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.
Tbh, Morales did repeated the propaganda that Milei and Carlos Mesa had said against Arce. That Arce had attempted a self-coup or something like that, which literally made no sense. Even Morales' former vice-president said that this was a stupid move and that Morales and Arce should stop fighting, and then Morales got angry with him too. I think Evo was a good president, he's a good person and politician, but he has a big ego.
I don't think Morales is planning a coup d'état or anything like that, he's just annoyed because Arce will probably be the main candidate for the next elections. And who knows, maybe in the future these two will make up, like Lula da Silva and Marina Silva did after literally 20 years. Iirc during the recent coup attempt, Evo was the first person to support Arce.
This isn’t a Morales ego thing, since MAS is mass mobilizing for this and it’s a material demand. This is the working class making demands. Arce better learn his place as a representative of these people and give into their demands, or Morales will escort him out of power again
how did the self-coup make no sense? it seemed at least a viable theory, given the media-friendly faceoff and how badly executed it was
Zuniga's first action after he thought he had taken control was to try to arrest Arce and free Jeaninez and Camacho. Evo was the first politician to declare support for Arce, asking people to take to the streets in support of Arce. There were many other movements in Bolivia, Zuniga was waiting for reinforcements to arrive as he didn't have the support of the police. But the coup failed due to poor organization. When the so-called reinforcements arrived in La Paz, they were met by the police, which meant that they had screwed up. Most of these regiments returned to their bases soon afterwards.
Zuniga tried to escape in an APC, but was soon captured. Later, other people, such as Juan Arnez Salvador, were also arrested. After that, Zuniga decided to say that it was all just an attempted self-coup out of nowhere. People like Carlos Mesa started repeating this. Evo also said this and then backtracked when Milei said the same thing and Evo's supporters were disappointed that he was agreeing with Milei.
For me, what's really suspicious about this coup is how slowly Argentina, Ecuador and the US reacted to it. And it happened literally two days after Arce made a deal with China and Brazil over lithium mining rights.