Cyclone Freddy has been a record-breaking and disturbing storm.
After first forming on the 4th of February, it moved across the entirety of the southern Indian Ocean, only one of four cyclones to have ever done so; the others were in 1994 and 2000.
It made landfall in Madagascar, weakening overland, but survived, hitting the Mozambique Channel, the body of water separating Madagascar from Africa, allowing it to once again intensify. It then struck Mozambique and weakened once again - but again survived. On March 1st, it emerged back over the Channel and struck Mozambique a second time on March 11th.
It has broken the record for the longest lived tropical cyclone on record - the last one being 31 days long in 1994. It has had the highest accumulated cyclone energy of any tropical cyclone, the last one being in 2006. It is the first cyclone to have undergone seven separate rounds of rapid intensification - anything more than three times in a storm's life is considered exceptional.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
March 13th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 14th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 15th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 17th's update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
American anti-war rally on March 18th by left groups!
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
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. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
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. Beware of chuddery.
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 journalist reporting in the warzone.
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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.
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.
For reference, bank trading was halted today because this is what happened within the first 30 minutes of the market opening:
PacWest dropped 46% (total bank assets: $40.3B)
Zions Bancorp dropped 44% (total bank assets: $81.5B)
First Republic Bank dropped 67% (total bank assets: $181.1B)
Bank of America dropped 5.5% (total bank assets: $3.015 Trillion (what the fuck))
W Alliance Bancorp dropped 75% (total bank assets: $67.7B)
EW Bancorp dropped 32% (total bank assets: $60B)
Zions Bancorp dropped 44% (total bank assets: $40.3B)
Bank Hawaii dropped 42% (total bank assets: $16.5B)
Comerica Bank dropped 39% (total bank assets: $73.4B)
Customers Bancorp dropped 54% (total bank assets: $19.7B)
Economy is fine though folks don’t worry :this-is-fine:
Capitalism is the most rational system and the market price of something represents that thing's objective value.
Love having fundamental institutions for society to function on the stock market
I think we're gonna need a bigger, more deep-fried porky for the collapse we'll be seeing soon.
mmmmm.... deep fried porky... I'm trying to eat more environmentally friendly and go vegetarian, but I'll make an exception when it comes to eating the rich.
I’ll edit the original comment in a minute to show the total value of each bank
i now also need the value of the silicon valley bank , sorry... but its important for perspective...
you did that very well and i shall always speak highly of you !
Not that this has anything to do with the broader point which is pretty terrifying, but the BoA 3 trillion thing had me googling, and I think that doesn't include debts. So like if someone bought a 150k house with a 145k loan, they'd have 150k in assets immediately, even though you'd normally think of them as owning 5k of their house.
Mexico has made an official request to join BRICS
Iran and Saudi Arabia actually signed a peace treaty following negotiations brokered by China. It's probably worth also mentioning that both have expressed interest to also join BRICS and Iran is already a member of the SCO. Also lithium reserves in Iran - 8.5MT (10% of the world's total).
America deserved 9th of November
Now they just need Uganda and Tanzania. I want to live in a world governed by MR. BISCUITS
Who's a good economic trading bloc? Who's a good widdle trading bloc? Yes you are! Yes you are!
So does this mean the war in Yemen is going to end?
Has Bibi's head exploded yet?:
I'm not old enough to remember people being gung-ho for Iraq war but pretending they were always against it and always know the WMD thing was a lie. Do y'all reckon that will happen with Ukraine? "Oh, I always knew Russia would win, I always knew they were nazis, I never supported them." Or will everyone just forget and look at you like you're the idiot for bringing it up?
Lol Saudi Arabia is declined to meet with Israel’s foreign minister. This is pretty huge news coming off of the restoration of diplomatic ties with Iran
Found out my landlord doesn’t have a job and just lives in the basement of our building so I will be claiming him as a dependent on my taxes
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization must defend its waters in the South China Sea and Black Sea.
You sea the way ocean currents move the water that is in those seas will one day, reach the Atlantic!
