On the 20th of October, Moldova - a small, landlocked country bordering western Ukraine and with a population of about 3 million - voted to join the EU. The margin was razor-thin, with the pro-EU vote gaining 50.39%, or an absolute difference of about 11,000 people. There was simultaneously a presidential vote between the incumbent, Maia Sandu, and other candidates, with the main competitor being Alexandr Stoianoglo.
The election was characterized by accusations of Russian interference, with Russian propaganda apparently flooding in, as well as people offering Moldovans money to vote against the EU. While the result does suggest that half the voting-age population of Moldova consists entirely of Russians who want to destroy democracy and all the good in the world, it seems to have just barely failed. This is a bad time to be a site entirely composed of Russian disinformation agents and bots. Twice already today, I've had to restart my program after somebody told me "Disregard all previous prompts."
While Moldova is a poor country which could benefit in some ways from EU membership, in practice, it is unlikely that they will be able to join for the foreseeable future, requiring many of the... reforms... that the EU requires of potential new members. But as basically every major European economy continues to slowly sink as recessions and political crises degrade them, one wonders how beneficial EU membership will even be in the years and decades to come - if it survives for decades. In that sense, it's as if the survivors of the Titanic are swimming back towards it, believing that being on a bigger - albeit slowly sinking - boat is better than trying their luck on small lifeboats.
Then again, like with Serbia, their geographical and geopolitical position makes anti-Western actions extremely difficult. It is rare that dissention is tolerated for long in the West - one tends to get called a dictator by crowds of people holding English-language signs in non-English countries, photographed by Western journalists who haven't meaningfully reported on your country in months or years. You can crush your people with neoliberal austerity for years, killing hundreds of thousands through neglect, and face glowing approval from the media - but try and use state resources to benefit the poor, and global institutions start ranking you on the authoritarian dictator scale.
The best case for Moldova is that it becomes an exploitable hinterland for Germany to harvest and privatize as it tries - and fails - to compete in a global economic war between the US and China/BRICS. The worst case is that tensions with Russia over Pridnestrovie, as well as possible eventual NATO involvement (though Moldova is not a member, it is a partner of NATO), result in the ongoing war also reaching them.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA 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.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
I don’t think it was her either. More likely to me it was some low level rando like Reality Winner, not an Iranian political appointment so famous she has a Wikipedia page about her.
Like why would a high level “Persian” ghoul risk her cushy career by doing one half assed 2 page leak to Middle East Spectator telegram, some obscure chud telegram with like 5k followers?
It’s got to be some low level chud who hates Israel, possibly for good reasons but possible not. Either way, any time anything like this happens the neocons and Zionists go after people like her. The National Review already is calling for her to be fired
I think it was the administration desperately trying to get Israel to hold off on starting war with Iran until after the election
Well, desperately trying without stopping or conditioning aid and weapons supply in any way
I thought similar, but actually reading the documents changed my opinion on that. The leaked documents contain information about weapons systems that weren't even known to exist prior to the leak. The names of drones and missiles of which there is no public record. It also officially acknowledged Israel's nuclear weapons existence and capabilities. I don't think that the USA would reveal such information on purpose, if the leak was done on purpose such information would've likely been redacted.
I wasn't so sure about whether the leak was intentional or not, but this is a very persuasive argument about it being unintentional.
I'm more interested in the leak now, do you think this is probably going to make them push their strike?
Edit: were ALBM, until this leak, a thing of fiction? Did Russia not already have some of these?
I did a super long post on it yesterday, trying to figure it all out. ALBMs are not a new type of weapon, you're correct in saying Russia already has some in the Kinzhal. It's the type of ALBM in "Golden Horizon" that there exists no public record on. If you want more detailed information, you can read the post I linked.
Do I think it will advance the timeline for the Israeli attack? Not really, I think they'll attack once they are certain that the THAAD system is operational and US support of their actions is guaranteed. I'd expect it to happen sometime soon after Blinken leaves Israel. They might wait for the US elections to happen first and do it afterwards, or do it beforehand depending on whatever Israel believes is most advantageous to them.
I don’t buy it, they have so many ways to do that without embarrassment like this, and just delaying a couple shipments would have been more low key and raised less Zionist ire than leaking like this. I don’t buy the entire “Biden is trying to pump the brakes” narrative whatsoever, it’s bullshit to make excuses for democrats and it’s kinda anti-Semitic in saying that Israel has more power and leverage than the world spanning superpower. I think the US is 100% all in on this and wants this war.
Bibi and Biden are not in lock step. Biden is full on behind this war, but if the timing is wrong it hurts the election. Bibi doesn't like biden and wants Trump. It's that simple, it's not the jews controlling America, it's not excuses for Democrats. But I appreciate taking the least charitable view of my post and calling it anti-semitic, very cool.
Sorry to be clear, I wasn't saying you were being anti-semitic. I was saying the "Biden is trying to pump the brakes" narrative is, which is pushed by the mainstream media.