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.
Do you always say weird insults when people report news?
Presumably, when we discuss the president of a country that is waging a war of national liberation and decolonization against US-backed contras, we would describe them with respect. The president of Burkina Faso is President Ibrahim Traore. You can't even be bothered to capitalize his name. And the way this is written reads bizarre, like he personally went to order them at gunpoint to build defensive embankments. "Kim Jong Un shot orchestra director 98 times!!"
The Sahelian nations have been massively underdeveloped and are under sanctions, "giving them jobs" is easy for you to say but it literally means nothing when the takfiri groups, receiving weapons and training from NATO and "Ukraine", are killing hundreds of people a month and specifically targetting infrastructure.
All of this leads me to my interpretation that you simply have a deep disdain for these people which is why I said it.
I appreciate our comrad's input and contributions 99% of the time, but if they are even a smidge offended, legitimately or not, they become the most sanctimonious ass I've ever seen. So no, not always, but often enough that it's weird.
I have said maybe a dozen times that, on this platform, we should ridicule people who slander anti-imperialist movements without citations or citing nazi media. It seems that simply pointing out correct principles doesn't stick.
Is this weird?
No. But vague and venemous comments alone don't get the job done. I agree, linkless news is just gossip, Nazi news is only useful in so far as we learn what the fascists are spinning. However, your formating critiques, like capitalizing names, comes across as pedantic and ceremonial and not in a good way. People engage in information in different ways, and demanding we all show respect in a niche Internet forum where the actors being discussed will never see it is a little ridiculous.
I think your worthy point is that linkless news isn't worth the electricity it takes to type the comment. Rather than letting your indignation at tone and substantive criticism get conflated into a single line of criticism, simply stating "link or remove" and then adding to that any additional criticism would be better. At the very least someone who, presumably, shared something in good faith, could attempt to then modify it in a way that better pleased the audience. As it went at first, all you did was launch a barb that seems alienating to anyone who didn't immediately share your attitudes and make the same connection, and almost certainly the poster themselves. I think that's a shame if we want the News Thread to be more than a hobby forum for a couple dozen power posters.
There's also the fact that the trenches massacre thing happened awhile ago. I guess we just assume people follow the same feeds we do. "X countries leads reprisals against islamist aligned ethnic group" is a common controversy, for example it's how the west finds a way to critique wagner's successes. (And let's be clear, reprisal killings do happen which is not good in multi ethnic states.
How is she being a sanctimonious ass? I guess she should throw insults at people for no reason like you?
Maybe that would make her less of a "sanctimonious ass."
It's okay. Maybe he is right. Sometimes I read things here and am just baffled which negatively affects my psychological state and necessarily my behavior. Such things seems to peak when events reach a crescendo. Probably better I leave then.
take shitfights into DMs or use the report button to get mods to deal with this. in the meantime, take a couple days off.
I don't want this to be more than it is, please don't see this as damning your entire involvement here. Sometimes touching grass is healthy and fine, don't let me stop you from doing that if that's what you need, but don't let my bristling push you out either. I think my direct response to your other comment captures more the spirit of my critique, but I assure you it's a friendly one. We all have habits or traits that sometimes rub people the wrong way, and at the end of the day part of why I've become reactive this one is just a numbers game. Like I said, I appreciate 99% of your contributions, but due to visibility by volume alone that means I see a good amount of the 1% too.
you view the earlier post as improper protocol in a forum post. fine - then explain that instead of immediately resorting to the most bad faith explanation possible, that lack of capital letters and flippant wording means deep disdain for the concept of the people in the global south or wars of liberation. if you think something is that disrespectful and terrible but you aren't sure, consider using the report button. mods here actually care. I appreciate your contribution to these threads, but there are enough clear and obvious 'enemies of the people' without jumping at shadows.
Pattern of behavior over years of reading the News Mega as far as I'm concerned. In this particular context, someone posted (linkless, shame on them) news. If she had a real problem with it's presentation or tone she could have stated clearly what that was and invited the OP to reformat it. Instead, we get unspecific accusations of "disdain for the people." Rather than critique the presentation in an informative way that let's the OP know and grow, she simply besmirches their character and assumes the wagons will circle on her side for a good ole ratio.
I know she can offer useful criticism too because she does as a response to the same comment! And good. But the venom is still present and unnecessary in my opinion. Being so quick to side swipe a comrade at minor offenses isn't a good way to go about life.
What was she supposed to post instead? "I'm sorry x, but I find your tone harsh! Would you mind adding softer language to improve the presentation of your post?"
How would that have been better?
Her comment was about tone and language in that post, nothing of the actual news. So her comment was fine.
You said it yourself in your comment that she posts like a "sanctimonious ass" whenever she's "offended."
It's funny you talk about her venom when you just called her a sanctimonious ass for being offended.
don't be needlessly antagonistic. take a breather and come back in a couple days
if you're going to disengage then you need to actually do that and resist the impulse to do parthian shots. you both are going in timeout for a bit
Well the top comment is bullshit anyways because the Sahel has been slowly winning territory back from Western-backed terrorists. Under Sankara's betrayer and murderer, 70% of Burkina Faso was occupied by ISIS. Now, it's closer to 40%. Mali recaptured Kidal around 2020 from those same Western-backed terrorists. There's a resurgence in terrorist attacks because the Frogs and the Burgerlanders are getting kicked out of the Sahel and the West has to reassert itself within the parts of the Sahel they still occupy.
Even just saying that is more useful than immediate belittlement and toxicity. Put this as a response to the top level comment. This thread got real stupid real fast so I'd like the next general to be posted and everyone to be more helpful and less dickish to one another.
Solidarity is a two way street, and there exists a type of condescending and chauvinist poster here that shits on those who we should have solidarity with. If they cannot take it, they should not give it
Some people exist in cultures where respect actually matters. Westoids would not understand this