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.
They also killed thousands of Tudeh members in prison without trial. Not MKO, the Tudeh, don't reduce the mass death of our iranian comrades to them being "terrorists". The IRI used the Iran-Iraq war as a pretext to eliminate all possible opposition groups in the country, among those various communist and pseudo-communist(MKO) factions. The Tudeh party was staunchly communist and aligned with the USSR.
The IRI is an anti-communist force, that it also is in some regards anti-imperialist does not change that. This is what critical support is about.
Don't reduce the rich left-wing history of Iran to "they were all MKO".
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I don't give a fuck about the MEK, but claiming the IRI is leftists is revisionist. I am sorry. I have been to Iran, I speak persian. I have read and listened to what iranian communists have to say about the islamic republic. It is not an ally to the iranisn working class, most of whom have been getting ever poorer over the last few years(Thanks to the sanctions, that is true) while members of the Pasdaran and the burgeoisie have been getting ever richer.
My problem is with you denying the reactionairy and burgeois character of the current iranian goverment. They are an enemy of the west, and as such should be supported against imperialist aggression (especially the sanctions), that does not mean I have to like them, or support their domestic policies. Why do you feel like you need to defend the IRI in it's treatment of communist groups(except the MEK, which is reactionary garbage)?
Have you ever read an iranian communist? Bozorg Alavi mainly focused on literature, but he did write some stuff about the history of iran, which is accessible and readable.
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Sorry I misread, and wrote before thinking. Bit I really wouldn't defend the mass executions of prisoners, especially since to my knowledge we do not have sufficent sources to say that there really mostly were MEK.
Thousands of Tudeh and other communists were also in those prisons. (For example the entire Tudeh CK, but as far as I know they only got confessions tortured out of them)
And it's not like the iranian state archives are open, or that they even exactly documented who died.
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Ok, I have watched the video, and because I never cared for amnesty that was nothing new. The video seems to reduce the deaths to mojahedin, which is provably not true. And it does not cite any sources, or link them. He uses "widely accepted" and other terms, but does not proove them. I am sorry, but I fear that it is not up to my standarts, esoecially with such a murky topic. He leaves out a lot of conrext sourrubding the events.
The problem with the executions from 1988 is that we have nothing but eyewitnesses about how many died in the prisons. We have enough proof that they happened(relatives were informed that their family had been executed etc.), but nowhere near the exact number. From what I have found 1/5 were Mujahedin(at least based on the one prison block in Evin we have some numbers for from the feydai) the rest were comprised of different groups.
They did happen, and actually led to an internal split, where the primary successor of Khomenei was ousted.
This is my main source: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft3s2005jq;chunk.id=0;doc.view=print
P.S. These are the numbers from executions some years prior to the events I was talking about, these are mostly MEK, since the Tudeh was not yet illegal, and they are accurated, cause we have the numbers from the IRI.
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You have not even read my source, give me something better than your vibes based analysis please.
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