:macron:
The devil went down to China,
He was goin' to give Xi a spiel
He was in a bind, pension reform enshrined
And he was willin' to sit and kneel
Image from this Politico article.
Macron (and Ursula von der Leyen, though nobody seems to care about her) went to Beijing, with the initially stated aim of trying to convince Xi Jinping to bring Russia to its senses. Obviously, the Chinese were entirely uninterested in this given that they had just formed an alliance in all but name with the Russians, and the two countries are now united in both long term economic deals, and also in their opposition to the Western bloc.
Macron's visit has, unexpectedly for me, been an interesting one. It sometimes feels like every media source I see has an entirely new outlook on what happened. But one thing is for certain: the western media appears to be quite annoyed by Macron, because he supposedly went to tell Xi off for being naughty, and then made statements while there warning that Europe must not become America's followers, thus implying he's pursuing an independent foreign policy.
But at the end of the day, all of these words are just... well, words. We shall see if Europe, or at least western Europe, will actually try and strike a balance or if they will continue to be vassals of the US. I'm certainly not holding my breath.
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.
April 10th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
April 12th's update is here in the comments.
April 14th's update is here in the comments
Sorry everyone, I'm having a busy weekend, so it'll be a three-update week this time around.
Links and Stuff
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.
Man people become fucking psychopaths online when it comes to war. Gleefully posting 19 year old conscripts getting blown to bits is weird, no matter who you are
seriously. didn't nearly every material metric of the average person there improve as well?
i remember as a kid being upset when i found out about tibet. read some article about the "valiant defense of tibet by an outclassed army armed with ancient firearms". i'm assuming it was some underequipped peasant levy forced to fight not "valiant defenders".
fuck propaganda every historical fact i was taught is a lie
Where can I read more about this? All I can find on google is Radio Free Asia-level hot garbage...
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/strong-anna-louise/1959/tibet/index.htm
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-russia-nord-stream-explosion-b2318161.html
Trump defends Russia over Nord Stream pipeline explosion and hints US was responsible
Trump says he won’t answer who did it because he doesn’t want to ‘get our country in trouble’
:a-little-trolling:
Man European greens are probably the most insufferable people in the world. Truly a Liberal deathcult who are the biggest servants of capital in the world. I hate the German Green Party so fucking much.
The news mega is on fire today. Best place on the internet.
:rat-salute:
Jokes about us being the one true leftists aside, what I've noticed from over a year of following this conflict and the geopolitical firestorm it's ignited is that it's very rare to find a place on the internet that has the three properties of being 1) genuinely left wing + pro-communist by any sensible definition; 2) genuinely anti-hegemonic and able to, with nuance, support countries in that anti-hegemonic coalition; and 3) genuinely socially progressive and not discriminatory against any minority.
There are a couple places that satisfy the first two but not the last (Naked Capitalism for example) and a lot of shithole right-wing places that only support the second, and I doubt that they'll remain in that position once the Republicans return to power or their personal situation gets sufficiently bad that they cannot mentally maintain the contradiction of opposing empire and yet benefiting from it, but very few that are all three.
So I'm proud that we've created this website, and specifically this thread, for that.
Yeah, this war is very interesting because from my experience, discourse about it seems mostly independent of the usual tug-of-war between the Left and the Right.
I've seen rational materialist analyses from communities that liberally use slurs and terms such as "Globohomo", and conversely I've seen some of the most asinine, neoconservative statements from those communities where you'd normally see pro-trans and anti-capitalist opinions.
And I don't think those particular communities will change their stance if Republicans come to power either. It's wild honestly.
As more countries start to default on their debt, China is refusing to forgive its loans — creating new tension with the U.S. and its allies.
The author fails to mention he worked for the IMF. Also, he got his MA at American University, a CIA feeder school.
Basically, read this if you want a headache. It ignores reality.
EDIT: The most accurate summary of the article is "Hey, China holds 10% of Sri Lanka's debt while 'Market lenders (AKA the US and EU)" hold 40%. China, please forgive debts so they can pay us!"
