Image is of Stepanakert, essentially the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is now a ghost city, and Azerbaijan has recently torn down the parliament building and various other important places. Sourced from this article.
Despite the predictions and assertions of various NATO-aligned commentators that Russia’s influence is waning, the opposite generally appears to be occurring. ASEAN has become more strongly aligned with Russia despite claims to the contrary. In Central Asia, there has been a propaganda push to declare that countries there are “emerging from Russia’s shadow”, while in reality, as Bhadrakumar analyzes, Russia’s significant economic growth and ongoing march towards victory in Ukraine is creating opportunities for further integration, not separation, and there are no major political shifts there in terms of Russian ties. And in Niger, Russian soldiers have now entered an airbase which once hosted American soldiers, now kicked out, and generally Russia’s diplomacy and economic deals (nuclear power plant construction, military equipment, grain shipments, etc) have accelerated in Africa.
Where Russia’s influence has actually seemed to decrease (outside of the West, of course) is in Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh’s remarkably rapid collapse in late 2023 demonstrated that Russia was not willing to escalate things in defense of Armenia to fend off Azerbaijan. One hundred thousand Armenians - most but not all of them in the region - fled in advance to avoid mass persecution, which received remarkably little attention by a West which calls itself overwhelmingly concerned with borders changing due to military action as in Ukraine. Since then, Armenia seems to be on some kind of self-annihilating bender, allured by the potential of Western military and economic deals. Armenia froze its membership in the CSTO due to its failure to protect them, and the head of NATO, Stoltenberg, visited the region in March. The West has offered up hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to Armenia and is helping them “modernize their military”; given the poor track record of Western military equipment in Ukraine, one wonders why they’re even bothering. RAND has advocated for a balancing act; America should, in their eyes, realize that they can’t entirely remove Russia’s influence but nonetheless should make inroads to protect Armenia from Azerbaijan (which is an interesting position given that Israel provided arms to Azerbaijan to help them take Nagorno-Karabakh).
A quick look at Armenia’s geographical position reveals the folly of trying to create some kind of Western outpost. With a hostile Azerbaijan to their east, a very unfriendly (albeit NATO member) Turkiye to their west, an ascendant Iran to their south, and Russia not far from the action, there is little hope of doing much more than causing a little chaos in the hopes it’ll momentarily distract Russia while it makes inroads most everywhere else on the planet. The political situation appears miserable for Pashinyan, but there isn’t really a popular alternative to take the reins. A truly cursed situation.
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 Armenia! 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 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.
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I’ve become like really actually prejudiced against the Baltics, like not “I have a cogent critique of the ruling regime of the nation state of Lithuania” or “Official sanction of revisitionist history and anti-semetic violence within the Baltics is bad”, but like prejudice against the people and the non-Nazi parts of the culture. Gonna work on that. : |
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The Baltics are filled with anti-communists anti-antifa gremlins and like most Europeans, they have a massively inflated sense of self-importance. Madagascar has almost 5 times the population and almost 4 times the land mass of the entire Baltics combined, but when’s the last time you hear people talk about Madagascar? There’s like Tier 3 Chinese cities with more people living in them than the Baltics. More people live in Missouri than the Baltics. And it’s not like they’re bustling centers of economic growth or scientific innovation either. The only reason why we have to constantly hear about the Baltics instead of Madagascar is because of their place in anti-communist history, the fact that they ceded from the Soviet Union and how they freed themselves from the “imperialist Soviet yoke” and now are under threat from the Asiatic ruZZian mongrel hordes.
There are some based Balts out there, but 30+ years of anti-communist government and education means that much like with Americans, you need to sus out how tightly they will cling to western chauvinism and white supremacy before offering respect.
Communist Balts are extra cool, for this same reason.
Me to myself: “Oh yeah, I wonder about that one Lithuanian artist Jonas Mekas, what are his politics like?”
Wikipedia:
During World War II, Mekas edited and contributed to two far-right, collaborationist newspapers under the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, the significance of which has been debated by historians.
the significance of which has been debated by historians.
There is no “debate”. There are facts and there are people who don’t like them.
Would help if there were like even a single example of an anti-imperialist figure from these nations.
Just cause the post-Cold War government sucks and there were Nazi collaborators present doesn’t mean there aren’t/weren’t anti-imperialist figures from those nations. The Baltic SSRs couldn’t have existed without local Communist parties run by people from the Baltics. Just look through the leadership of those parties, for example Johannes Lauristin.
Also don’t forget
Disco Elysium was made in the Baltics and is influenced by how bleak these countries feel for the people who still believe in a better future
John Bachtell, previous National Chairperson (Revisionist version of General Secretary) of CPUSA, member of their national committee (revisionist version of Central Committee), and president of Long View Publishing Co., the publisher of People’s World (The mouthpiece of CPUSA that puts out articles so bad they stopped printing physical copies so as to avoid having them used as toilet paper.), one of the few public faces of the right-opportunist anti-communist rot that has killed CPUSA and reanimated its corpse into a DNC sheepdog, turboshitlib extraordinare, and coincidentally has worked personally with former President Obama back in the day with his senatorial campaign as some kind of precinct coordination officer.
