Now with images!
@granit had an excellent comment in the last megathread recommending a podcast on MMT, as well as Marxism and anti-imperialism. Check it out!
Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
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 ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
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.
Yesterday's discussion post.
It is interesting to me that this reaction to something that isn't really of earth-shattering importance by itself - like, Ukraine wasn't a household subject in the West before the invasion threat really mounted, it's among the poorest countries in Europe, it doesn't play any discernable role in world politics unless you were really into agricultural world news or the current state of Russia-US/NATO relations and geopolitics. Like, if Russia had invaded Finland then then that's an attack on a "western", fully white nation and would be of inflated importance in people's minds, and if Russia had invaded a NATO country then... well, we wouldn't be here talking about it.
So it's interesting that the US did all this in response to Russia's invasion when, as the article says, the same was not really true for the Soviet Union. That was more of an ideological and cultural separation and demonization, but not so much explicitly seeking to completely isolate them and destroy them economically and shatter them into a hundred different tiny countries and salting their land and so on, and everybody being on board with that. It was an underlying hatred and fear, whereas this is really burning hot.
Is it desperation to boost the military-industrial complex in response to the falling rate of profit? Is it that we're governed by people who have almost no concept of realpolitik, as opposed to people like Kissinger? Is it people no longer seeing Russia as the threat it was during the Cold War, due to its perceived destruction after 1990, and thus everybody thinking that asking "Hmm, should we humiliate Russia or not? Should we let them get Ukraine's territory or not?" is even an applicable question to this situation as they still buy the whole "GDP the size of Italy, half their nukes probably don't work anymore" thing?
Any mafia boss will be able to tell you how important it is to maintain credibility. If people see you as powerful you can get your way unchallenged but if people starts doubting your ability to bank up your demands with force, your power slips away and people starts challenging you.
The US is in a similar situation. What was once a shining city on a hill is now increasingly seen as a failed state, a cautionary tale of how not to run a country. Chinese industry is roaring while the US seems incapable of product anything but weapons and financial scams. Even large parts of the weapons industry is just a front for scams. The political system is ossified and seemingly unable to govern effectively as evidenced by the humiliating mismanagement of COVID.
The ability to break Cuba, Venezuela, Korea, Iran and Bolivia as well as the humiliating defeat in Afghanistan has seriously put into question the US ability to project power abroad.
And then we have the Ukraine crisis. The US had invested a lot of effort in drawing Ukraine into its sphere of influence and encircling Russia. Had they succeeded it would have been a welcome win for Washington.
But the plans feel apart and Russia openly challenged them. The US had to take up the challenge in order to maintain credibility as an empire. The alternative, a negotiated compromise with Russia involving de-escalation of NATO, would havesaved thousands of lives but it would also have been a huge blow to the US empire's status and would have opened up a Pandora's box of challenges to their global supremacy. War was the only acceptable option for Washington.
Yes I think it will become the US suez moment once russia wins and there's some reflection and people realise that the US was unable to change the outcome doing everything bar sending troops(although there are 'advisors' there currently)
I think there's something to the idea that the current crop of technocrats believe there own bullshit to some extent, 'ukraine is winning we just need to send a few more wunderwaffens and it'll be a game-changer' etc, IMO there's a feedback loop with the media
Media military industrial fart sniffing circle jerk feed back loop.
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I've actually now been thinking about it quite a bit and what the US could actually get out of it and I think it could just be about Oil, the US hit peak Oil in 1970 but was able to deal with it thanks to discovering Alaska but ever since then US oil production has come down, offshore can set it off but it's not very efficient and cannot preserve their status, the thing that really reversed it was fracking but those drills lose 30% of their output every year until depletion so you need to constantly build new drills and that's not being done anymore, so we've might've already hit peak fracking oil and because those drills lose 30% it's basically falling down, almost all of the USAs geopolitics is based on their energy/oil dominance with them losing it a lot of stuff built on it will come down as well, the petrodollar probably won't exist in a world where OPEC or Russia hold the oil dominance.
They might think that even though their energy dominance decline is inevitable they might still be able to hold onto it if they eliminate the most dangerous players, Iran is already isolated and the US gov probably thinks they can control the Gulf states. The one country that could bring this all down is Russia, so they have to move as quickly as possible and isolate Russia so that they cannot be challenged. This might be why the US looks so brazen why they were fine with endangering the US dollars status as the global reserve currency because it might not even exist in the future, why they are so willing to drive Russia and China closer together because they have to try to isolate them in order to hold onto their dominance.
I think they might've overestimated their own influence as we can now see countries like India not really caring about it and lots of european nations giving up on the sanctions and start getting russian gas in order to keep their economies going.
So I think the reason might not even be about NATO and affirming it to it's allies even though that is a nice benefit it's about Oil, US is running out of cheap to produce oil and the next country that is able can challenge their hegemony.