SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] @ SeventyTwoTrillion @hexbear.net

I am the news dude. I do the news megathreads.

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this is pretty great

btw, I have absolutely no issues with anybody doing what they want with the updates or posting them wherever, so if you wanna do stuff like this then I'm fine with it. I would like links back to them but that's just etiquette, not a requirement or something

he is absolutely a young Ebenezer Scrooge

I will accept the following criticism (though I don't think any of us would have proclaimed to have been experts or even particularly knowledgeable on Niger or Nigeria, we are typically not the kind of people who go and look at wikipedia articles for 30 minutes and then come back as X Country Understanders) and this is an incredibly useful article that I am always in desperate need of. There's a tendency within myself, which I am always at work to purge, to come up with explanations that sound very nice and explanatory and all the pieces fit together quite nicely, but without actually going ahead and verifying whether any of it actually true.

That being said, and I fucking hate being the guy to say this because it's always so cliche, but I think the truth might lie somewhere in the middle between the broad geopolitical (which we tend to focus on in our ignorance of on-the-ground conditions much of the time) and the narrow local (which this article very helpfully provides). Both domains govern and shape the other. I think it's perfectly plausible to fit this into the jigsaw of the Second Cold War, you just have to be careful you aren't forcing the jigsaw piece in where it doesn't actually fit. And as the article says, fitting the coup into the "This is an act by America against France to cut them off from uranium and force them to take American gas" place doesn't work for a number of reasons as they explain. Fitting the coup into the "This is Russia being based and being anti-colonial" place also doesn't work. It's got something to do with the origins of jihadist groups in West Africa, something to do with Western exploitation, something to do with the jostling for allies and resources by big powers - but also something to do with local ethnicities (e.g. as Bazoum is), something to do with the governments of West African countries, and something to do with the recent histories of these countries and how their independences came to be, and a whole number of other factors. Really it's an entire 1000-page book to have a decent description.

It's important to remember - for myself and others - that these countries and their people do have agency. Liberals and conservatives tend to assume that they don't, from a perspective of racism, explicitly or implicitly, and it's easy to do something similar by assuming that these countries are mere pawns by other great powers in a great geopolitical game (and perhaps handwaving that there's probably other things going on and then not bothering to learn what those other things are), and while that's a little closer to the truth than racistly assuming that they're incapable of having independent ideas, it's still not correct. I must keep purging my liberalism every single day.

Many of the commentators in the alternative media space of the Western world may wish the best for the African continent, but, more often than not, they are not equipped to understand the nuances inherent in the complex web of relationships and interests that exist among various African states.

Through their narrow field of vision, these commentators only see the jostling of France, USA, UK, Russia and China for influence in Africa, and interpret all moves by African states as either for the Russia-China axis or the USA-French axis.

It never even occur to these commentators that a huge country such the Nigeria could have core national security interests in Niger, which is separate from the geopolitical manoeuvrings of USA and France, both of which are mere interlopers and not native to the landscape. I often notice that many of these commentators have barely heard of the three organizations that Nigeria diligently funds and controls in order to secure its regional and national interests. I am referring to ECOWAS, Lake Chad Basin Commission and the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF).

There is a hyper-focus on Tinubu (who is no doubt a corrupt man) as if he is the sole decision-maker inside Nigeria. He is not. There is the national legislature, civil society groups, the local media, respected traditional chiefs and many influential politicians whose views on military intervention must be taken into account by Tinubu.

If Tinubu were the sole decision-maker and an American/French puppet, then Nigerian-led ECOWAS intervention in Niger would have already started as Tony Blinken, Vicky Nuland and Emmanuel Macron have fervently lobbied for.

...

There is no doubt in my mind that France, the EU and USA are incredibly frustrated by Tinubu's lack of decisiveness, but he is definitely not their puppet in any way or fashion. Nuland or Macron may not give a damn about a possible refugee crisis in Niger following a military intervention, but Tinubu does. Not because he is a humanitarian, but because it will damage his political standing in Nigeria, especially among Northern Nigerians who form a formidable support base for his political party, All Progressives Congress.

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Officials of France, EU and USA have mostly been reduced to following Nigeria’s meandering political system instead of calling the shots.

more and more people are saying this

Every time I explain the war to libs I become 1% more pro-Russia and I'm a little concerned about it.

