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.
Another lula w
Maybe Social Democracy isn't objectively the moderate wing of Fascism. Maybe Euros and Anglos just suck at not being fash.
I think "social democracy" is fundamentally different in non imperial core countries, due to a lack of a proper dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Still not socialism though.
"Social democracy" can mean a lot of different things in the global south. You have genuinely good leaders like Lula but you also have people like Juan Guaido who was a succdem when he was prematurely appointed to be the American viceroy of Venezuela. Even Jeanine Añez, Bolivia's former dictator, was a member of a succdem party at some point.
And it doesn't help that all kinds of opportunists will flock to more or less leftist labels whenever those are popular.
Eh, it still is. Even at their best, if they don't go out of their way to actually do non-succdem policies (like fight and jail fascists) their policies inevitably lead to fascism becoming the main political force in the country. Lula has learned that from the first go-around, where he essentially got lucky that Bolsanaro is incredibly incompetent.
Lula isn't a social democrat though, I'm pretty sure he's a democratic socialist. There's a big difference
He's borderline, Like Chavez. Certainly not as hardline as Allende.
strictly speaking he's actually to the right of a social democrat - came from unionism, but union membership actually fell during his presidency; tends to listen to social movements, but usually favors the bourgeoisie; wants to end hunger but does it with a neoliberal project without even attempting to solve the underlying issue of our food producing structures; wants more infrastructure, but builds them within the framework of public-private partnerships and concedes a lot (and i mean a lot) or public property into the hands of the bourgeoisie, and so on
it's just that his foreign politics are a lot better than we'd expect from a "moderate" south american, especially here in brazil where so-called "moderates" are actually neoliberal ghouls who want people working 12 hours a day and house cleaners to be family servants
What here we'd call a "Whitlam" (A Labor Right politician who ended up being our most Left-Wing PM to the point the US had to coup him) Socialist. Not actually a Socialist but malleable if circumstances and an organised left force him onto a socialist path.
The poster who talked about the difference between core and peripheric countries was right. A social democrat in Brazil is trying to make sure the welfare system is not thrown out with the bathwater. That's Lula's position. He's at the head of a country that only recently began to make social investments, that was defeated in the cold war, whose last instint of industrial developmentism was first domesticated with a US led coup, and then largely dismantled when that junta fell from grace. A social democrat in Europe is in charge of dismantling the welfare state. At which point are shaped by our reality, rather than bringing our ideology to fore? It's hard to say.
I think he's just based.
He would 100% call himself a social democrat over a socialist. So would brazillian communists