I know the Rambo title card is a hoax.
The COTW was chosen in the wake of the aborted sequel to the attempted assassination of Trump being performed by a guy who is VERY enthusiastic about Ukraine, to the point of trying to sneak Afghan soldiers into Ukraine by setting up a house in Pakistan to house them and then further transport them. He also apparently offered to send thousands of Afghan soldiers to Haiti to help them combat gang violence. Whomst among us doesn’t have the numbers of thousands of Afghan soldiers on speed-dial. Do you reckon there’s a group chat?
Anyway, while there is still no official recognition of the Taliban’s government by any country, China has taken a different course than the late USSR and the US - forming economic in-roads, rather than trying their own invasion. This has been a big boon for the struggling country, with various mines and oil and agriculture deals helping keep things barely afloat. A total disintegration of the social fabric of Afghanistan is not in the interest of any of the powers that border it - China, Pakistan, and Iran, with Russia not too far away - so an interesting dynamic of helping-without-official-recognition has been established. I wonder who will be the first country to fully recognize them?
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Afghanistan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
The motherfuckers did it again, fuck this earth. One of the explosions in Sour/Tyre yesterday was less than 100m from my cousin’s office. We fucking lost contact with him for hours until everything settled and we got a thumbs up in the family group chat. How is this blatant terrorism even fucking justified by these absolute freaks. So many young beautiful people leave us every single day in Lebanon, for what? The continuation of the biggest terror state since Nazi Germany. My hatred and rage are genuinely reaching uncontrollable levels, fuck everyone from Sykes to Ben Gurion to Sadat to Clinton to Abdullah
if you go into the Lebanon sub on every thread is full of people talking about how Hezbollah is an embarrassment and Israel has just won this war, and if you check their post histories every single person making those comments is either american or israeli lmao
A Lebanese resident on an online post: — Yesterday, after what happened, I was just like all these pure and good people, feeling like I was hit on the head, even though I didn’t shed a single drop of blood. But the blood that was shed was the blood of my brothers.
The scene on the street felt like a scene from the horrors of the Day of Judgment—the fear, the panic, the blood, the chaos… all of it.
After donating blood, I went back home very late, sad, defeated, and broken.
Everyone assured us that the security incident was over, but the psychological impact it caused inside us seems to be lasting a while.
A day after the incident, you can feel the people are gloomy, burdened… sad, or more accurately, all of us are broken.
A young [wounded] friend of ours, a character, one of the most humorous people you’ll ever meet, always smiling. I thought “now, for sure, he must be psychologically devastated.” I went up to visit him at the hospital a short time ago, hoping to ease his pain. I faked a smile and entered:
“Swear to God, you played it right. Now you get the injured soldier’s pension, and your situation is settled for good. You’ll patch up the ceiling and get married.”
“Injured? Who’s injured, huh?! I lost an eye and two fingers, that’s all. Do you think I was a sniper? I still have another eye and three fingers on my right hand, so I can aim and shoot. Anyway, you donkey, when I shoot, I close one eye. Now, this one closed on its own! And for shooting, you only need two fingers; I have an extra one… let them dare!”
I swear to God, even if our homes were destroyed over our heads and there was only one of us left, with both legs amputated and his left hand cut off, and only one finger on his right hand, he would crawl through the rubble, find his target, and shoot.
We are many.
We do not break.
We do not die.
it is so enraging that the dominant narrative surrounding israel poisoning supply chains with explosive-stuffed tech, then remotely and blindly detonating these explosives and injuring thousands of civilians would immediately be paraded around by Westerners as “israel’s targeted attacks against Hezbollah”
But it’s not even surprising, because these are the same rotten souls who claim israel is “fighting Hamas”, even though israel has killed tens of innocent thousands of Palestinians, in addition to maiming and debilitating tens of thousands more, and leaving 2 million Palestinians with no safe place to go, little food or water to consume, and little to no access to necessary healthcare.
I fucking hate it all.
Cards Against Humanity sues SpaceX, alleges “invasion” of land on US/Mexico border
Apparently they’re saying SpaceX has invaded land that CAH bought to prevent the Trump border wall.
“Seven years ago, 150,000 people paid us $15 to protect a pristine parcel of land on the US-Mexico border from racist billionaire Donald Trump’s very stupid wall. Unfortunately, an even richer, more racist billionaire—Elon Musk—snuck up on us from behind and completely fucked that land with gravel, tractors, and space garbage.”
“If we win, we’ll equally split the lawsuit’s net proceeds among all 150,000 of our original subscribers, up to $100 each,” the company said. “While this isn’t enough to compensate our subscribers for the anguish they’ve suffered witnessing Elon Musk defile their once-verdant land⸺where wild horses galloped freely in the Texas moonlight⸺we think it’s a pretty good start.”
Lmao if you paid $15 to CAH several years ago, they’re gonna give you $100 when they win.
