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Geopolitics in the 2020s.


dorlomin

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Not sure of the context but here’s an anti French demonstration in Turkish occupied Northern Syria. Very resourceful the way they be painted the flag on the ground to burn but a few questions to be raised about the flag they are in possession of.



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The Karabakh  ceasefire announced by the US has failed to hold.  As previously both sides have blamed each other for the breach but it seems likely that Azeri forces breached it.  The Azeri President has given an address basically saying they will continue the war.  In his speech he also claimed that the Armenians of Karabakh are alien foreign invaders of Karabakh who only came to the region in the 19th century following Russian invasion.  It's worth listening to this because of what it implies the fate of the Armenians of Karabakh is should Azerbijan storm the territory.

The prospects of any intervention on the Armenian side are remote but Russian forces have set up a field camp near the Lachin corridor, which is the link between Karabakh and Armenia proper.  Russian troops provide border security in Armenia and there are a couple of Russian military bases there as well.

 

 

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17 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

The Karabakh  ceasefire announced by the US has failed to hold.  As previously both sides have blamed each other for the breach but it seems likely that Azeri forces breached it.  The Azeri President has given an address basically saying they will continue the war.  In his speech he also claimed that the Armenians of Karabakh are alien foreign invaders of Karabakh who only came to the region in the 19th century following Russian invasion.  It's worth listening to this because of what it implies the fate of the Armenians of Karabakh is should Azerbijan storm the territory.

The prospects of any intervention on the Armenian side are remote but Russian forces have set up a field camp near the Lachin corridor, which is the link between Karabakh and Armenia proper.  Russian troops provide border security in Armenia and there are a couple of Russian military bases there as well.

 

 

I was wondering who controlled the lighter shade of purple in the map above, and it's complicated stuff. It's not quite as clearly Armenians good, Azerbaijanis bad as it can appear. The Soviets didn't plan for their disintegration when they redrew internal borders as favours to local party bosses when they didn't really matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lachin 

Edited by welshbairn
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2 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

I was wondering who controlled the lighter shade of purple in the map above, and it's complicated stuff. It's not quite as clearly Armenians good, Azerbaijanis bad as it can appear. The Soviets didn't plan for their disintegration when they redrew internal borders as favours to local party bosses when they didn't really matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lachin 

Yep, it's a complicated issue.  I think that the poltiical decisions made by Armenia since the war have had a big impact on what is happening now.

I realise not everyone is as big a geek as me but following the war on 1988-1994 the Armenians eventually controlled the majority of Karabakh and seven regions of Azerbijan, which they held as a buffer zone.  This resulted in 700,000 Azeris being expelled from their homes.  Most of the areas that Azeribijan have retaken so far in thsi war are those areas - when they talk about "liberated villages" they mean the ruins of villages that have been unpopulated for decades.  

The Armenians point would be that they had to take these regions because if they didn't they wouldn't have had security from Azeri attacks, which given what is jhappening now is probably correct.   What should have happened post 1994 is that the controlled regions of Azerbijan should have been used to negotitate, land for peace.  The Armenians could have ceded control with provisios of demilitarisastion, possibly with foreign observer/peacekeeper troops.  However, the Armenians just never budged from what they held and that has lead to the war we have now.  The Azeri government also share blame as they have continually pushed anti-Armenian hatred as an official state line, making compromise very difficult.

I'm probably simplifying it though - there is a long history of cleansing and killing in this region.  The town of Shushi, currently held by Armenains is a good example.  It was a mainly Azeri town and was captured by Armenains militias in the early 90s, following which all the Azeri population fled.  It's seen as a cradle of Azeri civilisation and culture but if you look back far enough, it used to be 50-50 Armenian and Azeri until the 1920s when the Armenians were massacred following the First World War.  The idea you can take a history like that and sort it out in a conference room in Geneva is probably naive.

 

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Putin talked about the origins of the war in his comments a few days ago.  During the Soviet era there were complaints from Karabakh Armenians that they were discriminated against by the government of the Azeri republic and when glasnost began they formed a group to campaign for their rights, which included unification with Armenia.  Following demonstrations phsyical clashes developed between Azeris and Armenians.  When news of these clashes spread to Baku and other areas in Azerbijan serious ethnic violence began, with Armenians in Baku and Sumgait expelled from their homes, alongside hundreds of killings.  In total around 200,000 Armenians living in Azerbiijan were expelled.  These refugees returned to Armenia or Karabakh, which resulted in increased agitation for Armenian control of the territory.  The Soviet leadership in Azerbijan moved against the Armenains during Operation Ring, where Soviet troops were used against Armenian militias in what was called the first (and only) civil war in the Soviet Union.  After the collapse of the USSR the war in Karabakh became full scale.

