Pumpkins and Ooze Discussion for October 30th to November 5th, 2023 - The International Ghouls-Based Order - COTW: Lebanon
Pumpkins and Ooze Discussion for October 30th to November 5th, 2023 - The International Ghouls-Based Order - COTW: Lebanon
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.
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I’m feeling a mixture of optimism and caution. This is the first time in my life, since the George Floyd protests and riots, that I’ve seen one of the “eternal” veils of propaganda stripped from so many people’s eyes. This is a good thing, but I feel incredibly cautious because this leads to wanton brutality upon the masses by the bourgeoise as they struggle to maintain control
but I feel incredibly cautious because this leads to wanton brutality upon the masses by the bourgeoise as they struggle to maintain control
I agree but ultimately there's never going to be a way to dismantle capitalism without it. Mark Twain's "There were two reigns of terror" quote states my position the best - while I don't want to speak for the Palestinian Resistance, I think they would agree that - given that the Israeli state would otherwise continue to exist and wouldn't magically poof out of existence because the Zionists managed to develop some empathy - it's better to withstand a month, six months, a year, two years (however long this conflict lasts) of incredible violence and heartbreak but with the strong potential of the Israeli state collapsing, rather than undergo another 30, 50, 70 years of oppression and slow-burn suffering. The total agony in the latter is greater by magnitudes.
A similar calculus exists in all nations under capitalism, though obviously most of us don't have it as bad as the Gazans, and I think we are generally entering that period (perhaps a few decades long) of incredible state-driven violence as the crises and contradictions continue to accelerate. But in the long term, despite what atrocities lay in our future, it offers infinitely more hope than slowly asphyxiating on carbon dioxide in comparatively low-level violence for the next, let's be optimistic and say 100 years. I also believe that the abilities of Western states are generally deteriorating due to their magical belief in the power of technology and surveillance above all else. Not to say that these aren't sometimes very frightening and comprehensive, but I think more than a few governments that rely on surveillance technology are looking at October 7th and becoming very nervous. It can be beaten, and most importantly, it can be beaten by people living in a concentration camp relying on smuggled goods, not just powerful anti-Western states.