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.
EDIT: Should probably note here that Zhao DaShuai is quite open about being People's Armed Police Propaganda Bureau
broke: global trade networks will solve all ills and make things more efficient
woke: we must work towards more local and regional supply chains for the benefit of self-sufficiency and weakening imperialism
bespoke: we've gotta make sure everything important is made solely inside anti-western countries or Israel will plant explosives into everything to cause massive terrorist attacks
as a side note, this is yet another example among thousands of Western projection. we've been warned for years and years that buying goods from China is unsafe because who knows what malicious things those godless communists are putting into those devices. then, Israel literally plants explosives into thousands of devices that were then imported into Lebanon and then detonated, injuring thousands, and that's not only not regarded as malicious, it's actually regarded as clever. I have a feeling that if China revealed that if they'd been putting explosives into a bunch of their goods and then exploded them and it injured thousands of Americans, Western social media would not be applauding China's genius. They'd call them utter cowards. They'd probably go out in huge protests demanding that every square inch of China is turned into radioactive glass, demonstrating that they "haven't broken the American spirit" or whatever.
the accusations of spying were always kinda sus since all phones can spy and its something readily regulatable, but i cant believe this of all things is the reason they insist on banning chinese phones lmfao
ur-fascist batman was already wringing his hands at the thought of turning ubiquitous communication devices into a panopticon but israel has somehow managed to outfash the bat
literally cartoon villain shit
The Huawei phone ban was just collateral damage from the Huawei telecom equipment ban. They didn't care if you used a Huawei phone, they ran Android and came with the associated NSA backdoors regardless, but they could not tolerate countries choosing Huawei cellular equipment since they wouldn't be able to use their backdoors they have with nokia or cisco or whatever.
westoids realizing aiding terrorist attacks backfired on them
it's official and well known worldwide now, western devices are tampered with and could be bombs. the only way to avoid this is to buy chinese/russian/iranian.
Can see incoming orders world wide with the same requirements. This could be a real turning point in the new cold war and decoupling of globalization era trade
My effort at a translation
Frankly it seems kinda quick that this happened on Tuesday and now factories are running non-stop on Thursday, but I don't really know how much about how procurement works for Middle Eastern countries.
The second the attack happened factory owners would have know that they are gonna get a boost in orders. The second it happened the wholesalers were gonna be going through their stock to see what's going to be hard to sell and looking to get alternate stock.
I think this is going to be one of those supply chain whiplash situations like we had constantly throughout the Covid lockdown era. People are speculating an increased demand and making orders so they can cash in, but nobody actually knows what that demand is going to end up being. Things will probably ripple back and forth between increased demand and overproduction.