Imagine a terrifying world where we are all ruled by monsters of every stripe. And not hot ones like werewolves, but instead decaying zombies and mummies who are both insensitive to, and actively benefit from the immense suffering they cause on a daily basis. The top echelon of society, filled with profit-seeking, bloodsucking vampires. And the worst of it is that they repeat on a daily basis that what they are doing is not only just, but there is no other possible way to do it.
Pretty spooky, right? What if I told you that this world... was our own?
Happy Halloween!
Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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/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/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.
I have to say, if Hezbollah launch a full scale thing today their timing is impeccable compared to IDF progress. I know everyone here was getting antsy and wanted them to move quicker but it's starting to look like waiting for IDF to hit urban fighting is the correct move, and if the "wait til friday" thing was intentionally timed with that prediction in mind then it's shockingly good timing.
Hezbollah definitely has spies deep enough within the Israeli government to at least be able to get an idea of what Israel's planning to do.
The recruitment of espionage agents in Israel for Hezbollah is associated mainly with the Arab population in Israel, including former Member of Knesset Azmi Bishara, who was suspected of supplying various intelligence information to Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War in 2006; an IDF officer of Bedouin origin at the rank of lieutenant colonel who supplied intelligence information to Hezbollah early in the 2000s; and ordinary residents in various areas of Israel (Kulick, 2009). However, there are not only agents from minority Arab or Bedouin groups, but also Jewish agents who have supplied intelligence information to Hezbollah as part of drug deals (see below, Criminal case 36/03 State of Israel vs. Said ben Jamil Kahmouz).
The information that the agents in Israel have supplied to Hezbollah is diverse, including the location of critical civilian and military infrastructure, orders of battle, border points, and information on IDF weapons. In addition, Hezbollah has sought to gather social information on diverse issues, including political rivalries, government systems, social struggles, social trends, and more, in order to identify strengths and weaknesses of Israeli society, military vulnerabilities, and future targets, and even in order to understand the mood in the country (Zeitoun et al., 2021; Kulick, 2009). The Israeli agents were recruited into Hezbollah service based on various motivations, including ideological and economic reasons (Kulick, 2009).
Also IIRC, a few years back they posted a photo they took of Benjamin Netanyahu in his office (from the outside looking in, probably from an adjacent building), with the message basically being that they're deep enough inside to potentially assassinate him while he's at work.
Can you link me the story about them publishing the photo? Search engines are completely useless for anything regarding Israel Palestine that happened prior to Oct. 7 2023.
I tried search for it for a bit last night, but it either happened more recently than I remember (I was thinking it was sometime between 2016-2020), or it's just been lost in the noise of all the threats Israel & Hezbollah have thrown out at one another over the years. It's kinda frustrating looking for it, 'cause searching up anything along the lines of "Hezbollah threatens Netanyahu" just returns a bunch of articles about Netanyahu threatening Hezbollah.
Also IIRC, a few years back they posted a photo they took of Benjamin Netanyahu in his office (from the outside looking in, probably from an adjacent building), with the message basically being that they're deep enough inside to potentially assassinate him while he's at work.