It's my weekly rest day, so no update today.
I just want to thank everybody who has engaged with these threads, from the frequent commenters, to the background lurkers, and even the people who come in thinking this is the main megathread and start telling us about their banana bread recipe or something like that.
I'm hopeful that my daily schedule will stabilise for at least the next few weeks, if not months, and I can finally get a reliable stream of updates rather than those punctuated by random breaks.
Of course, may the war end soon, and may Azov, Right Sector, and every other group get what they deserve. And, of course, these threads will continue past the end of the war - unless the end of the war coincides with a sudden and brief increase in the air temperature to several million degrees in every city on the planet.
Yesterday marked the 72nd day of me doing this. I'm gunning for 72 trillion more.
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's so fucking funny to me that like, Sweden and Finland both confidently strode up to NATO and were "We want in." and the whole media cycle for a day or two was journalists - who think that they're uniquely intelligent people whose opinions have any more merit than anybody else's - making articles with headlines like "You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it. Putin has brought us together into unity and together, autocratic regimes will never prosper." And then like a day later, Erdogan comes out of nowhere and stops the whole parade.
Like, this is the funniest thing that could have happened, and I feel bad for not predicting it based on the principle that the stupidest and/or funniest thing will always happen because we live in a dying world run by failchildren and the failchildren of those failchildren. And it's similar for Orban blocking the oil embargo for so long. Like, it sucks so fucking bad that the only people who are putting up any fight against this are these horrific quasi-fascist turds (aside from the really principled ones, like the Portugese communists or some of the more left-wing groups Sweden or Finland).
But there's few things I like more than watching liberals eat shit on their takes and predictions, and some overpaid motherfucking journalist who starts half their articles with a quote from the Iliad, writing an article about how Turkey and Hungary should be kicked out of every organization and sanctions put on them that you can obviously tell was written with incredible seething anger - watching their fury is like nectar from the gods to me. These are some of the most passively evil people on the planet, people who are doing propaganda for this genocidal global empire but actually fully believe the bullshit to their core, and them crying over their keyboards is just :chefs-kiss:. Really hoping for the day when I can get a Liberal Tears mug and have it not be automatically assumed that I'm a weirdo chud.
No one is immune to propaganda and that includes the propagandists peddling their bullshit. If anything, the propagandist is more exposed to propaganda by virtue of being a propagandist, so it's only a matter of time before the propagandist has their brain melted by their own propaganda.
There’s a psychological phenomena where you begin to believe things you recite out loud repetitively, even if you fully consciously disagree it. Propagandists who know they are spouting lies start with cynical lying manipulation, then they still half believe it in a semi-detached way, and finally they fit it into their cohesive worldview to fill in a gap unconsciously.
It's not a total surprise than Turkey would fuck it up for them, because NATO conceptually doesn't make sense anymore and hasn't since 1992. The war in Ukraine absolutely has extended NATO's lifespan yet another 30 years like some fucking evil neromantic lich ritual - honestly, absent this I think we would have seen it dissolve of the course of the 2020s. France and Turkey have been at loggerheads forever, Greece and Turkey obviously aren't best friends and haven't been forever, and there are so many euros that wouldn't want to risk war for the sake of France/Lithuania/pick whatever NATO country really.
war in Ukraine absolutely has extended NATO’s lifespan yet another 30 years like some fucking evil neromantic lich ritual
I've heard this a lot from western leftists but I don't understand it at all. NATO survived for 30 years after the USSR fell, what makes you think it was on the cusp of collapse now? I don't think that NATO would have collapsed any time soon if that dastardly Putin hadn't intervened in Ukraine's civil war.
Many NATO members have historical tensions, Turkey-Greece, Macedonia-Greece, France-Turkey and they have worked at cross-purposes historically. Sure, NATO lasted for 30 years post USSR but it wasn't like they were just coasting and would've sailed for another 30 - they were actively trying to find another paradigm to get the alliance to go on. Bosnia, Afghanistan, anti-piracy off the coast of the horn of Africa, Libya etc. And that definitely worked for about a decade and a half but the NATO-as-human-rights paradigm was starting to shudder.
