19 nations want to join the BRICS organization, and the current five members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa if you weren't previously aware) are meeting in Cape Town in early June to discuss enlarging the group. South Africa's ambassador to the group has said "Thirteen countries have formally asked to join and another six have asked informally. We are getting applications to join every day."
Some of the nations that we know about include Argentina, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, and Iran, but it appears there are three more countries in Africa that want to join but haven't been disclosed yet (perhaps it's risky for them to publicly ask as America wouldn't be happy about it).
In other news, Russia has recently carried out one of their most powerful attacks on Ukraine to this date, with bomber planes flying seemingly freely and without interception from Ukrainian air defense and missiles and drones raining down on the country. A couple days before, we saw footage of Russian Lancet drones blowing up Ukrainian S-300 systems on the front line, presumably there to try and counter Russian air power when Ukraine launches its counteroffensive, which some have speculated will begin on May 9th, which is Victory Day in Russia, for the propaganda effect.
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.
May 1st's update is here in the comments.
May 3rd's update is here in the comments.
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.
All joking aside, it's pretty disgusting how a r*pist like Trump can get away with doing SA to multiple women over the years and nothing happens to him and the thing liberals want to put him in jail over is farting on the constitution or some dumb bullshit.
Police in the Dutch town of Groningen has arrested a Ukrainian national and charged him with drunk driving after he had crashed his car into a lightpole. The man had no ID on him but when searching the car the police found a Ukrainian driver's license issued to Boris Johnson, featuring a photo of the disgraced British leader and an expiration date in the year 3000.
Cities that aren’t important at all: the ones that Russia has captured
Cities that are very important: the ones Russia hasn’t captured
*list is subject to change depending on what cities Russia is going to capture next
I still don't understand why the Saudi realignment isn't bigger news in the US. The American-Saudi partnership has been an incredibly pivotal economic relation that tilted the international economic landscape both during the cold war and beyond. The breakdown of that partnership and the wind-down of the regional cold war between Saudi and Iran bodes quite ill for American hegemony in the Middle East and their influence in global energy markets.
I think most journalists and analysts aren't taking the news very well and the narrative is basically "Okay, sure, China has managed to make a temporary truce between Iran and Saudi Arabia but it's unlikely this deal will last due to (insert racist statement about the human nature of brown people here)"
this sounds like projection consider how the western countries are doing revolving ladder kicking between them
Ever since the US made spreading "Freedom and Democracy" the core fairy tale of it's foreign policy, Saudi Arabia has been a sore subject. We won't hear much about this realignment for the same reason we heard nothing about the war in Yemen. Our alliance with SA has absolutely no propaganda value. It is a radioactive regime which only invites uncomfortable questions about our foreign policy objectives. The mask starts slipping when we go from supporting dubious color revolutions one week to fist-bumping monarchs the next. Americans are the most brainwashed people on Earth, but even that goes too far.
I still don’t understand why the Saudi realignment isn’t bigger news in the US.
The US spins minor L's in its favor while tries to sweep major L's under the rug.
At the end of the day the Saudis use a lot of US military gear for which they need support. But the West can't really afford to antagonise the Saudis further given the current energy markets. Neither can they really pull an effective charm offensive, given the mood about the Saudis at home.
But I think a lot of the Western elites are counting on the idea that decades of hostility and geopolitical competition isn't disarmed so easily.
The Tavini Huiraatira party, a left wing, pro independence party, has achieved an absolute majority in the Assembly of French Polynesia (38/57 seats) after the latest round of elections. This is Tavini Huiraatira’s best result ever, and it has broken the stranglehold of the two entrenched conservative parties which are anti-independence.
can't wait for the :cia: to restore 'freedom' to them
NAFO: Noooooooo, the drone attack was a false flagerino. It's ruZZian dezinformatsiya maskirovka, you red fascist tankie nooooooo
Ukrainian postal service: https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1653769407099707395
a pig was lit on fire lol
🇫🇷 🇷🇺 French demonstrators blow back at police crackdown with Molotov cocktails.
Explosive sounds are followed by bursts of fire directed at French police as they charge at demonstrations.
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Really upsetting to see this. I wish the French would just come to the negotiating table like adults and learn to compromise. Throwing fire bombs at the police solves nothing. Yes I do have a blue checkmark on twitter, why do you ask?
You're replying to me with brainless wojaks because of my awful takes backed up by my blue checkmark but I paid $8 for free speech and my ancestors are smiling down on me. Can yours say the same?
:soypoint-1: :mattjak: :soypoint-2:
:yes-hahaha-yes-r:
:yes-sicko:
Please avoid jumping to conclusions. It cannot be conclusively decided to what degree the alleged Molotov cocktails that some reports claims were thrown by members of the public contributed to the combustion-related incident that happened immediately before the cop caught on fire. Also, that cop was no angel so one shouldn't blindly trust everything they claim.
Let's not jump to any conclusions about this officer-involved molotoving until the protestors finish their investigation into what happened.
the fact that this emoji is broken makes every cop's death 20 times funnier
The government said Ukraine tried to attack the Kremlin in Moscow with drones to kill President Vladimir Putin and warned of retaliatory measures against Kiev.
