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.
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.
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/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/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.
Eliyahu said in a social media post: "It is clear to anyone who is sensible that the nuclear remark was metaphorical."
In Eliyahu's Kol Barama radio interview, it was noted that ravaging Gaza would endanger some 240 hostages - among them foreigners as well as Israelis - held since Hamas sparked the war with an Oct 7 cross-border assault that killed 1,400 people.
"In war, you pay a price," the minister responded, while adding that he was praying for the return of the hostages.
"It is clear to anyone who is sensible that the nuclear remark was metaphorical."
Oh, okay! I'm gonna go send a letter to Putin to tell him to make the statement "Nuking Washington DC is an option." and I expect the United States to take it calmly and coolly and realize it was a mere metaphorical statement.
Maybe tomorrow he'll tweet (and then very quickly delete)...
"We have 107 mother of all bombs that we have in our arsenal. The plan when appropriate is to use these mighty non-nuclear weapons to 'punish Gaza and put them back into the stone age'. I say we use them and we use them now. Right now."
Follow up tweet
"In my previous tweet it appeared I was making secret military details known to the public. That is an erroneous assumption. It was a poorly phrased 'what if'."
A step too far. Even the U.S. knows you're not supposed to say it publicly and explicitly; you're supposed to just keep strongly implying it through language like "all options are on the table".
while adding that he was praying for the return of the hostages.
lol... They're actively blocking the transfer of many foreign hostages - functionally many of them are just as much (or moreso) Israel's hostages as Hamas'.
This leans a little bit too hard on westerners having basic empathy imo. The rest of the world already tends to side with Palestine, that just hasn’t really helped them that much (so far).