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.
Yesterday's discussion post.
Seeing as I've heard no talk of hexing putin I can only assume the lib witches are still reeling from the battle with Allah
saw this one (9k+ likes) circulating a while ago, but it did die down (see the pic too):
I have to admit I kind of wish I could live in the witch battle DND anime world these people live in
It most be so comforting to think that making a weak tea and leaving it outside overnight could have a measurable effect on world geopolitics.
I think I've actually read a book with this plot. In fact, weirdly enough, I think I've read more than one.
the leftover physic energy from god-building is rattling around there too
Surprised I haven't seen anyone here comment on Geoff Young. Dude apparently just won his primary in Kentucky, for the same seat Amy McGrath got owned trying to contest. This is apparently his platform (I think #7 is a typo). Calls the US out for arming Nazis in Ukraine, etc.
He obviously doesn't have any chance of winning, but what I can't wrap my head around is how the hell he won his primary.
Andy Barr (R-Pro-War, Ignorant, Reckless Neocon)
this is great
edit: I think #7 in his platform isn't a typo but implying that being "pro-life" usually means being against reproductive health and contraception thereby increasing the number of abortions, legal or otherwise.
My brother is chalking up the Ukraine conflict to Putin wanting "lebensraum"
This is what watching cable news gets you I guess
Russia, famously overpopulated and land-poor
Edit: Its funny how for the libs Russia is simultaneously a gas station masquerading as a country AND running out of gas
Russia is the country that has the least need for lebensraum on the planet! Climate change is gonna thaw those tundras and make them hospitable! Burning coal is just giving them more room!
What Russia does want are non-ice coastal ports, to be fair, but equally, if the Arctic ice is gone then that problem also solves itself.
Just to be pedantic.... I think Russia is the second least in need of lebensraum. Canada has like a 5th the population and a bigger land mass than Russia.
The real reason for trump plans to buy greenland is to get lebensraum :very-smart:
Canada is a ferocious boreal hellscape inhospitable to man and the machines that sustain him.
It really looks like the Ukrainian forces on the Donbass front are seriously collapsing. Several villages being taken, including Troitske and Vyskryva south of Popasna, which imperils a ton of Ukrainian strong positions, as well as a massive push west towards Soledar and then Bakhmut, and then a push north towards Severodonetsk. Popasna being taken really was a crack in the lines that spread a massive fracture that is now devouring the Ukrainian front.
Combine that with the Russian counterattack on the Ukrainian advances near Kharkiv, and it's not looking good for Ukraine.
I hopped on to reddit and didn't see a 30k up vote post on worldnews so yeah, must be a pretty bad day for Ukraine
Fake news, the Ghost of Azov and all the scooby doo ghosts will surely destroy the russians and the rebels. That's what the western media have been telling me :so-true:
where you seeing those things? idk how people follow this conflict so closely lol i find it really hard to find good sources
72tril plugged an RSS feed of all the news directly into his brain.
DefensePoliticsAsia is a good source on YouTube if you want summaries that are very conservative (in terms of not making wild speculations and listening to cope and gossip) and reliable.
where you seeing those things? idk how people follow this conflict so closely lol i find it really hard to find good sources
If you can find the time to read twitter on like an hourly basis consider following @GeromanAT and @200_zoka, they post a lot of stuff on the RU advances. Some good videos mixed in there as well, it's like the best of Telegram if you don't have the time to do that.
On Telegram Intel Slava Z and Donbass Devuschka are quite good for an English livestreaming of the war, but can be very time-consuming and of course you'll see lots of dead Ukrainians at this point in the war.
I quit telegram because now it's like 200 new messages every day and at least 100 dead Ukrainians at that, like some wise man said around here, ain't good for your soul.
Just a curious (and mostly pointless) personal observation about the economic-psychological warfare waged not only against Russia but also Belarus (where I currently reside).
So as you know, many big brand companies had begun "exiting" these markets: some for real, other just stopping their operations (while still paying their employees' salaries) till things blow over, others rebranding, others selling off. Russia has been affected by this much much more, but Belarus too to a certain extent.
The observation. About two months ago I was taking a stroll through Minsk's biggest downtown mall, and on the 3rd floor there was a pretty substantial H&M store, which was closed. There was a sign saying "Due to the bla bla bla we made the decision etc etc etc". Pretty vague but also everyone gets it ok.
Now, this week I went back there, and the H&M store, still closed, is suddenly on the 1st floor, with the same sign on display. The space the store is occupying now is smaller on the one hand, but on the other it's very close to the entrance so more traffic. I don't know how these things are priced and which of the two spaces is more expensive to rent, but I basically see two equally plausible explanations. 1) Since H&M is closed and is losing money on that particular space, they just moved to a cheaper one. 2) Or if it's not cheaper someone had a brilliant idea to move it closer to where more foot traffic is to show off their "we're closed because we're morally superior" sign.
Either way it's their spot and they obviously keep paying for it, planning to return.
