Bulletins and News Discussion from September 16th to September 22nd, 2024 - This Megathread Is Dedicated To The Brave Mujahideen Fighters of Afghanistan - COTW: Afghanistan

Image is of China's ambassador to Afghanistan, Zhao Sheng, meeting Taliban Prime Minister Hasan Akhund in September 2023.

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.

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Brazil receives support from American company and fires order to take down X.
On Wednesday night (18), Anatel (the National Telecommunications Agency) sent notices to 20,000 operators and internet providers again ordering them to block X, after the social network started operating again in Brazil.
Brazil had the support of the American company Cloudflare, used by Elon Musk to circumvent the order of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who ordered the app to be blocked. Informed by Anatel of what had happened, Cloudflare “isolated” the traffic used by X so that it could be blocked without affecting other institutions and companies using the same network. If it weren't for this, the blockade would also bring down access to the websites of the Supreme Court itself, private banks and others.
- I'm so confused. Are they saying that these institutions all use Cloudflare and the only way to block X would be to block Cloudflare?
  
  I think Cloudflare is going to block x dot com only from Brazil. They already agreed to that. If they refused, the Supreme Court would have blocked Cloudflare.
  
  All websites reverse-proxied by Cloudflare originate from "Cloudflare" and there isn't an effective way to block a single website out of that network. The west is effectively behind their own great firewall, except it's "privately" run.

1619 comments