Latest updates on the Special Xmas Operation, raging inland from the Blue States ordered by Soviet Communist Brandon.
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The new defense lines of the southwestern salient at New Mexico has been hardened after Blue forces gave up Colorado, surrounded as it was on 3 sides.
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In the northwest, Blue offensives are making incremental progress into Idaho and some parts of Montana. The fighting is bitter now due to the cold.
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The massive strongholds and disadvantageous terrain around the Rustbass, of course comprising Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Indiana, continue to hamper Blue attempts to make progress, but the Reds are for some reason refusing to evacuate from Pittsburgh, which is the lynchpin of defensive lines in this area. Columbus and Cincinnati would be immediately threatened by the breakdown of Red defensive lines here.
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The attempt early on in the war to take Florida and seize the key location of Mar A Lago has been long debated, such as on the purpose of the assault, and its efficacy. When Brandon said he was withdrawing forces from there as a good will gesture for negotiations, we were and remain perplexed, but the distance of the supply lines leading there must have been simply too long to be maintained.
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Much speculation remains of whether Canada will eventually join in the combat to threaten the northern positions of the Reds, such as in the Dakotas.
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On a personal note, I'm getting pretty tired of all this talk of the Ghost of Orlando and the calls of Slava Christmasi. And it's pretty fucking obvious which side is shelling the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant.
December 19th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 20th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 21st's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 23rd's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Supreme Dictator Brandon is sending me to the snowball-pocked frontlines of the Special Xmas Operation on Xmas Eve and Xmas Day where I will be assuming my role of shooting down fireworks and making snowmen to distract enemy fire. Luckily I will only be spending two days there because I'm an entitled millennial and nobody wants to work anymore, and I will be back at home with my avocado toast on Monday.
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.
Breaking: A Starbucks customer has just told a blue-haired barista that their name is "Merry Christmas," forcing them to write the phrase on the cup, and call it out to all the customers. Disturbing reports of the room being filled with applause remain as of yet unconfirmed.
Update:
We've just been informed that a second Merry Christmas has hit the Starbucks
uhhhh delta delta foxtrot echo we have a confirmed merry christmas type incident in progress at the local starbucks, scrambling happy holidays enforcers to locale for tactical acertaining of christmas wishers spinal cords
Ordering a HH-13 strike (the Happy Holidays missile, of course) on the Starbucks now. We cannot allow this breakthrough in the frontlines to propagate.
Whoa there! Have you considered freedom, democracy, liberty and eagle cheeseburger?
Apparently according to reddit, Russians are just running straight into Ukrainian positions to be shot in order to deplete Ukrainian ammunition.
They're really bringing this shitty narrative back from the dead.
The Ruskies are simultaneously doing human wave attacks in the hope that they have more soldiers than the Ukrainians have ammunition, and are also hiding like cowards miles away from the front line doing artillery barrages and using drones and missiles instead of fighting like men
:parenti:
Enemy at the Gates and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race
I think my favorite cope from Reddit recently was that the Ukrainian hotline for Russian troops to surrender has received a million phone calls from Russian troops.
Yes, sure. And eventually every Russian citizen will call this hotline and surrender to Ukraine as well
If I were Russia I would definitely hire a few call centers to clog the phone lines
surely at some point they'll have to realize that reddit upvotes don't win wars
Huawei has developed Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) lithography, and has filed for a patent, a step towards manufacturing semiconductors below 7nm nodes.
Hard to understate how monumental this is given the sanctions the US has been throwing at China to hold back their chip development technology.
This is where I say something about productive forces and something else about worker co-ops
:deng-cowboy: :RIchard-D-Wolff:
https://www.huaweicentral.com/huawei-patent-shows-new-technology-to-enhance-chip-development/amp/
Twitter Aided the Pentagon in its Covert Online Propaganda Campaign
Twitter executives have claimed for years that the company makes concerted efforts to detect and thwart government-backed covert propaganda campaigns on its platform.
