Get it? The Sturmabteilung?
Anyway, Ukraine will probably launch its counteroffensive soon. Maybe this week. Maybe next week. Eventually, for sure. Probably. So I'm taking the week off to prepare for it. Your regularly scheduled programming will be back on May 1st.
Image is of dragon's teeth fortifications in Ukraine, from the wikipedia article.
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.
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.
True story - somebody rang my doorbell a minute ago and because I'm not a right-wing psycho - I didn't try to kill them.
In fact - she was friendly and actually laughing "Oh, my goodness. I went to the wrong house!" I started smiling too. And I'm still smiling. I can't even be properly be grumpy right now. Oh, but this burst of sunshine will fade. I have hope.
Bernie is skipping the campaigning stage and going directly to the drop out and endorse Brandon stage of his 2024 run.
Heard something interesting through some connections.
_
Statement by Borotba (Struggle), a revolutionary Marxist organization banned in Ukraine since 2014: May 9 marks the 78th anniversary of the Day of Victory over Nazi Germany.
Almost a century separates us from those events. However, right now we see what a colossal impact they continue to have on the entire world community.
World War II didn't just start. It didn't come out of nowhere. A tangle of contradictions in international politics led to it, which they didn't try to untie by diplomatic means, but to cut with the help of war.
The reasons that divided the world into supporters of the ideas of Nazism and anti-fascists more than 80 years ago still exist today. Western corporations and finance capital, which for many years armed Hitler, created a combat-ready army in order to send it against those from whom they felt threatened: the Soviet Union.
Now we see exactly the same thing: Western transnational corporations and financial capital over the past 8 years have been very intensively creating an army of Nazis, supporters of white supremacy, in order to direct it against Russia. More than 120,000 well- motivated fighters, pumped up with far-right propaganda, were gathered at the borders of the Lugansk and Donetsk People's Republics (LPR and DPR), preparing to kill the peaceful civilians of Donbass and Crimea, just like their predecessors in 1941.
However, this was not allowed to happen.
Today, speaking about the process of denazification, it is important to understand the causes that led to the world war 80 years ago, and which still exist in the world.
It is important to realize that in Ukraine, it is not Russia that is fighting against Ukraine, but two political currents fighting: anti-fascists and Nazis. That is why thousands of far-right militants from all over the planet wearing runes and swastikas poured into Ukraine. That is why we see stripes with a hammer and sickle on the soldiers of the Russian special forces, and red flags of Victory on the tanks.
We want to appeal to our brothers and sisters from other countries of the world:
Comrades! Know this! In Ukraine, we are fighting, including against your enemies. Against those who came from your hometowns. Against the Nazis of America and Georgia, against the far right from Poland and Sweden. Against those trained by Spanish and Lithuanian instructors.
We know that the future of all humanity is being decided in Ukraine today!
And we urge you not to be silent!
May 9 is the Day of Victory over fascism! On this day,
we call on everyone to take to the squares of your cities to pay tribute to the anti-fascists of Spain who died in the battles against Franco, the Italian partisans who fought against Mussolini! To the Greek People's Liberation Front (ELAS) fighters, anti-fascists from the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia! To the prisoners of concentration camps and the participants in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising!
We call for rallies in memory of those who did not give up! In memory of Ernst Thälmann, Aris Velouchiotis, Bruno Buozzi, Jean Moulin and millions of others who died at the hands of Nazism!
And we urge you not to be silent!
May 9 is the Day of Victory over fascism! On this day, we call on everyone to take to the squares of your cities to pay tribute to the anti-fascists of Spain who died in the battles against Franco, the Italian partisans who fought against Mussolini! To the Greek People's Liberation Front (ELAS) fighters, anti-fascists from the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia! To the prisoners of concentration camps and the participants in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising!
We call for rallies in memory of those who did not give up! In memory of Ernst Thälmann, Aris Velouchiotis, Bruno Buozzi, Jean Moulin and millions of others who died at the hands of Nazism!
Today, like 80 years ago, the world is divided into two halves: supporters of Nazism and their opponents. We know you are on the right side!
Show it to everyone on May 8 or 9, 2023, by going to the main square of your city with red flags and St. George's ribbons raised high!
We will win!
I’ve reached a point in my career where I’ve come to the realization that the modern day college system is nothing other than job prep
God there are so many similarities 🤮
South Korea ponders the high cost of being America’s friend
Last time it was the Netherlands and Japan, now it’s South Korea and soon it’s going to be the whole of the G7 rich countries. Being a US ally at a time when geopolitics is leaning heavily on trade policy certainly keeps you on your toes. It’s also quite galling when Washington expects you to take economic hits for geopolitical gains when it’s not always willing to do the same itself.
