Very slight change of plans: I'll begin the updates next Monday instead of this Friday. So this week will have no updates. Dang. So y'all better post hard enough to make up for it. But not so hard that we get past 1000 comments by the end of the week.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the “buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!” people.
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, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
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.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
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 ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
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.
the r/china thread about this is hilarious and entirely unhinged
:galaxy-brain:
China's economy continues to grow despite zero covid policies: CHINA IS DOOMED TO FAIL
Infinite COVID: Millions dead, millions disabled, life expectancy on downward trajectory, partial collapse of the hospital system, growing disbelief in modern medicine, extreme wealth inequality, contraction of the economy followed by partial rebound
Zero COVID: Few thousand dead and disabled in a gigantic country, life expectancy continues to grow, hospital system secured, continued increase of living standards, decreased growth of the economy followed by partial rebound
It's obvious which one is better, but of course :porky-scared-flipped: can't let it show and thus their economists are in denial.
only critique I have is that China doesn't have a free healthcare system
And they used to have one under Mao and the Deng dismantled it
I had this talk with a moroccan relative of my wife pretty recently. They were talking about some tiktok of Chinese problem being "locked up" and how Zero-Covid was barbaric, while also lamenting the fact that in Morocco the government tried to put in place some extremely harsh curfew measures / lockdowns. I argued that the government then didn't provide much in the way of support for the population, and people then rightfully determined that the lockdowns were bullshit, and everybody started going out like they were planning anyway. Also apparently the army that was used to supplement the police force didn't get paid a lot, so a lot of moroccans just bribed the guards (allegedly) in order for them to be left alone. I think I got my message through, but i gotta admit that it gets hard to combat the ambient propaganda that's being sent over whatsapp and consumed by my wife's entire extended family.
Also just systemically a market economy starts to disintegrate if you shut down too much stuff for too long, even if it's totally unproductive shit, due to financial entanglement. Money needs to keep moving around or the system starts to eat itself. Like how a bar might be broke after two months shutdown, even though it's still there obviously, and all the people who work there are still there, but it's now non-operational because number go down, which means some people won't get the money they're owed, and others are out of a job, and so those people don't have any money, and that ripples around until it actually hits something important. And the only fix the government can do is sprinkle around money liberally, which in turn means half of it goes to the best-connected and not the people who actually need it, which in turn just causes the whole machine to become unbalanced.
Oops, totally did! Thanks, it bugs me when people talk about how China's economy isn't growing fast enough for them compared to the west when the situation is even worse here in the west when you take into account inflation (and inequality) wreaking havoc!!
Also while other major countries' economies shrink by the same metric. You know, the countries that forced mass death and disablement on their populations "for the economy".
Love to gloat on the internet about making an ass out of myself at a bar like it was some bold stand.
I just want to shake these people and yell "You will never find peace or happiness in the quest to please empire! My boomer family will always look at you differently, my chud cousins will always say racist shit behind your back, and in times of hardship you will still be the first place they cast blame, no matter how much you denigrate others! You are like a genestealer cultist who doesn't realize their ultimate goal ends with them being eaten! You are Sysiphus pushing a big racism up an endless mountain! THERE IS NOTHING BEYOND THAT ILLUSORY GATE OF HONORARY WHITENESS, NOTHING!"
Yeah... I've been drunk and said dumb shit as well. Not this dumb though.
I love how "Per Capita GDP" was used.
The US is basically run by a Finance/Military industrial cartel, with a low growth population so median per capita GDP until 2005 rapidly outstripped China even though China was already catching up in total GDP and Median Income.
In recent decades, with China's population growth slowing GDP per capita has skyrocketed and is increasing at about the same rate as the USA.
my debt got sold 10000 times before the statute of limitations ran out
OMG THE GDP!!!
Can you feel the pure unadulterated liquidity of transactions that aren't trading goods, aren't even trading predictions on goods like Marx complaining about the futures market, but are trading predictions about the performance of financial clusters containing fractions of unforgivable debt to pretend to bolster the risk values of clearly criminal transactions!?
https://lateralthinkingtechnology.wordpress.com/2022/05/11/waiting-for-the-good-guys-to-win-middle-class-china-and-foreign-friends/
this guys writes like a drunk leftist who reads Carl Schmitt and Cioran
What in the LaRouchite fuck is that place? Every second post is some about China's 'demographic crisis'.
A sub for sexually demented crackers who like to role-play as the aggrieved emperor of China
Without looking for myself this sounds very :jesse-wtf:
theres an r/cuba too, i bet you can guess what that board is like.
