Image is of the drying Canelon Grande Reservoir in Uruguay as the country battles three consecutive years of drought, its worst in nearly a century.
Quoting every country and region that is currently suffering under unprecedented climatic conditions and posting every graph showing extremely concerning things happening would make this preamble way too long, so I'm gonna keep it short and merely say that, holy shit, the consequences of fossil fuel executives' actions are looking real fucking bad.
Hundreds of millions of people, if not billions, are currently enduring higher than average temperatures sometimes reaching up 48 degrees Celsius or 120 degrees Fahrenheit or even beyond. Drought is putting pressure on water supplies basically everywhere around the world. And El Nino is activating, which will only do further damage.
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 and third update have done the Dragonball Z fusion dance and created this long-ass thing that took me... a while to get done.
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.
Love seeing the “poor widdle Ukraine invaded by fascist crazy Putler for no reason” narrative being spread on Hexbear. Very cool! Post on the news mega you fucking cowards.
I do find it entertaining when people outside the news megas make comments that essentially imply that we uncritically and fully support Russia and Putin, (as if we've turned into a group of patsocs or something! luckily I haven't seen accusations that bad). There was a brief phase a year or so ago where that kind of shit happened but most of those people have either moved on or were banned for being reactionaries.
As, I think @Alaskaball@hexbear.net has talked about this through the lens of the Second International vs the Third International, I feel like there's still a notable split on this site between the "We should only support progressive, communist countries or those clearly on the road to it" camp and the "We should support - critically, if necessary - all countries that genuinely oppose fascism, which is currently being most strongly expressed by the Western bloc led by the United States." camp.
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I can only speak for my own culture and upbringing, but to most people of my home province and culture and generation the word "history" is synonymous with "rote memorization of names of centuries-dead royalty from another continent". It's almost like the school system I attended was scientifically designed to figuratively beat all curiosity about history out of kids.
I've often thought that history ought to be taught in reverse. Start kids off with recent events that they may have heard about, then teach about the events that led to those events - and so on. Keep them engaged, make them think of history as something that directly shaped their lives.
I think the US has a lot of interest in not properly teaching the 20th century so while I agree that that would be an interesting and perhaps better way to teach history, all you'd get out of it is just First Cold War propaganda updated to the modern day. I feel like one of the reasons why leftism was allowed to very briefly come back to the fore in the form of Bernie is because the people who had grown up and were his voting base hadn't been as steeped in the anti-communist propaganda and didn't know about recent history that well, but now that we're in the Second Cold War that leftism will be stomped back into dust again and we're due for another few decades of neo-McCarthyism, with the obsession by online liberals of calling everybody who doesn't hold literal genocidal fascist views about Chinese ("we'll blow up the Three Gorges Dam!") and Russian people a tankie as a good indicator of what's to come in real life
Well, and there's a few anarchists (like myself) around who probably aren't interested in supporting any countries, but will nevertheless prioritize how we oppose them based on the hierarchy of the state (including imperialism), the degree to which reactionary ideology creates zeal in their authorities, and our own ability and responsibility to influence them. Opposing the waging of all war by state militaries is consistent with this, as the tools of the state will not solve our problems (IOW no war but class war). See also Eugene Debs' awesome speech(es) about war.
Yep, thank you and to all our anarchist comrades
call me a book worshipper but "on contradiction" stays winning here
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On Contradiction | Mao Zedong
This gave me a theory boner.
Yeah, a ND friend who holds grudges forever decided that they don’t like Hexbear because of it.
This is my general feeling on it. Any country or organization opposing NATO is by default correct.
Not very convinced that it will lead to communism in Russia, though. Putin's handling of the war, while often questionable, has been much better than NATO, and he's still quite popular. One would like to think the war will push regime change in Europe, and it might, but it's looking like it won't change in a good direction either.
Not that Tsarist Russia is necessarily a good analogy for current-day Russia, but I have been entertaining some idea lately where, a few years down the line say, the Russian people develop more radical anti-oligarchic thought as state involvement in the economy increases, and they start protests by doing the whole "Putin, we're protesting on your behalf against these oligarchs that are threatening our country!" like people did back then, and then eventually it dawns on them that Putin isn't going to save them from them or he dies and somebody unpopular is put in his place (or, hell, Putin/the new guy actually do institute socialist reforms, though that's got like a 0.1% chance of happening) and we basically repeat history
hard to imagine what exactly would cause people to get to that level of desperation other than a war with NATO though because the climate probably isn't gonna do it, and if we're at the point where masses of Russians are being killed in the war then we're probably already about a hair's breadth away from going down the Posadas route instead. maybe a really really bad recession, like even worse than 2008
Honestly I'd like to encourage this development (not the cowardly part they should have the courage to enage fellow comrades), for one it allows us to flesh out certain arguments and aids in developing analyses
You need a wall to bounce a ball off-of and I nominate these foreign policy babies as the wall
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Personally I'm waiting to see what the Poles do when western stimulus of the Ukrainian economy ends and several million more refugees stream over the EU borders
Polish AfD they'll be ultra fash, anti-nato and a bunch of other things if past migrant crises in euro countries is to be believed.
