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Ethno nationalist officials in Afghanistan are sharing ethnic slurs & hate speech openly. Earlier there was one official sharing video of stopping Pashtun herders from entering Persian parts in North, to keep it 'pure'.  Come September things will get messy. 

Pretty much this. 

IMG-20210524-104041.jpg

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16 hours ago, McAzeem said:

Ethno nationalist officials in Afghanistan are sharing ethnic slurs & hate speech openly. Earlier there was one official sharing video of stopping Pashtun herders from entering Persian parts in North, to keep it 'pure'.  Come September things will get messy. 

Pretty much this. 

IMG-20210524-104041.jpg

So are the Persian parts in the north, the Tajik parts? How on earth can they have this racist attitude when their country is a multi-ethnic society? The government and army should be embracing all ethnicities, not causing division and spreading hate.

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4 hours ago, Michael said:

So are the Persian parts in the north, the Tajik parts? How on earth can they have this racist attitude when their country is a multi-ethnic society? The government and army should be embracing all ethnicities, not causing division and spreading hate.

Yes, North of Afghanistan is the Tajik/Persian parts of the country. The Northern Alliance.

It's been pretty much like this since the creation of the modern state. The conflict in Afghanistan at it's core involves infighting between different ethnicities & warlords within them. Then you have regional & global powers also protecting their interests.

I don't know why they can't agree to a power sharing formula like in Bosnia.

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15 hours ago, Michael said:

So are the Persian parts in the north, the Tajik parts? How on earth can they have this racist attitude when their country is a multi-ethnic society? The government and army should be embracing all ethnicities, not causing division and spreading hate.

Afghanistan’s a multi-ethnic society, sure - but it’s also a country that’s been fractured with instability and warfare pretty much since the Soviets invaded.

It’s only going to get worse in the coming months, I’m fairly certain. I don’t think the Afghan government itself is up to keeping things safe and stable. They just play into the ethnic and religious divisions.

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Naftali Bennett is most likely going to be the man replacing Bibi.

I hope Bibi faces justice for the corruption scandal he's embroiled in. And I hope that one day he faces justice for the war crimes that have taken place under his watch.

But Naftali Bennett is also a horrific person to be running Israel. He's not interested in peace, he's a leader in Israel's illegal settlement movement (so probably good pals with Chelsea's Roman Abramovich), and is firmly opposed to any two state solution. His base are made up of a bunch of ultra-religious ultra-nationalistic dickheads.

So they're really just replacing one right winged ethnonationalist, with another right winged ethnonationalist. And this guy may be even less interested in making the Middle East more stable than Bibi, and Bibi had 0 interest in stability in the Middle East.

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Iran’s upcoming elections are a bit of a massive shitshow. Only one serious candidate (Raisi) and all other candidates are extremely unpopular. Ahmadinejad is running again and he’s the next most popular candidate xD, but Raisi’s popularity is almost double his according to surveys taken.

All 7 candidates that were approved to run are hardliners - no real moderates or reformists. Which I think was to be expected because Iran’s democracy isn’t very democratic as all & all candidates are picked by lifetime appointed hardliners… and reformists have basically expended all of their political capital. The JCPOA falling apart was very damaging for them politically, but Soleimani’s assassination & the numerous Israeli terrorist attacks within Iran domestically have killed their limited support with the people who hold all the power.

The public’s faith in these elections is probably at an all time low - and Iran usually has pretty high voter turnout, despite many people believing elections are fixed. This year is different though as many people are just saying they will not vote at all.

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On 13/06/2021 at 02:54, McAzeem said:

https://iranintl.com/en/world/ahmadinejad-claims-israel-infiltrated-iranian-intelligence

Ahmedinijad speaks about Israel infiltrating Iranian intelligence. Believable for me, there is no way Israel attacks Iran's top security/nuclear sites and kills nuclear scientists with such impunity without having internal intel. 

They had to have infiltrated Iranian intelligence - and probably other members of Iran's political apparatus that keep everything "under control" like the Revolutionary Guard.

