Dr. Gonzo

Well idk if that'll happen. Apparently he streams on twitch and someone asked about Everton and his response was pretty disrespectful to the club. As a Liverpool fan, I had a laugh about it at first... but I'd probably fucking hate him if he was playing with us. Andy Lonergan has also joined Everton as a 3rd choice (or 4th?) keeper. A keeper with a CL medal to go along with their CL winning manager - but in all seriousness, I think while his overall quality may be a bit dodgy because his career record was never really one as a top keeper, he's a good backup keeper to have around the squad. By all accounts, he was popular and got along with pretty much everyone in the squad and I think that's important with backup players that aren't going to start more often than not.

Yeah, Vialli! And yeah, I have no idea how anyone could put up with that kind of abuse daily. It's got to be horrible being treated like that by someone who's supposed to be guiding your fledgling career as a kid.

Jesus, have you heard about this shite from the 90s? It's appalling... https://theathletic.com/2771877/2021/08/19/chelsea-coaches-punched-and-kicked-young-black-players-in-1990s/?amp Here's some excerpts: It makes you wonder whether others at the club at the time (including... Hoddle, Gullet, the Italian guy who's name I forget) knew about these incidents. Fun fact, Graham Rix is also a convicted nonce... and still managed to get work in football after the conviction!

This post ended up being way longer than I intended. So I'm breaking it up into 2 parts... Afghanistan Focused Part I think the US was justified in it's original mission in Afghanistan - going after Al Qaeda and Bin Laden was certainly justifiable. But at the end of the day, Bin Laden left Tora Bora pretty quick to go to Pakistan and that compound he was found and killed in. The time to leave Afghanistan was when the Taliban were left reeling from the US military action against it and were ready to surrender to the US & Afghan government. A peace deal was brokered by Karzai and the Taliban - Donald Rumsfeld and Bush rejected it though and decided to pursue the idea of "nation building" in Afghanistan. But it wasn't like Iraq, which was a completely unjustified war. The US had a good reason to go after Bin Laden... but political and military leaders sort of twisted the initial reason of why they were there into a futile attempt at nation building. And a lot of what the US and allies did in that "nation building" was not great. Supporting warlords, some of whom are just as bad as the taliban tbh, and doing nothing really about the systemic corruption in the new Afghan government made the government increasingly not trustworthy in the eyes of many Afghans. Considering how the Afghan army had far more losses in the conflict each year, I'm not so surprised to see so many soldiers decide they weren't prepared to put their lives on the line for a puppet government that was viewed as corrupt and in some cases, criminal, rather than surrender and go back to life under the Taliban. The sad truth is that many Afghans just want stability & despite how repressive and brutal the Taliban were, for many of them Taliban rule was the most stable period of their lives. The next best time to withdraw would have been after Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. But I think that could have been similarly chaotic. I think any withdrawal from Afghanistan at this point would likely have been chaotic and giving a set date to the Taliban of when we would withdraw sort of gave them the encouragement to lay low until May... then begin their offensive in May saying the US was in violation of the withdrawal agreement. Perhaps negotiations with the terms of withdrawal should have been done with the government that was propped up by the US? Honestly, I don't have much hope for Afghanistan to get better... at least anytime soon. We have to hope that the Taliban are "moderate" in their repression (lol weird thing to type out) and that some of these recent PR statements they've made aren't just bold faced lies. But you can't trust terroristic zealots to tell the truth. It's likely the Northern Alliance will keep up the fight against the Taliban and perhaps in cities like Herat and Jalalabad, we'll keep seeing opposition to Taliban rule (although today we've seen the Taliban open fire on protestors...). So I think parts of the country will find themselves embroiled in civil war. US Foreign Policy Discussion Part But as for the US and it's foreign policy, I would hope Afghanistan would mean more open discussion about US's foreign policy and their "role in the world." I agree with you that the US isn't the world police and should stop acting like they are... or at least, if they're going to act like cops... they should try to act less like shitty & malicious cops. If the US & West are to be expected to "promote human rights" then there need to be more discussion about the governments the West hops into bed with that are serial human rights violators. Foreign policy goals and objectives need to be considered more carefully. For too long the US does something abroad without any consideration of the blowback of those actions... and then has to react to the disasters that follow and these calamities drive the US's foreign policy... without any consideration of what the hell the US is actually trying to accomplish. That is especially true of the Middle East. But we're not going to have candid and frank discussions about the long term goals and objectives of US foreign policy while the US political system is so divided and fragmented. When the political parties view each other as different teams, rather than people who play for the same team just playing in different positions, and when extremism and radicalisation is out of control domestically... it becomes really impossible for anyone to make any sort of long term planning of any political goals - much less foreign policy goals that will likely require the cooperation of other countries. The US needs to start asking more of its political leaders and it's media. They are most responsible for the absolute shitshow that is US politics. They probably have needed to since Vietnam (or earlier)... but the next best time to do something that should have been done a long time ago is always "now."

