August 15th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
August 16th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
August 17th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
No updates on Thursdays.
August 19th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
August 20th's update is here! 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.
Lula is up four points in a week according to a new poll out today, on the eve of Brazil's official campaign season launch.
Lula: 45%
Bolsonaro: 34%
Lula tied, in the margin of error, with the sum of all other candidates (45% to 46%), which could guarantee his victory in the first round. The result reverses the trend towards Bolsonaro, who had been showing growth in recent polls.
I know he's a socdem, but i hope he wins :lula-bars:
At least he will pivot away from America economically, militarily and diplomatically and towards China
He's at least the best kind of socdem - one that isn't tied to America or has particularly pro-American attitudes. Just about the only positive thing you can say about Bolsonaro is that he had enough of a spine to not be crushed by America's appeal for everybody to hate Russia. Lula seems to also have that positive.
the only positive thing you can say about Bolsonaro
I will say that him catching Covid more than any person alive and having his poop backed up all the way to his nose was very funny.
He's a lot like AMLO with foreign relations, both support AES and left-leaning states while being critical of the US and their Allies.
Latvia has proposed a bill to officially discriminate against Russian speakers in the country. This is definitely ethnic cleansing.
Learning about this proposed language law sent me down a rabbit hole with regards to this situation. Like 10% of the population is stateless, which is actually significantly better than when they gained independence and made 1/4 Latvians (if I'm reading correctly 700k stateless people with a a 2.8 million person population) stateless in the early 90s.
Just horrific.
The Baltic states have always been fascist strongholds. Lithuania is like the only country in Europe where 96% of its Jewish population died during WW2 and the Nazis were not the one to kill most of them.
Reading up on the Baltics is nightmarish. Like just open support for their nazi past, they dont hide it, they dont try to pretend it was some third-way nationalism. They fucking go after Holocaust survivors and their activists for defamation if they publish factual documents about crimes committed. We are talking about some truly evil countries
If I start hearing automatic gunfire in the Tallinn commieblocks - might not be far off from actually happening soon (esp. Lasnamäe where I live with 2/3rds Russian population), this should "probably" be my cue to buy a 1-way to Johannesburg. Again.
My "baltics-cool" submissions in emoji is very much appropriate
Latvian government doesn't represent it's people; anyway: USA is becoming desperate, since the exact same scenario (you know how it began) failed in much bigger & better trained/equipped Ukraine. They really are just giving Russia easy reasons to keep on expanding - same with China in Taiwan, at least I don't see any long term USA strategy? What is their supposed endgame?
They are likely just trying to score another short term "victory" before the upcoming US elections; no strategy, just cheap tactics.
Well, I guess ww3 it is then. A year ago I was sure it was gonna be USA provoking China that started ww3 but instead we got eastern Europe provoking Russia.
What the fuck is wrong with the Baltic states? They seem to have a grotesquely out-sized view of their own weight and clout give that they would be mid-tier cities in any real country.
it's because they were the first republics to secede from the USSR so the west rolled out the red carpet for them and accelerated their entry to NATO and everything to own the commies. Also their history of collaborating with Nazis probably helped. Now they think they're hot shit.
It's kinda bonkers that pride parades had ukraine flags, and that some libs somewhere thought that a gay marriage vote would fly in Ukraine. No idea what's happened with that.
The mask keeps slipping each day. Muhajideen 2.0 vibe from this bunch
Series finale because the evil empire has finally collapsed or because the evil empire decided to start a nuclear war?
Blowback season 10 will be broadcast from a nuclear hellscape
Well I tried sharing with some liberals the statement by Zelensky that Ukrainian forces will target anyone firing from the ZPP, and got told 'obviously he means Ukrainian operators will perform targeted assassinations on the individual troops, nothing as unsophisticated as shelling'.
Presumably these high speed low drag operators were too busy doing REDACTED shit to have stopped Russia anywhere else until now. A totally invented reality.
