Not really related to the topic at hand, but it’s something that’s been bothering me for a bit and it seems like a good opportunity as any to raise the matter: you are posting articles from this blog quite often, I’ve even started reading it myself occasionally. And while I do find the author’s situation analysis informative (if perhaps too optimistic at times), I have to call into question their ideological leanings (for the lack of a better term). The author has a second blog, dark futura, which focuses on the more abstract meandering and culture stuff. In there, the author keeps mocking climate change as a hoax, has at least one article decrying the attention to trans issues as an agenda of the powers that be (IIRC the Obama admin specifically), and most recently had an article with statistics on which universities were popular among the “1%”. Which is fine by itself, informative even, if not for the fact that throughout the article there seemed to have been nods towards support of US repubs in a positive way. Plus the comment section was frothing at the mouth about the supposed Jewish agenda in these institutions, complete with users “well akschually”-Ing the topic as “not antisemitic”, because (and I quote) “ashkenazim aren’t really Jews, they’re turkic”. And while the author is hardly responsible for their comment section, the fact these comments were permitted to stay and were not challenged says a lot.
So with all that said, I have to call into question why you are posting their things.
That’s all valid criticism of the author of this blog who, as i have warned before, is clearly a right winger and comes with all the baggage associated with that position. I stick to posting their military analysis because it has proven to be a good summarization of information from various other sources that i usually read before this blog’s articles and which allows me to verify the accuracy of the summaries that this blog makes. It saves me the time of having to collate all of the disparate info out there from various telegram channels, social media posts, articles, etc. As for whether their predictions are too optimistic… predictions are always difficult and one should be careful with them, both the optimistic and the pessimistic ones. I always take the attitude “wait and see”.
On their second blog, yes, that is essentially sewage that i wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole and i am glad the author keeps the two separate and the military blog reasonably free of ideological insertions. Also, i don’t ever scroll down to the comments on sites like this, i find that preserves my mental health. Ultimately it’s up to you whether you want to accept sources of diverse ideological inclination or just stick to leftist ones. But if you pick the latter you will have fairly slim pickings. Sometimes good information can come from sources that we don’t agree with ideologically. Hell, sometimes the most useful info comes straight from internal US intelligence agencies or think tanks because internally they are more truthful than in the propaganda they put out to the world. So it’s a question of if it is productive to insist on ideological purity in your news and analysis.
If you don’t find this particular blog’s summaries enlightening or have a better source of up to date summarized news on the Ukraine conflict feel free to make suggestions and i’ll take a look. So far i trust that the readers on this platform are adults who know to consume media critically and not allow the ideological bias of their sources to influence them. And after all, similar criticism could be raised of other sources that are frequently used by anti-imperialists, such as for instance The Grayzone (we had an entire discussion at the time when Ben Norton left them about how Max Blumenthal has some very dubious takes on certain issues…), but they are nonetheless a valuable resource.
I am glad that you raised this concern though because it is important to have these meta discussions every once in a while about the media that we use to keep ourselves informed and how we should treat it.
If a person has good geopolitical analysis and shitty takes on domestic politics and trans issues, does that invalidate their geopolitical analysis?
In my experience, few people (if any) have the correct positions on everything. This used to really bother me. I try now to just pick and choose sources according to how their opinions in their domain of expertise aligns with my values and knowledge. For example, I’ve gotten a lot of useful info and analysis out of the Duran people–a lot of their analysis and predictions regarding their us/Russia Ukraine proxy war has turned out to be correct despite them being paleocons and having bad takes on social issues.
This is pretty much my view too. The Duran are a good example, so are the Grayzone, or Pepe Escobar even. They each have their uses where they offer good news or analysis, but they also have instances where they can turn into utter garbage, for instance when it comes to topics like vaccines or socially progressive views on gender. It is what it is. You just have to learn to “eat around the bad spot”. Take what is useful to you and discard what is not.
If we only ever consumed media from sources that we 100% agree with, firstly we would not have any media to consume at all because there is always something to disagree over even with other leftists, and secondly we would be living in a very small echo chamber. You just have to trust that your own ideological convictions are strong enough to not be swayed by stupid, unscientific, reactionary nonsense. And if you are unsure on something you can always come back here and discuss with your comrades.
