December 5th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 6th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 7th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 9th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 10th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
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. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
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. Beware of chuddery.
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 fairly brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
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 ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
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 ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they're being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. 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. 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
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
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.
Very stoked to have found a first edition of Stalin’s The Foundations of Leninism & On the Problems of Leninism at a small town bookstore this weekend for $2. It even has The Foreign Languages Publishing House • Moscow stamp on the inside cover. Just such a super rare copy.
My mom gave me one and it just kept falling apart the more I read it. :ussr-cry:
The more the book fell apart, the more powerful a communist you became, transferring its power and knowledge into you
It's true, I once accidentally tore apart a copy of 12 Rules for Life and now I am addicted to benzodiazepines
I almost couldn’t believe it. I don’t see a copy of this version online anywhere so I’ll probably digitalize and upload it at some point
I was pretty excited to find a clean copy of the early 70s edition of Capital vol 1-3 from International Publishers on eBay recently. Hard to find copies without notes in the margins or highlights. But some nerd stamped the title page with "The Library of [Person's Name]", so I'm gonna take an exacto knife and cut that shit out.
Don't be a nerd who calls their own personal book collection a "library" and start stamping things...
⚡️The Armed Forces of Ukraine suffered heavy losses in Bakhmut due to NATO COIN tactics.
Full article
Soldiers of the 71st, 58th, and 53rd brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who were captured in early and mid-November near Bakhmut, say that the training course in the UK and on the territory of Ukraine, with the support of instructors from the USA, Canada, and Australia, was not designed for intense battles and harms the Ukrainian infantry .
Soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine underwent training under the NATO COIN programme (from the English term "counterinsurgency" or "counter-guerrilla warfare"). The COIN program was created to fight "non-state forces" and insurgents and does not assume that the enemy has effective artillery and heavy weapons, which the Russian Armed Forces have in large numbers.
In addition, the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not conduct a full six-month training course. For assault units, an accelerated course was held in 20 days, and for ordinary infantry, training was completed in two weeks. After the courses, Ukrainian servicemen trained according to COIN standards began to die en masse in battle.
At first, losses were recorded in the Kherson direction, but now the most massive losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are observed in the Artyomovsky and Krasnolimansky directions, where the forces of the southern grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were transferred.
Due to the heavy losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Bakhmut in September, October, and November, American instructors were sent to the units of the 30th, 53rd, and 71st brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who were instructed to help with the management of the Ukrainian infantry and reduce the level of losses.
According to the prisoners, the training of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in COIN tactics, both abroad and at the Yavoriv training ground, was built around actions in small mobile groups. At the same time, the main directions in the preparation and training were manoeuvres on light vehicles (the so-called war of pickups), the assault on buildings, and practising the "filtration" Of the civilian population.
It's all about the mistakes of American officers when planning counterattacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Bakhmut. This was due precisely to a misunderstanding of the capabilities of the RF Armed Forces and the Wagner PMC, which have a large number of artillery and heavy equipment.
TLDR: The fabled western training that was supposed to turn the tide of the war by teaching Ukrainian troops to fight like the westoid master race turned out to be half-assed counter-insurgency training which happens to be completely useless against an enemy with heavy artillery, resulting in heavy Ukrainian losses.
The west seems to have gotten so used to fight people who are too poor to have shoes that they have forgotten about all other types of war.
The DPRK fired missiles that hit nothing but open ocean and they get sanctioned to hell, but Ukraine hits Moldova and Poland and gets another billion dollars in weapons .
:curious-sickle:
Twitter dot ukraini is currently very upset and think that they are being shadowbanned by :my-hero:, citing their Twitter impressions going down this month. Unfathomable that the website with the shortest attention span on earth is bored of a stalemate conflict in what was a corrupt nowhere country to the western world of libs just 10 months ago.
Apparently the Dems have decided that South Carolina will replace Iowa as the first state in their presidential primaries. They’re saying it’s to reflect “a diverse electorate” but it feels a lot like it’s just giving Jim Clyburn faster access to the kill switch for progressive candidates. At least now I won’t have to have false hope for a decent candidate to come out of it all :agony-minion:
Also why can’t they just host the primaries simultaneously with multiple rounds or ranked choice already goddammit
many westerners genuinely believe that Russia will not only be defeated, but forced to unconditionally surrender and be destroyed as a nation. It's ridiculous how effective american propaganda is.
https://twitter.com/DemSocialists/status/1599469232701714432/hidden
The DSA is hiding replies suggesting that politicians that break basic fundamental principles of "Democratic Socialism" like being pro-worker and supporting strikes, should be un-endorsed by the DSA.