It didn't help that NATOs mission in Afghanistan was failing for 2 decades before finally ending in utter failure and the other missions they went on weren't exactly winners either. Trump and that section of the GOP was doing their best to bust up diplomatic relations (for their own and the other national bourgeoisie set's interests over the international bourgeoisie), who knows how that could've turned out absent a Ukraine conflict because Biden has also continued some of those Trump geopolitical choices too. They've been searching for the "pivot to Asia" since at least Obama but NATO's existence always sucked away some of their capacity to shift the imperial war machine out of Europe (because the academic types that run foreign policy have recognized America's decline in capacity to do both at the same time).
Not saying the West would've played nice in Eastern Europe though, lol. It just wouldn't have been NATO, would've been a German led EU style response as America withdrew from Europe. Russia's intervention gives a plausible reason for NATO to continue and for member states to choose to stay in and refocus that's better than the now very worn out "global human rights police" that's been failing.
Honestly, that could explain why the US was so determined to instigate war with Russia - NATO was becoming a relic so there is motive to manufacture a war that justifies its prolonged existence/maintenance.
Whether ultimately Russia or US is more responsible for the war (for the sake of argument) I don't think there is any timeline where the US lets their NATO institution collapse without a fight - which lines up with Hudson's analysis: this war is just as much about re-asserting US leadership in Europe as it is about combating Russia.
lol liberals and being shocked by historical fact name a better combo
Was it a "oh god, we were just praising fascism; are we the baddies?" kind of awkward silence, or a "next time we meet it'll be to disown the dirty leftist" kind of awkward silence? LOL.
Anyway, sorry. Family can be a real shit sometimes.
Erdogan going full joker mode and now wants sweden defense minister resignation
I wonder why other countries hasn’t gone as well, you can probably trade your vote for like couple of billions if you are a small country, citing price increases
Yah Erdogan opened the flood gates. Croatia started making nationalist demands as well, threatening a veto. Wonder if anyone else will try to extract concessions
I would have thought Eastern European countries, especially those very close or bordering Russia, would be against Finland or Georgia or Ukraine joining NATO precisely because they would become targets in the event of a NATO war (assuming it stays conventional and not nuclear, which is not a comfortable assumption). Like, you wanna join for the protection, but nobody else after that because what if you have to protect somebody else?
So perhaps Turkey is the Joe Manchin of Europe - somebody for them all to point to like "Aha! It's all Turkey's fault, we totally would have let Sweden and Finland join NATO if it wasn't for them, but alas..." but in reality a solid third of them aren't really comfortable with it.
No I think that's just Erdogan legit fully jokerfied, this has been a long time coming with being rejected from the EU, US support for Gülen and Turkey having to bear most of the fallout of the syrian civil war from all NATO members. Might be interesting to see how they'll chose to react to this and what that would mean for the really big stuff like Canal Istanbul because that could be another bargaining chip he could use..
I feel like for the Anglophone libs the biggest virtue is to have power and not use it (for a lib metaphor, it’s like at the end of Terf Tome Book 7 they destroy that powerful wand rather than using it to do anything good). Which is why the libs are always appalled when someone who does have some power and leverage (Manchin, Erdogan) and actually uses it to achieve something. They don’t care about what they want to achieve, it doesn’t matter — the problem they have is HOW DARE THEY USE POWER RATHER THAN RENOUNCING IT AS A VIRTUOUS PERSON?!
I don’t think Poland will, they want to own Russia too badly. Surprised Hungary hasn’t though
Some feelgood news: US Navy’s F-18 Super Hornet Crashes In Southern California, Killing The Pilot; Brand Boeing Takes A Big Hit move over F-35, the old dogs still have a few tricks to show you.
What can I say, critical support to Boeing in helping to destroy the US Air Force
Boeing busts union, starts making even worse crap by underpaying overexploited workers to an even greater extent.
C... c... critical support for just this one busted union? :conflicted:
Unanswered phones, missed signals: fear of accidental US-China crisis grows SCMP
“The escalation risk is significantly higher than it was 2001,” said Amanda Hsiao, an analyst with the International Crisis Group and author of Risky Competition: Strengthening US-China Crisis Management, which was released this month. “We saw then a period of political stalemate and tension, about 11 days before a breakthrough emerged. Were something like that to happen today, it would take much more than 11 days to resolve.”