Reactions I have seen so far:
- Oh this beat China watcher expectations? Well China has to be lying.
- Oh this beat China watcher expectations? So what? Why would China care about China watcher expectations? Sincerely, China watcher.
- This is barely better than America! Please please please ignore inflation is happening everywhere but China PLEASE.
- This is barely better than America! Ha, China will never be the #1 economy!
- This is barely better than America! Ha, the CCP will lose the mandate of heaven and only a liberalized economy will be able to increase growth rates! Please please PLEASE Eastern European shock therapy PLEASE.
"I say, Smithers, I don't know why Harvard bothered to show up this year. They barely even won."
Show them these kinds of growth stats when you remove the FIRE sector lol
I think real estate is pretty important to China's economy as well, but yeah if you took out FIRE, the US would be hit way harder lol. :this-is-fine:
Real Estate makes up something like 20% of China's GDP, (at least according to the latest Michael Roberts blogposts) so taking it out would massively change the entire calculus. The big thing for the US is the fact that no sector has been able to grow aside from the FIRE sector and that the FIRE sector is the only sector whos growth is entirely dependant on parasitism.
I highly recommend the Michael Hudson book on Finance and debt "Killing the Host" which I am currently reading. He's good folks.
So our ruthless capitalist regime is gonna start shit with China, I guess? Probably provoke a conflict over taiwan?
Tbf thats really quite low vs the usual
:xigma-male: "What do you mean? you didnt get double digit growths?"
China's growth is really impressive and has a strong resemblance to the US growth in the late 1800's. I feel like the Soviet Union would have also been passed just as quickly if it were still around today.
Workers in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, have reportedly seized control of numerous factories in response to a bosses lockout against President Luis Arce.
Among those seized are Pil, the largest manufacturer of dairy products in Boliva, and Fino, the largest producer of vegetable oil.
MAS lawmaker in Bolivia proposes the nationalization of companies that fund pro-coup protests.
A lot of super concerning talk about dirty bombs right now. Russia claiming Ukraine has 2 dirty bomb plans in the final stages, this shit will be instantly blamed on Russia despite any evidence against it.
isn't a dirty bomb almost entirely theoretical? at least it was when they were alleging al-qaeda was gonna use one
So, it's like the US leaving depleted uranium all over Iraq?
much worse. Du is mostly toxic because of chemichal efects sort of like lead or arsenic but it is no that radioactive. Depending on the makeup of the bomb it could me much more radioactive. To the point that it could poison the earth for hundreths of years is they use cesium. And as chemichally toxic.
yeah I don't doubt it's cheap but it's not really anymore effective (theoretically) than a regular bomb so I guess given the choice between that and a regular one, the regular one at a busy location is just as effective and easier to evade authorities during transport.
It's effective as a scorched earth strategy and for political shock value and escalatory potential. In purely military terms I doubt it has much use.
The concept is pretty simple, you just collect your uranium from your nuclear power plants (and Ukraine has a few), put a bunch of explosives together with it, and blow it up. Basically any country that has nuclear power plants could make one if they so desired.
My guess as to why this hasn't happened before is that a) not every country has nuclear power plants, particularly underdeveloped ones; b) many terrorist groups have some connection to intelligence agencies, and even the really cynical ones like the CIA that want to generate terrorism to guarantee they have jobs and can put fear into the population probably don't wanna deal with radioactive fallout; and c) it's gotta be pretty difficult to get radioactive materials into countries, because these things are quite tightly controlled especially across borders, and getting enough explosives together for a big enough bomb would also be tricky.
My own reasoning has always included as well that d) it's a fucking waste of radioactive materials and wouldn't do much. It does seem like the perfect shitty idea some fucked up psycho would come up with in DC though, particularly as a weird way to shout "nuclear threat" against Russia without actually detonating a nuke, which stills frightens the shit out of everyone.
tbh option C is the likely reason just because it's the simplest. also radioactive materials are likely reasonably tightly controlled (at least more so than explosive precursors) so the source may/would be quickly found out so an entire supply chain might get outed.
I don't think one has ever been used but the concept seems simple enough to make if you have radioactive material and a conventional explosive
Slight aside, but I remember reading comments on Reddit by the guy that built OPEN-RISOP (who was a US nuclear planner) about his rationale for targeting nuclear waste storage locations in his hypothetical attack plan on the US:
Also, depending on the winds, striking the Riverbend and Waterford Nuclear Power Plants could result in long term radiation. Nuclear fallout lasts days/weeks/months. Spent fuel fallout lasts for decades to centuries.
