Credit to @ThomasMuentzner for the title idea. No, the goddamn city still hasn't been taken, though excitingly, the Russians have moved like three residential blocks up!
December 12th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 13th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 14th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 16th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
I feel pretty ill today so I'm taking the weekend off. Might post some articles here and there.
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.
Some interesting things on the upcoming TikTok ban, which have weirdly passed under the radar both in MSM and leftist spaces:
The proposed bill is not just banning the TikTok servers from accessing the U.S. It intents to block the entire parent company from financial dealings with U.S companies. What this means is that if/when the bill passes, TikTok will be banned from the App Store/Play Store on every single device in the world
Although portrayed as an anti-TikTok legislature, TikTok is actually not mentioned anywhere inside the actual text of the bill. Instead it refers to "any social media company in or under the influence of China and Russia". Once the bill has passed, it gives the U.S. the ability to ban GLOBALLY literally any single software product, which has Russian/Chinese shareholders - Yandex, Beidou, Alibaba, Tencent's WeChat(biggest social media in the world).
Worst part: They have targeted gamers. Gamers! As Tencent is a "social media company", :amerikkka: holds the right to ban Legaue of Legends, Valorant, Fortnite, Clash of Clans, PUBG and any other game co-owned by Tencent.
On a more serious note: The bill can also be used to target companies even outside of its social media subsidiary. Tencent or Alibaba using servers with AMD and Intel chips? Not anymore!
You forgot to mention the best one: :reddit-logo:
Imagine the public outcry if the US government actually banned Reddit because Tencent is a major investor.
It's the funniest outcome so it's bound to happen
They'll start banning chinese companies from investing into US assets before long.
I love the free market
So because Tencent owns 10% of :reddit-logo: does that mean reddit will be banned too?
:inshallah:
I feel like this would be pretty damaging for the US too, though? I'm personally curious about to what extent we'll see capitalists (with their short-term profit interests) try and oppose the economic war on China. Lobbying and such.
I wonder what China's response to this would be, if they decide to do one at all (the government hasn't had the best track record of actually responding to American aggression).
Regardless, China is getting decoupled from the West, whether they want to or not. I think Xi to a certain extent saw this coming and has hopefully been spending the last year since the invasion figuring out what to do about it, but we'll see if it's adequate. I could totally see this ending up like the sanctions on Russia have ended up (very unsuccessful depending on your metric) but Putin also seems to be more proactive and willing to fight back, and he's mainly fighting (economically speaking) Europe, which is just America's lapdog - whereas China has to take on America itself going for their jugular.
True. I also don't think they are really going to flex muscles right away. US-Europe relations are in a very crucial 1-2 years and banning Europeans from TikTok will probably rock the boat too much.
However I think the main point of the legislature is a message to the Chinese Tech Industry "The west is our market. Don't expand here or else". If I was a CEO of an upcoming Chinese social media, I would definitely think twice before expanding in Europe/US knowing that my entire company can now be banned on a whim
Regarding TikTok, I think it will get away with some back door deal like sharing its user data with the US Gov or giving its algorithm to Silicon valley, worst case scenario is a US-only ban