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.
Death to Israel this is more supervillain shit
Full Hezbullah statement on the pager explosion
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most MercifulInitial statement issued by Hezbullah:
"At approximately 3:30 pm on Tuesday 09-17-2024, a number of message receiving devices known as “pagers” exploded, which were owned by a number of workers in various Hezbullah units and institutions.
These explosions, the causes of which are still unknown, led to the martyrdom of a child and two brothers, and the injury of a large number of people with various injuries.
Hezbullah's competent agencies are currently conducting a wide-ranging security and scientific investigation to determine the causes that led to these simultaneous explosions.
Likewise, medical and health agencies are treating the wounded and injured in a number of hospitals in various Lebanese regions.
We ask God Almighty to have mercy on our righteous martyrs on the road to Jerusalem, and we pray for the wounded and injured to recover quickly.
We call on our honorable people to be aware of the rumors and false and misleading information that some parties are spreading in a way that serves the psychological war in the interest of the Zionist enemy, especially since this is accompanied by the Zionist enemy’s speeches of intimidation and threats and what it calls changing the situation in the north.
We affirm that the resistance, at all its levels and various units, is at the highest level of readiness to defend Lebanon and its steadfast people."
Tuesday 9-17-2024 13 Rabi` al-Awwal 1446 AH
I think the way to analyze this latest attack is that the zionists are getting increasingly desperate. They have burned up probably one of their most extensive clandestine intelligence gathering operations in this attack. Seems extremely myopic from a strategic perspective. I guess with the latest responses from Hezbullah and Ansar Allah (not to mention Iran's pending response), they have been compelled to these desperate tactics to do something concrete and vindictive, the intelligence gathering was no longer as valuable in comparison. Just some thoughts I've been having today.
I would be shocked if the Zionists are just blowing their load, with no follow up planned. But then, they are coward.
Interesting. How?
Conceivably if they can trigger these explosives remotely, they could also gather info remotely as well. Even if they couldn't gather info, they went to a lot of trouble to setup this supply chain infiltration, and they've now lost that capability/opportunity going forward.
I guess the idea is maybe they had wire taps on the pagers?
I’d be genuinely surprised if they didn’t. Managing to infiltrate compromised communication devices is a much bigger scoop that conducting a very scattered terrorist attack.
Western libs are wanking themselves blind about how sophisticated this operation was, which is pure nonsense. This is less precise than mailing someone a bomb in an envelope.