this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of a harbor in Tasiilak, Greenland.


NATO infighting? You love to see it, folks.

The latest incident of America's satrapies becoming increasingly unhappy about their mandated kowtowing involves, of all places, Greenland. As I'm sure most people here are aware, Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark with a degree of geopolitical and economic importance - the former due to its proximity to Russia, and the latter due to the proven and potential reserves of minerals that could be mined there. It's also been an odd fascination of Trump during his reign, now culminating in outright demands.

Trump has called for negotiations with Denmark to purchase Greenland, justifying this by stating that it would be safer from Russia and China under America's protection. Apparently, Norway's decision to not give him the Nobel Peace Prize further inflamed him (not that the Norweigan government decides who receives the prizes). He has also said that countries that do not allow him to make the decision - which not only includes Denmark, but also other European countries - will suffer increased tariffs by June, and that he has not ruled out a military solution.

This threat has led to much internal bickering inside the West, with European leaders stating they will not give in to Trump's demands, and even sending small numbers of troops to Greenland. The most bizarre part of this whole affair is that the US already basically has total military access and control over Greenland anyway, and has since the 1950s, when they signed an agreement with Denmark. There are already several US military facilities on Greenland, and B-52 bombers have famously flown in the vicinity of the island (and crashed into it with nuclear bombs in tow, in fact). Therefore, this whole event - in line with his all-performance, little-results presidency so far - seems to be largely about the theatrics of forcing the Europeans to continue to submit to his whims. I would not be surprised if they ultimately do sign a very imbalanced deal, though - the current European leadership is bound too tightly to the US to put up even half-hearted resistance.

This is all simultaneously occurring alongside the Canadian Prime Minister's visit to China in which longstanding sore spots in their bilateral relationship are being addressed, with China reducing tariffs on Canadian canola oilseeds, and Canada reducing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, as well as currency swaps between their central banks, among many other things. It seems no accident that Canada's reconsideration of their relationship with China is occurring as Trump has made remarks about turning Canada into the next US state, as well as the demand for the renegotiation of the USMCA.


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Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
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Sources:

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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

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/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
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/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
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.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
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.


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[–] xiaohongshu@hexbear.net 34 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Honestly, in another timeline the headlines could have easily been “How Europe secured a future of energy and raw resource for itself by brilliantly exploiting US sanctions against Russia”.

In my opinion, the Europeans made two critical miscalculations:

  1. That Russia’s economy could be easily collapsed by unprecedented US + EU sanctions (against a GDP smaller than Italy’s) - they were probably expecting a repeat of 2014-2015 sanction, but ignoring that Russia’s special conditions would not have resulted in a collapse given its energy/food self-sufficiency, a major exporter of raw materials (inelastic demand), low external debt and a large military force with nearly inexhaustible Soviet-era equipments
  2. That the US would be so brazen as to bomb the Nordstream pipelines in front of the world - when the move against Russian economy did not work out, they were expecting the US to at least uphold its image as a leader of the international rules based order

Indeed, they were expecting a repeat of the 1990s USSR collapse. The European Union and the eurozone were only made possible because Europe was able to monetize the vast amount of Soviet industries into financial capital as the union fell apart.

In a slightly different universe, they could have succeeded in carving up Russia and ended up in a better position than the US, by simply leveraging the might of US economic sanctions.

[–] jackmaoist@hexbear.net 24 points 3 months ago (2 children)

They also forgot that Russians as a people lived under sanctions for 70 years. Not having treats won't make them revolt.

[–] xiaohongshu@hexbear.net 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I wouldn’t call the Russians as not living well for 70 years under sanctions. The early and even mid stages of the USSR, especially after the war (1950s-70s), were genuinely good. The USSR had its own largely insulated, self-sustaining economy that shielded it from Western sanctions. Unfortunately the liberal rot already set in by the 1980s and everything fell off the cliff in the 1990s.

Still, Putin made good economic recovery in the early 2000s (GDP rose by 10 fold during that time) until the 2008 global financial crash and later, the 2014 Ukrainian civil war. A lot of people criticized Russia for wanting to join the West, but remember that everyone was doing that in the 2000s - especially China, who joined WTO in 2001 and came out on top.

[–] aanes_appreciator@hexbear.net 15 points 3 months ago

The "western world" could probably be easily carved out between countries that would immediately descend into looting and pillaging if twitch went down for more than a day