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.
Yesterday's discussion post.
Joker report:
:joker-troll: ENTER ERDOGAN:
Erdoğan blocks Nato accession talks with Sweden and Finland
:jokerfication: ENTER ZORAN MILANOVIC (CROATIA):
EXEUNT
still means shit ofc, but NATO isn't "as united as ever" and Erdogan signaled to others that they can start compiling wishlists, especially when it comes to such a reckless endeavor as having Sweden and Finland join NATO, which very few European members actually want to happen (apart from the Baltics and Poland)
I love this. Westoid media pretended that NATO expansion into Sweden and Finland was just a question of them deciding it. They think NATO is essentially a local little league team that you can just join.
We were also told that NATO was sticking it to Putin by being as united as ever.
And then it happens, those nice friendly Nordics decides to join. And then they are told no. And to add insult to injury, the countries saying no are countries who are far down the whiteness scale compared to Sweden and Finland.
NATO is not rising to the challenge in a united defense of liberal democracy. They're squabbling over petty bullshit and making demands that stands in stark contrast to the lofty ideals the west claims to stand for.
I was telling some Finns that they shouldn't expect the West to save them.
How'd you like a little forced austerity with that nuclear-laden military base that's also swarming with heavily armed and propagandically stupid yanks, bro? So much for Nordic social democracy. Ha ha ha.
would be pretty funny if NATO swapped Turkey and Croatia for Sweden and Finland. also, equally funny and deranged if like, half the NATO states take this opportunity to be like "Okay, I'll approve Finland and Sweden but only if I get one of my weird national and deeply racist issues addressed"
It’s a veritable who’s who of ethnonationalist gripes and grievances
I could be wrong but my impression so far is that Turkey is not actually all that pleased about supplying all those drones and then seeing them all get destroyed while Ukraine still loses the war. I wonder if they felt they've done their part and this is compensation for it.
The "Turkish drones are so effective wow" narrative is very much an attempt to make Turkey happy by praising their shit drones. The reality is everyone involved knows they barely do anything but its one of those things you can't just go out and admit it.
So Turkey may already be pissed overall and this isn't just opportunism.
Drones are pretty damn good against technologically inferior enemies like Armenia. They are not particularly effective against Russian anti-air and electronic warfare
Yes Bayraktars don't seem to be as effective as advertised, or at all. Even though there is a lot of media silence imposed on the Russian side, they seem to make a point to publish every photo and every video of every Bayraktar that's been shot down, there's been so many.
Is there any genuinely good military equipment being made anymore or is it just national MICs grifting the governments they're parasitically attached to or outright in charge of with high cost equipment that just doesn't actually work?
Russia's hypersonic missiles seem to function as they should, though it's obviously hard to get a good look at them when they're travelling so quickly. Are their tanks okay? What about in China?
Hard to say. A lot of America's stuff is very high tech and works in some situations, but hasn't show itself to be effective against a popular insurgency. Russia is coasting on late cold war soviet tech, much of which was very good, and they've been able to modernize a lot of their stuff to keep up with the new high tech toys.
I think the real issue is that without an industrial base America's whiz-bang science fiction toys can't be replaced faster than they would be destroyed in a real conflict, so the US would rapidly run through it's cool toys and have nothing to replace them with. Also, the US population is such a fucking mess that recruiting a meaningful army would be... uh... very difficult. Can you imagine trying to conscript a million zoomers and keeping them from fragging their officers immediately?
Based zoomers! :crab-party:
They could always try to recruit from the Christian Fascists, but if they try to recruit from the general population they'll be training and arming hundreds of thousands or millions of kids who have no loyalty to the government and no faith in authority to do anything but punish them and ruin the world.
Yeah right now feels like maybe 50% of the Russian success is attributable to all those great late-Soviet missile designs, Kalibrs, Kinzhals, Iskanders...they all seem to work great, Russians have a good supply stock, and the West can do jack and shit about those daily missile strikes.
Just a reminder for folks because I only realized it after the Seth Harp interview on RWN - Russian dumped 30 (that's right, THIRTY) Kalibrs on the redditor base in Yavoriv on March 13. Ukronazis saying "30 Ukrainians got killed", some Austrian redditor interviewed said at least 60 Westerners got murked. Why can I not hold all this Ukraine winning.
I am not very smart when it comes to these things, have never really been a war need, but I think this depends on what you consider to be military equipment, yeah?
Like, it seems that modern military conflict is mostly reliant upon information. If militaries are prioritizing information gathering systems, pairing munitions with targeting computers (or whatever the correct jargon is), establishing satellite measures and counter measures, etc. You wouldn't necessarily see this reflected in what we traditionally think of as military hardware so much.
Also (and this is a bit shaky) I don't really see munitions being built for anything specific If that makes sense. Designing around potentialities leaves designs ungrounded. I'm not sure how to further clarify this point, I hope this much makes sense.
Bayraktar more like BayREKTared am I rite folks
deleted by creator
Well, in a way this is because NATO is not really useful for Turkey anymkre, but tries to limit it and has significant costs. So, Turkey is seizing the opportunity to redress what it sees as a skewed relationship (which, if you go by ghoulish NATOite logic, yeah fair enough). They're likely to get significant concessions.
Turkey also doesn't really feel threatened by Russia and has no incentive to see them join NATO while relations with the US and the EU are in the shitter, so it's a perfect opportunity