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I'm going to revisit the episode of The World at War which deals with the Brits fighting the Japanese in the Burmese jungle.

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Click the like button at the top of the page to like this entry. Use the share and/or re-stack buttons to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.

I will now turn to finishing off the long entry on the War in Ukraine that I promised you earlier this week.

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If Saudi royals prefer Israel to Hamas (meaning: If Saudi royals are sane) then this would be a good time for them step up to the plate and make their position clear.

As the (putative?) leaders of the Arab world, they could be helpful in bringing some semblance of order (and even "peace") to the Middle East. Seldom is an isolated and insignificant (even if filthy rich) country given this opportunity to do something benefciial for ALL concerned.

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Impossible, as they would be abdicating their leadership role in the Islamic World, and even worse, inviting rebellion at home.

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Thank you for throwing this weighthy stone into this puddle.This seems to be the most widely accepted, almost tex-book, opinion.

But this contradicts one of the basic Enlightenment tenets, according to which humans just want to get along and they have to be taught and forced into hating other ethnie --- by governing authorities or dominant belief systems (=? "religions" ?)

So now am I to believe that Muslim governments are at the mercy of their obtusely hate-filled subjects and, moreover, that the Islamic "World" can be lead only by ethnie/nations that are wholly devoted to killing Jews?

In my decades of inter-action with students/faculty from sundry corners of the Islamic world, I was steadily re-assured that individual Muslims have no ill will toard Jews, provided they that Jews treat them (Muslims) well.

So, who are the "evils" that cause all this bloodshed in the Middle East?

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Collective crimes are the responsibility of the collective.

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I do not believe for a second that 'humans just want to get along'. Tribalism is in our DNA and is an evolutionary thing that has allowed us to survive. In/Out groups are as human as it gets.

"So now am I to believe that Muslim governments are at the mercy of their obtusely hate-filled subjects and, moreover, that the Islamic "World" can be lead only by ethnie/nations that are wholly devoted to killing Jews?"

I'm not sure how you made this leap.

"So, who are the "evils" that cause all this bloodshed in the Middle East?"

No "evils" caused this conflict. It's an ethnic squabble over territory and rule. As old as our species.

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Making your position clear is a real bad idea in the Middle East.

That was an American thing, and that America is gone...

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Dec 9, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

Ahh....so the like really are important. I always wondered why writers requested them, but wasn't sure why.

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It's basic psychology: the more attention something gets (whether through likes, shares, or comments, or all of these, the more people will want to check it out.

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Should rename likes to squeaky wheels.

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Dec 9, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

Good piece. Not sure about the German take, but very good overview of the Mideast situation- thanks!

Burma has been a mess for a long time and the government really has never had control over the border regions (neither up North nor to the east along the Thai border). Now the country is more strategic for China (as your note covers) which is probably not good news for the people.

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China respects international law, so they would never meddle in Myanmar's internal affairs.

/sarcasm

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Dec 9, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

I don’t use social media much but I do know there was a lot of triumphalism among Muslims and leftists immediately following the Hamas attack. Has it been followed by doomerism now?

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From what I am seeing, yeah

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Dec 9, 2023·edited Dec 9, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

I know the people who actually call the shots don’t primarily view it through religious lens. But there was a lot of celebration among the online Muslims when Azerbaijan took over Artsakh a few months ago. So it’s very nice to see them being humiliated by the Jews in turn.

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There was certainly a great deal of triumphalism but I have come across twitter posts by Arabs who expressed straightforward empathy for the Israelis. One can't read too much into social media (especially in a region where the public/private distinction is all-important) but it appears to me that, while still a minority, there are plenty of Arab Muslims who have had enough of Hamas and the whole toxic legacy of Palestinian irredentism and revanchism.

My take is that extremism is more attractive to the Levantine Arabs than the Gulf ones while a similar distinction operates between the Arab diasporas in the West and much of the East. The Westernised and substantially deracinated children of migrants and refugees are attracted to the jihad as an exercise in identity-formation.

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You can add Scott Ritter to the list.

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Dec 9, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

Understandable that the Junta is exasperated with all of those Karens bothering them 😂

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very nice!

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1. I wonder how much a more permanent defeat of the Gazan Palestinians - like, say, an expulsion from Gaza itself - would rock the Middle Eastern political landscape. It cannot be overlooked that the current Iranian regime derives much of its (heavily waning) legitimacy from being perceived as "defenders of the Palestinians from the evil Zionists". If Gaza falls, this claim would be irreversibly damaged.

2. The Burmese Civil War* might have the interest of China, but it would certainly have the interest of India as well, for India is right next to Burma, and whatever goes on in Burma might spill over to India as well.

*I use "Burma" interchangeably with "Myanmar", for I don't much care for "endonym petty nationalism" (e.g. "Turkey to Türkiye", "India to Bharat", etc).

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I too prefer to call it Burma instead of Myanmar, just like I call it Kiev instead of Kyiv or Czech Republic instead of the horrible Czechia.

Some changes I'll accept, like Dnipro in place of Dnepropetrovsk. Churchill protested at Angora being Ankara, saying that it was 'ridiculous, as no one has ever heard of an Ankara cat'.

