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.
Had a glance at the debate thread on
r/politics …It’s wall to wall denial and imagined new Trump-Russia hysteria:
- The top 29 comment chains are all about Trump with no mention of Biden’s performance at all.
- More than a third of those comments are trying to spin a theory that Trump and Putin planned going into Ukraine together in secret.
- The 30th most popular comment chain is thr first negative comment about Biden and it’s scathing criticism is that “someone should have gotten Biden some water or something in the ad breaks”.
The saddest part of this election is that I can’t vote for both candidates, given what an excellent performance they both gave in the debate. Profoundly illustrating the biggest issues in America and describing expertly how they’d solve them.
Prediction: Biden is going to refuse to step down, he’ll be desperate to make an impact in the second debate, they’ll overdose him on amphetamines and we’ll see even crazier shit than the first one
Bruh is Biden speaking French I can’t understand shit
Funny to remember how widespread making fun of the “Soviet Gerontocracy” was in the 70s and 80s in western media and politics. This is so so so much worse. Suslov, Brezhnev and Chernenko at their worst and most decrepit state were monsters of vitality and intellect compared to what we are seeing from Amerikkka these days.
You can put renal failure induced encephalopathy Andropov on the debate stage 5 minutes before he died and Biden would still seem barely sentient comperatively
32-33 Celsius in parts of the BaltiKKKs, hottest in the
right nowDiehard Democrat supporters should accuse Biden’s critics of being “gerontophobic” because mental and physical deterioration are a natural process that the president has no control over.
Biden looks pretty similar to von Hindenburg at this moment
Brüning recalled that once the president came to meet him at the railway station, but failed to recognize him. On the other hand, Franz von Papen, a later chancellor, found that despite minor lapses the president remained competent until his last days. Hindenburg was persuaded to run by the Kamarilla, and supported by the Centre Party, the Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which regarded him as the only hope of defeating Hitler.
Hindenburg was 82 at that point.
We all know how it ended after Hindenburg was elected he let the Brownshirts back on the streets then he and von Papen did a bunch of hemming and hawing until they made Hitler chancellor and did pretty much everything Hitler asked for like dissolving the Reichsttag. Two years later the guy would croak and Hitler would take everything over.
Denmark news
The people of the hermit kingdom in the north share a strange proclivity with it’s government: An intense drive to destroy all of the nations natural resources.
The danish regime has just voted to “marketize” the water sector. This means that the water sector will now be maintained by the Ministry of Work with the sole rules for usage being “economic factors”. This means the environment is right out the window. Who cares about fucking up the ground water if it makes money? What this really means is that an issue that has been prevalent is only going to be ramped up: The poisoning of the danish ground water.So on another forum, some of the most consistently wrong and delusional neoliberals are STILL saying they shouldn’t replace Biden.
Some choice quotes:
I think the argument that Biden needs to step aside is short-sighted. The Democrats have nobody with a strong public image that would garner the same voter turnout - replacing Biden this late in the game would basically be throwing in the towel and handing the election to Trump.
Yeah, it’s simply too late. We’re locked into this. If Biden stepped aside they would just nominate Harris since the DNC would have full control over who gets nominated (and she would also be president if Biden for whatever reason stepped down from the role before the election) and historically taking it out of the hands of the people like that has resulted in very lopsided elections. It’s political suicide trying to avoid an impending political stroke. I can’t imagine anyone being selected charismatic enough to get over the “political unknown” factor that will sway independents to hesitate or go third-party like how polls show that if Haley suddenly got the position Trump is in a large amount of people would switch to RFK due to unfamiliarity. Whoever was selected would have needed a primary’s season to get their name out there enough for people to be on board and also need to be liked enough for that to matter.
Who could they possibly choose? It’s too late to enter the primary, the DNC would certainly nominate Harris or Newsom, who both will not win against the GOP in a presidential election, no one in the House is notable enough to fill his shoes and the Democratic party would genuinely take their chances with a mob like on Jan 6th again than nominate a Jewish progressive who is against Israel’s extermination campaign and has the heritage background to actually have a meaningful impact on public discourse and governmental action for that.
It’s insane to expect Biden to be replaced, short of him dying he isn’t going to be, it would be an insanely bad idea and would be the easiest way to ensure the Republican party wins the election.
If the DNC thinks like they do, Trump 2024 is locked in.
Bit idea: Respond to neolibs saying that if you don’t support replacing Biden, you are voting for Trump.
#NoHayGolpeEnBolivia
I do not understand spoken English well but I do not understand anything that Joe Biden say in any clip of this debate.
From predictit, the election gambling website
Blue is the dang cheeto, purple is Boe Jiden, red is Gavin Newsom
Biden went from trading at 47 cents to 28 cents in one hour lmao
The Atlantic is reporting that the debate was rehearsed lmao
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