Image from this Financial Times article, although the archived version has a different image because they presumably changed it after.
China's Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, has met last weekend with the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, and Afghanistan's Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi (all pictured), discussing security and trade and particularly strengthening co-operation with China and increasing development in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative.
After the United States destroyed the country and killed hundreds of thousands of people and left millions destitute, intentionally destabilizing the region to counter Russia, China, and Iran, Afghanistan's government has been co-operating with China and Russia to try and rebuild. China has already invested billions into Pakistan creating a network of roads, trains, and ports, and the hope is that Afghanistan could receive similar infrastructure investment. And Russia is supplying oil and wheat to the country too.
Additionally, both China and Pakistan have a strong interest in keeping the security situation there manageable, as the country is still the base for several terrorist groups - including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the Uyghur militant group - which have committed acts of violence in Pakistan and surrounding countries.
Afghanistan notably hosts approximately $1 trillion worth of minerals. The Taliban have hoped that China will boost investments in the country to help them exploit these resources, as obviously Afghanistan is in dire economic straits.
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.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
This week's third update is here in the comments.
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.
According to an article posted here last week, he is a CIA asset himself.
That was about previous presidents https://orinocotribune.com/former-president-of-mexico-revealed-as-cia-asset/
Ah fuck, I knew something felt off about that (I read the headline wrong obv)
His democratic popularity is proof that he's actually a dictator with a brainwashed population. Real democracies aspire to a high of 40% approval on a turnout of about 45%. Anything better than that is suspect, jack. :biden-rember:
:parenti:
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum. :parenti::parenti: :parenti::parenti::parenti:
for authoritarian presidents that have very low approval ratings it's evidence that most of the people hate them and want freedom and democracy from communist tyranny; for authoritarian presidents that have very high approval ratings it's evidence that the people are brainwashed and kept in echo chambers or that the polls are outright fabricated
A single T-34 showed up in Victory Day because that's all they have left, just one lone tank.
Also no flyby, all russian air force planes were shot down by the Ghost of Kyiv.
Robbie Martin did a little summary about him and why this may just be another Tulsi Gabbard style 'anti-system' campaign and we know how Tulsi pivoted after the elections, he endorsed Hillary in the past, his son is in Ukraine, his foundation gave Fauci some award, there was more weird stuff like that
edit: apparently his sister runs the foundation, even though it has his name in the title, another fun one is he recommended the Epoch Times as a good anti-system outlet 😄
https://piped.chauvet.pro/watch?v=S2YvHDIgj08
true, also if he polls well in this early stage he might also embolden other dem candidates to assume Biden is weak and enter the race, could be useful for people in both parties
:hillgasm: vs. :cheeto-man: would be the funniest outcome of the primaries
Trump wins again, drops dead from a heart attack on election night, making vp elect :live-tucker-reaction: president.
His platform is all over the place to the extent where I think he could pull voters from Trump and Biden if he runs third party.
can I get some resources on the CIA killing JFK? I know they probably would have done it, but I want the info.
aight, but any like hard resources I can read through?
Yeah sure let me just bust open my cia top secret hard drive real quick
Thank you citizen! Now give me your name and address!
Russian passport holders in Latvia, mostly pensioners, are being forced to take loyalty tests and Latvian language classes. Failure may equal deportation from Latvia, despite having lived there for decades.
:isaac-pog: when your just-built PC boots up and recognizes all the devices on the first try
The Russian propaganda/media aspect of this war is very confusing to westerners and is unfairly covered most of the time. I find the Russian framing of the war mostly flimsy, but I oddly respect how Russian media has avoided the "war of civilizations" framing that Americans ran with during Iraq and Afghanistan. They never made it a Russians vs Ukrainians thing and went instead with the "misguided brothers" narrative, which honestly makes lots of sense on nearly all levels. Western Europeans and especially Americans don't have the concept of "brotherly nations/peoples" in a similar way Latin Americans, Arabs and Eastern Europeans for example have, which is why the brother narrative is confusing and is interpreted as pure evil somehow. This is also why anti-war Arabic media usually argues about this conflict with something like "it's so sad that two similar peoples are fighting", while anti-war westerners still consider Russians and Ukrainians as two polar opposites.
Finding it real fitting that during the Russian may 9 parade in the section where the color guard marches in with "The Sacred War", the Russian tri-color's all fucked up and its only the Soviet victory banner that's fluttering in the wind.
https://fair.org/home/ukraines-press-freedom-score-increases-despite-martial-law-banned-media/
France-based press watchdog Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières, or RSF) recently released its scores and rankings for international press freedom. In 2022, RSF gave Ukraine a score of 55.76 out of 100, placing it 106th out of 180 countries surveyed. In the most recent report, issued after over a year of war, Ukraine shot to 79th out of 180, with a new score of 61.19. This despite wartime measures that banned opposition parties, consolidated media under state control, and saw journalists’ speech chilled by unprecedented intimidation.
Western media is now saying that "anti-Ukraine" rallies in Europe are organised by russian intelligence, is this repurposed "russian interference in 2016"?
As we all know, it is very easy to rally tens of thousands of people to get out into the street and risk their livelihoods and health for a cause they don’t believe in
They're running stories about how some protestors at anti-war rallies look alike, which means they are paid Russian crisis actors.
The documents were leaked to the Dossier Center, a research organization run by the Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Their authenticity cannot be verified [...]
Mainstream Western media cherrypicked an unproven statement from an extremely biased psycho and plopped "— report" at the end of the headline :surprised-pika:
https://t.me/intelslava/47652
🇷🇺🇺🇦 Eliminated Ukrainian militant Alexander Yegorov.
Yegorov has been participating in the fighting since 2014. He was in "Azov" *, was one of the prisoners from "Azovstal". After the exchange, he again went to fight. Destroyed in Artyomovsk.
:fuck-around: :wholesome: :pit:
Any time the mods unpin the news thread, I immediately check to see what news they are trying to hide from me.
