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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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.
The first few days of COVID lockdowns, when it was only supposed to be for two weeks, is such an interesting time to look back at. No one in the world knew what was going to happen next
COVID was an object lesson that atomized individuals do not, in fact, know what's best for themselves all the time.
I remember being so goddamn naive and thinking "okay this sounds serious enough to cause quarantines, we'll all take it seriously and actually quarantine for a few weeks easy peasy!"
That almost immediately I shifted to "ok so long as they take it seriously and don't let it get a foothold in America we'll be alright, I am concerned that the lack of healthcare/social safety net there would barriers to a real quarantine and further spread covid"
I was fully doompilled on covid when people started busting out anti-mask and anti-vaccine rhetoric. Then I knew we were truly screwed.
I don't think that's true, it was fairly obvious to those doing research that COVID was not going to disappear after a half arsed 2 week lockdown, and that the lockdowns were going to have to be extended for quite a while. The virus was spreading at an exponential rate and reaching new countries every day, and some kind of "worldwide lockdown" to eliminate COVID forever was never going to be feasible.
Half-assed lockdowns were definitely the problem. Need to do mandatory full assed lockdowns in targeted locations like China did
Yeah, but a lot of countries in the world simply do not have the capacity or capabilities to do so. While most first world countries did have that capability, and simply chose not to lockdown properly so the line could go up, many other countries in the third world didn't even have the infrastructure to track cases and deaths, never mind doing proper targeted lockdowns. This article explains it well with regards to Africa.
I remember when COVID first started I saw a few articles pop up with "How are Africans immune to COVID-19?" and they were nonsense stuff about I don't know what, but it was anything but the real reason that not many people went to Africa and that African countries weren't able to track down each case. Opened my eyes to how dumb Anglo-speakers are.
It would very hard to mobilise and basically try change the state of the world in the month or two at the beginning of 2020 before COVID hit hard. Healthcare systems take years to build, and I don't think the collective West even has that kind of industrial capacity considering that they've outsourced everything to China over the past few decades. The West would've had to start actually caring years ago, instead of delivering ineffective aid packages.
The Soviets had to more or less browbeat the west in to helping with Polio elimination.
The only good thing about covid is that it wasn't mers or sars. : (
I was leasing a car in the middle of February in 2020, and while filling out paperwork, I was telling the salesman how the current research said COVID had a 10-14 day incubation period before people became symptomatic, and how we (the US) were fucked because there was no way we would do the stuff necessary to actually fight an illness like that, because it would require basically shutting down the whole country. He looked at me like I was crazy lol.
This is going to sound off the wall but I was listening to Michael Moore’s podcast at the time (March 2020) and he had correct predictions. His ivory castle contacts were telling him the real truth that the public officials were obfuscating. He said, according to his sources, we would have wave after wave of lockdowns and openings for at least a year, probably longer.
I have a molecular biology background and knew exactly what was going to happen (except maybe how little active protection the vaccine would confer). It didn't really help in the long run but it was definitely better at the time.
I bought a huge amount of rice. Also what medications I was able to find for a respiratory illness, like cough syrup and stuff. Bought a ton of apples and potatoes because who knows?
Fortunately we had a bidet and skipped the toilet paper shortage.
I know a bunch of old doctors and they've known that the 21st century would see something like covid for a long time. So I knew it was coming even if the details were unknowns. I was seriously worried right from the start.