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.
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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.
Apartheid Antony returned from his gunboat diplomacy tour. Israel attack against Iran very soon?
The US will attack Iran through its ‘israeli’ attack dog. I suspect they will wait until after the “election” in the US as the democratic regime doesn’t want gas prices to skyrocket before the Americans “choose” their regime.
The question is only a matter of scale.
On Monday the IOF spox threatened to bomb Iranian embassy in Beirut on live Saudi TV. We shall see.
What worries me is that it is currently in the interests of the zionists to ‘lock-in’ the course of the conflict before the election, so that no matter who wins they will have no choice but further support of the entity.
And what better way to do that then by starting a war with Iran?
Woke- Kamala is president Broke- Trump is president Bespoke- Biden declares war and continues being president
There has been an attempt made on my political career, which has left it scarred. Which is why I, uh, you know. The thing! Anyway I’m declaring myself the Supreme Chancellor of the Empire of The United States of America
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Depends on what Israel view as most advantageous to them, in attacking before or after the US elections. But I do think the Israeli planned attack is now a matter of when, and not if. And the scale of Israel’s attack will in turn effectively decide the scale of the Iranian response. Iran have given Israel a route to de escalate while still carrying out some response, as long as the Israeli response is not too large. However if the Israeli response is large in scale and targets valuable assets, all signs show that Iran will escalate in response.
IRGC Gen. Jafari:
Sources for the quotes: 1
2 (they are in Farsi)
Thanks to user @fever@hexbear.net for providing the sources and translation.
Bibi wants Trump. They will attack before the election. Over the past week or two, some pollsters have started to admit that the data is showing Gaza is actually much more of an important issue for voters than they originally thought.
Could I get a source on this if you’ve got it?
However in another possibility, if Israel believe Trump is already likely to win as it stands, why would they risk attacking now before the election and changing the situation? It all depends on what they are thinking and strategising internally.
I just don’t see why the Biden admin would stop if Kamala loses. Nothing has made him stop at this point and they have shown no signs of caring about any criticism of resistance from Democrats. Honestly, given how spiteful Biden and the Dems are, and how eager they are to show how much they love Israel, I’d be more worried that they somehow double down after losing than the opposite.
I’m hoping for a Biden January 6 style coup where he tells either KDolph or Trump to fuck off.
People will finally understand that Biden really is the only person who can save democracy.
‘Israel’ doesn’t decide anything…