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.
Smallish energy grid update. As most people already know relations between the EU and Switzerland are pretty bad and now it seems to crystalize itself in a sort of 'soft sanction'
Short primer on energy relation, swiss companies made quite some profit by basically buying up excess german and french energy production and selling it back to them when they needed it. Because switzerland has one or two mountains and built one or two big pump storage dams. Switzerlands energy grid acts like a battery for a few european nations for the most part germany.
EU has pushed switzerland out of several energy-plattforms, so like SWIFT but with electricity, which starts to threaten that the swiss grid is cut off from the rest of europe. What does this mean? Well overall energy grids would be a lot less secure and some nations would be affected. This means higher energy costs for switzerland for sure and smaller increases for most european countries, germany stands out because they've made use of this the most and are/were dependent on this quite a lot, thankfully german energy prices as well as their energy grid is very secure.
This whole thing is going to suck for people already struggling all over europe and it's mainly done for political brownie points.
is this because of them not being as hard on Russia or is this something else?
This is something that has been cooking and stewing in a lot of europeans minds for decades now the Russia thing just put it into overdrive. Switzerland not being part of NATO or the EU is something that has infuriated Europeans for so much time now, the fact that people can vote on pretty much everything is something that a lot of euro politicians hate because it could be a danger to their more bureaucratic/technocratic way of doing things. Media will often point out our right wing frothing chuds which yeah fuck them but they use it to present switzerland as the most right wing place so it ought to be punished, and honestly these days that just seems laughable with France descending into a police state, AfD at 20% in Germany and fascists in Italy.
This got me curious about the state of pumped-storage hydroelectric power stations. I thought they weren't viable for some reason, but it looks like the boys in red are going all in
it seems like a better solution right now than massive arrays of batteries but the fact that it requires a lot of water, which will become increasingly scarce, is a big question mark for me
the droughts caused big issues for hydropower last year for example. though idk if the same applies to pumped storage as it's technically a different thing I guess
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The article does repeat a claim that pumped storage is less susceptible to drought since it operates on a closed loop. I guess we'll see how that bears out in future.
Ultimately you still need some new water when your holding area is effectively a giant lake and evaporates constantly. It's true that it would need less than a hydro dam, though.
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Reject batteries, return to giant flywheels spinning extremely fast.
Arigatou, Gyro..!
Yeah pumped-storage is doing quite a lot not just day/night stuff but also seasonal it basically builds up slowly over the summer and depletes during winter because well energy demand which I hope won't lead to people freezing this winter but you know feeling kinda doomer.