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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
RE: Federal interest rate cut.
Okay so the graph shows that a cut in interest rates precipitates a recession. While that’s true, I think we’re still in uncertain waters because the US economy is unlike it’s ever been. The 8 years of near zero interest rates was unprecedented and shifted so much of the capital into assets rather than real production. So I don’t know if the typical rules about borrowing and reinvestment will apply.
Do the high priests of the economy think a recession is coming? They’re saying they don’t think so, but they also could be lying. The rate hikes were intended to slow down inflation, which they largely did. But prices are still high compared to wages. What will people do with lower interest rates? Is it enough to boost general consumption? Or just enough for financial types to move money away from production and into financial instruments. I don’t know.
Waiting in anticipation for the pre-election October Suprise
It’s opposite (in theory): lower interest rates make people more likely to buy lots of machines on rolling credit to do stuff. Its very obvious in solar, where profit margin is allegedly around 5 %, you are basically fucked unless profit margins increase more than interest rates of 5.5 or interest rates drop. (More truthfully, given the choice between bonds at 6% and solar installation at 5%, only very committed person would risk it, when bonds are risk free). Also lower interest rates boost housing prices.
But lower interest rates also produce high movements of capital, because it opens up more and more speculation areas the closer they are to 0.
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Speaking of unusual economies, I recently saw that money managers are net short on oil for the first time in over 10 years of data. I’m not sure what if any impact that will have but it definitely caught my eye.
So they expect the oil supply to increase. Does that mean they think the Russia Ukraine war will be resolved? Or that US will deregulate and increase production? Or do they have no idea and gamble?
As I understand it, it’s more about consumption not reaching estimates in 2024 which resulted in excess stockpiles. This has pushed the price down to the point that OPEC hasn’t been able to remove production cuts established earlier, as they had anticipated on doing. The cuts are intended to exert upward price pressure by limiting supply but consumption was just too low to justify releasing more oil onto the markets.
Investors had been growing bearish almost all year, the OPEC postponement was just another push in that direction (against the long-term trend which has been consistently bullish because no one believes in the green transition [to which this glut is unrelated]). The investors follow OPEC production (and Chinese consumption) very closely. It’s also not a very large short balance, but it could be a sign that investors expect a little more “pain” before consumption and prices recover. The next big shift in supply/demand may not come until N hemisphere winter, when heating increases consumption.
I doubt this will turn into anything big, or predict anything big. However I think it could contribute to a short-term environment of instability, from which more important events might occur.
It could also be a way to finish the kneecapping of Europe. Alot of countries dropped interest rates recently.
In the American tradition, rate cuts are meant to be an anti-recession tool, making a softer landing from the high interest rate regime that actually precipitates the recession. Rate cuts can also be a way to attempt to delay recession, though obviously this doesn’t always work. They’re meant to keep nearly-failing businesses afloat a bit longer and make it so that more new businesses are created (lol).
Basically this is more of a symptom than a cause.
I think “recession” is a meaningless term at this point. There have been so many shenanigans and tricks used to avoid/hide the post covid recession that nobody seems to know what is really going on anymore.
Will GDP growth be negative for 2 consecutive quarters? who knows or cares? GDP is essentially measurement of how many guys in suits shake hands. It has no real meaning to the material situation of the economy.
Are businesses collapsing? Are people losing their jobs? Is there a drop in standards of living for the majority? Is it going to get worse before it gets better? Are the rich managing to turn this suffering to their gain?
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck who cares what you call it.
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