I think the tenet of "If you're explaining, you're losing," is possibly the only correct thing Reagan ever did or said other than dying, when applied to real-life debates and arguments. Everybody's seen the TV arguments where a host is asking short, snappy, accusatory questions to a person that has foolishly volunteered to try and explain their viewpoint, where every time they get more than 10 words into an explanation they are cut off and another accusatory question asked, so even if you support the interviewee it's like "Dang, this is rough to watch." It's mitigated quite a lot online by upvote metrics - if you see a short, snappy comment with like 3 upvotes and a reply with 80, then you mostly know in your lizardbrain who is winning and who is losing. But even so, the tenet still holds, and that's why it's important to also attack your opponent rather than remaining in defensive explanations after every accusation. Hence the chapo/Hexbear styles of engagement with libs.

With that said, what might be happening is that when a liberal offers a short, concise, and wrong accusation or argument - say, "Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin is an authoritarian dictator who wanted to destroy Ukraine for not bowing down to him, and Ukrainians are resisting him," - it's tempting to try and offer a short, concise, and more correct statement in response - "Actually, Putin was justified in invading Ukraine because NATO pushed up to their borders and Ukrainians are Nazis."

The problem is that that response isn't actually true, or at least it's not the whole truth, and additional details are critical to make the argument more airtight especially if you don't want somebody to turn around and say "Well, if you think that's right, then you think X country (that you don't support) invading Y country (which you support) was justified too, because the situations are broadly comparable."

The problem now is that if you try and add those additional details, by the time you're done, you've written an essay, and you are explaining and thus losing. This is the exact problem I had with writing Hexbear's position on the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

So I'm personally quite non-judgemental when people on the Left in public give these sorts of short, snappy, and wrong statements, because while people around them are like "This isn't my position, this is insufficiently nuanced, actually I have a great 15,000 word essay on this and 7 books if you want to know more..." in reality they're constrained by "If you're explaining, you're losing."

Big Serge and RWA are thinking that Robotyne will be abandoned soon by Russia. Held out for over two months when it was probably planned to be overran in the first few days, essentially as well as it could have gone for Russia

the final boss of liberalism

just putting this thought somewhere, perhaps somebody can point me towards a thinker who has expressed this before: I feel, rather than liberals being unable to see systemic problems as being systemic at all, instead liberals see the individual as systemic (usually in enemy countres), and the systemic as individual (usually in their own or allied countries). So if a bad thing or things happen in an enemy country then that's because that's a fundamental part of their system, whereas if bad or bad things happen in their own country, those are just unfortunate little things that don't taint the wider society

For example, when faced with problems of low wages in America, rather than taking a wide-scale approach they might be like "Well, if you work hard then you can get promoted to better positions and make more money," which obviously doesn't address the fact that if everybody tried to do this then there would be nobody to work the bad but necessary jobs. But when faced with individual stories of people being repressed in Bad Countries like Russia or China or the DPRK, like via the stories of dissidents, then their individual experiences are magnified and generalized to become a systemic part of that Bad Country.

#Tradle #528 2/6
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Use whatever de jure and de facto powers he and his party may have over the Central Bank and the oligarchs to shift away from neoliberal economic policy and towards a state nationalist economy. These might not (and probably wouldn't be) leftist, pro-worker reforms, but he strikes me as somebody who only takes action when he has been backed into a corner with no other options remaining and otherwise doesn't wish to rock the boat. He also strikes me as somebody who is more of a nationalist than he is a liberal. The more drastic the crisis, the more dramatic the response would be, so in only a small crisis he might not do too much but if there was a risk of the 1990s happening again I think a lot of the kind of things that wouldn't ordinarily be on the table would be available.

Though, as I said, the recent history of neoliberal economics is mediocrity (so long as the financiers aren't allowed to get too jiggy with it and cause crises like 2008) so it doesn't seem likely that there would be a crisis like this.

Russian neoliberals got their sleeper codes from the West and have been tasked to destroy the country from the inside as the sanctions didn't work

jokes aside, these policies probably aren't going to collapse Russia, Western neoliberal countries (when they aren't cutting off their free energy sources and cutting off from China) aren't generally in risk of collapse and I think if shit hits the fan seriously then Putin will overcome his cowardice and be forced to act, but it's gonna condemn Russia to mediocrity and slow growth if the course isn't changed.

