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.
Convinced this tiktok phillipines shit is feds.
The “their flag upside down” shit reads as cia to me. If this was on twitter you’d do a search for the phrase and find it in dozens of very slightly differently worded posts by fake accounts.
EDIT:
I’m also convinced that the posts about it on /r/thedeprogram are also feds.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDeprogram/comments/1do86bb/america_what_the_fuck_are_you_doing_what_is_this/
20day old sus account.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDeprogram/comments/1doiylu/am_i_the_only_one_being_bombarded_with_content/
Account with similar karma quantity, hasn’t posted in 1 month, before that it didn’t post in 1 year.
Call me tinfoil hat my fed-dar is going off.
“dont let history repeat itself”
Bruh you are 500 miles off of China and they havent colonized you once in 3000 years. Meanwhile you got got multiple times by western colonial empires from the otherside of the globe. The only history repeating itself is yall being colonized by the US, this time willingly
It comes off as feds to me because actual Filipino nationalists would be a lot more belligerent like all nationalists. Less “pray we won’t see the Filipino flag upside down” and more “the Chinese navy better pray they don’t see the Filipino flag upside down.” This self-victimization they’re doing just comes off as colonials begging their colonial masters to save them, which I think actual Filipinos would be loathed to do.
I guess my point is that in sabre-rattling, people usually try to puff up how their country’s military will totally own the other country’s military, not beg outside third parties for help. That kinda goes against the whole point of sabre-rattling.
Oh also, for the Tiktoks, are the people in there actually talking about the Philippines and China? Because if not, maybe this is how the feds bot Tiktok. They find random clips and slap their propaganda on it even when the clip has nothing to do with what the propaganda. It’s like how porn bots on Twitter use random photos of real women as pfp.
Now that you mention it that IS how some of them are.
Things like a video of a person just looking at the camera and doing an expression for 10 seconds, the text on screen is the only content of the video.
That specifically being repeated is so
Their national flag was originally designed as a war flag with red on top and blue on the bottom, so the convention is to have blue on top during peacetime.
Ahh okay, appreciate the clarification on that
It was recently revealed that the DOD launched an anti vax campaign in the Philippines. Despite what neoliberals cheer on about Biden’s moral superiority for ending the program, his admin recently gave the units and contractors responsible for the campaign billions more dollars to carry out the same task (read the last sentence in the article)
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/
Philipenis
probably made by a joined effort by
and the 
gov, the CPP in an article mention the join effort of both trying to escalate the border conflict between china and the philippines after their disinformation campaign about covid-19, seems the goal is to justify more USA involvement in the philippines territory via a “protection” agreement
Philippines flag but upside down is their war flag isn’t it? So it’s just become a meme euphemism
Why do vassal states talk about “we” and “us” as if they’re gonna be significant contributors in the event of a war with China and not be babysat and exploited by the US military lol
.