I'm having increasing difficulty maintaining the time and energy to put into these updates, especially after having moved. My earlier rhetoric about doing this until the war ended (or past that) sounds increasingly foolish now that the war won't be won, militarily at least, for many months longer. I'm also returning to academia soon, which will keep me very busy, and also want to get back to reading theory more, as I've had less time for that, and my reading list is building up.
My choices are thus:
a) fully 'hit da bricks' and stop the updates and the megathreads (presumably somebody would take over posting them, at least while the war continued);
b) stop the updates but maintain the megathreads, posting some of the most important pieces (e.g. from MoA, Naked Capitalism, etc) I find in a few times per day;
c) maintain the updates and the megathreads, but prune the updates to the point where I'm essentially just posting headlines. And might mean that I also couldn't post summaries as, well, I'm not really reading the articles (and the difference between the update and the summary would be fairly negligible anyway).
I don't think the first option is necessary, but I also don't know how useful the third option would be to people. Like, this isn't (just) some kind of self-actualization exercise for me to know more about the news, nor a blog really, it's meant to be a resource. But I'm fine with doing just the headlines, it would take like an hour every day which is a time investment I'm comfortable with. The debate I'm having with myself is whether, at that point, if I'm really filling a niche - i.e. if there are better resources if all you want are the important headlines.
So I'm split between b) and c), essentially.
But for now...
Here is November 14th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary!
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.
CNN and Sky News have lost reporting credentials in Kherson after showing Ukrainian soldiers doing a Nazi salute lol
Reddit are mostly saying “good”.
Free speech for racist transphobes but not for you know journalists covering a war.
The official reason seems to be entering the city before “stabilization efforts” had finished. I guess they didn’t want anyone talking to the press before they got stabilized.
https://censor.net/ua/news/3380312/jurnalistiv_cnn_i_skynews_pozbavyly_akredytatsiyi_pislya_reportajiv_z_vyzvolenogo_hersonu_detektor_media
Also Jesus Christ the Nazis are getting bolder if the only useable footage the news media are finding is Nazi salutes and Derlewanger patches.
It's been there the whole time. The difference is that the rich are finally realizing that this war is going to affect their pockets, not just the poor. So get ready for the media to go back to Ukraine is full of nazis and maybe we should back down from the war.
"Stabilization efforts" aka coaching to population not to do Nazi salutes on live TV.
More like punishing "collaborators" (people who may or may not have taken some goods and aid from the russian troops or bartered with them) by tying them to poles with their pants off in some sort of psycho-sexual fascist public humiliation ritual that often results in people freezing to death.
Then they can execute all the "collaborators" and blame it on the russians
Then they can execute all the “collaborators” and blame it on the russians
Can't wait to hear about the Kherson massacre that Ukraine mysteriously took days to report.
Please Adolf Ivanovich, will you and your boys knock it off with the Hitler salutes for fifteen minutes while CNN is here? And for Christ's sake, wear some shirts over those tattoos! If you're nice you can hunt for disguised Russians afterwards.
yeah thats bad. I wonder if theres another angle showing who he saluted...with whoever it was saluting back. Probably out there somewhere
I thought it was going to be people in the background again but man Ukrainians prove me wrong all the time.
UN envoy admits fabricating claim of Viagra-fueled rape as ‘Russian military strategy’
During the call, Vovan and Lexus pressed Patten on whether she had any proof of her incendiary allegation. Clearly flustered, Patten responded: “No, no, no. And I don’t — like I said, it’s not my role to go and investigate. I sit in New York, in an office in New York, and I have an advocacy — and I have an advocacy mandate. My role is not to investigate.”
So you are telling me working at the UN is realy just like being a :reddit-logo: full time dork huh? An advocacy mandate lol. That is how r/politics and r/worldnews users would describe themselves.
Seems like it reflects pretty badly on freedom loving liberal Ukraine if they can't even get a name behind the allegations due to predicted backlash and societal shaming.
Just wanted to say I really appreciate all the work you've done. Don't often post, but I check these threads nearly every day.
Yeah @SeventyTwoTrillion don’t feel at all obligated to make another update if you’re burnt out, you’ve done an incredible job with these they’ve been extremely informative and helpful. Appreciate it a ton, big ups to you man
no matter what we should keep the megathreads, if only because it's funny to see someone stumble in here thinking it's the general megathread and post about whatever quirky thing happened to them, while everyone else is talking about the world falling apart
Does this happen the other way around in the general megathread? I don't go there often
I don't think so lol. Those sickos sometimes even horny post. Disgusting.
France and trashing shit after being forced out of their colony, name a more iconic duel.
As cringe as it is, I know enough about military systems, and the situation, to immediately know it was very unlikely to be any kind of Russian strike.
and as cringe as it is, the precise and calculated way in which the media twisted the information, again, just resolutely confirms for me that their names need to be noted down, and that reeducation is a privilege. People who's career consists of actively professionally lying are not people we need to persuade.
In more lighthearted news, Trudeau got caught giving one of his anglo condescension tweets about that rumour Irans got some 15000 protestors all facing the firing squad then had to delete it due to it being misinformation. Pretty funny how much noise the Liberals make over foreign disinfo and manipulation when literally our own misinformation campaigns will catch even the Prime Minister with his pants down
I see :reddit-logo: has decided to simply pretend that the missile was Russian despite the US claiming it was Ukrainian, very cool.
:xigma-male: scolding Trudeau face to face on camera lmao https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1592851147684868096
Poland invoking Article 5 against Ukraine to take back Lviv is the most jokerfied possibility
Extremely funny timing that just after Ukraine and the US do their whole "Actually we want to negotiate, we've been willing to this whole time, Russia's just being unreasonable by not giving up their entire leverage", this shit happens, and Ukraine's switch is immediately flipped to "WE MUST DESTROY THE RUSKIES. HELP US, NATO! WE WILL CRUSH THEIR SKULLS UNDER OUR BOOTS TOGETHER!"