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Dec 9, 2023·edited Dec 9, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

I think the generation who grew up with the old names think its ridiculous and no one will call it by the new names. But the next generation is a "blank slate", they will call it by whatever name they have been taught in schools, hear/read in news etc. So I call it Turkey instead of Turkiye, Czech Republic instead of Czechia, but also Myanmar instead of Burma, and Iran instead of Persia. Similar dynamics occur with most social changes.

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No doubt. No one uses Peking anymore, for example.

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Dec 9, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

What about all those Chinese restaurants serving "Peking Duck"?

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touche

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Any restaurants serving Chicken Kyiv?

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If you want to refer to that disaster of a country as Burma, go for it. Reminds us who is responsible.

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Dec 9, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

It is not petty nationalism to call India Bharat. It is literally the name of the country. The constitution literally says "India, that is Bharat...". The word Bharat appears in the national anthem, India does not. Hundreds of Millions who speak non-English languages in India refer to the country as Bharat.

It would be as stupid as refusing to call someone William when you have known them as Bill.

The only people who have a problem with this are Anglos, anglo-adjacents, anglophile Indians in the West who pretend to have all the correct liberal opinions and generally who blow a gasket at the mention of Modi because "muh! Hindu Nationalism Bad!".

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I will buy that argument when all non-Anglos start calling China, Zhōngguó. And Japan, Nihon. And Germany, Deutschland. And the million different local ethnonyms. Every language has its own names for places. English is not unique in this. Indian languages have names for foreign places that differ from the local ones too. Don't make this about "muh! Western liberalism bad, based local whatever good" because thats not what this is about.

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All I am saying is that it does not make one a petty nationalist to use Bharat instead of India because that is the name of the country. It is not a commentary on Western liberalism. The usage has existed for millennia in history and across various geographies and contexts in the subcontinent.

You can keep calling it India if you wish but refusing to use Bharat because "muh petty nationalism bad! me so principled" is ignorant of the history of the place and the reality of the the word means.

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Dec 10, 2023·edited Dec 10, 2023

If you insist, that Anglos when conversing or writing in English, call India, "Bharat", then yes its petty nationalism. Which is fine, the petty nationalists of Burma(Myanmar), Persia(Iran), etc have been succesfull in that regards. But nationalists should have the courage to own up to their own ideolology.

I am not concerned about what Indians or any other nationality call their countries in their own language. Or even in English when they use it themselves. I just get annoyed when the petty nationalists insists Anglos(and only Anglos, no one seems to care what the Chinese or the Spanish or the Ruskies call it) use the endonym too.

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It sounds like a lingering fixation with the former colonial power. As such it indicates a vestigal anxiety, a desire for recognition, that is ultimately pointless. India's significance speaks for itself, ditto the decline of the UK and the disorder and weakness within the US.

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Maybe reading comprehension is not your strong suit. Show me where i insist that you use one word over another.

Hundreds of millions use Bharat including those of left, right, north, south and center. That in itself does not make them nationalist because That is all i am saying. Anglos can hold on to their owner words if it makes them feel better. So pathetic.

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Jordan is Palestine (and "Palestine" is Israel)

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And Israelis are Palestinians...Golda Meir had a passport to prove it,

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Issued pre-1948. My ex-wife's birth certificate says "Palestine" (born in 1945). In both cases, it was the Brits doing.

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It looked to be about anglos generally to me. Even anglo adjacents whatever the hell they are.

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Dec 9, 2023·edited Dec 10, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

Iran was also the first victory of the modern political Islam. If the Iranian theocracy falls, political Islam will take a hit across the world.

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Yes but that political Islam arose in response to something.

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Burma, like the British Empire, is no more.

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Dec 9, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

Neither is Burma Shave... but nobody refers to it as "Myanmar Shave".

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Never heard of that product. Do Buddhist monks swear by it?

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Dec 10, 2023·edited Dec 10, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

The benefits Tehran receives from supporting the Palestinians are balanced by costs. Iranians want their domestic problems (unemployment, infrastructure, environmental degradation and corruption) solved. The regime is very vulnerable on this one. Also the mullahs recruited Palestinians (and Lebanese) to staff the riot police in Tehran when they put down the protest movement a few years ago. This has not endeared the Palestinian cause to critics of the regime.

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Dec 9, 2023·edited Dec 9, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

1. Any pretext will do for Germany to ban the AfD. The real reason cannot be stated, and that is opposition to American hegemony in general and thr war on Russia in particular.

2. The Dutch merely additionally confirmed what everyone already knew.

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By 'contained', do you mean Gazans remaining in Gaza?

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The conflict not spreading to an all-out war with neighbours like Hezbollah, or other forces like Iran.

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Well in that case, Israel had better avoid displacing Palestinians into neighbouring countries.

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Perhaps they’ll be dispatched to America and Europe?

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Perhaps. Europe is in the neighbourhood, so that gives them the "home advantage".

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Dec 10, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

Thanks!

too many conflicts on its plate to manage --> too many conflicts on its plate

[comment: to manage is redundant, the metaphor includes it]

Because it was bullshit, of course.

