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.
Revolutionary defeatism is when you fence sit. The more you fence sit, the more like Lenin you are.
This is why western left anti-communists and trots have been wildly successful in bringing down their governments
Revolutionary defeatism is when your empire succeeds while you opt out of the conflict.
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On one hand, we can hope that NATO gets absolutely nothing out of this conflict that they were hoping for. On the other hand, we can't pretend the proletariat holds any power on either side of the trenches. As long as we are simply observing and hoping for the least bad outcome, as long as we are not active participants in history, we may as well be sitting on the fence.
Would the "least bad outcome" not be the end of monopolarity, The establishment of a real production based trade system (BRICKS) to end Dollar hegemony, military defeat of NATO and destruction of Nazism in Ukraine?
Is assisting already existing socialist nations throw off the dollar and get fair payment for their labor instead of having to funnel everything through investment bankers in USA not what we want?
Is the embarrassment of NATO and death of Nazis not what we want?
Russia may not be Socialist but the Communist party of Russia is the second strongest party in the nation whereas anything remotely communist is illegal in Ukraine.
Yeah we should definitely be doing more to sabotage our own war efforts, but the "anti-war left" doesn't seem to be much of a thing anymore.
Exactly. Week after week we see headlines about BILLIONS of dollars of military aid flowing in there, and as far as I know, in the US, there hasn't been a single stoppage.
The differences of state socio-political systems, political views or religious beliefs can by no means be an obstacle in the way of joint struggle against U.S. imperialism
Kim Il-Sung
Doesn’t matter if proletariat holds power or not if you’re resisting hegemonic imperialism
Western leftists and communist parties should be intertwined in the labor movements and leading strikes to disable the war machine. That’s the only goal western leftists need to worry themselves about, not making moral declarations on American imperial enemies and getting caught up in intrigues and debating about who is pure or not.
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The global working class will be helped by the weakening of America and NATO. I think it's plenty in our interest that the world's greatest imperial power be hampered. This war isn't what is harming us, the unchecked growth of anti-communist regimes in Europe and America is.
And this is why they need to lose.
“The problems are bad, but the solution, the solution is very bad” - trots when asked to side with global left and colonized against their empire
WW1 harmed the working class and had no proletarian power. Revolutionary defeatism didn’t mean fence sitting in WW1, it meant active organization against your own nation’s war effort.
The correct revolutionary defeatist position for westerners is to organize against NATO and against NATO arms and further spending and aid to Ukrainian fascists
Here’s an opportunity to weaken the US government and you aren’t even taking it, because you are a westoid fencesitter. Any western “socialist” group not actively organizing against the western war machine is not following the correct program.