The idiot has surrendered

The Afghanistan situation is crazy, tbh. And while Biden said "I'm the President, the buck stops with me" - he then went out of his way to blame everyone he could... the Trump administration for negotiating the terms of our withdrawal; the Afghan government & military. And while there may be truth to what he said... I don't think it excuses his role in the chaotic withdrawal. The Trump administration made no secret it would not honour international deals it didn't agree with that Obama & co had negotiated... that's why the US pulled out of the Paris climate accords and the JCPOA with Iran. Biden was not compelled to follow through with a deal brokered with the Taliban & could have easily changed the terms of pulling out. Likewise, the US and NATO blaming Afghanistan and their military for the collapse in Afghanistan. There's probably some truth in that. But at the end of the day, that was a government propped up by the NATO, trained and armed by NATO... and they were, in effect, responsible for how Afghanistan's government would be able to survive on it's own. So the rapid collapse of Afghanistan falls squarely on the shoulders of those who spent 2 decades to spend a lot of money to create something that was not stable enough to stand on it's own two feet. And if intelligence suggested the collapse wouldn't have been so quick... that intelligence should have been adjusted once it was seen the taliban were making rapid gains in Afghanistan over the last month. But even if you feel for the people of Afghanistan and the devastating humanitarian crisis we can see unfolding there (and it's kind of remarkable this guy is showing that sort of empathy because usually these types are the sort that "hate those towelheads")... I don't see what driving up to the capital with explosives in your car and making terroristic threats does for ANYBODY that needs help in Afghanistan. I think the US is at a weird tipping point. People feel emboldened to do things like this or the coup attempt in January (which has been taken suprisingly not seriously, considering it was people who stormed the head of government and were looking to hang people & brought nooses and gallows with them). At the end of the day, the collapse of Afghanistan after the US withdrawal should be leading Americans to question their foreign policy and military actions (but tbf, we could say the same of Vietnam... or even the collapse of the Shah's government in Iran). But shit like this and what we saw in January... indicates that the US has to deal with it's own issues of radicalisation and the spread of extremist viewpoints that push violent ideologies. Otherwise the US will end up like Afghanistan and Iran, ravaged by extremism & in the hands of dangerous weirdos.

He's an idiot. "I don't want to die, I want to go home" ...well maybe then don't make terroristic threats... because he's not going to go home, he's either going to die at the hands of the police or get arrested.

Bomb threat at the Capitol building today.

I guarantee you most people on Twitter are definitely from the first world & mostly from the “Anglosphere” - and the racism is proportional, I’m sure. I don’t disagree that Twitter is a cesspool, but let’s not try to pin all the bad behavior on foreigners because that’s definitely not the case

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/58263422 Joe Willock says he gets racist abuse on social media every day.

I think drone strikes are somewhat inhumane (although probably a better option for any aggressor than sending in actual troops or aircraft to bomb someone)... but I still think that's a better option for everyone in the Middle East than past policy of "nation building" or backing groups of radicals that they then lose control of. However, I doubt they stop backing fringe groups of weirdos. They're not going to stop in Syria - as far as I know... so they'll probably continue this policy of backing "opposition" in the form of radical weirdos & then be surprised in a few years when those radical weirdos turn out to be as radical and weird as they are.

@Gunnersauraus, @6666, @shut up ... any other Arsenal fans I may have missed - how do you feel about signing Odegaard full time? I don't really know how he was during his loan - I assume better than Ceballos, though?

He was able to get on a flight back to the UK!

Oh for sure. Either way you slice it, he's really stolen from Afghanistan (even if that money is mostly from the US & NATO nations providing aid to his government. Reports of 3 people killed and 12 people wounded after shots fired at anti-Taliban protests in Jalalabad.

I feel like the US should be asking for him to be handed over to be put in a prison cell and taking some of that money to put back in their treasury.

Saying women will be able to work "in the framework of Islam" can mean... a lot of different things. And this is one of the big issues of having zealots run a government. Will it be like Iran, where there's definitely systemic oppression of women in terms of: headscarf laws, inequity in terms of marriage (and divorce - though, I doubt the Taliban will allow for divorce, tbh) & inheritance... but women aren't really barred from education/schooling/property ownership/driving. Will it be more like Saudi Arabia, where there's far more restrictions on what women can/can't do - but they're not prohibited from everything? I think at some point, Zabihullah (or another representative) yesterday did an interview with an Afghan woman working for BBC - so I hope when they do take rights away from women (which, sadly, I think is inevitable under Taliban rule - you can already see it when little girls yesterday in Kabul went to school in full burkas)... they leave as much in tact, so that these women - while definitely living under religious oppression - can at least get an education and get work. It is especially hard to take the Taliban at face value, especially now when they are aware they've got the eyes of the world upon them and they've learned that having an effective PR team is really important, but if any of this is true... it's at least a step in the right direction compared to life under the Taliban in Afghanistan 20 years ago. It's still very far from ideal. But saying women can go to school and get jobs is a far cry from 20 years ago when women were basically forced to be kept in their homes - so I guess that's a better step than nothing. Also the claim that they want unity and inclusivity within the government - which I hope means an end to the persecution of Afghans based on religion or ethnicity. It's really hard to take them at face value though... because it's the taliban and we've seen their rule in Afghanistan before.

