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.
Dude that jumped the border into the DPRK seeking asylum. Damn near uncritical support.
spoiler
Over 25% of personnel across all branches of the military were food insecure in 2018, with some service members struggling to stay within their monthly budgets or finding themselves captive to their schedules, according to a report released earlier this year by the RAND Corporation think tank.
“[W]e actually looked at some of the predictors of food insecurity among service members and, actually, service members who live on-post are more likely to experience problems accessing food, more food insecurity,” said Dr. Thomas Trail, a behavioral scientist who co-authored the report.
“Which makes the situation at Fort Cavazos kind of concerning, because you think, ‘Well, you know, they have dining facilities there, they get a meal card, they should be able to eat.’”
Soldiers at the sprawling, 214,968-acre U.S. Army base, which sits about 70 miles north of Austin, have battled insufficient food access for much of the summer, Military.com reported earlier this week.
Just two of the base’s 10 major dining stations have been open every day this summer, with another three open only during limited hours, according to the report. Confusing or conflicting information on hours of operation has compounded the problem.
While some soldiers can head off-post to grab grub, not all have vehicles. And those who do face a lengthy drive — up to an hour round trip — plus the prospect of paying for food out of pocket, rather than with military-issued meal cards usable on-post. Without factoring in bonuses and allowances, annual base pay for active duty soldiers starts at just over $23,000.
The reported root of the problem at Fort Cavazos is a lack of staffing for the on-post facilities, with a majority of cooks either deployed or undergoing training elsewhere.
“What we’ve found and what the [Department of Defense’s] own surveys have found is that the rate of food insecurity is high among service members and their families, higher than it is among equivalent civilians even,” Trail told The Messenger. “It’s a fairly large and somewhat persistent issue.”
The research report, which was sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, did find some trends. Two-thirds of those service members found to be food insecure were “in the early to middle stages of their career,” according to the report. They were also more likely to be of racial or ethnic minorities, and disproportionately in the Army rather than other branches.
“[I]f you’re living on-post, [and] you have a meal card, but you can’t use that meal card to purchase food because the dining facilities aren’t open or they’re not easily accessible, then you’re essentially not getting the pay you’re owed to pay for your food,” said Trail.
This issue comes up even on bases with ample kitchen staffing, with some soldiers’ work schedules incompatible with the hours of operation for on-post dining options.
“Some people are on shift work and they need to eat when the dining facilities aren’t open, so they’re spending money on food [off-post] that technically they’re not being reimbursed for from the military,” said Trail.
One person interviewed for the research report relayed that exact concern.
“We do a lot of shift work, which means that you won’t be eating in the [dining facility],” that interviewee said. “You get your BAS [Basic Allowance for Subsistence], and if you’re buying microwave dinners or eating takeout all the time, it adds up quick.”
New York’s Fort Drum is currently running a pilot program allowing soldiers to use their meal cards at non-military eateries, like Panera and Qdoba, according to Military.com.
So, the biggest military in the world has tactics that are entirely geared towards fighting shepherds in deserts, wunderwaffen that cost exponentially more than the hardware they may end up outmatched by, and they still can’t feed their soldiers in their own country living on bases. I hope there’s a lot of Qdobas and Paneras in Taiwan otherwise China’s gonna have a cakewalk.
Yea that’s not a good sign when your military logistics network can’t provide the barest of necessities while in their home country. And the solution basically being subcontracting it out to fast food joints is too perfectly American. Next you’ll hear about McDonald’s on bases charging $500 for a big mac, can’t leave those military contracting dollars on the table after all!
Can’t wait for slop commercials with a low gravelly truck advertising voice talking about “military grade meat” and “eating like a warrior”
Every military base I’ve been on has had a wendy’s and every foreign US base I’ve been on has had some form of Applebees or equivalent Amerikkan restaurant.
People don’t talk about rural poverty much - or when they do it’s about the absolute poverty of Appalachia - but there’s been a massive hollowing out of the rural regions between metropoles due to the end of military keynesianism. Bush gutted and neoliberalized the military during the Iraq war and in doing so started to drain out one of the only economic inflows into many of the poorer regions in the south. Recruiting numbers aren’t just down because people don’t want to be war criminals, they’re down because joining up is no longer the guarantee of economic stability that it used to be
The average US military grunt gets treated like absolute shit, and the culture makes that the whole point. Follow that trail all the way up and you can see why they allow barracks to fall into disrepair and why they neglect to consider at all feeding the troops domestically. It’s very much the sense of hyper-individualism striking again, “they get paid, they can find their own food” without sparing a glance at what that entails.
