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.
This is pretty good but leaves me asking how did they miss the obvious connection with the online ad model/social media as dictated by Google? I feel that talking about media disinformation and not at least mentioning this side will paint an incomplete picture here. TL;DR commentary on some history of Google search and journalism below.
So why focus on ads? Because if you go back and look at the rise of google's adsense, the main point was to create fake pages with either misleading or straight up false information to deceive readers and lead them towards either another bigger website or to sell some shitty product, you know the year is 2006 and your grandpa is about to spend $499 on some fake shit from one of those silly obviously fake pages.
So then they talk about journalism and what actualy happened? Journalism became an extremely online thing, as mentioned old TV news losing ratings(though obviously still influential) they have to resort to what? Exactly the google/internet ad revenue model aka if you don't get "engagement"(the history of Google algo ranking itself is fascinating) you wont earn as much from ads. I don't blame them either since if you go back and look the top earning websites were making absurd amounts just from sitting at the top of google search. The money was there and the party was only starting.
Then 15 years passed and journalism is now also extremely connected to the ad model and social media to the point half of it is just "rage bait" or click bait. Google was a major if not the major force behind the transition to websites relying on social media too. So you have fucking NYT on twitter saying nonsense but doesn't matter if it gets 100k-500k views that are redirected to the article page and some loser sees an ad or buys their sub.
But the takeaway is the media and internet tech giants will never admit this was a demon they created. The biggest misinformation source? Literaly google. Now go do something about Google search now. Too late.
Misinformation you say? As far as I can see from a functional point of view your shitty NYT article, your fake amazon review, your fake niche website about fishing boats or something are all doing the same thing: Trying to get your attention and direct you to either watch/click an ad or buy something. To tackle this you can't be a liberal and say oh its just the news sources, its a problem with the entire Google based internet. IMO there is no solution other than to tear it all down, in principle online advertising shouldn't exist to begin with.
Look at China though, people already said this before but the firewall is extremely important to simply achieve one thing: not allow Chinese internet to become the same Google adsense fueled collection of mostly useless websites. Of course they certainly have their own problems over there, but at least in principle they are in control and in principle the CPC can change things if necessary. The same isn't true over here.
great post, comrade.
it feels to me like it's just another example of how the profit motive cannot do anything but make profits, after decades -- centuries, even -- of liberals worshipping it.
if your industries follow the profit motive, then they will not create new industries inside your own country, they will go abroad, to your ultimate detriment.
if your military companies follow the profit motive, then they will not create good, functional weapons as part of an effective doctrine, they will make pieces of shit designed to be bought for exorbitant amounts of money and then destroyed in war zones.
if your media companies follow the profit motive, they will not create better quality news and analysis, they will descend into clickbait hell where engagement, good or bad, is the only worthwhile metric
I’m very surprised that the AI revolution finally arrived to deliver the holy grail of writerless content only after search-based internet browsing had already been drowned in spam. I really didn’t see that one coming.