I'll be putting up effortposts and essays on the bulletins site, both to signalboost it a little more to people who mostly use the RSS feed, and mainly also to preserve them while the site devs need to make posts and comments beyond a few months ago unsearchable. And also to have it one full piece instead of split across multiple posts/comments due to the character limit.
So if you wanna write a long piece up on something you're interested in, or summarize a book or concept similarly to @shipwreck, then you can both write it up as a post (for the internet points and comment notifications), and, if you want, let me know (or I'll ask you permission) to put it on the site.
November 28th's update is here on the website and here in the comment section!
November 29th's update is here on the website and here in the comment section!
November 30th's update is here on the website and here in the comment section!
December 2nd's (big!) update is here on the website and here in the comment section!
December 3rd's (short!) update is here on the website and here in the comment section!
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
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. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
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. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are fairly brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
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 ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
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 ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they're being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. 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. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
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 can I show my mom to make her not hate russia for "bombing babies", or at least make her hate ukraine just as much for the same? She's a Michelle Obama Liberal. I called her a lib and she said i am too, but i told her no, im a communist and she said im not. Lol.
I think it's hopeless, but I want to show her how ukraine is worse than russia or at least committing atrocities in Eastern ukraine...
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She is in denial, is all. A lifetime of propaganda will do that.
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Damn you got owned by your own mom.
My experience with trying to convince people is that there's three different things you do: you either bring up an irrefutable point that makes them go quiet and they pretend to agree with you for a while, before being shown more propaganda from the media and they once again take up their stance (and this can go on basically until both people are sick of it); you bring up a set of points and they bring up their set of points and nobody wins and it ultimately becomes a battle of platitudes; or you actually manage to convince them, which is the rarest of all.
So I've largely stopped trying to convince people of anything in a political sense and, when safe to do so (AKA not surrounded by hooting armed chuds) am just unapologetically a communist. Until there's a disciplined communist movement in the West, it's all mostly just self-actualization anyway, at least outside of protests and unionbuilding.
If she's a lib and fully wedded to the establishment ideologically and materially then I don't think there's any evidence that we could hand you to convince her because of how deep the brainwashing is at this point and how exaggerated beyond believability to any non-Western mind the stories we're getting out of this war are.
I realize that this is an incredibly unhelpful answer. If you really want to try, there's been a lot on how Ukraine has been bombarding the Donbass and Donetsk City, both in the present and the years before this conflict. You might struggle to get any of that from the mainstream media, but if you google search to, say, before January 1st 2022, you might get some more unbiased results on it. On top of that, you'll get a lot of articles on the Nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine, before the West decided that they weren't Nazis anymore. And what happened in Odessa in 2014 might be eye opening to her if she didn't already know about it.
But I don't know if it's possible to convince her that the Russians aren't being comic book villains given all the bullshit out there on it.
I thought of sending her this speech from Brian Becker's anti-war protest in NYC.
The Socialist Program: "Fighting for Peace as US Seeks Major Power Conflict:" Brian Becker's Speech on Nov. 19
Episode webpage: https://www.patreon.com/posts/fighting-for-as-74970262
Edit. She said she'll listen.
Show her the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial in Kiev, and then show her the street leading to it is named after the Nazi who committed it, Stepan Bandera. It was named after him by the Maidan regime. Then show her how Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko were sheltered by NATO for decades afterwards. The Maidan regime is a culmination of this incubated Nazi movement.
All of this information is openly available in the liberal press. Jewish and Polish organizations condemn Bandera and Kiev's love of him
Maybe the situation is different in the US but over here in Europe this isn't the hill to die on. Public opinion isn't gonna shift anytime soon and even if Russia were to win the war this is only a win for leftist in the sense that it's a lose for western imperialism. There are better topics to talk about as leftist. Topics that moderates are more open minded towards.
Explaining nuanced geopolitics to someone who doesn't care to learn about it is nearly impossible and arguing for Russia just makes you look like a dickhead when Russia's domestic policies make it such an easy target for Nato propaganda.
She hosted some Russians 15 years ago and now says she is done with Russians, which I find a bit hateful. That's why I tried to focus on the Russia aspect, but in general I agree with you.
On the bright side, I asked and she's never heard of Juan Guaido.
show her this image
I told her what it was and she looked anyway. The allure is too much
so did it work? does she have all the correct opinions now?
She is anti-nazi...same as before. She watches Richard Engel, the NBC war correspondent. I will try to introduce her to Patrick Lancaster interviewing some shelled Ukrainians or something.
Richard Medhurst is your friend for converting libs. Unapologetically anti-imperialist and always has the correct stances, but hides his communist power level. He is more “normie” in the way he talks and doesn’t have any reactionary baggage
Lancaster is solid stuff. Show her the one where he is at a maternity hospital that is getting shelled by the UAF. That will push her baby killers button.