Image is a snapshot taken from the recent Hezbollah video "Our Mountains, Our Treasures", showcasing their extensive underground fortifications, supply lines, and weaponry.
iran can't keep doing this to me, they've gotta respond soon, right? I'm gonna run out of analysis about countries soon, oh god
The COTW (Child of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific child every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied children. If you've wanted to talk about the child 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 child.
The Child of the Week is Hassan LargePenis! He is chad-and-cuck rater and general commenter @LargePenis@hexbear.net's son, born over a month ago. @Greenleaf@hexbear.net recommended I have him as the COTW for a week and I finally got around to it.
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.
So what does this mean? What are these agreements, and when do they expire?
Oh and Viva Colombia
Colombia was the most Pro-US and Far-Right country in South America for some years, Alvaro Uribe was a far-right president that had really close ties with Israel and the US. Iirc he was the one selected by the US to write a report in favor of Israel's in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Then Colombia elected former guerrila fighter and leftist Gustavo Petro as president. Uribe is currently in the same situation as Bolsonaro, probably going to jail soon. I think Israel used to train and sell guns to Colombia, and used to buy a lot of stuff from them. Besides training far-right militias there. When these agreements expire they will not be renewed, and Israel will have to find another country to sell them coal.
One of Biden's first acts as U.S. president was to get Columbia to restart the drug war. I hope Petro cut that the fuck out again.
Petro banning coal exports to the entity the same week he says Venezuelan elections were not valid.
Weird
*edit spelling
Tbh, he didn't say that the elections were not valid. Pretty sure he said they are not valid until the Supreme Court rules that they are valid, and once the Supreme Court investigate the hacker attack that they are already doing.
Pretty sure Lula da Silva said something like that too. Unfortunely a bunch of liberal news media report only half of what Petro said to make it seems they are anti-Maduro, when in reality Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are presuring the US into not doing a Guaido 2.0 in Venezuela.
So they both didn't call for a redo of the election? https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/08/16/president-maduro-responds-to-lula-and-petros-call-for-redo-election-we-are-a-sovereign-country/
They said this was a possibility, but they both knew that Maduro and Gonzalez (Gonzalez is still missing, hiding somewhere, so every time I mention him, it's someone else who said it for him) would refuse. Maria Machado said she was offended by it because Gonzalez won and that was that.
That's more or less Lula and Petro doing things to say that they tried everything they could to negotiate something between Gonzalez and Maduro. And Gonzalez refused all that. Biden said it was a good idea, but the White House, a day later, said that Biden didn't understand the issue and that the US was against it.
It seems like theres a lot of misscommunication between what the leaders actually say and what some news media reports. First they said Maduro attacked the electoral process in Brazil and Colombia, but when you see the video, you see that Maduro basically said that the electoral system in Venezuela is better than in the other two, which is true, he didn't say that the elections in Brazil or Colombia were invalid.
Then they said that Maduro was saying that a bloodbath would happen if he lost, but if you watch the whole speech, you'll see that Maduro was actually saying that a bloodbath would happen if Gonzalez gave orders to attack the Chavistas, which ended up happening anyway. Afterwards, some people said that Lula and Petro don't recognize Maduro or that they recognize González, but there are several interviews and videos of Lula, Petro and members of their governments saying that they don't trust González's “proof” and that they will wait for the results of the CNE.
In the end, I believe they will recognize Maduro's victory, first because Maduro has more proof that he won than some random documents Gonzalez made in some Miami apartment. And since Colombia and Brazil need to do business with Venezuela, and Maduro is the head of state, I've heard some liberal media saying that's what will happen. Even if the United States hates Maduro, they will have to recognize him as president.
Btw, I believe that what Lula or Petro said about a unified government was bullshit, they didn't ally themselves with the extreme right (Uribe or Bolsonaro), all Lula and Petro did was ally themselves with the liberals. I was the one who posted about Lula and Petro calling for new elections in Venezuela, here a few days ago.
Thanks for the explanation. I guess I still don't understand why they didn't just recognize Maduro's victory originally.
In the case of Mexico, this is due to the fact that it is the USA's neighbor. They need to play their cards very well so as not to irritate the US too much. The case of Colombia and Brazil is a little different and is mainly due to two factors: one is a little selfish and the other is more comprehensive.
Lula and Petro were elected in a coalition with some liberal and conservative parties (these parties are opportunists or really don't like Bolsonaro and Uribe). These parties and their voters don't really like Maduro and see him as a dictator due to the constant bombardment of fake news about Venezuela from the mainstream media. Lula and Petro openly defending/recognizing Maduro would cost them a lot of political capital with these voters and support in the legislature.
The other factor is that there is always the possibility that the extreme right in these countries, which is very strong and well organized in both Colombia and Brazil, will use this to attack the government and call for US sanctions and intervention against their own country for supporting ebil dictator Maduro and Vuvuzela. Therefore, Lula and Petro have to play this long game until Maduro resolves his situation and the Venezuelan far right (Gonzalez) is discreet since Gonzalez is currently nothing to resolve it other than saying “yes, I won because I said so”.
Honduras, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba case is different, they have strong rulling party/coalition that doesn't mind having the allied with Venezuela. And in Bolivia's case it's good for Luis Arce (Lucho) because he is gaining some respect from the Far-Left after being accused of being a Neoliberal by Evo. And Chile, well, Boric is a fucking moron and traitor.
Wow thanks. This makes a lot of sense. Also it looks like Colombia still has NATO bases in it 😳
This also provides context how Lula got roped into the occupation of Haiti earlier this century.
What's the long end game for those two then in regards to asserting sovereignty in regional relationships? Waiting game while imperial hegemony declines?
Wait for the US decline, use the money and aid they get from China and Russia to build their on industry and military capabilities. Brazil is taking the role as the main regional power with the decline of Argentina. They want to restart the Unasur initiative (This is the EU of South America) and replace the OAS with CELAC.
Brazil has called this plan Neo-Industralization, headed by Lula's VP. It seems it was planned mostly by him, even though he used to be a rival of Lula and a Neoliberal, seems like he changed his views to some sort of right-wing developmentalism, which used to be popular with the right in some Latin American states during the 1960's and 1970's. Most of these right-wing developmentalist eventually allied themselfs with leftists and socdems due to their shared hatred of neoberalism.
In Colombia, Petro has been focusing in ending the internal conflict. The old FARCS members that created their own party, are currently allied with Petro and they are negociating a peace deal with the last big armed leftist group, the ELN. Petro has also created what he called the "National Development Plan" which is a four-year plan to develop the country and it's industries.