Could you imagine water molecules in the Atlantic with loyalties to Russia and or China. We need our waters to declare their hatred for dictatorships, and yet the dolphins have been silent!
Trading of Credit Suisse was suspended today after its share price plummeted 20%.
Love how everyone who was crying about a balloon 2 weeks ago now fully supports an actual spy drone spying on independent nations.
Mr. Putin, this is Det. Olivia Benson of the ICC Special Victims Unit. You are under arrest for being a pervert.
https://apnews.com/article/icc-putin-war-crimes-ukraine-9857eb68d827340394960eccf0589253
Folks, Credit Suisse is beyond beyond fucked. $50 billion cash injection yesterday, but that has absolutely no asset backing. This basically indicates that it’s there to cover investors, and it’s deeply fucked. To explain this as simply as possible:
There’s a thing called basis points, which is essentially a credit score by insurers for banks. Credit Suisse peaked at 1287 basis points yesterday, which is just… astounding. 100 basis points = 1% yearly cost to insure investments (A score of 100 basis points is pretty decent, but if you do a little digging you’ll find that almost no bank has that score right now haha this is fine.) 1287 basis points is a 12.87% yearly cost to insure investments in Credit Suisse. This is insurers essentially betting that within 5 years, there is nearly a 2/3 chance Credit Suisse is completely sunk (64% chance) and this is only compounding the fact that large investors know this and are more likely to move large and SAFE investments from Credit Suisse, since it is unlikely these are appreciating in value at a rate greater than 12.87%. This is so fucked and there’s almost no way to show just how fucked this is. When Lehman collapsed in the Great Recession, it peaked at about 600 basis points. Credit Suisse posted losses of $7 Billion already last year, and the cash injection from the Swiss National Bank is deeply troubling considering the Swiss National Bank also lost like… $150 Billion last year. Also to combat inflation as a rule you want less money to be circulating in the economy, so it looks bad in that regard as well since people do not think their money is safe in the bank and governments are handing out billions of made up money to said banks to pay back people who are taking their money from the bank.
So tl;dr in regards to the status of banks and the economy: keeping money in bank cost more than not keeping money in bank, but bank need money in bank to pay back people with money in bank
The finale of the saga everyone was waiting for ends on a big fart.
Switzerland will not send any weapons to Ukraine the coalition broke down in the most hilarious way possible. The market-liberals again put forth their motion to do away with all the laws concerning weapons export and got a big no which made them big mad, so mad in fact that when their coalition partners brought forth their proposals they didn't show up at all, the SP (socdems) now have a big infight where the parts of the party that were in that coalition are getting dragged for: a. being dumbasses b. being against neutrality
In other actually incredibly insignificant but :bloomer: news Bern voted on building a new city quarter with about 1100 apartments. At least half of them have to be rented out at cost, the whole project is going to increase housing by 3% so it is actually kinda significant. Whole thing was accepted by 65% to 35% so yeah ima take this lil thing and be happy about it.
I remember when Switzerland was planning on joining NATO and liberals were patting themselves on the back about how Russia is so evil they made the neutral party not neutral.
Then the Swiss decide that their profits are more important than a backbone and now the libs are angry and bringing up Nazi gold again lol
I never heard of the whole joining NATO thing, this sounds like your average us journalist living in london writing about switzerland. Just to put it into perspective switzerland voted to join the UN twice, because the first time in the 80s it was rejected by like 60% and just barely passed the second time with some small margin like 53%. What often happens is some random politician will say something like "We should join NATO" in the Bundeshaus which means exactly nothing.
Also redditors with their one joke, not even hitting with the fucked up shit switzerland did like throwing german and allied POWs in the same camp which was supervised by a literal fascist, or how switzerland forcibly seperated roma children from their parents and then used them as de facto child slaves on farms.
Not sure what the liberals are trying to prove by bringing up the Nazi gold.
By going this hard against Russia, by comparison it's basically saying that Switzerland was okay with the Nazis, but those dastardly Russians, those evil Russians! Now that's an ideology worth opposing.
Not gonna go down well in the Global South, that's for sure.
