Image is from @Parsani@hexbear.net, who got it from @RNAi@hexbear.net, who got it from Discord.

Thread update: Prigozhin’s fucking dead.

rip-bozo

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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
    37·
    11 months ago

    Rising powers, multipolarity and capitalism’s ‘final crisis’

    Thoughts? I think it’ll be obvious where I come down on it but given that he spends the first part of the interview talking in terms of Lenin’s definitions of imperialism, I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand.

    Ukraine was part of Russia — there was no such country as Ukraine, according to Putin. There is actually very little in his speech about NATO and its expansion to Russia’s borders. Instead, he revealed that his real motive was to reestablish the Russian Empire. Ukraine has a lot of very important and valuable resources. Ukraine’s geopolitical position also makes it extremely important for all who seek to dominate Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which of course includes the imperialist states grouped together in NATO. Russia felt that it could strengthen its position vis-à-vis its imperialist rivals by crushing Ukraine’s independence.

    I have no problem describing that as imperialism. It is a different form of imperialism — in many ways it is a more traditional form of imperialism than the one implemented by the West since 1980, but it deserves the title of imperialism.

    …

    There is plenty of debate about whether we can describe China as a capitalist country. But there is no disputing that there are many capitalists in China, including in the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and that it is in their DNA to become imperialist.

    …

    First of all, as you know, there is a lot of politics going on around this issue; there are a lot of people who hurl the term imperialist against China and Russia in order to present the West as the defenders of humanity against these new imperial powers. It is important to be totally intransigent in the face of this type of propaganda.

    But if we look at China, we can see that due to the one-child policy and various other factors, there has been big labour shortages. That has meant that the market position of Chinese workers has improved and, with it, their wages. In response to this, Chinese companies have been shifting production to countries where wages are much lower, such as Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and others.

    This is identical — albeit on a much smaller scale — to the processes of globalisation that saw transnational corporations in North America and Europe shift their production to low-wage countries, such as China.

    …

    The idea that social revolution is inconceivable and that the best we can hope for is an end to US/Western hegemony and the emergence of a multipolar world has been gaining ground among opponents of Western imperialism around the world.

    In reality, a multipolar capitalist world, a world of rival hegemons and would-be hegemons contesting for power, is a world at war.

    And the idea that we should back one side or another, that we should see the corrupt, brutal, thuggish regimes in power in China or Russia as saviours of human civilisation seems to me absurd.

    …

    Wherever we are subjectively, objectively, the necessity to begin a transition towards communism is posed by this existential crisis. Anything that distracts us from this, any sort of fantasy that some kind of a multipolar world will be better in any way, must be dispelled because we do not have any more time to waste.

    Aside from Cuba, he’s never see a socialist country he didn’t immediately hate, it appears. Pretty sus.

    • RedDawn [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      39·
      11 months ago

      corrupt, brutal, thuggish regime in China

      Did he spend any time establishing this or are we supposed to just all agree on this premise already

          • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
            22·
            11 months ago

            In bad country, citizens wages are depressed and they’re forced to weather extremevcold while the leaders receive lavish ceremonies including carriages made of gold.

        • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          16·
          11 months ago

          Honestly, this is enough for me to dismiss his position almost entirely without question. No matter what his understanding of Lenin (and I firmly disagree with his interpretation of Leninist imperialism, and generally think that he is incorrect about Russia taking the Donbas or Crimea are Leninist imperial ventures, hell China’s African SEZ’s more closely align with Leninist imperialism and even they are stretching the definition to the breaking point with China’s usual policy of forgiving and restructuring infrastructure loans).

          This guy’s brain has been so steeped in the mire of academia that it would be a courageous effort for him to actually pull his head out of his ass.

          • meth_dragon [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            11·
            11 months ago

            he’s all about how outsourcing and unequal exchange and exploitative global capital-labor relations are the face of modern imperialism but i don’t see how lenin becomes any less relevant since capital export remains the foundation upon which all these other mechanisms of exploitation are built

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      30·
      11 months ago

      The main problem with the Russian imperialism narrative is that why now? Actualy lets go with all the “why” questions that immidiately come to my mind and I readily admit I’m no expert and this is only based on what I learned in the recent past.

      -Why did Russia spend years, decades even warning the west/NATO against their expansion? If Russia was looking to simply expand their resource base they would not look at NATO with fear or even caution, they would in fact act exactly like the US and say “hey I have nukes and Ukraine is not on NATO so fuck off” and they would have done this in 2000 or 2010 not 2022.

      -Why did Russia just ignore the obvious NATO interference, the growing Nazi influence for so long, in fact why did they wait 8 years since the Maidan coup?

      -Why did Russia even bother with multiple negotiation attempts through the Minsk agreements? If resource imperialism was actualy a thing why go through the diplomatic route?

      -Why was the Minsk agreements based on the independence of the Donbass republics? What sort of imperialism is based on check notes fighting for your neighbour’s independence?

