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.
To be fair, Roscosmos has done what, a hundred crewed missions since the breakup of the USSR. Has SpaceX even made it to ten yet?
I wouldn't be too impressed with the launch statistics either because at least half of them are just dumping starlink satellites into LEO to financially sustain SpaceX.
You can compare that to success rate of the Long March rockets:
which from memory covers ~10 rockets with various engines and propellants
If we're comparing crew vehicle launch rates, SpaceX has had 10 launches of Crew Dragon carrying actual people on board since their very first in August 2020, or 3 1/3 per year.
For an apples-to-apples comparison in that same time frame, Soyuz crew vehicles have launched 6 times. If we're generous we could call it 6 1/2 launches in the same time frame, since there was a launch in April 2020 and the next one was October 2020. That's a launch rate of about 2 1/6 per year. SpaceX has a crew launch rate about 50% higher.
And not only did one of those Soyuz vehicles during that post-August 2020 time frame have that coolant leak (my memory was wrong in my earlier comment, it was coolant and not propellant leaking during the MS-22 mission), but the uncrewed Soyuz-derived Progress cargo ship MS-21 that was built about the same time and at the same facilities by the same technicians had the exact same coolant leak problem. That's not a design flaw, because that basic design has been in use on Soyuz variants for half a century. That has to be negligence during construction. Either negligence in testing components prior to construction, or negligence testing the integrated system after construction. Either way it's negligence, and Roscosmos' Q&A controls didn't catch either problem.
A successful launch is a successful launch. I thought you wanted to compare launch rates?
Look, I know it's frustrating to give the slightest shred of credit to any project that has even the slightest connection to twitter's current asshole-in-chief. I really do sympathize. The world would be a much better place if he was simply not around anymore to influence it. But if we ignore these facts for ideology reasons, then we're no better than the liberals who throw ideological tantrums when we try to make them face uncomfortable facts on political, historical, and economic matters.
I do give credit to the Chinese space agency though. They're also using Soyuz vehicle and Salyut station module derivatives, but improving on them in terms of both reliability and capability. Using a Salyut derivative instead of a Soyuz derivative for uncrewed cargo flights is just
, those can carry huge amounts of cargo. And if they've had any Q&A problems they keep those problems a tight secret. I would bet on them not having substantial issues though, they're known for professionalism in Q&A. I'm glad that they're finally transitioning away from dropping toxic hypergolic rocket stages from their inland launch sites and moving to cryogenic rockets to be launched from the coastal Wenchang facility.
I typed out a long reply and accidentally hit cancel lol
In essence