Image is of Jeff Daniels in The Newsroom, giving a speech (parodied below) about how - gasp - America sucks. But in a patriotic way.

And you - general megathread poster - yeah - just in case you accidentally wander into the news megathread one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest megathread in the world.

We're seventh in citations, twenty-seventh in accurate predictions, twenty-second in effortposts, forty-ninth in non-mainstream article posting, 178th in guessing when wars will start, third in powerusers, number four in dialectics, and number four in megathread exports. We lead Hexbear in only three categories: pointless infighting, number of adults who believe Putin is based, and copium manufacturing, where we produce more than the next twenty-six lemmy megathreads combined, twenty-five of whom are full of delusional liberals. None of this is the fault of any Hexbear user, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest megathread in the world, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about! Jokes about whether they got a Zionist's semen in time?!

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
    ·
    5 days ago

    Geopolitical Economy Hour: Did Israel and the US win in Syria?

    An interesting discussion by Mohammad Marandi and Radhika Desai which, via a sober analysis, seeks to dispel a lot of the triumphalism from those on the pro-genocide side, and bitter resignation from those on the left. I shall summarize the video below:

    • First, we start from a quote from Responsible Statecraft which more-or-less concludes that Israel is (at least at the current moment) triumphant in the Middle East. A key part of their assessment is that the Shia movement has been crippled, which is the first sign that things are amiss in their conclusion (much of the Resistance is Sunni). What else is wrong?
    • Marandi remarks that the events in Syria are a tactical victory for the US, Israel, and Erdogan (not Turkiye as a whole), but this victory is unstable and likely to disintegrate over time, for the following reasons.
    • The question for the US is: should they stay or go? If they go, this presents issues for maintaining this instability for Israel's benefit. If they stay, this presents an issue for Jolani, because the US's purpose inside Syria is explicitly to weaken it (they are stealing Syria's oil to ensure that pro-Resistance forces have less resources to work with).
    • The question for Erdogan is: can he continue to exert leverage over Jolani now that he has performed a successful uprising and has western diplomats knocking on his door?
    • The question for Jolani is: how much humiliation can he - and Syria - take from Israel stealing their territory and bombing their weapons stockpiles? This will naturally cause resistance to once again rise up against HTS and Jolani. Additionally, Syria still has plenty of groups that are internally vying for power and has plenty of economic problems that cannot be fixed quickly. In fact, there could be a new civil war between the different factions inside Syria and even between groups in HTS. This is on top of the returning refugee groups from Turkiye.
    • The key mistake for Israel is the delegitimization of their new pet regime in Syria. What Netanyahu should have done instead is not undermine Jolani and held off on the annexations, and instead done all they could to stabilize and strengthen them (like with Jordan and Egypt). This is on top of the obvious problems for the IDF trying to occupy territory with an increasingly dysfunctional and degraded army after their continued defeats against Hezbollah and Hamas.
    • Iran and Russia did the right thing in a bad situation by pulling out without further commitment of resources, as Assad or his generals seemed unwilling to fight for themselves to maintain control of their section of the country. It would be too much to say that this was part of Iran's grand plan or anything like that, but by not holding desperately onto Assad and instead deciding to let them go once, say, Aleppo or Homs had fallen, Iran has avoided falling into an unnecessary trap.
    • The timing of dangerous gambles/events in Ukraine and the Middle East do appear to be a ploy by the Biden administration to create fait accomplis for Trump's administration; either to ensure they keep the project going, or at least to complicate and delay an eventual resolution on the side of Russia and the Resistance.
    • Iran is a stronger country than 8 years ago in terms of foreign relations with non-Western countries, and will be harder to isolate than before. Western sanctions will still present many difficulties, but not as existential as before (so long as China and Russia are in their court).
    • Iran is also a stronger country militarily than 8 years ago, and will set the world on fire if Trump (or, indeed, Biden, with a couple weeks to go) tries anything too stupid. It will be too dangerous for the US and especially Israel to start a war against Iran, and Iran's position as the "hub" and suppliers of weapons and expertise means that the Resistance will continue to function relatively well (and has not been "defeated" or anything like that).
    • CleverOleg [he/him]
      ·
      5 days ago