I figure there's some spots in their supply chain that makes them deal to some extent with Russia, which carries a heavy penalty. which makes business a net loss. They're closing up shop while they either figure out how to open up shop again without being sanctioned, or maybe they think sanctions will be lifted just enough to make a profit again, perhaps hoping the GOP will go soft on Russia?
Isn't there also a rumour that this is the German strategy? Because Nordstream II or w/e its called, the big pipeline that would allow for huge amounts of natural gas from Russia, hasn't really been demolished as much as the project has been put on administrative hold indefinitely. Which would mean that a potential future administration could just active the project and have it running within a couple weeks / months, if the political will is found.
According to the party chairman of the Swedish Communist Party, the Left Party(the demsocs who got support from DSA for anti-NATO activism) have ordered their local groups to not cooperate with the Communist Party in anti-NATO agitation.
tfw the national chauvinists and opportunists side with capital in a war which will inevitably lead to a huge drop in living standards, ceding the anti-war position to the far-left
how did that go last time around again? is there any sort of historical precedent for this? surely it can't backfire for them to allow the communists to become the only anti-war party when ~40% of swedes still don't support NATO membership even at a time of war drums and chest beating, and that figure will surely rise as the war gets old and the consequences worsen.
Succdems hate communists more than they love any of their stated policy goals.
Finland will be cut off from Russian natural gas supply starting at 7am tomorrow (May 21) for refusing to pay in rubles or via the euro to ruble payment scheme. And in response, Finland and Estonia will jointly lease a floating LNG terminal from a US company for 10 years.
weird how all these sanctions against russia seem to benefit the US at the expense of europe! i'm sure it's just a coincidence that this keeps happening. ah well, we may be diving headfirst into poverty and shortages but at least we're sticking it to putler and totally ruining the russian economy!
Yeah, and probably the LNG will be way more expensive because transferring gas via pipeline should be less energy intensive than liquefying gas, shipping it, and then reversing the process. I could be wrong on that since I don't really know how that process works.
They turn off the gas if you don't pay your gas bill. Everyone who's ever paid an utility bill knows that it's how these things work.
So far it looks like Finnish media is at least reporting it this way, that it is the logical result of their decision not to pay. It is better than some of the articles that came out when Poland was cut off, that Russia was simply doing it to punish Poland unprovoked
I'll probably have to wait for all the "reformed" azov nazis to write their tell all books and then wait for the one who really tells the truth but till then lets do some speculating. How much food do you think they had left in Azovstal? What other reasons would they have given up at this point in time? Like were they fighting over who gets the last twinky or were they discussing cannibalism? Or was it water? Did they draw the line at drinking their own pee?
I have no idea what the volume or availability of food vs water is in a siege scenario is like so I have no idea. Maybe they could get rainwater but that shit's probably running off the roof of the factory and taking bits of heavy metals with it so maybe not.
I clearly have Trump-brain because the first thing I thought of was that image of Trump with all the McDonalds on the big table in front of him, but in the dark in Azovstal instead. Just like, an entire room filled floor to ceiling with big macs.
In the inevitable film adaptation of this "Thermopylae" moment, the ending act will depict Azov (without any tattoos or Nazi symbols, of course) as a) all coming out of the factory simultaneously in a dramatic last stand and all getting killed but taking those damn Ruskies to hell with them; b) being told to surrender by the higher command as they've done their patriotic duty and the Donbass front is safe and reinforced because of them; or c) stabbed in the back by their command.
or c) stabbed in the back by their command.
The classic Nazi origin story. Mix in some anti-semitic conspiracy theories, and you've got a stew going
I could definitely see that being the case. Intentional or not, I would be surprised if we don't see it used at least somewhat in the inevitable post-war revanchism
With a Jewish president they've already got that lined up if they lose.
Not just about supplies but the psychological state. Russia was constantly bombing the place, you probably can't sleep while hearing constant artillery shells, ground shaking etc.
Then the fact that the wounded soldiers are also a burden. They were already desperate weeks ago, we saw the failed rescue attempts. The growing frustration was one of the biggest reasons imo.
Russia, for its part, has already lost this war [...] its sense of security diminished by the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Finland and Sweden.
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Sweden and Finland are not members of the Nazi Arming And Training Organisation yet. It turned out the west was not so united after all.
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What in the ever living fuck do the people writing this kind of drivel think NATO expansion in the Ukraine would do to Russian national security? Finland and Sweden in NATO sucks for Russia, Ukraine in NATO, or even just NATO-aligned, would have been a complete disaster for Russia.
A series of glorious victories, each closer to our capital than the last
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lost my phone, got in a fight, and got sick all in the same day. might have also lost my job, but won't know until the end of the day.
Bold move of Kiev to evacuate their troops directly into Russian prisons.
