Image is of a protest in Pakistan after the attempted assassination of Imran Khan in November 2022.
What a clusterfuck of an election.
Imran Khan, the previous official Prime Minister of Pakistan, was removed by the command of the United States in April 2022 in a no confidence motion. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Imran Khan and his supporters have protested since then against the Pakistani state, which is more-or-less governed by the military despite the furnishings of civilian rule. This has ranged from largely peaceful protests to trying to burn down and occupy houses and headquarters.
It was assumed by the Pakistani elite that they could make the problem go away by arresting Imran Khan and effectively forcing many PTI candidates to run as independents while hounding them with police raids and stopping them from campaigning - and adding salt on the wound by disabling social media access and mobile services on the day of the election to make it more difficult to co-ordinate. Fortunately, these people don't seem to quite understand how the internet works in the current day, and so Khan's supporters started up WhatsApp groups and improvised websites and apps to spread the word about which candidates to vote for, leading to Khan's party getting the plurality, though not the majority, of votes in the election.
This has created a rather depressed mood in the Pakistani elite. A coalition of eight parties joined together, obviously excluding the PTI, but this coalition is shaky and lacks much legitimacy, with two major parties inside it, the PML-N and PPP, being ideologically opposed on several issues. It has been regarded as "the coalition of losers" by Khan's supporters. The new Prime Minister is Shehbaz Sharif, who also ruled from April 2022 until August 2023 and is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, who served as Prime Minister three times before in the last few decades. With inflation at 30% and the economy greatly struggling, there are fears that things may only stay together for months, not years, before the coalition fragments and something else has to be done.
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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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
On Nuland stepping down, three possibilities, from the most optimistic to the least:
Case 1: The blob has determined that the PNAC strategy is too costly for the empire to sustain, following the attritional warfare in Ukraine as they did expect Russia’s change in strategy (Phase 2) to work. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has effectively stopped the expansionist aspiration of the empire all the way towards Iran, or has significantly delayed it in its tracks.
Case 2: Nuland takes the fall but the imperialist doctrine will persist without her involvement. This will likely follow with a pull back on the current strategy in Ukraine promoted by the neocon faction, while the empire redraws a new approach towards achieving the PNAC goals in more strategic and realistic manners.
Case 3: Nuland is getting promoted. The empire is going all in on a maximalist approach against all its geopolitical foes, leveraging on every piece of advantage it has (or still has, before they lose it completely in the near future) to retain its relevance as the global hegemonic power.
Thoughts?
If she was getting promoted, they would have announced that instead of her resignation. 2 is probably the most likely, that other internal competitors have been able to shovel enough shit onto her that the admin is convinced that someone else could donate better job.
She is also of the age where she could have a personal reason for stepping down, like having cancer or something.
shes just gonna lie low for a while at some think tank or other before returning as actual secretary of state
There wouldn't be any need for her to lie low though if they are going to have her replace Blinken. If anything, you would want her to stay at the state department to start working on a transition.
She can make more money this way and she might be back under a different administration.
PNAC?
Project for the New American Century
Robert Kagan, the co-founder of PNAC, is Victoria Nuland’s husband
Get the fuck out that’s fucking wild
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Study_of_War
Institute for the Study of War is lead by Kimberly Kagan, Robert's sister.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute
American Enterprise Institute has a "resident scholar" Frederick Kagan, Kimberly's husband.
Noticing a pattern?
She resigned on her own, as a refresher lets put the pieces together over the past 12 months:
1- Ukrainian failures and internal conflicts regarding war strategy going back to the start, places like Bahkmut where Zelensky and Zaluzhny had personal differences. That whole episode where Zaluzhny "disappeared" from public sight, even the Russians thought he was dead and later turned out he was just in self reclusion.
2- The topic of Ukrainian mobilization, the army needs more men but Zelensky doesn't want to risk giving the media a reason to doubt Project Ukraine i.e you wouldn't need a second mobilization if you were winning would you? Also how can we give you weapons if you don't even have enough soldiers?. Clearly Zelensky can't admit they lack manpower and therefore a proper army.
3- Ukrainian elections can't be postponed indefinitely otherwise its not realy democracy is it? Project Ukraine can't become a mere military dictatorship. Yes Zelensky using the same green military shirt is aesthetics of a "warrior" nation not actual politics.
its the image they want, not the actual truth aka a real soldier/general leading the nation. Liberals(the media believes) wont support a dictator against Putin. IMO Its about all that racist honorable white and western values against the barbarians.
4- There is no strategy but to sacrifice men for PR battles and beg for more weapons. Zelensky is the one doing PR tours along the front, giving medals, making grandiose claims about fortresses(famous last words in Bakhmut). This is inevitably causing attrition and is unsustainable in the long term. Every time he puts his face near his troops all they see is the constant death and failure represented through the incompetent/corrupt civilian government.
5- Zaluzhny got the backing to become a real threat. He got support from the army and a sizable lead in the polls. Therefore understanding the gravity of the situation Nuland makes a personal visit, makes clear the US supports Zelensky unconditionally and no decision will be made without their consent. For context the last time Blinken visited Ukraine was in September(4 months).
6- Adviivka happens,There is no way to make a positive spin. Without the possibility of a spin, Nuland's opponents(not ideologicaly but in terms of their personal priorities aka China vs Ukraine/Russia) come back to bite her, you can almost hear them screaming and laughing at her: "You told us this was the last time, you told us Ukraine wont need anything more, you told us it was going to be fine! You told us this coup shit was nothing to worry about!".
7-Nuland "resigns" barely within a month of her personal visit to Ukraine and in the aftermath of the most embarrassing Ukrainian military defeat so far.
So what is the answer? Nuland gives up voluntarily, due to embarrassment, frustration or both. She wasn't "fired", there is nobody powerful enough to do that except a sane and functional US President "frustrated" with this nonsense. Biden can't even take a piss by himself.
The current situation though is Zaluzhny is currently confortably leading the polls(published on MSM so its accepted now).
Nuland likely made some very big promises and is eating shit for it, but in their own little game she is forced to resign out of embarrassment. She lost too much influence by being so completely wrong, so there is no point playing the game anymore imo. She wasn't fired, she is still powerful and influential and maybe she'll get a another new job and a new scheme etc...
she'll probably join the Institute for the Study of War think tank her sister-in-law runs as a senior consultant and fellow and get hundreds of thousands of dollars of grifted money for the rest of her life as reward for her "good work" in Ukraine since 2014. I think you're right that the anti-Russia neo-cons are losing out internally to other factions who just want to focus on China, or on Latin America, or whatever else isn't the raging money pit dumpster fire of Ukraine. The MIC is all for destroying equipment to produce and sell more for profit, but even they are losing their appetite seeing their weapons losing to the Russians and all their stockpiles running dry, and the serious risks of WW3 escalations in balking many.
Getting out of the way before a Zaluzhny coup? If she burned her bridges with him...
I think it’s (1). The “boots on the ground always be escalating camp” have failed and the empire is in two geopolitical zwugzwangs at the same time while China just be chilling, waiting out the clock.
It’s Joever.