August 1st's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Go here for live updates on the Taiwan situation.
August 3rd's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
No updates on Thursdays.
August 5th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
August 6th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
No updates on Sundays.
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.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
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 ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
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 ~ 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.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
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.
The record of sanctions imposed by the US seems to demonstrate that they're counterproductive- the ordinary people whom the US expects to turn against their own government instead rally around it because they blame the US for their woes. I'm wondering whether the same will be true of Taiwan in regard to Chinese sanctions.
This is very interesting and I’ve never thought of it.
Anecdote, last year mainland banned import of pineapples from Taiwan, apparently a pretty bit agricultural product there. The ban’s official reason is the detection of certain worms etc, but it was widely speculated to be political — except unlike the current situation there was no direct trigger.
The response: the pro-independence DPP and media tried to rally domestic support, even with such funny proposals of “if we all each eat 18 kgs of pineapple a day for 2 weeks we will resolve the issue! Who needs China!” (This was instantly a meme) But the populace’s response seemed different — of course the opposition party KMT had a field day against the gov for its rhetorics and naïveté and failing to build good rapport with China, but the general mood seemed to be mostly either “what can you do?” or actually thinking the DPP is souring everyone’s livelihood with empty rhetorics of pro-independence even though the consensus in Taiwan has always been that they will never, ever dare to declare independence.
So I guess I doubt there’d be a consensus in Taiwan that China is to blame this time. Pro-independence capitals controls Taiwan’s media, but electoralism leaves political discourse there really divided
I remember horrific fascist slime creature Mike Pompeo posted a picture of himself holding a bag of dried Taiwanese pineapples, looking like a bloated mafia snitch who had been at the bottom of a river for weeks and all of the good, principled DPP liberals were salivating over his display of support for their democracy.
It’s the “democratic pineapple!”
Taiwan’s libs are like the most insufferable species of libs. They are the living manifestation of Cold War brainworms :brainworms: like, imagine libs who love trump so much they posting-attacked the American mission in Taiwan on Jan 20, 2021.
There is absolutely nobody too craven for them, I guess when the base of your movement is the pro-Japanese Hokkien bourgeoisie the bar is automatically at zero.
Yup. Imagine “progressive” high school students protesting the government’s curricular reform, arguing that they shouldn’t say comfort women in the Japanese army were coerced cuz “some of them were voluntary” … (happened in 2015)
I started to warm up to China when I heard they were changing Hong Kong textbooks to highlight the humiliation and destruction that British colonization brought to China, much to the dismay of Hong Kong protestors. I wonder if they'll do the same thing in Taiwan when reunification happens.
I don't think that's a universal reaction to sanctions. Seemed to be a different story in apartheid South Africa, for example. (Not that I'm trying to draw an equivalence here.)
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Wasn't it more civilian boycotts than state sanctions that did it?
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South Africa was already "sanctioning" the non-white majority so they didn't feel the sanctions imposed on the country. Also South Africa had had a real organic resistance movement that had been organising against the regime for decades. The regime had also been defeated on the battlefield, chipping away at its legitimacy and confidence.