Image is of the King of Morocco meeting with John Kerry (a species of demon that plagued Hexbear in the misty past).
This preamble comes courtesy of @LargePenis@hexbear.net:
Morocco (Al Maghrib), or more officially the Kingdom of Morocco (Al Mamlaka al Maghribiya), is a country located in the northwestern edge of the African continent. The name Morocco comes from the Spanish name Marruecos, which itself comes from the name of the city of Marrakesh. In Turkish for example, Morocco is known as Fas, mainly because Turks knew the land of Morocco through the city of Fes. Morocco is regarded as part of the Arab World and Arabic is the main language amongst the population, with French and Berber languages also widely spoken in the country.
Morocco was the home of mostly Berber tribes until the Muslim conquest and the subsequent Arab migrations in the 700s under the Umayyads drastically changed the character of the country. A Berber commander, Tariq ibn Ziyad, would later cross the Strait of Gibraltar (Jabal Tariq) from the northern shores of now-Morocco and conquer Andalusia, which remained under Muslim rule for nearly 800 years. The country emerged as a significant regional power during the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties in the medieval period, known for their contributions to architecture, philosophy, and trade across North Africa and southern Europe. The current ruling dynasty of Morocco, the Alaouite dynasty, came to power in the late 1600s. The Alaouites claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad through his grandson Hasan ibn Ali, giving them religious legitimacy and political authority in the region. Despite the Shia-coded claim to legitimacy, the Moroccan royal family and the population mostly follow the Maliki school of Sunni Islam.
In the early 20th century, the Treaty of Fez (1912) created the French Protectorate of Morocco, negotiated largely without input from the Moroccan people. Moroccan lands were completely divided under French and Spanish zones, with thousands of colonists pouring into the country. The royal family frequently collaborated with colonial powers, suppressing local resistance movements and prioritizing European interests. Prominent anti-colonial uprisings, like the Rif War (1921–1926), were met with brutal crackdowns, enabled by Western-backed forces. Post-independence in 1956, Morocco maintained close ties with its former colonizers, fostering economic dependence on France and Spain. The monarchy’s alignment with Western geopolitical interests often undermined Pan-African and Arab unity movements.
During the Cold War, Morocco positioned itself as a staunch ally of the West, marginalizing leftist and nationalist factions within the country. The Green March of 1975 was a Moroccan state-organized movement to assert control over Western Sahara, a territory decolonized from Spanish rule but still awaiting self-determination. This march, supported by Western powers, particularly the United States, is often criticized as a colonial expansion disguised as a popular movement. By settling Moroccans in the disputed territory, the march disregarded the Sahrawi people’s right to sovereignty. U.N. resolutions on Western Sahara have seen limited enforcement, largely due to Morocco’s Western alliances shielding it from accountability. Western-backed security and intelligence partnerships continue to be the cornerstone of Morocco’s repressive nature towards any anti-colonial and leftist movements. In 2021, Algeria again severed diplomatic ties with Morocco, citing hostile actions and concerns over Morocco’s ties with Israel, which Algeria views as a betrayal of pro-Palestinian solidarity. The two countries have mostly clashed over the issue of Western Sahara other than a short war in the 60s over a border dispute, with Algeria continuing to support the Sahrawi independence movement.
Morocco’s relations with Israel have historically been discreet but significant, rooted in the presence of a large Moroccan Jewish diaspora in Israel. Former King Hassan II played a significant behind-the-scenes role in fostering covert ties between Morocco and Israel during his reign. King Hassan II is reported to have allowed Israeli intelligence access to critical information from a meeting of Arab leaders in Casablanca in 1965, which may have helped Israel prepare for the Six-Day War in 1967. His government provided a platform for discreet diplomatic exchanges and intelligence-sharing, including Morocco’s facilitation of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel in the 1970s. In 2020, Morocco formally normalized ties with Israel through the Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States, in exchange for U.S. and Israeli recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Diplomatic and trade relations have since deepened, with agreements in fields like defence, agriculture, and technology. Despite official ties, Moroccan public opinion remains largely sympathetic to Palestinians, but such opinions are rarely considered by the royal family.
