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.
So blinken is 61 and rich and very insulated, i thought he was younger. He probably acknowledges that times have changed and it's not the 90s. He probably thinks it's still the late aughts, ie Obama era when it comes to the states ability to weave narrative.
What his shocked about is how fast the narrative has spiraled out of their control. He probably thought they could still control it through msm not realizing that it's basically a dead media form. Vietnam took years and thousands of Americans dying before the state couldn't control the narrative any more. The howling of agony for Israel lasted at most 4-5 days.
Of course oct 7th got forgotten. It was pretty clear to any one following that the idf slaughtered whole kibbutz to kill a few hama fighters their.
And than just the nonstop war crimedcommitted by zionist. Than the zionist putting on the news some of the most vile, sneering, blood thirsty looking jackals did nothing to help either.
Since the Vietnam war - the US MIC learned how to control the narrative.
The Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan where tightly controlled by the MIC but there was an illusion that the tv reporters were actually covering the conflicts. The MIC described the censorship as something necessary in wartime. But in reality were they cleverly manufacturing consent and Americans were gobbling it up. "Embedded with" should have been a disgrace but Americans just sort of forgot that every single millisecond was approved by the MIC.
The reporters seemed like pigs in shit as their embedded platoon drove them around and they couldn't hide their excitement when they "took incoming fire".
To be honest - I thought Americans would be perfectly okay for at least months with slogan/concepts like Israel needs to do what needs to be done.
I think Biden, Blinken, the dems, and other 100% behind Israeli forces (powerful people, orgs, etc) are shell-shocked too.
It seems to me they didn't realize that their comments like "This is X number of 9/11s for Israel" and "This is the greatest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust," would have a backlash. Americans don't like math and we don't do math but I think the public did do a little number crunching for once. Subconsciously the public might have thought to themselves "Israel has already killed about two times as many Palestinians. And they aren't slowing down at all. How many 9/11s is this for the Palestinians?"
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Rant: In other news - I hate it when people don't listen. Just a few minutes ago I had to tell somebody the same thing about four times in a row. I know I was talking and words were coming out of my mouth but he didn't seem to hear a single one. The situation wasn't work related and he was a stranger to me so I nearly lost my temper. I would feel guilty now if I had said "Fucking listen to me. Listen. I will not say this again..." Man, did I want to tell him that.
My dad never listens. My mil used to not listen till my bil went absolutely bat shit on her for asking questions and not listening. My dad is just a moron so no point.
I think the real problem for the mic, blinken, and the isrealis is social media and the fact that they used all their manipulative powers they could over the past two decades. And that real problem is the educated the shit out of millennials than pulled the rug out from under us so we aren't really in the mood to believe more garbage.
Obama was really the last straw for many. Oh a black man president how progressive. Followed by 8 years of him obstructing any change.
Followed by
Trump is anti Christ media ww3 starting hysteria, that legitimately has broken a few people i know. Followed by Biden starting war after war and getting us basically to the edge of ww3. Along with the non stop lying of the economy is great Jack! 20 dollar an hour minimum wage! Sorry Jack the parlamitarian. Student loan forgiveness lol jack.
The lies don't work when there's no candy coating. It's just shit smeared in your face and you're being gaslight being told actually it's bavarian chocolate of the highest quality.
It really has changed things. My favorite example is how many (all?) the editors and top execs at the NYT ever seem to have a single positive thing to say about social media. At best they dislike it but sometimes it's clear they hate it. And they pump out endless amounts of NYT content pushing their narrative about how bad it is. Like this - Pick a Side. Pick a Side. Pick a Side. Now.
In reality - powerful people at the Times and elsewhere in the media want to be oracles. They want to be the gatekeepers who give information to the masses and tell them what's good/bad. But young people aren't motivated to climb to the mountain to listen to idiots like Thomas Friedman spew his shit. They have far better stuff that they can access and it's right in their pocket on their phone.
It's a kind of chocolate cream.
Clearly nothing makes people hop aboard the propaganda train like shaming them for not hopping aboard yet! Just scream "I can't believe you don't believe me!!!!" a few more times and a little louder. It's bound to work eventually.