Image is of the drying Canelon Grande Reservoir in Uruguay as the country battles three consecutive years of drought, its worst in nearly a century.
Quoting every country and region that is currently suffering under unprecedented climatic conditions and posting every graph showing extremely concerning things happening would make this preamble way too long, so I'm gonna keep it short and merely say that, holy shit, the consequences of fossil fuel executives' actions are looking real fucking bad.
Hundreds of millions of people, if not billions, are currently enduring higher than average temperatures sometimes reaching up 48 degrees Celsius or 120 degrees Fahrenheit or even beyond. Drought is putting pressure on water supplies basically everywhere around the world. And El Nino is activating, which will only do further damage.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second and third update have done the Dragonball Z fusion dance and created this long-ass thing that took me... a while to get done.
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 decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
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 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.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
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 ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist (but still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
The Western reaction to the grain deal is just so funny to me.
They claim to be motivated to stop hunger in the global south, while simultaneously refusing to honor their side of the deal and allow Russia to export grain as well.
That position is so ridiculous they often don’t even mention why Russia is pulling out, and just pretend it’s a unilateral “deal” Russia has suddenly broken.
US Pressuring Ukraine to Push Harder in Counteroffensive
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that US officials believe Ukraine should be launching large-scale assaults against Russia’s defensive lines despite the risk of major losses and are blaming Ukraine’s tactics for the struggling counteroffensive.
The report said that the pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive “has generated concerns in the West that the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky may not deliver as powerful a blow as it could.”
The main complaint from the US and other Western countries is that Ukraine is not using “combined arms” tactics, which integrate infantry, armored vehicles, and artillery. Instead, Ukraine is relying on artillery and sending small teams of engineers to clear minefields, which Ukrainian officials say they are doing to prevent unnecessary losses.
The New York Times also reported that the US was frustrated by Ukraine’s caution. The report reads: “Senior US officials in recent weeks had privately expressed frustration that some Ukrainian commanders, exasperated at the slow pace of the initial assault and fearing increased casualties among their ranks, had reverted to old habits — decades of Soviet-style training in artillery barrages — rather than sticking with the Western tactics and pressing harder to breach the Russian defenses.”
Ukrainian troops received combined arms training in NATO countries ahead of the counteroffensive, and the Biden administration wants them to use it. But Ukrainian forces did launch large armored assaults in the first weeks of the counteroffensive, which resulted in heavy losses. According to Times, 20% of all of Ukraine’s weaponry deployed to the battlefield was damaged or destroyed during the first two weeks of the counteroffensive.
Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, has hit back at Western criticism of the counteroffensive, saying NATO would never launch such an assault without air superiority. He’s been demanding that the US and NATO provide US-made F-16 fighter jets, which aren’t expected to arrive until next year.
According to the Post, US officials are privately saying that Western jets won’t make much of a difference due to Russia’s exstensive air defenses. John Kirchhofer, the chief of staff for the US Defense Intelligence Agency, offered a bleak assessment of Ukraine’s prospects at a conference last week, saying that no weapon will be the “holy grail” to help Ukraine “break through.”
Despite the situation on the ground for Ukrainian soldiers, the Biden administration is still pushing for more fighting and shows no interest in a ceasefire or diplomacy. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley insisted on Tuesday that the counteroffensive is not a failure.
“It is far from a failure, in my view. I think that it’s way too early to make that kind of call. I think there’s a lot of fighting left to go,” Milley said. “And I’ll stay with what we’ve said before, this is going to be long, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be bloody.”
- Show
Russia on the Grain Deal at the UN Security Council:
"Most of you expressed, in one way or another, disappointment at the termination of the so-called grain deal that provided for exports of Ukrainian grain to global markets. I have a question to you. What was it that you expected?
From the very start, we have been drawing everyone’s attention to the fact that the initiative did not meet the initially proclaimed goal and was gaining a well-defined commercial nature. In fact, from the very beginning, developed countries have taken the lead among those buying food from Ukraine. However, no steps were taken to remedy this trend.
During the Black Sea Initiative, a total of 32.8 million tonnes of cargo was exported, of which more than 70% went to high- and upper-middle-income countries, including the European Union. The poorest states, notably Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia, accounted for less than 3%...