Morocco’s future is split between ambitious global aspirations and permanent domestic issues. The country’s co-hosting of the 2030 FIFA World Cup with Spain and Portugal is seen as a significant opportunity to showcase its shiny infrastructure and global presence. However, these achievements are often overshadowed by criticisms of its political culture, including the monarchy’s ceremonial practices, such as the humiliating tradition of publicly kissing the crown prince’s hand. Allegations surrounding King Mohammed VI’s personal behavior, including incidents of public drunkenness and alleged homosexuality continue to be a hot topic within opposition circles.
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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.
Are we spreading propaganda from NATO sources again?
Yes, nato sources and random telegrams alike. The info discipline over the last week has been absolutely pitiful and it should be a moment for reflection among this site.
Info discipline lmao this is a slop factory. Nobody here has any effect on any of this.
Then why do we usually have standards about reactionary sources? It’s not about the effect on the conflict, it’s about not treating all information as equally valid
Since when? The only thing I’ve ever seen is people being asked to mention it when posting reactionary sources, or to use archive/mirroring when linking.
Half the news mega has always been western sources, sometimes for roasting, sometimes for speculating.
You’re not going to convince me that unrestrained freakposting based on nothing is a net positive, and I won’t convince you that there should be standards within the news mega
Maybe you could? Who knows, I didn’t open up the conversation to NOT talk about it or because I’m uninterested in why.
What I get out of the news mega is a stream of information that is unlike anywhere else. Marxists speculating in realtime about current events. Which for me includes our immediate reaction to uncertain information, which is sometimes wrong.
Not including or suppressing any of that would in fact be less valuable for me. It is interesting to see people trying to slice through fog of war and triangulate what’s correct and what is not, even if it’s sometimes incorrect.
For me, the fog of war is too thick. Things look grim (otherwise Russia wouldn’t even be involved) but I don’t know how grim.
The thing that I’m puzzled about is why did this attack start now? I know people are going to say that the attack is to open a front after the Lebanese front has been closed, but given the progress of rebranded al-Qaeda, wouldn’t it make more sense for the attack to happen before the ceasefire or for that matter happen before the invasion of south Lebanon? If Syria collapses, then Hezbollah is cut off from Iran, so if anything, the Zionist entity should’ve tried to open this front and destabilize Syria first before invading Lebanon. Or is this a case of the Zionist entity wanting to open the Syrian front first but due to various realities on the ground, they were pushed to open the front in Lebanon first?
IMHO, the proper sequence of events should’ve been:
Destabilization/collapse of Syria through Zionist-backed “moderate rebels” in order to cut off Hezbollah from Iran.
Formal invasion of south Lebanon.
Pager attack to incapacitate Hezbollah front line fighters and spread chaos.
Instead, what happened is the complete reverse.
My, admittedly uneducated, understanding of things was that the pager attack was forced early because some Hezbollah soldiers had discovered the explosives, and rather than setting it off and letting the attack go to waste, the Zionists were forced to invade in order to make something of the premature attack. That could explain the ‘reverse order’ you mentioned. Also, in Alexander Mercouris’s latest program, he speculated that the ceasefire was partially sought by Hezbollah, despite not achieving their objectives of a ceasefire in Gaza, because they had intelligence about this incoming incursion in Syria. The Zionists sought the ceasefire because they were getting their shit rocked and getting nowhere, and the invasion was unpopular with the army before it even happened.
Would have affected the decision-makers involved in the ceasefire negotiations wouldn’t it?
Hezbollah has been actively involved in fighting in Syria. It may be the case that these Al Nusra groups wanted Israel to weaken Hezbollah before they would act, and Israel’s Lebanon operation was to do just that. Their proxy in Syria may have required it before acting.
