Thread image created by yours truly, depicting Iran and Pakistan very impolitely not asking whether America, on the other side of the planet, is okay with them transporting gas around.
The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline has long been obstructed by American involvement in the region. Iran completed its section of the pipeline quite quickly, but Pakistan has been unable to finish its construction for a decade due to the fear of falling afoul of American sanctions on Iran. The United States has repeatedly tried to pressure Pakistan to give up the project and obtain gas from other countries instead. Recent articles on the state of the pipeline are contradictory, with some stating that Iran or Pakistan have given up on the pipeline while American sanctions persist. Pakistani officials reject this framing, saying that they are still working with Iran to try and get the project completed somehow. Nonetheless, Iran is becoming increasingly frustrated and is threatening a legal battle and a demand for reparations.
Meanwhile, back in Niger, the $13 billion under-construction pipeline connecting Nigeria and other West African countries to Spain and Italy will likely face delays due to the sanctions applied by the West and ECOWAS on Niger. Those following the European gas fiasco will be aware that while Spain and Italy have been impacted by the energy crisis, they have been very busy making deals with African countries to replace their Russian gas, and thus stand a better chance than Germany of making it through the crisis with their industries somewhat intact. The coup has thrown a wrench into their plans, though they can still obtain some gas from northern African countries.
And, last but not least, America tried for years to stop the construction of the Nord Stream pipelines between Germany and Russia, which culminated in them deciding to blow them up late last year.
All in all - the United States really does not like it when countries build up energy infrastructure and gain some independence from them.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
This week's third update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
Is there anyone here who supports the Taliban because they fought US imperialism?
Ultimately these sorts of governments are very extreme when they first start out, but mellow as they come to grips that a large part of the population is discontent with moralistic politics and want actual material changes. The country is under rather severe sanctions that are causing famines in many parts, I expect them to mellow out a lot of their policies and cozy up to China, because thats really their only option for stabilizing their position. China seems to be very open to this idea.
I'm trans so obviously I don't support them as an individual. To be frank, I think if I visited as a Czech citizen nothing bad would happen to me there and would be safer than many places for a visitor, but that doesn't mean it'd be great to live there and obviously my Afghan trans siblings will not be doing so hot even though there are certain allowances for transness under Islamic law. Things could be worse though, like being under US occupation or ruled by Al-qaeda or something.
Casual reminder that Afghanistan used to be communist until the USA killed many of them. They still have a decently sized socialist movement that, afaik, has no quarrel with the Taliban at this moment. Maybe that issue will be pressed later, but I doubt it.
Nobody likes the reactionary, misogynistic and homophobic Taliban movement and I'm sure everybody here wish something much better for the Afghan people. However, we live in the real world and not in the fairytale world of nicely aligned black and white ideals. The alternative to the Taliban is not fully automated luxury gay space communism but an American puppet government of unfathomably corrup compradors.
The Taliban are horrible but they've done things that are objectively good, like bringing law and order, stopping the opium trade, reining the warlords in and ending the foreign occupation. All of these are things the US puppet government failed miserably at.
In a wider geopolitical context the Taliban victory over the US empire has weakened the imperialists and helped make more breathing space for the global south to seek independence. This too is an objectively good development as US imperialism remains one of the largest impediments to socialism and global development.
I'm not denying that these things comes with a heavy price that the Afghan people are paying. But even if you reckon that Taliban rule is as bad or worse than US rule, you have to assess reactions to the Taliban by their material consequences rather than by what feeling the abstract idealism of a reaction gives you in your tummy. The current western policy towards Afghanistan is outright criminal and borderline genocidal. Sanctions never ever work. They didn't work against Cuba, China, Korea, Vietnam, the USSR, Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan in the 1990's or Russia and they're not going to work now. What they are already doing to Afghanistan is creating famine and suffering for Afghan people whose only crime was being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Taliban might be the worst regime in the world but isolating them, stealing their money, blockading them and funding terrorist groups inside the country is only going to hurt the average Afghan even more.
That might be the best sentence on dialectical materialism I have ever read.
I find myself ever more often rolling my eyes at media which offers up fantastical solutions to real-world problems without even really beginning to understand the complexities of the situation, and comparing X party or Y country or Z person with some hypothetical
like the whole "The United States should have withdrawn from Afghanistan, but in a different way!" thing with liberals
Not really, no. But it would have been really fucking cool if the US hadn't intervened in their affiars and supported reactionaries who dismantled the incredibly progressive home-grown, communist-led government that had liberated women and built infrastructure and housing. The Taliban is a direct result of US intervention in Afghanistan, as is Afghanistan's subsequent historical trajectory. The Taliban offered up Osama Bin Laden in order to avoid an invasion, but the US said "no" ... All that blood and suffering and the US couldn't manage to build a political institution that could withstand the Taliban. The blood is entirely on the US governments hands since 1979, so I would say that they are definitely the bad guys in this scenario, even if the Taliban suck... way more innocent people have been killed and had their lives ruined by the US than the Taliban as far as I can tell.
I wouldn’t go that far because they’re fucking awful but I would say that we can’t impose feminism or gay rights by military force and that’s not what we were doing in Afghanistan anyway, aside from some photo-ops in Kabul.
