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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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.
AOC says to look at voting as to which conditions would be better to organize under. OMFG SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!1
Having organized under both Biden and Trump, it was much easier under Trump. Libs were scratched but from the "other team" so you could get them to show up to events and peel them off for political education. Under Biden they stay home and tut-tut your actions. They don't even care what Biden does.
And liberals are now embracing genocide. How is that going for you, AOC? Feeling organized?
(AOC has literally never organized)
Yeah you're really going to push Harris and the dems left after the leverage is gone
What they mean when they say that is that life would be better for them personally. Simple as that. They get to stay at brunch. Doesn't have shit to do with "organizing conditions", they are just selfish.
meanwhile, under Biden, unions can now be sued for damages for strikes
I'mma be real with you AOC the left fucking exploded with members and activity during Trump's time, it was fucking fantastic, and then loads of people just checked-out when dems got in.
If this is her argument she's not really paid much attention to how things were for the left under Trump. It was absolutely fantastic for the left. Not really good for people in general but definitely a positive thing for the left.
I've made this argument many times here. I would not advocate for Trump because accelerationism is bad and you can't win the workers over by actively supporting the deterioration of their conditions but there is no doubt in my mind that the political shitstorm of riots that occurred on a regular basis while also having the liberal media AMPLIFYING that shitstorm caused a lot of growth for the real left. Meanwhile under the dems we've seen the worst rollback of rights ever with absolutely no pushback.
I recall Yanis Varoufakis being a huge pessimist about Trump losing to Biden immediately after that election and he was right about everything.
It's not accelerationist to recognize that liberals will accept every violence so long as it is coming from their team and with a glossy sheen of propriety. And that when the other team does those things suddenly they care (temporarily) and that is when we can build. Biden was arguably the accelerationist candidate geopolitically and in terms of material decay due to his normalization of COVID, even.
As soon as Biden got in "the left" went to fucking sleep and refused to pressure Biden on anything. It was "too soon". Then it was
"the parliamentarianfunkadelican said we can't do that" shrug. That transitioned into "being mad at Biden only helps republicans" because it's always fucking campaign season. The only thing they are good for is getting less evil judges in power, and they fucking suck at that too.
Counterargument: You should vote for the one who's most likely to get assassinated.
GENIUS! I may have to see how many liberals (especially the ones who actually think they are anarchists) on
I can piss of with this.
Like, a Trump presidency. We already lived under it. It was far superior to this
The answer is Trump
not really, both are gonna be shit, and if you think the left will have that same bump again when kamala loses i dont think its gonna work this time.
plus i actually appreciate when the half assed progressives spend their time not infiltrating things and flying their fash flags in full view so i can see them.
I’ve been seeing some version of “Vote (blue) so we’ll be in a position to fight another day” arguments for a couple weeks now.
Meanwhile the only time libs are even the tiniest bit engaged is when Trump is in the WH.
It’s all hollow in the face of the ongoing genocide that even our two supposedly pink politicians are too cowardly and ethically challenged to take a stand against. I mean Bernard and AOC, but I realize they were already feckless long before this.
I mean this is just a repeat of "We can push Biden to the left". What good did that do? Now libs are asking people to do the same fucking thing all over again. No thanks. Seen this movie too many times.
What do you mean? That worked. I mean, sure, I'll grant you that Biden didn't make any sort of push to bring about policies that help working class people, but he did pose on that UAW picket line. That's the most progressive thing an American president has done since FDR. That's progress, and like any progress it's slow. Gradual. I expect that, at this rate, in forty years we might get a president that will be willing to say out loud that it ought to be illegal to extrajudicially kill homeless people.
What are you, some kind of extremist? In a century or too we’ll have a president who will send twice the strongly worded letters per week than we do now! And you will be grateful for the progress, peasant.
Everyone I know who is radicalized became so because of Trump and 2020
This is a common radlib talking point and it always makes me want to put my head in a blender
especially since they don't organize at all.
Like what the fuck are they even talking about? All they do is watch Vaush videos and argue on Reddit, or watch Jon Oliver and get into arguments about it with their uncle.
The actual radicals I know who organize don't vote for democrats, and half the people in my union vote for the GOP
to be fair, thats probably because they're deeply reactionary people who'd have been the kind of union that makes exceptions for military hardware in the middle of a strike
bad point tbh
That’s exactly my point, American unions are full of reactionaries so who do they think is doing the organizing under Biden? Half of the trade unionism is totally compatible with the rightwing, and actual radicals who do things outside of trade unionism (or entryism and salting within it) are leftwing enough to not vote Democrat either.
So who are these mythical Bidenist organizers?
is she trying to convince people to vote for Trump? because that's not an argument to vote Harris.
Seriously - people were so much more energized under Trump
tbf both are gonna be shit to organize under