Image is from the January 2023 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. Over 50 heads of state and 600 CEOs attended.
holding flashlight under face
Imagine a terrifying world where we are all ruled by monsters of every stripe. And not hot ones like werewolves, but instead decaying zombies and mummies who are both insensitive to, and actively benefit from the immense suffering they cause on a daily basis. The top echelon of society, filled with profit-seeking, bloodsucking vampires. And the worst of it is that they repeat on a daily basis that what they are doing is not only just, but there is no other possible way to do it.
Pretty spooky, right? What if I told you that this world... was our own?
Happy Halloween!
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.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week's first update is here.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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/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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
Many of the settlers in Palestine today were born outside of Palestine and if a just peace were to happen with all the war crimes tribunals, truth and reconciliation commissions, property reforms and equality that would entail, living in the Levant will loose its appeal to those people. They will be "forced" out or at least every will loudly proclaim that they were forced. To settlers being forced out and having to live as equals with indigenous Palestinians will feel roughly the same. They will be as butthurt about losing their Lebensraum as the Rhodesians were, only this time large parts of the western elite will be happy to amplify them.
Keep in mind that many, many Israelis were born in Israel. Apparently about 70% of the Jewish population. There are certainly plenty of landlords from the Bronx, but it's not that clear cut. There are many Israelis who have never lived anywhere else. Removing settlers from recent settlements is certainly feasible but I can't see any scenario where any serious numbers of Israelis are deported to other countries. Europe won't be any more accepting of Israeli refugees than it has been with Ukrainian, Afhgan, or Syrian refugees and it would replace a crisis of settler-colonial violence with a crisis of refugees and possibly stateless people. If there's any model for a peace it's probably post-apartheid south africa, but that's not even close to a good match. There are far more Jewish Israelis than Muslims or Christians in Israel and Palestine. If there's ever any kind of just peace it's going to be unique to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Lots of Jews are going to be living in a free Palestine but I still think that a just peace will result in a non-neglible number of settlers and settler descendants leaving on their own volition. Those who buys into zionist ideology and who believes themselves to be the master race are not going to be happy about having to live in harmony with Palestinians. The nastiest people are going to be most likely to leave and they're going to revel in their own imagined martyrdom.
While it will be hard to have sympathy for the zionist gusanos, it is likely that the fall of the zionist entity which is a prerequisite for a just peace will be a violent and chaotic affair. It is reasonable to assume that the fall of the zionist entity will create actual refugees.
I do think zionist refugees will be among the more welcome ones in the west. Their treatment will be closer to that given Ukrainian refugees than to that given again ones. ÅWestern elites have sympathy for victims based on who they are and on who are victimising them. A free Palestine is going to be a significant loss of geopolitical influence for the west who is likely to be antagonistic to the new state. Consequently the real and imagined hardship of the refugees will be of utility to western propaganda goal.