I see media class nihilist hookworm jimmy dore is also in the comments trying to get rose emojis to join his united front of etsy shop crystal aunts, larouchite occupy burnouts, and industrial capitalists.
larouchite occupy burnouts
damn that really is a "type of guy" huh
Does he even pretend to be left anymore? He spends 90% of his time bitching about vaccines and the non-existent lockdowns and the other 10% doing the same but on Fucker Carlson
If he stopped pretending to be left he'd have to compete in an ecosystem of right wing grifters. Better to stick to your ecological niche even if it's smaller.
I wrote about why this is an organizational problem here: https://hexbear.net/post/237633/comment/3043409
U.S. accuses Russia of providing weapons, fighter jets to Iran
Are they aware that Russia and Iran are sovereign nations that have a right to buy or sell whatever (conventional) weapons they want? The UN arms embargo expired in 2020.
Peruvians are marching in Lima to demand the closure of the right-wing majority congress that just ousted Pedro Castillo in a legislative coup.
Rural indigenous communities are said to be marching towards the capital tonight.
I doubt this will lead to anything, but it's nice to see that the Peruvian working class also hates those ghouls in the congress.
https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1600616728949563401
Um...so Merkel just admits they were never considering peace and diplomacy, but were pumping up Ukraine with weapons and gearing up for war while faking the Misk agreement.
Libs on my local forum: "She is so smart! If we only still had Angela! So smart!".
Can Mr. Hexbear please explain, how the heck is this a good look for the EU?
Hey, @SeventyTwoTrillion, I want to thank you for your post from last week on arguing with libs. I just went back to it so as to stop myself from angrily responding to a friend's email.
My experience with trying to convince people is that there’s three different things you do: you either bring up an irrefutable point that makes them go quiet and they pretend to agree with you for a while, before being shown more propaganda from the media and they once again take up their stance (and this can go on basically until both people are sick of it); you bring up a set of points and they bring up their set of points and nobody wins and it ultimately becomes a battle of platitudes; or you actually manage to convince them, which is the rarest of all.
So I’ve largely stopped trying to convince people of anything in a political sense and, when safe to do so (AKA not surrounded by hooting armed chuds) am just unapologetically a communist. Until there’s a disciplined communist movement in the West, it’s all mostly just self-actualization anyway, at least outside of protests and unionbuilding.
When the Bolivia coup happened, I remember Matt Christman doing a bit about kids "marinating in Stalin memes" who call their parents CIA agents because they won't buy them a Mosin Nagant for their birthday being closer to the truth than anybody in the media. It was probably the kindest thing any of them said about us.
:fidel-salute-big:
My intention isn't to make people more passive or even pushovers in these sorts of situations, I just don't think arguing, especially on the internet, is an effective use of time.
What I do instead is either ridicule them ("Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? insert quick counterpoint here that doesn't have to be totally accurate but merely has to confuse and disarm them so you can disengage") or briefly state your position and why you believe what you believe without going into oodles of theory, and it can help to have them prepackaged to best appeal to the liberal psyche ("I believe in socialism because I believe that democracy, one of the traits that we value most in our society and call out other countries for not having, should extend to the workplace; for the same reasons that the leader of a country having ultimate power is a bad thing, so too is it a bad thing that a boss or a group of shareholders have ultimate power; I believe in planned economies because the largest corporations like Walmart and Amazon are already internally ran as a planned economy and are incredibly successful global corporations because of it - the different parts inside a corporation should not have to compete for resources, they should work together, and neither should a country. 20 different companies developing 20 different versions of the same thing is incredibly wasteful in resources, which we should be conserving. Instead we should pool resources to make 1 really good thing")
At the end of the day, none of us are saying "Wow, I should have argued with people more today!" and while that's kind of a cliche, I think it is still true.
Yeah - let's not violate the Sixth Commandment of Combat Liberalism, but also let's not insist on having the last word when it won't make a difference.
Edit: or the First, for that matter.
No last words, no first words? That's leaves only middle words....
You goddamn centrist :grillman:
"The First Commandment! I meant the First Commandment!" I screamed, as I was dragged to the guillotine.
You also just don't convince someone that communism is good in a day when they've been propagandized their entire life. You can plant seeds of doubt, however, that may or may not eventually grow to be a genuine change of ideas.