This is someone in CPUSA’s leadership who openly pushes the party to support the Democratic party and calls any third party candidate a running-dog for ‘fascist’ trump, (and we know for a fact he’d call PSL anti-democratic and ‘progressive’, if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d face greater backlash) as I’ve previously quoted before…
Third-party candidates prevented both Democrats and Republicans from surpassing 50% in 2016, playing a key role in Trump’s victory. Therefore, another GOP scheme is to siphon off votes from Democrats by flooding the zone with third-party candidates or supporting those that develop independently in order to widen division, play on concerns about Biden’s age, and tap disappointment with the policy promises that Biden and the Democrats haven’t been able to fulfill.
In 2024, the GOP and MAGA are excited by the “No Labels” Party, the Democratic primary challenge of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Green Party candidacy of Cornel West. They see all of these campaigns as opportunities to disrupt the election, divide the anti-MAGA majority, and undercut the progressive voter mobilization needed to defeat fascism.
~ John Bachtell, previous leader of CPUSA and president of People’s World
MAGA Republicans will use any means necessary to win—including ‘progressive’ third parties
And of course if you feel like torturing yourself more with his writing here’s another one titled: Biden’s ‘crisis presidency’ and potential for transformative change
So anyways, now that I’ve riled you up, allow me to drop the feather to break the proverbial camel’s back.
John Bachtell says “I condemn Hamas” because of some video showing some dude getting his ass beat because he was stealing phones, food, solar cells, etc. from refugees and got caught. (link to proof)
Zero investigation into the image and he immediately begins to push pro-fascist talking points.
And if that’s not disgusting enough, not much later he begins posting in support for the Georgian color revolution thats happening right now
Good fucking luck actually having your social fascist and class traitor leadership willingly relinquish power - and thats assuming you can actually vote them out to begin with - any members of CPUSA here. You’d literally have better luck trying to learn as much as you can and getting as many resources as you can then bailing for an actual communist party.
Edit: I also forgot to mention he’s unironically repeats nazi propaganda and is a banderite
National Chairperson
but why though? Like I get that Chairman is gendered, but General Secretary is already not gendered!
Cpusa really seems like the Democrat coded flip side of the coin with patsocs on the other side stumping for the gop
Yeah they all suck.
Funny you mention patsyuck, but I’ve been seeing some hub-bub from the more ultra-left sections both inside and outside cpusa calling cpusa’s leadership patsocs.
They’re incorrect, CPUSA’s leadership is comprised of chauvanistic boomer liberals, but they’re not Patsocs. It’s like a fascism vs Naziism thing, Nazis are a more “refined” version of fascism and Patsocs are a more “refined” worldview defined by chauvanism and boomer liberalism.
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Listening to Mearsheimer is so weird. It’s pure historical materialism that walks straight up to the point of being Marxism, but then he takes a turn and says “…and this is why we must focus on containing China to maintain the US empire, because that’s what it is it’s an empire.”
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the mythical capitalist marxist
I didn’t say he was a Marxist. I said his realism is strikingly similar to historical materialism insofar as it views and understands the world but differs wildly from Marxism in terms of what how it believes we should respond to that material reality.
Realists really sound like “fence sitting I’m smarter than anyone else because i know game theory lingo and taking a position is not realist”. And when major events happens they say “i told you so” even when they never had a clear position.
Kissinger was really good at this, people tend to recount his most notable political decisions and he mystified himself by playing up his cold and calculated maniac personality
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5/8/24 - Hexbear user @SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net documents catching and releasing invasive Asian hornet.
5/10/24 - Asian hornets attack IDF troops, hospitalizing 10.
Coincidence?
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Amerikkka threatening the ICC
“Nor have you issued an arrest warrant for the genocidal General Secretary of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, or any other Chinese official.”
“We interrupt this actual genocide to remind you of a fake one.”
These fascists are quivering because they know full well how GUILTY they are and how deeply involved their votes, war machines, and pillaged tax dollars go to directly in supporting the genocide. This letter is as admission of guilt and culpability. I’d like to see them try and go through with this. Show the world who you really are.
12 more warrants are needed.
By issuing warrants, you would be calling into question the legitimacy of Israel’s laws, legal system, and democratic form of government.
yes.
He also emphasized that Russo-Cuban relations are based on mutual friendship and respect.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel held a meeting at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow
The Russian leader thanked Diaz-Canel for attending the Victory Day Parade and emphasized that Cuba-Russian relations are based on mutual friendship and respect.
“The Soviet Union and modern Russia have always stood by the Cuban people in their struggle for their interests and their homeland,” Putin said, recalling that Cuban citizens also fought alongside the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War.
