I’m not gonna lie to you - I thought Israel would have started shit with Hezbollah by now which would have derailed whatever megathread theme I had planned, so I didn’t bother planning one.
If you want a decent couple pieces going over what Hezbollah has done to Israel, then have a look at How ‘Israel’ Has Lost The North and Hezbollah’s Quarterly Report. It’s not exactly the most professional analysis, as you’ll see if you read it, but it gets the point across and relies on evidence. In essence, Hezbollah has pushed the Israelis back tens of kilometers and decimated their border infrastructure, all while unveiling anti-aircraft missiles that have forced Israel to reconsider bombing runs. They still probably have the ability to turn various towns and cities in Lebanon to rubble, but Hezbollah can do massive damage back to Israel in turn. This has gone on so long with so little meaningful opposition by Israel that border settlements are going a little haywire and tentatively declaring independence from Israel and saying they don’t want IDF troops there anymore. I don’t take these terribly seriously from a military standpoint but it is indicative of the Zionist settler mindset crumbling over the last 9 months.
We’re now at the point where Israel kinda has to go to war against Hezbollah or the entire Zionist ideology of military deterrence and expansion via illegal settlements simply no longer functions, but that war will also lead to massive destruction for military and civilian facilities (ports, power stations, war factories, etc) which is a massive problem for Israel’s continued existence. Hamas continues to function inside Gaza despite the surface occupation of significant areas, including the Gaza-Egypt border, and attrition there is leading to big materiel and psychological losses for Israel too. And Yemen has, for all intents and purposes, prevailed against America’s failed attempt to thwart their blockade - with some in the army claiming it’s the most intense naval battle America has faced since WW2 - and missile strikes are tentatively beginning to hit or at least threaten ships in the Mediterranean Sea.
Nukes are still lurking quietly in the background, of course, but the Resistance is perfectly aware of that and still seems confident to go ahead with operations, so I can’t really do anything but shrug and say that I trust them to do what’s right.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
Something I wonder about when I post in threads like this is the possibility of it being sifted through one day by historians, of some sort. Whether that’s internet archivists digging around the wreckage of the old worldwide web for lost media 20 years from now, or scholars from a post-internet empire 5 centuries from now trying to salvage whatever data they can from what they view as the height of human civilisation. Just as the tiniest Roman shopping list carved onto stone would give us insight into what life was like for a distant ancestor of ours, our posts could give our descendants a glimpse into our world.
If you are a curious scholar or even a passionate amateur sifting through the digital detritus of the 2020s to learn what life was like in the leadup to the third world war, i have only one message for you: MARG BAR ISRAEL
or scholars from a post-internet empire 5 centuries from now trying to salvage whatever data they can from what they view as the height of human civilisation
whenever I get a bit too anxious about ongoing events, I like to imagine a hypothetical person during, say, the Mongol conquests. in the middle of massive battles that shaped civilizations, but just trying to get by on the day-to-day, trying not to get murdered, harvesting grain or weaving or something, and totally forgotten by history. did they ever think that centuries on, people would still be talking about and analyzing events back in their time? did they hope that we’d have overcome war by that distant decade? I sure hope that the people of the 2100s and 2200s are living in lovely communist cities and free from many of our blights.
it’s a more human-centric version of the concept of “compared to the universe, we are tiny and insignificant” so it has more mental staying power for me. it’s not so much about bitter nihilism as much as it is the indomitable human spirit. a city 100 miles away in central Asia gets sacked, but you still have to go wash the clothes in the river and feed the cattle. today, I am just one of billions living during the current timeframe. in a century or so, I and almost everybody currently alive will be dead, but geopolitics continues on, our suffering forgotten, or at least made less horrifying by remote abstraction, like those who died to the mongol army. but today, we live.
sometimes in life, shit happens and then you die. most of the time, shit happens and then you keep living.
That’s been on my mind too lately, history is filled with intense events that were the entire world for the people experiencing it. Current events are just history being made, but rather than being locked into a track as when we read history, we can directly affect the course. Though, history is also full of completely forgotten stories of people like us and not like us, fighting for things which are motivated by things almost completely irrelevant now. And they would go on being forgotten events and people of the past, except that we can retrospectively analyze them as tools for our present. Interesting to think about when it comes to the legacy we’re collectively leaving to the world’s children.
also it’s kinda wild realizing how old people are still pretty young in a cosmic sense, we’re all just someone else’s kids that inherited the fucked up world handed down to us. Like how stories get passed down through generations, except only the ones told by the oppressing classes are remembered.
I needed this, it’s beatiful in a way that hurts but gives me perspective and hope for the people of tomorrow who wouldn’t be able to live as they do if it weren’t for us suffering today but managing to fight for that future despite everyone around us not being even remotely ready to understand what we’re fighting for.
