Image is of Azerbaijan's President, Aliyev (left) and Armenia's President, Pashinyan (right) in a meeting a month or two after Azerbaijan took Nagorno-Karabakh.
- Never go to a second location.
- Always get the interior ministry post.
- Never get in a helicopter or any small aircraft.
- If someone with a gun enters your car, they’re gonna kill you.
- If someone tells you they’re not going to kill you, they’re calming you down to kill you later.
- Never give up your nukes.
- Never release the opposition's political prisoners.
- Never let the opposition delay elections.
- If someone starts to get into German runes, drop them.
- Never trust a South American with a German name.
- Never move anywhere for a religion.
- Never go into the sewers unless you’re a sewer guy.
- If someone’s trying to get you to commit a crime, they're FBI (sometimes CIA or military intelligence).
- Never become an FBI informant.
- If you do become an FBI informant, record everything.
- Never relinquish your arms.
- Always get it in writing.
- If you keep gambling, you’ll eventually win.
- Never talk to cops without a lawyer.
- Always pay your mercenaries.
- Don’t let anyone take your passport.
To add an addendum to rule 3, never put your President and Foreign Minister in the same helicopter or small aircraft. Especially if doing so in bad weather conditions. Especially if you're already under threat from a hostile nuclear power in the region with a proclivity for terrorism (though this probably isn't Israel's doing, in this particular case).
Anyway, Azerbaijan. Not a great country, I think. Did some genocides. They're a petrostate that is hosting Cop29, which I suppose is a way for the bourgeoisie to implicitly convey their contempt for the green movement. They got weapons from Israel, too.
Just for the record, there's an Iranian province called East Azerbaijan, which is not the same as Azerbaijan.
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 Azerbaijan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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The bulletins site is here!
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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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
ICJ orders Israel to halt Rafah offensive
In his reading of the ruling, Judge Salam says the court orders Israel to halt its Rafah offensive.
https://aje.io/hg54p3?update=2922734
Of course, Israel isn't going to comply but still a L.
I think Israel will not comply, and it’s going to be a pretty big L for them.
By not complying with a clear UN-backed demand, they are only making themselves into a bigger global pariah. Israel thinks they can go it alone and they don’t need support from anyone, but that’s patently untrue. There will be increasing pressure across the world to cut economic ties. And even further than that, as Israel just keeps increasing their negative perception around the world, immigration into Israel - which is existentially important for the Zionist project - could start to dry up. Obviously this isn’t going to end Israel by itself, but it is absolutely one step among many that will get us there.
absolutely. Israel isn't Russia. it's not even South Africa. it is a small country in Western Asia which has vulnerable offshore gas fields and is reliant on foreign labour for agriculture and desalination for water. it physically cannot handle being cut off from the world even if they try and pretend that this is the case (such as how they're pretending that they're unaffected by the Red Sea blockade while Eliat languishes and road logistics are unable to replace those carried by massive ocean ships, surprise surprise).
with sufficient economic/diplomatic (or indeed military) opposition, an Israeli collapse would be rapid. months, not years. before it, people will be like "oh, but Israel has X military strength, Y planes, an entire security state built up over decades, full American support, I think it's optimistic to predict that this country will go down so easily" and afterwards, people will be like "how the fuck did we not expect this country to collapse sooner? like, good god, it has so many glaring vulnerabilities."
When it’s all said and done, I will be very interested to see how Israel addresses the situation of Palestinian labor in Israel. I saw that before Oct 7, there were over 200,000 workers who lived in the West Bank (maybe Gaza too, not sure) and worked in “israel” proper. The Israelis are saying they will never let those laborers back in and the idea of using Indian or Bangladeshi migrant labor has been floated. That is absurd as Yglesias’ “one billion Americans” idea. Israel is a deeply white supremacist state - I would argue they are the most maybe the most racialized state in the world right now. They do allow some token racial minorities in so long as they are Jewish, but you can read all about how they are treated as second class citizens at best. The idea that the racist Israelis will accept a couple hundred thousand brown people to work and live among them… I just can’t imagine that happening. And that’s not even considering the logistical issues that would be involved in bringing over and housing 200k migrant workers.
But then again, the Israelis have taken a hard core Nazi turn, and I think they’re serious about not letting Palestinians back in. We’ll see if they’re serious enough to torpedo their own economy over it though.
Extremely normal response
For context, it’s a quote from Ben Gurion on Nakba Day 1955, while the Palestinian people were kept under military rule. Zionist speeches and history are one eternal self-suck
The /r/worldnews thread is fun. Lots of people saying the UN supports Hamas and some even saying they were involved in October 7th. Wild world over there
Protocols of the Elders of Gaza
R politics was better than those bloodlust brutes in world news when Biden denied genocide accusations.
That forum is uniquely bloodthirsty.
just saying but a place called world news is bound to be astroturfed to hell and back
It's not very grillpilled of me but I occasionally check into r/worldnews as multipolarity marches along just to see them get increasingly delusional
The specific wording of it also implies genocide if the Rafah offensive continues. I wonder if they did that more to halt the US/EU from aiding israel given that it would then legally make them complicit in genocide
Decent article about it: The Independent (UK): Biden’s vanishing red line: White House silent as top UN court orders Israel to halt Rafah attack