Very slight change of plans: I'll begin the updates next Monday instead of this Friday. So this week will have no updates. Dang. So y'all better post hard enough to make up for it. But not so hard that we get past 1000 comments by the end of the week.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the “buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!” people.
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.
Someone irl was talking about Russian atrocities and they brought up that "Russian Sleep Experiment" creepypasta as if it were based on a true story. I told them it was a fictional story and they responded with, "but you never know. It's the sort of thing Russia would do."
You can make up anything about Bad Country and people will believe it because they feel it's true, all coming from the same people that love to talk about how rational they are.
It's an intractable game of idea whack-a-mole and I'm not really sure how to solve it.
It's feels like, during the Western propagandization process, a country is associated with a general vibe of negativity or even evil without people really knowing any concrete reasons on why exactly that might be the case, nor having any real data on it, and therefore anything bad about them is believed to be true (the most extreme and thus successful example of this is the propaganda about the DPRK), and anything you disprove ultimately doesn't mean anything because That Country Definitely Is Bad even if that particular reason is false - there must be a hundred other reasons why that country is bad even if that person doesn't specifically know them, so they can just assert that, because you're often not in a real debate (where you might need to cite facts and statistics) about it, you're at most in an argument and more likely in a brief squabble.
There's obviously very material reasons behind it but to hand-wave an explanation, I think liberals - in the broadest sense of that word - are professional "Ah, well, nevertheless..." sayers.
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During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum. :parenti::parenti: :parenti::parenti::parenti:
Liberals fuckin' love that "the exception proves the rule" logic
It's liberalism. Back when there were Force the Vote struggle sessions on this site, you could explain in detail why it could not work and the reply would be "BUT WHAT IF IT DID THOUGH". Idealists without material analysis.
I heard Japan has a haunted version of Godzilla on the famicom. It's not fake I read it online.
I remember believing Lavender Town Syndrome way back in 2014. Still embarrassed about that.
That was an interesting story until the ghost waifu drek showed up.
I've read a fair few Creepypastas that are initially quite interesting and then go full anime bullshit in the later acts for no reason.
It takes a lot of restraint to just leave a story at "wow this fucked up thing happened" apparently.
Like the sleep experiment, its not just that oh if you dont sleep for a month or whatever you get fucked up, its actually a primordial evil that monologues at you about how its hidden within all of humanity and its super spooky.
Or Ben Drowned is actually about a conspiracy to preserve peoples consciousness within their favourite games, and not only is Ben a real person but every NPC in that cartridge of Majoras Mask is a real preserved person being tortured in the digital realm.
People clown on Lovecraft for this(Among other things) when some of his stories are like, "Romani fiddle music is satanic", "What if a hispanic figured out how to live forever then melted?" or "There's a secret society of flesh eating subhumans living beneath our streets and homes(And this one guy makes scary paintings of them)" but these are in fact, fucked up things that happened.
It's so fucking funny that all of those are real stories he really wrote
None of it will beat the time he wrote literally just racist fanfiction about his real life apartment and neighborhood having too many foreigners living there and imagining them all as doing live human sacrifices in the service of satan.
Anime had had some creative, interesting, and even scary concepts and themes before, but yeah for the most part the post-2000s waifu flood that coincided with the "waifu" slang being coined in Azumaga Daioh broke some brains good.
Did you bring up the American Reanimated Corpse as Head of State experiment?
Never heard of it 🤔
Meanwhile it's actually most similar to MKUltra shit like when they forced modified football helmets with speakers on them onto people then played psychologically distressing audio tapes for hours and days on end to destabilize their personality.
Every accusation made by the west is in fact a projection.
Libs, read another book. Read another creepypasta.