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.
I try to use left sources whenever I can and I regularly use Michael' Roberts as he is the one that does the most accessible and frequent economic analysis on current events. We don't quote MSM very often for analysis but often just for the current event data or fact. MSM will lie and have a horrendous bias on reporting.
But if Reuters reports Chinese official data on unemployment or something quoting how is that a problem? Often MSM is the only source on other countries but as long as they're quoting official sources why do you care if its Reuters or AP?
If you're sitting here waiting for an explicitly Marxist professional/academic/journalist to tell you of news events then you'll post a comment a month maybe.
Here on the last week Russian food inflation where people were coping it was cherrypicking because it was MSM.
I was going to comment a much larger comment showing no actualy it is that bad. Here is readily available info from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on the current 2024 rising global food inflation.
The current Russia situation is reported by many official sources.
TASS
Rosstat latest data You can google translate yourself but the items are correct. Potatoes are 5% within a week you can reach the conclusion yourself. Картофель 104,68 - 167,43.
Yes the western MSM made a sensationalist headline.
No the reporting was indeed correct by all sources including the Russian government.
Some people want to do some extreme copium, yet if we said that Americans have to deal 10% food inflation in a year everyone would immediately agree its terrible and a doom scenario. Why is this not also true for neoliberal hellhole Russia?
The rest of my comment was going to be explaining why the Nabiullina/Russian CB is a piece of shit neoliberal in charge with no clue but it was too long as I'd have to explain why just mindlessly raising interest rates using shit phrases like "overheating" and "balanced growth" is just clown shit economic principles that will ruin the country. The neoliberal mainstream pursuit of a natural rate of employment, achieved through monetary policy is the key of what they're thinking and its bullshit.
Also the key point I guess is Russian interest rates are once again at the historical high, yet for neolibs there is no admission of failure just double or tripple down. Same talking points, same decisions, then surprised when it doesn't work.
I didn't write it in the end because it was turning into a lesson of Marxism vs neoliberal principles yet again.
Thanks for the information on "Russia copers" you are still arguing with in the shower, but my point is people here are taking the path of least resistance, letting western journalists lead them around by the nose, and most of them are not actually challenging the premises of the financial journalism they regurgitate (which is the subject of what I replied to). On the subject of dedollarization people seem to have exposure mainly to the weird crypto goldbug people and Jackson Hinkle. I won't apologize for calling it pathetic.
I won't lie I'm being selfish. This thread, like Telegram and the last 2 sane subreddits and twitter users, it is a wonderful intellectual crutch for me. When the subject returns to just treading the same subjects of western journalism and only mentions the periphery in dunking on western news it has zero utility to me. Once the low effort takes over I hope it devolves into complete crap so nobody else can enjoy it. 😁 I just don't get anything out of talking to online western leftists other than weird, pedantic, uninformed lectures on things I already know. The election has come and gone and it just gets worse. Some people haven't even let go of the democrats.
People literally replied to the Bloomberg dedollarization article with "China isn't doing enough communism". What's next, they're not pressing The Button?
If you don’t get anything out of it, why are you still writing walls of text up and down the thread? Just go.
Scorched earth obviously!