We can’t expect these groups to just be top-down commanded by Israel, they have their own demands of Israel before they’ll carry out actions for them, weakening Hezbollah so that their operation can be a success seems quite likely to me. Hezbollah are probably an essential pillar that has been keeping Syria upright.
diversion for ukraine imo, bibi is on the backburner strategically and with the idf getting btfo on the ground the best reinforcements hes gonna get are these headchopping cannon fodder
meanwhile ukraine gets a 100k wide peacekeeper to afu pipeline lol
I think it’s that the US/Israel wanted to pause the Lebanon front so they could redirect materiel to a new Syrian front. Destabilizing Syria with a new phase of the civil war both distracts Russia and blocks supply lines to Lebanon and Palestine.
Yeah. The news mega is a river of posts. Its rough and wild in the rapids, there are sink holes and rocks and sometimes you dont know which way is up. Then there are calm patches where the objective truth can float to the surface.
I think the reason I like it is because occasionally having a comrade point out that something is bullshit or say something I missed feels like it sharpens my ability to judge things. I have become more sceptical over time.
this metaphor is both very fitting and beautifully stated.
I mean even the trusted telegrams are completely confused now.
There shouldn’t be “trusted telegrams”. I’m guilty of this myself, but the fog of war and deliberate misinformation and propaganda has created an environment where even sources that have been fine before will spread lies simply because they don’t know better. Add in all “opposition media” and you have a stew that we won’t understand for minimum a week, if not longer
Obv wanted to put trusted in quotation marks but i agree, i just saw a “video from the coup attempt” where people are walking around in the middle of “gunfire” like nothing happened.
It’s horrible here. I’ll wouldn’t trust any analysis at this point. I will log off and come back in a week. Just pure doomerism.
if we had an emoji of Donnie’s face in this scene I would use it
If it’s with regards to Syria, no, the collapse of the SAA is just that bad.
It’s regards to Syria yes and to me it seems like HTS is just sending small groups forward for propaganda shoots and sell it as victories and then get bombed to pieces.
That was one interpretation a long while ago when half of Aleppo had been taken. Now it appears the thunder runs are going all the way to Homs. You can’t tactically withdraw from Homs any more than Damascus.
They did that early last night, but with the current rate of advance it was no longer necessary for today’s gains, and gains made late last night. They may do it again tonight in Hama and have probably started posting pictures already for propaganda purposes, but unless the SAA heavily reinforce their positions there, it’s likely to fall within the next few hours. Reliable sources like Suriyakmaps have stated as much.
The sad truth is that alot of the sunni population is fine with them. Even if they weren’t, there are just too many refugees in Lebanon and turkey right now, they either go back to Syria or they try to go to Europe. Lebanon can’t hold them anymore and turkey wants to use them to dilute the kurds.
I hate the rule that we have to pretend everything is okay until some hezbollah twitter feed can no longer hide the truth.
The problem is that i haven’t seen anything convincing that says things are not okay just close shot videos of HTS guys claiming they already conquered all of Syria and Assad has been fed to the lions.
We have members of this community with family on the ground saying things are bad.
It is horrible for them. If you ask a person lost in the woods how big the forest is they aren’t going to give you a reliable measurement.
There is lots of fighting going on but we have very little information on how big the fighting force is. If 1000 guys are spread evenly across a city and all start shooting at the same time every person in the city is going to think their neighbourhood is under attack and every person they talk to will say the same. and until those 1000 men are all dead the entire city will think that the city is lost.
Except no one has reported the number of HTS fighters in their relatives’ neighborhoods, just that the fighting has reached them, which, while limited in what that can tell us, is still information nonetheless.
If the fighting wasn’t there, we would be seeing much more pushback from SAA-aligned sources showing that this is all smoke and mirrors and the HTS attack isn’t actually that bad. We aren’t.
We don’t know how bad it is though. This could be an October 7th style attack. Al-Aqsa flood penetrated deep and hit hard and caused lots of damage… and were mopped up in a few days. The difference is that the resistance was reporting what was going on and in the second and third day so was isisrael.
In this fight neither side is releasing official bulletins yet. Its just selfies posted Ukrainian style and one thing I haver come to feel is that selfie captures tend to be exaggerations or outright lies.
Once again, saying “fighting has reached my family’s neighborhood” isn’t a statement of how bad it is. Trying to say that it is, is just trying to put the spin you want onto the news.
