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.
Canadian province of New Brunswick minor electoralism win. The provincial Liberal party won an extremely strong majority over the incumbent Progressive Conservatives (and yes, that is legally what they call themselves, long story). I don't live in my NB homeland anymore but I do keep an eye on the news there. This is good news.
While normally an NB election has historically been meaningless as the two big parties have had basically identical platforms for decades, this particular election is a big win for trans people. The outgoing premier Blaine Higgs is a vicious transphobe who put other vicious transphobes in his cabinet. The incoming Liberal premier Susan Holt may be very liberal in economics but she's at least good on the social policy side, especially on LGBT+ issues. I'll take Holt over Higgs anyday. Higgs didn't even keep his seat in what is normally a PC stronghold. He pissed off so many people with his various bigotries that went on full display the last few years.
What's especially interesting is putting aside the liberal wins in Fredericton and Saint John, it was almost entirely an English-French split. 70% of the province is blue (the English south), and 30% is red (the French north), and all the anti-French assholes are pissed about it. The French are really who ousted Higgs, which is not surprising for anyone who knows that he hates the French so much he used to be in an anti-French hate group.
The Progressive Conservatives? ;)
Yeah, he's one of the old COR diehards. Fuck them. It's so satisfying to see that prick not only lose the election but also his own seat. He's not the type to handle rejection well so I hope this eats away at him until he dies old and miserable and alone.
But the best news of the night was Faytene Grasseschi losing. She's too dangerous to allow to hold any elected office. She's an evangelical come-from-away who was brought in specifically to be Higgs' right hand in implementing anti-LGBT+ policy and legislation.
Yeah Faytene is horrible, her church does these weird anti-trans and anti-abortion marches and they have her face printed off on a huge banner labelling her as a prophet. Marci MacDonald's The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada has some good stuff about Faytene's early entrance onto the evangelical scene, and the ties between all the Christian Nationalist players and their American benefactors.
She has built a weird creepy "compound" that is ostensibly a television studio for her preaching (which is specifically aimed at Canada and Israel, no surprise), and she also has an anti-abortion snitch line (for a province that already has like zero abortion access). Anyway, what's very funny about her loss is that she picked an overwhelmingly conservative area, like Trump flag (in Canada for some reason), Fuck Trudeau, anti-vax conservative. And she still lost, because she missed the most important part of New Brunswick voting: her opponent is from there and everyone knows him.
All the come from aways who spent their lives in Ontario, Alberta or Saskatchewan and have lived their adult lives in social-conservative echo chambers and expect to be hailed as noble conservative heroes when parachuted into provincial contests in traditionally Conservative ridings have no idea how politics works in NB. They think western-style conservatism will sell with a majority of locals. But NB politics is extremely local, to the point where historically the only difference between the Liberal party and Progressive Conservative party is the colour of their lawn sign and local name recognition is everything.
Next step, send the Irvings to gulag?
I'd be interested in that story if you find the time
It's a result of various party mergers in its history. Nothing really interesting, just long.
Oh lmao