Zelensky: "In my spare time - of course, I don't get much, with these Russian orcs occupying my country (send us more HIMARS please) - I have been playing a game called Assassin's Creed 2, Very cool and quite fun, I didn't know Italy looked so great, I talked to Mario Draghli about it over the phone the other day. And I have authorized our generals to try and do something like that to Russia. We already have hundreds of recruits for this new... well, I shouldn't talk about it, of course, Russia is listening. But yes, I have talked to Ubisoft about making their next game take place in Ukraine. Perhaps during the good years when our national heroes like Bandera were alive. I have taken to calling myself 'Volodymr Zelensky da Kryvyi Rih', and all the media will do the same from now on. That is today's address. Keep on the good fight."
God, can you imagine the :so-true: energy if Zelensky talked about playing a video game lmao
If Zelensky said he was a PC gamer then reddit might crash due to the overload of comments and upvotes and awards on a single post. There'd be an integer overflow error once it reached 9999 platinum awards
the Kyiv Independent tweet was bad enough. but now the NYT is gloating about extrajudicial civilian killings. i get that this stuff happens in war, but i never expected a full-throated endorsement by “the paper of record”.
here’s the link to the actual article. grabbed a screenshot in case they mess with the sub-title (although they might have already).
This is gonna be a text wall, but this essentially sums up the last six months of analysis in these threads, so it's a worthy wall.
How Russia thwarted US imperial plans in Ukraine and beyond Multipolarista, by Antonio Camacho Negrón.
History testifies, time and time again, that the United States and Europe have always viewed Russia as coveted prey, and more so as a powerful opponent to their expansionist pretensions. Without a doubt, for various reasons that we will detail later, Russia has today become the top geopolitical-military threat to Western hegemonic aspirations.
Since 1904, with the publication of the “Heartland Theory” by English geographer Halford Mackinder, Russia has acquired great importance in the geopolitical conception of the world. In fact, Mackinder is considered the father of geopolitics. His theory states that the world is a big island, and that in the center of that island, as the pivot where the other countries balance, is Russia:
“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.”
The land area of the Russian Federation is almost twice the size of the United States. In addition to its privileged strategic position, its neighbors, China and India, are among the most populous on the planet and the fastest growing. Russia has a very well-educated, relatively united population and a low population density – a favorable condition that allows it to meet the basic needs of its people without great difficulty. It also has immense natural resources, many still to be discovered.
After 1991, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Western countries were convinced that Russia was defeated.
They had a fifth column in the Russian government that responded unconditionally to their interests; they controlled a large part of its natural resources and banking; and, according to their ideologues, all they had to do was put a little more pressure and the social situation would implode, the Russian Federation would dissolve, and Russia could be divided into several states.
These Western pretensions were thwarted by the resignation of Boris Yeltsin in 1999 and the rise of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer. Putin reversed the appeasement policies of his predecessor. He set in motion all of the national forces based on the idea that, in order to protect itself from Western adventurism, it was necessary to implement an accelerated plan for agricultural, industrial, technical and military development.
Putin reversed the appeasement policies of his predecessor. He set in motion all of the national forces based on the idea that, in order to protect itself from Western adventurism, it was necessary to implement an accelerated plan for agricultural, industrial, technical and military development. In two decades, he brought Russia out of the backwardness that previous governments had plunged it into, and turned the country into the second great military power after the United States.
Under the presidential mandates of Vladimir Putin, the following changes occurred:
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Russia in 10 to 20 years surpassed state-of-the-art Western technology in its military development. Russian hypersonic missiles, nuclear-powered missiles, electronic warfare missiles, anti-satellite missiles, super-fast torpedoes, nuclear icebreakers, among other technologies, have no equivalent.
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With the production of state-of-the-art weapons, Russia has become the main competitor in the most profitable industry of the United States, the war industry, attracting among its buyers former clients of US arms such as India, China, Pakistan, Turkey, and others.
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Russia has built a series of nuclear icebreakers with the main objective of opening an Arctic route – a route that, by shortening distances for merchant ships, makes Russian products more competitive. In terms of military logistics, the Russian fleet, having greater access to the Atlantic Ocean, and therefore to the east of Canada and the United States, would have an additional tactical advantage over its rivals in terms of maneuverability.