...
And while the odds of an unintended war remain small, the risk is growing, as communication and crisis management falter, guardrails disappear and more ships, planes and submarines crowd China’s periphery. Adding to the mix, the two nuclear powers increasingly frame their competitive struggle as a contest between democracy and authoritarianism, making it far tougher to compromise.
...
Badly frayed relations mean that existing machinery designed to prevent the two giants from sliding into crisis, or helping them defuse one once under way – including hotlines, maritime guidelines, formal and informal diplomatic channels and military protocols – are increasingly ineffective or non-existent.
And while the US side sees China as a rule-breaker bent on upending the global “rules-based” order, Beijing views the US as a washed-up superpower intent on humiliating China and preventing its rise.
“People are worried about an accident because everyone’s on such a hair trigger,” said Susan Thornton, a senior fellow at Yale Law School and former senior State Department official. “It’s kind of amazing we’ve gone since 2001 without one.”
...
Contact between the PLA and the Pentagon has been on a steady decline. The high-level Security and Diplomatic Dialogue, established in 2017 by president Donald Trump’s administration before relations deteriorated, was abandoned in 2019.
Last year, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin tried and failed three times to organise military talks with General Xu Qiliang, vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission. Chinese state-run media accused Austin of ignoring diplomatic protocol by failing to request a meeting with his civilian counterpart, Defence Minister Wei Fenghe.
Combine this with the news that Russia and the US are pulling out most of their diplomats and aren't returning each other's calls and that there aren't really any methods of reliable contact anymore between them, and it starts becoming very worrying for if a serious emergency hits. I have always assumed that if there really was a serious situation that could evolve into nuclear armageddon, that cooler heads would prevail and go "Wait, wait, we're not gonna sacrifice everything just for this temporary thing." I thought that was the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But our politicians and diplomats are incompetent failchildren who are getting increasingly unable to even run the empire efficiently, and they're pissing off their adversaries with deliberate sore spots, like US politicians going to Taiwan, so that they don't want to talk to them. Very dangerous stuff.
Adding to the mix, the two nuclear powers increasingly frame their competitive struggle as a contest between democracy and authoritarianism, making it far tougher to compromise.
China increasingly frames it this way? Press X to doubt.
Why can’t westerners criticize their own nations without doing “both sides” projection?
:I-was-saying: ...even though I don't know what authoritarianism means.
:yes-hahaha-yes-l:
:sicko-pog:
They officially don’t frame it as oppositional at all. The official CPC line is that China is minding its own business, developing itself peacefully and going their own way. They don’t have any “clash of civilizations” narrative driving them like the West does.
The extent to which the Chinese are hostile to the West is based on how aggressive the West acts towards them in preventing their development. They are starting to see the West as forces opposing their own peaceful rise instead of neutral trade partners, but there’s no big official Chinese state narratives about the evil US empire (at least not yet)
Well, they have recently been favorably comparing their "whole-process democracy" to America's sham democracy, and they do talk shit about America's crimes pretty frequently on all the state media I follow. Although it's usually tit for tat.
They are slowly being forced into a more hostile stance against the West, due to the West’s aggression towards them. The main way that it gets expressed currently is either “taking the high road” or doing hypocrisy-owns on the West diplomatically, which is much different than the West’s policies of sabotage, sanctions, coup attempts, funding fabricated smear campaigns (like the Uighur genocide narrative), etc.
Yeah, obviously it's just in response to western aggression, but they definitely have increasingly been going after the west as undemocratic, oppressive, warmongering, etc. Remember those reports they put out about human rights violations in the United States? The article's just wrong in its framing, implying that it's mutual aggression versus one-sided aggression from the west and China defending themselves.
Those are the “hypocrisy-owns” I spoke of. China is basically just using the western narrative and flipping it, using it against the west as a “nut uh” to negate Western criticisms. It doesn’t really signify anything greater about China’s ruling ideology or how they frame geopolitics, it’s merely a turnabout
So what exactly is the reasoning behind the war being one of genocide? All I hear is that it's because Russia is fascist and attacking Ukraine, but never a full explanation as to how that equals genocide.
