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.
Good morning. The Secretary General of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has declared total war on US occupation forces in Iraq. An earthquake is coming.
https://t.me/Eng_ahed/50177
First the Houthis, now this. Oh shit? Is it happening?
Decolonization and denazification is happening ๐๐๐
FYI "Houthis" is imperialist terminology to demonize the Ansarallah Movement and its armed branch National Salvation Army. Specifically they can call everyone "Houthis" and murder civilians because they are just "Houthis."
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/houthis-or-ansar-allah:-why-western-media-including-washingt
I also wasn't aware (though I did know that the Houthis didn't call themselves that), shall switch to Ansarallah from now on
God fucking damnit every fucking time.
Thanks for making me aware of this.
I have nothing but positive connotations with the word "Houthi", does it translate to something demonizing?
I think it's just the family group a lot of the movements leaders come from
Their leader is Ahmed Al Houthi, it's like calling MLs Stalinists basically
got it. gonna start calling westoids "Bidens"
Damn
In addition to what Rania said, its like calling every Vietnamese person, guerillas and civilians was a "Vietcong".
And to make matters better, Israel is hurting for money and the US Senate and House are deadlocked in a battle over funding Ukraine and raising the debt ceiling. The Iron Dome is not cheap to run
What are they going to do to push the USA out of their home that they couldn't do before? How are they going to avoid being shredded by hundreds of airstrikes?
This seems like a different situation. The USA has likely drawn down from peak occupancy in Iraq and they're a bit more stretched out right now watching Palestine in the west. They don't have to beat the US outright to win -- They just have to keep funds and munitions from contributing to the fight vs. Al Qassam. If the US gets too feisty in Iraq, Iran might get nervous as well
I'm sorry I dont have any readily available political education on the Hasd Al-Sha'bi created in 2014. However, Iraqi resistance fighters did inflict major defeats on the US occupation forces before. Why do you think they had to withdraw so much in 2011?
Heavy duty precision missiles, drones, advanced anti-aircraft and electronic warfare, Iranian satellite targetting data, a decade of preparation for this moment... I think the Americans are in for quite the surprise. ๐๐๐
Impressive.