So basically we're seeing a hinge point, and in 50 or 100 years time the history books will either read "After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered the beginning of the Second Cold War, and the sanctions regime forced the Russian government to support its economy or risk collapse, this began the transition from a neoliberal to a state-supported, worker-oriented economy which was continued by Putin's successor..." or "...or risk collapse, but aside from this blip, neoliberalism continued to be the economic ideology which governed Russia and led to slow growth in the decades after..."

You can be doomer or bloomer about it, none of us actually know what's going to happen unless we get a crystal ball.

I was willing to give Lasso the benefit of the doubt and just attribute the first killing to an angry gang or oil company but now it's obvious that the feds are involved. Monroe Doctrine never really left but it's certainly back now - Peru, Argentina, now Ecuador. No coincidences.

Nazi Germany lost the war a couple years before the actual final defeat and end of WW2. So even if officials on both sides were saying, publicly or privately, "Shit, I think it's all over, we can't defeat the Russians or push them out of our territory," the war could still continue for many months, even a year or two. It does seem to me a lot like the failure of the counteroffensive is that same moment for us here, though obviously it's easier to tell these things retroactively.

Ukraine has the advantage of not needing to devote their manpower to anything other than sending people to the front, as they're getting their equipment from the West and getting repairs done by the Poles, so I think Ukraine still possesses the ability to wage war and will continue to possess it for the rest of the year at least. Honestly they might even have another counteroffensive attempt in them, though it'll be even more of a farce than this one.

#Tradle #527 4/6
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https://oec.world/en/tradle

It's nothing to do with steamrolling militarily, the sanctions were put in place in such large doses and so quickly as to try and cause a breakdown of the war effort and internal revolt against the Russian government by West-friendly oligarchs who could then hand over everything that isn't nailed down to the West

Yeah absolutely.

I'm just thinking like, if I was elderly in a socialist society where my basic needs were met, would I want to do what I currently do now (both where I work and the stuff I do for the site), even if I could retire? Because I almost feel like I'd be happier if I didn't have the stress of "if I don't do my job right I could lose it then be homeless", as an external motivator, as opposed to the internal motivator of wanting to do that job.

But in a capitalist society, that's not what the article is talking about, they're just talking about exploiting the labor of people until they drop dead and telling a story of a minority of people who may or may not actually be happy to continue working when retired.

how elderly who work find purpose and enjoy the comradery with colleagues

Honestly to a certain extent, so long as those retirees don't have to work to survive and it's just because they actually like doing what they do (and doing that job won't be a problem like if they have to lift heavy objects or whatever), I feel like this could be an example of external motivation being worse than internal motivation.

Like that saying, the best way to kill a hobby is to get paid for it. The reverse might also be true, if you aren't getting paid for it (in the sense that you already have some form of socialist or communist UBI where you don't suffer if you don't labor) then it might bring some of the joy back.

but this is more of a "under socialism it would be like this" thing, under capitalism making the elderly work is usually pretty exploitative. as you say, some people reach old age with few problems while others have many, and comparing those (and even insinuating that those latter people should be working because it's supposed to make them happy) is pretty disgusting.

literally nothing politically significant has happened anywhere in the world except that Ecuadorian dude getting shot

I love the in-between periods so I'm trying to make the most of it. There's absolutely no way to predict the timing of any of the big flashy events that captivate everybody so I don't even try. The BRICS summit later this month probably has some interesting things in store but there's still a week to go, so plenty of time for something stupid to happen somewhere.

2023 so far has basically been

Chinese weather balloon -> Russia-Ukraine war anniversary (are they planning something?!) -> Reaper drone shot down -> EU goes to China and also begins decoupling -> Bakhmut captured -> Turkey elections and Ukrainian counteroffensive begins -> Wagner mutiny -> ZNPP scare and NATO Vilnius summit -> Niger coup -> ???

and it's much nicer being in one of the arrows than in the events much of the time

This seems like big numbers but versus the Russian army? plus with the Western shortages of ammunition and shells and patriots and missiles and such? and bad NATO training? my griftometer is blaring tbh