back in my map era, we're ukrainemaxxing right now
Declarations of the imminent doom of Ukraine are a news megathread specialty, and this is not what I am doing here - mostly because I'm convinced that whenever we do so, the war extends another three months to spite us. Ukraine has been in an essentially apocalyptic crisis for over a year now after the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, unable to make any substantial progress and resigned to merely being a persistent nuisance (and arms market!) as NATO fights to the last Ukrainian. In this context, predicting a terminal point is difficult, as things seem to always be going so badly that it's hard to understand how and why they fight on. In every way, Ukraine is a truly shattered country, barely held together by the sheer combined force of Western hegemony. And that hegemony is weakening.
I therefore won't be giving any predictions of a timeframe for a Ukrainian defeat, but the coming presidency of Trump is a big question mark for the conflict. Trump has talked about how he wishes for the war to end and for a deal to be made with Putin, but Trump also tends to change his mind on an issue at least three or four times before actually making a decision, simply adopting the position of who talked to him last. And, of course, his ability to end the war might be curtailed by a military-industrial complex (and various intelligence agencies) that want to keep the money flowing.
The alignment of the US election with the accelerating rate of Russian gains is pretty interesting, with talk of both escalation and de-escalation coinciding - the former from Biden, and the latter from Trump. Russia very recently performed perhaps the single largest aerial attack of Ukraine of the entire war, striking targets across the whole country with missiles and drones from various platforms. In response, the US is talking about allowing Ukraine to hit long-range targets in Russia (but the strategic value of this, at this point, seems pretty minimal).
Additionally, Russia has made genuine progress in terms of land acquisition. We aren't talking about endless and meaningless battles over empty fields anymore. Some of the big Ukrainian strongholds that we've been spending the last couple years speculating over - Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk, Orikhiv - are now being approached and entered by Russian forces. The map is actually changing now, though it's hard to tell as Ukraine is so goddamn big.
Attrition has finally paid off for Russia. An entire generation of Ukrainians has been fed into the meat grinder. Recovery will take, at minimum, decades - more realistically, the country might be permanently ruined, until that global communist revolution comes around at least. And they could have just made a fucking deal a month into the war.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 all socially reactionary. 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 ~ A 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. Produces interesting and useful maps.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
Weapons grade copium: EU to demand technology transfers from Chinese companies
LOL €1bn. Biden just throws around $10bn to random semiconductor companies like it is nothing, why would China export all those jobs and IP for basically nothing.
A quiet fear has taken root in my chest, what if......what if they fuckin comply? What if some western university incubated neo-classical egregore worms it's way through the leadership of the party and presses the goddamn GO button on this shit?
Who cares if they do. The advantage China has is the economy and scale and vertical intergration they have build in those sectors. There isnt actualy some super secret sauce there like what asml holds with lithography. Top EU universities ,physics, engineering and chemistry teams already now almost every development the chinese put into work for batteries and EVs. It would do fuck all to help the EUs industry actualy be competitive . Now and even more so in 10-20 years. Either eay the momment china does tech share with idk Brazil or Mexico when they open some plant there the west gets everything through industrial espionage as well
China truly is a miracle. Reading this even 15 years ago would seem outlandish
the progress brings me hope. I am curious how long the press will read like this. IRL ppl don't really seem to care where knowledge or material is coming from as long as the price is decent and the quality is good. Also, anecdotally, certain niche industrial machines (way less common than anything related to cars or solar panels) that I'm familiar with are made by companies all over the world. However, Chinese manufacturers make machines that are identical (operationally and I can imagine materially) to machines made by American, Italian, German or Turkish companies for 1/10 or 1/5 the price. The barrier simply seems to be communication. Chinese companies' sales teams do reach out via email in English, however (I'm told) they don't seem to have a strong presence at trade shows. So many little things make it plain to see that everyone besides the bourgeoisie would have it better in a world that cooperated JDPON style
I like how the therapy speak people around here have made an exception for using cope in a derogatory fashion.
It's truly a tragedy, the greatest sorrow to ever befall us
Sometimes you've just gotta incite all of the worst posters in the thread at once to make a list my bad OG.
It's shorter than just pasting comments like yours every time we need an example of fragility.
I'm quite excited to see what the next random phrase on the chopping block is going to be after the last meltdown you all had on here.
I never would have guessed dunks would go before cope!
Hell yeah dude, can't wait because I'm a fucking dickhead too.
That shit was so funny people made commentary threads about it trying to even unpack what or why stuff happened. Dickheads are in good company.
Yep it's a great time for those of us who like to seethe and shit when we see others exhibit behaviors we don't like about ourselves. Yes siree.
Keep your non-news drama baiting reactionary bs out of here.
You're just mad because you know it's a great example of exactly the kind of arbitrary tone policing that would be introduced here. You didn't throw a fit when anyone else referenced that shitstorm here before.