Image is of Chinese FM Qin Gang and German FM Annalena Baerbock, in Berlin.
Conor Gallagher over at Naked Capitalism details the latest in EU idiocy - foreign ministers backed a more hardline position on China and are considering putting sanctions on Chinese companies that they accuse of supporting Russia. The ideological contagion of "you are either with us or against us" has, without a shadow of a doubt, taken root in the brains of European politicians despite whatever words fall out of Macron's mouth.
The obvious problem here is that China is the EU's biggest trading partner for goods, their second largest import market, and their third largest export market. China's manufacturing is equal to that of the US and Europe combined, outputting most pharmaceutical ingredients, processing most rare earths, manufacturing most solar power wafers, and leads the world in the clean energy market in general - important, as the EU has given up cheap energy from Russia. It is not impossible for the West to develop their own domestic alternatives, but it will take several years to do so, and the sanctions war may escalate independent of that timetable.
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.
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.
Getting tired of the crowd in the left that say we shouldn't engage in culture war.
Isn't the culture war just patriarchal white supremacy renamed?
The left isn't trying to destroy cultures, the right is. Their goal is to destroy all cultures besides the hegemony culture of patriarchal white supremacy. The left is trying to preserve and expand variety cultures that they're setting out to destroy.
Wouldn't choosing not to engage in this war just be refusing to oppose patriarchal white supremacy and by extension fascism?
Yes
Holy shit do they have transcripts for entire episodes? This is extremely useful.
yea CN does transcripts for every episode
They do! Just one more reason they deserve your five dollars a month.
Not if you're using that energy to engage in class politics
Sure, but that doesn't mean we have to actually seriously and politically engage with the questions "Was the last Star Wars good?" or "Is Black Panther actually woke?"
We can (and do!) talk about culture, but that doesnt mean we let the media or the right wing define the terms and questions of cultural combat.
I think the answer to your problem would be to realize the Antifada podcast is done by 2 guys who think “unionized white Americans should lead a revolutionary vanguard, and if anyone else does it it is probably authoritarian” or something like that
They correctly wouldn't put that in racial terms, that's a silly thing to say
They hate, I mean without question hate, China. They hate, I mean without question hate, anything about diversity. They love, I mean without question love, the 2021 trucker movement.
I see a pattern of being overly critical of dark skin, and overly empathetic towards white skinned people. This pattern transcends their own claimed ideology, where fascists property owners have more revolutionary potential than modern China.
They are racist
I mostly listen to Sean on his diving into the wreckage series with C derrick varn and I think you're wrong on all accounts
IMO there are two common bad takes regarding "culture war":
The solution is real, leftist intersectionality: to acknowledge that all hierarchies of power are important to oppose, and they are intertwined in complicated ways under capitalism. While other hierarchies have been subjugated to class to some degree, that doesn't remove their importance, and capitalism is not special in that it cannot be opposed while ignoring the other hierarchies that prop it up and will serve to protect it from your opposition. We shouldn't dictate people's priorities, because we are all affected by different hierarchies to different degrees in our individual and communal lives. But what is very important is that we must insist that even while focusing on your own particular priorities, you not actually contradict other people's struggles/priorities. It's fine for people to oppose racism, but if they prop up capitalism and are reactionary toward people who oppose it, they're being harmful and aren't authentically anti-racist. And vice-versa.
Neither liberals nor so-called "MAGA communists" (or whatever the fuck) can ever really be allies. Our cooperation with them when taking particular actions over particular issues must be just that: extremely limited, conditional, and wary. Always watch for the knife.
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The goal while engaging with these groups is to look for openings to highlight that the specific culture battle is just an extension of class war. So many people just want to be part of change, to help make things better. They join these brainwormed movements because they feel the truth that capitalism is the problem but they don't know it. We can encourage them to look deeper.