Polish AfD, isn't that just the PiS party?
Current PiS and AfD are basically the same but what I mean is that there'd be a reactionary protest party similar the way AfD was basically a protest party of the CDU, since the whole thing happened under a conservative/reactionary government only a different reactionary party can come out of it. Maybe they'll say that the PiS have been sissified by the USA and real traditional values are actually what Putin does. Maybe they'll do TERF shit who knows what I do think is that it'll be weird since this is all we get nowadays.
I hate living on a continent where the only political innovation we get is new exciting ways to be a fascist.
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Wall!
Ha imagine thinking there’s a difference between nato and not nato ha silly chumps. Nato and not nato are the same that’s why you should tacitly endorse nato.
Very good bit
Wow this simulation is so life like. I really believe you are a honest to goodness liberal.
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i've been seeing this discourse so often recently that i thought federation already happened lmao
rest of the site needs an automod reply for ukraine and volcel police
I have been thinking about creating a statement putting out our general position on the war and putting it in the thread for a few weeks after we federate. It won't stop the more determined liberals but perhaps the lurkers might see that we aren't on Putin's payroll or anything
Maybe something like:
expand
This is good and a generally accurate summary of the news megas view of things.
On the one hand, this nails it very well. On the other hand, based on my interaction with liberals regarding ukraine, it would be much funnier to just put "Z" there
It wasn't just ethnic Russians, Ukraine was killing ethic Ukrainians in Donbas as well. I would de-emphasize the ethnic aspect. Being Russian or Ukrainian in these areas is more of a political question for many people in these areas due to the intermarriage over centuries. It's not like the US with the one drop rule.
I would rework this somehow. The way you currently have it implies that Ukraine is Nazi-run because of its Nazi past, this is just not true. Ukraine became Nazi-run and then emphasized the Nazi collaboration part of its past over the Nazi fighting parts of it. Stepan Bandera was honestly kind of a historical nobody before the government made him into the father of the nation. His organization was important but he kinda wasn't.
I think there might be value in separating out a historical primer from our general beliefs. Going from the coup all the way up to Zelensky. It would be a lot of words though.
Gotcha. I wanted to connect the Ukrainian WW2 collaborator movement to modern Ukraine but then it just turns into a history documentary, so I've decided to shift the part about Bandera up in the 'here's why Ukraine is fascist' section and not in the 'history' section.
I have also replaced "ethnic Russians" with "separatists", which seems about as neutral phrasing as I can imagine.
I'm personally okay with the whistle-stop tour of recent Ukrainian history as it stands, I think there should be some explanation of the version of events as we see them because otherwise you might end up with people going "hey, these people are talking about being historically literate but they aren't talking about the Revolution of Dignity that overthrew the pro-Russian stooge in 2014 and instituted freedom and democracy and justice, and Russia's barbaric invasion of Crimea, what the hell." I mean, they'll probably still think that but I do wanna try, for the people who are very fuzzy on what's actually happened in the last decade or so and might just know "uhhh Russia invaded Crimea in like... 201...4? and then, uhh, they invaded Ukraine in 2022? because Putin's evil or something? that's what the media tells me" but also don't wanna read a whole brochure on Ukrainian history
all I want to really get across is "Here are our beliefs that many/most of us feel about the conflict, here's why we think that, and in summary we are communists that are against the West and for the anti-NATO coalition making us fairly rare in the grand scheme of the whole western left, so if you feel about the same way then you can hang out and talk about current events in a safe space, if you wanna argue about these things with us then we'll listen if you make good points but we'll laugh at you if you don't, and if you're one of those NAFO weirdos then we'll probably kick you out"
Separatists works, as would Ukrainian separatists since they're all Ukrainian there regardless of ethnicity. You do also need to include Minsk 2 and possibly Minsk as well. Somebody else mentioned it already and I can't believe I forgot about it.
Probably a good call it keep it as short and sweet as possible.
I would ask that you consider adding context for the coup and US involvement.
That and the burning of the Union building were points of inflection that seriously shaped events, in my personal opinion.
Really strong statement that would probably do good if pinned or something.
I've added a little more historical context as you've suggested
I really dig the way you phrased it. Gets to the point without giving room to get bogged down too much.
Probably going to steal this next time liberals show up in the trueanon sub.
Banger
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I’m not sure that you can get through to people who have completely rejected empirical reality in favor of idealistic western-leftist grandstanding.
you can't, but i find comfort in the presence of walls of text
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I’m in this comment and I don’t like it.
Fr though, walls of text are like a weighted blanket for the mind.
A true leftist 😊
The mega has legit became the least liberal place on hexbear, maybe it always was.
But it's still very liberal, except for me
Still seething Putler never ran out of missiles like CNN said he would.
show em