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.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Israel harassing West Bank residents ahead of Blinken arrival

    Zein Basravi reporting from Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank.

    This is a noticeably busier evening on the Israeli military front in terms of these ongoing operations in the occupied West Bank.

    These sorts of constant, consistent harassing, keeping the occupied West Bank and the residents in these communities on edge.

    These operations seem to be happening at a higher frequency in the lead-up to the US secretary of state’s visit which should be happening at about 11:00am local time [09:00 GMT on Sunday]. In just a matter of hours, he’ll be coming here.

    Blinken is meant to be meeting with the Palestinian Authority President Abbas. No doubt the primary focus of those conversations will be trying to bring about a ceasefire to stop the violence happening in Gaza.

    But in parallel, what’s been happening in the occupied West Bank, illegal occupation, settlers attacking Palestinian communities consistently, these ongoing nightly raids by the military, the problem of Israel continuing to slowly digest the occupied West Bank, these will all be issues that no doubt Mahmoud Abbas will raise with the US secretary of state.

    But to what end is still an open question.

    No level of diplomacy seems to be leading to any solutions or to a halt in the ongoing violence in Palestinian communities, not just in Gaza, but here in the occupied West Bank as well.

    -Al Jazeera

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

      Blinken is meant to be meeting with the Palestinian Authority President Abbas. No doubt the primary focus of those conversations will be trying to bring about a ceasefire to stop the violence happening in Gaza.

      LOL.

      [x] doubt

      If anything it'd be about getting the PA to pressure Hamas to release the hostages, to the extent they'd even be able to do so (but probably even more just to gather as much material as possible for more Zionist propaganda from the White House).

      I'm not sure why Al Jazeera, of all outlets, would give fuckin' Blinken (and the U.S. generally) such benefit of the doubt.

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        1 year ago

        If anything it'd be about getting the PA to pressure Hamas to release the hostages

        I think their intent is to try and give north gaza to PA after Israel has "cleared" it of hamas. They want to incite a power struggle within the palestinian people.

        At this point the US strategy will be what it has always been in the past, "who is the opposition to my enemy and how can I give them support to drive a wedge?" In this case, it's the PA. In the past it was Hamas against the communist factions.

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

          Ugh. Yeah. That sounds a little too on-the-mark. 😫

          Either way, I'm sure it's not a "let's figure out how to get Israel to stop slaughtering Palestinians" and far more of a "let's destroy Palestinian solidarity and do the exact opposite of that other thing."

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        No doubt the primary focus...

        That is an usual phrasing for them. Could it be a translation problem? Maybe the original was written in Arabic and then somebody/something translated it into English.

        When I lived in Japan it was pretty clear that many newspaper articles had that problem. The Japanese tend to translate things literally. Any article involving something nuanced like international diplomacy was a slog if not a horrible slog to read.