Bulletins and News Discussion from May 20th to May 26th, 2024 - Never Break TrueAnon's Rules For Life - COTW: Azerbaijan

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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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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Would Taiwan actually go to war for independence should China attempt an invasion?

Of course I’m not talking about fighting back, because the vassal government would do whatever the U.S. tells it to do in that situation, which would be fight, likely with US aid.

What I’m asking is whether or not the people of Taiwan would put their lives on the line for something like that? Like what is the consensus, generally?
- Per here
  
  In December 2021, two organizations in Taiwan separately published opinion polls supposedly addressing whether Taiwanese public would be willing to “fight on the battlefield” should China invade. One organization’s poll had 62 percent of respondents say yes and 27 percent say no, while the other survey, with a slight difference in its wording asking whether “you or your family” would be willing to fight, found only 40 percent said yes and 51 percent said no.
  
  If most Taiwanese are unlikely to be engaged in the fighting, who would be? It’s a surprisingly small slice of the population. Taiwan’s military currently has at most 188,000 active soldiers, or 0.7 percent out of a total population of 23.5 million. It might be tempting to imagine that Taiwan could mobilize the supposedly two million strong reserve force, but as I have explained in a previous report such a “reserve force” exists only on paper. For one thing, the military’s stockpile of spare service rifles could barely equip more than a few brigades, or about 10,000 to 20,000 of reservists concurrently. It is also widely debated among Taiwan’s defense analysts how useful, if at all, these hastily organized infantry units armed with only small arms would be facing the onslaught of the modern PLA in a war expected to be conducted predominantly over air and sea with missiles and other means of long-range fire projection.
  
  My guess is that no, most people in Taiwan (or really anywhere) would not put their life on the line to fight the PLA. The major cities along the coastline would be secured quite quickly; I can foresee some kind of guerilla activity in the mountains of Taiwan (which are numerous and often covered with dense jungle) that would take decades to stamp out however. Most Taiwanese will just get on with their lives, though, as not much would change about their day to day existence outside of like more state supported housing and things of that nature.
  
  I'd disagree if only because the US is currently learning and studying how to make a people fight 'to the last man' like is being done in Ukraine, I'm convinced that if China were to go to war suddenly there'd a hundred Azov instructors that'll tell the government how to 'Make the native taiwanese into soldiers' there'll be another Operation Paperclip when the war in Ukraine concludes so that the US can teach its vassals how to make essentially slave armies that'll fight to the last xyz.
  
  Small Arms would not be a problem larger equipment yes but shipping and making that stuff is something that could be solved. Hell Ukraines economy has completely collapse but they still make their own suicide drones so.
  
  The war would be fought the exact same way the war in Ukraine is currently fought. "To the last Taiwanese"
  
  It'd be incredibly hard to pull this stuff in Taiwan, simply due to the logistics required. Getting weapons and aid to Ukraine to prop it up is simple compared to the nightmare that getting it to Taiwan in a war would be.
  
  Just give Elon musk permission to shoot care packages via orbital satellite to Taiwanese soldiers?? It’s not that hard.
  
  Problem is if the PLN does a blockade of Taiwan, good luck getting any weapons in. If you think the Houthis are shutting down the Red Sea, wait until you see what the People's Liberation Navy can do! Supply chains are vitally important for this kind of strategy. Likewise, Taiwan's cities are all on one coastline surrounded by mountainous jungle. There's nowhere for prolonged defensive lines or anything like that.
  
  In situations like this it's important to use their full name - the people's liberation army Navy. That way you can say "trust the PLAN"
  
  Most of the separatists are in the south(western) coastline. The northern part of Taiwan is where the KMT are holed up. And the mountainous parts that Westerners like to cope about Taiwanese guerilla commandos are where all the Indigenous Taiwanese people live, and they tend to not be separatist either, seeing the status quo vs separatist slapfight as just an intra-Han conflict that they should have little part in.
  
  Make the native taiwanese into soldiers
  
  Native as in first people? If so, I believe that Taiwan’s special forces are entirely indigenous people lol. So much so that comments praising them praised them for their “savage fighting skills” lol. Westoids cannot help themselves but be racist at every moment
  
  No as in doing the fascist thing where they do a revisionism that's why I put the quotation marks there.
  
  I'd disagree if only because the US is currently learning and studying how to make a people fight 'to the last man' like is being done in Ukraine, I'm convinced that if China were to go to war suddenly there'd a hundred Azov instructors that'll tell the government how to 'Make the native taiwanese into soldiers' there'll be another Operation Paperclip when the war in Ukraine concludes so that the US can teach its vassals how to make essentially slave armies that'll fight to the last xyz.
  
  They can try, but too bad the Taiwanese military is full of generals like this: Retired Taiwan general tells military to overthrow DPP, surrender to China
  
  That was a good read thank you comrade
  
  Don’t worry. Taiwan is training for a Red Dawn scenario by training teenagers and elderly people with wooden guns and airsoft
- Honestly, if China doesn't fuck with the taiwanese ruling class by, for example, nationalizing stuff redistributing land etc, they'll probably flip
- What I’m asking is whether or not the people of Taiwan would put their lives on the line for something like that? Like what is the consensus, generally?
  
  Before even asking that question, you have to ask whether the Taiwanese military would actually defend Taiwan from the PRC and uh:
  
  Retired Taiwan general tells military to overthrow DPP, surrender to China: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4261383
  
  Taiwan charges army officer with corruption, harming state security: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-charges-army-officer-with-corruption-harming-state-security-2022-11-22/
  
  Taiwan detains army officer suspected of leaking military secrets to China: https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-china-army-spies-military-secrets-06c3ae0ab0b379cb60a8da53bea5cb4d
  
  Taiwan Soldiers Promising Surrender to China Among 10 Charged for Spying: https://www.newsweek.com/taiwan-china-espionage-spying-indictment-10-military-personnel-1847899

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