In a sad ironic twist, a lot of the Azeri refugees from the war went to live in Sumgait, from where many Armenians had been expelled.

Edited by ICTChris
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We're really not tbh. East Germans literally couldn't travel to the West without a specific permit which is why they flooded into Hungary in a bunch of knackered Trabants to cross the border there in 1989. Travel and working between Gammonland UK and the EU is still going to be quite straightforward but less so than the previous arrangements for no valid reason.

Meanwhile on the external frontier of the EU huge amounts of money are being paid to corrupt governments and on walls/decrepit refugee camps/violent enforcement to keep immigration to a premium ever since Hungary and the other Eurogammons took hold of the agenda after the 2016 influx. When it comes to migration the UK and the bulk of Europe run similar regimes of arbitrary cruelty and privilege.

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2 hours ago, virginton said:

We're really not tbh. East Germans literally couldn't travel to the West without a specific permit which is why they flooded into Hungary in a bunch of knackered Trabants to cross the border there in 1989. Travel and working between Gammonland UK and the EU is still going to be quite straightforward but less so than the previous arrangements for no valid reason.

Meanwhile on the external frontier of the EU huge amounts of money are being paid to corrupt governments and on walls/decrepit refugee camps/violent enforcement to keep immigration to a premium ever since Hungary and the other Eurogammons took hold of the agenda after the 2016 influx. When it comes to migration the UK and the bulk of Europe run similar regimes of arbitrary cruelty and privilege.

Quite, it's all a bit depressing after watching the happy faces of badly dressed people hacking at the Berlin Wall with sledge hammers. In my case the Channel Wall will make a significant difference in that the EHIC protection will be abolished which means that affordable travel insurance for someone with pre-existing conditions will be almost impossible. I realise that my holidays aren't quite as important as the collapse of the Soviet empire and its satellites but it pisses me right off. And it annoys me that the principle of freedom of movement, even within a restricted area of countries and people, has been thrown away for no rational reason. 

Edited by welshbairn
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47 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Quite, it's all a bit depressing after watching the happy faces of badly dressed people hacking at the Berlin Wall with sledge hammers. In my case the Channel Wall will make a significant difference in that the EHIC protection will be abolished which means that affordable travel insurance for someone with pre-existing conditions will be almost impossible. I realise that my holidays aren't quite as important as the collapse of the Soviet empire and its satellites but it pisses me right off. And it annoys me that the principle of freedom of movement, even within a restricted area of countries and people, has been thrown away for no rational reason. 

"The Collapse" by Mary Elise Sarotte is an excellent book about the wall.  She indicates that it could easily have been more bloody than it was.

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Azeri troops are 5km from Shushi, one of the larger towns in Karabakh. As mentioned above it has a history of massacres and ethnic cleansing, already in this conflict the historic cathedral has been shelled.

I actually read an interesting article by a regional analyst that talked about the different courses the War could take depending on where the Azeris targeted next. https://asiatimes.com/2020/10/azerbaijans-next-move-will-make-or-break-karabakh-war/

Elsewhere in the war there has been another horrific strike on an Azeri City, with an Armenian rocket attack killing 20 civilians in Barda. There has been some chatter about the Armenian side having increased success bringing down Azeri/Turkish drones, with possible assistance from the Russian army.

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7 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Venezuela's got the biggest oil reserves on the planet, double Iran's. I don't get it. Venezuela pays for the oil in gold bars when it gets through.

They don't have any refineries.

That's how neocolonialism works. America and Europe take the raw materials from the poor countries at a cheap price then sell it back to them as expensive products.  

 

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23 minutes ago, Detournement said:

They don't have any refineries.

That's how neocolonialism works. America and Europe take the raw materials from the poor countries at a cheap price then sell it back to them as expensive products.  

 

Someone's played the trade game!

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I read The Open Veins of Latin America which goes into a lot of detail about trade. This is a good wee summary 

 

Screenshot_20201101_175007.jpg

Liberals want people to believe this is down to the hidden hand of the market but it's actually due to richer countries sponsoring coups and bankrolling governments which act against their own economic interests and agree to destructive trade deals. 

Edited by Detournement
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