Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
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 and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
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 all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
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. Produces interesting and useful maps.
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.
When will anglophone news sources learn not to refer to Chinese persons by their given names lmao. It’s so flirtatiously endearing to refer to Wang Yi as Yi — or to Xi as Jinping ~~~~~
In this case, the masthead should use the same convention for Chinese names as they do for others. e.g. 'President Joe Biden' and 'President Biden' or 'Mr Biden' would be equivalent to 'President Xi Jinping' and 'President Xi' or 'Mr Xi' thereafter.
In Chinese articles, President Xi would be called something like 'National Chairman Xi Jinping' and as Xi Jinping thereafter.
In formal spoken Chinese, it is most common to use the family name + title, family name + Mr/Mrs/etc, or family name + relation to the speaker.
So for e.g. the person with the name Li Xiaoning could be
Li laoshi (teacher Li)
Li nvshi (Ms Li) or
Li ayi (auntie Li)
Generally though, given names are only used by friends, family or from a person of higher position to one lower. Teacher Li could address her student Wang Bingbing as Wang tongxue (pupil Wang) or Bingbing tongxue (pupil Bingbing). Wang Bingbing's friends may call her Bingbing.
For people with two character names, they're often just said in full, even in informal situations, or the given name is reduplicated to soften it a little e.g. Huang Mo would be called Momo.
I get that China is going to do their own thing with foreign policy, but is it really too much to ask that China do something like “due to gross human rights violations, we are suspending all Chinese trade with Israel until a ceasefire is reached”? Weren’t they part of the bloc that put economic pressure on apartheid South Africa? I’m not asking them to give dongfengs to Hamas or anything. Is it really too much to ask that communist country try and do something here?
Yep, they're not gonna be at the "kids table" for much longer and I want to start seeing some leadership on these issues in the next decade. They've already started that a bit recently which is great, far better than the West ofc
Nah just look at the Pelosi/Taiwan incident again, they even mobilized their two carriers, they made a big deal about red lines and the US just called the bluff. Its not that they're not commited to communism as much as too much restraint and a naive idea that they'll win out in the long run. Things like climate change destroying the planet or US imperialism making blocs like BRICS irrelevant if China doesn't stand up to defend it just doesn't compute to them.
I'd almost say this is just rookie shit but who am I to lecture they should know from the mistakes of the USSR, it just seems they learned all the wrong lessons. The USSR was never this powerful in comparison.
China's been very consistent and clear about its stance regarding foreign affairs - no foreign interference. China acts when Taiwan's on the line since it considers Taiwan to be internal affairs, and it doesn't take an active stance when it comes to Israel-Hamas since they haven't been asked to mediate on the matter by both parties. Same for Ukraine-Russia. They did mediate for Iran-Saudi Arabia since it was asked for by both sides.
I don't like China's lack of action either, but it is a consistent stance and I don't see them changing it even when they become the number 1 superpower in a decade or two.
Right, they could even just embargo military purchases. I don’t think that would create too many problems with the US (certainly not more than, say, selling weapons to Russia) and would probably be somewhat effective in impacting Israel. China could do things, and they choose not to.