:yea:
Spent fuel fallout lasts for decades to centuries.
On that topic, this article about the Sellafield storage site in the UK is pretty insane - they're storing radioactive materials in quickly degrading plastic bottles over there.
Thanks for sharing, fascinating (and horrifying) article!
What was once a point of pride and scientific progress is a paranoid, locked-down facility.
Sounds like the UK in general. :picard-troll:
It’s fascinating to think about what elements of western infrastructure will be our equivalents of Azovstal - vitally important, unique remnants of a more powerful time. They still just about sustain the economies of countries they are in, yet are utterly impossible in build in the modern world. Nay, they’re impossible to even imagine being built in the modern world.
It is a thing which can be done, but a thing which has never been done in practice. In 2022, China and Russia have demonstrated hypersonic ICBM capability, but we are meant to believe the world will be ended by some nuclear waste in a suitcase.
That US once accidentally dropped some nukes on Spain and one of them blew up on a beach (only the conventional explosives detonated), so that's a little like a dirty bomb.
Well, it is something straight out of the Russia playbook. Not to mention how absurd all the evidence presented is. Here is the thing - it is something not even meant for the West it's meant for internal propaganda, or at most a justification for escalation.
It's wierd that in every news article about North Korea launching missles, it's almost never mentioned that the US-South Korea military exercises are going on. If they mention it all, it's framed as the North being paranoid about our harmless and normal military exercises involving enough forces to start an invasion, that we just do for no particular reason, and that no one should find provacative.
Someone irl was talking about Russian atrocities and they brought up that "Russian Sleep Experiment" creepypasta as if it were based on a true story. I told them it was a fictional story and they responded with, "but you never know. It's the sort of thing Russia would do."
You can make up anything about Bad Country and people will believe it because they feel it's true, all coming from the same people that love to talk about how rational they are.
:agony-immense: I'm going to become the jonker if they do this dirty bomb shit
So will I but we'll be the post apocalyptic operator Jonker from the Snyder cut which is even worse
I'm going to become whatever Marvel Cinematic Universe figure your become when you get irradiated. The amazing Captain Spiderbat or whatever.
"they (PRC) lie cheat and steal their way into unfairly competing, putting American companies out of business... their economic rights and human rights violations are part of the same problem. they both flout the rule of law... make it easier to steal our innovation." - FBI director Christopher A. Wray
livestreaming now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHv1Tgql_o0
These fuckers allowed intellectual property to become so egregious that a tombstone can keep collecting royalties on a song for 50 years, that life saving medicines can be monopolized for decades, that oil companies can sit on critical patents for clean energy and do nothing with them as the world burns, and that multinational corporations can patent just about any industrial process which has existed for over a century as long as they stick a computer in it somewhere, and they want us to cry about their shit getting ripped off. Motherfucker, I'm with China. I'll steal whatever I can get my hands on. We should start something like scihub but for blueprints and schematics.
The only form of intellectual property you can make a case for keeping is trademark. I want to know where the product was made. It can be a complete fucking rip-off of someone else's design, I don't care. Patent, copyright and trade secret are abolished. Have every factory manufacturing the best designs, not the shit we have now where they all try to circumvent each-other's patents by intentionally developing sub-optimal and incompatible mechanisms as a workaround. I just want to know where to take it if it has a defect. Even still, trademark as it presently exists is absurd. You have companies like Apple getting trademarks on rounded rectangles, companies like Fluke getting trademarks on the color yellow. That shit needs to get shut the fuck down. Also all the designer fashion shit like Tiffany or Gucci. If the trademark is in anyway a bourgeois class signifier, it's protections are gone. Bubba down at the local auto garage is free to slap Rolls Royce and Bently emblems (preferably both) on the shitty Dodge Neon he's trying to sell.
If I remember the IP law class I took years back right, some golf gear brand owns a European trademark for using the smell of freshly cut grass to sell sporting equipment. Absolute madness.
I can see a limited case for trademarks in telling consumers who made the product and who's responsible for fixing it if it breaks but current rules are completely bizarre.
I can see a limited case for trademarks in telling consumers who made the product and who’s responsible for fixing it if it breaks but current rules are completely bizarre.
100%. I think of it like pears of jeans. You have all these companies making jeans. They are all the same product more or less. Canvas pants with a fly, button, pockets, and belt loops. You slap your name on them so people know which factory they came from. The abundant ones build a reputation, the resilient ones build a reputation, the ones sustained by sweatshop child labor build a (radioactive) reputation.
