Bulletins and News Discussion from July 15th to July 21st, 2024 - It's Joever
Bulletins and News Discussion from July 15th to July 21st, 2024 - It's Joever
Image is of Joseph Robinette Biden, who has stepped down and will not run against Trump in the 2024 election.
In the aftermath of Trump surviving an assassination attempt, many professional opinion-havers are now talking about the scourge of "political violence" that has overtaken, or will soon overtake America, and how we must not let chaos rule. This is, of course, patently absurd. The American government and its allies have been the greatest force of political violence on the planet since the beginning of colonialism, and the foundations of the country are made of corpses. Today, America commits political violence by forcing Ukrainians into the maw of Russian artillery instead of trying to reach a peaceful settlement, which Russia has repeatedly expressed interest in and offered Ukraine relatively favourable terms. They supply Israel with endless weaponry to destroy entire cities and populations, while Biden supporters insist that somehow things could be worse than daily massacres and mass starvation.
In May 1945, French police fired on protestors, causing retaliatory attacks on French settlers, killing about a hundred. In response, the French murdered 45,000 Algerians in a little under two months, in a frenzy of political violence called the Sétif and Guelma massacre. As the massacre was being completed, the International Court of Justice was established. It goes without saying that Algeria never benefited from the ICJ, and the War of Independence from 1954 to 1962 was made inevitable. Over a million Algerians were killed before France could bear the fighting no longer and gave up, and Algeria won itself a state. Comparisons to the ongoing war of independence and genocide in Palestine are obvious.
While the means of colonial violence have evolved over the centuries, the basic structure of it has not. As in Algeria, Vietnam, and Cuba, resistance groups in and around Palestine are fighting for a world with less political violence. The American government would drown every city in the developing world in blood to prevent peace.
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 Algeria! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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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 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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As NATO Bids Farewell to Reality, Moscow and Beijing Pursue Win-Win Deals With Türkiye
The EU may look back at some point in a decade or two and rue the decision to snub Türkiye, but Türkiye has long been expected to go along with the wishes of NATO and the EU despite often being treated like a second-class citizen. The failure of Türkiye’s EU accession is just one of many examples.
As mentioned above, the US threatening to torpedo the nuclear power plant in Türkiye is representative of another. The US sanctions Turkish individuals and companies for “aiding Russia,” for “aiding Iran,” and the US is already threatening to slap on more sanctions over Turkish firms’ exports to Russia. A quick search on the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control site turns up a whopping 232 sanctioned Turkish individuals or entities. This is not a great look when Türkiye is going through its worst economic crisis in two decades.
There have also been, from the Turkish point of view, a lack of consideration of Turkish defense needs. In the 1990s, Ankara asked NATO multiple times to deploy early warning systems and Patriot missiles to Türkiye, but it never came to pass. In 2017 Russia sold Türkiye its S-400 missile defense systems, which are arguably superior to anything the West has. In response the US expelled Türkiye from its F-35 program and sanctioned the country’s defense industry organization and its leaders.
While the US keeps slapping more sanctions on Turkish entities, the economic relationship between Türkiye and SCO countries is growing exponentially.
the west is self-defeating as usual
The Influence of Sea Power upon History by Alfred Thayer Mahan lays down the clearest strategic plan for an American Empire. It would have been so easy to follow.
After WW2 America and its much weaker allies had control over the Skagerrak straight, the Dardenelles and Aegean, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and all the built up ports in the gulf and red seas.
It would have been so easy to allow other nations everywhere else figure out their own shit and focus on keeping these areas under control either by force or by diplomacy.
Instead the Cold War intelligence network decided fighting wars everywhere all at once was a good idea. They decided that expanding conflict into landlocked countries or adding landlocked nations to NATO was more important than running an effective empire.
It’s the thing that prevents me from going conspiratorial and instead believing the fundamental drive for the American political class is individual greed and promotion. There is no better place to rise through the ranks than in a conflict zone.
the thing that prevents me from going conspiratorial and instead believing the fundamental drive for the American political class is individual greed and promotion.
This is a fantastic point and it's something I need to pay more attention to. I'm guilty of viewing the west/US as a unified entity, when really it's best viewed as a multi-headed snake, and all the heads are biting each other for control.
Like you said, all they had to do was focus on the naval aspect of the empire. But if they did that, then certain people/factions wouldn't be able to extract their profit.
After WW2 America and its much weaker allies had control over the Skagerrak straight, the Dardenelles and Aegean, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and all the built up ports in the gulf and red seas.
As well as the Straits of Malacca (Singapore/Malaysia) and the Philippine Sea.
No carrot, only stick
Not super familiar with the region but what do they even need air defense from? Syria? They seem a bit busy. Iran?
