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The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2022-152
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
> American officials believe they have, so far, succeeded at “boiling the frog” — increasing their military, intelligence and economic assistance to Ukraine step by step, without provoking Moscow into large-scale retaliation with any major single move. <
– The ‘Wild Field’ Where Putin Sowed the Seeds of War – New York Times – Sep 17
> Columns of dark green military trucks and American-made rocket launchers are thundering down the long, straight highways into the Donbas. But they will have a much harder fight on their hands.
…
“I’d go into the supermarket to buy some meat, and the shopkeeper tells me, ‘If you don’t speak Ukrainian, I’m not going to sell you any meat,’” Mr. Tsyhankov said. “I’ve been speaking Russian my whole life. How do you think that made me feel?”
…
At 9 p.m. on July 9, four cruise missiles slammed into a dormitory at the old ceramic plant. The buildings crumbled as if they were made out of sand. Viacheslav Boitsov, an emergency services official, said there were “no military facilities nearby.”
But according to Mr. Mohyla and Oleksandr Nevydomskyi, another Ukrainian military officer, Ukrainian soldiers were staying in that building.
…
Every night, the horizon in Chasiv Yar lights up with explosions. Ukrainian soldiers operate here almost as if they are on enemy territory, hiving themselves off from the public, watching their backs, traveling by night in long convoys of cars with the lights blacked out, the drivers wearing night vision goggles.
– Russian sanctions slow to bite as US officials admit frustrations over pace of pain in Moscow – CNN
> The hope had been that the sanctions would quickly choke off Russia’s war machine in Ukraine, making it difficult for the Kremlin to sustain its efforts on the battlefield — and perhaps even turn public opinion against the invasion when day-to-day life in Russian society became uncomfortable.
But the Russian economy has proven far more resilient than many top Biden administration officials had expected when they set out to punish the country in February, thanks largely to record-setting revenues it has reaped in the spring and summer from soaring energy prices. In the first 100 days of the war, Russia earned a record 93 billion euros in revenue by exporting oil, gas and coal, according to the Finnish Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
…
“We were expecting that things like SWIFT and all the blocking sanctions on Russia’s banks would totally crater the Russian economy and that basically, by now going into September, we’d be dealing with an economically much more weakened Russia than the one that we are dealing with,” said one senior US official, referring to the US and European decision to cut some Russian banks off from the SWIFT international banking system. <
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Other issues:
Fakenews and Iran:
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, canceled all meetings and public appearances last week after falling gravely ill and is currently on bed rest under observation by a team of doctors, according to four people familiar with his health situation.
State television showed Khamenei, 83, standing as he spoke in a steady voice to his audience sitting on the floor about the importance of Arbaeen, a ceremony that marks the end of a 40-day mourning period for the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, Imam Hussein.
Poor countries:
John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch – 17:51 UTC · Sep 16, 2022
NEW: income inequality in US & UK is so wide that while the richest are very well off, the poorest have a worse standard of living than the poorest in countries like Slovenia.
Essentially, US & UK are poor societies with some very rich people.
A thread:
Afghanistan:
Covid-19:
Use as open (not Ukraine) thread …
@ lex talionis | Sep 18 2022 16:19 utc | 34
@ Grieved | Sep 18 2022 19:50 utc | 62
Regarding Yogi Adityanath (b. 1972), he is a Hindu monk who is a Hindu nationalist of the ruling BJP Party. However, his relations with the national leadership actually have not been that good, as he has stationed himself to the “right”(?) of Modi, claiming that the BJP has watered down or sold out Hindu nationalism by not persecuting the Muslims enough. As nationalism, a form of materialist belief, is actually the main religion of the world, it is not very unusual for anyone to be a fanatical, obsessive nationalist, and of course politicians can exploit the nationalism of the majority by trying to sic them on the chosen enemy minority. As a monk, he is just like the Venerable Wirathu in Myanmar: His main point is, kill the Muslims, oust the Muslims, expel the Muslims. The trouble is, Muslims constitute 19.3% of the population of his state of Uttar Pradesh, which had a population of over 241 million in 2021, making it more populous than all countries of the world except for China, India, the US, and Indonesia. I would imagine he has a crack at succeeding Modi, and he is positioning himself for that by showing himself as more true blue against the Muslims. Because the Indian Muslims, now themselves over 200 million people, are the largest minority in the world, this could create a very explosive situation. Adityanath’s position seems to be that all the land of India belongs to the Hindus, so the Muslims must leave, be killed, or possibly revert to Hinduism (not sure if he would welcome that). I see no difference between his views and those of so-called “right-wing” Israeli Zionists who want to drive out or kill all the Arabs (no question of conversion there). It has been a commonplace of nationalist history in Israel and elsewhere to accuse the national leadership of failing to make the state absolutely ethnically pure, and Adityanath certainly follows that model.
Why did India turn out this way? Gandhi’s vision was a united state, one which accommodated all faiths, never mind the existence of a large Muslim minority. The Pakistan separatist movement, on the other hand, wanted a state for the Muslims, a kind of Muslim Zionism, but what they got was much less than they had imagined. Many Muslims, especially most of the religious leadership, opposed Pakistan on the grounds that it was materialistic nationalism, not Islam. Once the partition was set in motion, with British approval, however, it proved unstoppable. So the South Asian Muslims ended up divided into three similar-sized populations in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, while nearly all the Hindus were and are in India. It is thought that Nehru was satisfied with this outcome and surreptitiously encouraged it.