“We remember this and will always treat with great respect those who stood alongside our parents and grandparents, shoulder to shoulder, fighting together against Nazism,” he stressed.
“We will always support the Cuban people and oppose U.S. attempts to restrict Cuba’s development through sanctions and restrictions. However, for decades, the Cuban people have fought against them and feel strong,” he said.
For his part, the Cuban president handed Putin a letter of congratulations sent by the revolutionary leader Raul Castro on the occasion of his inauguration as president of Russia.
“Our visit to Russia concluded with a very pleasant meeting with Vladimir Putin, the president of this great country. It was a warm exchange between friends who are well aware of the challenges their nations face and are committed to mutual support,” Diaz-Canel said, adding that Moscow can always count on Havana’s support.
“Cuba constantly condemns the geopolitical manipulation carried out by the U.S. government,” he said, reaffirming rejection of the threat posed by NATO’s approach to Russian borders.
The Soviet Union and modern Russia have always stood by the Cuban people in their struggle for their interests and their homeland
So help them! These are two of the most heavily sanctioned nations on earth, and Cuba is suffering far more from it. I hope Russia at least can extend some help now that they’re already cut off from most Western financial institutions. What’s left to lose by letting the Cubans import pacemakers or something?
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They still have lots of hydrocarbons and Cuba is experiencing severe fuel shortages.
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I somehow completely missed that Ukraine is now using civilian planes to bomb Russia. You’d think the international “rules based” order people would have something against this but they predictably do not.
A Ukrainian Sport Plane Drone Just Flew 800 Miles Into Russia To Blow Up An Oil Refinery [forbes]
Reddit discussion is all about how Russian air defense sucks, based Ukrainian ingenuity, so brave etc etc.
I’m scratching my head thinking, this is bad for exactly the reason that soldiers pretending to be red cross to hide in plain sight and ambush their enemies is bad right?
This encourages the destruction of civilian aircraft.
This has nothing to do with air defenses though, its another failure of the coordination between Russian civilian and military organization. Certainly they should have large exclusion zones but at some point you take calculated risks, there are too many targets in any major city and before you even talk about shooting down civilian aircraft its just the point of restricting civilian aviation to such an extent it makes flying out of anything but obscure distant airfields impossible and therefore pointless.
Russia would rather risk losing a military base or some random infrastructure than to severely compromise their civilian aviation sector.
Ukrainians do these tactics because they hope this sort of disruption will lead to discomfort and revolt e.g destroying the Crimea bridge means people can’t travel as easily for work/vacation(its a popular destination) and therefore lead to some mass psychosis.
The problem is they fail to understand alternatives exist to get to Crimea besides just the bridge, nothing would change.
But coming back to civilian aviation, even if these attacks are successful, nothing will change, Ukraine hopes to make people afraid of flying and to disrupt civilian aviation, this wont happen no matter what just like Russia is keeping their western jets flying through “grey market” parts, they’ll do whatever it takes to keep civilian aviation going as “normal”.
All that said, there should be changes to procedures and whatnot, but the holy grail mass psychosis event Ukraine is hoping for will never come. Russia will not shoot down random civilian aircraft, except as a last resort imo.
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Comrades, it is Victory Day today, although this victory was 78 years ago, its impact has only grown with time.
Long live the USSR, Glory to the Red Army, All Power to the Anti-Fascist Heroes! The defeat of Fascism will forever be one of the defining moments in all of human history!
Th tribute brought IRL tears to my eyes.
There is a sadness in the tribute seeing the flag change from the USSR flag to the Russian one
(First off, if you are free right now, fucking click the link titled “A tribute”. second off, fucking click the link titled “A tribute”)
Seventy-nine years ago to this day, the People’s flag was staked into the heart of most grevious reaction and the world celebrated victory over German fascism.
Seventy-nine years later, we stand on the shoulders of those heroes. We stand in the world of their victory, imperfect as it may be yet in contrast of what could have been it is a world in which we can still fight for a better tomorrow.
Let us not just spend the day honoring the sacrifice of the millions of men and women who have passed on the torch of humanity through nostalgic remembrance, but take onto us the legacy of their work to build the foundations of a better world and continue in their place so when the time comes for us to pass on the torch of humanity to the new generation we can say that out of the ruins of the old barbarism we have delivered to them a better future of peace and freedom and continue the great work towards the emancipation of the human race.
Forwards ever, backwards never.
DEN POBEDY! DEN POBEDY! DEN POBEDY!
Its a good fucking tribute ain’t it
It get better every year as more and more people grow to understand and appreciate the depths of hells the Soviet peoples went through to save the world.
Probably my favorite image of the year thus far is a picture of of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin that had a projector on it get hacked and display the flag of victory on it
Unfortunately I think the projector hack may have been a fake, can’t find anything other than a few retweets
