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.
lemmitors are just mass downvoting negative articles about Ukraine in their news comms, even if it comes from mainstream sources like Wapo or ft. Someone in the comments just has to accuse the OP of being a tankie or having a pro-Russian agenda and then engagement with the post just craters so it doesn’t show up in feeds anymore.
/r/worldnews still has articles saying Ukraine is winning, crazy cope over there
deleted by creator
But but the real counteroffensive hasn’t started yet
Wear em down, it won’t be too long before we break through their first defensive lines (mass downvoting)
I go in at night and upvote everything, but by the next day they’ve redownvoted the whole field again, sometimes stacking their downvotes on top of eachother.
Operation Ikea Freedom will be an overwhelming success when it launches.
I propose that we tone down the rhetoric, draw them into our spaces before closing the encirclement, exactly like how Paulus’s 6th Army was destroyed in Stalingrad.
I am absolutely certain that some of them are vote manipulating with multiple accounts and that one of lemmy’s main problems going forwards is going to be the question of how to combat vote manipulation.
removing downvotes did a lot to create a healthier and more engagement minded culture here.
Unfortunately, saying “it worked for hexbear” would probably poison the well.
The biggest thing about not having a downvote is that if someone is talking absolute rubbish you MUST respond to counter it, which is extremely effective when you aim to speak and reach the truth of a given matter.
Good way of putting it.
I also like how it removes the ability to be passively negative. Systems with downvotes allow people to be passively interacting with opinions and statements and get themselves worked up without at any point engaging mentally with the subject matter. Having to take the time to actually express the opinion forces at minimum a brief moment of thought.
Whoever’s idea it was to do this really had a handle on how forums work.
My support for it wasn’t based on that but instead based on the interesting research that shows it’s bad for us.
This study in particular: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.1429.pdf
This means that a downvoted person is more likely to engage in future. And that their future interactions are more likely to be bad. It creates a negativity spiral.
That’s fascinating, thanks for linking the study.
It is. My personal opinion is that this is what creates the combativeness of reddit, where every interaction is viewed by people as a debate to be won. And it creates horrible behaviour.
That feedback loop probably drives a lot of engagement for
I agree. And I know that they are quite aware of this research as it was given to me by a former admin I used to be acquainted with.
reddit with hexbear characteristics
It would be interesting to see what an identical site in terms of how it works would be like after a few months of doing a user transfer from an assortment of the default subreddits.
100% vote manipulation by firms contacted by the ClA
lol maybe. I’m not against the idea the feds are already here, they’ve infiltrated 5 person marxist book reading groups several times so we know for certain that they get to stuff early.