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
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.
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So... not at all? Sanders isn't even socialist and there's no grassroots or party organizing for socialism behind him. There was never any hope for socialism out of a Sanders presidency. Just confused social democrats because he uses the word socialism dishonestly.
And the owner class' propaganda apparatus is basically the same thing it's always been. Creating jingoistic support for imperialism is the United States' favorite pastime. It's just different to live it than to read about it happening in the past.
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Say no to benefitting from a new social program? Probably not, but that doesn't mean being closer to socialism.
The bare minimum has a much lower floor btw. No public school. No guaranteed emergency health services. Most people spending most of their budget on food. Normalized child labor. These are real things that the global working class have to deal with and it's the US' trajectory.
The shit that's happening to Castillo right now is most likely what would happen if Sanders became president.
Could be. I think they'd mostly just stonewall him until and unless he decided to make any power plays (expansive EOs, appointing judges that the Senate refused to consider). I'm not confident he would have actually tried to do so. He's a lib and he has always played by their rules. Plus, the status quo is more than acceptable to both parties, in reality. They'd love to do nothing, watch the system shit itself like usual, and then blame Sanders and use it as an example of why "socialism doesn't work".
Sure there is contempt and hate from the ruling class, even historically this was often the case so this isn't new. I am sure some of them always laugh at America itself, how 300m people think that shit is a democracy.
But I wouldn't go beyond that, the second part I think you are giving them way too much credit. These people believe their own shit, really not just believe in it they rejoice it in it, the hate and contempt is the only thing that motivates these fucks, after you are rich enough nothing else matters but human social relations, i.e your class.
People keep theorizing since the beginning of the war that this whole thing was a plan to take down the EU and while yes this is definitely happening, I also always argued that these people really believed Russia was a gas station with an army the same level as Iraq or worse and even honorary whites could defeat them if you gave them the bare minimum, you can almost hear them saying "here have this shitty Javelin missile and a few magazines, that is all you'll need. Fucking tanks, artillery, air? What are you thinking lol this isn't WW2 trust me darling."
They've managed to create a world where the ruling class and most of the people close to them are in emperor's new clothes mode on one side while the other side really believe their own bullshit to a fanatical degree.
The epitome of this was the Ukrainian missile landing in Poland and the article quoting the AP reporter guys literaly saying: "I can’t imagine a U.S. intelligence official would be wrong on this".
One look at the dumb as fuck choices people with too much money and power like Musk and Trump make and you can see that they're obviously stumbling around blindly. The only thing keeping them safe is ther money, and that shit won't last forever as their dumbasses crash the economy and anger workers.
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At the end of the day, he just is too old, weak and poisoned by Liberalism. He repeatedly failed to stand up to challenges and attack the correct targets with viciousness
By not aligning with social democrats. Rule number one: if you conflate yourself with liberals, you inherit their failures.
Instead, have a well-informed party line and build radical labor power and win local elections.
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The only elections I really care about are those outside the imperial core. The ones inside are essentially not worth your attention span. As you say, even if the earthly avatar of pure communism descended from the heavens wielding a hammer in one hand and a sickle in the other, if he decides to run in an election then it doesn't make a difference. There's a hundred different hurdles to jump over, and not even getting in office stops the hurdles from coming.
And this even applies to people who fundamentally agree with capitalist logic and don't want anything to do with socialism but would just allow workers to go on strike, so anybody with real socialist or communist ideas or plans is automatically out of the running. A quick phone call and they'll change the election requirements or disqualify you. Jump over that hurdle and they'll shut down voting booths in your strongholds and do widespread voter fraud. Get past that somehow and they'll just sigh and give the intelligence agencies their orders and you'll be dead in a week.
That being said, can elections inside the imperial core be entertaining as hell? Absolutely. If the circus is in town, you might as well go see the clowns. Just don't expect anything but things to get worse.
My ultimate hope is that somehow a left-wing resistance can build itself under the pressure of the necessity of survival as we enter this period of hardship that then leads on to fascism, particularly in Europe. But that requires the people who are going to be crushed in the current and future strike and union crackdowns by the state to become more radicalized by that, rather than submitting to defeat out of atomization, and that's no sure thing. And basic survival conditions can really go either way - with a left-wing force already present, they can lead to revolutions, but without one, they just lead to misery, mass migrations, and mass death.
Wouldn't surprise me, even Blair would occasionally throw fodder to the Labour Party left but :tory: is cracking down on any actual socialists - or even social democrats - in the party with absolute viciousness and pushing for manditory minimum sentences for climate protestors and to essentially make war crimes legal for the British military.