Behind the scenes, however, the social networking giant provided direct approval and internal protection to the U.S. military’s network of social media accounts and online personas, whitelisting a batch of accounts at the request of the government. The Pentagon has used this network, which includes U.S. government-generated news portals and memes, in an effort to shape opinion in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and beyond.
It's nice to have substantial evidence, but at the same time: :shocked-pikachu:
The defining delusion of liberalism is the fantasy that "the economy" and "the government" are distinct entities and not near-synonymous concepts. This is the perfect example to show libs to demonstrate exactly that, though most of them are too far gone into the blueanon rabbit hole.
Say what you want about Santa Claus but at least he doesn't work for the Rand corporation like the Tooth Fairy
Qatar has basically been threatening to cut gas supplies to Europe if they continue investigating them for controversies in relation to the World Cup.
Like, obviously Qatar is a fucked up country and they should eat shit for the crimes that they've committed but it does also make me feel a little good that Europe also can't just totally dictate terms to every country outside the West (without themselves eating shit)
I guess that's one of the major problems with multipolarity from a leftist perspective: there are a lot of shitty countries out there that want to do shitty things, and giving every country equal power - or at least earnestly attempting to do so - means that they will have the ability to do more shitty things.
But at the same time, you can't really oppose multipolarity on the grounds that the world would ultimately be better if the United States was in charge of everything, given the almost unending number of crimes against humanity and reactionary coups and everything else that they've done that has immiserated billions of people.
So, in my mind, the answer to this conundrum is that China and Russia and others aiming for multipolarity isn't the end, but the means to an even greater end, that end being proletarian revolution
A big plus is that revolution would no longer need to defeat the entire imperialist apparatus, just state and regional powers.
I agree, but also, all of those fake Gulf states are a couple of arm shipments away from being colonies of India. They are playing a dangerous game by pushing back when they rely on NATO for their security. If they had capable national defense forces, it would be a bit different.
Ukraine has received more funding from the US this year than Russia spends on its military in an entire year and it’s still losing lol that’s why things are getting desperate
Tbf the money here is not exactly going directly to the AFU. Only to Bidens very wholesome military weapon manufacturer friends.
There's a very similar picture from the 1940's showing congress doing the same celebratory standing with Chiang Kai-Sek's wife.
Ukrainian MoD reports they shot down seven of Santa's reindeers but still advise that people leave out some cookies and milk near the tree.
In the same announcement, Putin talks about how Russia was deceived and misled by the western powers into believing that their voluntary dissolution of the Soviet Union would allow Russia to be able to join the quote unquote “Civilized World” but for all their talk, their promises were false and they have continued to attempt dismembering Russia no matter in what form. And despite repeated attempts by Putin to work and cooperate with the west, there is no progress to be made. And for these reasons, this is why they are increasing their Military spending.
While I think he's broadly telling the truth - the Putin of the early 2000s did, IIRC, talk about joining NATO and I remember him being fairly chummy with people like Bush - I don't think this was a revelation he had in the last year. It was likely way back in 2014 that most of his remaining belief died that Russia could really be an equal partner in the West.
His recent reaction to Merkel's statement was similarly a bit of an act, I think. Him saying that he "didn't expect this" and so on doesn't correspond with reality, at least to me - he clearly saw after 2014 that attempts to stop Ukraine from arming and trying to take down the Donbass were futile because the United States wasn't really on board with it. Whether Merkel actually was trying to deceive Putin from the very beginning or instead she was simply too cowardly to stand up to the United States and NATO and say "You actually have to stop arming Ukraine for the Minsk agreements to work!" is, in this context, neither here nor there - Putin clearly saw that the deal wasn't working and made preparations to make Russia sanction-proof accordingly.
