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.
Lol did not expect this
Maybe my little tirade played a part in prompting this?
Anyhow,looks like the referrendum will pass,almost all the votes are counted,with a very,very narrow lead for YES,so my silly little comment about hope kinda looks stupid now. My apologies to those tagged,it was the middle of the night here and I'd just woken up,and the diaspora vote wasn't counted yet
.
Maybe it can be contested,but I'm not holding out any hope,looks like it's gonna be another Lucy football moment for the romance speakers of the east. Sad,but this is the post Soviet world we live in.
Also,I will reiterate my point,this is purely a Romanian endeavor,there is almost nothing in there to loot that either isn't in Pridniestrovie or hasnt already been looted other than some vineyards and farmland. It is the quintessential Eastern European agrarian nation,with it's land consisting of flatlands and plateaus. As far as I recall it is also bereft of any significant underground resources,so it's no Donbass. Most I can say is that it has maybe some potential for green energy,but let's be honest,who's gonna build that and with what money? You can't even say that they're an untapped labor market, Moldovans have been using their joint Romanian citizenships to work for pennies on the dollar in the EU for almost two decades now. It truly is the shining example of post Soviet decay and the power games played by the West in this region.
Edit:Looks like it's joever,50.46 to 49.54,with a 13.596 vote difference
Oh and to add to the point made about Pridniestrovie,my personal opinion is that they will be cut loose and tossed to Russia in the process of accession to the EU, simply because once Ukraine dies down,the US will force the EU to eat up whatever remains of it,and Moldova with it,to fully kill it as a viable organization.
However,in the worst case scenario,where war breaks out,if Moldova attacks/is attacked, Romania will absolutely join in. As for what NATO will do,well,I suspect we'll find out during Trump's second term that NATO is now a tiered subscription service and that, conveniently enough,Eastern European nations don't get the full premium package,but something like the Ukrainian subscription plan.
A small balm to the soul for me is that if we have a Ukraine 2 here,my hometown will be in the Russian occupied zone, seeing as the county it's in is a border county,with a Lipovan Russian minority. Silver linings I guess.
NATO has always been a tiered system. The much vaunted article 5 doesn't say "immediately launch nukes" it says that member states have discretion to do what they think is necessary. In practice, invokation of article 5 will mean doing whatever the US deems necessary. You'd better believe that what they deem necessary differs between the Baltics and say France.
Sure,but this time it'll dispell all misguided notions people may have had up to this moment is my point
I too keep hoping for Charlie brown to kick the football of imperialism
I've been expecting this for a while now. No way they are going to treat countries like Estonia on the same level as Germany, France and the UK.
Pretty funny how the Baltics don’t seem to realize that with all the Sabre rattling they’ve been doing.
It's always the petty bourgeois diaspora lol
I remember seeing something about how in Mexico,the white americanized city people act like tourists in their own country when visiting the less developed areas
This is exactly how the diaspora here act,they come here on vacation because we have the lowest prices in EU (for them,for us it's eyewateringly expensive),they drive their fancy BMWs, disregard traffic laws and then go on to say that it's still a backwards country and that everything here is shit and then come autumn they scurry back to Germania to work in some multinational company or as you said small business
Exactly, they completely lose touch with what made them poor in the first place where they came from and just push for neoliberal policies because they're not gonna be the ones counting pennies at the supermarket. But they "love" the country when it comes to their fun time vacations
Seems like shenanigans were built in lol
Yeah,to be expected,I remember seeing something about this
Both in Bucharest and Moscow the polling stations were open until 23,in Moldova they closed at 21
interestingly, it seems that the referendum was polarized between every border region and chisinau. young people hoping they'll work for a few more pennies if they unify with romania?
Yeah,but I think it was a combination of the diaspora,who I've increasingly grown to despise,both here and in Moldova,and pro Russia people being urged to boycott the vote
I remember hearing some stuff about how the NO vote would have won by something like 80.000 plus votes if those who boycotted participated
Also,yeah, Romania is stretching it's legs and infiltrating itself into Moldovan society more and more,so the young people result is probably caused by this,plus,we kinda see each other like brother countries,with Moldova being the junior sibling and the pro EU culture of youth here would have made the youth there follow our example
is moldovan nationalism so undeveloped that they just follow romania wherever?
Well,the nation of Moldova appeared in 1991,it's historical predecessor,the Principality of Moldavia was one of the three Romanian principalities,which would unite with Wallachia in 1862 to form Romania.
The area of modern day Moldova was historically the eastern part of this entity and was already part of the Russian Empire at this point.Romania today actually has the core part of Moldavia. It stayed that way until the end of WW1,when the Russian Empire broke apart,and it was annexed/it reunified with Romania. In 1940,the Soviet Union strongarmed Romania into withdrawing from the region.
During WW2, Romania took it back with the help of Nazi Germany,and committed a shit ton of atrocities against the Jews in Pridniestrovie,then they got pushed back by the USSR,and it reminded a part of it until the Soviet Union fell.
One of the few good things about my country's constitution is how it explicitly disenfranchises expats. If you want to vote here you've got to live here.
Never celebrate early, we exist in hell world trash future etc etc
Man we fell off after 1989
Depressing as hell