It's sometimes even worse. I made a list of many of the headlines a couple days ago
We Should Say It. Russia is Fascist, by Timothy Snyder
That didn’t last long. In 1939, the Soviet Union joined Nazi Germany as a de facto ally, and the two powers invaded Poland together. Nazi speeches were reprinted in the Soviet press and Nazi officers admired Soviet efficiency in mass deportations. But Russians today do not speak of this fact, since memory laws make it a crime to do so. World War II is an element of Mr. Putin’s historical myth of Russian innocence and lost greatness — Russia must enjoy a monopoly on victimhood and on victory. The basic fact that Stalin enabled World War II by allying with Hitler must be unsayable and unthinkable.
Sounds like Professor Snyder needs @Thomas_Dankara to reeducate him.
Nazi speeches were reprinted in the Soviet press
OH MY GOD, THE PRESS REPORTED THE NEWS? LITERALLY 1984.
Smartest liberal.
I thought I recognized that name and yeah, this guy's whole project as a "historian" is to minimize Nazi crimes by casting them as nothing out of the ordinary compared to what the Soviets did, and all just part of a single system of violence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands
the worst kinds of anticommunist lib academics eat this shit up - here's a review of his book from Anne Applebaum that's revealing:
"Snyder's original contribution is to treat all of these episodes—the Ukrainian famine, the Holocaust, Stalin's mass executions, the planned starvation of Soviet POWs, postwar ethnic cleansing—as different facets of the same phenomenon. Instead of studying Nazi atrocities or Soviet atrocities separately, as many others have done, he looks at them together. Yet Snyder does not exactly compare the two systems either. His intention, rather, is to show that the two systems committed the same kinds of crimes at the same times and in the same places, that they aided and abetted one another, and above all that their interaction with one another led to more mass killing than either might have carried out alone."
Yeah he totally doesn't compare them, just says they were basically, qualitatively the same and that Nazism and communism are symbiotic and lead to the same results
And it's worth noting that probably the foremost historian on Nazi Germany, despite also being quite lib, finds his methodology and understanding of both Nazism and the Soviet Union under Stalin to be shit:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n21/richard-j.-evans/who-remembers-the-poles
The book was awarded numerous prizes, including the 2013 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought
lmao
Yikes. Thanks for the context. I remember his name popping up all the time after Trump was elected, I guess to coincide with the publication of On Tyranny, but haven't read anything of his other than this stupid op-ed. Thanks for Evans's review, too. I'll read that now.
Never have I ever heard a liberal talk about what went before the German-Soviet pact of non-agression. Not a word about how the British blocked any attempts at an anti-Hitler pact, that effort might as well never have happened if you are to believe western historiography. Not a word about how the western imperialist nations carved up Czechoslovakia and gave the parts to Germany and Poland in the Chamberlain-Hitler pact.
Nor do they ever say a word about what happened afterwards, not a word about how the USSR fought the hardest and made the greatest sacrifices to rid the world of fascism.
It's all Russia Bad, Communism Bad and nothing else with that lot.
Stalin enabled World War II by allying with Hitler
SOMEBODY TELL THE FUCKING CZECH IT WASN'T THE ANGLO-FRENCH'S FAULT!
We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat... you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi régime. We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude... we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road... we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting". And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.
England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame, and will get war.
Churchil on the Munich Agreement.
China has proposed to start an expansion process of BRICS
for fuck's sake. They are going to ruin a perfectly good acronym
As the first order of business, I'd accept Somalia, Honduras, Iran, and Tajikistan, personally.
china to announce new organization that contains top 100 countries by population "BRICSUIPNBMJEPEVDTIGTUFITMKSCSUAASUIAPCMSUPAMMGYNVMCCNANTSBMRMCKZGESNSCCSZGRBBTBBHCSDCGJPASHUHTBAPSISTSHLPBLLNKETSDFCSNOSCLICNMPKCMGEUBMAJQAPLNGBGLNSGLBETETMCEDFRCGBSMMLWSCMMMBGBBMIVFBNFMSSSCGCKGSATUSAIADCBMNGASFSMTSLSGBCPCATWNSSSMFNTH"
Then Zelenskyy would probably have a couple swastika-adorned fans ready to greet hm at the door when he got home?
The "cracking open a cold one with the boys" to "getting cracked open like a cold one by the boys" pipeline.
What if they go to reach into the bag of chips at the same time
If you want some fresh racism and orientalism, here's Business Insider calling Ramzan Kadyrov a "Chechen Warlord" multiple times .
They literally quote a tweet from the UK MoD that calls him the Chechen Republic Head, then they turn around and says the tweet called him a warlord.
To me it seems very obvious that the term is just being deployed for propaganda points using asiatic hordes imagery, they offer no qualifications for why he should be described as a "warlord" and they literally misquote statements to include the term instead of his actual title and position.
What speaks against calling him a warlord is that he is pretty loyal to the central government. That's atypical for a warlord.
I might be wrong about this but he also doesn't seem to be engaged in skirmishes against other warlords, something that you would also typically expect a warlord to do.
I get why it would make sense to call him that but it's not an exact fit.
