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.
Dumb question: Why do militants shout "Allahu Akbar"? Is this exclusive to Islamic militants or more broadly people who speak Arabic?
It’s Arabic for “praise be god” basically.
Yes, but why is it said in military contexts? Is it considered part of a holy war or the idea that God is protecting them?
The general vibe I get (and I'm not a religious person and I also don't want to appear patronizing) is that religious Muslims tend to ascribe a lot (most? all?) of their successes directly to Allah; you see this all the time in statements, about how they might have fired the rocket, but Allah ensured that it hit the target. Things like that. It seems fairly similar to sects of Christianity who believe that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and so on, so everything you succeed or fail at is part of God's plan for you, though with Islam it seems like that concept is taken a step further. So I think calling out Allahu Akbar is basically a way of saying "The only reason this happened is because Allah willed it!" But it's such a staple of the language and religion that is must be pretty automatic. I mean, I say "Thank god..." and "Oh god!" and "God damn it" and similar things all the time despite not believing in God, as it's such a core part of the English language. But they very clearly do believe in Allah, obviously.
Yeah, like when muslims almost fall down from the stairs or something they say "Allahu Akbar", when they hear and explosion "Allahu Akbar", when they hear that their relative died "Allahu Akbar", but the tone is different obviously
Like my mother in law, who describes litterally anything in the future as "inshallah". As in, "Will you come by for dinner in 20 minutes? - Yes, Inshallah". She occassionally makes me worried, because it sounds like she believes she could die at any moment.
the best translation for inshallah is just 'hopefully'. your kid tells you they want to be a doctor, you can say inshallah. someone asks you if you'll come by for dinner, you say inshallah.
can be, but this kind of thing can also just be cultural
like saying "thank god for that" or crossing yourself etc.
depends how religious the person is i guess
Seems like it's used in a similar way to how we say "oh my god" after significant events
I guess I always chalked it up to being some sort of religious thing
A celebration of a dub mostly
What's a dub in this context?
dub = w = win
72T was a lot more eloquent than I was tbh, but yeah a win, a success
"Hell yeah" or "fuck yeah" maybe. People love affirming a thing that just happened