There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is Palestine! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly update is here.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
German newspaper today had a frontpage article about pro-Palestinian protests happening in major cities in the country. You'll never guess the headline.
"Hamas' influence extends even into our own borders."
The sheer audacity is staggering. This conflict and the media coverage have left me in utter disbelief. When every frontpage article was "Slava Ukraini" I noticed the propaganda and the clearly biased reporting, but I was mostly willing to led that slide because I can sympathize with Ukraine supporters in that it's a smaller country being invaded by a larger one and Putin does indeed suck ass. I understand siding with Ukraine against Russia.
But there is no excuse for siding with Israel, a substantially more powerful force holding literally all of the cards. They are unmistakeably the bad guys here. They are the oppressors, the occupiers, the invaders. The almost unilateral support for Israel has been an intensely jokerfying experience.
Some people may disagree with me, but I feel like the propaganda surrounding China, Ukraine, Israel, even African resistance to the French over the last couple years is significantly worse than it was in the aftermath of 9/11 and for the invasion of Iraq. It seems more total from media outlets, politicians, etc. It feels like capital, through the media and politicians, is trying to more aggressively assert control over the global south and desperately needs the population of the global north to buy in.
I think the contradiction between imperial core and periphery has greatly increased in the last 20-25 years, and that’s what’s driving it this. Capitalism must resolve this contradiction to move forward in development. The periphery must be broken (from the perspective of capital). China and Russia represent an existential threat to the imperial core to drain resources and profit from the periphery. Not that Palestine has a lot of resources to exploit but that is the place in the world where the friction between core and periphery are in the most direct and immediate conflict.
It’s socialism or barbarism, as always. If the global south is not able to rise up and stop the neoliberal order from exploiting them… the global north will seek to impose the Palestinian occupation on the rest of the world.
Yeah i'd agree with that, back then at least some dissent was platformed in mainstream media, at least on lib media. Now tho it's a total deluge (less so for Ukraine due to idiots like
being accidentally partially correct)
I don't even think it's entirely intentional tbh. I think it's just lazy journalism.
Most of Western media just consists of reading a news wire like Reuters and putting a spin on it for your target audience. I'm pretty confident that that's causing the homogenization of media: despite the veneer of independent media, they're not actually presenting any factually independent information.
Most media outlets have been absolutely gutted in the last decade. Foreign offices closed, investigative journalism desks closed, writers fired, reporters cut. As you said, a lot of journalism these days is literally just re-writing Reuters and AP releases, often using algos to do a lot of the work.
Most Old Media could never figure out how to make a profit after the internet came on and gradually disintegrated, leaving behind our accurse five-social-network internet. The "Pivot to Video" was apparently particularly disastrous and the last straw for many media outlets.
I agree. The enshitifcation has taken hold of western propaganda.
Which paper?
Rheinische Post
The same insufferable class of media pundits and political commentators in my country, the "everythingologists" who fill the airwaves and the opinion columns with their inane takes, who compared Ukraine to Palestine because "there's an invader and an invaded, it's not hard to pick the right side" are now comparing Israel to Ukraine with no irony.
The ones who excused neo-nazis in Ukraine ("Ukrainians can't afford to be picky about who's willing to fight for them!") are now saying there's no excuse for anyone, not even Palestinians, to side with Hamas. In both cases they attack(ed) the left for not uncritically parroting their exact line, which to them is "siding with terrorism" out of "vulgar anti-americanism". The left is eternally fading into electoral irrelevancy because the Good Normal People™ (liberals one scratch away from fascism) (who were definitely huge commies before) are "finally seeing us for what we really are". And of course our contempt for these smarmy lying snakes is just further proof we hate "diversity of opinions" and "the free and independent press".
Fourth Reich
Worth remembering: Support for Israel as a strategic geopolitical asset is what is driving many governments and likewise the powers behind those governments. A lot of people in high positions don't give a single shit about Jewish people or Zionism or Israel; They care about having a nuclear armed state in the Middle East that is, or at least was, somewhat tractable to their goals in the region. There are certainly true believers, but there's also a lot of realpolitik behind official support for Israel.
My point being; News coverage does not necessarily reflect the attitudes of people on the ground. I've been around for a while and I know from experience that many, many people understand what is going on in Palestine and that Palestinians have long enjoyed support from leftists and just general non-assholes in the west. They just don't get much time on TV.