In India, the Congress Party nominally supported a “secular” and inclusive Indian state, but the Indian Muslims and other minorities were always at a disadvantage. But bare “secularism” is not enough cement to hold a multilingual, multiethnic state together, so eventually religion was chosen as the vehicle for unity, a religion that nominally united 80% of the population. This was also a way to try to overcome classism, as the non-Brahmin majority sought equality and affirmative action in various ways. It leaves Muslims and Christians excluded, however, and the hate campaigns that are carried on are hardly conducive to peaceful societal existence, let alone ethical in any sense, except in nationalist logic.
I think nationalists who try to appropriate religion for their nationalist identitarianism should be called out on it. That is, they should be denounced as irreligious materialist hypocrites. This would apply equally to Hindutva Hindus, Zionist Jews, or Muslim statists, such as Da`ish/ISIS, but also other ones who want “Islamic” republics, etc. All of these people are just trying to build a materialistic idol in the form of a state which they want everyone to bow down to and worship. Such idolatry does not fit in the belief system of any of the existing major religions and is indeed inimical to them and threatens to replace them.
Posted by: Cabe | Sep 18 2022 22:50 utc | 73
@ karlof1 | Sep 18 2022 16:49 utc | 38
@ Julian | Sep 18 2022 17:20 utc | 40
@ Guernica | Sep 18 2022 17:32 utc | 42
@ karlof1 | Sep 18 2022 20:20 utc | 64
Regarding Armenia and Azerbaijan, poor Armenia is really out of luck, and their poor status is really galling to the Armenians in a nationalist world where their nationalism has lost and lost and lost and lost and really gets scant regard. The trouble is, the Turks are way more numerous, especially if one adds up all the Turkic peoples: Turkey, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and very large minorities in Iran (Iranian Azeris constitute one quarter of Iran’s population), Russia (Tatars, Bashkirs, Central Asian immigrants, Crimean Tatars), China (Uighurs, Kazakhs), Tajikistan (Uzbeks), Afghanistan (Uzbeks), and Iraq (Turkomans). Now, maybe the Central Asian Turkic peoples would rather not be bothered with the Armenian question, but it remains a hot issue for Turkey and Azerbaijan at least, and those two surround Armenia.
In trying to avoid Russia, the West tried to develop a pipeline running through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey, so Georgia also ended up allied with the West. Though some western imperialist extremists would like to turn on Turkey for its frequent non-cooperation, it is just too big to alienate completely, and also its NATO membership is hard to finesse, because it really wouldn’t do to expel it. The West has also needed Turkey as a Muslim counterweight to the rest of the Muslim world. This has left Armenia high and dry, despite the Armenian diaspora.
Armenia is a poor, high, barren, landlocked land with no resources and a declining population. When the Armenians first began to aim for a national state starting from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, they had big plans to get the European powers to endow them with a huge territory and ethnically cleanse the Turks from it. In very little of that territory did the Armenians have a majority of the population, but they were a large minority over a vast region. As things worked out, however, they lost out in Anatolia, from where they were expelled and massacred, they lost the Kars district that had been part of Russia 1878-1918, including the site of Ani, the former Armenian city and capital of 961-1045, they lost the Nakhchevan enclave that became part of Azerbaijan, they lost Mount Ararat and the district of Igdir, and they lost Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh), which was included in Azerbaijan despite its Armenian population. The little piece that was left that became Soviet Armenia was only saved by the Soviet Union; otherwise, there would have been no Armenia at all.
As the USSR was dissolving, the Armenians tried to grab Karabakh and in the ensuing war with Azerbaijan were able to gain control of a large part of Azerbaijan, driving out some 800,000 Azeris. So Azerbaijan was determined not to make peace with Armenia and got its own back, recovering all their terra irredenta and also driving out the Armenians from about a third of Karabakh.
So the Armenians are fit to be tied, but to whom can they turn? Of their neighbors, only Iran has been friendly, and even its friendship is tempered by the fact that a quarter of its population are Azeris. Russia has had to balance. I think Russia did very well in stopping the complete loss of Karabakh for Armenia, but the matter is not settled, and Russia doesn’t even have a direct geographical conduit to Armenia, as it has to cross either Georgian or Azerbaijani airspace.
The US would naturally like to stick its oar in, but it can’t really side with Armenia, because relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan are more important, and also Israel is enjoying being allied with the Muslim country of Azerbaijan, which helps it limit its isolation from the Muslim world and also to surround Iran with hostility. Israel and the US might also like Azerbaijan to be used as a base and a platform to break up Iran by appealing to the Azeri population in it to revolt in favor of a Turkic nationalism of its own. So Armenia is kind of stuck with Russia and Iran, despite many Armenians wishing that they could rather ally with the US. This issue was raised during the recent war, especially because Russia was seen by obsessive Armenian nationalists as not intervening soon or forcefully enough, but that view was defeated by the realities of the situation.
Posted by: Cabe | Sep 18 2022 23:56 utc | 78
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