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.
“I did everything right, and they exploded me!”
computer, enhance
When the war started several people in my town put up Ukraine flags. A while later the supermarket chain I shop at put up signs about donating to Ukrainian refugees and they started selling a limited line of Ukrainian goods, presumably so you could support the Ukrainian economy by buying frozen berries. I bought a can of Ukrainians beer, it was nice.
Most of the flags are gone now. The Ukraine stuff has also silently disappeared from my supermarket. Sure, the politicians are war crazed as always, sending war planes and doing photo ops with Zelensky, but the general public seems to have lost interest in the war. It has become background noise.
Russian opinions on various leaders of Russia/USSR throughout history:
Interesting notes for people that can’t read Cyrillic:
Peter the Great is clear number 1, Catherine the Great is 2nd.
Stalin comes in at 3rd place, with 65% having a positive view and only 20% having a negative view
Brezhnev is in 4th place, and Lenin is sadly in 6th place :(
Dead last is Yeltsin of course, and 2nd last is Gorbachev of course, with nearly 2/3 of the population openly hating them, once again confirming how much of a tragedy the dissolution of the USSR was
Nicholas II right above Lenin
Truly an era of the blackest reaction.
Liking Nicky II is a purely ideological statement too, since he was pretty objectively bad as a head of state.
Brezhnev is in 4th place
he got 10 points for his fantastic eyebrows
here’s the machine-translated poll. very crusty but the names are recognizable
Lenin and Nicholas II getting the same positive approval is very funny. It really shows how the popular conception of Russian history is, disappointingly but unsurprisingly, basically a “Who was the coolest Russian?” contest rather than any concern about ideology.
Nationalism and its consequences and so on and so forth
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It’s going to be because communists rightfully blame him for causing the chain of events that eventually lead to the end of the ussr by denouncing stalin, and while the whole population won’t be able to articulate why they will have had negative Kruschev shit permeate throughout the population over many decades resulting in the popular folk hate for him.
This is how it is for Thatcher here in the UK too really. A lot of people won’t be able to explain why she was bad at all, they just know, THEY KNOW. And that’s because of the left continually hating on her and the culturally passed on shit.
Those 1-2% “don’t know” responses kind of fuck with me. Imagine being Russian and responding with “who the fuck is Stalin?”
tbh im sort of jealous of them
The 1-2% ones are “Declined to answer"
Lenin being in 6th (especially if Stalin is 3rd) baffles me. Can anyone shed some more light on that?
Are you baffled that his ranking was this high or this low?
30 years of liberal anti-communist propaganda did a lot to Lenin’s reputation, and in my opinion already a surprisingly good numbers for Lenin.
And Stalin is obviously a much more difficult figure to denigrate against because he actually defeated the Nazis, industrialized the nation, brought security to the people and turned it into a world’s superpower. (Stalin was demonized and his contributions erased for decades since the XX Congress until he was rehabilitated in the late 2000s, which added even more myths and legends to the figure throughout the entire period)
Also worth noting that Lenin threatens the existing state, whereas Stalin is more tied to nationalism (due to the greatness of the ussr) rather than revolution. This simple difference results in accepting Stalin as a positive nationalist figure while being more critical of Lenin due to the threat anyone learning his ideas would post to the state.
Lenin only led Russia for a short period of time before his medical issues, and it was during very turbulent and hard times. Civil War and other problems, massive suffering. Obviously he helped to end these problems, and the work he did set up the ability for Stalin to industrialize as he did - but that doesn’t really get fitted into the popular conception of a leader and what conditions are like while they rule.
Cuz he created Ukraine and empowered minorities too much (especially for russian right). He is also seen more as a hippie heads-in-the-cloud idealist, rather than the way stalin is characterized as a homophobic manly man.
