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.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Mainly still fighting over Avdiivka. Seems like a bloodbath if I'm honest, russia really really wants it.

      • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Avdiivka is personal, it’s the Nazi hub from with Donetsk was shelled for 8 years. It’s the symbol of banderite incursion into Donbas. I’m surprised Russia took this long to get around to it and is still being so light handed with it, they could have just leveled the place

        • 420stalin69
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s been fortified for a decade. It’s a heavy fortress. The Russian play seems to be to choke off the supply lines and make it harder to rotate units and resupply ammo which will lead it to weaken over the course of weeks or months.

          • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/f/b/469734.pdf

            Here's an OSCE (NATO biased) report from 2020 of various ceasefire violations and reports on the Ukrainian civil war. They are careful to never lay blame on which side is doing the violations because they're a NATO-controlled organization and they're covering for Ukrainian war crimes, but they document the hotspots of conflict nonetheless.

            Of the civilian casualties due to shelling and SALW- fire, nearly 75 per cent (464 casualties) occurred in four areas along the contact line. The highest concentration of civilian casualties occurred in the settlements around Avdiivka and Yasynuvata and parts of Donetsk city (northern, central, and eastern areas)

            -Page 16

            As noted above, the area around government controlled Avdiivka and non-government-controlled Yasynuvata has seen the highest concentration of civilian casualties due to shelling and SALW-fire. Between 29 January and 9 February 2017, violence in the area in and around Avdiivka, Yasynuvata and the Donetsk airport reached levels previously unobserved by the SMM

            ...

            Seventy per cent of all ceasefire violations docu- mented in this period were recorded in the area around Avdiivka, Yasynuvata and the Donetsk air- port.

            -Page 18

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      More and more I'm convinced Putin is waiting for the presidential elections next year to finally wrap up this war, he probably thinks he's really smart for coming up with an "October surprise" that involves smashing thru what's left of the Ukrainian military in a year's time