Here is July 18th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is July 19th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Apologies fellas, the mixture of the heat and work has really exhausted me over the last day or two, so I think I will take a break day today and get rested up for the next three days of updates.
Here is July 21st's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is July 22nd's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is July 23rd's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
No updates on Sundays.
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.
Last week's discussion post.
What's incredible in all of this is how - for decades now - we've been told that the German economy is becoming the fulcrum around which the rest of Europe will spin. Italy and Greece only are what they are because of the trade imbalance doing to the periphery what NAFTA / Trans Pacific Trade did to the American Midwest.
To think that the industrial core could be laid low practically overnight. What even is the point of NATO if it obliterates your domestic economic interests like this?
It's horrible what American business elite did to the Midwest. But at the very least it was to pump up Americans elites pockets
German elite seem to be like yeah. Rape the whole countries manufacturing sector. We don't need anything. Just a good hand shake and a pint.
NATO never thought it would actually need to be used in a defensive war, that is the main takeaway.
All of the military strength in the world is meaningless if you will not use it offensively against the power which has your entire economic engine gripped by the balls. Russia being able to shut down the economic centerpiece of Europe without even attacking is such an incredibly understated chess-like play.
Intentional or not, Russia forcing NATO nations to either deeply commit to Ukraine’s lost cause, or abandon Ukraine entirely, has been an incredible revelation. In a conventional war of NATO vs Russia alone, Russia loses easily and nobody doubts this. Russia forcing NATO to only be able to wage an economic war puts Russia on a much more even playing field (if not at an outright advantage) because of Europe’s need for Russia to keep the European economy afloat. NATO needed this conflict to be a conventional war against Russia to win any kind of victory that keeps Russia weak/down.
What really boggles my mind is how unprepared the EU is for this. For years and years a horde of Atlanticist ghouls has been going on about how evil dictator Putin was going to use "the energy weapon" but now when you can argue that he is actually doing it, the euros seems to be caught by surprise by the fact that a hydrocarbon-based economy is in fact in deep shit if you piss off the people who supply the hydrocarbons.
No serious attempts seems to have been made to diversity energy sources or to phase out fossils in favour of renewables. They even closed down lots of nuclear plants.
It even seems like they never even considered the possibility of blowback when they sanctioned Russia. Are they high on westoid exceptionalism, are they insane or are they part of a sinister conspiracy to destroy Europe.
NATO's idea of defense was to stand up and reinforce guerrilla insurgencies behind enemy lines. That's been the strategy since at least Hungary in '56. Everything from the Contras in Nicaragua to the Taliban opposition to Russia in Afghanistan have been proxy wars sponsored by NATO states.
Well, Putin being able to maintain a firm grip on domestic leadership in a country awash in western money, foreign assets, and corrupted local business interests is the real play. The US balkinization of the USSR never truly cracked the Russian core. And by maintaining a sold hold on the internal political sphere, Putin held together the unified Russian economy to leverage it as a kind of national collectivist bargaining chit in world affairs.
Everything today is running downstream of that. Germany can't just buy O&G from The People's Republic of East Siberia while blockading St. Petersburgland.
Its been a bloody, horrific nightmare of brutality and death. The war is an absolute failure of international relations and a betrayal of the Globalist vision neoliberalism promised. NATO states could have very easily looked at the playing field, realized they were in a losing position, and backed off long before a shot was fired. They were just so used to bluffing and winning that they continued to push on Zelensky with the promise Russia would never pull the trigger.
Its definitely a revelation, but the cost of losing has been abhorrent. They gambled with the lives of an entire nation and now millions of Ukrainians are paying for it.
Becoming? Germany and France are already the economic and productive center and you are right the poorer EU countries are deliberately forced to run their economies in a certain way in order to provide those two with a qualified and educated workforce along with cheaper resources and services. Perhaps it doesn't seem like we reached that point because it would be incredibly awkward for the neoliberal media to acknowledge straight up "ah yes the EU is actualy merely a failed project for industrialization and dominance around Germany with France just barely tagging along, always has been".
Also being part of NATO is just about having a membership card of the democracy club. There was never any real material benefit to it, Russia was never going to invade, certainly not after the 90s shock therapy anyway.
Ostensibly, until Russia pulls the plug on the cheap energy. Now its looking like the shambling remains of the Soviet state still have a bit of life in them. Moscow is proving itself the de facto center weight of the continent.
Much more than that. Just ask Libya or Syria. Look at Yugoslavia.
It is firstly and foremost a promise that you won't be the target of a vicious nightmarish conquest by other western powers (give or take a Turkey)
But it is, secondly, an implied threat that keeps all the other colonies in line. You're on Team NATO, so you can hit them but they can't hit you back.
You are absolutely right about NATO, but the question was more about "benefits" and you are describing a mafia/protection racket, NATO membership is a mafia pinky ring. It doesn't bring any benefits other than you just get to avoid being punched in the face every other day.
Not getting punched in the face is a BFD. Compare pretty much any country pre-war to post-war, and the longer they avoid getting bombed the better they perform. Even the most abused members of the EU outperform Latin American states brutalized by the drug war.
But NATO was also supposed to be the knife at the neck of Russia, extorting it for cheap raw materials. Being a NATO member was also supposed to mean you got first crack at the spoils.
I have heard historians speculate, that had Germany won WWII, Europe would more or less look the like EU today. With Germany at the center of power and the rest of Europe in an economically subservient position.
I'm not sure I totally buy it, but I think there's definitely some truth to it.
If Germany won that means USSR lost, there was never a post WW2 communist bloc and EU may have been United under Nazi rule (which may have eventually liberalized somewhat a a la Spain post Franco) but like 40 years ahead of the current time line so I think it would all look a lot different regardless.