No update today.
Somebody commented during my small break last week that I should try and insert breaks in, say, a day or so every week or two weeks, which I think I will try and do - though they might be irregular (i.e. on different days).
Happy International Day for Biological Diversity!
Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
The PKK aren't communist.
that would change things. I hear "workers party" and my US brain jumps to comparative conclusions
What do you base this on? I know very little about them but after a short look around their leader and their original manifesto seem to be Marxist Leninists. Maybe they have changed over the years but they seem pretty based to me.
They were originally ML, but abandoned it after the destruction of the USSR. This is coming from Hakim, from his video on Kurdish nationalism and a couple Deprogram episodes iiirc. If you want it in their own words, you'll find plenty of attestation if you just google it. "Democratic confederalism" is their thing now, and it seems very light on socialism. They seem to be mostly concerned with Kurdish nationalism at the moment. Which may or may not be based; I'm not trying to make a value judgement here, just clarifying.
So Democratic confederalism does seem to still be ML based but its an alternative to state based socialism. They want to make pockets of socialist communities within other nation states. They are trying to break out of the Ethno-state idea even though that is how they started. They are extremely environmentally aware and theoretically every political job has a male and a female position as a way to combat patriarchy? Interesting stuff. Obviously they are going through some teething but it seems like their hearts and minds are in the right place.