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.
David Frum is on CNN and besides ridiculously spinning Biden's numbers to make them seem not that bad - he actually just said "Maybe there's something in the voters and not the candidate."
The funny thing (as in funny tragic) is that Biden could at least promise that if he wins and the dems control both houses - that right away in early February, 2025 they do stuff like put Roe into law and pass actual fucking legislation to protect voting and election systems.
But their entire message to voters so far has been "Have you seen the other guy?" It seems they are following Hillary's highly unsuccessful 2016 playbook with a minor edit - it's his turn, again.
That campaign worked after 4 years of media hysteria about Trump and covid.
They promised your wouldn't have to think about the president and people didn't for 2-3 years.
Now they are trying to drum up that hysteria again
Get Joe the anti-seizure sunglasses and let him rip on 9/11 next year
CMON MAN, I FEEL GREAT
He does an early afternoon meet and greet with regular folks and as music is playing he says "I used to dance to this in 1962!" The song is That's the Way (I Like It) by KC & the Sunshine Band which came out in 1975. The prez does have smooth moves for an 81 year-old but he suddenly falls down like a sack of potatoes. The Secret Service grab his anti-seizure sunglasses and wrestle them to the ground.
The White House soon issues a press release saying that he has had a "minor medical emergency" when in fact he's had a massive stroke and he only has roughly a 10% chance of survival. The next day Kamala is seen in public with very large disco-era sunglasses.
That's the Way (I Like It)
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
He kept going and he was ranting about "far left extremists" and how people "scaled the walls of the White House to attack Biden". What the fuck. I had no idea what he was talking about but I assumed he certainly meant gate. I had to google. A 21 hour old Fox News headline sums it up.
I don't know if he ranted about young people letting America down. I assume he did but just a few seconds of his angry unhinged ranting was enough and I stopped watching. It was far more disturbing than funny. I'm Jewish and I have a temper that used to be embarrass me but right-wing Jewish fury unnerves me.
noticing that there’s shit in my pants
“Maybe there’s something wrong with these pants.”