Here is July 11th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is the update for July 12th and 13th! TLDR? Here's the summary.
News update for July 14th: I passed my exam! So I'm going out to celebrate today. Also, it looks like Japan is giving up on pretending it's a democracy, America is on its knees begging to invade Iran, and Moon of Alabama has an update on the current macro state of the war.
Here is the update for July 15th! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is the update for July 16th! 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.
Summary
News
The EU is working on improving compliance among European countries with the sanctions on Russia, lamenting that they don't have the same sanctions enforcement mechanisms as the US (Strange that the US has such well-developed sanction mechanisms, eh? Anyway, the Putler invented global blackmail). At the same time, the EU is worried that it's losing, or has lost, the battle of narratives with the wider world on the Ukraine war, with many countries, including in the G20, don't want to rock the boat too much with Russia. A French minister says that Putin will cut off the Russian gas supply to Europe because he's an evil totaliauthoritarian, which makes previous discussions about Europe cutting off their own gas supplies to own Russia pretty hilarious in hindsight. Russia will receive its pipeline gas turbine after July 14th. Zelensky has fired his ambassadors to Germany, India, Czechia, Norway, and Hungary, with no specific reason given. The UK is trying to ramp up its nuclear power capacity, which I feel like they should have started a decade or more ago. Gazprom is reducing its gas supplies to Italy due to 10 days of routine maintenance. Lithuania is desperately trying to put itself out of its misery by increasing the restrictions on goods that can be sent to Kaliningrad.
China will apparently soon announce that it's allowing local governments to sell $220 billion-worth of special local bonds to help strengthen the economy. Macau is being put on lockdown for the first time in over two years until July 18th. Wang Yi says that Asian nations should avoid be used as chess pieces in a major power rivalry. Kiribati is quitting the Pacific island bloc over internal disputes, with Australia trying desperately to stop them from leaving. Sri Lanka's President and Prime Minister are leaving their posts (and Bloomberg advises the country to set up an "all-party cabinet that includes technocrats with deep economic experience", hilariously). Geothermal power in Laos is generating $600 million annually for them.
Pakistan's mango harvest is being ruined by drought. The US is still trying to destabilize Uzbekistan.
The Ivory Coast is trying to clean up after flooding, caused a little by climate change but a lot by a lack of proper drainage infrastructure and a lot of concrete and bitumen through which water cannot drain.
The western US continues to experience water scarcity, with increasingly desperate measures being tried. Most Americans find the major issue with electric vehicles is the logistics of how and where to charge them.
An important street in Bolivia is being named after Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian general and hero to who the US assassinated in early 2020, and a sisterhood agreement between Tehran and a city in Bolivia is being established.
Conflict and Climate
Russia continues to destroy Western-supplied ammo. Ukraine says that new US guided rockets have "passed the test", but the attrition rate on the front lines means that Ukraine needs a lot more.
Billions of people rely on 50,000 wild species for survival and their livelihoods, stressing the importance of biodiversity. NASA will release the first high-resolution color images from the James Webb telescope tomorrow.
Dipshittery, Good Takes, and Hope
A ghoul tries to argue that trying to rein in climate change is bad, actually, for working class people, by citing the protests in the Netherlands and the crisis in Sri Lanka, the latter which has a "virtue-signalling" ESG rating of 98.1 out of 100. Zelensky cites Ukrainian forces moving onto Snake Island after Russia retreated as a symbol that Ukraine "will not be broken", ignoring that it already has been, and will be for decades. It's actually your fault - yes, you - that this recession is happening, because recessions are powered by belief, and if you believed that there wasn't going to be a recession, it wouldn't have happened. The Supreme Court is damaging the international image of America, which is otherwise a shining beacon of democracy which is responsible for only good things. Bloomberg argues that Biden can in fact unite Israel and Saudi Arabia to face down Iran, whose containment and subjugation would, apparently... bring down terrorism in the region? ...uhh... have they checked who's supplying the terrorists over there and who Iran is fighting? ...no?... okay... moving on... the Western media reports that China has developed mind-reading AI that can measure your loyalty to the party, which is almost certainly not true but if it is: I bet I would score the highest, like S+ tier. Boris Johnson is, as literally everybody knows, bad because he's a raving populist who is so deeply concerned about the people in his country, especially the homeless, that he brought the country down, and we need more aristocr-- I mean, meritocrats and technocrats to rule the UK, like Liz Truss.
Responsible Statecraft has some decent analysis about how the Iran hawks are delusional. Popular Resistance interviews Elnora Gavin, a resident of Benton Harbor who is organizing with her local area to fight problems there. MEPs in the EU expect the European Council to revise the EU Treaties to include the right to an abortion as a fundamental human right.
Oh BTW thanks! :rat-salute: