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.
Brazilian Liberal Media has made some claims that the Lula Government will be against the inclusion of Venezuela into BRICS. Considering that all joinings require a consensus on the part of member countries, this would be a spanner in the works. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it doesn’t actually strike me as surprising. The Brazilian Government has a difficult relationship with Venezuela since Cháves.
On the one hand, there’s the electoral issue. We are marching towards the second round of the municipal elections and any support for Venezuela galvanizes the right and the far right which are the majority of the country.
But on the other we do have the leaked CIA cables from way back when that claimed Lula had a difficult personal relationship with Hugo Cháves. Behind closed doors, the Venezuelan Government was considered difficult to influence or pin down, and a difficult partner to be had. What some might claim is a sign of sovereignty, others in the Brazilian side would say is a difficulty in cooperating in a time of american hegemony. As such, Brazil’s government feels a bit miffed with the way their brokered deals during the electoral crisis in Venezuela were more or less discarded.
I guess we’ll see the truth of things when during the next couple of days.
Same media outlet just reported on the main foreign policy guy for Brazil, Celso Amorim, who was talking about the strategic importance and cost of certain countries joining BRICS or not. Seems he was clear cut on the value of Turkey, while being opposed to Nicaragua’s entry (due to the whole Vatican thing a while back).
However, while the headline claims that ‘Celso Amorim says he’s against Venezuela’s entry’, the actual article reads: ‘the former chancellor did not clarify if, in that specific moment, he meant it [a comment on some countries being worth less to the bloc] towards Venezuela specifically’.
Brazil as a country exports crude oil and imports refined petroleum. That trade relationship is specific to BrazilxUSA trade and is the reason why we are in a trade deficit with the americans. Considering that getting Venezuela in is more of a Russia/China ideal, I can’t imagine that opposing their entry is anything more than optics at this point.
Seems more like either Lula’s goverment is just attempting not to give ammo to the far-right/right during this election or just the liberal media outlets wishing that Lula would break relations with Venezuela. I remember that during I think the 2022 Colombia election, Gustavo Petro said that Maduro was a dictator and whatever, but after the elections he reestablished relations with Venezuela, opened the borders and visited Caracas.
I think I saw some liberal Brazilian outlets saying that theres was nothing Lula da Silva could actually do or would probably do to help Gonzalez, and that the Brazilian, Colombian and Mexican goverments would continue trading with Venezuela and Maduro, because Maduro is the head of state of Venezuela and the other guy is just some dude living in Spain. We will see how this will end.
I’m inclined to believe that as well. I don’t doubt reports that the Lula people are not actually super cozy with the Maduro people, in the same sense that North Korea is neither a vassal nor even very friendly towards the PRC. There’s just a lot of right wing propaganda that needs to be criticized on that front. At the very least Brazil and Venezuela are sovereign nations with ideological differences between them, they are bound to butt heads all the time. But Venezuela is a cornerstone of South America and the Caribbean. All of Itamaraty’s historical ambitions for Brazil go through Venezuela, Argentina and Peru. Those are the three countries without which Brazil cannot be considered a ‘Big Nation’ or a ‘Regional Leader’. It’s not just about the oil, it’s about geography as well.