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.
new rule: all speeches will be disappointing
he is now issuing a fatwa against Larry David
me remembering the teaser where he pressed the nuke button
Situation escalating on US-Lebanon border with Israeli town, military position hit
Several explosions were heard here in Naqoura , for example. Now it’s evening so you can see anything but the Israeli positions behind me, there were huge explosions. Also it was claimed by Hezbollah that they have used today for the first time explosive laden drones and hit an Israeli command center towards the east.
There were around 25 to 30 rockets launched from Lebanon towards the Israeli positions and as we just heard now towards Kiryat Shmona where there was an impact. A rocket hit a residential area there. So situation is unfolding on an hourly basis. This is the first time that Hezbollah is using explosive laden drones.
Also the rockets that we heard here in Naqoura being launched on the naval base, were a bit heavy and they were not intercepted by the Iron Dome. They were not guided missiles, they were surface to surface missiles. So the whole situation here is giving us an indication that things are escalating and this time they’re escalating in a kind of a dreadful way
This process of drawing political legitimization from a sacred text can lead to fanaticism with dangerous consequences. The Bible, for instance, has references to genocide: the Amalekites were killed to the last by Joshua. Today there are those, thankfully for now only a fanatical minority, who refer not only to the Palestinians as Amalekites but also to those who are not Jewish enough in their eyes.
“thankfully for now only a fanatical minority” - christ, Ilan Pappe wrote this in 2017 and we’ve already seen Netanyahu call the Palestinians ‘Amalek’
Israeli army: Four more soldiers killed in northern Gaza
The Israeli military said four more soldiers were killed following the latest clashes with Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip.
:settler-down:
WATCH: Residents near Nablus evacuated as Israel threatens to demolish their homes
A video posted by Al Jazeera Arabic on the social media platform X showed heavily armed Israeli forces escorting a group of Palestinian women, who were carrying their infants, as they left their homes in the occupied West Bank before dawn on Friday.
According to the post, residents of a residential building near the city of Nablus, were “forcefully” removed from their homes, as Israeli forces threated to demolish their building.
Al Jazeera also received reports that Israeli forces also surrounded a house in the Jabriyat neighbourhood near the Jenin refugee camp, demanding its evacuation and threatening to blow up the building.
Israeli forces carried out anew on Friday a new raid across the occupied West Bank – an operation that has become a nightly occurrence shortly after the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7.
it’s because of Hamas bro, they have to do this because of Hamas
Lebanese opposition leader calls for Hezbollah to withdraw from country’s south
Samir Geagea, the head of the Lebanese Forces party, has said that the country’s Shia militia Hezbollah should withdraw from the country’s south, as the threat of all-out war with Israel rises.
“It would be better if Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah withdrew from the south and handed it over to the army, instead of giving his speech tomorrow, and his promotional films – ‘it’s not time for them’,” Geagea said in a post on social media.
:nasrallah-who-must-go:
As we reported earlier, Germany is banning the pro-Palestinian advocacy group Samidoun, now, the government has announced that the activities of Hamas will also be prohibited.
Interior minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement, “With Hamas, I have today completely banned the activities of a terrorist organisation whose aim is to destroy the state of Israel”.
But a Hamas representative in Lebanon said the ban showed that the country was in partnership with Israel on crimes against Palestinian people.
“This prompts us to question whether the German political mentality is a Holocaust mentality that affects all peoples and is not limited to one party or another,” Osama Hamdan said.
your fired Mr. Hamas
takes on The Majority Report today:
“Antony Blinken needs to resign in protest”
“Israel does have a right to exist and should exist, because it does”
US students fear employer backlash amid war in Gaza
A climate of intolerance to dissent over the Israel-Hamas war has led many in the United States to worry about the consequences of making public any pro-Palestinian sentiment.
Students wear masks at protests, worried that they will not be able to get a job once they graduate.
The fears haven’t come out of nowhere; in several high-profile cases people have lost their jobs for speaking out in support of Palestine and against Israel’s bombing of Gaza.
in authoritarian China, people are afraid of losing their jobs or being unemployable if they go against the government’s pro-genocide stance
White House says no sign Hezbollah ready to go in ‘full force’
Amid an increase of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said there is no indication the Iran-backed group is ready “to go in full force.”
Still, he said the White House was concerned about attacks on Israeli by Hezbollah, who claimed to have hit 19 Israeli positions in a simultaneous attack today.
cope?
US congressman suggests there are no ‘innocent Palestinian civilians’
US Congressman Brian Mast has suggested that there are no “innocent” Palestinians in the conflict with Israel.
“I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians,” Mast, a Florida Republican, said in a speech on the House floor. “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term innocent Nazi civilians.”
Mast previously wore an Israeli army uniform to Capitol Hill in a show of support for Israel.
The congressman’s remarks come as rights advocates have been decrying the ongoing “dehumanisation” of Palestinians by US politicians.
Arab-American activists also have warned that such rhetoric leads to hate against their communities at home in the US. Last month, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death near Chicago in a suspected hate crime.
lol
when did MLK turn into this borderline theological figure where people in 2023 sit around arguing about what he would have thought about Israel? so bizarre
White House confirms US exploring ‘pauses’ in Gaza fighting. What does that mean?
John Kirby, a White House spokesman, was just asked during a news briefing to explain what “humanitarian pauses” would look like in the Gaza Strip.
This is what he said:
“We’re really not just talking about one pause; what we’re trying to do is explore the idea of as many pauses that might be necessary to continue to get aid [in] and to continue to work to get people out safely, including hostages.
“The president already worked on one such pause, when we were able to get those two Americans out and that’s what we’re kind of looking at.
“And just to remind, when we’re talking about humanitarian pause[s], what we’re talking about are temporary, localised pauses in the fighting to meet a certain goal or goals. As I said, get aid in, get people out.”
The US continues to reject mounting calls from the United Nations, human rights groups, Palestinian leaders and other countries around the world to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
so ‘humanitarian pauses’ are literally nothing, we’ve already had them apparently. lol.
