On the 20th of October, Moldova - a small, landlocked country bordering western Ukraine and with a population of about 3 million - voted to join the EU. The margin was razor-thin, with the pro-EU vote gaining 50.39%, or an absolute difference of about 11,000 people. There was simultaneously a presidential vote between the incumbent, Maia Sandu, and other candidates, with the main competitor being Alexandr Stoianoglo.
The election was characterized by accusations of Russian interference, with Russian propaganda apparently flooding in, as well as people offering Moldovans money to vote against the EU. While the result does suggest that half the voting-age population of Moldova consists entirely of Russians who want to destroy democracy and all the good in the world, it seems to have just barely failed. This is a bad time to be a site entirely composed of Russian disinformation agents and bots. Twice already today, I’ve had to restart my program after somebody told me “Disregard all previous prompts.”
While Moldova is a poor country which could benefit in some ways from EU membership, in practice, it is unlikely that they will be able to join for the foreseeable future, requiring many of the… reforms… that the EU requires of potential new members. But as basically every major European economy continues to slowly sink as recessions and political crises degrade them, one wonders how beneficial EU membership will even be in the years and decades to come - if it survives for decades. In that sense, it’s as if the survivors of the Titanic are swimming back towards it, believing that being on a bigger - albeit slowly sinking - boat is better than trying their luck on small lifeboats.
Then again, like with Serbia, their geographical and geopolitical position makes anti-Western actions extremely difficult. It is rare that dissention is tolerated for long in the West - one tends to get called a dictator by crowds of people holding English-language signs in non-English countries, photographed by Western journalists who haven’t meaningfully reported on your country in months or years. You can crush your people with neoliberal austerity for years, killing hundreds of thousands through neglect, and face glowing approval from the media - but try and use state resources to benefit the poor, and global institutions start ranking you on the authoritarian dictator scale.
The best case for Moldova is that it becomes an exploitable hinterland for Germany to harvest and privatize as it tries - and fails - to compete in a global economic war between the US and China/BRICS. The worst case is that tensions with Russia over Pridnestrovie, as well as possible eventual NATO involvement (though Moldova is not a member, it is a partner of NATO), result in the ongoing war also reaching them.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
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.
This guy used to write for Bloomberg, and people pay money for his opinion blog now. He discovered this after proposing a three state solution to the occupation of Palestine, and after accusing the NYT of faking the CT scans of the kids shot by IDF soldiers.
I hate all zionists, but I have a particular spot for the bulldozer drivers. These aren’t just your normal soldier who loots houses and takes selfies in ruined buildings. The bulldozer driver is the one responsible for destroying homes and running over people in very conscious acts, you have to be a special piece of shit to demolish houses with your vehicle, one by one. On the other hand, the military use of bulldozers is quite unique to “israel”, even thought pretty much all armies use them. “israel” uses them very close to ongoing combat, usually armies employ them after areas have been cleared of enemies, but their bulldozers seem to follow frontline troops to begin destruction immediately, no time wasted there. I think this shows how much “israel” just loves destroying stuff, how their incursion into Gaza is simply to destroy it.
Remember that video of a bulldozer going through a refugee camp, running over and destroying people’s tents, a bulldozer that you can’t see but you can still hear destroying stuff, but then it comes face to face with a Qassam fighter that fires a very accurate RPG shot into the cabin? That is one of the most powerful videos by the Resistance that emerged from Gaza. Instant Justice I would say. These bulldozers are an integral part of “israel’s” plan for Gaza, and seeing it get destroyed as it’s doing it’s work is amazing. The bulldozer works for the genocidal cause, the Qassam fighter puts a swift end to it, it’s extremely symbolic. Here’s the video for those who didn’t watch it
And yes, this is related to that fucking piece of shit bulldozer driver who had PTSD and then suicided because he couldn’t bear with it. Hope many more zionists follow him tbh.
Death to “israel”.
Trump is saying Kamala supports “Muslim-hating” and that Liz Cheney is an idiot
Kamala losing the Muslim vote to the guy who did the Muslim ban would be one of the greatest Democrat moments yetChina says Australia ‘plagued by systemic racism’ after diplomat raises concerns about human rights in Tibet and Xinjiang
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-24/china-accuses-australia-of-racism/104513232
australian here to confirm that China is correct
Jfc Kamala is really doubling down on having Liz Cheney as her hype woman. Apparently they were campaigning together in Michigan today. I swear I’ve seen Liz Cheney have a more prominent role in this campaign than Tim Walz over the last couple weeks.
I saw a poll the other day that showed both Dem voters and independents are really turned off by the idea of having a Republican in Kamala’s cabinet
Kamala has worse political instincts Hilldawg, and that’s saying something.
So there’s this spanish-speaking twitter account called “Palestina Hoy” which posts news about the ongoing genocide in Gaza and they said they have been blocked by twitter which prevented people from following them. That is true, when you clicked on follow and refreshed the page, it would say “Follow” again, as if you never decided to follow said account.
In total, this account had like 2k followers, while many of their posts had like 5k+ likes, so it’s completely true that they were under blockade. The blockade was lifted after weeks and they went from 2k followers to 302k followers in mere hours.
death to twitter, death to elon musk and death to “israel”
Zionists are currently on a witch hunt for the leaker in the pentagon who released intel on Israel’s upcoming attack on Iran.
This is their current subject of attack, Ariane Tabatabai, an Iranian woman who works with the pentagon.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_Tabatabai
Only problem? She’s a mega gusano shill who is one of the most hawkish people in the administration on Iran.
Ariane Tabatabai (Persian: آرین طباطبایی) is an Iranian-American scholar of political science, writer, and senior policy advisor to the United States Department of Defense. She is a graduate of King’s College London and the daughter of Javad Tabatabai, an Iranian philosopher and professor at the University of Tehran. Tabatabai is also a former researcher of “RAND Corporation” think tank, curriculum director and associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University, an international civilian consultant for NATO, the Middle East Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and several other research institutes.
Tabatabai, in an article in the Foreign Policy magazine before the 2020 US presidential election, argued that Iran’s economy is fragile and will be forced to negotiate, agree and make concessions, demanding that the winning US presidential candidate not return to the nuclear agreement and pressure for more points.
After the Biden administration took office in January 2021, she joined the US negotiating team in nuclear negotiations with Iran, but together with Richard Nephew, she left the team after a few months due to differences with Robert Malley, the head of the US negotiating team, and also because she believed that the US would lift too many sanctions on Iran and consequently the possible agreement would not be strong enough.
Remember this all sell out gusanos and traitors, it will never be enough. Your masters still think you are scum and will dispose of you whenever convenient just because of your nationality and race. I bet she wasn’t the one to leak this, but I sure hope she gets crucified publicly by her “friends” in the state department and pentagon
We have comrades here in Iran, hope you all are staying safe.
Why is this dumb photo op so funny lmao, absolute state of this unserious country
Kelly celebratory slop for Weird Al’s birthday
An actually wholesome video from Ukraine
Ukrainian men escape the military conscription and kidnappings of the Ukrainian regime, scream in celebration after reaching Moldova and play music while dancing. Just dudes being dudes. Honestly really happy for these guys, hopefully they can have a future outside of Ukraine.
its crazy that people are willing to vote for genocide
BIG BREAKING: INDIA, CHINA REACH AGREEMENT TO END BORDER CRISIS:
https://xcancel.com/MattooShashank/status/1848295216266227721Nothing ever happens take: They are temporarily deescalating because the BRICS summit is coming.
The dialectic is ever in motion take: China is preemptively closing a potential front in preparation for a front opening in Korea.