Such geography and commercialization of an initially humanitarian initiative is easily explained by the fact that the owners of a significant part of Ukrainian arable land (more than 17 million hectares) are Western corporations Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto. They bought up Ukrainian land after Kiev lifted a 20-year moratorium on its sale at the request of the IMF and became the main beneficiaries of Ukrainian grain exports.
On the other hand, the Europeans who buy Ukrainian food at dumping prices then process it at home and resell as ready-to-consume goods with high added value. In other words, they earn twice. What does this have to do with the task of getting food delivered to the poorest countries, about which we have heard again today?"
Remember that back before the Yanukovich presidency was overthrown in Ukraine, they chose to take a 15 billion loan from Russia that did not have provisions to gut pensions, social welfare, etc. Nor a provision to open up the sale of Ukrainian farmlands to foreign capital. And then Maidan happened and the new regime took the IMF loan that required the exact opposite of the Russian offer and allowed for the hegemonic western capitalists to sweep into the new market and gobble up the People's wealth.
I know it's like 9 months away but I was thinking about what I could do on April 1st next year and I thought about doing basically a 1-day Evil Megathread where we only get our news from the mainstream media and talk about how Russia is going to lose and how the dollar will forever reign supreme and how China is about to collapse but then I realized that that would literally just be Reddit so now I have to think of something more creative
https://archive.ph/sVZuw
One of America's subs hit some shit while at sea while doing surface travel and needs emergency repairs but can't because a bunch of the shit needed to fix it isn't made any more. Lol lmao even
breaks 25 year old submarine
parts have "long since been discontinued"
It's like in Stellaris (or any 4X game) when you build and send out a fleet of ships and by the time they get to their destination they are already a generation behind
American military go 15 minutes without embarrassing yourself challenge [IMPOSSIBLE]
The article says they only ever built three submarines of that class, even aircraft carriers aren't usually built in such small numbers. Even MIC is a victim of capital
Was the Connecticut one of the ones modified as well for carrying a Seal team to do... Things with?
I also vaguely remember the rumor was this sub was very close to the Chinese coast and the Chinese used sonic depth charges or something until it surfaced, which is how it "hit" something.
Edit: Found the theory again. I remember it didn't sound completely far fetched at the time but I'd have to see if more info came out since.
Edit again: Looks like the redacted but more official story from the US is the CO, XO, NAV, and ANAV really suck
There's a few more good pictures here
that was a very interesting article
EDIT: doing more reading on this and the author's credibility took a big hit when I saw he has UFO stuff and something about building a teleporter
maybe if China is nice, they'll let the US go to war with them by offering them the parts needed to fix all their broken shit
I salute our brave Kaiju warriors in their ongoing anti-submarine campaign in the pacific
It's very funny that the us is so deep in to autocannibalization it can't keep critical aspects of it's nuclear deterrent floating. I have complete confidence that the F-35 fleet will self own due to maintenance needs and extremely tenuous supply chain within a week of real combat.
I was just reflecting that the most unrealistic thing about X-com and it's successors is the idea that the Western arms firms could rapidly reverse engineer alien equipment, prototype new weapons, and field them in four months instead of forty years. Someone should do a black comedy X-com meets Dr. Strangelove narrative game.
In my 2 edits in another post trying to figure out how they hit the underwater mountain found this banger:
At least as of November 2022, nearly 40% of the Navy's submarine fleet was sidelined in maintenance or waiting for maintenance. This is just one facet of the slow-moving crisis of lack of drydock space and personnel to effect repairs across the Navy's maintenance enterprise. This is only made worse by the service's aging fleet.
From here
Man, and I had some dork ass
a couple weeks back trying to act like China doesn't spend enough to keep its nukes in working order. Lol they have to tell themselves that because facing the reality of just how much of a paper tiger the US actually is scares them too bad.It's honestly incredible how much waste there is and how little the US Military achieves with all the money they spend.