I just thought of this, but as a part of my trademark reforms, I would introduce two changes. 1: You cannot license a trademark. If somebody else is making the thing, you are not making the thing. There are no profits from branding. Only from production. 2: If you claim a trademark, you must use it. You can't do this shit where you use hundreds of trademarks to obscure industrial ownership structures from the public.
Trademark becomes literally "we made this." Not a branding tool to wield hype and public perception to rip people off. Ideally, trademark dissolves into nothing else aside from the union bug.
In terms of trademarks, I wonder if what you’re getting is really about better supply chain information - a good factory in China with a high level of QA is a good factory regardless of who is having their goods produced there.
:yes-chad:
Trademark, but only for union bugs. Anybody can make Gucci bags, but I want to know that my AFSCME Gucci bag is authentic.
The manufacturing cost is often the same. It's just that whites are greedy.
The biggest technological advantage the west has over China is Semiconductors and they are really panicking because China has reached 7nm. If China reaches current gen then the west as a whole will lose their biggest card over the global south.
stolen trade secrets is my absolute favorite flavor of american china rage
Did you know the American Patent Office has jurisdiction over the entire planet? :thonk:
Yankees get frothing mad if you remind them that it's not 1950 anymore and they can't just have the rest of the world bow down to their whiny temper tantrums
All Chinese born after 1990 know is to chat, steal they way into unfairly competing, violate humane rights, flout the rule of law, put American company out of business, eat hot chip and lie.
YOU LIE, CHEAT, AND STEAL YOU LIE, CHEAT, AND STEAL YOU LIE, CHEAT, AND STEAL HOW CAN I TOLERATE YOU? I WILL NOT TOLERATE YOU I WILL GO DOWN BESIDE YOU I MUST GO DOWN BESIDE YOU NO ONE IS INNOCENT
they (PRC) lie cheat and steal their way into unfairly competing, putting American companies out of business
good
Death to America
It’s funny how mask off libs become the higher they are to power, their issue is economic rights, not human ones, and resolving ones is always linked to the other
Final Mexican State Approves Same-Sex Marriage
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's northeastern border state of Tamaulipas voted on Wednesday to recognize same-sex marriage, making it legal in every district across the country.
The congress of Tamaulipas approved to recognize equal marriage within its Civil Code, it said in an official Twitter account.
It comes the same month three other states approved the statute, a long-awaited mark of progress for a country known for high levels gender-violence.
"Today is a historic day for the LGBTQ community and for Mexico. Today we and our families are more visible, more equal, and we are a country with more justice," said LGBTQ activist Enrique Torre Molina.
Putin:
As long as nuclear weapons exist, there is always a danger of their use;
Russia does not need to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, there is no point in it;
We spoke about a 'dirty bomb' being created by Kiev for a reason, Moscow has a rough idea of where Ukraine's dirty bomb is being made.
https://twitter.com/Herravaldet/status/1584792279063068673
Former intelligence officer and head of media relations for the Swedish army, as well as former press chief of the foreign minister, is demanding that a journalist be "taken out of service" for writing an article that is sceptical of Swedish military propaganda and media collaboration.
And the article isn't even that critical, its literally just "I'm fundamentally sceptical of an all-military perspective due to the bias towards warhawking, this guy is paraded around every Swedish media outlet giving uncritically pro-NATO opinions, and he never cites a single source outside of mentioning two twitter accounts once." as well as pointing out the absurd divide in how emotionally charged war reporting is for the Ukraine war compared to literally every western initiated wars and invasions.
It's literally just a baseline "good journalism" opinion piece pointing out how we've apparently decided to go against elementary school level critical thinking when it comes to the war.
Most of the replies as well is just disgusting NAFO tier "bro you love putin cock" or on an actually scary level, "If this was martial law you'd be charged with land treason for questioning the integrity of a military officer!!!".
This thread on :reddit-logo:r/soccer is very interesting. r/soccer is obviously much more non-western than r/worldnews for example, and it truly shows how many people around the world at this point have understood the real nature of Ukraine outside of the lies of Western media. People are talking about nazi connections, Zelensky begging and calling Ukraine a failed state and getting upvoted for it. Libs screeching about evil Pootin are getting downvoted and destroyed in the comments.
management at my workplace had a session yesterday where staff could submit questions (that were visible on an online thing) about future workplace plans in an attempt to look "responsive". among all the other questions:
"If Chinese-Australians end up in internment camps in the coming war with China, will <employer> guarantee the right of re-employment after they're released?"
:what-the-hell:
