: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.
the lathe (@Posadas) has given me a vision of a balkanized united states dominated by megalopolises that are densely intraconnected by HSR and interconnected by long lines of the same. The rural in-between regions that aren't close enough to the centralized power of megalopolises will be ultimately more unstable and wild. expect extreme racism and christofascism in the south and a new non-civil war brewing over resource extraction between the megalopolis nation-states and the deep south. expect armed resistance in atlanta, but that it's the most obvious seat of stable state power in the region. it's by far the most geographically centered and controlled. desantis can't rule tennessee from tallahassee. don't expect the new england state megalopolis and the southern nation-state to view each other as separated members of one project this time. Lib politics on the southern barbarians writ large (i.e. much like in japan, where korean slaves took the brunt of much of the allied bombing, expect any kind of northern military response in the southern state to indiscriminately kill the exploited prisoners of the area).
do you think the megalopolis confederation corporate authority will fund the south florida relandification project or no
No, I imagine they'll find a way to take money from workers to compensate Florida landowners for ocean encroachment. This would probably have the legal knock on effect of strengthening the state as more and more of the coastline and sea borders become state property.
We are going to mine the rest of the Appalachians and use the loose dirt to fill in Florida.
this is a far future shitpost for the record. i'm not suggesting this will happen anytime soon. after i'm dead anyway. i imagine by the time something like this could unfold, it would involve any nation-state on occupied Turtle Island purchasing now-cheap HSR infrastructure from a hegemonic Chinese state.
This thing fell apart in the first sentence. Americans are ideologically incapable of building HSR.
deleted by creator
They wouldn't be Americans really anymore at that point.
I've had a plot for a scifi story in my head, and the separated megalopolises are part of it. I just think the future will be flipped, and everyone will be corralled into them except for the bourgeoisie and an elite PMC class who are working on a giant ecological project to restore the planet, who will be the only people who get to enjoy nature.