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.
Student protesters walk out of Hillary Clinton’s class at Columbia.
Nearly 300 students were seated at Columbia University on Wednesday afternoon for a two-hour lecture on women’s involvement in peace processes delivered by Hillary Clinton and Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Not even halfway through the class, about 30 students stood up and gathered their computers and backpacks, as part of a planned student walkout. They joined several dozen other protesters congregating near the lobby of the building.
The demonstrators, who sat quietly in a common area in the International Affairs Building — many of them in face masks — were protesting what they perceived as the school’s role in publicly shaming students whose photographs appeared last week on the video screen panels on a truck seen near campus. The screens showed the faces of students beneath the words “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites.” The students said the photographs were taken from a “private and secure” online platform for students at the School of International and Public Affairs.
They demanded “immediate legal support for affected students” and “a commitment to student safety, well being and privacy.”
The students whose images appeared on the video panels were members of groups that had signed a statement about the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel that said, in part, “The weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government.”
As Ms. Yarhi-Milo and Mrs. Clinton’s class was finishing around 4 p.m., the demonstrators shushed themselves into silence, anticipating that the dean and the former secretary of state would soon walk past the gathered students. That time never came. Word spread that Ms. Yarhi-Milo and Mrs. Clinton had left the building through a side door.
A spokeswoman for Columbia said the university had no comment. The protest came the day after the school announced a new task force on doxxing and student safety.
Seriously. No one should even need the current wave of acute genocide and its accompanying propaganda and repression as reasons to walk out of any lecture at all given by Killery. Let alone one about fucking "peace processes"....
Will she just die in a fire already, please?! The crabs are anxious! 🦀🦀🦀