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.
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?
I don't think so, I think it would be very hard for relations to normalise with Russia so you'll continue to see anti Russian commentary.
I think the most you'll see is a shift towards "we did everything we could but the Ukrainians were too corrupt or infiltrated by Russians" and here are all these human rights abuses committed by Russia
Yeah, I reckon you'll get some of that for sure. Already seen a couple of libs walking back stuff like downplaying/denying Ukrainian Nazis.
They just won't talk about it or will never admit they were wrong, like with Russiagate.
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Before people stop talking about it, those in power will say they did everything they could, while the big brains of reddit types will say that none of this would have happened if NATO did a no-fly-zone at the start.
I hadn't even thought about the no-fly-zone for a while now. I think you're right, they'll go back to the propaganda of a time untainted by reality.
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Whenever a past opinion becomes inconvenient the talking classes will pretend they never held that opinion, or even lie about having had the exact opposite opinion. A good example is the widespread support the Iraq war or apartheid South Africa had among western elites.
But the Ukrainian cause is not likely to become inconvenient any time soon, regardless of a Ukrainian defeat. The US empire is entering a cold war against Russia and China and the story of smol bean democratic Ukraine being crushed by evil authoritarian Asiatic Russia will fit perfectly into the ideological justification for this cold war.
We're going to hear about Ukraine for decades to come and "the betrayal of Ukrainian democracy" will be a thought-terminating cliché used to justify militarism and warmongering, likewise the alleged plight of Ukrainians living under the jackbooted rule of Moscow will be used to shame anyone from talking about detente and deescalation.
Ukraine will be the Uyghur "genocide" on speed.
It's better to assume a lib won't self crit or take any accountability
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no because there won't be any humans around if tensions between the empire and russia/china keep escalating