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.
yeah I thought it was just the translator being a poor reader (which he DEFINITELY was fucker should never do that again hes terrible lmao) but even then it was very meandering
eh. Its gotta be hard translating on the fly like that.
Not saying its not hard, just saying Im disappointed it wasn't a foremost expert for what, as far as Im concerned, was one of the most important speeches to happen since putins invasion speech and then since... Im not even sure.
then again, it doesn't really matter how effectively I experienced it Im a western leftist without political influence or organized labor to take action based on this speech, so, fuck why am I typing this
sidenote, Maybe Im just not aware of them, but it seems like "important speeches" ^(tm) don't really happen anymore, obama didn't have a moonshot speech, and trump had 100 famous ones, but not because they were potent
please tell me Im wrong
Idk I speak enough Arabic to understand and feel it was fine. I understood much of the intention and felt informed. If we could ask for more, it'd only be possible by a Hezbollah translator who already had a translation
True. There were times when the speaker was popping off and the translator was completely monotone
Fair but I don't think you can expect more from a translator who has no expectations. That's really difficult work with no realistic prep
unrealistic expectations I guess
Fair, I would hope for more but have translated before and know how hard it is on the spot.
I think it's legit to wish that Hezbollah released the text to translators first to make a good impression. But I also think that'd be more important for a more impactful speech.
Worth pointing out that the job of translating speech is called 'interpeting' by people in the industry. Interpreting live speech is known as 'simultaneous interpreting' and is seriously difficult.
Given that you're always playing catchup, and often have to wait for an entire sentence to be said before you can interpret accurately/grammatically, it's a race against time as much as an exercise in comprehension. i.e. the interpreter may have to drop some of the speech in order to maintain overall fidelity.
If the interpreter is provided with the speech beforehand, this can help a lot, as this will help them prepare key terms and turns of phrase in advance, but it isn't as simple as reading and following along, especially if the speaker goes off script for even a short stint. Given how meandering Nasrallah's speech appears to have been, I'm imagining they weren't provided a script in any case.
The interpreters I've seen (both consecutive and simultaneous) use a pen and note pad to take down short hand as they go, and will use that as their primary reference for their output, rather than scanning and digging through a pre-arranged text.
I didn't watch the speech, but if it was the one interpreter (like they didn't swap them out every ten or so minutes) then I would be especially forgiving on that individual. Perhaps they didn't choose the right person for the job.
damn yea now that you mention it the man went for 1.5 hours straight