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.

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • the_kid
    ·
    1 year ago

    Members of Biden administration ‘not comfortable’ with US president’s Israel policy

    There’s enormous pressure [on Biden to rein in Israel] and it’s both visible and … invisible, in terms of it’s happening within the government where the public can’t see it.

    Of course, we’re all seeing the public protests that are happening on a global scale, whether it is the walkouts, the staged demonstrations, the open letters that are being publicised in newspapers.

    But what we are also hearing and [what] is being reported here in the United States is that there are members of the Biden administration that are not comfortable with the president’s Israel policy and are becoming increasingly vocal.

    In fact, we know that the State Department is now offering listening sessions for some members of the [department] that feel that their personal beliefs do not align with the president’s policy and what is happening on the ground in Gaza.

    And what we’re being told is that the president is not listening to the experts, but instead is aligning himself with a very tightly knit circle of advisers, who are essentially giving him advice on how to proceed.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      They're getting uncomfortable with being called genocide supporters because they actually can't rationalise it away this time.

      Keep bullying.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      but instead is aligning himself with a very tightly knit circle of advisers, who are essentially giving him advice on how to proceed.

      biden-supervised

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
      ·
      1 year ago

      "Sir, President Biden, sir, if we continue our policies here, if we let Israel keep bombing Gaza, then we... ...the entire region could be plunged into chaos. We might not just lose Israel, but some of our other allies too. We need to reconsider--"

      "Quiet, jack! I may not like that young Bibi fella but, it's what my dad said, a house divided cannot... it, uh... I... it's not gonna work out! Nuland's been telling me, we'll send all the carriers, and it'll all quiet down!"

      • the_kid
        ·
        1 year ago

        but instead is aligning himself with a very tightly knit circle of advisers, who are essentially giving him advice on how to proceed.

        this bit was the most interesting to me. I would figure, being the mega-zionist he is, that this was all coming from Biden himself. but he is far too demented to even know what's going on now. I don't know much about Blinken and Nuland, what's their deal? are they as ideologically committed to zionism as Genocide Joe? or do they want war with Iran? strategically, this just seems so idiotic to me, I don't even understand it.

        • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Blinken authored a book about blowing up the Soviet Union's gas pipelines in 1987, and actually proceeded to do it in 2022, so vassalisation of Europe and trying to shut down the Russian "gas station" seems to be a key goal. As far as the middle east, Blinken co authored "Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy" in 2008, a 32 page document outlining future US foreign policy seperate from "liberal idealism and politics", according to the foreword. So that could provide some insight.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I always forget how old these freaks are.

            Narrator: Actually it's pure liberal idealism

            • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
              ·
              1 year ago

              This paragraph is the most pure unfiltered liberal idealism I've seen all month

              Prospects for diplomatic progress with Iran need to be assessed, not dismissed out of hand. We can be tough negotiators, but still negotiate. Past experience with Pinochet’s Chile, Marcos’s Philippines, and the Soviet Union show that careful and firm diplomacy with autocratic regimes can not only help to change regime behavior but also foster a permissive environment for democratic change.

              liberalism

    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Listening sessions lmao, peak Liberal praxis

      Citations Needed predicted this shit exactly, they said that we would start seeing articles about how conflicted and tortured the poor Liberals in the White House are and how they are doing their best to restrain Israel and how sad they are about what is happening.

      It’s laundering bullshit and all part of the PR mechanism

    • fever [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Of course, that is what presidents are for, absorbing blames and fooling people into thinking "the regime isn't bad its just this government in particular turning out bad". That is what this type of articles are portraying while we didn't see any of this for Yemen, Syria and other cases.