No update today, apologies. I intended to make one today but then numerous events and happenstances occurred. Tomorrow will be a return to your daily scheduled programming.
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.
I agree with Michael Roberts' thesis (my paraphrasing): that global captalism was saved from self-destruction during the Great Depression by WW2. The rebuilding of the capital stock of the west kept things going into the 70s, when capitalism began to enter into another free fall. Then, capitalism was only saved because of globalized supply chains and markets, just-in-time production, and offshoring. It's the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in action, only with capitalism saved at the last minute. Had the capitalists not found ways to keep the plane flying, I do think we could have seen a massive wave of socialist revolutions across the globe.
I don't think these capitalists and the economic sorcerers of their court (even the cream of the crop, the ones who show up in places like Davos and Jackson Hole) realize they just can't undo globalization and expect capitalism to survive. I mean, of course they don't see it. They all think capitalism is the only option for the world. They think it's this inherently stable system and pulling back from globalization would mean maybe a minor, manageable drop in profits. Going back on globalization means capitalism would enter a massive profitability crisis (it's already approaching crisis levels as-is!) that IMO would dwarf the 2008-9 financial crisis.