Genocide to libs now just means "country I don't like is doing thing I don't like." Anything Russia does is automatically genocide because Putin is Hitler, there doesn't need to be some sort of consistent logic applied.
Yeah. They need to thread the needle between their own imperialism/warcrimes/fascism and their enemies doing that, so they can't just say "this invasion is causing unnecessary deaths" because they're clearly OK with themselves doing that and it's super easy to just compare raw numbers at that point and see that the imperial core is worse on this every time. So they resort to just abstracted labels that they can append to things, especially if they're labels governed or promoted from pseudo-objective bodies like Human Rights Watch, etc.
When liberals cared about kids in cages, they (we) pulled out the UN definition of genocide to explain to chuds why systemic stealing of children counted.
While they (we) were there, they noticed a line about 'erasing national identity'. Putin gave his 'Ukraine isn't a real country' speech kicking off the invasion and the libs went :same-picture:
USA did so many Wars and Invasions , they can not call it War and expect the People to have a Emotional Reaction , so they choose another word..
Russia is the most evil country ever, therefore they must also be doing the most evil thing a country can do.
The thinking behind it is essentially the same as tht of Pizzagate, where chuds convinced themselves that democrats were pedophiles because that is the most evil thing a person can do.
It doesn't have reasoning yet. That comes later after they've collected enough bullshit stories like they're Pokemon.
Someone came in to the incredibly bougie Cafe I work at looking to leave a flyer for an "Aid for Ukraine" event.
This is the richest neighborhood in my city. That event? Pay $60 for a drink and hors d'oeuvres at the 4 seasons and buy Ukrainian art. Couldn't think of a more bourgeois way to get money for aid. Also no mention of what 'aid' they'll be giving
If it's too the usual UA aid orgs then it's a split between humanitarian aid and weapons
why am I explaining Marxian economics on :reddit-logo:? I guess it's helpful to clarify my thoughts but absolutely no one reading it has the background to understand what I'm saying, even when I try to break it down into terms they already understand from liberal economics.
tbf there are a lot of people here that got at least part of their radicalization on reddit lmao
Yes but Reddit has taken a sharp turn since then and CTH and genzedong bans/quarantines. The tone shift on Reddit general is noticeable, their long years of banning leftist dissent is paying off. Default/normie subreddits have no leftist presence anymore, and few anti-imperialist voices. The only “leftists” around are V*ush enjoyers and natoid nazlibs.
I got one reply telling me it was unreadable because of the lack of punctuation. the punctuation was precise and correct.
no I don't respond to people who try to act all superior. I'm not one for pissing matches.
no I don't respond to people who try to act all superior. I'm not one for pissing matches.
Thanks for keeping posting. I still read these even if I don't comment any more because my supply of takes is depleted
just wanted to say thank you for doing these. you're the only reason I have a clue what's going on with the war.
Lawl. Country being invaded by Russia and country being exploited and ruled by England compete to go to country ruled by monarchs to play soccer in arena built by slaves with enormous loss of life.
The beautiful game :amerikkka-clap:(pretend he's wearing a union jack shirt)
So you're saying pretty similar to any other day at a sports stadium, then?
The most important game of our lives
Real US Dems electoralism vibes
Bloodthirsty Twitter blue checkmarks saying this is an outrage and NATO should nuke Merthyr Tydfil in :countdown:
Gareth Bale's free kicks, the real ghost of
KievCardiff
Yesterday marked the 72nd day of me doing this. I’m gunning for 72 trillion more.
Aim for 72 morbillion days you L-word
There's been 12 mass shootings in the US since the hospital shooting :deeper-sadness:
It's always like this. People only notice when the News is focusing on it.
gotta distract from Ukraine's war crimes and losses somehow.
A disproportionate number of mass shootings are black kids getting shot at school or at parks or on their way home, in "smaller" numbers than the high profile cases. They don't get covered because their deaths are normalized. Just another day in Amerikkka.