I didn't really know how similar Dari was to Persian until I met the friend I mentioned earlier from Afghanistan, who's Tajik and one time he was on the phone with his mum (or his dad... or someone in his family) and I found I could pretty much understand everything he was saying - but I'd been pretty ignorant of that fact until I met him at uni tbh. They're not exactly the same languages... but they're very close.

I think the West staying as uninvolved as possible really would have been the best choice. I think the UK and EU had the right idea, I do think the US's support of some of these Jihadist groups is... let's just say questionable at best... I don't think these Saudi/Qatar backed groups are necessarily a good thing for Syrians or for regional stability on the whole. Russia's involvement in Syria's been pretty heavy. The cynic in me thinks apart from Russia's geopolitical goal of challenging the US's hegemony in the region by backing Assad, also thinks Russia sees value in being so heavily involved because it gives them a lot of opportunities to conduct weapon tests in a massive ongoing crisis. There's also been a bit of a proxy war between Russia and Turkey - which I think spilled over a bit into the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict we saw late last year too, tbh. And the way that war concluded seemed to ultimately lead to Turkey having more free reign to go after Kurds in Syria, while Russia gets a bit more influence in areas it used to control in the Caucuses. Iran's involvement has multiple levels, really. Part of it is Assad called on their military treaty for support. Another part of it is Iran is scared as fuck of these Wahabi/Salafist Jihad groups on their border... and another part of it is it's a battleground where Iran can engage in it's proxy wars with Saudi Arabia and Israel without putting too many Iranian lives at risk. Israel have long called for regime change in Syria (and Iran), so this battleground against both Syrian forces/Iran's revolutionary guard/Iranian backed militias is an opportunity to fight battles it has long wanted to fight. It's one of those conflicts where for me, as just some normal guy in the West with roots in the Middle East who wants to see some semblance of stability to where the Middle East can be a lot less chaotic, I look at all sides of the Syrian civil war and I think "hmm... I can't really see any good guys here." It's just an unpleasant shitshow, from my perspective. Geopolitics is a really ugly thing, a lot of the time.

I reached out to my friend from uni yesterday, who was an Afghan refugee to Europe in the 90s right after the Taliban first took over... Today he's told me his dad is currently there - and there's no real clear timetable on when he'll be able to leave the country. He'd hoped to be able to get out yesterday, but it wasn't possible (I'm not sure why - but seeing some of that chaos at the Kabul airport yesterday is a good indication of why it wasn't possible). He's understandably distraught at the chaotic situation... and I don't know how the fuck I'd be feeling in his shoes. I hope he's able to say that his dad got out safely ASAP. Kinda scary times for many Afghans, but I think especially if you're not Pashtun you've got serious fears about the Taliban being back in power considering how the last time things played out. His dad is a brave man for going back to Afghanistan when it was always likely the Taliban would be back in charge - although I don't think he expected the situation to unfold the way it did.

That's a good point - I didn't realise that, but yeah - I think that makes you very very right about the impact of trade along it's longest land border being stifled by the shitshow that is the Syrian civil war (what an ugly debacle that is, btw)

Honestly, I think it may come from that massive explosion at Beirut's port last year - I don't think they've ever really recovered from that, and as Lebanon's biggest port (and they only had 2) - I think that's probably made a substantial impact on Lebanon's trade worldwide. Then of course, COVID had it's own serious impacts on global trade... and I think a country like Lebanon that felt other external pressures on trade would feel those issues more than most other countries. And I'm sure the Syrian conflict plays a part in that as well. But before that explosion in the port, Lebanon had some serious economic issues generally - so I think it might be a bit simplistic to just pin all of this on the port explosion. Public sector debt in the country was at an all time high in 2019 before the explosion/pandemic. The banking sector had loaned out 3/4ths of all deposits made to the government and were facing liquidity issues. They hadn't seen GDP growth in over a decade (which is crazy, actually, considering how Lebanon's middle class was among the largest in the Middle East) & Lebanon's got issues with governmental competence and corruption (sort of a theme in the region, sadly) - neither of which really bode well for having a stable economy. As you say, there's a lot of political tension/crisis's & religious and ethnic tensions also play a part in that as well.

Kind of easy to forget during this rapid collapse of the Western backed Afghan government & the Taliban's swift return to power in Afghanistan... but Lebanon is also going through what is possibly it's worst ecnomic crisis ever. Massive inflation (which has gutted it's middle class - that was one of the fastest growing middle classes in Lebanon), banks cutting off people's access to their money, food shortages, water shortages, medicine shortages, homelessness on the rise, a government claiming it has no money left, extremely long power outages, fuel shortages, etc... For many people, their lives in Lebanon have completely crumbled. It's very grim.

Does Qatar fund the Taliban like the Saudi royal family does? I only ask because Al Jazeera is weirdly upbeat about the Taliban being back in control.

They both were, imo.

Tbh it’s the least the ambassador should be doing. The US and UK are most culpable for the massive refugee crisis this will cause… and they’ll both probably be taking in the fewest refugees. The people that worked with the US and UK are most likely to get targeted for retaliation by the Taliban. Just leaving them to fend for themselves sends a bad message for the next time we do anything like this.