Links and Stuff
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, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
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.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday’s discussion post.
It’s interesting watching western media, which thrives on and requires fast-paced, big events to function, losing its shit as the war grinds on. The imagination of the average journalist is very hyperactive, and they jump at their own shadows.
The reports from the front are just like “Russia reports that they took these three villages… DPR continues fighting back Ukraine in this stronghold… Kadyrov applauds the bravery of the troops… X tons of humanitarian aid is delivered to Ukraine… today, Y Ukrainian soldiers were killed… Z refugees from Ukraine were taken in…”
Whereas the western media is like “Why PUTIN the DANGEROUS INSANE WAR CRIMINAL is LOSING THE WAR and will NEVER LIVE THIS DOWN and will probably BE COUPED! The DERANGED MADMAN is being kept IN THE DARK by his own scared advisors! UKRAINE CANNOT LOSE and is EPICALLY HUMILIATING RUSSIA in their fight for FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY! 86 RUSSIAN GENERALS were UTTERLY SLAUGHTERED today due to ABSOLUTE INCOMPETENCE. Putin must be getting DESPERATE and will announce MASS MOBILIZATION OF THE ENTIRE RUSSIAN MALE POPULATION in approximately FIFTY-THREE MINUTES! Even though Ukraine is OBVIOUSLY WINNING because RUSSIAN LOGISTICS are SO LACKLUSTER and are using SMOKE SIGNALS TO COMMUNICATE and their PLANES CAN’T EVEN FLY and their TANKS ARE OLD AND RUSTY also they’re all DESTROYED and they forgot to put FUEL IN THEIR GAS TANKS because they’re all STUPID CONSCRIPTS, we must continue to give Ukraine our ARSENALS OF DEMOCRACY to resist and give them 33 BILLION DOLLARS. It’s Ukraine’s FINEST HOUR and Zelensky should be made PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD because of how EPIC AND COOL he is.”
It would be exhausting if it wasn’t so entertaining. They’re all off in some idealistic fantasy land.
Biden also told his audience that Ukrainian parents are naming their newborn children “Javelin or Javelina” in honor of the American-made missiles.
:agony-shivering:
Maybe I just suck, but “Javelina” is a weirdly decent-sounding girl’s name to me …
too damn close to being ‘‘Jabalí’’ which is just a wild hog in spanish, lmao
It’s also a wild hog (AKA “skunk pig”) in English:
https://www.desertmuseum.org/kids/oz/long-fact-sheets/Javelina.php
Naming my kid T-34 to own the Nazis and also because he’s actually a communist robot sent back in time to assassinate the billionaires.
Former Brazilian president says Zelensky wanted war
Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was interested in plunging his country into a war.
“He did want war. If he didn’t want war, he would have negotiated a little more,” da Silva, who served as president from 2003-2010, said in an interview to Time magazine that was published on Wednesday.
Da Silva said the West is encouraging Zelensky. "He thinks he is the cherry on your cake. We should be having a serious conversation: “OK, you were a nice comedian. But let us not make war for you to show up on TV,” the former president said.
Da Silva said he doesn’t know the president of Ukraine but thinks he’s acting weird. “It seems like he’s part of the spectacle. He is on television morning, noon, and night. He is in the U.K. parliament, the German parliament, the French parliament, the Italian parliament, as if he were waging a political campaign. He should be at the negotiating table,” the Brazilian politician said.
Da Silva said that, “People are stimulating hate against Putin. That won’t solve things! We need to reach an agreement.”.
Lula Be Wrong Challenge, difficulty impossible
Obviously Lula is absolutely spot on here.
Apart from being a bit of a puppet, I wonder if Zelensky just took a good look at the situation he inherited when he got into office (a dreadful economy, population loss, a civil war in the East, massive corruption - not all of it friendly to him - and an increasingly militarised block of Nazis who would only tolerate him for so long) and realised that any kind of peacetime unity was going to be impossible. So a nationalist war, with formalising the Nazi bloodlust against the Donbas, was the only route he could see to a Ukrainian project that he could maybe survive (politically and literally).
Obviously thats a fucking ghoulish calculation on his part, I’m not defending it, but it would at least be some sort of rational beyond a naive-turned-unhinged coke-fuelled ego trip.
It’s pretty straightforward. He’s a puppet and his anglo masters told him “agitate against Russia and do not compromise in any way, make the maximum demands, we totally have your back dude. Oh, if you don’t do this you are out of the job and we will find someone else who will”
We don’t have to analyze Zelenskyy’s psychology here. It’s pretty straightforward. He’s a comprador puppet for foreign imperialists and he’s doing his job.
