One year on. Hundreds of thousands are dying or dead, millions are displaced, the Middle East is undergoing its greatest changes in a generation, Iran has directly attacked Israel twice in one year, and Yemen has proven that the US Navy ain't worth shit. We are the closest we have been to nuclear war (discounting accidents) in decades, but also the fall of Israel.
Because one day, the prisoners of a concentration camp paraglided over a wall.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA 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.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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 Telegram Channels:
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.
In Finland news the government is going to privatize water next
There was a citizens initiative to counter this in 2021, but as is to be expected it made no difference. There is now a new initiative (essentially a "please don't do this) up, but looks like we are getting privatized water next.
The EU citizen's initiatives are the biggest scam in optics imo. Finns love them, they are doing so much democracy by signing them.
We have these citizens' initiatives as well. It's a complete farce, all they do is they make politicians say "fuck you, we're doing what we were going to do anyway" once again.
Yeah it is EU wide I think. It was touted as a mechanism of straight democracy. It is fully a system that gives people a sense of false agency, none of the initiatives that have not aligned with the interest of the powers that be have passed/impacted anything.
Two recent examples: One passed where people signed it to stop the destruction of peatlands. No impact.
Another one was to ban fur farms, the government gave fur farmers even larger bailouts aften ignoring it.
We have been doing these for ten years now, the parliament has declined 90% of the ones that have passed. These have to be taken into consideration when 50 000 people or over sign them.
The parliament also often drags ass on them and many have been inside the system for years without getting assessed.
It is said that with this system citizens can take part in the political discourse, but mostly it seems that these are just a spectacle to do stuff that looks democratic.
Similarly, a few years ago Florida voters pretty overwhelmingly voted a "ballot initiative" to give felons their right to vote back after time served. The state basically flipped them off and kept right on going. Same game, different players
That's pretty much a summary of Western democracy in general.
All it is, is a tool to placate sheep by making them think they have some form of agency.
Apart from longer processes, it achieves the exact same results a dictatorship would. But unlike a dictatorship, it comes with a built-in defense against revolutions, precisely because people under a democracy live under the illusion of agency, so instead of taking any meaningful action, they just wait for the
in the hope that it might change something for the better.
It almost never does, but somehow, the illusion remains. Just vote better next time!!!
Oh jesus christ, this should be good. We all remember how fun privatizing the electrical grid was, yeah?
i remember when i thought "Nordic socialism" was real
Sparkling fascism
The inevitable grinding away of social democracy
They should ask how that's going in the UK. (which is currently drowning in sewage and I'm not even referring to the cuisine)