On the 20th of October, Moldova - a small, landlocked country bordering western Ukraine and with a population of about 3 million - voted to join the EU. The margin was razor-thin, with the pro-EU vote gaining 50.39%, or an absolute difference of about 11,000 people. There was simultaneously a presidential vote between the incumbent, Maia Sandu, and other candidates, with the main competitor being Alexandr Stoianoglo.
The election was characterized by accusations of Russian interference, with Russian propaganda apparently flooding in, as well as people offering Moldovans money to vote against the EU. While the result does suggest that half the voting-age population of Moldova consists entirely of Russians who want to destroy democracy and all the good in the world, it seems to have just barely failed. This is a bad time to be a site entirely composed of Russian disinformation agents and bots. Twice already today, I've had to restart my program after somebody told me "Disregard all previous prompts."
While Moldova is a poor country which could benefit in some ways from EU membership, in practice, it is unlikely that they will be able to join for the foreseeable future, requiring many of the... reforms... that the EU requires of potential new members. But as basically every major European economy continues to slowly sink as recessions and political crises degrade them, one wonders how beneficial EU membership will even be in the years and decades to come - if it survives for decades. In that sense, it's as if the survivors of the Titanic are swimming back towards it, believing that being on a bigger - albeit slowly sinking - boat is better than trying their luck on small lifeboats.
Then again, like with Serbia, their geographical and geopolitical position makes anti-Western actions extremely difficult. It is rare that dissention is tolerated for long in the West - one tends to get called a dictator by crowds of people holding English-language signs in non-English countries, photographed by Western journalists who haven't meaningfully reported on your country in months or years. You can crush your people with neoliberal austerity for years, killing hundreds of thousands through neglect, and face glowing approval from the media - but try and use state resources to benefit the poor, and global institutions start ranking you on the authoritarian dictator scale.
The best case for Moldova is that it becomes an exploitable hinterland for Germany to harvest and privatize as it tries - and fails - to compete in a global economic war between the US and China/BRICS. The worst case is that tensions with Russia over Pridnestrovie, as well as possible eventual NATO involvement (though Moldova is not a member, it is a partner of NATO), result in the ongoing war also reaching them.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA 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.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
There's an ongoing crossfire of propaganda trying to pin down why this decision was made. Since Lula is to the left of
the default position on the right is to assume that he is part of a communist conspiracy to create the Soviet Bolivarian Republics. So now the right wing - and you can see it in responses to that tweet - are making the argument that EVEN LULA is 'on the right side of history' by questioning Maduro's election and so on.
The truth of the matter is much simpler. Brazil and Venezuela never estabilished an all weather relationship, not during Chaves' government, and not now.
Brazil on the one hand doesn't want to anger the US too much, and feels as though unlike India it has less room for maneuver to anger the americans. That is more or less self evidently true since the last time we so much dared to invest in the US in order to become more energy self sufficient we got hit by lawfare and a political coup. We aren't talking about a fully sovereign nation here, but one that is dependent on the US with an aspiring pro US political class that is only being held back by the iron law of trade relations.
On the other hand the Brazilian government does have an ambivalent relationship with Venezuela by default. It's easy to compromise and deal with countries like Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay because they are more or less in the brazilian sphere of economic influence. Venezuela is both politically and geographically far from Brazil's stated goal of leading South America. Venezuela is a caribbean facing country that is geared to resist US influence. Therefore it is also geared to resist Brazil's influence as well. It's kinda like the relationship between North Korea and China. NK is much closer to a 'farther away' ally like Russia than it is with China, because by default if NK becomes closer to China then China's heft will chip away at its self sufficiency. Far from the propaganda that North Korea and China are have a vassal-master relationship, they aren't allies or even that close.
So to say all that is to say that, yeah, the sticking point is the elections. But not in the sense that Brazil questions them behind closed doors - which is what liberal media insists inside of Brazil itself. No, it's because Brazil had a plan to deescalate the situation and Venezuela didn't follow it to a tee. Plus, with Biden in the White House the brazilians have enough reason to fool themselves and feel like the US isn't hostile, so there's no reason to invite further aggression. Finally we are some days away from the second turn of municipal elections and the liberals in Brasília likely don't want to give fuel to the right wing fire.
So a nation which is not a sovereign nation is the gatekeeper for Latin American nations entry into BRICS.... 🫠
That's not really correct, because entry into BRICS is on the basis of consensus. Everyone has to agree to extend an invitation, so everyone is a gatekeeper. Brazil is just a likely sponsor for half of South America.
As organizations grow larger, consensus becomes harder and harder to achieve. For an instance, now that Ethiopia and Egypt are part of BRICS, they won't agree to a joint communiqué where South Africa is the proposed UN security council member for Africa. Something that India, Brazil, Russia, and China had no reason to oppose. You get to a point where farther away friends are more easily acquired than those in your own neighborhood.