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.
America is already an oligarchy and not a democracy. This poll just shows that Americans are fucking stupid.
I came across this gem on wikipedia for "legislature":
" Function in authoritarian regimes
In contrast to democratic systems, legislatures under authoritarianism are used to ensure the stability of the power structure by co-opting potential competing interests within the elites, which they achieve (cap) by:[4]
Providing legitimacy; Incorporating opponents into the system; Providing some representation of outside interests; Offering a way to recruit new members to the ruling clique; Being a channel through which limited grievances and concessions can be passed. "
"[the United States of, presumably] America will cease to bea democracy in the future"
What kind of doe-eyed optimist nonsense is this? That question implies that the great Satan is currently a democracy.
If they even wanted to get to the bottom of anything they'd be asking about that pic of the QAnon Shaman posing with a Ukrainian nazi from Right Sector but that's a rabbit hole they're terrified of going down
We have a 2 party system and now those 2 parties are both openly supporting nazis
American politics: Oops, all nazis!
American 'representative democracy' is a lie
Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does the government represent the people?
Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
Putin: 'Odessa is a culturally significant city for Russians, we want to take it without too mich damage to infrastructure'
Igor: 'yes boss your will be done we shall cut off essentially supplies until they surrender'
Odessa, Texas, remains without water as temperatures soar
Putin: 'n-not that odessa! igooooor!'
Putler destroyed
Texas is such a horrible place and the people there keep voting to make it more horrible.
The administration of Zaporozhye has cancelled its citizens' debts to Ukrainian banks.
Please mr. Putin invade my country next.
Wonder if any Ukrainians racked up a bunch of debt in a splurge right before the invasion
I remember that. I figured those were sent by the west as “aid”
Idk seems like something Germany would do to act like they are helping
Two possibilities:
- The west sends money for stuff. The money falls off the truck and someone finds it and buy some nice cars.
- The west needs someone to play along. They get some "aid" in the form of nice cars and now they see things from the western side.
I thought I remember someone mentioning in one of the early war threads that some Ukrainians were taking out crazy loans when the invasion started.
Ukraine is a poor and mismanaged country so I reckon that lots of Ukrainians must be pretty fucked over by debts.
Lol, gazprom is going “sorry turbine broke” for nordstream, and exchange turbine is stuck in canada due to sanctions
They are spinning the tale that it’s worked its limits and further operation is not safe, so they are turning it off. Who knows whether it’s true outside of people working on it, but they are decreasing gas flow by 30 percent
Four paragraphs in today's update that I'm going to draw special attention to due to their extremely negative effect on my brain. These are among the worst, but there's plenty of bad shit in there today. Not sure if Ukraine has made a few choice donations to western journalists or what.
"But Russia’s heavy reliance on train transport, a 19th-century technology, reveals critical gaps in its logistics, the coordinated transfer of supplies. Russia’s struggle to supply troops away from rail lines has slowed its invasion and contributed to catastrophic failures in its early offensives to take Kyiv and Kharkiv. It could also shape the conflict going forward."
"Wealthy nations sanctioning Russia must make clear they recognize that the concern over global hunger is not unfounded — freedom is not free — and confront the question of costs, along with the reason for bearing them in terms that will resonate. Russia is fighting a war of conquest against a country it sees as a colony, something familiar to many in the emerging world."
"Moscow’s shortfalls with its arsenal, which have been obvious on the battlefield for weeks, are cause for long-term relief and short-term horror. Relief, because the Russian war machine, on whose modernization Vladimir Putin spent heavily, has been exposed as a paper tiger that could not seriously challenge NATO in a conventional conflict. Horror, because an army that cannot wage a high-tech war, relatively low on collateral damage, will wage a low-tech war, appallingly high on such damage. Ukraine, by its own estimates, is suffering 20,000 casualties a month. By contrast, the U.S. suffered about 36,000 casualties in Iraq over seven years of war. For all its bravery and resolve, Kyiv can hold off — but not defeat — a neighbor more than three times its size in a war of attrition."
