Iran's recently been causing some hubbub in South America. Back in early February, Panama allowed Iranian naval ships to sail through the Panama Canal so long as they abided by international norms, an act which has angered the United States. And more recently, Iranian warships were allowed to dock in Brazil - despite pressure on Lula from both Israel and the United States - with Ted Cruz making some rather lackluster threats.
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.
March 6th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 7th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 8th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 10th's update is here in the comments.
I'm gonna be researching and writing up an effortpost on rare earth elements and how China owned the West in that field over the weekend so no update on Saturday.
I'd also like to bring to your attention another effortpost I've put on the site, by @ComradeRat, in response to a question about early Marxist thinkers and terminology, like "historical materialism" and "scientific socialism", and who exactly invented these terms and were they misused by others later on, etc.
Links and Stuff
American anti-war rally on March 18th by left groups!
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.
Russians stumbling towards a Soviet command economy (very slowly but happening) may just be the greatest thing to happen in a while, and funniest.
All that running
All that hiding
and where did that bring you?
:back-to-me-shining:
Unpopular opinion on this megathread: What Russia is moving towards is more akin to the post-WWII capitalist industrial policy that occurred in places like Western Europe and South Korea than a Soviet style command economy. Still very much not neoliberalism though.
At this point anything that appears to challenge the python-like stranglehold that neoliberalism has on the entire european continent (and the psyche of everyone who lives there) is going to be perceived positively by people here. I sure as hell know that while Russia is certainly not the USSR, and honestly sucks ass in a lot of ways, them stumbling back into proving that keynesism works is going to be important for the rest of europe if we are to have any hope of not being swallowed by the sea.
Oh absolutely, I don't want to imply this is a net negative or anything.
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100%
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So if neoliberalism does not win in Russia and they move their economy more towards a Soviet command economy. Is this a win because the material conditions will be ripe for a transition to socialism? Or will it be a farce because the Russian state is not a dictatorship of the proletariat?
Good topic for discussion.
You'll get different answers from realists vs optimists. Truth be told you need a bit of both in order to have any reasonable outlook for the coming decades taking climate change into account.
Russia is going to get through CC relatively well compared to the rest of the global south. Good climate, tons of resources, large territory and obviously tons of natural resources.
But they're not heading towards a leftist government anytime soon.
The way in which the west is using identity politics in order to shame baby leftists into supporting Ukraine is unfortunately poisoning the well for at least one generation. Russia was already conservative and seeing the US leverage the whole leftist ideology in support of Ukraine just means leftist movements in Russia will have to support the reactionary forces just to survive.
Of course it goes without saying the current state of "western left" as mostly anti-Russia and moderately anti-China means they get all the evidence they need. Showing ordinary people that "western leftists" hate Russia is a huge burden for Russian leftists. I don't see any short-medium term way out of this sadly.
The second problem is that China is not exporting leftism to the global south, period. It is one if not the biggest criticism towards the CPC. The whole cooperation/mutual coexistence talk is a starting point, not the destination. There is no such thing with regards to reactionary fascists worldwide. Eventualy even the global south reactionaries will turn against China given the correct material conditions, sadly you can take India as the biggest example.
But with regards to Russia it means China is very much a hands off approach we got your back bro thing. They'll support whoever sides with them against the US, obviously Putin's successor should have no issues here. This means there is no real pressure for China to bolster leftist movements in Russia beyond what is necessary to keep the partnership going.
I'll say that I don't even think that Russia is going to do a Soviet command economy, what is more likely is that they'll move towards a more keynesian economy maybe they'll adopt the super keynsianism that china currently engages in though I'll doubt it which will reindustrialize the country for 10-20 years and then the neoliberals will get their hooks in again and do it all over.
regarding your first comment, I keep seeing conflicting opinions about how much or little Russia stands to gain from Climate change. Supposedly a warmer climate will allow them to turn more of Siberia into actual arable farmland, however I also see people claim that this is entirely cope and Russia will actually lose farmland as the climate heats up.
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I imagine China will become more involved in ideological struggle, or at the very least support communist parties loyal to them, once the ideological part of the Cold War ramps up. Right now it’s just platitudes about “anti western systems” in China and “anti Chinese communism” in the US.
Most of the world also is relatively stable and uninspired by any of the events in South America to become pink, or the war in Europe to demand complete decoupling of the west. Essentially you’re facing a third world who is prioritizing the status quo to get food, medicine, mitigate climate change and not revolution. I.e. It’s a bit harder to export revolution when no one except Naxalites and Filipino maoists are fighting liberation wars, and China is against the latter to preserve a “neutral” Philippines.
It depends how on how the communists are mobilizing. Some communists have said that the communist party of Russia is controlled opposition. I can see that, considering they protested the election accusing Putin of fraud, only to support him backhandedly during the war. There was also a televised event where different leaders of parties came and brought their concerns to Putin. One of them was the communist party leader and he just says some shit about how the war is important for socialism and Putin just nods lol.
Maybe they’re playing the long con. But unless they can increase socialist fervor then it’s not gonna result in much