I think they consider Greece to be a threat. Right now it seems pretty silly to imagine them going to war, but given their bitter history and NATO coming under pressure from Russia as they deplete Western weaponry reserves, it's not impossible that they'd fight again in 5, 10, 20 years if there's a disintegration of Western alliance structures. Other than that, probably Iran, maybe Armenia.
Complaining to NATO about how you need weapons that you plan to use against fellow NATO members is a real Turkiye moment.
Is there an older animosity than between Greece and Anatolia
on some level, deep down, Erdogan is still pissed about Troy
what historical megalomaniac hasn't dreamed of conquering anatolia and greece, and then saying 'i've avenged thee, troy' (actual thing that happens way too often)
Of course they want to genocide Armenia, they’ll go into withdrawal if they don’t feed their addiction at least once per decade.
Do keep in mind that Turkey was requesting those patriots many years ago. Which in today's going rate of decade per week, that's an eternity. They were similarly kicked out of the f-35 programme a long ass time ago. Yes, Greece is a threat in the sense that Greece spends way more money than it probably should laundering weapons for it's military. But that is akin to Egypt receiving as much money in 'lethal aid' as Israel. You have two countries that may have a lot of issues between them but which are, in practice, under the US Empire. So it becomes in the interests of said Empire to keep them in balance, if only to avoid discontent. So I don't think it's really about Greece.
It's also unlikely that Turkey ever peceived Armenia as much of a threat. This isn't just in hindsight. Armenia was always a small country holding onto an unrecognized enclave in Azeri territory. As far as the Turks were concerned the only threats they had to fear from Armenia was maybe if a terrorism situation cropped up in eastern Turkey. Same with Iran, a country with a defensive doctrine that is especially good at asymmetrical warfare and forming/supporting/training militia groups. Iran had and has many other fronts to deal with, one of which is Azerbaijan. Since Turkey is invested in the Azeris, this means that it is the Turks who are on the offensive in that front, not the Iranians.
Finally if either Armenia or Iran managed to create a serious militant group among the kurds or turks of eastern Turkey, the turkish state developed the actual counter insurgency weapon to deal with that. Hunter drones, another tech the americans felt the Turks shouldn't have. The Bayraktars, which sucked in Ukraine for obvious reasons, are being used for projection out of eastern turkey and into northern iraq. By all reports they are very successful there.
Counterinsurgency is not a place where you need AD. If you need air defense against the PKK that means they have a power hold and they aren't just a faction amongst many kurdish cultures and political groups. Now with the benefit of operation prosperity flop we can say, with hindsight, that if that happened the turkish state would be fucked and would need to straight up invade northern iraq. If the situation got any worse we'd see million-people pogroms from Istanbul to Van - something that people forget, the kurdish population is not confined to historical kurdistan or the current areas where they are a majority. The largest kurdish city in the world is Istanbul.
No I think the issue was Syria and Russia. Turkey was a NATO country years before the fragmentation we see today, it was meant to guard the black sea and the straights while looking north towards Russia - and for some reason it wasn't allowed to have american air defence. Even if wargames in the military tend towards paranoia and contingency planning, the fact that Turkey wasn't being fully integrated into the arms side of the alliance was in itself a very strange thing. The Turks were asking for american weapons, unwilling to develop their own alternatives, and being told no. They were being kept at arms length to the same degree as India.
What are the reasons that I think Turkey was wargaming towards Syria and Russia? Well, Syria and Turkey would trade shots by supporting different cross border kurdish factions against one another. So you have a history there. Then, once the West bolstered the Syrian Civil War the Turks went balls deep into Project Assad, mostly to dislodge the PKK and make money on the side by trading with whoever controlled the syrian oilfields.
The way the turks see it, it is in the US strategic interests to bolster turkey as this marcher state for NATO and to cooperate with turkish security concerns. The american brass was at one point inclined to agree, but Turkey has had no lobbying power so nobody in the american political class gave a shit. Quite the contrary, given that Armenia has some lobbying power (which the turks way overblow to Israeli levels) and Greece punches above it's weight in that department (which is a lobby that the turks only overblow slightly, Greece has had strong ties with american politicians for ages - they've been there since the start of the current POTUS' career).
Now everything's changed. We see a Turkey that went through a coup attempt that no doubt had CIA hands in it, the american brass went from hoping that kurdish Kobane burns against ISIS to becoming invested in the PKK as their proxy in Syria. Meanwhile the Turks are seeking BRICS+ membership, russian money and know how, chinese investment, and might even normalize with Assad as soon as they can deleverage themselves away from their own proxies in Afrin. More importantly Turkey is trying to be a moderating power in Ukraine, not really joining the project wholeheartedly. They sold, even donated some weapons to Ukraine. And they've let crazy EU plans for reconstruction to pretend that Turkey will rebuild some of Ukraine's east. But they are becoming Asia's and Russia's transit hub into Europe. Once again they are trying to play all sides to their benefit.
the US expelled Türkiye from its F-35 program
Bullet dodged, no?