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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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The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

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 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.


  • xiaohongshu [none/use name]
    ·
    10 days ago

    It simply means that Israel listens to the Biden administration, who asked them to strike on a weekend when the markets are closed, who asked them not to target oil and nuclear facilities. They did exactly what Biden told them to.

    All the chatter about Netanyahu trying to drag the US into a war is wrong. The US is in charge here. Israel is a loaded gun but it is the US that points at the target it wants and decides when to pull the trigger.

    • Parzivus [any]
      ·
      10 days ago

      I don't buy it. The Biden administration told them to chill out with Lebanon, which didn't stop them from a (failed) ground invasion. They've also ignored US requests to at least attempt to improve the optics in Gaza, Netanyahu won't even deny intentionally starving them. They're about to make Democrats lose the election. That doesn't feel like a loyal Biden puppet.

      • carpoftruth [any, any]M
        ·
        10 days ago

        one difference is that lebanon doesn't sit astride the strait of hormuz, through which 25% of the world's petro-products pass

        • Parzivus [any]
          ·
          10 days ago

          True. The US doesn't have to import oil anymore now that fracking is common, but the dip in supply would still spike prices right before an election. It'd be funny if Israel launched a giant strike on November 6th.

      • sisatici [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        10 days ago

        Hot take: israhell is completely obedient to USA. All the USA "concerns" and Israhell appearing as rogue state are to save image of USA. I know it is not saving the image too much but it would be still be worse for them if they revealed their order on genocide than just to send arms to genocide

    • ZWQbpkzl [none/use name]
      ·
      10 days ago

      Biden administration, who asked them to strike on a weekend when the markets are closed

      Is this speculation or based on some report?

      • xiaohongshu [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        10 days ago

        Reuters: Oil prices likely to fall after Israel shows restraint in strikes on Iran

        SINGAPORE/LONDON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Oil prices are expected to fall when trading resumes on Monday as Israel's retaliatory strike on Iran over the weekend bypassed Tehran's oil and nuclear infrastructure and did not disrupt energy supplies, analysts said.

        "Israel attacked after the departure of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the U.S. administration could not have hoped for a better outcome with U.S. elections less than two weeks away."

        Iran on Saturday played down Israel's overnight air attack against Iranian military targets, saying it caused only limited damage.

        "Israel's not attacking oil infrastructure, and reports that Iran won't respond to the strike remove an element of uncertainty," Tony Sycamore, IG market analyst in Sydney, said.

        "It's very likely we see a 'buy the rumour, sell the fact' type reaction when the crude oil futures markets reopen tomorrow," he said, adding that WTI may return to $70 a barrel level.

        Tchilinguirian expects geopolitical risk premium that had been built into oil prices to deflate rapidly with Brent heading back towards $74-$75 a barrel.

        It was an orchestrated response to

        1. show that Israel has been kept under leash by Biden, who also followed up with a statement that he hopes this strike will “end” the escalation against Iran
        2. restore confidence in the oil market by pushing the oil price down, thus lessening the risk of inflation that could hurt the Democrats in the election

        So, those who predicted that Netanyahu wanted to cause disruption to make Harris lose because Israel wanted Trump in the White House is wrong.

      • GaveUp [she/her]
        ·
        10 days ago

        there was a thread on r/wallstreetbets where a redditor confidently said this and got 10k upvotes

      • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        10 days ago

        So that you're aware WTI Oil futures on the NYMEX closes trading on Friday 22:00pm UTC and the attack is reported to start at around 22:30pm. They've obviously avoided any oil or nuclear infrastructure.

        If Iran did take the bait and immediately retaliated into an open war I think it is definitely possible for oil to reach '22 levels and that is certainly one way to lose the election on the 11th hour. I don't believe its possible for oil to go that high in any other scenario though.

        So its obviously prudent to avoid this risk.