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.
Joost Klein (Dutch representative) officially disqualified from the Eurovision grand final. Fans are in outrage. The delegations from Switzerland, Ireland and Italy have complained about harrassment from the Israeli delegation and have refused to show up to the flag parade ceremony. Bambie Thug (Irish representative, one of the most vocal Israel critics) demands that the harrassment is addressed. Individual jurors are withdrawing in protest. EBU is having a crisis meeting.
Apparently, the Israeli delegation cheered when the disqualification of Joost Klein was announced. Do they want the world to hate them?
Edit: Libs have discovered that the Israeli representative Eden Golan is from Moscow. I think the only way this could be worse is if Eden Golan shot a puppy on stage Kristi Noem-style.
Edit 2: Norwegian spokesperson Alessandra Mele, who was supposed to give Norway's points at the grand final tonight, announced her withdrawal from said role in protest. The Portuguese representative Iolanda has expressed her support for a free Palestine ahead of the dress rehearsal today.
Edit 3: This is from last night's show: Finnish spokesperson refuses to say "Israel" when giving out points, instead saying "Ireland" even after the moderator asks her to repeat. Last night, the Finnish representative from last year appeared in an Instagram story with Eden Golan and was forced to apologize later. Eurovision fans really, really, really hate Israel right now.
Well this could've been avoided if they just banned them like they did Russia. At least now people can see why the whole mena region never liked them.
Still it's pretty wild they're this dumb enough to take the mask off in front of white people. Like I'm not gonna lie that's actually dangerous considering what Europeans did to them in WW2. Don't give euros a reason to hate you bc they'll just become Nazis.
There were no Israelis during WWII. The Zionists in Palestine were divided over support for Britain (The Haggadah- Ben Gurionites origin of the Israeli Labor Party), or continuing terrorist action against the British (The Revisionists- origin of Likud)
Israelis are Jews. They're Zionists too. Unfortunately for the rest of the Jews, they're still a part of the community.
The people that committed the first Nakba escaped the Nazis, they're victims but also abusers. Israelis are for the most part, descendants of the victims of anti-Semititism.
When I say "them" I mean that in the sense that Israelis are still Jews and still can be subject to actual anti-Semititism.
Israelis don't understand that when Europeans dislike them it will be bc of their ethnicity, not their ideology and actions.
But see how the European powers treated Zionists Jews who formed the core of the colonial movement before, during, and after the war. While it is true that an about as many actual holocaust survivors went to Palestine as went to the US, Zionist Israeli society was outright hostile to them. The association of the holocaust with the Zionist movement and Israeli state is straight up hasbara.
This whole Eurovision thing is a fascinating microcosm of how “israel” operates geopolitically. I kinda hate the term because JBP coined it but it’s the perfect term: “israel” is a chaos dragon. From the US perspective, that’s its raison d'être. “israel” is supported because it keeps the rest of the MENA region disunited and fractured, unable to act as a cohesive unit. The parallels to this year’s contest are uncanny.