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Average Russian nationalist
Alhamdullilah Gorbachev finally died lmao rip in piss bozo
I wonder why Krushcev is so low? It’s not like huge amounts of the Russian population are anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists who hate destalinization
actually lots hate krushchev for the anti stalinism, many russian communists now side with the stalinist side of the split.
chicago boys are seething rn
The nice thing about permanent work from home is when the internet goes out you get the day off
I don’t think the collective west is ready for the hatred they’re going to be receiving from Ukraine for all of their “support” by the end of this war. We’re so clearly forcing them into certain death under the threat of the end of arms shipments and therefore total defeat by the Russians meanwhile proudly proclaiming in our own press how good a deal it is to have their people die en masse as a showcase for our MIC. We’re the British removed with the whistles ordering them over the trench and into no man’s land so some asshole in raytheon acres can afford a second mistress
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Things I have learned from Blowback: Do not do what the Afghan communists did.
Germans are again pushing the “6 guys in decrepit sailboat did the Nord Stream 2 sabotage” story and the libs are all worked up about it.
There’s a new twist…it’s hinted that otherwise useless and incompetent Russians were able to perfectly stage this incredibly complex and risky operation to blame the Ukrainians…
Fighting Russia regardless of casualties is important because after the war is over, zelensky will find the dragon balls and wish everyone back.
Nigerien soldiers led by Brigadier General Abdourahamane Tchiani overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum on July 26.
Niger’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation informed on Friday that the country’s military government gave French Ambassador Sylvain Itte 48 hours to leave the country.
According to the foreign ministry statement, the decision follows several actions by the French government contrary to Niger’s national interests. Among them, the French ambassador’s refusal to respond to an invitation to meet with Niger’s new foreign minister, the statement said.
For its part, the French Foreign Ministry said Friday night that it would not accept the Niger junta’s request, stating that “the military government has no authority to order France to withdraw its envoys.”
Nigerien soldiers led by Brigadier General Abdourahamane Tchiani overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum on July 26. In response, 11 members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sanctioned Niger and threatened military intervention to restore democratic order.
In early August, the junta declared that it would annul several military cooperation agreements with Paris signed under the ousted president. Niamey’s regime has accused France of planning a military intervention in the country to reinstate Bazoum.
The junta appointed a new government and recently proposed to return the country to civilian rule within 3 years. ECOWAS has rejected the proposal and continues to demand the immediate reinstatement of Bazoum.
Neighboring countries, including Guinea, refused to go along with the sanctions, while Mali and Burkina Faso said they would consider any military intervention in Niger an act of war against them. Late on Thursday, the West African country declared that it authorized its two neighbors to come to its defense in the event of an ECOWAS intervention.
there is only a few things that would be as funny as if Trump decided to run as an Independent from jail after GOP decided to run with some other republican for presidentDay 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 whilethe 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.
Google translated:
The Cuban Ministry of Public Health received this Wednesday in Havana a donation of 26 tons of medicines, medical supplies and equipment for emergencies with funds from the Russian Federation , through the World Health Organization, as part of the technical cooperation of the Pan American Health Organization.
In the warehouses of the EMSUME Medical Supplies Trading Company, the official delivery ceremony was held with the presence of Mr. Sergei Obóznov, charge d’affaires of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Cuba, Dr. José Moya Medina, representative in Cuba from the Pan American Health Organization and Dr. José Armando Larronte, from the Ministry of Public Health.
The donation of four 40-foot containers includes broad-spectrum antibiotics, medications for diabetes mellitus and heart disease; analgesics, anti-inflammatory and antihypertensive.
It also contains expendable material, sutures, surgical sets, instruments, disinfectant solutions, syringes, and equipment such as stethoscopes, glucometers, and oximeters, among others.
“Without a doubt, the medical equipment that we deliver today will contribute to the health and well-being of the fraternal Cuban people. Given the current complex situation, Russia is always ready to extend its hand to its friends,” said Sergei Obóznov, during the delivery ceremony of the cargo.
According to the Ministry of Public Health, the supply will help provide necessary medical care to at least 10,000 people in different regions of the country.
Last year, Moscow delivered more than 80 tons of medicines and medical supplies to the largest of the Antilles.