"But fiscal conditions, the inflation rate and donor pressure still matter, no matter which ideological faction has the upper hand. And there are a lot of ways for ideology to manifest itself, some of them requiring less fiscal space than others. What happened on the left after Sanders lost to Biden and the George Floyd protests took off in 2020, the dramatic shift from economic to cultural revolution, offers a case study in how radical energy gets redirected into culture war when its economic ambitions seem blocked off. The right has long experience with this kind of redirection, and ample enthusiasm for cultural conflict. So expect more of it, from both sides, under conditions of fiscal constraint. And expect a slow-dawning realization among the serious-minded socialists and populists that the best time to carry out their big ideas, the best moment for a radical policy departure, may have already come and gone."
Horror, because an army that cannot wage a high-tech war, relatively low on collateral damage, will wage a low-tech war, appallingly high on such damage. Ukraine, by its own estimates, is suffering 20,000 casualties a month. By contrast, the U.S. suffered about 36,000 casualties in Iraq over seven years of war.
That's cool. How many Iraqis died in our humane, high-tech war? What's that? Hundreds of thousands? As a low-ball, you say? Huh.
Fuck, I didn't even catch that. Bret Stephens is truly in a Dipshittery tier of his own. Him and Maximum Bootlicker.
train transport, a 19th-century technology
Look bro, Russia should have loaded their tanks onto Teslas and put them in a tunnel bro. That's the transportation of the future bro.
Wealthy nations sanctioning Russia must make clear they recognize that the concern over global hunger is not unfounded — freedom is not free — and confront the question of costs, along with the reason for bearing them in terms that will resonate
Some of you might die but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Russia is fighting a war of conquest against a country it sees as a colony, something familiar to many in the emerging world.
Meanwhile, in the real world, people in the imperial periphery love to see the western imperialists who continue to loot their countries eat shit in the Ukraine.
an army that cannot wage a high-tech war
TIL that hypersonic missiles and friggin' lasers are not high-tech.
Meanwhile the modern NATO-armed Ukrainian army are making technicals out of pickup trucks and WWI machine guns looted from museums.
And expect a slow-dawning realization among the serious-minded socialists and populists that the best time to carry out their big ideas, the best moment for a radical policy departure, may have already come and gone.
Serious-minded leftists knows that we simply cannot afford socialism right now. The time is never right for good things to happen.
Look bro, Russia should have loaded their tanks onto Teslas and put them in a tunnel bro. That’s the transportation of the future bro.
This is the plot of command and conquer red alert
That is a lot of dipshittery to go through so ima add some more
The calculated risks: First, as retired Adm. James Stavridis has proposed, the U.S. should be prepared to challenge the Russian maritime blockade of Odesa by escorting cargo ships to and from the port.
That will first mean getting Turkey to allow NATO warships to transit the Turkish straits to the Black Sea, which could entail some uncomfortable diplomatic concessions to Ankara. More dangerously, it could result in close encounters between NATO and Russian warships. But Russia has no legal right to blockade Ukraine’s last major port, no moral right to keep Ukrainian farm products from reaching global markets, and not enough maritime might to take on the U.S. Navy.
It's kinda funny how the dumbest people sometimes can have the highest positions and just furthers my belief that the US navy is the most failson of all the military branches. This guy worked as a head for NATO at some point so he must've heard about the Montreux accord that literally forbids military vessels from countries outside of the black sea to travel through the strait of Bosporus, you can't get anymore rules-based-order than that. I know that it actually doesn't matter but I honestly don't believe that someone sincerely is saying "Yeah no we should totally risk nuclear war" because in order to protect those precious ukranian grain ships they'd have to shoot down russian ships/aircrafts i.e. they'd have to go to war with Russia, this is literally just a wet-no-fly-zone all over again what's next, do we go back to regular no-fly-zone in august?
Navy Intelligence also has a lot of cross pollination with the :cia: which brings all kinds of fuckery with it :strangelove:
According to the Telegraph, 2 US mercs have been captured by Russian forces near Kharkov
Call signs of "Bama" & "Hate", both former US army vets, 1
foughtdid war crimes in Iraq. I'm sure they're just a couple of nice young boys who never meant any harm. Probably all they did was cook & clean, maybe a little radio work! That's all, honest!:amerikkka: :lets-fucking-go:
https://www.masina.rs/eng/partisan-memorial-cemetery-in-mostar-destroyed/
Partisan Memorial Cemetery in Mostar destroyed
The Partisan Cemetery in Mostar, one of the most important monuments of the anti-fascist struggle of the Yugoslav people and a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has suffered the most extensive damage a three-decade history of vandalism.
https://ba.n1info.com/english/news/all-700-commemorative-plaques-at-partisan-memorial-cemetery-in-mostar-destroyed/
fuck me, I thought it was smart starting a small stocks account for 5-10 years from now, with "safe stocks" but really I just pissed away a couple thousand dollars which is like a big chunk of money for me. I feel so fucking stupid.
