August 1st's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Go here for live updates on the Taiwan situation.
August 3rd's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
No updates on Thursdays.
August 5th's update is here! TLDR? Here's the summary.
August 6th's update is here! 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.
With regards to resources, but primarily food I also think climate change is a time bomb and if this is their excuse for not going to war then China may as well never go to war ever again because food production is only going to get worse as we have more climate disasters. In any case it may take years if not decades for the third world exporters to recover from this economic crisis.
Very much like the Russian issue with NATO expansion, the US took concrete and decisive steps while ignoring Putin's warnings and red lines.
The same is happening now so the issue may not be avoiding the war, but rather picking the appropriate timing like Putin. Maybe this isn't best time for China to start a war, but I also doubt the circumstances are doing to be better in the future.
The fall of the US and EU is going to be a long process and it seems they'll become more and more deranged. If China takes the conservative approach and backs down now we will be having this same discussion 5 or 10 years from now and the only difference is the world economy is even worse than before.
I think there are ways for China for solve both their food and energy problems - the first requires widespread organic farming methods and inevitably aid from Russia (which is in progress), and the latter requires them to shrink their usage of fossil fuels to at least the level that Russia and Iran can supply all their needs while the rest is supplied by nuclear and renewable energy (which they also appear to be doing).
As you say, I don't think it's impossible for China to go to war right this minute, but it would be very risky compared to if they put all their focus into decoupling themselves as much as possible from western products and, say, five years down the line, they might be able to survive the sanctions much better than today. Perhaps the US is at some level aware of the fact that China will only become more powerful if left to develop without having some of their resources drawn into a war and so is goading them via Taiwan provocations before it's too late to stop them. On the other hand, in those five years, the US can develop decent hypersonic missiles and Taiwan can further increase their defences, and climate change will affect China's ability to respond effectively, and so on.
There are risks in either approach. I will wait patiently to see what China's response will be in the coming days, weeks, and months.