Here is November 7th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is November 8th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
I strategically retreated from doing an update on Wednesday (and I always perform tactical update withdrawals on Thursdays and Sundays) so this next one covers a bit from those two days.
Here is November 11th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the “buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!” people.
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.
Not an American so I have no idea what this means, realistically what could change?
:biden-alert: Nothing would fundamentally change
Every two years the entire federal house of representatives is up for election. Every two years some federal senators are up for reelection (they serve 6 year terms so only about 1/3rd are up for election at a time).
Currently Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the presidency, but only by slim margins in the House and Senate. The Senate map this year favored Democrats significantly, more Republican senators are up for reelection than Democrats. Additionally a number of Republican Senate candidates are horrible candidates even by American standards. Democrats should have had the Senate in the bag but because they are unable to discipline capitalists who price gouge inflation has made the Senate a coin flip for who will control it. The house also looks poised to be taken by Republicans. This is assuming that polling is accurate, which remains to be determined.
If Democrats lose either the house or the Senate legislation will not be passed and what is passed will be horrible. If Democrats only lose the House they can still appoint federal judges in the Senate, which is probably better than Republicans getting to. It is unlikely that Democrats will lose the Senate but keep the house.
If they manage to keep all three branches of government I would imagine that abortion would get some level of federal protection and we might get to see another attempt at passing Brandon's agenda.
Local offices are also up for reelection and there is a current wave of hogs running trying to take over local governments to attack LGBTQ people. Voting usually doesn't matter but if you have some psycho running for dog catcher, trying to keep them from enacting LGBTQ pogroms is probably worth the effort.
If the Democrats outperform every poll they will still deliver nothing and shoulder all of the blame. I'm not voting anymore in the short term.
Yeah, probably.
The way I view it Democrats are slow walking us towards fascism while Republicans want to do a speed run. If Democrats give the left more time to get organized we'll fair better when the shoe drops. But like I said, voting doesn't really matter, especially a single vote.
I'm not sure we'd be better under the Democrats even (especially) for cadre building. The right wing will have its run for a while I'm guessing maybe a decade, but have no answers to American problems. It is worrisome knowing these ghouls are set to manage the decline of the American Empire but democratic administrations only will also only fuel right wing populism because the Democrats refuse to be genuine champions for the people. Gotta let that party die it's been dead for a while now. Number one impediment to the Left. Let it die.
Imagine the DSA, under the guns of our enemies, marching themselves strait into the work camps rather than getting pushed through the gates as a disorganized mob. The fascists would be so owned!
Actually they'd have a referendum to determine which members march first and then petition the fascists to respect their referendum.
Really though, if fascism is the foregone conclusion to liberal democracy then what is the alternative to organizing against it?
It sounds like accelerationism but hear me out. Maybe the fascists rise to power would be better if it was quicker.
What if the shock of becoming a fascist state over night is what is needed to make libs into comrades? Isn't fascism's second wave way more likely to be successful if they start the frog in cold water not throw it in a boiling pot?
Most people are reactionary in the most literal sense of the word. The trick is getting them to react to the right thing in the right way. Libs react to insecurity by embracing authoritarianism/fascism but they react to authoritarianism with cries for freedom and democracy. If Fascism was the immediate and clear threat to their security they would rail against it.
The only problems with this plan. 1 it presupposes that fascism is inevitable. 2 it doesn't account for the percentage of people that are Fascists and the number of libs that lean more fascist than anti fascist.
lol no. Manchin and Sinema would still refuse to get rid of the filibuster. If they keep the Senate, it will most likely be by a margin where they still make or break votes (either 50-50 again or 51-49). And even if they did have a higher margin, they'd just add a couple more conservative Dem senators to the list of rotating villains. Carper, Tester, Warner, they've got plenty of choices.
That's fair, I guess we'll see what happens.
Short answer: nothing.
Longer answer: The balance of the house and senate mean that we might just see a republican controlled legislative branch that might be able to do some weird stuff, but generally will just lead to a deadlock since Biden continues to hold veto capabilities over stuff. It won't stop the money for war, imperialism, theft from the working class, everything in the imperialist machine will continue as it has since Biden took office from Trump, but people will be a bit more mean on TV. People will point to the left as the reason for the Democrat's loss. The temperature against queer folk and reproductive rights will increase a bit more, but until 2024 republicans passing a nationwide ban on abortion isn't really going to happen. This government has been in deadlock basically its entire time with barely any moves to help the working class and anything they've tried has been devastated by the courts because the US isn't a democracy anyway.
And we'll fuckin' do it again if they don't shape up or get outta the way.
We should just claim to be taking the Democrats hostage. It wouldn't be true but they'd get really mad and it would be very funny.
Embracing those accusations would make the left look cooler and more powerful than today.
Maybe actually do it. Leftists voting for republicans. Its like a strike. A strike is a lose, lose. The republicans would win and the dems and left would lose but the left loses either way. If the Left votes for the republicans they make everything worse for the democrats until they actually put together a reasonable alternative. the only problem is they never will.