Absolutely deranging to see debates about train infrastructure and removing attendants from trains in favour of having the driver do literally everything, and then seeing chuds go "Yeah! We need to protect ourselves and our infrastructure against foreign sabotage from Russia and China!"
The sabotage is literally coming from the government you fucking moron, both the anti-Russian former Socdem government and our current anti-Russian right wing government are collaborating on this shit!
Al-Aqsa is getting raided since Friday and thus, I've made the concious decision to advocate for throwing cinderblocks at the "Stand with Israel" crowds, preferably from high-rise floors. They have really come out like cockroaches after you flick the light on.
Also I got my new Twitter permanently banned but that is just a mere bump in the road for for the ongoing jihad against NAFOs.
So the shooter today the media and police quickly identified he was an employee and this was a workplace violence incident. The Tennessee shooting the police still have not released a motive for the shooting or literally any info on the shooter, letting right-wing fashoids set the narrative that it was transgender terrorism. Very curious!
I feel like I'm re-treading my old stomping grounds of being a chud who calls all mass shootings ops, like I used to when I was a 4chan chud, but something is up about the Tennessee shooting. I'm NOT defending the shooter, but it's awfully fishy the school was providing cover for sex offenders and here's a former student shooting up the place and the police have been silent on the whole thing. The shooter sent a text to a friend that explained everyone would know why they did it based on the information left behind and we're totally in the dark, giving cover for fascists to spin this into a narrative about transgender people being terrorists.
If the US found Operation Gladio "strategy of tension" effective in Europe, why wouldn't they use it here? We also know that the FBI would find mentally ill Muslims and create terrorist plots for them.
it's only operation gladio if it comes from the european region of eurasia. if its in the us it's sparkling mkultra
mkultra
I wonder if part of that program is a sort of entrapment set up to find marginalized people and radicalize them into doing stochastic terrorism? Like what the FBI was doing to muslims that someone else mentioned?
strategy of tension
Would explain a lot especially the cops always coming out as heroes from each shooting at a time when police sentiment is poor.
It's easy to fall into this line of thinking - and I'm not sure it's wrong. Law enforcement had really suffered a hit to their popularity in the post BLM zeitgeist, and then Jan 6th came along with their herd of petit bourgeois and FBI informants and agents and whaddya know, the libs fully recuperated law enforcement and they're back to being heroes.
and then Jan 6th came along with their herd of petit bourgeois and FBI informants and agents and whaddya know, the libs fully recuperated law enforcement and they’re back to being heroes.
Yeah j6 was a boon for libs and law enforcement respecters, feels like it totally undid the gains made by the George Floyd riots.
spoiler
I am putting this in a spoiler since it’s utter conjecture, but you’ve probably heard the theory that the shooter just shot the administrator and maybe the cops shot the students.
No that is the first I've heard this, do you have anymore sources on that?
I think it was a comment on r-TrueAnon - no actual source
Wondering where the cops would have been able to have shot the kids because the bodycam footage showed them rushing in and engaging the shooter.
Good point. I'm not studied on this at all. Haven't watched it or read that deep on it.
afaik they made entry to the school and rushed the shooter, iirc the body cam footage already shows a dead kid on the ground but it's blurred over. So I'm not sure I really buy the cops doing it, honestly sounds like it's giving cover to the shooter, BUT, I wouldn't put anything past the pigs.
what the hell did xi show macron to make him start ranting about taiwan to a politico correspondent. was it the light of allah?
The hottest 60 yearold Chinese women you've ever seen.
I've been wondering why France seems so close to Brazil, diplomatically. When the fascists attempted a coup, Macron straight up said France's army would help revert the coup and put Lula in power if it needed be (edit: the actual words were something like "Brazil has France's unconditional support"; the army thing was from Chile, I think). Other LatAm countries also did, as is expected from neighbouring leftist countries, but not from fucking France though.
What I mean is, France appears much more interested in the 'multipolar world order' than other imperial vassals, for some reason.
The way I see it France is a failed hegemon. Go back two, three hundred years and France had the sort of demographic weight that Russia eventually acquired in Europe. The early modern empires that preceded France's rise - the Ottomans, the Spanish - were built on the backbone of minority populations, namely the turks and the castillians. But unlike Russia, the huge french population was all concentrated in a much smaller territory. Wars had been fought in Europe for a long time as a means to try and contain France.
