December 5th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.

December 6th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.

December 7th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.

December 9th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.

December 10th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.

Links and Stuff

Want to contribute?

RSS Feed

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.

  • Wertheimer [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Hey, @SeventyTwoTrillion, I want to thank you for your post from last week on arguing with libs. I just went back to it so as to stop myself from angrily responding to a friend's email.

    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.

      • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        When the Bolivia coup happened, I remember Matt Christman doing a bit about kids "marinating in Stalin memes" who call their parents CIA agents because they won't buy them a Mosin Nagant for their birthday being closer to the truth than anybody in the media. It was probably the kindest thing any of them said about us.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      :fidel-salute-big:

      My intention isn't to make people more passive or even pushovers in these sorts of situations, I just don't think arguing, especially on the internet, is an effective use of time.

      What I do instead is either ridicule them ("Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? insert quick counterpoint here that doesn't have to be totally accurate but merely has to confuse and disarm them so you can disengage") or briefly state your position and why you believe what you believe without going into oodles of theory, and it can help to have them prepackaged to best appeal to the liberal psyche ("I believe in socialism because I believe that democracy, one of the traits that we value most in our society and call out other countries for not having, should extend to the workplace; for the same reasons that the leader of a country having ultimate power is a bad thing, so too is it a bad thing that a boss or a group of shareholders have ultimate power; I believe in planned economies because the largest corporations like Walmart and Amazon are already internally ran as a planned economy and are incredibly successful global corporations because of it - the different parts inside a corporation should not have to compete for resources, they should work together, and neither should a country. 20 different companies developing 20 different versions of the same thing is incredibly wasteful in resources, which we should be conserving. Instead we should pool resources to make 1 really good thing")

      At the end of the day, none of us are saying "Wow, I should have argued with people more today!" and while that's kind of a cliche, I think it is still true.

      • Wertheimer [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Yeah - let's not violate the Sixth Commandment of Combat Liberalism, but also let's not insist on having the last word when it won't make a difference.

        Edit: or the First, for that matter.

        • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          No last words, no first words? That's leaves only middle words....

          You goddamn centrist :grillman:

          • Wertheimer [any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            "The First Commandment! I meant the First Commandment!" I screamed, as I was dragged to the guillotine.

    • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      You also just don't convince someone that communism is good in a day when they've been propagandized their entire life. You can plant seeds of doubt, however, that may or may not eventually grow to be a genuine change of ideas.