Image is of the Germany coal power plant Staudinger, taken from this article.

Germany has closed down its last three nuclear power plants, after decades of protests against them in the wake of Chernobyl and then Fukushima. They were going to be shut down last summer, but then some obscure event happened in Ukraine or something, and that kept them alive for a little while longer as energy uncertainty mounted.

Now with the assurances that their natural gas supply will be healthy and sufficient, as their pipeline to Russia that supplied much of their gas is now gone, and new renewables will be sure to fill the gap, as Baerbock does everything in her power to anger China (the dominant renewables and rare earths manufacturer on the planet) things are looking bright for the German economy and energy sector, making this the right time to finally shut down those pesky nuclear power plants, which emit orders of magnitude less pollution and less radiation than coal power plants.

The European environmental movement is going swimmingly.

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 17th's update is here in the comments.

April 18th's update is here in the comments.

April 21st's update is here in the comments.

Links and Stuff

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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.

  • baguettePants [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Financial Times (FT) publishing a "Dollar :-(" article (lol) yesterday, a very mild comment about unprecedented drop of the US dollar international share, all but saying "This is fine!".

    Today, the same FT is immediately following up with a "Dollar :-)", going a step further and actually saying "This is fine!".

    Is it me, or there's a lot of cope and confusion in the West going on right now, resulting with these comical "I am not owned!" articles?

    Dollar :-( http://archive.today/WNSUj

    Dollar :-) http://archive.today/ou4Z0

      • mkultrawide [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Well, let's compare the % of CEO that China has jailed for breaking laws versus % the US has, and we can decide who is more lawful.

        I don't think China wants to be the reserve currency right now, anyways. Their foreign policy seems to hinge on using their USD surplus from trade to finance their foreign policy, BRI, etc., A strong dollar benefits them in that regard.

      • AbbysMuscles [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        become a net deficit country. This will require China to sacrifice its manufacturing base (as was America’s) and become a debtor country. So long as China wants to make money from the global South, this is not going to happen.

        In a sense, this is worse for the US, because the US cannot re-industrialize itself so long as the dollar remains the global reserve currency, so it will continue to entangle itself in financial traps that it can never get out of

        If you have the time, can you elaborate on why this is the case?

          • AbbysMuscles [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Thank you so much! I'm a bit less confused now.

            Biden’s masterpiece will be to rebuild an alternative supply chain outside of BRICS

            This is the only part I tentatively disagree with. Or at least am very skeptical it can be pulled off. I understand that chipmaking is a somewhat niche case due to how insanely specialized and expensive it is, but it looks like most US attempts to move supply chains of China have gone terribly.

              • lol_typical [he/him]
                ·
                2 years ago

                I keep forgetting Superstonks people are going to hear about this shit too and not watch or read what Hudson and Desai are actually on about. Desai for instance argues the US has been seeking hegemony but can't quite do it

          • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            My question is how much of Biden's plan is contingent on Biden being in office and to what extent can Biden's replacement accidentally sabotage the plan laid out by Biden.

            In a way this is like watching a game of chess. Don’t underestimate what the US can do with its dollar (at least for the short term), but also don’t write off the Russian and Chinese economists just yet. Both sides are playing games at such level that we may not begin to comprehend until after the deed is done.

            By short term, what's the time frame? 2 years? 5 years? 10 years?

          • lol_typical [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Does China actually seek making rmb the reserve currency? I thought they were mostly doing mixed currency swaps and the new Brics financial stuff is like, using mixed currencies and creating new currencies for regional trade outside the dollar?

          • meth_dragon [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Biden’s masterpiece will be to rebuild an alternative supply chain outside of BRICS

            i didn't spend the time to fully parse all of hudson, but the impression i got was that the dollar's dominance came about in large part due to all the US military interventions across the world flooding local economies with dollars. i suppose the US could pivot to an infrastructural approach, but china seems to already be doing that job for it with the BRI being mostly denominated in dollars and all.

            from this perspective, it seems like the cpc are just being their usual cowardly, technocratic selves and this current fad of dedollarization is merely a hedge against future potential US instability, the stick if you will, with BRI being the carrot. so i guess my questions are:

            1. can you clarify what you mean by 'rebuilding supply chains'? off the top of my head, i feel like this means buying out existing assets in exchange for restructuring IMF loans, but i fail to see how the effects of this can be more beneficial for the US over BRI already being denominated in dollars.

            2. who is left to invest in and is this even the right question? i'm not seeing any countries or groups of countries with the potential (political stability, infrastructure, reserve army of labor) to restore rates of profit like 90-00s china outside of maybe india/brazil/vietnam/the US itself. is rate of profit even what is being contested here?

            3. how does flooding the world with dollars (to rebuild supply chains) affect BRICS? my headcanon is that BRICS is trying to create an alternative to the US demand sink by building up the rest of the world to be importers, while the US is trying to keep the rest of the world as cheap exporters to maintain its treats.

            4. is the US even capable of doing FDI normally? i know china was largely built up by japanese/taiwanese/HK FDI, but afaik american FDI outside the marshall plan was most successful in the form of vassal states with military bases in them (SK/JP/TW, idk how SG got to where it did). just proclaiming my ignorance here.

      • mkultrawide [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Meanwhile, the battle lines are being drawn, and Biden’s counter-offensive has already begun. With more than $1.5T USD injected into the economy solely from high interest rates, these money has to go somewhere. Expect the cheap dollar is ready to flood the global south once again this summer. If BRICS is not careful here, they could get checkmated here, and it would be a true masterpiece for the Biden’s administration in destroying the BRICS bloc once and for all.

        You lost me, here. High interest rates are going to cause a contraction in the supply of money, which makes the dollar stronger.

          • LigmaGrindset [undecided]
            ·
            2 years ago

            The US treasury is so huge that the high interest rates is actually creating a fiscal deficit of ~4-5% of US GDP just from interest payments alone!

            I still don't understand this bit. I'm enjoying your comments here so if you get a chance to explain what this means I'd appreciate it

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Some aspects of BRICS are already pretty bad for the less influential members (Brazil and South Africa). South African reserve bank is still following the conventional policy of raising interest rates to curb inflation, and it's going badly. Lula is basically at war with his own countries central bank who want to keep interest rates at 13.75%, and even hike them to combat inflation. It was actually a big deal that that they didn't hike it in March.

    • iridaniotter [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      No fucking way. They actually did the faces too. What the fuck.

      Anyway yeah liberals just don't understand the concept of change unless it happens overnight. There's a clear trend of dedollarization but if you look at the numbers, the situation does not seem dire at all. The thing is, a thousand cuts will kill you.

      • baguettePants [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        In a single year, the US dollar share dropped almost as much as in previous 20 years combined. It seems like a pretty serious paper cut. Unprecedented even.