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Assad has returned with full force to the regional diplomatic scene. The earthquake, followed by the Iran-Saudi peace deal, has shook the Middle East.
Ever since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, Saudi Arabia has closed its embassy in Damascus, but now the two countries are discussing the restoration of diplomatic ties. Various Gulf States have been in talks with Syrian officials and have visited the country, such as Jordan's foreign minister. Assad has been to Oman to meet with their leader. And Assad has recently gone to Moscow to meet Putin, agreeing that Russia is fighting "old Nazis" and "neo-Nazis" in Ukraine (Syria is one of the few countries, alongside Belarus and the DPRK for example, that are unabashedly pro-Russian and always votes alongside them in the UN).
All of this poses a profound problem for America in the region, as they're slowly being squeezed out. Two roads lay before them - escalation, or retreat. While a dignified retreat might be the pertinent thing to do, the Biden administration seems desperate to cause and escalate conflicts everywhere they can. Their base in Syria was attacked on March 23rd, prompting retaliation strikes against Syria. And Russia looks like it's ready for America's next moves, as Russian aircraft frequently fly over the US military base at At Tanf.
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.
March 27th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 28th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 29th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 31st's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
April 1st'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 decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
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 relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
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 ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist (but still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Another big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia's army.
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
Almost every Western media outlet.
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.
lmao.
I'm tempted to reply to this guy and tell them as a skilled machinist, I'd rather make these for China. I don't feel like signing up for this bullshit though.
These people grossly misunderstand the manufacturing situation. Even though manufacturing has plummeted as a percentage of the economy, it has still been growing most years, and the United States is still the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We don't make consumer goods any more, but we make a shit ton of weapons, medical instruments, aerospace components, and industrial machinery. The arms dealers in particular are very keen to open up factories all over the country, to gain leverage against elected officials.
I really can't explain why the US has fallen behind here. We have the industrial capacity - you simply cannot be the largest military power in the world without the industrial base to support it. We have the expertise - these arms dealers have the money to get first pick of the nation's mechanical engineers. We have the flag-fucking loyalty of a large enough segment of industrial workers. There are armories and weapons manufacturers littered all over the place with a large enough labor pool to select people for secretive military projects. I think it really is just a management problem. A failure of imagination. An assumption that the enemy is intellectually inferior. They can't be that smart if they are too dumb to appreciate "democracy." They can't be that smart if they are all brainwashed drones.
From what people like Micheal hudson have said the problem is fundimentaly a management and industrial subsidy problem where policys that benefit U.S. Fire sector are detrimental to manufactureing, so us exports are really niche or understood to be uncompetitive this is due to the drain, workers in the usa have to be payed insane amount of money to inefficiently buy monopolized goods and services fincal capital only maintains industry and redirects most money away from the productive economy investments in favor of speculation. In other words the manufactureing sector is geting blood sucked by the finacal sector so all ot can do it reproduce its self but not expand new means of production, great example of this is lithium mining in the usa. The other issue is not being industrial minded leads to lack of investment in workers. Example would be fincial captial looks at workers like sponges to be squeezed, industrial capital looks at workers like cattle to be taken care of for as cheaply as possible and keep the costs of social reproduction (housing, food, Healthcare, education) cheap as possible to encourage more workers to procreate like cattle.
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There’s not much oversight in contracting. They will try to siphon as much money as possible and return whatever they feel like it. Other countries have private contractors too, but China’s government also has a lot of authority over private industry so they can stamp out inefficiency and fraud if they feel like it
As we always joke at the factory I work at, Management is just a competition to see who can stick their head up their own ass the furthest, and who ever wins gets to be in charge.'
More realistically, it's because management in manufacturing is still mostly a boys' club, and all of the guys who are chosen to be managers were generally really good at 'doing specific manufacturing task and kissing ass' but really shit at 'managing people efficiently and making sure they are motivated to produce product'.
Like occasionally you'll get a guy in who has people skills and the shift really turns around and is enjoyable, but the majority of the time it's some 30-50 year old asshole who has the social skills and sense of humor of a sixth grader whose only redeeming quality is that he knows how all the machines work, which would make him a great mechanic, but for some reason he has been placed in charge of people.