From what I understand, as long as the stock market doesn't suffer total existential failure, most safe stocks will survive and recover.
If you need the money shorty then that is trouble. But in the long term it does not matter too much when you bought
Yeah that whole long-term thing works till it doesn't. And i think we are entering that phase of it's not going to work any more
Right, like isn't Japan's stock market still lower now than it was before it crashed in the 90s or something?
Probably, but unless you live in a country that has been deliberately hamstrung by the US, then you're still more likely to get something out of a longterm investment in the Funny Line Go Up or Down machinery. Japan is sort of unique because they have been hamstrung by the US fucking with their currency, while also heavily financialising their economy.
Also, Japan in the late 80's and early 90's had like the mother of all economic bubbles, with very little to back it up in terms of real assets. It also royally fucked up their property market if I recall correctly, but that is almost a guarantee when you depend so heavily on the financial sector.
Tamerlane was looking for someone to teach his donkey to talk. Nobody wanted the job. Finally the wise men of the dunes - Hodja Nasreddin took the position and promised to teach the donkey to talk in 10 years time.
- Are you crazy? his friends asked him.
- Not really, Hodja answered, the money is good the job is not hard and in 10 years a lot might happen: I might die, or Tamerlane might die or surely enough this old donkey might die.
"So you think an outside force is justified in doing military intervention in a sovereign country?"
Distinguishing between ethnicity and nationality is impossible for Americans. Understanding that some people have complicated and conflicting national and ethnic identities is beyond impossible because they don't even know that this phenomenon exists.
Meanwhile Americans have no problems considering themselves Irish, Italian and Norwegian at the same time, despite knowing nothing about the countries or cultures, speaking none of the languages and having never been there.
In a country where people “are Irish” by DNA alone, complex ethnicities/nationalities/language spoken are impossible for Americans to wrap their heads around
:ira: Irish muricans are only really Irish if we oppose imperialism and colonialism, hate the british monarchy (all monarchy really) and want the :cia: splintered into a thousand pieces and those pieces destroyed for what they've been doing to the world and what they did to our boy :jfk-gaming:
New Patrick Lancaster is really impressivly , he gets trapped by the Constant Shelling with this amazing Donestk Lady ...
Yeah , in extension the hole Donbass as a Hole is Blacked out from all conversation
And then in the middle of it all is Patrick with his amazing wierd raw reports , .. I watched, Like the streets of Mariupol with all the Bodies Liening there .. this report here , .. yesterday the Maternity Hospital .. Imagine this report from a Kiew materinty Hospital .. .. its the perfect symbol for how muh we are censored hes not only the most "primary Reporter" but also its literally the most Interesting Content of this hole Madness...
my sweat smells like a liquid sour dough bread mixed with mildew. am i dying?
What happened with that Russian default that the US was trying to force? It was big in the news and then just went away.
It's not a default when you want to pay but they won't let you.
They probably realized international courts would laugh at it and force them to take payment.
It also probably became clear that it would spook our markets more than theirs
Plus all they have to do is say it a bunch, do nothing and ignore it, and then libs all assume it happened anyway
Lmao now the papers are saying that despite the Russia energy exports doing fine and store shelves being stocked like normal, at the latest in autumn the sanctions are absolutely going to bring Russia to its knees.
Obvious projection - Europe, as it currently stands, will be screwed in the coming winters
A funny side story is that of Sweden and Finland. Under great fanfare they announced that they were going to join NATO. Every westoid dipshit rejoiced about how they were really sticking it to Putin and how the war had backfired for Russia who now would have two extra NATO members at its border instead of one. Russia responded by talking of more nuclear weapons in the Baltic region. Happy times.
And then the most funny thing happened. NATO is not like an amateur football club that you can join just by filling out a form and paying a fee, to join you need to get the approval of all existing NATO members. And Turkey, who saw little benefit in committing to a possible war in the far north of Europe, saw is opportunity to scratch some old itches about Sweden and Finland being too friendly to the Kurds. They demanded that the two would-be members started to repress politically organised Kurds in order to allow the expansion. Their demands includes the extradition of a Kurdish-Swedish member of parliament, and the blocks in the Swedish parliament are so equal in size that this one MP can bring the succdem government down.
