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

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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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • yastreb
      ·
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

      • daisy
        ·
        1 year ago

        They cannot see how the past connects with the present, and how the present shapes the future.

        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.

        • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
          ·
          1 year ago

          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

    • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      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.

    • meth_dragon [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      call me a book worshipper but "on contradiction" stays winning here

      There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.

      ...

      When imperialism launches a war of aggression against such a country, all its various classes, except for some traitors, can temporarily unite in a national war against imperialism. At such a time, the contradiction between imperialism and the country concerned becomes the principal contradiction, while all the contradictions among the various classes within the country (including what was the principal contradiction, between the feudal bourgeois system and the great masses of the people) are temporarily relegated to a secondary and subordinate position.

      ...

      But in another situation, the contradictions change position. When imperialism carries on its oppression not by war, but by milder means--political, economic and cultural--the ruling classes in semi-colonial countries capitulate to imperialism, and the two form an alliance for the joint oppression of the masses of the people. At such a time, the masses often resort to civil war against the alliance of imperialism and the feudal bourgeois classes, while imperialism often employs indirect methods rather than direct action in helping the reactionaries in the semi-colonial countries to oppress the people, and thus the internal contradictions become particularly sharp.

      ...

      But whatever happens, there is no doubt at all that at every stage in the development of a process, there is only one principal contradiction which plays the leading role.

    • red_stapler [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      Yeah, a ND friend who holds grudges forever decided that they don’t like Hexbear because of it.

    • Parzivus [any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      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. xi-plz

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
        ·
        1 year ago

        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