In addition, his statement that "maybe we should have started this conflict earlier then" is also not him being genuine; I think he's more trying to convey that he doesn't have any regrets about starting it, contrary to what the Western media, trying to mindread him, suggests. If Russia had gone fully into Ukraine while taking Crimea, or soon after, then while it might have been easier to take down Ukraine's military, the impact of the same sanctions that we saw this year projected onto 2014's Russia would have been much more detrimental, and the 15% GDP contractions that the "experts" projected back in February and March might have actually came true back then. (though Russia invading Ukraine in early 2020 while coronavirus was causing the initial global storm of concern would have been a very interesting parallel universe to be in).
I think Mercouris has made a similar point recently - that, while Ukraine strengthened in those 8 years, so did Russia; and perhaps Russia actually strengthened relatively more than Ukraine did. Ukraine's military back in 2014 would have collapsed within weeks. Ukraine's military in 2022, without outside help, would have fallen within perhaps two or three months, and certainly by the middle of summer - there's a reason why Zelensky initially agreed to try and negotiate in Istanbul.
The difference in Ukraine's strength is not very great at all. They spent those years building the Donbass strongholds up, and those are a massive problem, for sure, but on other fronts, Ukrainian resistance rapidly collapsed in the first month or two of the war. Meanwhile, Russia has strengthened to the point where the economic thermonuclear blast that was released on them this year, which would have sent most other nations tumbling to their knees, has achieved only to set back their economy by 3% in the worst current predictions, and perhaps half that for the better ones.
Yes; and I think it's yet another case of the Iron Law of Western Projection that people in the West say things like "Oh, I bet Putler's feeling so owned that we deceived him into buying Ukraine more time to arm itself against his insane war of brutal aggression!"
Idiots. Putin bought Russia time to prepare itself for NATO's war of aggression against them. They're angry that Russia didn't immediately collapse and all they can do now is try and pretend that he's as owned as they are.
This is the part I don't get. Back when I was a LIB I figured that the UK and USA were on the edge of making peace with Russia so they could unite Russia with the west against China. I was under the mistaken idea that "democracy" fighting against Communist China was more important than cold war grudges. Western warmongering isn't about ideology, self interest or even survival. It isn't even racism honestly I don't understand how they choose who to hate and start pointless wars with.
I think the logic was described quite well by Mearsheimer when he said “we’re going to be the 800 pound gorilla in the room.” His summary of the American imperial project is more or less “someone’s gonna do it so let’s make sure it’s us.”
It’s basically prison logic. “If we are the biggest and baddest mother fucker in the room, then we are safe.”
It’s a kind of toxic concept of preemptive self defense that grows from the genocidal colonialism. There is a cultural assumption that if they aren’t putting their boot on your neck then you’re going to put your boot on their neck.
At this point, I think it’s the deranged delusions of grandeur of the elite in America that feel the need to conquer
Well sure but even the most delusional yanks realize they cant take on Russia and China at the same time. NATO barely won the cold war and even then it wasn't because they won militarily but because USSR's leadership got usurped by traitors. For the west to antagonize Russia who seemed pretty satisfied with their situation in the early 2000s while also being scared shitless of the rise of China makes no sense.
There are still those that wave the red flag in the RF. They were not all killed or driven into hiding. Perhaps the West has unfinished business.
The Danish government-affiliated broadcaster has had its Ukraine and Russia correspondent's accreditation as a journalist in Ukraine revoked by Ukrainian secret police who claims that she has made "pro-Russian" posts. This is likely due to her sharing pictures and descriptions of pro-Russian rallies on her professional facebook profile. The Ukrainian secret police refuses to let her continue to work as a journalist in the country unless she commits to only writing "positive" stories and only use the sources fed to her by the secret police. She has refused to do so.
Danish media and politicians are making surprised Pikachu faces and thinks this must be a mistake as le wholesome freedom and democracy loving Ukraine would never ever violate the freedom of the (good objective westoid) press.
In other news Denmark is having paranoia of is own. The armed forces is cancelling leases of military buildings to civilians to "prepare for the worst", thereby creating trouble for businesses who are renting ammunition bunkers to store fireworks in.
