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.
I made a new video - Zionism needs antisemitism
is it too fast? I gotta get better at editing audio, I cut out all the breathing and pauses and only then realized you kind of need a bit of that to sound natural
Slightly longer gaps between certain things helps. Like the end of the quote and the start of "throughout". Just a little more processing time for people for the prior statement helps.
A new microphone could too but that's an expense and a proper one isn't cheap, a pop filter would help in the meantime though and they can be cheap.
I'll try it out on the next one, thanks.
what problems do you hear with the mic? I wonder if it's something I can fix? it's brand new, but I have it connected through USB instead of XLR for now, maybe that's why it doesn't sound the best? I figure there's no point spending so much money on an audio interface and whatever else when I'm barely getting views in the first place lol.
The main thing I hear is popping, which is a "P" sound you get when you start a sound, it's the air from your breath as it hits the mic. Pop filters are designed to remove this and come in cheap at like £5-£10 or so.
Mic being new isn't much to go on really it's not so much the age of a mic that matters but what mic it is. I think the good mid-range desktop mics are probably in the £100-300 range but it's been such a long time since I built a streaming/video setup I could be wrong and out of date now.
it's a Shure MV7, so a pretty decent mic I think. I read a lot of reviews online saying that the windscreen that comes with it is awful with plosives and to replace it with another one, so I'll try that first I guess.
Should be good. I think it just needs to be further away maybe? A pop filter like this really should mitigate this problem almost entirely though
Gain may also be part of the problem but it's harder to tell without seeing levels. Make sure nothing is peaking.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Great video, but I think that for the non-communist the relationship between capitalism and antisemitism (or any other racism) needs to be better explained.
As I understand it and generally try to explain it, when people live with false scarcity and precarity, the rich have to justify this situation that's self evidently irrational (you also have to explainfalse scarcity).
Rather than implicate themselves they instead scapegoat a group that in some inexplicable way is making the nation weak. This intangible so-called weakness is presented as the source of everyone's problems, instead of the fact that the rich are hoarding the wealth that workers are producing.
It doesn't have to be capitalism. A similar dynamic exists under feudalism. Likewise, this dynamic doesn't have to target jews. It can be any group that meets the need to redirect class resentment. This should be obvious to any American but usually hasn't ever been considered.
Simple. Just kidding. I don't have to many converts I can take credit for.
I really liked the video, I just think that the economic system most peple associate with "freedom" being linked to antisemitism will really confuse a lot of people.
Edit: I was typing on my phone and in a hurry. That's my excuse for the sloppiness.
Thanks for making a rare piece of media acknowledging that antisemitism is an instrument of class conflict.
Great pacing. Most youtube essays I put at 2x because they talk too slow. You spoke clearly and almost dispassionately and made your case concisely.
thanks! that's really what I was going for - I'm really tired of these 47 minute meandering video essays that everyone's doing these days. the monotone dispassionate part is unfortunately just how I talk haha.
Its clean and makes you sound unbiased.
hell yeah!
side effect: i will now read your comments in your actual voice lol