Essentially the Turkish demands are too humiliating for Sweden and Finland to accept so at the time of writing Sweden and Finland has given up all the benefits of pro forma neutrality and gained none of the benefits of NATO membership.
Sweden and Finland has given up all the benefits of pro forma neutrality and gained none of the benefits of NATO membership.
Just like Ukraine did.
Russia is winning as for the last couple months they've been focussing on an artillery war, which Russia is really good at, and destroying Ukrainian equipment and killing and wounding tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops. There has been considerable movement on the Donbass front in that time, but if you've glanced at the map every now and then, it would seem like there's been little movement. This is because Donbass has been reinforced by trench networks and strongpoints over the last 8 years of fighting, with defense in depth, and Ukraine is using the WW2 Nazi strategy of holding indefensible positions at great cost to their own troops for no particular gain other than hollow media "victories" as they're "stalemating" Russia. The West has been sending weaponry, yes, but it's drying up aside from the US's stockpile (and even that is looking a little dicey) because Europe just doesn't have the industrial capacity nor willingness to send in enough equipment. Just yesterday, one of Zelensky's advisers said they needed an incredible amount of equipment - 1000 howitzers, 500 tanks I think, the list goes on. Germany is just now finishing up the training and supply of seven howitzers. Ukraine is also running out of ammo, while Russia, despite many predictions that their supplies and industry would collapse, has maintained its rate of fire and is turning their army, as I said before, into paste. Ukraine has achieved some limited advances up near Kharkiv, but it's too little too late. They're trying to attack Kherson on a wide front right now, but it doesn't seem to be going super well for them - they're mainly trying to draw Russian forces away from Donbass, like they're in a chokehold and they're trying to punch Russia to try and weaken their grip, but it's getting ever meeker as they run out of oxygen.
Everybody knows it's a proxy war, it's just how much the officials wanna officially admit it. For example, a month or so ago, the NYT(?) ran an article about how American intelligence is being used to kill Russian generals and such, and American officials told the journalists to shut the fuck up.
Russia has consolidated its hold on Kherson and most of Zaporozhye oblast (changing their education systems, switching from Ukraine's currency to the ruble, wiping away bank debts of the citizens, offering Russian passports and citizenship), in the south of Ukraine, and it looks like they're just gonna get annexed. Russia holds, or will hold once the DPR and LPR are fully captured/liberated/whatever, a full quarter of Ukraine's territory, and a significant proportion of its arable and industrial base. Russia may end up going for Odessa and Mykolaiv oblasts once Donbass is liberated. They could even go for the whole of Ukraine, though I'm not sure how much I really believe that.
Going off the headlines in MSM you would think Ukraine is on the verge of victory so this is an enlightening update. Appreciate it.
I think the efforts of the MSM were initially like a nuclear bomb of propaganda for the first week or two, with the Snake Island thing and the Ghost of Kyiv, and then it settled down into a Great Wall, where no opinion even vaguely critical of Ukraine could penetrate. This has only really broken a bit in the last week or so, with a slate of articles suggesting that Ukraine might not actually win this. But today, there's a return to the old narrative. I ultimately think that they'll push the pro-Ukraine narrative right up until the last Ukrainian soldier dies defending the last Ukrainian city, if it comes to that. They report Russian advances as losses, but those losses are getting suspiciously closer and closer to Ukrainian cities...
This is what I’ve been wondering about. Since neutrality doesn’t seem to be on the table are they just going to go for the whole thing?
There's been a whole saga over the last few months about what exactly Zelensky and his party are going for. Zelensky himself isn't a very helpful source, as he jumps between "We will need to negotiate with Russia to end this war" and "We will retake Donbass and Crimea no matter what!" on consecutive days. I think there's a good case that he and his party are being controlled by the West - there was an example about how the timing of Ukraine withdrawing from negotiations was at the exact same time that Boris Johnson went to go visit and talked to Zelensky. Since Istanbul in March(?), there hasn't been any serious attempt at restarting negotiations. The West has gradually shifted from "Ukraine will obviously win this war" to "Okay, Ukraine might not win, and besides what even is victory? But we need to continue giving them weapons so that they can have the best negotiating position possible." The obvious problem with that is that Ukraine continues to lose territory every day, and they aren't really getting any stronger compared to Russia, so if that remains the official policy, the war will never end unless Ukraine is fully annexed, or at least the government is captured and a puppet government is put in its place.