Iran's cultivated a society where there's a lot of benefit to being "a traitor" to their government. They're incredibly repressive and continually mismanage the economy (granted, sanctions don't help - but they're not going to get sanctions removed while maintaining a hard line) while government elites somehow manage to keep getting richer and richer.

But there's no way they conducted that really sophisticated assassination of the recent head of nuclear science for Iran without having people on the inside working for them. And I wouldn't be surprised if the reason they've got access to computer systems of critical infrastructure is due to similar infiltration.

But also, what can Iran really do in response? Israel's basically given a free pass at whatever they want to do on the international stage due to the US intervening, whereas if Iran responds they'll get bombed back into the stoneage by Israel and the US.

With hardliners coming back into power soon, I think the government isn't showing their hand... but it's easy to see how they're going to play their cards. They've got no interest in rejoining the JCPOA or any new deal with America - any deal will only be as good as Biden's administration is in power... which might not even be 2 full terms. And the US and Israel will act with inpunity for as long as Iran isn't nuclear.

So unfortunately, I think the regime is going to be on a fast track to building up a nuclear weapon... as well as generally modernising it's military. And once they've got a nuclear weapon, I think all hope of reform in Iran is pretty much dead - the status quo will be maintained because turbulent politics and upheaval will be too much to worry about for the world powers to allow.

Basically, Trump showed them the path they should follow with the way he treated North Korea compared to them.

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Have seen articles/stories of Jews from US and other countries who went to Israel as they grew up believing it being the perfect homeland but quickly saw it was a weird place & headed straight back home. 

Never mind Palestinians those segregation walls, check points, apartheidic measures around every corner will have an effect on any sane person living there even Israelis.

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25 minutes ago, McAzeem said:

Have seen articles/stories of Jews from US and other countries who went to Israel as they grew up believing it being the perfect homeland but quickly saw it was a weird place & headed straight back home. 

Never mind Palestinians those segregation walls, check points, apartheidic measures around every corner will have an effect on any sane person living there even Israelis.

I have a friend here who was born in Israel and has family there - they left a few years after Rabin was assassinated because they felt that the political culture there was very much culminating in something very ugly. And they were right - I think Israel's always been an ethnostate since it's creation - but the situation has just been gradually getting worse and worse since Rabin's assassination. So in the people I know in my life personally, the most vocally anti-Israeli government person I know is... an Israeli.

He gets some pretty horrible comments when he makes posts online by virtue of being Jewish and being vocal against Israeli policies.

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Some positive news from the new Israeli government - a nice change compared to recent news coming from that country!

While I think Bennett is a right wing piece of shit like his predecessor - because his coalition is so broad and includes so many different parties, his health minister is the head of Meretz, a left wing, pro-peace, progressive party. And the health minister has announced they're going to be transfering 1.2 million Pfizer vaccines to the Palestinian territories. That's very big news compared to when the Israeli government was actively denying them vaccines not too long ago and it's something I'd like to see. It's a shame Meretz don't have more power in this coalition, but hopefully over time they gain more power in Israeli politics.

In less positive news, Iran's bullshit elections are underway. Expect to see Raisi win that election. Tbh, I don't think he'll be much different for Iranians than Rouhani because late stage Iranian presidents basically always fall out with Khamenei and end their tenure as basically a figurehead rather than an actual leader, while the IRGC runs things. But Raisi's popular with Khamenei and the IRGC, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Iran's domestic policy become even more repressive - while it's foreign policy to become more aggressive.

Raisi is someone I personally hate and someone that's really hated in my family. He was one of the leaders of the judiciary in the political purges in Iran of the late 1980s after the long war with Iraq. He's responsible for sending thousands of people to their deaths because of their political beliefs... including some relatives. I hope he dies slowly and painfully while in office.

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U. S. is looking for bases in Pakistan or Central Asia after getting troops out from Afghanistan. I don't think it has anything to do with keeping check on this place after leaving. Probably to influence Chinese interests and poking Russia from Central Asia in response to Crimea.

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Hahaha they can do that?

Why didn't they do that a long time ago if they can do that?

Interesting way of poking at Iran's hardliners though. It'll piss them off, but probably not get taken as seriously as killing off IRGC members like we'd seen under Trump/Netanyahu.

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