Image is from the January 2023 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. Over 50 heads of state and 600 CEOs attended.
holding flashlight under face
Imagine a terrifying world where we are all ruled by monsters of every stripe. And not hot ones like werewolves, but instead decaying zombies and mummies who are both insensitive to, and actively benefit from the immense suffering they cause on a daily basis. The top echelon of society, filled with profit-seeking, bloodsucking vampires. And the worst of it is that they repeat on a daily basis that what they are doing is not only just, but there is no other possible way to do it.
Pretty spooky, right? What if I told you that this world... was our own?
Happy Halloween!
Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (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.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is Lebanon! 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.
This week's first 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.
Me, the week after October 7th: Yes, Hamas is terrible and there is no justifying the attack, but Israel is a terrorist state and their uncritical endorsement by the West is criminal to say the least
Me, nearly a month later, completely jokerfied: Inshallah our brave Hamas fighters will bring an end to Israel in righteous jihad
me first day: Based of Hamas to fight against their colonizer, but the civilians being killed and kidnapped is kinda bad.
Me now: Hamas was too kind
me since october 7th: good for hamas, idc about colonizer "civilians"
wisdom
Americans don’t care one iota for the many millions of innocent civilians we killed in Korea and Southeast Asia (“well, that’s just what happens in war”), but we are supposed to care about a few hundred “civilians” that are directly involved in a colonial struggle on the side of the colonizers?
exactly. it always seems like burden of civility and taking the utmost care before any action is on the side of the oppressed. decolonisation is going to be messy and violent. if that makes people so uncomfortable, they should side against colonization from the start then
hell yeah
Hamas cares more about the hostages than Israel does LMAO
I can’t remember who said it here, but on the 7th I was first unsure what to think; then someone here framed it as “civilian deaths are a tragedy, but the blame for their deaths lies solely on the state of Israel, not Hamas. By creating such horrific conditions over the decades, they have given Hamas no other options to try and liberate themselves, so those deaths fall on Israel” and that has stuck with me ever since. Year after year, the Palestinians have been subjected to murder, torture, maiming, imprisonment, and daily humiliations on a scale that no westerner is capable of wrapping their heads around. They have been living under a military occupation as a result of a war they had nothing to do with over 50 years ago with no hope of independence via negotiation. How else are a people supposed to react?
I’ve actually explained it this way to a few people and have been surprised by how positively it’s been received.
Absolutely. The way that I have been able to break through with the liberals in my life has been by comparing it to the Nat Turner's rebellion, the Haitian slave revolt, or the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Sure, you can sit here comfortably in the imperial core and talk about how no violence is acceptable, but could you honestly blame the slave or the ghettoized for their violent uprisings? Especially since any attempts at negotiations or peaceful protest have been met with violence in this case - the 2005 ceasefire and the march of return.
Abhorring violence of this type is liberal idealism at its finest
pacifism, at least the kind expoused by some liberals, always made me uneasy even before I became a full-on communist. Either it's (somewhat) genuine and you're calling on both the oppressor and the oppressed to stop killing each other, in which case you just want a negative peace of the kind described by MLK, or you're just a complete dipshit and calling for the "bad" kind of violence to stop (militants physically shooting people, etc) while ignoring or even justifying drone-strikes and airplane bombings, let alone the more "passive" kinds of violence like enforced starvation, thirst, or long-term electricity blackouts, as being a necessary evil in a complex world filled with bad actors etc etc
well said. this type of liberal pacifism isn't pacifism at all, but rather a preference for the slow, abstract violence of the status quo to revolutionary violence. I'm reminded of the twain quote you had in the mega a few weeks back.
I feel as though anyone with an appreciation for history must acknowledge the necessary role of violence (or the threat thereof), in the slow march of progress