Bulletins and News Discussion from May 6th to May 12th, 2024 - The Nagorno-Karabakh Nosedive - COTW: Armenia
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.
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.
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.
Israel's ambassador to the UN is currently giving a speech condemning Palestine's bid to join. And he's shredding the UN charter, which is what he says the general assembly is doing.
Armchair analysis: Israel is the west’s crazy “bad cop” in the Middle East. The threat is always there for Middle Eastern countries: play ball with the US or Israel will fuck your shit up. The quid pro quo is, the US gets pliant vassal states in places like Egypt, Jordan, etc and Israel gets money, protection, and diplomatic cover from the US.
The rabid, unhinged nature of Zionists is a feature, not a bug, that serves US interests. It allows the US to (superficially) keep their hands clean of the violence that needs to exist to perpetuate hegemony. US gets to play good cop and appear to the rest of the world to be level-headed and impartial (whether the world buys that is a different matter).
The US has fostered this “attack dog” mentality in Israel for decades, if by nothing else by not holding Israel accountable for anything. It now permeates Israeli society. And the US might be naive enough to think you can just turn on/off Israel’s psychotic mentality like a faucet.
Well, that's inflammatory, but also sounds raw and passionate
sees he doesn't shred it with his hands, but actually brought a tiny battery powered paper shredder to the podium that he stares dumbly at while feeding paper to.
LOL and he's still going on and on about "the Israeli babies burned on Oct 7". Leave it to Israel to keep on parroting talking points which everyone already knows are total shams...and which it, itself, even admitted a long time ago were lies.
But we can also laugh at this clownish behavior because we've inoculated ourselves to it. The reality is that people tend to just remember that there's stringent support/opposition to a thing, and what you actually say and do tends to get lost in collective memory. One of my favorite excerpts from Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching:
The charge that monkey-wrenching alienates public opinion stems from an incomplete understanding of propaganda and history. Scientific studies of propaganda and the press show that the vast majority of the public remembers the news only in vaguest outline. Details rapidly fade from memory. Basic concepts like “opposition to logging” are all that are retained. History informs us that direct action engenders as much support as opposition. The American Revolution saw as many colonists enter the Tory ranks as enlisted in the Continental Army. During World War II, as many Frenchmen joined Nazi forces as participated in the famous French Underground. The majority of the public floats noncommittally between the conflicting forces.
I doubt the effect is as strong with someone just getting up in front of the UN and spouting lies as it is for militant direct action, but I'm sure it's there to some extent.