[Comment: another sentence about what you mean would be helpful here]

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Dec 10, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

What stands out so much about Bellingcat is that the faces of the org are so far left economically and culturally. In my view that tells us quite a bit about the state of the western elites and where their sympathies are increasingly leaning, though some could argue either Bellingcat is lying about that or the intel community is using them to try to make leftists more interventionist

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Dec 10, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

Also with respect to Burma, I just have one question, to Niccolo or anyone else who would know: are patriots in control or not?

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A uniform wearing mafia is in control.

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Ideology is mostly irrelevant. The intelligence agencies have always used people across the political spectrum. The ideological character of the personnel and the propaganda are useful clues as to how the regime thinks it best to manipulate us.

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Unless they believe their own 💩.

They do.

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So gimme a double Reichsbuerger with cheese and a large freedom fries.

(sorry I couldn't help myself)

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I was unable to restrain myself either.

Mit Frei Frittes bitte ...

the jokes can’t stop themselves

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But wait, there's more!

I see I caught you guys at breakfast, sorry about that, what you having?

Ah, hamburgers.

Hamburgers! The cornerstone of any notorious breakfast. What kinda hamburgers?

Ah, cheeseburgers.

No, where you get 'em, McDonalds, Wendys, Jack 'n The Box?

Ah, Reichsbuerger.

Reichsbuerger! That's that German far right burger joint, I hear they got some extremist burgers. I ain't never had one myself, how are they?

Erh, they're good.

You mind if I try one of yours? This is yours here right?

Mmmm! This IS an extremist burger!

(And so on, and so on, and so on...)

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Rundell's piece was highly evasive. He left out the fact that the Biden Administration supports the Muslim Brotherhood within Sa'udi Arabia itself.

The Kashoggi affair indicated that Washington sought regime change in Riyadh. Either the new relationships between Riyadh and both Moscow and Beijing alarmed the US or because influential networks with the US national security sector seek personal benefits from installing their own cronies within the al-Sa'ud family itself.

American state-building has failed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has failed on the West Bank and Gaza too. The Sa'udis understand that Israel offered the Palestinians a state, with a capitol in East Jerusalem and sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif (above ground, the subterranean tunnels and the Wailing Wall were to be retained by Israel). They are not going to waste resources, still less risk a war for the sake of the Palestinian refugees for whom this is not enough.

The present war touches on the character of TurboAmerica itself. If the US seeks stability in Western Asia it will support the destruction of Hamas. If the US is applying a strategy of tension (either to constrain the Israelis or to maintain leverage against other regional or extra-regional players) they will find a way to do this.

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Dec 10, 2023·edited Dec 10, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo

IMO they definitely wanted MBS gone. He disrupted the relationship with Washington when he held the corrupt princes under house arrest and forced them to return money to the state. The corrupt faction were very, very close to the US deep state. John Brennan (CIA director under Obama) had been station chief in Riyadh and would have been close to some, if not all, of the principal villains. I get the impression that the untold backstory would be very sinister indeed.

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I don’t actually think Qatar has agency over DC.

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Yes but 🇺🇸 own Qatar, not other way round. No agency outside Qatar (that’s absurd) and Qatar pays tribute, not lobbying for influence.

LOBBYING.

MY FELLOW AMERICANS

YOU WAIT IN THE LOBBY

They’ll be nice, and do nothing.

Nothing good.

But they’ll be polite.

Past the lobby?

Paying customers only, but it’s TRIBUTE, not “Influence”, certainly not foreigners!

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Recommended reading on the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire?

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It's been so long that I can't remember any good ones, and there are some good ones.

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the two classic literary pieces are “Radetzky March” by Joseph Roth (a novel) and “The World of Yesterday” by Stefan Zweig (a memoir). Both are excellent, in a finely-wrought, elegiac way.

Worth noting that both writers were cultured, urban Jews - like minorities in modern multi-cultural states, Austria-Hungary’s Jewish population had a special appreciation for and reliance on the central authority, in this case the Habsburg Imperial state.

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Thank you for the recommendations! Needed new books to read.

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If only they had in America...

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I think seen in the proper context, they have largely adopted the same political preference in America. In A-H it was support of the overarching imperial authority over the local nationalisms, and here too they largely support the central authority (i.e. the Federal gov’t) over the local authorities which have, at least until recently, been more firmly rooted in the dominant ethnos.

It an entirely rational preference for an ethnic minority group that perhaps feels its own precarity.

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Well said, but as for the rational preference, American was and is the better bet.

*As in - What now?*

[the rational preference was getting with the IN crowd, which is now the decidedly OUT crowd in a year come what may].

Your Golems you bought here to attack us Rabbis have turned on the Rabbis, and asking the intended victims for protection is foolish and weak.

Also, we're not allowed self-defense legally ourselves. Legally, as in if one is foolish enough to involve the laws, which themselves are fatally weakened and all to our advantage.

The Central government in DC: it isn't and never was, and now it collapses of extreme old age. DC was always unnatural and now nature claims DC.

Pshaw ! No active harm, but do have fun with your pets.

Here in America we do our own work, do avail of that 2d Amendment.

Cheers !

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