Since then France failed to evolve into the top industrial power. France was a country with massive agricultural potential. But so was Austria, Germany and Russia. All three experienced population booms once their borders stabilized in the 1800s. To make matters worse, in the era of coal and steel the french did not compete with Britain or Germany, they were on Austria's league. Think about that for a second. Everyone sees the Austrian Empire as a basketcase but it had steel outputs approaching that of France for certain late periods. What little France had going for it was a second rate colonial empire, infuriatingly good PR capable of surviving all of the country's failures, and status as a military power. Unfortunately for the french what really counted was the latter, and they fell for the same sort of stagnation that had cursed Prussia in the napoleonic wars. Just as Frederick the Great before him, Napoleon left behind a military estabilishment meant to support himself and his role as supreme commander, while lacking in the tools necessary to evolve past him. Hence the Franco-Prussian war debacle.
Fast forward to the post war period France kinda stands out from the major powers of Europe because unlike Germany and Italy it wasn't occupied by the US, and unlike Britain it doesn't see itself as a privileged partner of a cultural kin. France also understands that it is ultimately a dead end in terms of demographics and geography. It can't be the preeminent industrial power of Europe. That will always be Germany. Hell, Italy isn't far behind France. And yet it constantly tries to be the head of Europe. At points the french believed they'd be the financial power behind Germany. Or that at least they'll get to be the military power that pushes the EU into a new era. So they are always making or at least trying to make these deals. Speaking of Brazil, the french didn't just want to sell us planes, people in the know have told me that they wanted it to be the beginnings of a military alliance. Or at least of some sort of NATO-Brazil cooperation that goes through the french. Problem is the brazilians wanted tech transfers and industrial cooperation, which the french were cagey about. So we went with Sweden instead.
The way I see it the French are as atlanticist as everybody else. Of course they are. If you're european then the rules based international order was good for you. But they also kinda want to act with strategic autonomy. It's just that they just can't follow through to the end. I don't know why exactly. Is it a remnant of their 1800s foreign policy culture of seeking soft power wins above all else? Is it a lack of resources to do so? Is it a lack of unity under this or that political project? Lack of opportunity? What I'm interested to see is wether the french protests will force Macron to derail the EU-Mercosur FTA or, on the contrary, if he'll lack the political capital to resist pressure from the rest of Europe.
Another thing to consider is the absolutely massive EEZ France has in the pacific. More perhaps than other European nations they have to walk a tightrope with regards to the future balance of power between the US and China in the pacific.
France has always seemed a little uncomfortable being under the US Empire. They left NATO at one point, they have their own nukes that are outside of the US command structure, they maintain their own French colonies instead of having America/NATO do it, shit like that.
accidentally emailing macron confidential state enterprise documents under the heading '5 trillion BRI EU investment plan'
He's surprised but I'm not, :liberalism: and :frothingfash: will defend literally anything to try and own China.
Lol thats not who I expected to be talking about this.
It would be insane if this causes some people to actually learn what Tibet was like before the PRC. The independence people would even have to become Republic of Tibet people
I find the talk about the super duper mega Ukraine counter offensive in Western media hilariously naive at times, because Ukrainian gains are treated as permanent all the time while all Russian gains are treated as always temporary. Let's say that Ukraine makes a major breakthrough and manages to seize Tokmak and Bilmak in the Zaporozhye axis. What stops the Russians from just sending more soldiers and recapturing the lost positions? The only reason why Russians never recaptured the Kharkov countryside and Kherson is because their current defensive lines are way more appropriate for an army that is fighting a war of attrition. It feels sometimes that these people completely forget that Russia has still 400k mobilized soldiers with nearly 6 months of consistent training that are just chilling in bases waiting to be deployed. That's not counting VDV and other elite units that were recently replenished on the Zaporozhye and Donetsk fronts.
NPR quits Twitter after falsely claiming Twitter "falsely" claimed them to be government-funded.
Nothing but disdain for these so-called journalists.
