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.
Okay but then that's an argument to vote for trump. Look at how effectively large masses of people could get motivated, organized and agitated while he was president. Kids didn't get out of cages, libs just stopped caring. There were riots and an honest to god revolutionary spirit in 2020
As stupid as CHAZ was it was at least possible to make something dumb like that. Now we have libs handwringing about Kyle Rittenhouse and genocide and all the other shit.
Trump was an obvious obnoxious buffoon who did what they all do, but with no grace or elegance that allowed people to ignore their lying eyes.
People didn't stop getting disappeared under Biden, the crackdowns only increased. I'm certain that if Hillary had been president we'd never had gotten a lockdown at all (look how quickly the west decided COVID was over as soon as Biden got into office)
There was ACTUAL pushback against state department propaganda about places like Venezuela (not that it was common, but I would at least see people questioning that shit in public)
Several countries started improving relations under Trump (notably the DPRK and ROK started getting friendlier). We saw him negotiate a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Not because he was good, but because he's a stupid clown.
The EU distanced itself from the US and talks of more centralisation started in earnest (I dislike the EU, but I think it'd be better if it weren't a US lapdog)
We saw people be more critical of the US government.
People went out IN MASSES whenever the government tried to fuck with women's rights or LGBTQ people. Now? "Oh the parliamentarian!" "Oh it's nuanced!"
Meanwhile under Biden the left has been abandoned once again. Nobody gives a shit about police violence or the climate or indigenous rights or global exploitation.
The secret police are coming either way, but libs at least felt scared under Trump, they at least realised they were in danger too.
Edit: Just remembered how people freaked out about Trump cutting funding for the national parks. Biden crushed a strike and nobody gave two shits, not even when the consequences came rolling around. I don't even know what gets cut in funding these days, because it's not Trump doing it.
I feel like this has infinitely more to do with domestic ROK politics than Trump's visit. Moon Jae-in was a liberal who came into power after Park Geun-hye (daughter of one of the military dictators) was arrested for fraud, and he was much more conciliatory to the DPRK. The current president, Yoon Suk Yeol, is a far-right anti-china anti-feminist who wants the ROK to get nukes, and he's not interested at all in improving diplomatic ties with the DPRK.
Also imo the Russia-Ukraine war happens regardless of who's in office, so the EU would be driven back into the arms of the US no matter what.
I completely agree. I just think that those things wouldn't have been allowed to happen under a "competent" president.
I disagree. What motivated Russia to escalate to war was in large part the agressive posturing of the US through NATO. I don't think we'd have seen the same posturing or the same moves. Zelensky admitted after the SMO that he had been asked to pretend to act as though Ukraine could become a NATO member despite getting a clear "no" behind closed doors. Could Trump have pulled that maneuver off? And if he did, could he keep quiet about it? Trump is an isolationist and an idiot.
He was also on speaking terms with Putin, making diplomacy much easier than the many roadblocks that appeared under Biden.