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Well, Prigozhin gets to live in Belarus instead of being on the wrong end of an Iskander, Wagner forces (in Ukraine at least) will probably get integrated into the Russian military, and SHOOOOIIGUUU and GEERRASSIMOOVV get to keep their jobs. Putin looks like a weak leader but at least things are intact. Also, the front in Ukraine hasn't broken down or anything.
I imagine a ton of things have happened behind the scenes that we either will never know about or will only slowly come to know about in the future.
About as happy an ending to the Wagner saga as we could hope for given the nature and historical horror stories of mercs. Or is it the end...? (Yes. Hopefully.)
And I have it on good authority that Stalin is currently looking down on this situation from heaven and incessantly swearing at these motherfuckers for what they've done to his country.
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 and only update is here, because I am on my regularly scheduled week-long break that I forgot about until now given all that's going on. Next update will be next Wednesday.
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.
Is the Chinese brand Shein as bad as I'm hearing on Anglo media or is it more NATO countries singling out a Chinese company? I'm only asking because they pulled this shit in my country when Korean businesses set up shop here. A bunch of reports came out about how abusive they were and most of them ended up pulling out while NATO countries moved in and did the same shit. The reports for those were suspiciously absent.
I think it's more about the audacity of the marketing campaign. Like western companies just avoid speaking of the labor altogether.
IDK how there finger pointing considering they outsource to similar factories and slave labour, in China non the less. I guess if its not making them money, its suddenly an issue
Look closely at clothes in stores now, companies have largely moved from China to South Asia and South East Asia because wages in China were getting too high
Never ending chain of exploitation, I expect them to move to Africa soon enough
I buy most of my clothes on ebay, cuz its easy to find stuff that fits and I often can get good stuff for cheap, so I look at lots of listing for vintage clothes. And you can really see it: every decade or two the country, or countries, that most clothes are made in changes. I just bought a skirt suit made in Japan, so I know it's pretty old (not that there aren't clothes made in Japan anymore, but Japanese clothes, like a lot of Japanese products, are now high-end, boutique, or designer items; whereas it used to be a place known for low wages and stuff, just like China was). People in the US still think of China as the exporter of garbage cheap stuff, but they make a lot of nice stuff there now. I wonder if western Sinophobia will keep them from making the same sort of shift in perception of quality that was made towards Japan and the ROK in the past. Clothing factories seem to be some of the earliest ones to change places; I would imagine because it's easier to set up a new clothes making sweatshop that a factory making like advanced electronics or something. It really shows off the irrationality of capitalist "efficiency." Like you spend resources constructing factories, build up an experienced workforce, figure out all of the transport and logistical stuff; and then you abandon all of that and then do it again in another country because your rate of profit has fallen somewhat and you can pump it up by exploiting people harder in a new place. Only a capitalist would find this more efficient: it makes more money, but it's less efficient resource-wise to always be moving factories and training new workers and moving raw goods and finished products all over the fucking world. I have, for example, several shirts made of US grown Supima cotton (and they are advertised as being such, this is supposed to be a selling point), and they are made in Malaysia. Not trying to make some patriotic "buy US" point or anything. It's just silly that we waste all this fuel (producing greenhouse emissions too) doing things like shipping that cotton from the US to Malaysia and the shirts back to the US where I buy them. When the factory could just be fairly close to the cotton producing area lol. But the company would make less money and the shirt would cost me more, so this doesn't happen; how does money make any rational sense lol??? We're burning up the fucking planet for this shit
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I would also like to hear this. My partner brought it up as a company that is more terrible than most any fast fashion company for the environment, and they usually are well informed, even if limited to western sources. Chemical levels exceeding euro standards and shit like that. Its good to be skeptical of propaganda against China for things the whole world is doing, because I trudt them more than H&M to improve as time goes on
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As far as I've seen, I think literally every product they sell is made of synthetics. So on that front, they probably would be worse than average for that reason alone.
It's pretty low quality clothes, but no different than the other cheap clothing companies; except Shein is even cheaper. Afaik this is because they have no retail shop overhead, and because they just order one big batch of each item--they don't restock. Because of that, they have a HUGE amount of different pieces for sale, and there is a steady stream of new stuff added, and it's very cheap, and you can browse all this and buy them on a phone app. I do think this encourages a pattern of constantly buying new pieces, wearing them a few times, then getting rid of them. Along with social media, stuff like this helps promote a like influencer driven rapid fashion cycle where you're always getting some new thing for this week's little trend. I've been to a few thrift stores full of Shein stuff, and it isn't really worth thrifting cuz Shein is so fucking cheap that the thrift store is probably selling it for more than it was originally. And they aren't exactly clothes built to last for a long time (again though, they aren't unique in this aspect).
Basically, this is all just capitalism; Shein is just doing it well. I wouldn't feel any more guilty about buying stuff there than basically wherever else.
SHEIN is not uniquely bad. I did research into this because a lot of my lib friends kept giving me shit about shopping at SHEIN everytime I bring it up while they say literally nothing about me shopping at H&M, Zara, Uniqlo, Adidas, etc.
Their workers do long hours and get paid little, which is standard for large clothing/textile companies
All the claims of child labor are completely unsubstantiated and the sources are always just some anonymous dude
Their worker's rights track record actually seems to be better considering they haven't been caught stealing wages which a ton of other companies have
An interesting thing to note is that even the high end Italian designer brands engage in terrible workers exploitation. A lot of their clothes are made using cheap undocumented migrant labor
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the-chinese-workers-who-assemble-designer-bags-in-tuscany
https://www.elevatelimited.com/blog/how-the-italian-luxury-supply-chain-for-decades-a-symbol-of-craftsmanship-and-sophistication-is-in-the-spotlight-of-worker-exploitation/
https://nitter.snopyta.org/RealSexyCyborg/status/1661714929324548099#m
I figured as much. This is what I love about living in the global south. We see what these companies all do in our countries and don't do as much of the moral grandstanding that these NATO countries do. SHEIN is extremely popular here because people can afford it.
Me, reading that: "just press the socialism button already! nationalize those shit factories"
https://hexbear.net/post/275580