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.
Right now my least favorite words are...
Libs use phrases like "the humanitarian crisis" as a thought terminating cliché. It's an intro to a short segment about the situation that somehow Israel has zero responsibility for. Every time.
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What are your least favorite words right now?
I still remember when a lib friend of mine called 9/11 "unprovoked" and my brain turned inside out.
barbaric, inhuman, pay no attention to the genocidal machine
That's another great one.
"Terrorist" because it's sending me to the bad place of the early aughts post-9/11 and reminding me that nobody learned anything and the media is literally worse now.
Remember that beheading video you saw when you were 15? Ok now picture that with babies.
It's real I saw it reported and repeated as first-hand accounts with my own eyes
Israel
unprecedented unjustified terror babies
ISIS
I think this is worth discussing. I honestly thinkt that this point that a lot of the language used in the media is designed to trigger a certain response from your average westerner, bases on their upbringing, the media they have consumed, education in school, and their real world experience. "Terrorist" is a good example. Your average westerner has been conditioned by all this to see terrorists as Arabs with guns in the desert in drab clothing, so if you can match anyone to that description, the propaganda automatically clicks into place. The media doesn't even need to say anything or even call people terrorists. It's all happening at the subconscious level.
Beyond that - for Israeli there's the ever present live streaming and then re-re-re-re-re-re-broadcasting of interviews with Israelis "who have lost loved ones to Hamas terrorists". Before the interview begins the interviewer says "I'm so sorry about what happened to you." And they nearly always speak English. People who speak your language tend to be far more sympathetic.
Empathy (or pretend empathy anyway) is ever present from the interviewer. "I really don't want to ask you about this... I know it's hard... But could you talk about it more?" And the interviewees could talk for 10 or 15 minutes. An interviewee could get an entire ad-to-ad segment.
An Gazan interviewee might get ~15 seconds. In Arabic they might say "I was hurt and they killed my dad. Our home is gone. Destroyed. What do we do?" Then there's an edit to drone footage of the destruction in Gaza and the goddamned mouthed "humanitarian crisis" phrase. I wonder if viewers even notice they nobody told her "I'm so sorry about what happened to you." It's just their shit, tough luck. Sorry - you live in the wrong place where Hamas runs things.
That's just how propaganda works. And those trigger words affect us as well. It's just that instead of activating the "trust everything this person says" part of our brains, it activates our "this person is a liberal/fascist/chauvinist and everything they say should be jettisoned from our heads" part of our brains.
"Beheaded" is at the top of the list for me. A vile thing to do and a vile thing to baselessly claim someone else did.
"Babies" is still second unfortunately.