As Marxist economist Michael Roberts explains in a recent post, core inflation in Western economies isn't going down:

This is what worries central banks. And what it also shows is that interest-rate hikes have little effect on reducing inflation, which rose because of food and energy prices, something central banks cannot control and are now falling for reasons nothing to do with central banks. Instead, central bank rate hikes are increasing the cost of borrowing to spend for households and invest for companies. Indeed, as ECB chief Lagarde said at her press conference, monetary tightening was being ‘very efficient’ in squeezing the real economy. As I have argued in a previous post, profits are now being squeezed as price inflation abates. And rising interest rates are squeezing companies at the other end.

Sure, if consumer spending and business investment slumps, then core inflation will eventually fall, but only as economies drop into recession. Even then, the major economies may enter a slump in production and a rise in unemployment this year, but still have inflation rates well above the levels of two years ago – the worst of all possible worlds.

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.

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

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

February 8th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.

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

February 11th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.

Links and Stuff

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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.

  • Satanic_Mills [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Are the Russians actually using modified S-300 missiles for surface to surface or is it just Ukie cope for their air defence?

      • Satanic_Mills [comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I figured, it's just so brazen that there's a report with every missile strike of an S-300 plowing into an apartment complex.

    • keepcarrot [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      No idea. Hypothetically possible, but the West have been running various "Russia is out of missiles" stories since February last year and the S-300 s2s one is one of them.

    • NonWonderDog [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Basically an S-300 has always been able to shoot at line-of-sight ground targets, but there's no evidence that they've spent millions adapting the guidance and targeting systems in order to turn the world's best SAMs into the world's worst ballistic missiles.

      Apparently there are rumors that Russian electronic warfare is able to remotely detonate enemy S-300 missiles, so there are rumors that the Ukrainians have responded by disabling the range safeties on their missiles. So if they miss the target they just land somewhere and explode. No idea if that's true, but it's not entirely absurd, I guess?

      Anyway, here's my understanding of the ground-attack capability that I posted here a month ago:

      As I understand it, the S-300 can be used against ground targets with a few extreme caveats.

      First some background. There are two types of radar at an S-300 site: search and tracking. The missiles also have two guidance modes: semi-active radar homing (SARH), and command off line of sight (COLOS).

      SARH means the tracking radar paints the target, the missile sees the reflected radiation, and the missile plots its own intercept. This is used for terminal guidance.

      COLOS means the search radar keeps track of the missile position and sends steering commands to make it go to a particular point in space. This is used to direct the missiles to the general area of the target without turning the tracking radar on (which can be detected by the target aircraft).

      But since some of the search radars sit on a 40-meter boom arm, they can actually see a lot of ground area. The missile can be command-guided to any point that the search radar can see, so if the SAM site is in imminent danger of ground attack, and the radar can see the attackers, this can be used to guide a missile onto them.

      I have heard (might be complete bullshit) that this originally required the operator to push the self-destruct button at just the right time so the missile doesn’t bury itself into the ground before exploding. But the Russians have also claimed they can hit moving vehicles with this now, so I’d assume that there have been enough upgrades that they don’t have to do that anymore.

      But the missiles can’t be fired over the horizon at anything in particular. The best you could do is disable the self-destruct and hope it lands near something important and explodes usefully on impact, which is a really bad use of a million dollar missile.

    • sisatici [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think they might be trying to use all of s300 stock since the system is completly known by their enemies and they want to replace it with the Newer AA and better systems but it can still be a West cope. They sure as hell are not struggling with conventional missile production and supply