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The close relationship between the military power of Russia and the economic power of China, which has been consolidating, is of extreme concern to the West – a feeling that increases with the implementation of megaprojects such as the New Silk Road that extends through the five continents, and which begins in China, but its main ramifications cross through Russia.
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Russia’s military support for Syria, in opposition to the strategic objectives of the United States, has been a major headache for NATO in its attempts to change the government in Syria.
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Moscow’s close political, economic, cultural, and military relations with Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Bolivia have, to a large extent, rendered the sanctions imposed by the United States ineffective.
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Russia is the main supplier of fossil energy to Europe, which gives it great bargaining power and affects the competitive capacity of the US hydrocarbon industry.
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The great economic and geopolitical advances that Russia has made in the last decade in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa are not well seen by the West.
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Russia, by drastically reducing its holdings of dollars and treasury bonds, and by promoting the use of its own currencies among its trading partners, has become a major threat to the privileged power of the dollar as an international currency. The rapid increase in its gold reserves is also of great concern to the West.
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Russia, with its accelerated agricultural development, has taken the leadership in wheat exports from the United States and has put North American farmers in a bind.
As we can deduce from all of the above, in the short and medium term, the real threat to a declining United States is Russia. Glen VanHerck, head of the US Northern Command, pointed this out in September 2021 when he said that Russia is the main threat to the United States today, whereas China is a long-term threat.
The empire, hidden in NATO, acts in fear of Russia’s strategic positioning, its energy self-sufficiency, economic growth, expansion of sea lanes, military power, geopolitical influence and, fundamentally, its anti-establishment attitude towards policies and imperial initiatives. US political scientist Graham T. Allison popularized the concept of the Thucydides Trap to describe how the contradictions between one hegemonic power and another rising power drag them to war.
The US empire cannot engage in a conventional war with Russia, an emerging power that challenges its hegemony, without condemning itself to its own destruction – which is why it resorts to hybrid warfare, or unrestricted warfare, in the hope that the economic, political, and social attacks on its adversary are so devastating that they stop its agricultural and technological-military advance, that they reduce the production of hydrocarbons, that they destroy the strong alliance with China, and more than compensate for the self-inflicted damage by the sanctions. But it is inevitable that the effect on its own economy will be a boomerang.
Through hybrid warfare, with the aim of continuing to impose its hegemony, the United States incites Ukrainian extremists without caring that they are bringing Ukraine to total ruin in a conflict of attrition against Russia.
In unrestricted war, without any shame, the United States demonizes its adversary, creates a media dictatorship, and uses sanctions, censorship, propaganda, lies, and slander to stupefy its audience so it can no longer think clearly.
In 2019, a powerful US think tank sponsored by the Pentagon, the RAND Corporation, published a report entitled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia: Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options.”
This research document explores in minute detail the options that can be used to exploit Russia’s vulnerabilities in order to destabilize it. All the measures, supposedly in the name of containment, that the United States has imposed on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine are reflected in that document.
Continued:
The curious thing is how this is a reflection of the arrogant vision and imperial mentality of the United States. The document does not contemplate the accelerated countermeasures that Russia would take to protect its economy from possible sanctions, or the slowdown of the US economy caused by the pandemic, or the devastating effect of inflation.
The current US president, Joe Biden, acknowledged in 1997, when he was a senator from the state of Delaware, that NATO’s expansion into the Baltic countries would be what would “tip the balance” toward a “hostile response” from Russia.
What factors pushed President Biden, 25 years later, to change his mind, when Russia is much stronger and the United States is on a downward curve? Medicine, old age, the incompetent people around him, the out-of-date analysis of the RAND Corporation, or the messianic longings of a declining empire? Unequivocally, none of these causes can be ruled out.
Everything indicates that NATO and therefore the United States was betting that Russia would be unable to invade Ukraine. In 1999 came the first wave of NATO creeping up to Russia’s borders, with the affiliation of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic; and Russia did nothing.
