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.
Russian communist talks about her visit to Italy (Part 2):
We come to the home of one of the organizers of the conference, the leader of the Italian Fronte del dissenso Moreno Pasquinelli. Moreno lives in Umbria, in the village of Castellina, on a mountain. A stone house built in 1200 (!!!), half sunk into the ground. Suddenly it turns out that in this house, which seems so familiar to us, about 50 people can easily fit around a large oak table - leaders of local communities, political and student leaders of Umbria were invited to meet with us.
Over plates of spaghetti we talk about the war in Europe, the nature of Kyiv fascism, and the support of the Russian special operation by the Western public. As soon as the conversation turns to Russian problems, a calm conversation turns into a stormy, emotional discussion: we are trying to explain to our Italian colleagues that our support for the special operation and the Kremlin’s foreign policy efforts does not mean at all that we support Putin in domestic political issues - we are the opposition. “Leave your differences at least for a while,” the Italians shout, “when you win the war, then you will make claims to the authorities...”
In response to our objections, Moreno jumps up on the table, in the middle of plates of spaghetti, pulls down his pants, shows his bare ass and shouts: “Here! This is what will happen to all of Europe, this is what will happen to Italy, this is what will happen to all of us if your Putin loses the war! ! Do you understand??"
We understand. There is nothing to object to. “This is our war,” we say, “and we will not lose it.”
The Italians sure have a way of expressing themselves.