Bulletins and News Discussion from June 24th to June 30th, 2024 - Waiting for War - COTW: Lebanon

Image is of fires in northern Israel set off by Hezbollah, to force settlers to retreat from their occupied areas, in response to attacks on civilians in Lebanon.

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.

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Something I wonder about when I post in threads like this is the possibility of it being sifted through one day by historians, of some sort. Whether that’s internet archivists digging around the wreckage of the old worldwide web for lost media 20 years from now, or scholars from a post-internet empire 5 centuries from now trying to salvage whatever data they can from what they view as the height of human civilisation. Just as the tiniest Roman shopping list carved onto stone would give us insight into what life was like for a distant ancestor of ours, our posts could give our descendants a glimpse into our world.
If you are a curious scholar or even a passionate amateur sifting through the digital detritus of the 2020s to learn what life was like in the leadup to the third world war, i have only one message for you: MARG BAR ISRAEL
- or scholars from a post-internet empire 5 centuries from now trying to salvage whatever data they can from what they view as the height of human civilisation
  whenever I get a bit too anxious about ongoing events, I like to imagine a hypothetical person during, say, the Mongol conquests. in the middle of massive battles that shaped civilizations, but just trying to get by on the day-to-day, trying not to get murdered, harvesting grain or weaving or something, and totally forgotten by history. did they ever think that centuries on, people would still be talking about and analyzing events back in their time? did they hope that we'd have overcome war by that distant decade? I sure hope that the people of the 2100s and 2200s are living in lovely communist cities and free from many of our blights.
  it's a more human-centric version of the concept of "compared to the universe, we are tiny and insignificant" so it has more mental staying power for me. it's not so much about bitter nihilism as much as it is the indomitable human spirit. a city 100 miles away in central Asia gets sacked, but you still have to go wash the clothes in the river and feed the cattle. today, I am just one of billions living during the current timeframe. in a century or so, I and almost everybody currently alive will be dead, but geopolitics continues on, our suffering forgotten, or at least made less horrifying by remote abstraction, like those who died to the mongol army. but today, we live.
  sometimes in life, shit happens and then you die. most of the time, shit happens and then you keep living.
  
  I and almost everybody currently alive will be dead
  Skill issue
  
  China will finish the research of
  eventually and create immortality, the challenge is to live until then
  
  I needed this, it's beatiful in a way that hurts but gives me perspective and hope for the people of tomorrow who wouldn't be able to live as they do if it weren't for us suffering today but managing to fight for that future despite everyone around us not being even remotely ready to understand what we're fighting for.
  
  That's been on my mind too lately, history is filled with intense events that were the entire world for the people experiencing it. Current events are just history being made, but rather than being locked into a track as when we read history, we can directly affect the course. Though, history is also full of completely forgotten stories of people like us and not like us, fighting for things which are motivated by things almost completely irrelevant now. And they would go on being forgotten events and people of the past, except that we can retrospectively analyze them as tools for our present. Interesting to think about when it comes to the legacy we're collectively leaving to the world's children.
  also it's kinda wild realizing how old people are still pretty young in a cosmic sense, we're all just someone else's kids that inherited the fucked up world handed down to us. Like how stories get passed down through generations, except only the ones told by the oppressing classes are remembered.

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