In 2004 a second wave came with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Slovenia; and Russia did nothing.
In 2009 a third wave came with Croatia and Albania, and Russia did nothing.
In 2017 a fourth wave came with Montenegro, and Russia did nothing.
In 2020 a fifth wave came with Macedonia, and Russia did nothing.
We know that all these waves were accompanied by US military bases and thousands of cannons pointed at Russia. Western intelligence created a fifth column inside Ukraine, and Russia did nothing. They sponsored a coup d’etat against its democratically elected, Russia-leaning President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, and Russia did nothing.
They establish a puppet government led by neo-Nazis and other supremacists, and Russia responded with the annexation of Crimea on March 18, 2014, after a plebiscite in which 97% of Crimeans voted in favor of it.
The provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk declared themselves independent and, despite the constant bombardment by the Ukrainian army and the murder of more than 14,000 people, most of them Russians, Russia did not move its troops into these territories, nor did it recognize their independence.
In 2014, consistent with a declaration of war, Ukraine renounced its military neutrality; Russia did not go beyond a few declarations of disgust.
In 2014 and 2015, the Minsk agreements were signed between Russia and Ukraine, with France and Germany as signatories, to end the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian fighters in the two provinces of Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk). Through these deals, a ceasefire was approved, and Ukraine agreed to pass a law that recognizes the provinces a certain type of autonomy before taking control over its borders.
The Ukrainian government flouted the treaty, violated the ceasefire, and killed thousands of people in the two separatist territories with its bombing. Ukraine did not approve the law stipulated in the treaties, and on the contrary approved more legislation that discriminated against ethnic minorities, especially Russians, in which they were prohibited from speaking their language. Russia also did not respond to the provocation.
For months before February 24, 2022, the United States and the European Union, in order to immobilize Russia, unleash a campaign of hysteria about an alleged invasion of Ukraine, at the same time that NATO trained Ukrainian soldiers and Kiev’s army deployed more than 100,000 heavily armed troops to the Donbas border.
Mistaking Russian caution for weakness, they were preparing a full-scale offensive. It was no longer possible for Russia to remain cautious; the cost was very high. And to NATO’s surprise and frustration, Russian troops invaded Ukraine.
In the face of the invasion, the United States and its European ruling cliques found themselves in a powerless position – their calculations were wrong To make up for it, they had no alternative but to resort to Russiaphobic hysteria and self-destruction by imposing economic sanctions. Could we see a greater display of imperial impotence?
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said of Putin.
Given all this situation, we can deduce that in the economic area, in the short term, the United States wins a battle; it increases its sale of weapons, gas, and oil to countries in the NATO sphere; and their unfounded fear strengthens their adherence to the designs of the empire. The US GDP rises, the dollar temporarily strengthens, and it achieves a contraction in the Russian economy for a short time.
In the medium and long term, Russia wins the war, disarms Ukraine, occupies it for a relatively short time, establishes a government allied with its interests, strengthens its own economy with the reconstruction of Ukraine and with the expansion of its commercial ties with China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. For centuries to come, it also militarily secures its weakest flanks in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.
In the medium and long term, with respect to the United States and Europe, the excessive effects of their actions will keep inflation high, thus weakening the dollar and the euro and making SWIFT lose relevance in the face of Asian interbank systems.
The economic crisis will bring out the contradictions between and within Western nations, which will give way to the destruction of their veneer of cohesion and unleash a social implosion.
Paradoxically, in the long term, without even having participated directly in the conflict, the one who will truly be the winner is China: the yuan is strengthened, ties with Russia are further deepened, exports are increased, and, to the detriment of the United States, its geopolitical influence rises.
In the end, the imperial politicians and planners, carried away by the arrogant pride that characterizes them, were the ones who really made the miscalculation. They made plans for Russia that were much larger than the measures they could take to achieve them, and were thus doomed to defeat before the conflict even began.
When we look at Putin in comparison to US and European leaders, regardless of the fact that we do not agree with any of them, the only one who demonstrates a dialectical analytical capacity and a holistic conception of the world is Putin. It’s not for nothing that Western leaders hate him so much; he is running laps around them.
