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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Slavoj Žižek: Hamas massacre of Israelis must be condemned, no ifs or buts

    Slavoj Žižek, a Slovakian philosopher, cultural critic, and self-described "moderately conservative communist", affirmed Israel's right to destroy Hamas in Gaza, and further spoke on the subsequent rise in antisemitism in an interview given to the YouTube channel PoliticsJOE published on Friday.

    He has often taken a very critical stance against Israeli policy, particularly in the West Bank and this has led to accusations of antisemitism. He references at the beginning of his interview that he gave a speech in Frankfurt that condemned terrorism and affirmed Israel's right to destroy Hamas but also criticized Israeli policy in the West Bank for contributing to the event. Thus, he started an op-ed piece for Project Syndicate, an online opinion site that hosts a variety of commentators, by writing that "the barbarism that Hamas has unleashed on Israel should be condemned unconditionally, with no 'ifs' or 'buts.' The massacres, rapes, and abductions of civilians from villages, kibbutzim, and a music festival was a pogrom, confirming that Hamas’s true goal is to destroy the state of Israel and all Israelis." He expressed his horror during the interview with PoliticsJOE at how Hamas deliberately attacked communities of people who had been pushing for peace with those in Gaza and had worked to make that a reality, "by hiring them and helping them [to go to hospitals in Israel]".

    They attacked there "not only because it was most practical," he said, "Because the real aim of this attack was to eternalize war, to prevent any possibility of peace for decades." He attacked both Hamas as well as Netanyahu and his government, specifically National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for producing radical programs that call for exclusive control of the region by one ethnic group, Arabs and Jews respectively.

    Žižek sees the main goal as not to fall for radicalism and to recognize that "The key point here is not to fall into this trap of Palestinian versus Israeli, but that those who are now playing opposite roles are really playing a very similar game." "Hamas and Israeli hardliners are two sides of the same coin," he writes in his op-ed. "The choice is not one hardline faction or the other; it is between fundamentalists and all those who still believe in the possibility of peaceful co-existence."

    What an absolute fucking monstrous dipshit. We're reaching entirely new levels of dumbfuck bothsidery.

    • sempersigh [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      You know the take is bad when I’m reading a zizek quote and I’m not even hearing his voice when I read it

    • plinky [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Israel keep electing hardliners, dog, the fuck palestine can do? Like sure condemn hamas, but radicalism soil is being toiled by israel

    • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Had me in the first half thinking Zizek could have said something worthwhile

      Edit: I flipped and reversed the headline, it was dogshit from the start

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

      Oof. Žižek has some bad takes, but I did not expect him to go all the way to supporting Israeli fascism and genocide. 🤨

    • daisy
      ·
      1 year ago

      self-described "moderately conservative communist"

      what

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Conservative in all actual physical situations but in the abstract he wants a couple features of communism