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.
When you see someone on the internet saying that they are not fans of dying in a nuclear holocaust and that they would love their rulers not to escalate things to that point, those are not real people. It is fake Russian comments, disinformatskaya intended to scare you into not supporting total war against Putin’s Asiatic hordes.
We already know that real westerners love getting nuked and that they would never support peace. But now the FBI and a bunch of Euro mainstream media says they have the receipts to prove it.
Here is Danish government broadcaster DR’s version of the story (machine translation):
Secret Psychological Warfare Plan Revealed: Russia Aims to Strike the West with a ‘Nuclear Psychosis’
Internal Russian documents show how scare campaigns are designed to make Europeans fear a new world war.
Read more...
[video]
In meeting after meeting, people from President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle have spent months planning how Russia can instill fear in Europe and the rest of the West.
This is done in close collaboration with a propaganda company in Moscow that spreads streams of disinformation, fake stories, and millions of pro-Russian comments on social media platforms like Facebook and Telegram.
The goal is to make Europeans fear nuclear war, hoping they will pressure their governments to stop supporting Ukraine.
This is revealed in internal documents, videos, and other materials from the Russian company Social Design Agency.
The company has fabricated stories, including claims that Europe will face power outages and a shortage of fever-reducing medicine, which will result in “a surge in child mortality,” according to a draft of an influence campaign.
Social Design Agency has also crafted numerous fake social media posts where imaginary Europeans express fear of nuclear war:
“I don’t want my country to enter an open confrontation with Russia. Isn’t it clear that our actions could lead to World War III? Russia is not our enemy,” reads one of the messages the company aims to spread through fake profiles.
Another document outlines how Social Design Agency plans to influence public opinion polls so that at least 50% of people in European countries feel “fear for the future.”
“If the Kremlin is unhappy with conditions in the international system, this is one of the channels they can try to influence. And the message in these campaigns is effective because we all fear nuclear war,” says senior researcher Flemming Splidsboel from the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), who studies information operations and has reviewed several of the documents for DR.
FACTS: The Basis of This Story
Documents Provide Deep Insight into Russian Operations
Page after page, the internal documents reveal how Social Design Agency operates.
On the one hand, the company meticulously monitors Western media and opinion-makers, producing daily reports on the news landscape.
Additionally, Social Design Agency analyzes the target audiences for Russian propaganda—mainly European citizens—to determine how they can be emotionally manipulated, according to one document.
Afterward, the company develops the actual content for the campaigns, which is then distributed through replicas of real news sites and on social media using artificial intelligence.
“By thoroughly preparing our information attacks and having a clear understanding of the project’s goals, we firmly believe we will succeed,” states a message in a video from the internal material of Social Design Agency.
You can watch the video at the top of the article, where the founder of Social Design Agency explains the company’s work.
[image]
Claims to Have Spread Millions of Fake Comments
The documents paint a picture of a company that produces vast amounts of disinformation to promote Russia’s cause.
In one report, Social Design Agency claims to have posted 33.9 million fake comments on social media in the first quarter of 2024 alone.
The company also claims that in the same period, it produced 39,899 original posts, including videos and memes or cartoons.
Many of the company’s comments and texts have limited reach. However, international media outlets that accessed the company’s material have found several instances of real people sharing content from Social Design Agency.
Senior researcher Flemming Splidsboel views the campaigns as an attempt to pressure Western governments to force Ukraine to submit to Russian demands:
“The goal could clearly be to initiate negotiations so that Russia can secure the areas in Ukraine they have already conquered and annexed,” he says.
Media Partners in the Investigation
Multiple Meetings with Putin’s People
This is far from the first time Russia has been linked to influence operations targeting Western voters.
Recently, the FBI released documents specifically addressing Social Design Agency’s role in these efforts.
The FBI documents describe at least 20 meetings between Russia’s presidential administration and the Moscow-based company in recent years.
DR also has access to summaries from these meetings, which, according to the FBI, were written by Social Design Agency’s founder, Ilya Gambashidze.
These include notes from a meeting on March 12 of this year, where Ilya Gambashidze summarizes the thinking behind influence operations against Western countries:
“We need to scare them,” he writes in the meeting notes.
[image]
Aims to Create a ‘Nuclear Psychosis’
According to the FBI, former Russian Prime Minister Sergey Kiriyenko coordinates Social Design Agency’s influence operations on behalf of the presidential administration.
This is confirmed by a European intelligence source to Süddeutsche Zeitung, with whom DR collaborated on the story.
Sergey Kiriyenko is now the First Deputy Chief of Staff for the Presidential Office and is often described as President Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man.
[image]
According to the FBI, Kiriyenko participated in a meeting with Social Design Agency on April 16, 2022, where he discussed various topics to be spread as propaganda.
At this meeting, Sergey Kiriyenko reportedly summarized the goal of creating “a nuclear psychosis” in the West.
Involvement of such a high-profile figure underscores, according to Flemming Splidsboel, that Social Design Agency’s operations are deeply connected to the core of the presidential administration.
“All in all, this suggests a large Russian campaign that comes from the top and is clearly a high priority,” says Flemming Splidsboel.
Neither the Russian presidential administration, Social Design Agency, nor Ilya Gambashidze responded to questions from DR and the other media partners involved in the investigation.
When people told me they hated dying in a nuclear holocaust or (far worse) that they were “not fans,” I wish I had said in no uncertain terms: “I love dying in a nuclear holocaust. I am in awe of it. I am set free by it. It will be the finest event our galaxy has ever seen.”
Where are our
comrades when we really need them?
The medicine thing literally happened though? perhaps a global pandemic (that we have now completely memory-holed) has had an impact on the availability of medicine?
and power did get prohibitively expensive for many people? Dastardly Russians with their accurate reporting of current events.
“Why do the Russian intelligence services feel the need to remind westerners that nuclear war is a bad thing? Is it because we are worshipping at the altar of Death and no longer fear the warm embrace of Hellfire? NO! the russians are trying to steal our bodily fluids!”
The thing about shortages in the west is that they have become really good at hiding them. It is not that the meds are not for sale or that you have to queue for them, you just can’t afford them. Ideologically this has the effect of turning a supply chain failure that warrants political intervention into a personal problem of not having enough money, something you, the individual, are to blame for.