In Brussels , after Chilean President Gabriel Boric failed to convince the rest of the CELAC leaders to specifically condemn Russia, Lula said, "perhaps his lack of experience in these kinds of meetings makes this young guy more thirsty and hurried, but this isn't how it goes"
Lol, common Boric L
hot damn the site is so lightweight even this thread is loading quickly what the hell
Russian MoD has declared a sea blockade of Ukraine:
Starting from July 20th 00:00 Moscow time, all vessels going through the Black Sea into Ukrainian ports, will be considered carriers of military cargo
When Biden inevitably falls in the shower and breaks a hip I'm going to contact CNN and claim I'm a "bathing expert" who studied applied showerology at the kohler institute of toilets and bidets and I have over 6,000 hours power washing my armpits so naturally I'm a pro on this situation.
Love seeing the “poor widdle Ukraine invaded by fascist crazy Putler for no reason” narrative being spread on Hexbear. Very cool! Post on the news mega you fucking cowards.
I do find it entertaining when people outside the news megas make comments that essentially imply that we uncritically and fully support Russia and Putin, (as if we've turned into a group of patsocs or something! luckily I haven't seen accusations that bad). There was a brief phase a year or so ago where that kind of shit happened but most of those people have either moved on or were banned for being reactionaries.
As, I think @Alaskaball@hexbear.net has talked about this through the lens of the Second International vs the Third International, I feel like there's still a notable split on this site between the "We should only support progressive, communist countries or those clearly on the road to it" camp and the "We should support - critically, if necessary - all countries that genuinely oppose fascism, which is currently being most strongly expressed by the Western bloc led by the United States." camp.
They cannot see how the past connects with the present, and how the present shapes the future.
I can only speak for my own culture and upbringing, but to most people of my home province and culture and generation the word "history" is synonymous with "rote memorization of names of centuries-dead royalty from another continent". It's almost like the school system I attended was scientifically designed to figuratively beat all curiosity about history out of kids.
I've often thought that history ought to be taught in reverse. Start kids off with recent events that they may have heard about, then teach about the events that led to those events - and so on. Keep them engaged, make them think of history as something that directly shaped their lives.
I think the US has a lot of interest in not properly teaching the 20th century so while I agree that that would be an interesting and perhaps better way to teach history, all you'd get out of it is just First Cold War propaganda updated to the modern day. I feel like one of the reasons why leftism was allowed to very briefly come back to the fore in the form of Bernie is because the people who had grown up and were his voting base hadn't been as steeped in the anti-communist propaganda and didn't know about recent history that well, but now that we're in the Second Cold War that leftism will be stomped back into dust again and we're due for another few decades of neo-McCarthyism, with the obsession by online liberals of calling everybody who doesn't hold literal genocidal fascist views about Chinese ("we'll blow up the Three Gorges Dam!") and Russian people a tankie as a good indicator of what's to come in real life
I feel like there's still a notable split on this site between the "We should only support progressive, communist countries or those clearly on the road to it" camp and the "We should support - critically, if necessary - all countries that genuinely oppose fascism, which is currently being most strongly expressed by the Western bloc led by the United States." camp.
Well, and there's a few anarchists (like myself) around who probably aren't interested in supporting any countries, but will nevertheless prioritize how we oppose them based on the hierarchy of the state (including imperialism), the degree to which reactionary ideology creates zeal in their authorities, and our own ability and responsibility to influence them. Opposing the waging of all war by state militaries is consistent with this, as the tools of the state will not solve our problems (IOW no war but class war). See also Eugene Debs' awesome speech(es) about war.
call me a book worshipper but "on contradiction" stays winning here
There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.
...
When imperialism launches a war of aggression against such a country, all its various classes, except for some traitors, can temporarily unite in a national war against imperialism. At such a time, the contradiction between imperialism and the country concerned becomes the principal contradiction, while all the contradictions among the various classes within the country (including what was the principal contradiction, between the
feudalbourgeois system and the great masses of the people) are temporarily relegated to a secondary and subordinate position....
But in another situation, the contradictions change position. When imperialism carries on its oppression not by war, but by milder means--political, economic and cultural--the ruling classes in semi-colonial countries capitulate to imperialism, and the two form an alliance for the joint oppression of the masses of the people. At such a time, the masses often resort to civil war against the alliance of imperialism and the
feudalbourgeois classes, while imperialism often employs indirect methods rather than direct action in helping the reactionaries in the semi-colonial countries to oppress the people, and thus the internal contradictions become particularly sharp....
