Image is from @Parsani@hexbear.net, who got it from @RNAi@hexbear.net, who got it from Discord.
Thread update: Prigozhin's fucking dead.
The BRICS summit will begin on Tuesday and end on Thursday, with various world leaders, politicians, and representatives meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa.
America's anxiety about the summit has been obvious. They have been complicating the event by pushing for the arrest warrant for Putin to be upheld if he steps foot in the country. While this is a remarkably dangerous and unhinged thing to do - even by America's standards - to the leader of a nuclear superpower who could end the world within an hour, it does betray their desperation. Unfortunately, for those of us who wanted to see Putin surrounded by an army of security guards fending off people holding handcuffs, he has sent his Foreign Minister, Lavrov, in his place. Additionally, America has likely been spreading rumors about the lack of interest in gaining new members in the organization.
With apparently 20 countries formally seeking membership and another 20 informally doing so, the bloc has been elevated, whether they like it or not, to the position of the international vanguard of the non-western world. It is extremely important to say that this is not the same as it becoming an anti-American bloc, and many of them (including original members Brazil and India) wish to keep a friendly relationship with the United States. Nonetheless, with the United States' policy of "if you are not with us, you are against us," and as the US seeks to weaken China, in coming years many of them might find themselves under hostile pressure.
BRICS has to try and solve many problems if they are going to chip away at America's stranglehold of the world economy. These problems - like mitigating the dollar's status as a global reserve currency, and America's dominant role in the world economy - are extremely complicated, and will takes years, even decades, to be overcome. Therefore, one should temper their expectations and excitement for this summit. It took tens of millions of deaths in cataclysmic wars, and then several more decades, for America to reach its current position. I see no reason to believe why its downfall will be any less bloody and elongated.
To end on a less depressing note, I've been searching for appropriate anagrams given the list of countries that seek to join BRICS. Obviously not all of them will make it in, but even so. The best I've come up with is HIBISCUS EMANCIPATES BBBBKKRVV.
(also, "bulletins and news discussion" can be rearranged to "libidinous newsstands uncles".)
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
Day 1 of the electoral campaign in Bavaria, and I thought to help out the local Left Party chapter because ~~I haven't touched grass in a while~~ the local chapter is okay.
I've been called a murderer and commie swine by a big bald dude in an area with a fash problem. He just yelled and went away
I've also been approached by a very aggressive guy who was threatening me and the person I went with and kept yapping about how were paid by Russia and working for him. He made three approaches to us, but just going "uh huh" and "don't you have anything better to do?" eventually made him go away.
Also the libertarians were doing their own stuff near us, but just ignored us.
Bavaria is always like this. The conservatives won every election since 1954 here.
The fash are the fash as usual, but libs have been whipped into a frenzy from the war in Ukraine. Not too unexpected, but still unpleasant.
No.
In the near term, it's only going to get worse. The Socdems will probably get annihilated in the next election (well, not them, but the Green and libertarian party - it turns out neoliberal economic policies and reform stoppage have been unpopular), and Friedrich Merz of the CDU will become chancellor. Possibly allying with the fash.
Merz is a Reaganite who is notoriously literally on the BlackRock payroll. Hardline neoliberal, flirtatious towards reactionary social policy.
The left party is stuck in a permanent crisis, and the radical left is somewhat stagnant nowadays, with the usual problems of the last 30 years. A silver lining is that the odd phenomenon as the Antideutsche have been slowly fading away. It's not just their support of Israel that's questionable, but they have a lot of odd takes that are based on the assumption that the masses are inherently reactionary for example.
Add to that economic woes and you have a fun cocktail of future misery.
Antideutsche do have very uuhh “hot takes” that are very alienating to most working class people, they are also very content with self-indulging as moralistic smarty smartheads than actually organizing a movement. Btw does bavaria have the chinese medicine/crystal healers like my cdu-fiefdom?
...die Basis? There's plenty of cranks, that doesn't narrow it down lol
Urk, Bavarian politics must not be fun to deal with (though I've had some nice times in Bavaria down near the Bodensee.)
Thing is, the party has been in power for so long, they barely even have to change anything for themselves. Usually, when there's a big law being proposed it's a proposal to increase budget to cops.
It's basically a fact of life that this party is in power and will be for the next who knows how many years. They're reactionary yes, but also extremely pragmatic and opportunistic, to the point where they'll take over lefty projects like the 365€-Ticket yearly public transport subscription (it was modeled after Vienna) and introduce it if it seems the opposition is getting ideas again.
Yeah, we have an entrenched reactionary agrarian party here too, and they combine the most rabid social chuddery and anti climate change/environmental sentiments with a surprising hatred of coal (ruins the farms) and support for the welfare state (keeps the pitchforks from the mansion).
The Netherlands?
The CSU isn't even agrarian. It's... basically the party of the state's bourgeoisie. Interventionist, ensuring local firms stay competitive and expand beyond the state's borders/internationally - constantly pandering to them.
Australia. The National Party is the junior member of The Coalition.
Well good luck comrade, that is a HUGE boulder to push up a mountain.
Hilariously, that's exactly what I thought too. "One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy", I say while posing next to a poster.
What's it like in Die Linke these days? I've heard rumours of a risk of a split and of the leadership being cringe lately. I would love of you could tell about the situation, also if you could tell a bit about leftist organising in Bavaria which must be a really uphill battle.
Basically: There is infighting and a looming threat of a split by a patsoc-like faction, which is surprisingly large and popular even in the general population. However, they are reluctant to actually go through with it. Meanwhile libs have a strong hold on the party leadership and do whatever they want, no matter what the members think.
Thus, it's both a party that seems to offer nothing (as even positions like opposition to war are slowly, but steadily watered down by the party leaders.) and looks to be constantly infighting.
I can't really tell you about organizing because this is the only place I have been politically active in. However, in the City it's fairly normal. Reaching out to unions there, organizing protests there, trying to recruit members but failing, being always bogged down by a lack of funds, relying on the enthusiasm of the comrades until they burn out, splits, nonsense drama, etc. The main difference, I suppose, is that the cops here are more overbearing. Lots and lots of cops, and they have very wide permissions to do stuff other parts of the country disapproves of. Maybe it's different in München or Nürnberg, but that's how I perceive it.
Meanwhile in the countryside, there's zero, zilch, nil, nada. Not even lib parties. Many rural villages have elections where the CSU is the only party to run, and they will run it forever. And when there's opposition, there's usually only the Free Voters' Association (FW), which is a CSU for people who don't like the CSU but like their policies.