I've long thought that Russia made huge geopolitical gains by proving to the world that they could protect Assad from US regime change efforts.
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Nordic socialism moment: A survey among members aged 40 to 59 of the Danish union 3F that organises "unskilled" workers have shown that 67,5% of members are taking painkillers to be able to go to work.
Meanwhile the same union is heavily supportive of and involved in the social democratic party that is responsible for making Danish retirement age one of the highest in the world and who is right now campaigning with slogans about "responsible economic policy so we can afford the future".
Oh, and by the way, that responsible economic policy that requires people to work full time until they're 72 doesn't prevent the social democrats from increasing military expenditure to 2% of GDP, including a replacing the entire navy with new ships
The cryptofash(very light emphasis on crypto) party in Sweden is suggesting that the department that handles prisons and jails be renamed, I'm struggling to translate it perfectly but basically the current name is phrased in a way that suggests the purpose of the department is to take care of and "treat" criminals in the way that healthcare treats patients, "criminal-care" or "crimecare" basically in a literal translation.
Well the cryptofascists think this is liberal coddling and bullshit(note that in all modern history the phrasing of the department name has included the word that translates to "care" even if it started as prisoner-care) and instead thinks the department should be renamed as to focus on the punishment part, basically wanting it named the office of punishment, or "punishment-works" in the same way you have steelworks or steel mills. Extremely cool things going on in Sweden.
Also the "moderate" controlled public transit in Stockholm have loosened restrictions on advertising to the point where the cryptofascist party has painted trains on the subway with their color scheme for 2 weeks, including text that says "Welcome aboard the victory train!" and "SD 2022" and party figures have tweeted out shit like "Welcome to the return migration train, you have a one way ticket, next stop, Kabul!". Very cool.
[🇫🇷🇲🇱⚡️The French army has left Mali, abandoning all its military bases and installations after years of presence.
The playing field is left for "PMC" Wagner ", which by its activity has achieved the displacement of competitors from Mali.
Not least due to mutually beneficial relations with the local government of the military, who use the rhetoric of the fight against French imperialism and colonialism with might and main.
France to the last tried to cling to Mali, but, just like in the Central African Republic, failed. During Macron's presidency, 2 countries fell out of the French colonial empire at once. Largely due to the inconspicuous, but effective work of "Wagner".
It will be interesting if this trend spreads to Burkina Faso and especially Niger, with its uranium deposits.Source
Dang those Nazi Russians… checks notes… fighting for decolonizing Africa??
I was told “Wagner” were all just like Azov. Can anyone here imagine Azov fighting to decolonize Africa and rid it of European leeches, working hand-in-hand with African soldiers and leaders?
I mean, for cash? You can find people to fight for any cause if you pay them enough. Mercenaries don't necessarily have any ideology, and if they do it's almost always in favor of colonialism, imperialism, and fascism. The idea that Russian mercs are acting out of an anti-colonial ideology is a stretch. Russia is a capitalist country. They're there because someone with nine zeroes in their bank account thinks it'll be profitable. This isn't Cuba sending troops to support independence movements in the 20th century.
This is pretty much what I was going to say.
Wagner is doing here the equivalent of the police arresting some rapist, you know broken clock occasionaly does something good but its so rare it is meaningless.
PMCs in general are not friendly to leftists anywhere, but if you have the money you can put them to good use.
Sure they aren’t doing it out of charity, nobody said they were. Azov would always be on the opposite side and you know it, just like their Rhodesia freak friends. The difference between bonafide fascists and mere rightwing mercs
here in another Doku on wagner
:chefs-kiss:
segment begins with "lets check what the Academie Frainches is doing§
Wait what? How did 450 vaguely Russian mercs kick France out of Mali and the CAR?
It's kind of wild for them to be trying to go "Ooh sinister Russians!" when the other side is literally the fucking French.
“They just want to colonize these unsuspecting Africans!”
“Like you have been doing for centuries?”
“Shut up Russian bot”
