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.
Hungarian shell company behind exploding pagers used by Israel in Lebanon terror attack - The Cradle
Someone mentioned Motorola as a supplier of these types of pagers, but these AR-924 models are made by this exact company.
No kidding, bud.
Yep, apparently the company is some woman doing international trade, probably with similar shady stuff, what says more is that not even the hungarian authorities are investigating it, saying "people are free to start a company here", so looks like Orbán is doing a favor for Bibi here.
How did that deal go down? I seen their "website" before it was taken down like the guilty bastards they are and it is one of the most generic thing ever made.
Further more who in Hezbollah made the purchase? It isn't like oh no name Taiwan company get me an order of X number of pagers. Oh ok, we'll have our Euro affiliate direct to you. I hope they do an investigation.
I agree with others - where there is smoke there is fire. Combine this with Vault 7 and Snowden revelations that intel gets in the middle and alters crap to plant their backdoors like everything is very sus right now. How many others are out there?
I hope someone / country gets a terror designation. And if this happened even as a shell in Taiwan I hope China goes after them. It is on China grounds.
China doesn't actually control Taiwan. They say it's part of China for face reasons, which is a relatively recent phenomenon starting when the KMT first started claiming Taiwan.
I originally thought Apollo Gold was a no name company as well but then I read that commonwealth (tw website) article and it looks like they successfully carved out a niche in Europe and other places.
So you can't even trust the "Made in" on products now? I know some make a distinction of where parts are made and where they are assembled, but this seems like such a weird situation.
Thing is, you don't know who has got their hands on your phone/device before you buy it. Low or high tech.
In the case of your personal smart phone you might buy your phone from a dealer that sells to a variety of people which makes an attack like this on you very unlikely. Furthermore you may take your phone to a repair shop and there they will be able to find any signs of tampering. You have more to worry about from Five Eyes Spyware which is on every device and social media site.
Hezbollah's pager was bought from one point of sale - a single point of failure. Furthermore the reliability and cheapness of these devices makes it less necessary to repair them and find signs of tampering.
You can't trust "Made in Taiwan", that's for damn sure.
this is going to do decades worth of brand damage to that label
Why?
Couldn’t trust it, ever. A lot of US military contracts require “made in USA,” so people relabel things accordingly.
Latest evidence shows the bombs were planted while they were in customs so the made in designation doesn't mean much when stuff can be tampered with