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.
U.S. and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior U.S. official and one former senior U.S. official.
its so joever ukkkraine bros
Cant wait for the coping "aktually giving away 1/5 of the country to russia is a win because Ruzzia wanted to annex all of ukraine"
I kinda wonder if Zelensky would even listen if the US told him to negotiate a peace deal at this point. I suppose that would heavily depend on whether he's more afraid of being lynched by Banderites or if he's more afraid of whatever consequences the US would realistically dish out for disobeying.
Is it too cynical to think that Israel opened a perfect opportunity for Hamas to do the flood just to distract people from the American failure that is Ukraine?
Its probably too cynical? The Hamas Israel war has destroyed Netanyahu and Bidens popular support (or at least what was left of it). I think the intelligence community believed in its super powerful surveillance apparatus and didnt see this coming. Rather then a master plan to distract from Ukraine its probably just them taking advantage of a new crisis to forget about the old one. Just like Ukraine made people forget about Afghanistan, etc etc
The plan was to start a war with China and/or to escalate significantly, giving Biden the "tough on China" appearance, the president with a strong character and conviction that you could say actualy fights to defend US interests etc. It is an easy W over Trump that will always be looked down upon by libs for having "talks" with Russia, DPRK etc. Trump was also entirely ineffective against China though obviously not his fault alone.
The Ukraine narrative they were always going to wash their hand away, claim the Ukrainians are too corrupt and too fucking stupid, literaly what NATO officials say about the "training" already, we talked about this here so much too etc...
Too stupid to win the war and to use the western wonder weapons correctly etc, they were ready to just say "well we tried our best but our ally was just not worthy enough, tough luck if you want to win a war fight it yourself"