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.
Extincion Rebellion in Finland has withdrawn from a demostration due to police violence. The libs are calling this a smart move as it draws more attention to their cause. Mainstream media however rarely reports the demos or if it does, it typically frames these as the disrubtion of traffic. Today the liberal bourge paper Helsingin Sanomat has called out for the protesters right to protest safely.
Their next demo will start as planned tomorrow with a press release about the police violence. In the Finnish text based press release they report the police hitting people in the head, dragging them on the asfalt and other acts of physical violence. The police started forcefully removing protesters as soon as the demo started with no prewarning or commands to leave.
My coworker: Those protestors don't even know what it is they're protesting, they just want to be anti-something
Veljeni Kristuksessa, they aren't running for US president, they surely know where they are and what for
Oh man, such a typical Finnish person comment that. Literally textbook mukaneutraali mukarationaalinen obnoxius End of History type apathy covered nihilism inspired Finnish person comment.
I fucking hate it here.
Finnish libs definitely have an air of unearned arrogance
Move to Alaska in America. There are at least as many moose, more bears, real salmon, and you have your pick of biomes with extremely harsh winters and little sunlight. But people are usually pretty cheerful and friendly.
There’s two types of Alaskans
Native born normal cheerful people
Disgruntled exiles from mainstream society with giant beards
The goods are odd but the goods are odd. I tell people that, at least among white people, most Alaskans are midwesterners, Texans, and Californians who were too weird for their home states so they went as far from everyone as they could without leaving the country.
Finns do this by moving into a cabin in the woods in Lapland. Ngl, been eyeing job positions in the north for a while.
There are estimated to be several tens of thousands of people living entire out of the system in ak. Folks building little cabins in the interior, living by hunting and foragin and growing vegetable patches during the summer. Certainly not the lifestyle for me!
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I can understand that. It's a very different culture. I think, for Alaska, there's a couple of things going with the very casually friendly and, I guess you could say intimate, culture. A lot of Alaska's white culture grew from Californians and Texans. Both of those states tend to have a very forwardly friendly culture. California is noted for having a very fake, superficial friendliness, while Texan culture in some cases can be a more genuine casual friendliness. The other cultural component is the US Midwest, which was heavily settled by Nordics and might seem more familiar - folks tend to stick with their close friends and families and are more socially reserved. But the Midwesterners who moved to Alaska are mostly people who didn't fit in with that culture, so they brought some aspects of that culture but socially they blended in with the California west coast casual friendliness and Texas.
Then you have the large minorities; Alaska Natives are the biggest minority group by far and the culture of many villages strongly emphasizes community. It makes sense - the native villages are as isolated as anywhere can be, so you have small communities that very much need to cooperate to survive. Folks are often welcoming and hospitable.
Then we've got asian and pacific island groups - lots of Hawaiians, Polynesians, and folks from any coastal region in the Pacific with a fishing industry. Lots of people from Japan, Korea, and Vietnam came up for jobs in the fishing industry and settled, and brought their own culture and tradition. For instance, it's common for kids of all backgrounds to get elaborate leis, big necklaces of flowers or candy often with money from friends and relatives tied in to them, at school graduations. And that came entirely from pacific islanders coming up and contributing to the culture.
So it's a big weird mix of different peoples from different parts of the world contributing their cultures to Alaskan culture. It really is it's own world. The racial dynamics are very different from the rest of the us, the legal and political relationship between Alaska Natives and the US government is very different from the relationship between the US and indigenous people in the rest of the country.
I work and all my skills are in the public sector so am pretty sure AmeriKKKA would have no jobs for me, haha. But the nature in Alaska is appealing.