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

    Palestinian Authority says half of homes in Gaza destroyed

    The health ministry of the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank, has put out new figures on the impact of the the war in Gaza. It says:

    • More than 50% of Gaza's housing units have been destroyed

    • Nearly 70% of its population are displaced

    • 16 out of 35 hospitals that can take in-patients have stopped functioning

    • 42 UNRWA buildings have been damaged

    • At least seven churches and 55 mosques are damaged

    • As we reported earlier, Israel accuses Hamas of locating infrastructure in tunnels underneath civilian areas.

    Israel says it has struck more than 11,000 "targets belonging to terrorist organisations" in Gaza and dropped more than 10,000 munitions on Gaza City alone since 7 October, when it began its campaign in retaliation for Hamas's deadly attacks.

    - BBC

    It's a steady stream of horrible news about Gaza. And the following comment is an unoriginal thought on my part but I can't believe that "Everything bad or awful in Gaza is directly due to Hamas" is an actual argument.

    • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      It's a steady stream of horrible news about Gaza. And the following comment is an unoriginal thought on my part but I can't believe that "Everything bad or awful in Gaza is directly due to Hamas" is an actual argument.

      The party line on CNN and MSNBC is that literally every airstrike on Gaza murdering civilians is Hamas' fault and it's beyond infuriating. But you know as a fellow MSM watching torturee.

      • mkultrawide [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Literally just "She was dressed slutty so she was asking for it" but for armed conflict.

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

        a fellow MSM watching torturee

        I had to make some rules for myself or I was going to go postal.

        • If anybody in the Israeli MIC appears - immediately stop watching.
        • It's probably best to stop watching if the American MIC appears unless I actually want to know what Israel might soon do militarily.
        • If an NGO has a phrase like "for peace" or "common ground" in its name - I probably should immediately stop watching.
        • If an NGO person says something like "Hama's brutal..." - immediately stop watching.

         

        The other day I was actually shocked when somebody who I assumed was some State Department asshole sounded reasonable so I googled him.

        Edward Djerejian

        Edward Peter Djerejian (born March 6, 1939) is a former United States diplomat who served in eight administrations from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton (1962–94.) He served as the United States Ambassador to Syria (1988–91) and Israel (1993–94), Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan and Deputy Press Secretary of Foreign Affairs (1985–1986), and was Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (1991–1993.)

        He was the founding director of Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy (1994-2022) He is a senior fellow at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is on the board of trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

        Djerejian was elected chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corporation's board of directors (2013–2015). Djerejian is the author of the book Danger and Opportunity: An American Ambassador's Journey Through the Middle East (Simon & Schuster, Threshold Editions, September 2008. ISBN 1-416-55493-9)

        I only had a brief glance at this page and he still might be a ghoul. He's 84 so maybe it's the reason he doesn't give a fuck. When referring to both sides he actually mentioned totally forbidden phrases like "concessions need to be made". The MSNBC anchor acted and looked totally appalled. He went way off script and MSNBC must have considered his appearance a big blunder.

    • emizeko [they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      :projection:

      Everything bad or awful in Gaza is directly due to Israel

    • carpoftruth [any, any]M
      ·
      1 year ago

      "targets belonging to terrorist organisations"

      Let's be really clear here - Hamas obviously has a military wing but they are also the government in Gaza, meaning they are also teachers, health care staff, bureaucrats, technicians running municipal infrastructure, domestic security, etc. A school operated by the government in Gaza fits the Israeli definition above.

    • fuzzy
      ·
      1 year ago

      its campaign in retaliation for Hamas's deadly attacks

      Our "Glorious Campaign"

      Their "Deadly Attacks"

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

      It's kind of amazing how good Israel appears to be at detecting tunnels under hospitals when they can't for the life of them (literally) detect the ones out in less urban/cluttered areas in order to roll their tanks past and avoid said tanks getting hit by anti-tank weapons....