Image is from @Parsani@hexbear.net, who got it from @RNAi@hexbear.net, who got it from Discord.
Thread update: Prigozhin's fucking dead.
The BRICS summit will begin on Tuesday and end on Thursday, with various world leaders, politicians, and representatives meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa.
America's anxiety about the summit has been obvious. They have been complicating the event by pushing for the arrest warrant for Putin to be upheld if he steps foot in the country. While this is a remarkably dangerous and unhinged thing to do - even by America's standards - to the leader of a nuclear superpower who could end the world within an hour, it does betray their desperation. Unfortunately, for those of us who wanted to see Putin surrounded by an army of security guards fending off people holding handcuffs, he has sent his Foreign Minister, Lavrov, in his place. Additionally, America has likely been spreading rumors about the lack of interest in gaining new members in the organization.
With apparently 20 countries formally seeking membership and another 20 informally doing so, the bloc has been elevated, whether they like it or not, to the position of the international vanguard of the non-western world. It is extremely important to say that this is not the same as it becoming an anti-American bloc, and many of them (including original members Brazil and India) wish to keep a friendly relationship with the United States. Nonetheless, with the United States' policy of "if you are not with us, you are against us," and as the US seeks to weaken China, in coming years many of them might find themselves under hostile pressure.
BRICS has to try and solve many problems if they are going to chip away at America's stranglehold of the world economy. These problems - like mitigating the dollar's status as a global reserve currency, and America's dominant role in the world economy - are extremely complicated, and will takes years, even decades, to be overcome. Therefore, one should temper their expectations and excitement for this summit. It took tens of millions of deaths in cataclysmic wars, and then several more decades, for America to reach its current position. I see no reason to believe why its downfall will be any less bloody and elongated.
To end on a less depressing note, I've been searching for appropriate anagrams given the list of countries that seek to join BRICS. Obviously not all of them will make it in, but even so. The best I've come up with is HIBISCUS EMANCIPATES BBBBKKRVV.
(also, "bulletins and news discussion" can be rearranged to "libidinous newsstands uncles".)
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
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 and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
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 all socially reactionary. 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 ~ A 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. Produces interesting and useful maps.
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.
Sorry if the following is too stream of consciousness:
Much to my present embarrassment, in a previous life, I was in the
imperial navy. I am very unsurprised at how many times they fuck up. The whole organization is rotten, with unaccountable toxic leadership at the top, middle, and lower management levels, but especially the surface navy. No officer candidates want to be a Surface Warfare Officer, partly for the glory of being a pilot or running death squads but mostly due to the toxic reputation, so they dump all the fuck-ups in the surface community and compound the problem.
The navy, specifically the surface navy, is the last biggest holdout of aristocrat simping. The officers eat separately from the crew, on fine china and real silverware (I know, I had to polish them), while the crew eats worse food on those segmented plastic trays you see in schools and prisons (
), and they’re the first ones effected when food starts to run out.
Worst is the “Chief’s Mess,” or senior enlisted (E7-E9). They are a prime example of the rot. For decades, they’ve been derided as out of shape alcoholics with multiple DUI’s and divorces who keep their workers on the ship as long as possible so they don’t have to go home to see their own families.
7th Fleet, based out of Japan (Yokosuka and Sasebo), has the worst reputation out of all of the US fleet forces. Operational Tempo is high, with sailors spending at least 50% (but usually 75%+) of their time underway, and working hours in port are always long. That results in a culture of heavy drinking which, coupled with white supremacist imperialist propaganda dehumanizing the locals, leads to “Liberty Incidents” (“liberty” referring to time off work) where sailors assault locals. Instead of dealing with the root problems, the tactic has been further curtailing the already limited “liberty” hours. In ~2018, married sailors living off base had to submit written request in advance to go out to dinner with their spouse/family. Instead of solving the white supremacy problem, which would undermine the overall imperial project, or the self-imposed problems of high optempo with low manning, this just exacerbates everything.
Turning now to the most relevant bit:
In the 1990’s, the US decided it was going to run the military like a business. The navy came up with a genius idea: “Optimal Manning,” where they figured you could do more work with less people if you just forced it on them. It’s been like 25 years and they still haven’t recovered. It turns out that people need to sleep to function properly. Sleep deprivation is like being drunk regarding things like reaction time and staying awake, so you have all of these multimillion dollar ships (or over a billion for the carriers) being driven around by disgruntled, sleep deprived people who are just counting down the days until they get out. It’s no wonder that they can’t stop running into shallows and sea mounts.
The only people involved who are shocked are those at the top whose fault it is.
Also, they’ve surfaced a sub under their own warship before so it’s not out of question they might accidentally surface under another country’s warship.
Comment might be a stream of consciousness, but it's a good one!
I'm a bit shocked how bad it is considering the Navy is cruising around in some of the most expensive military hardware America has. Let alone the fact that those ships and subs are manned by quite a few individuals.
Curious what you fully mean here, like basically everyone wants to be on the seal teams or a pilot versus a ship officer? I can't imagine folks would want to be a submarine officer either.
Explains a lot really. I knew about the heinous or at minimum disruptive things the sailors get up to, but that extra background helps contextualize it. It is continually shocking how I've got friends and family that everytime an incident makes it back to the US news they assume the locals just don't appreciate our protection... Which is just usually leads the convos to veiled racism I try to stop/ correct.
Literally just running the navy into the ground lol.
I don't remember this when did this happen?
I appreciate the kind words. I’m a little intoxicated from vibing with comrades at the bar, so we’ll see how this post goes.
Submariners get incentive pay, which some people think makes it worth it (not me, but I’m tall). But, to step into the nationalist militarist mindset: submarines: WW3 :: aircraft carriers: WW2. Submariners describe the situation as (picture a polface soyfacing while pointing) “there’s two kinds of ships: submarines and targets.” The upside of naval combat is that you don’t get up close and personal, and the downside is it’s dehumanized.
But, yes, everyone wants to be something special. Everyone who isn’t a big standard SWO (surface warfare officer) gets some kind of incentive pay, and being on a surface ship is long hours of boring tedium, and all the officers are dicks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Hartford_and_USS_New_Orleans_collision?wprov=sfti1
I would love to answer any more questions.
That's actually crazy that subs would be that much more desirable. Granted the US military overall really doesn't seem to pay all that well and I feel like they get away with paying just barely enough and providing just enough incentives.
This is funny to me considering if another navy has a good way of targeting submarines, I would much rather take my chances in a surface ship going down than a sub already underwater.
From the Wiki Entry
I'm sensing a pattern here