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.
https://twitter.com/AlexThomp/status/1721220295300694036
That's pretty funny.
But to me that's fucking hilarious.
---
During the noisy and confrontational Gaza meeting - out of nowher Biden rises out of his chair as if he has a purpose. Everybody goes silent. But he doesn't say anything. He turns and he does his old man shuffle to the window, mumbles something as if he's talking to himself, and as he looks outside he's standing in a slightly odd way. The aides are looking at their papers or at the table or at the floor or any direction that doesn't create eye contact. The silence is oppressive.
He starts to shuffle back towards his chair. It feels like it took him five minutes. He clears his throat and says "Does anybody else smell burning rubber?"
Now that's hard to believe
I think not constantly being on camera supporting genocide and having dementia episodes is helping her a bit
He was never supposed to be in public this much. He’s supposed to be sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber until they need to drag him out to inject him with stimulants before having him read a teleprompter. All this impromptu presidenting is making him look real bad.
People just don't vibe with "Actively endorses Holocaust 2"
Yeah when Kamala is doing better in polling than Biden its time to press the emergency button. Thats fucking wild.
I'm glad is finally getting the numbers he deserves
What's funny to me is that it really seems like Biden is just unlikable. Like, Obama messed up in Afghanistan and Syria (both are currently ruled by US enemies who have higher approval than before the wars) just like Biden is messing up in Ukraine and Israel but where Obama just got away with it, Biden is facing consequences.
Being a young, charismatic man who's got Hollywood up your ass and posturing yourself as the living embodiment of the American Dream goes a long way.
Obama didn't lose Afghanistan during his term, and Syria is so fucking complicated that I doubt even the news savvy American could name the sides there.
In contrast, Biden retreated from Afghanistan Saigon style (reminiscent of a memory that boomer Americans still actually have), and ukraine has been a much faster failure than the typical forever wars America has lost. He is the best at losing folks, no one loses like him.
He also just gave up vs. covid, promised strudent loan relief but is overseeing the return of student loans, and thinks inflation happened because people could refuse the occasional job offer.
Also a rapist.