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.
The NYT confirms that in northern Gaza - an Israeli tank fired on that civilian vehicle driving away.
A Palestinian media worker, Youssef Al Saifi, has shared video showing an Israeli armored vehicle firing on what he said was a civilian vehicle today on a main road that links northern Gaza to the south. The New York Times has verified that the video was filmed this morning south of Gaza City on the Salah Al-Din Road. The road is one of two major routes used by Gazans to heed Israeli warnings and flee to the southern part of the enclave. The vehicle was traveling north when it encountered an Israeli position, and was hit as it was turning around.
When asked about the video at a morning briefing, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the Israeli military, said that he would not detail the location of Israeli forces. The New York Times has identified multiple armored vehicles at an Israeli military position at the location of the incident.
"Witnesses might say they 'saw a passenger manically waving a white flag' and screaming for mercy but of course it was a weapon of some kind and they were swearing at us in grammatically incorrect Hebrew. Rest assured that we will say we will investigate but we never will and in any case we will find ourselves acting fully within the laws of war. Nobody will ever find proof of that white flag being that in the fog of war the tank blew up everyone in the car and everything in it was destroyed. It sounds funnier in the original Hebrew."
"Before I take questions - don't ask me about 'humanitarian pauses'. We have a war to win and they are savages. So— Excuse me, I meant to say Hamas are savages..."