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?!
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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 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.
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