Russia likely wants Novorossiya, which is a region that broadly constitutes the east and south of Ukraine. Odessa, Myklolaiv, Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkiv. Maybe Dnipro, maybe not. You can freely speculate whether Russia will actually get all that before Ukraine capitulates, or whether Ukraine will never capitulate and Russia will just continue advancing towards the west and north. Medvedev just said “Who said Ukraine will exist on the world map in two years?” in response to the US proposing a Lend-Lease program that will last until 2024. Is that just a threat to scare them into surrendering? Is that a promise? I don't know.
There's most definitely a large number of people in the Russian govt that want to go all the way to kiev. They start saying things than the next day kremlin walks it back.
I thought Russia was motivated in no small part by not wanting to share borders with NATO. If they annexed all of Ukraine, that would kinda go out the window, no?
Russia already shares borders with NATO. They don't want NATO to have open terrain to drive through to Moscow from Kiev, nor for NATO to control a country that is (or at least was) an important ally to Russia.
Ukraine would resume it's historical role as Russia's borderlands, a buffer between Russia and Europe.
They are not "happy to move slowly" they tried moving fast and found their losses too high their logistics too vulnarable. No military ever goes with the war of attrition as plan A. Just take a look at WWI how long it took them to accept that a war of attrition was what they were in. Ironically it is the stronger side that really does not want to do the war of attrition. The weaker side might argue that if they just hold out long enough the enemy might loose the will to fight, like the Vietnamese and Afghans did against the US and I think this is what Ukraine is going for so far without too much success it seems, but maybe Russia is moving so slowly because their soldiers actually are unwilling to go for riskier but more rewarding moves. The stronger side always wants to use their strengh to end the war of attrition and go back to the war of manover and it looks like Russia can't do that for whatever reason.
This side has correctly seen through the wests propaganda Ukraine is not winning, but it has mostly accepted the Russian position as gospel. Go two weeks or a month or six weeks back with some accounts and they always claim that Ukraine is just two weeks away from collapse, being encirclement, surrendering on mass that things will get moving again and then they don't. Unless there is just wild speculation that Poland will invade Ukraine in which case Germany of course will have to retake Hinterpommern...
The most realistic scenario of an end is that Ukraines or Russias homefront collapses before any decisive battle ends and just for the record again I still believe that Ukraine is in the worse position since Russia has more material and Ukraines economy is in shambles, but this might go on for a long time.
Russia can’t go faster cause:
A) ukraine still has s300, and russia hasn’t planned for dealing with their own anti air systems in their doctrines
B) ukraine gets full recon from the west, so there can be no surprise attacks with large scale movements of heavy weaponry
C) the state of russian spetznaz is not so great to do deep sabotage/the fortified regions are impenetrable to this in any case
D) russia hasn’t learned railway bridges locations in ukraine
This guy is a known doomer, he always takes the least charitable interpretation of every event for Russia
Explain why donetsk gets shelled by m777/caesars? Maybe some large air transport brought them there? :puzzled:
How did they get from poland all the way to donetsk? :soviet-hmm: how do shells get delivered? :soviet-hmm: some logistics mysteries science just can’t answer
The price of everything is going up everywhere, the EU is almost certainly going into recession, the US probably will too in the next year or so. Supply chains are getting fucked up, there's gonna be a global food crisis, there's an energy crisis that may be even worse than the crisis of the 1970s. Meanwhile, Russia, which is a largely self-sufficient economy with some capacity for state control, has faced the incredible amounts of sanctions placed against it and kinda shrugged it off. It certainly isn't looing good aside from a couple metrics, but it's very far from fatal, and the damage on the West is definitely higher than the damage on the East.
In a bigger sense, the dollar hegemony's decline is accelerating, partially due to the US seizing Russia's foreign reserves and thus undermining global trust in the financial system, and also because Russia, China and friends are beginning to explicitly move away from the dollar and towards national currencies. The ruble is the best performing currency in the world this year, to the point where it's actually now too strong and, if anything, Russia's economists aren't doing enough to keep it under control.
it costs 8,000 to feed a 50-head of cattle because the fertilizer and feed have gone up exponentially.