It it’s not all just selfies. It’s this mega calling accounts like Suriyakmaps maps “terrorist social media peddlers” after previously calling them reliable accounts with sources in Syria. It’s calling some of the users in the sub “terrorist selfie posters” when they report what they are hearing from members of their own families. That’s not critically analyzing the news, it’s trying to control the narrative.
Furthermore, the SAA has made official statements. It’s preparing a counterattack to retake Aleppo. If this hasn’t been that bad so far, why does the SAA need to prepare a counterattack? Is HTS making it into Aleppo bad?
I don’t get why we need opsec, this is an internet forum. We shouldn’t have to care if news might be demoralizing, a soldier fighting for Assad probably shouldn’t be online right now. The rule was silly when it was pro Iranian because we made fun of pro Ukrainian people for doing stuff like this, now it is just larping that makes people look like Baghdad bob.
And they can’t be wrong?
Oh, do you have sources on the ground saying differently?
Nothing that happens in these threads is so urgent that taking a couple days is a problem.
What is the point of a breaking news thread if we have to wait days, I might as well just read a newspaper
the news is still available quickly, though?
it’s just analysis that is lagging somewhat because some of the news is contradictory and some of it is certainly propaganda, but considering the quality of analysis available here versus in a newspaper, the delay seems totally worth it.
the quality of analysis available anywhere instantly is going to be poorer in comparison – good analysis takes a moment. we owe it to ourselves and each other to not jump to conclusions, especially considering our comrades for whom this is much more than just news.
No, we are doing Russian Invasion of Ukraine Pt. 2, where any news we don’t like is misinfo.
I mean if the bad news are not corroborated by anything but 4 seconds “we totally took half of syria in two days, trust us bro” selfie videos by dudes who a few hours later feature in other videos with half their face blown off, than yeah, it kinda smells lile misinfo.
Well then, it’s a good think that accounts with SAA/government sources are also corroborating a lot of this, isn’t it?
Also, just for my own interest, you are saying that when members here with family in Aleppo are saying that HTS has made it to or are near their neighborhood, they are actually just reporting things that they saw on social media and not things they can actually see, like fighters, or hear, like gunshots or explosions?
They’re not corrorborating it. SAA explicitly denied that Hama fell and the “coup” also turned out to be bullshit.
I’m saying that just because you see HTS groups in the city doesn’t mean theyve 100% taken over, as i said elsewhere, they most likely spent smaller groups forward in order to claim propaganda victory and cause panic (success).
Who said that Hama fell? Please link to the comment.
https://hexbear.net/comment/5688250
Not fell per se, but it wasn’t true that SAA retreated either.
So your previous comment was misinformation.
Not really, it’s just that this info is then translated incorrectly into “they have captured everything behind them” for example, when it could just be loose fighters moving forward but not establishing any occupation behind them.
That’s just an example, but the sources are all talking in points and moments, and then articles and analysts keep translating that to fronts and establishments. It’s not entirely incorrect, but the dynamics are just way off if the analysts are wrong. The fog of war isn’t just lies, it’s also these sorts of translations of facts to “bigger” facts. Lots is lost
If you cannot parse the nuggets of truth and lies out of media you are reading its kinda on you.
I’m reading this thread so everyone else can parse the truth and lies for me
Yea, i read most of the shit here as gossipy. As others in the thread noted there are lots of contradicting reports. Taking one source as gospel is a little silly there is so much crosstalk you cannot expect any one source ion a conflict to be accurate. Even if they are trusted they can absolutely make errors get misinfo passed to them or conditions on the ground can change making reports obsolete quickly.
idk I’ve gotten shit on my last account for saying both Ukraine and Russia are prob not accurate on their casualties counts or equipment losses or w/e, not to equivocate but to say that every source has biases own their own set of incentives and Its prob very hard to account for everything in an active warzone anyway.
Sometimes people get really attached to ideas and narratives in this thread idk how to put it bc that comes off as pissy and I’m not trying to be, I mean I’m still here reading the thread.
They always do. The empire literally unleashes a torrent of fakenews everytime another foreign operation begins.
Thank you bot account?
Removed by mod