Zelensky sent a deranged assassin to my home in the form of an aggressive robin that attacks my living room windows, no doubt he wants to silence my posts pointing out how Ukraine loves nazis. I will not stop.
:sankara-salute: thank you for standing bravely against this avian threat. No doubt the next step will be sending Lockheed’s Martins to your home, though I think they can easily be distracted with dried mealworms
cops in france carry lil personal fire extinguishers because of how common it is to be set on fire. Rest of the first world needs to up the game
Pro-tip for the cops reading this: Simply stopping being a cop and getting a real job is a much more effective way of avoiding developing burns following a combustion-related incident.
OTAKON: "Snake! The Gendarmerie carry personal fire extinguishers, don't bother trying to light them on fire."
SOLID SNAKE: "Hrm.. I suppose my molotovs are useless."
OTAKON: "That's right, Snake, but if you have good enough aim, you should be able to hit them for critical damage if you shoot the pressurised cans. They're located close to a femoral artery too!"
SOLID SNAKE: "Copy. ACAB. Snake out."
Poland wants reparations from Germany and then from Moscow, the Financial Times says.
In the opinion of the publication, Poland remains "the main hyena of Europe." In October, the Poles filed a formal lawsuit against Germany for reparations of 1.3 trillion euros for damages and losses incurred during World War II.
Berlin categorically rejected the claim, pointing out that the issue had been settled in the 1950s with the government of Communist Poland. But that doesn't stop the Poles.
Warsaw, however, is not demanding reparations from Russia. As Polish Secretary of State Marcin Przydacz said in an interview, Poles have a civilizationally different attitude toward Berlin and Moscow.
"With Berlin, we can start a dialogue, but with Putin, it is a different civilization." "As soon as we achieve success with Germany, the next step is to start such a discussion with another oppressor," the Polish politician fantasizes.
lmao Poland
So will the Poles in eastern Prussia then just leave towards Poland or do they get all German Citizenship ?
They're correct in demanding reparations from Germany. Fucking Germans pretend like they dealt with their past and feel extra smug about it, but each time someone wants some material justice they're like: We already said we're sorry! What's the big deal? NO HANDOUTS YOU BUMS!
Think Churchill said it first, broken clocks and all that.
Churchill is such an infuriatingly hard-to-hate figure. He did a lot of awful shit in his life. But he also rallied Britain to hate nazis, which in the 1930s was a PR challenge of the highest order.
hard-to-hate
he has some spicy quotes that will help with this. real "exterminate the brutes" stuff
During the Munich crisis as Poland helped the Nazis destroy Czechoslovakia
If Bonnet had any doubts that the Polish ambassador was not accurately representing his government’s views, these were quickly put to rest by Field Marshal >Edward Smigly-Rydz. He told the French ambassador in Warsaw, Leon Noel, that the Poles considered Russia, no matter who governed it, to be “ Enemy No. 1 . ”
“ If the German remains an adversary, he is not less a European and a man of order; for Poles, the Russian is a barbarian, an Asiatic, a corrupt and poisonous element, >with which any contact is perilous and any compromise, lethal.” According to the Polish government, aggressive action by France, or the movement of Soviet troops, >say even across Romania, could prompt the Poles to side with Nazi Germany. This would suit many Poles, reported Noel: they “ dream of conquests at the expense of >the USSR, exaggerating its difficulties and counting on its collapse.” France had better not force Poland to choose between Russia and Germany, because their >choice, according to Noel, could easily be guessed.25 As Daladier put it to the Soviet ambassador, “Not only can we not count on Polish support, but we have no faith >that Poland will not strike [us] in the back.” Polish loyalty was in doubt even in the event of direct German aggression against France.26
:poland-cool:
there's also the local politics aspect to this, there are elections coming up this year in Poland, I heard the Law and Justice party ran a poll and the numbers were good for this issue (apparently better than their regular 30% base support), so they are now deploying it right before the elections, there was also a media blitz recently about who's pro-Pope John Paul II and who's not, which also yielded them a positive bump in the polls
‘Red scare’ in US causes multi-year flood of refugees with PhDs to China
The United States may want to choke off vital supplies of hi-tech gear, especially advanced semiconductors, to China. But, thanks to a “red scare” about industrial espionage and intellectual property theft that has specifically targeted ethnic Chinese researchers, it is inadvertently repatriating scientific talent to the mainland on a massive scale.
It’s an influx of refugees all right, but with PhDs and other advanced degrees, and many even with tenures back in the US. Forget Beijing’s Thousand Talents Plan or Overseas High-Level Talent Recruitment Programmes. The US government is recruiting for China by creating a climate of fear among an ethnic group of researchers through selective prosecution, while casting hundreds under suspicion and killing the careers of many.
In a new analysis of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data, the conservative Cato Institute found that in 2021, the US lost published research scientists to other countries, while China gained more than 2,408.
“This was a remarkable turnaround from as recently as 2017 when the United States picked up 4,292 scientists and China picked up just 116,” it said. “The rest of the OECD and China have both surpassed the United States for net inflow of scientific authors.”
We're really determined to lock in our "declining empire" trajectory, huh. Let's make good and sure those cascading systems failures have no way of being course-corrected!
