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.
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.
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/3079671b-b829-4df9-a160-71fc7c710ecb.jpeg)
TLDR of Simplicius's article yesterday:
It's worth noting with the ATACMS thing that some of the big pro-Russian people on Twitter are stating that Ukrainian usage of ATACMS is through the roof and they've already fired an appreciable fraction of all the ATACMS ever produced (and, in typical American fashion, they make very few per year), and that Russian losses aren't so bad comparatively (I mean, they aren't, if I understand the number of destroyed systems versus the number the Russians have ever made/can make per year - which I may not understand as I'm not a military guy). Others can work out if this is accurate reporting or cope, just saying what I've saw. But Simplicius did sound fairly concerned about it in the article. Not very concerned, but fairly concerned.
ATACMS is a relatively fast ballistic missile (top speed between Mach 3-4, so not hypersonic but quite close) fired from within short range (300km max range). This gives air defenses a very small window to respond and shoot down the missile. A 4-5 minute window from firing of the missile to impact at max range. Ukraine had lots of success with thisin the beginning, and are probably having success again now because they are firing a lot of them. Realistically the is little air defenses can go when faced with this type of threat. Even the most advanced air defence systems in Israel failed to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles.
It would be very funny if, with Putin's backing, Yanukovich would be declared the interim president of Ukraine.![emoji guaido guaido](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/b19eeff5-1d1e-43fc-93bb-a1c7950c8837.png)
The ATACAMs story should be dividided into two points, tne actual material effect on the war(if any) and the political/human factor i.e the current NATO aggression and escalation.
#1 I think Mercouris is very much on point today with his reponse, (here) with the consistent historical analysis so far, this is not the first time Ukraine had success with their missile strikes, such success was brief, but it wasn't the only time then so its obviously not going to be the only time now, in the end the trend is Russia probably has the means to continue to adapt and eventualy develop countermeasures.
The material cost of the war and the imbalance between Russia vs the west is still the key point. As he says, what is the expectation here, what is the end goal? The west can't make many more ATACAMs but Russia can surely make more S-400s. Ultimately there is nothing but a unicorn victory here, what is destroying a S-400 in Crimea going to achieve?
In fact Simplicius makes this point below while demonstrating he is being very inconsistent here.
Excuse me what? This is literaly
unironicaly getting lost on the narrative. I do not agree with this double thinking. The Russian army will simultaneously be thrown into a chaos and at the same time nothing will change in the course of the war?
You can't reach this conclusion, press both buttons here which is why I prefer the conservative stance here i.e this is a short term advantage that is not significant in the long term given the underlying material realities of the war.
#2 - Yet both of them agree that this is yet another step along the escalation/provocation ladder which yeah its undeniable. But who is realy going to waste time guessing where the famous "red lines" realy are? Unless you're paid to write articles or make YT videos about this panic, just keep betting on nothing ever happens.
The Russians should know the European general population is not ready to die for Zelensky, in fact the EU regularly goes back and forth, anyone remember Zelensky being shunned on the NATO summit last year? We know THAT meme?
Its hard to keep making guesses but I think it is still naive to assume NATO intervention is guaranteed at all... Its pointless to make long term predictions but Ukraine is a neoliberal project that is ultimately not really essential to EU/NATO. They can cut their losses and abandon Ukraine at any time specialy if the EU fascist parties start winning elections.
if 1000 missiles can wreck ~100 russian anti air systems, shipping loads of planes will start making all the sense and will make this much closer to western doctrine. Meanwhile russian planes are completely useless at hitting patriots.
So far its closer to 1000:40. There are only around 1000 ATACAMs in existence and they aren't making any more. While they are doing damage to Russia's anti-air it is a temporary issue because they have plenty of replacement parts and are producing more.
usa is only training 12 pilots and ukraine is only getting 6 f16s and the date keeps getting pushed back with 40 more being promised with no delivery date.
Russia has hit patriots a few times but they found it easier and cheaper to just make it so their aren't missiles for the patriot systems.
Over a dozen patriot systems have been destroyed in Ukraine by Russian missiles
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
I've got some kind of thesis brewing about how imperialism doesn't allow for the idea of stopping or slowing down escalation, they can only conceive of victory and just get more frustrated when they don't win the way they're supposed to. Like, would Biden have to follow your leader himself for this thing to break? idk. I wish they'd just stop.
Hawks have infinite room to argue for taking the next step on the ladder. Each step normalizes all further steps, meaning the argument for the next step is exactly as easy as the last was.
Meanwhile, the cost of peace increases with every escalation.
If the logic for escalation held once, it is increasingly likely to keep holding.