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.
Wtf is it with the lib idea that Hamas is some kind of corrupt, ruling gang that heavily exploits the civilians of Gaza as human shields just to stay in power? Do libs even hear themselves speaking? That doesn't make any fucking sense. Somehow they have this idea in their head that being in a leadership position of a resistance group inside a literal concentration camp is a cushy enough gig to warrant fighting an all out war with Israel solely to perpetuate their position.
The most charitable way I can interpret such a profoundly incorrect reading of Hamas is chalking it up to another consequence of the fact that the vast majority of liberals do not know even the absolute barest, most fundamental basics of Palestine's situation. They must think Gaza is just another Arab country on Israel's border and that it has a corrupt, antisemitic government with little popular support. As such, they've totally missed the fact that it is an open air concentration camp in the first place.
they're trying to do the Nazi thing of "the first country to be invaded by nazis was germany"
90 years of professional victimhood
ideology instead of material analysis, same reason they can believe that every nation the US declares an enemy has an evil, crazy, irrational dictator in charge
Warsaw ghetto uprising was against the law, and therefore a violent armored gang, qed. Also very likely didn't condemn ~~partisans~~ stalinists terrorist troops
It's just part of the scary arab terrorist playbook. Everybody who fails
and opposes the US is a massive piece of shit who sends children into schools as suicide bombers.
I almost called this “Marvel brain”, but that’s definitely not it. More like racist “9/11 Tom Clancy CIA Jim NCIS yellow filter prayers over speakers” brain. We have had over 20 years now of all sorts of TV shows and movies that depict generic “Muslim terrorist” groups. They think Hamas acts just like the “extremist groups” on TV do.
totally, when i try to imagine myself there, i think i would join or serve in some way - I hope I would
Also the head of Hamas military, Mohammed Deif - his wife, 7-month-old son, and 3-year-old daughter were killed by an Israeli air strike in 2014. He lost a brother and two family members in the current attack. (This is buried in a recent article about him.)