It’s very much the sense of hyper-individualism striking again, “they get paid, they can find their own food” without sparing a glance at what that entails.
US Military Brass have the mindset of an Austrian commander in the 1600’s, but think that they can contend with China militarily.
Officers are usually paid well-enough, breaking in at above 40k a year from the moment they start their careers as an O-1, with career officers climbing the ranks making over 200K a year.
Of course this doesn’t include military bullshit that garnishes your pay or bonuses that can help subsidize your life in service.
So the only reason if and why we’d see any sort of officers revolt would likely be something spawned from pure ideology - which is also extremely unlikely.
One thing I’ll never get over when visiting family in the US is seeing how strong military worship can be in some places. I remember going to some small rural town and having “US MARINE” bumper stickers or decals would have people honking their horns and a few going “YEAH! YOU’RE A HERO!” Another time a guy in a military outfit was buying groceries and some dad loudly said to his kid, “Go to that guy and tell him thank you for protecting us!”
Military people in my country are largely viewed as slackers or people too stupid to pick up a trade or go to school. The only people who do something similar to what I saw in the US are the far-right types that like the fashy aesthetic of it.
So I was browsing and I saw a user post a video of Pyongyang taken from a very tall building. The user kinda admits the city looks cool but finishes by saying “these buildings are all empty and there are impoverished people”, first commenter say Pyongyang is the cleanest city because people are “not allowed to do anything” (???).
May burn and suffer a painful death. I am tired of better than thou white ass cracker motherfucker gringos. The world will be a better place without them.
Argentina’s primary election winner Javier Milei, the ancap, said that if he’s elected he’ll cut diplomatic ties with China because “they’re Communists and I don’t deal with Communists”. Diplomatic, political and economic suicide, here we go!
Also he said the US and Israel would be “our top allies” if he wins, how original. He also gave names for a possible cabinet and how he’s going to reorganize the government: A number of ministeries will be eliminated, state scientific institutions will be privatized (He’s on the record saying “What have scientists done for us?, they need to be competitive”) and the Central Bank will be “demolished”. He mentioned the Ministry of Defense will be under a woman who is known for being a Videla apologist, she claims the last military junta did not carry out a genocide and denies 30,000 people were disappeared, tortured and killed by the state. He also wants a “voucher system” for education, public schools and universities are pretty much gone, instead, the state would give people “vouchers” for them to “spend on educative institutions of their choosing”, thus “forcing schools and universities to compete among themselves”. And probably his “top issue” is complete dollarization of the economy. His path will be most likely similar to Menem’s neoliberal plan, first he’ll “fix” high inflation (In the case of Menem it was hyperinflation of the late 80s), this will be seen as very positive by the general population. He’ll most likely do this by cutting a deal with the IMF and other foreign entities, they’ll let him “reign in peace” for two or four years, in exchange, Argentina will give up it’s energy and lithium reserves (among other things, like labor reforms and shit like that), sealing our fate.
We’re living in the wildest nightmare. Capitalism has brought this country to it’s knees numerous times before, and the “libertarian” solution to capitalism is even more capitalism. I am contemplating more and more just leaving this hollow piece of shit behind and migrate to Spain, at least for a number of years. I just don’t feel particularly safe here no more, this is a nightmare scenario, this isn’t just your typical right winger taking power and getting kinda obstructed by democratic institutions, these are true Fascist demons taking power and going all in. I’m not sure he’ll be able to fully implement his agenda, most likely he’ll fail along the way, the problem is that this shit will bring high social tension, economic devastation and a massive drop in quality of life. Do I really want to live through this crap AGAIN? I grew up during the late 90s and early 2000s, I remember the December 2001 riots, I can still hear the echoes of the “Cacerolazos” (people banging pots to protest), I remember my school friends asking me if we could give them spare cardboards to their parents because these could be sold for some money, I remember the endless waves of unhoused people looking for food in the trash (who are more and more visible today) and, of course, I remember the police killing 30+ people during the protests as if this was 1978. No, I don’t think I want to live through this again, even less when I’m a target for these lunatics. There is fight in me, but is there any fight in those around me?
Death and Eternal Suffering to all Fascists.
