September 26th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Next thread here. Sorry, the threads start breaking down at above 1000 comments.
edit: I've found a number of sources to use, mostly based on analysis rather than purely event reporting. I've kept some of the better mainstream sources, but I decided that I was gonna cut the six most aggravating sources out entirely: NYT, WaPo, Bloomberg, Forbes, Business Insider, and Politico. I'm not yet sure if I have enough for fully fledged updates (or maybe eventhe new material is too much) so I will do tomorrow's update with what I've found so far, and if I think I need more, I will add more. Unless I managed to get it just right the first time, I think I will end up iterating over the next week towards the best balance of lots of good sources that don't take too much time to sift through.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the “buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!” people.
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.
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Crises of capitalism either require more land to conquer and then manufacture and sell products to, or the mass destruction of old things, like an old forest set on fire allowing new trees to grow.
As the Earth is finite, it must be war.
As direct war between the United States and China or Russia is impossible for the future continuation of humanity, it must a proxy war.
As Russia and China are still largely industrial nations as opposed to the more financial economy that the United States (and soon the EU) has, and wars are tests of industrial might, Russia and China will win these proxy wars and, in the long term, come out stronger for it.
:19: :84:
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I read in a blog someone saying that space exploration is a new venue for superpowers because of the resources, but that resources are ultimately the thing that makes war between superpower possible which is something impossible at the moment because it would end up drying the parties involved
Metal Gear Solid's sequels were supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual. :doomer:
I don't think the US cares that much about "running out" of military equipment itself, but it always jumps at the chance to claim that it's happening and use this to give fat contracts to private industry. Having a ton of stock blow up doesn't really hurt the US' ruling class, it actually helps it out to the extent it can be leveraged into new funding. It's just a win-win for them to also be forcing a cost on Russia through the process.
The increased EU military budgets will disproportionately go to buying stuff from the US, too.
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Absolutely, the US makes expensive "high tech" crap, most (but not all) of which is pointless. But it also has no plans to directly fight any near-peer war, its main weapons against near-peers are economic or the threat of nuclear war. Its military isn't useless by any means, but it's not really intended to be ready against China or Russia (the only conceivable direct military peers).
Maybe this is my ignorance of the Russian economy but I don’t see how that play works out for Russia. The military industrial complex is both yhe US’s greatest asset and hinderance but in a moment of true military crisis I see our ability to turn on a dime and dump more and more money into the military. That’s also the rot at the core of our infrastructure, but if the dick measuring contest is munitions to munitions I don’t see how america loses
Because US military industrial complex is privatized and runs on state contracts it costs the govt much more than Russia (where it is for the most part state-owned) to produce the same results. Yes, you can dump more money, but it's a slow process because money does not equal factory capacity. e.g. "Inability to Quickly Replace Stingers and Javelins for Ukraine Highlights Industrial Base Problems". It's a problem for Russia as well, but they have just codified into the law that disobeying a state order for military needs is punishable by jail time. So the production will be ramping up. I haven't seen the US govt doing anything to ramp up the industrial capacity of the military industrial complex, except for printing more money to feed it. It's an open secret now that Russia is buying suicide-drones from Iran too, for example. This is a bare minimum of what can be bought elsewhere if there are real industrial production shortages. Russia's state debt is negligible compared to the West, they can buy things without printing money. The US, on the other hand, has to go further into debt to do that.
I guess from my perspective I see these as relatively equal competing oligarchic military states so to have those disciplinary measures come out in Russia means more to me that they’re closer to a state of crisis (because they’re actually directly involved in this conflict). Maybe the rot is too deep in the american MIC to efficiently ramp up production in the face of crisis but I don’t see how Russia would be more capable than the US at bringing their war dogs to heel. Could be wrong, time will tell I guess
The motto for this whole conflict
Because theres more than 2 players
Lose lose for russia is a win for China
Dumping money into ineffecient military ventures hasnt stopped us decline yet
The US kinda sucks at making stuff, especially a bunch of stuff quickly. See: the months-long mask shortages that were only alleviated by Chinese production. It's part of it's neoliberalization.
The most pitiful reality is that our oppressors are only occasionally competent and they believe in absolute bullshit most of the time - and it leads them to make many mistakes and errors in predicting anything at all. But they have immense systemic power, so it usually doesn't matter (for them) that they are so incorrect.
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