But whatever happens, there is no doubt at all that at every stage in the development of a process, there is only one principal contradiction which plays the leading role.
There was a brief phase a year or so ago where that kind of shit happened but most of those people have either moved on or were banned for being reactionaries.
Yeah, a ND friend who holds grudges forever decided that they don’t like Hexbear because of it.
We should support - critically, if necessary - all countries that genuinely oppose fascism, which is currently being most strongly expressed by the Western bloc led by the United States.
This is my general feeling on it. Any country or organization opposing NATO is by default correct.
Not very convinced that it will lead to communism in Russia, though. Putin's handling of the war, while often questionable, has been much better than NATO, and he's still quite popular. One would like to think the war will push regime change in Europe, and it might, but it's looking like it won't change in a good direction either.
Not that Tsarist Russia is necessarily a good analogy for current-day Russia, but I have been entertaining some idea lately where, a few years down the line say, the Russian people develop more radical anti-oligarchic thought as state involvement in the economy increases, and they start protests by doing the whole "Putin, we're protesting on your behalf against these oligarchs that are threatening our country!" like people did back then, and then eventually it dawns on them that Putin isn't going to save them from them or he dies and somebody unpopular is put in his place (or, hell, Putin/the new guy actually do institute socialist reforms, though that's got like a 0.1% chance of happening) and we basically repeat history
hard to imagine what exactly would cause people to get to that level of desperation other than a war with NATO though because the climate probably isn't gonna do it, and if we're at the point where masses of Russians are being killed in the war then we're probably already about a hair's breadth away from going down the Posadas route instead. maybe a really really bad recession, like even worse than 2008
Honestly I'd like to encourage this development (not the cowardly part they should have the courage to enage fellow comrades), for one it allows us to flesh out certain arguments and aids in developing analyses
You need a wall to bounce a ball off-of and I nominate these foreign policy babies as the wall
Personally I'm waiting to see what the Poles do when western stimulus of the Ukrainian economy ends and several million more refugees stream over the EU borders
Polish AfD they'll be ultra fash, anti-nato and a bunch of other things if past migrant crises in euro countries is to be believed.
Current PiS and AfD are basically the same but what I mean is that there'd be a reactionary protest party similar the way AfD was basically a protest party of the CDU, since the whole thing happened under a conservative/reactionary government only a different reactionary party can come out of it. Maybe they'll say that the PiS have been sissified by the USA and real traditional values are actually what Putin does. Maybe they'll do TERF shit who knows what I do think is that it'll be weird since this is all we get nowadays.
I hate living on a continent where the only political innovation we get is new exciting ways to be a fascist.
Obviously they'll need to deploy troops to a new East Poland territory and build a big wall
Ha imagine thinking there’s a difference between nato and not nato ha silly chumps. Nato and not nato are the same that’s why you should tacitly endorse nato.
Wow this simulation is so life like. I really believe you are a honest to goodness liberal.
i've been seeing this discourse so often recently that i thought federation already happened lmao
The mega has legit became the least liberal place on hexbear, maybe it always was.
But it's still very liberal, except for me
rest of the site needs an automod reply for ukraine and volcel police
I have been thinking about creating a statement putting out our general position on the war and putting it in the thread for a few weeks after we federate. It won't stop the more determined liberals but perhaps the lurkers might see that we aren't on Putin's payroll or anything
Maybe something like:
expand
First and foremost, this site and the news megathread's user base are not a monolith, and there are frequent discussions about who to support and to what degree. Nonetheless, we nearly universally acknowledge that the West's role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core, both militarily through wars of aggression and coups, and economic means, giving them unpayable loans, imposing austerity, and applying sanctions to keep these countries in permanent debt peonage. These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term "rules-based international order." It is in the Left's interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.
Our position on Russia's invasion of Ukraine is also varied. Given that we believe that NATO must lose, many of us generally critically - emphasis on critically - support Russia in the conflict. However, it is important to understand that this conflict was not pre-destined and could have been avoided if NATO had not continued to advance toward Russia over the preceding decades. NATO provoked Russia into this conflict as they could not accept another major power on the European continent; they wished to destroy Russia economically and politically to take over and then loot the country for cheap resources; and to put further pressure on China, the West's true enemy. They have turned Ukraine into their shield - a shield that is becoming ever more battered and bloody.
