Image is from @[email protected], who got it from @[email protected], 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.
because this is the sane and responsible thing to do. effective treatment and release of water is more environmentally responsible and less costly than storage forever with associated maintenance/inspection costs. the site is currently storing about 1.3 million tons of water, not a few thousand, over a thousand or so tanks. the contaminated water contains a bunch of isotopes. the treatment process the Japanese are using removes everything but tritium, which is heavy hydrogen. the tritium remaining in the treated water is responsible for about 60 Bq/L of radioactivity. for context, background levels of radioactivity in the ocean are about 10-15 Bq/L. canada’s drinking water guideline for tritium is 7000 Bq/L (citing canada because the country has a robust civilian nuclear program).
the release of treated water is planned to occur over decades, so all you water storage tank fans are going to have plenty of time to make pilgrimages to the Fukushima tank farms. alternatively, if you are really sad because you think the world needs another liquid radioactive waste storage site that should limp along until government austerity cuts destroy it, go check out the hanford site in OR. it’s a really cool forever tank farm that was built during the cold war and is now leaking massive amounts of radioactivity into groundwater and on into the Columbia river.
the histrionics over this are absolutely unfounded. there are a myriad of perpetual environmental liabilities around the world that are not being properly addressed, whose existence represents an indelible forever tax on all future generations. this is a situation where the Japanese government has successfully been pressured into cleaning up their own mess in an environmentally responsible way over an achievable timeline.
another link, this one from japan calling out china for releasing much greater amounts of radiation with their nuclear wastewater. I’ve got no way of verifying any of this mind you https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/world/asia-pacific/20230623-118053/
tankies
Any nuclear engineers in the house? I’ve often wondered about the reputed safety of the CANDU designs. That series of reactors does have a long history, and there’s been no well-publicized incidents anywhere near the scale of Fukushima, so I’m inclined to accept the prevailing public opinion that they’re genuinely good designs. But are they truly fundamentally safer, or have we just been lucky?
Reminder that Fukushima was only this bad because of a giant fuckin’ earthquake/tsunami. Canada is much more geologically stable, west coast excepted, and the canadian shield, where I think most of those reactors are, even moreso.
I’m still against it because I just like being contrarian.