      -Why is this person ignoring the early peace deal negotiation and proposals where Ukraine was to be guaranteed independence in exchange for NATO neutrality. Fucking nothing to do with “resources”, I’d tell them to read some news about the war for once and not just some random NYT columnist opinion but I realize that is in fact terrible advice, but come on, “the Western MSM doesn’t report correctly” is no excuse, the early peace deals in March-April 2022 were widely reported and factually correct.

      I could go on but if the year was still 2014 maybe, maybe you could begin to make an argument about the reasons behind annexing Crimea, but that is pointless now. If on one side Russia is looking at only resources, on the other side Ukraine is literaly looking to commit ethinic cleansing of the Russians in donbass. I wont mention Podolyak and co yet again.

      Every single conjecture about Russian “Imperialism” is irrelevant now, not only it ignores the majority of the actual events of the past 8 years but also is like who gives a shit if Russia gets a coal mine somewhere in Donbass, what do you mean so Ukraine gets to shell and kill civilians because otherwise some academic will clutch pearls about Imperialism? Fucking reality check is all that is necessary, or in vulgar terms, take their head out of their asses for 1 second.

    • SimulatedLiberalism [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      28·
      11 months ago

      Ah yes, my favorite Aussie Trotskyists…. The only thing that will satisfy them is somehow all the working class in the world simultaneously rise up to overthrow their respective bourgeois ruling class and establish world communism, which unfortunately, as much as I’d like it to happen, is never going to happen.

    • MultigrainCerealista [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      18·
      11 months ago

      This part stood out to me:

      The third factor was the massive expansion of debt. Throughout the 40 years of neoliberalism, global debt has increased at a rate three times faster than global GDP [gross domestic profit].

      What would have happened if global debt had remained at the same proportion of GDP? Instead of anaemic growth, we would have had a decade-long global slump!

      Claudio Borio, chief economist of the Bank of International Settlements called this “debt-fueled growth”, and noted that the return of inflation and higher interest rates meant this era of debt-fueled growth is now over. This is tremendously destabilising: one of the most important

      So basically productive capacity was able to grow but now we owe the bankers money and instead of just telling them to fuck off we are going to stop growing just so we can pay the bankers more money.

      It’s seems so insane to me that the biggest factor limiting growth right now is too many numbers on one side of a spreadsheet. It’s so disconnected from material reality.

      Central planning now.

    • DictatrshipOfTheseus [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      11 months ago

      I would argue some also misplace their hopes in false solutions, such as multipolarity or the BRICS trading bloc (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa)… The idea that social revolution is inconceivable and that the best we can hope for is an end to US/Western hegemony and the emergence of a multipolar world has been gaining ground among opponents of Western imperialism around the world.

      From my understanding, it’s not that those who put their hopes in multipolarity/BRICS think that social revolution is inconceivable, it’s that we recognize that you have to have the right conditions for revolution before it can happen. Multipolarity is the best way of bringing about those conditions. Like has been said so often here, it’s about giving the global south the breathing room to be able to express its agency in the world, which in turn could allow the social revolution he’s talking about to happen without it being immediately obliterated by the sole world hegemon. The author is talking like it’s an either/or situation, when it’s not that at all. It’s a process that takes more than just a single fucking step, lol. And what (actual) leftist thinks an end to US hegemony “is the best we can hope for”?

      In reality, a multipolar capitalist world, a world of rival hegemons and would-be hegemons contesting for power, is a world at war.

      And a sudden world wide revolution wouldn’t be?

    • meth_dragon [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      11 months ago

      breh i’m reading that guy’s book wtf

      now the rest of my reading experience will be colored by the questionableness of his takes

      this is too much, the last guy at least had the decency to hide his dogshit opinions all the way at the end of the book

      i cant believe u done this

    • heartheartbreak [fae/faer]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      I think that Russia is a particularly interesting situation where there is really not a huge “export of capital” but rather a large amount of capital flight that is deflating the economy of Russia. At the same time Russia has developed financial capital with monopolies in certain areas of industry. Putin strikes me as a Russian nationalist ideologically as opposed to somebody who serves capital. All of this leading to my conclusion that the Ukraine war is an imperialist war, but an interesting imperialist war where the smo is the actual event moving Russia into the realm of imperialism.

      Imperialism is most importantly a division of the world into domains of influence, and highly important is that entry into the imperialist world order must be announced by violence/war. The United States officially entered the stage of imperialism in the 1890s with the annexations/invasions of Hawaii, Cuba and the phillipines. While this was a more natural entry into imperialism where capital at home ballooned to the point of needing super exploitation, the Russian situation is almost in a sense approached from the other angle where external threat and pressure in a way “forced” their hand in taking a slice of the Ukraine and it’s resources.

      This somewhat unique situation being the site of a lot of interesting and somewhat unique situations where “Russian Imperialism” as an explanation obscures more than it reveals.