Ukraine is not innocent, plagued by fascist paramilitaries with a very significant degree of de facto power over the country. The media can hardly take a photo of Ukrainian troops without catching one with a tattoo of a Nazi slogan or symbol. The media has additionally tried to suggest that these paramilitaries are not fascist or do not have any power, or if they were fascist, then they were purified soon after the war began, and only non-fascists remain. These are blatant falsehoods, and none of us are fooled. Suggesting that the country cannot be fascist because they have a Jewish head of state makes as much sense as suggesting that Americans were not racist while Obama was president. Stepan Bandera, a fascist collaborator with Nazi Germany, has been increasingly elevated to the status of national hero by right-wing groups inside Ukraine, while his history has been muddled and deliberately obfuscated.
The US-backed coup in 2014 has led directly to the war, with pro-Russians inside Ukraine being killed horrifically in Odessa and the shooting of protestors blamed on government forces. This led to the overthrow of Yanukovych, who was regarded as a Russian stooge after he received a superior economic deal from Russia compared to Europe, which was intolerable to the West. He was then replaced by the pro-western leader Poroshenko, who was then replaced by Zelensky. After the annexation of Crimea - which the overwhelming majority of the Crimean population is satisfied with even according to Western sources - Russia attempted to find a diplomatic solution to the fighting in the Donbass for 8 years while separatists inside Ukraine were being killed by the thousands, solutions to which Western leaders, by their own admission, only agreed to buy time for NATO to arm Ukraine. We can only conclude that the West was preparing Ukraine for their battle with Russia as part of a long-term strategy to weaken and destroy them, and it is utterly understandable why the Russian government found this intolerable and felt forced to act. Putin did not invade Ukraine because he was stupid, evil, misinformed, hungry for power, hungry for territory, wanted to rebuild the USSR, or any combination of the above - he even expressed his desire to join NATO in the early 2000s! Instead, this is the consequence of three decades of NATO marching their military forces towards Russia's doorstep. The universe did not begin on February 24th, 2022, and historical context here, as in every situation, is mandatory if you want to form quality analyses. Arguments that do not acknowledge history will get you laughed at here.
We do not attempt to excuse or justify all of Russia's actions in the conflict. Millions of Ukrainians have been forced to leave the country - many went to Russia, for what it's worth - which has been incredibly damaging to those people's lives. The electrical grid has been targeted, creating immense hardship for the people inside Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. We do not, however, think of these actions as genocide, as we do not want to diminish the term. Suppose you strongly oppose this invasion for its cruelty and thus support the West. In that case, it is worth looking at any of the wars which had involvement by the United States and NATO (Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.), even limiting yourself to the last few decades, and comparing the deaths, destruction, and long term consequences. Doing so is not "whataboutism", it is basic principled consistency. Putin is not a fundamentally evil person - and, indeed, many people inside Russia openly criticize him for not being even tougher on Ukraine. The average Russian is also not to blame for the conflict, and certainly not an "orc" or subhuman in any way. We do not tolerate calling anybody on either side of the conflict these terms or similar.
Lastly, we as a site have many people in the LGBTQIA+ community. As such, we unequivocally denounce the reactionary language used and laws enacted by many people and countries in the anti-Western bloc, such as Russia, Iran, certain African countries, etc. It is important to note that some countries in this bloc are experiencing generally positive trends toward social progress - such as Cuba and Venezuela. It is also important to note that some countries in the Western bloc have either never favored LGBTQIA+ rights or are sliding away from those rights (such as in the UK, USA, and others with right-wing governments in Europe). Reactionary policy is neither pre-destined nor permanent, and with a combination of economic and social development, the weakening of repressive religious structures, and the ascendancy of left-wing governments, among other factors, the conditions of people in the LGBTQIA+ movement and the wider population can be meaningfully improved inside even the most hopeless countries today.
This is good and a generally accurate summary of the news megas view of things.
