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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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
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    38 minutes ago

    Bernie Sanders to stream with Pokimane and Valkyrae in support of Harris

    The Tuesday night stream is aimed at addressing concerns among Democrats and their allies that the left is giving up critical organizing spaces online.

    This is how Bernie can still win. Also, wtf? There was legit a cat person vtuber in there lol.

  • mkultrawide [any]@hexbear.net
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    2 hours ago

    yiiking-out

    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.

  • Socialism_Is_The_Alternative [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    5 hours ago

    Today marked the start of the important 2024 BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia Federation. Below is a selection of videos showing the arrivals of many important world leaders.

    Chinese President Xi Jinping’s arrival: https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/china-arrival:9

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s arrival: https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/modi-arrival-airport:d

    South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s arrival: https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/sa-arrival:4

    Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s arrival: https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/iranian-president:c

    Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s arrival: https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/maduro-russia:4

    And a bonus video: a crowd of supporters greets Xi Jinping: https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/welcomexi:9

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
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    6 hours ago

    Exam shows stability and Brazilian President Lula da Silva is ‘able to carry out his work routine’, say doctors. The President fell in the bathroom of his official residence on Saturday, hit the back of his head and needed five stitches. The presidential administration canceled the official trip to Russia on medical advice.

    President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party) was clipping his toenails when he fell off a stool in the bathroom of his official residence and hit his head last Saturday. The chief executive was finishing clipping his nails on one foot when he moved to start clipping the nails on the other foot, ended up unbalancing himself and fell off the stool he was using for support.

    Btw, I recently saw a very strange video on Twitter of an elderly man (probably around 65/66 years old, who claims to be a journalist) saying things like: “Lula is a liar! Either he’s dying or he’s lying! He can’t be president because he’s going to die! Why doesn’t he appear in public? All his photos are staged, just like that other Brazilian president (the first civilian president after the military dictatorship) who hid the fact that he had cancer and died a month later. How dare Lula and his RADICAL supporters criticize Bolsonaro, you see, why doesn’t Lula talk to me? Why does he only talk to his RADICAL left-wing outlets? Lula didn’t say he had the libido of a 20-year-old, and if anyone wanted to compare him to Biden, they’d just have to ask Lula’s wife how good he still was in bed (Lula is the same age as Trump, by the way). Another lie! Lula doesn’t have the libido of a 20-year-old!”

    It was very strange for me to see someone who seemed to be on a normal news program talking like that, as if he was having a breakdown, so I checked the guy on Wikipedia and it seems that he was a member of the Fernando Collor government (which lasted about 2 years, stole poor people’s bank accounts by freezing them and giving them worthless money). And he hasn’t lived in Brazil since 1992. I have no idea what that was about, but it looked like the guy was really pissed off because Lula said he had normal sex with his own wife.

  • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    7 hours ago

    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

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    8 hours ago

    In an incident straight out of a Hollywood movie: Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militants (formally known as the Janjaweed) in Sudan shot down their own friendly transport/cargo plane, owned and operated by their own UAE suppliers. The UAE operated aircraft they shot down was likely bringing in supplies and engineers to repair another friendly UAE operated aircraft that crashed previously.

    Video here

    AP News article

    “Sudan War Monitor” article

    The RSF shot down their own plane that was bringing in parts and specialists to repair their own damaged aircraft which they crashed… The level of incompetence and lack of co-ordination on display is staggering. The UAE cannot even stop their own proxies from shooting down their own planes!

    Editing to comment on the South African driver’s licence being present on the UAE plane, our sub-imperialist arseholes just can’t help jump from one sub-imperialist entity to another. If it weren’t so tragic it would be comedy.

  • dead [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 hours ago

    DPRK reports that it is still planning retaliation against ROK propaganda leaflet scattering and that they found more leaflets scattered on Oct 21.

    The DPRK detective agencies’ investigation into the drones from the ROK is going on and the truth behind the despicable provocation of the ROK military gangsters will be analyzed further in detail.

    No one knows how our retaliation and revenge will be completed.

    spoiler

    Press Statement of Kim Yo Jong, Vice Department Director of C.C., WPK

    Pyongyang, October 22 (KCNA) – Kim Yo Jong, vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, issued the following press statement on Tuesday:

    The reckless infringement upon the sovereignty of the DPRK by the ROK military gangsters is a hideous military provocation that can never be pardoned.

    Seoul will have to experience at first hand so as to know properly how dangerous act it committed and how terrible and fatal the consequences it brought on itself are.

    A military provocation against a nuclear weapons state may be led to horrible situation, unimaginable for politicians and military experts in any big or small country in the world with their normal thinking to experience. So, there will be no such instance except one recently made by lunatics of the ROK and Ukraine.

    Such deed can be done only by lunatics in the Seoul and Kiev regimes.

    Seoul and Kiev are exact counterparts in going about begging and letting loose reckless remarks against nuclear weapons states at random without follow-up capability.

    It seems to be a common feature of bad dogs bred by the U.S.

    The DPRK detective agencies’ investigation into the drones from the ROK is going on and the truth behind the despicable provocation of the ROK military gangsters will be analyzed further in detail.

    No one knows how our retaliation and revenge will be completed.

    A lot of political motivational rubbish sent by the ROK scum was discovered and removed in many parts of the DPRK on October 21, too.

    The brute courage of the Seoul authorities to jump into fire with brushwood on their backs, far from reflecting on their conducts and being prudent, will bring the danger of destruction of all the scum. And they will be denounced by everyone else. -0-
    www.kcna.kp (Juche113.10.22.)

    .
    http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/b02ea907dce5b8c1e3f89bc1ff090dcf.kcmsf
    https://archive.is/pTLPy