      Iran and Russia did the right thing in a bad situation by pulling out without further commitment of resources

      I think NATO was hoping Russia would increase resources and recommit to supporting Assad, even if they knew it was more likely Russia would just cut their losses and get out. By that metric alone, Russia did the best with the hand they were dealt by following that old military maxim: “do not do what your opponent wants you to do”.

    • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, comrade/them]
      ·
      5 days ago

      I think if we're talking about the Shia element of the resistance, it would be the links between Iran and Hezbollah which have now been weakened with the fall of Syria and the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon. So i think it would just apply to just that part of the resistance.

      With regards to Israel, it appears that they're trying to take and annex the most strategic points in Southern Syria, including Mount Hermon and important dams in the Yarmouk River Basin. Along with their de-militirisation campaign, I think this is about securing Israel's future strategically no matter what happens in Syria. It's clear that the Zionists have little trust or faith in HTS or any Al-Nusra Front offshoots at the moment, Israel just supported them over the years to use as a tool to weaken Syria. If any strengthening will happen, it will be later once the situation is more clear and whoever's in charge of Syria establishes more control.

      Iran definitely has the capability to make life very difficult for the US and it's proxies should they choose to take more offensive actions against Iran, we've all seen what Yemen has done to global shipping using Iranian designed weapons for example. But the question remains if Iran will use such capabilities. Iran themselves are simultaneously stronger and more vulnerable than before. Operation True Promise III appears to be on hold for now, and losing Syria has also complicated it, there was talk of launching attacks from Syria, a senior IRGC official even mentioned something about how they could have done so for True Promise II, but chose not to, a tacit admission in my view.

      The main conundrum Iran faces from a purely military perspective currently is that their longer range missiles, while having the ability to evade Israel's missile defence systems and the accuracy to hit large soft targets like energy and electricity infrastructure, don't have the accuracy necessary for counterforce targeting. Iran's shorter range missiles however, do have the required accuracy for counterforce targeting, as shown by the Iranian strike on a US base using these shorter range missiles in 2020. So that's why using Syria as a launch base was appealing. There have been attempts by Iran to extend the range of their existing short range missile systems, the Martyr Haj Qasem missile being the best example, a Zulfiqar warhead fitted onto two, much larger than the original Zulfiqar missile, solid fueled booster stages. Zulfiqar originally had a range of 700km, Haj Qasem is said to have a range of double that, 1400km. Though it's unknown if the accuracy is maintained over longer distances. I think that Ansar Allah in Yemen fired one of these missiles towards Israel recently, which would be the first use of such a weapon. And yes, it is named after Qasem Soleimani

    • sisatici [he/him]
      ·
      5 days ago

      as a turk, I feel very bad for what we enabled in syria. if it is any consolation, we are not thausands of kilometers away to be immune to consequences. This does not really benefit turkey surely. hts also seems to be too weak to fight, demanding tsk support for fighting usa supported groups. I am filled with rage as chuds here talk about how ackchyually they are anti zionists and iran is sekritly agent of israhell while we completly enable zionist landgrab, I am not even gonna talk about our trade since it seems too cloudy to judge. I kinda doubt if really iran is stronger than 8 years ago, assad has ran away, heavy casualties on hezbollah and hamas, supply for hezbollah seems at risk.

    • plinky [he/him]
      ·
      5 days ago

      Erdie influence is in the construction and infrastructure building part tbh, even if qatar bankrolls their favorite moderate rebels, hts won't go buying german wind turbine or concrete. They'll buy turkish stuff.

      But i also think it was purely erdie play maybe with some cia go ahead, not biden masterplan.