This week the Financial Times revealed that the US is pushing Korea’s semiconductor manufacturers (principally Samsung and SK Hynix) not to fill any gap in supply to China if the US chips company Micron is excluded from Chinese markets on national security grounds.
Because of their military uses — and more generally to limit China’s technological advance — semiconductors are one of the main pressure points for the US’s campaign on security and trade. This year Washington succeeded in pressing the Netherlands and Japan into agreeing tougher export controls on chip exports to China.
Washington’s implicit threat is to allow the expiry of waivers granted to Korean companies after the US last October imposed broad controls on trade in chips and chip equipment with China. The US can, in theory, use its extraterritorial sanctioning powers moderated by loopholes to fine-tune coercion over not just adversaries but allies.
Korea might also suspect the US warning has more to do with profits at Micron than national security. The Netherlands was irritated when ASML, its world-leading chip machine manufacturing company, was restricted from exporting kit to China in 2019 only to find American companies filling the gap with semiconductors they had made themselves.
The US hasn’t managed to assemble a gang of diehard supporters on whose political allegiance it can depend. It faces a spectrum of more or less friendly nations doing case-by-case trade-offs about which of Washington’s initiatives they want to support, decisions in which commercial considerations will inevitably play a part. It’s an awkward situation for a president who has just declared his intention to stand for re-election on a platform of creating jobs at home rather than sending them abroad.
Russia is recruiting Afghan special forces trained by Norway to fight in Ukraine.
The victories of the Austrian Communist party are some real bloomer stuff to me. The positions of the actual successful and more principled styrian wing have taken over the national party, and now they have 20% in one if the most reactionary regions of the country(from 1% last election). The party anchored itself in the populace, by participating in electorialism, but organising mostly outside of it. The cadres lower their wages to the workers median and the rest is put into a pot to help anyone who asks for help(for example with the landlord, groceries or the boss). That integrity managed to catapult them into power and also keep them there. They will not bring us to the revolution, sure, but they will make the working class more class concious and help built a movement that can.
The cadres lower their wages to the workers median and the rest is put into a pot to help anyone who asks for help(for example with the landlord, groceries or the boss)
fantastic way to kill the "out of touch elite" stuff dead
more parties should do thisAlso a fantastic use of mutual aid, one that moves it beyond being regular charity (which is inherently good, but not great for organizing).
They raised 290.000 last year through this and helped thousands of people directly. They use the people asking for help to construct a kind of mass line.
I get why this would be a very effective mobilization strategy. Who would you believe would actually do something for those at the bottom of society, the people who buy big glossy ad campaigns telling you about all the good they want to do it the people who are actually using their limited resources to actually help people here and now?
In Denmark Enhedslisten, the leftmost party in electoral politics, pays their functionaries the same wage as a skilled metal worker in Copenhagen get. Elected politicians who receive a salary for being full-time politicians pays a "party tax" to lower their income to metalworker levels. The money goes into the party's general funds. Metal workers get a decent pay so the politicians are still able to live comfortably but it's still significantly lower than the "I'm a very special boy" pay politicians in other parties gets.
Any good English language coverage of this stuff? Austria is a real blind spot for me in European politics / news and that does sound very positive.
https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/448919.kp%C3%B6-an-der-macht-fernziel-sozialismus-nicht-vergessen.html?sstr=KP%C3%95
This, of course, is not english, but it is a good left critique of the current KPÖ and it's problems and victories. Maybe Deepl will like emit something usable with this. This newspaper is a surviving GDR/DDR medium, which makes it's reporting very principled.
I'll give it a go with translate when I've got a little more time. Thanks.
It's probably a little premature, but I would love to read a really good analysis from the KPÖ of what they think they are doing right, and what other comrades can learn from them w/r/t how to run a communist party successfully in an imperial core country in 2023.
Oh, sadly they are pretty fashy. In some stares the FPÖ which is a nazi successor party, is in goverment.
Hi, I shared a timeline the other day, hoping it contained a collection of headlines which indicate US involvement in the crisis in Sudan.
It did not have the events I was thinking of. It even had some entirely fabricated events.
If you only upvote the disinfo and not the followup I might cry. Thank you. Gonna go to work now. Hearts.
https://hexbear.net/post/264131
Note the asterisk by the pollsters to explain that the Chinese people must be brainwashed or controlled - there's no way China could actually be a democracy!
I do love that even informal professionalism is completely dead.
Alleged venezuelan president Juan Guado arriving at Miami airport and being embraced by the masses
President Xi Jinping to Zelensky:
“China will neither watch the fire from the other side, nor add fuel to the fire, let alone take advantage of the opportunity to make profits.”
Multipolarism is so fucking here folks and China is the peacemaker :lets-fucking-go:
Zelensky’s response (exactly as I predicted here) to press following the conversation:
“The territorial integrity of Ukraine must be restored within the 1991 borders.”