I’d also say critical support to the Taliban for ending the opium crop and ending the practice of pederasty among the elite. They also seem to be good at fighting corruption.
They’re fucking awful to women and I can’t even imagine what being gay in Afghanistan would be like, just awful. But that doesn’t justify the invasion at all because the invasion wasn’t able to reform that and in fact it wasn’t even trying anyway so pointing to the horrendous treatment of women and LGBT+ is liberal idealism that should be ignored.
So critical support to the Taliban for keeping the west out of their society and now that they’ve achieved that goal I hope they fucking die.
In the same way we have critical support for Iran, a government that by all means is awful and theocratic and definitely not socialist, it's still better that their government is Iranian and not some foreign installed bourgeois dictatorship I suppose is my line of thinking
Probably the closest you will find is a bunch of people (including yours truly) who commented during the very brief takeover period in 2021 that was genuinely incredible that the US had managed to create 0 effective government after propping up a puppet for 20 years. People were looking at it like with a certain level of schadenfreude and bemoaning the fact that the entire occupation was for naught, except allowing local opium growers time to export their goods to the big pharmaceutical companies, which probably helped cause the opiod crises that is ravaging poor, rural areas.
Afghanistan has the right to nationally self-determin their own course independent from American interference.
If the U.S never interfered in the first place, its likely that the goddamn taliban wouldn't have been in power in the first place and the Communists - who did everything the Americans cry about the taliban not doing - would've helped create a quality of life for the people of Afghanistan that they can only dream of now under the yoke of the american-created Islamic fundamentalist republic.
Hopefully now that the Adghani people have their first respite in the literal decades since America plunged their lands into hell, they can now start sorting themselves out and head back onto the correct path towards the Red sunrise of a better tomorrow.
Are the Taliban aware that they're doing exactly what the USA wanted them to do? Do you think it bothers them that what they think is "right" is something American alphabet soup organizations desired because it would weaken their country? Why wouldn't they do the opposite just to spite America?
They’re Islamic fundamentalists, they aren’t doing what they do because America paid them to do it, America funded them because they already wanted to do those things and were anti communist.
I definitely don’t support the taliban, but they are at this point the legitimate government. I think we should return the money we’ve stolen from Afghanistan and drop sanctions as that only hurts the most vulnerable people.
The fact that they are the legitimate government should really be provoking a lot more introspection from liberals about how we got to this point and how the US has been conducting itself for the last several decades. It isn't, but that's part of the same problem.
I thought the blog posts with the Taliban guy whining about the boring life of an office drone were funny as hell, idk if that counts
EDIT: also as others have pointed out, we need to give their money back, people are starving over there.
I don't support the Taliban, no, I'm okay with their anti-US stance. There's a big difference between uncritically supporting everything a group does and understanding one thing they do.
China’s Position on the Afghan Issue
The Afghan/Taliban issue isn't just imperialism and resisting the US, as the Chinese note in their policy. Nobody in the real world is simply making decision based on "do you hate the US yes or no?". There are a number of relevant real world issues that come into consideration when "supporting" or even just dealing with a country/government.
Afghanistan's situation is a regional problem that affects others to the extent it should be in the self interest of the whole region to cooperate with and help them.
But as the Chinese also note, this isn't just naive selfless help, it is targeted and principled, they do have an interest in seeing Afghanistan develop into a somewhat more economically and socially stable country as this solves the US interference/imperialism problem, it means international trade through land routes uncontested by US+vassals and perhaps most importantly helps maintain strong incentives for the Taliban to continue to fight against other Islamic terrorists(ETIM).
#1- China will not interfere directly as its against their principle. Of course non-interference doesn't mean selflessness, of course they have their vision on what path would be best according to what they consider regional "stability".
#3
#4- China is particularly concerned about Afghanistan because it was historically a base for ETIM terrorists who are now used as geopolitical pawns by the US to misrepresent China's crackdown on Xinjiang. ETIM was also present in other countries e.g Syria. It is important to support the Afghan government and pushing them to crack down on ETIM.
#7
As you should note this isn't stated with some *terms and conditions apply: as long as its a government we like. The Chinese say this unequivocally and if the Taliban is in charge right now then so be it.
#8
I think this should be obvious but no special "bargaining" e.g "we will help you, if you let us build another base"
#9 China doesn't want to dictate(certainly at least not give the impression) these "terms" alone, which is why they want to bring all the relevant regional powers into this discussion.
What is the china position on china
No, but a majority of libs on lemmy do support the Islamist separatist party of Xinjiang, despite the fact the Taliban has backed them since 2007
You mean those mujahideen that the US propped up to fight a proxy war against the Soviets, and then didn’t turn out to be reliable allies? To quote Trump, “we’re going to win so much, you’ll be so sick and tired of winning”
I don't support the taliban, I just hate America
I hate amerikkka so much. Not a fan of taliban.
I'd say I support them over US imperialism but Id also choose to have my poop on my hands over a strangers poop on my hands.
?
What do you mean by "support" exactly?
I want to hug and kiss the taliban but they won't let me 😖
Clarification. You do not under any circumstances have to hug and kiss the taliban
i'm not straight, so no
are any of us hetero at this point