Russia attempted to find a diplomatic solution to the fighting in the Donbass for 8 years while ethnic Russians inside Ukraine were being killed by the thousands
It wasn't just ethnic Russians, Ukraine was killing ethic Ukrainians in Donbas as well. I would de-emphasize the ethnic aspect. Being Russian or Ukrainian in these areas is more of a political question for many people in these areas due to the intermarriage over centuries. It's not like the US with the one drop rule.
The geopolitical background for the current conflict dates back to at least the early 20th century with the collusion of fascist Stepan Bandera with the Germany Nazi government.
I would rework this somehow. The way you currently have it implies that Ukraine is Nazi-run because of its Nazi past, this is just not true. Ukraine became Nazi-run and then emphasized the Nazi collaboration part of its past over the Nazi fighting parts of it. Stepan Bandera was honestly kind of a historical nobody before the government made him into the father of the nation. His organization was important but he kinda wasn't.
I think there might be value in separating out a historical primer from our general beliefs. Going from the coup all the way up to Zelensky. It would be a lot of words though.
Gotcha. I wanted to connect the Ukrainian WW2 collaborator movement to modern Ukraine but then it just turns into a history documentary, so I've decided to shift the part about Bandera up in the 'here's why Ukraine is fascist' section and not in the 'history' section.
I have also replaced "ethnic Russians" with "separatists", which seems about as neutral phrasing as I can imagine.
I'm personally okay with the whistle-stop tour of recent Ukrainian history as it stands, I think there should be some explanation of the version of events as we see them because otherwise you might end up with people going "hey, these people are talking about being historically literate but they aren't talking about the Revolution of Dignity that overthrew the pro-Russian stooge in 2014 and instituted freedom and democracy and justice, and Russia's barbaric invasion of Crimea, what the hell." I mean, they'll probably still think that but I do wanna try, for the people who are very fuzzy on what's actually happened in the last decade or so and might just know "uhhh Russia invaded Crimea in like... 201...4? and then, uhh, they invaded Ukraine in 2022? because Putin's evil or something? that's what the media tells me" but also don't wanna read a whole brochure on Ukrainian history
all I want to really get across is "Here are our beliefs that many/most of us feel about the conflict, here's why we think that, and in summary we are communists that are against the West and for the anti-NATO coalition making us fairly rare in the grand scheme of the whole western left, so if you feel about the same way then you can hang out and talk about current events in a safe space, if you wanna argue about these things with us then we'll listen if you make good points but we'll laugh at you if you don't, and if you're one of those NAFO weirdos then we'll probably kick you out"
Separatists works, as would Ukrainian separatists since they're all Ukrainian there regardless of ethnicity. You do also need to include Minsk 2 and possibly Minsk as well. Somebody else mentioned it already and I can't believe I forgot about it.
Probably a good call it keep it as short and sweet as possible.
On the one hand, this nails it very well. On the other hand, based on my interaction with liberals regarding ukraine, it would be much funnier to just put "Z" there
I would ask that you consider adding context for the coup and US involvement.
That and the burning of the Union building were points of inflection that seriously shaped events, in my personal opinion.
Really strong statement that would probably do good if pinned or something.
I've added a little more historical context as you've suggested
I really dig the way you phrased it. Gets to the point without giving room to get bogged down too much.
Probably going to steal this next time liberals show up in the trueanon sub.
I’m not sure that you can get through to people who have completely rejected empirical reality in favor of idealistic western-leftist grandstanding.
you can't, but i find comfort in the presence of walls of text
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it.
Fr though, walls of text are like a weighted blanket for the mind.
Still seething Putler never ran out of missiles like CNN said he would.
Putin has confirmed that he won't be attending the BRICS Summit 2023 in person. Despite assurances from South Africa that they will not pursue an arrest against Putin and responding to the ICC with a :PIGPOOPBALLS: , a likely reason that was brought up from a mate at work is that US+Israeli spies (or South African collaborators) would make an attempt on Putin's life, which would cause in the least, Johannesburg to become the world's first megacity-turned-warzone.
Also since yesterday was Mandela Day, a :gigachad: :mandela: power move would have been for Nelson Mandela (who outlived Thatcher) to send a hot stream of piss at :bathroom:
to all our anarchist comrades
