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 @[email protected]:
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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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 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.
From Reuters:
Not hard to see where this goes - ceasefire for some months, Israel continues airstrikes claiming they are not violating the terms of the ceasefire, Hezbollah retaliates, Israel invades again once Trump is president, no Hezbollah troops in the south means Israel can actually advance. Unless Hezbollah is much worse off than what I would guess, it’s hard to see what they get out of this.
So a ceasefire where one party doesn’t have to cease fire?
Like the kid who would say their superpower was that they were immune to all superpowers.
Israeli wishcasting. These conditions would amount to a complete capitulation by Hezbollah - withdrawal past the Litani and disarmament, abandonment of Gaza, impunity of IOF strikes in the South, allowing return of Zionist settlers to Northern ‘Israel’. I don’t want to diminish the human impact of Israeli terror bombing, but on a strategic level Hezbollah has been outperforming all expectations, increasing their operational tempo, striking deeper into the entity, etc. A ceasefire may well be declared, but if this is the proposal it will hold for an eye-blink.
I am open to being wrong, I am an outsider and a very distant one at that - obviously I hope I’m not. I have no insight into Hezbollah’s internal situation, but I’m pretty convinced that most of these ‘Lebanese sources’ and members of parliament that get cited for these things don’t either. Hezbollah have effectively built dual-power and are the protectors of Lebanese sovereignty in the popular imagination, I don’t think they’re actually beholden to the decrees of the atrophied Lebanese state apparatus. I take it as political theatre, for the most part.
Or the situation is terrible. Fuck do I know
I’ve been feeling similar. Hezbollah totally withdrawing from the south seems unrealistic, but it’s really difficult to get an accurate idea of how much fight Hezbollah and the IOF still have in them.
yeah, I feel you comrade. sitting at a safe distance (in the west no less!) boasting someone else’s fighting prowess and spilled blood feels a bit crook, to say the least. we can’t really know. I stand on the assessment with the limited tools and information available, but I’ve been wrong about so much. Hezbollah are certainly projecting strength.
Maybe Lebanon agreeing to this without being able to hold Hezbollah to any deal they’re not party to is a face saving device for Israel and the fact Hezbollah won’t comply gives them a good excuse to try again whenever they feel they’ve recovered their strength.
They know Israel is diplomacy incapable by now, there’s no way they take the deal.
Territory gains by Israel have started to increase within the last few weeks, and while Hezbollah were able to restrict Israeli territory gains beforehand, it came at a huge cost for them. 1294 Hezbollah fighters have been killed since the Israeli pager terrorist operation and decapitation strike on September 17. If we assume an injury to death ratio of 4.2 to 1 (the same ratio as the total statistics in Lebanon among the civilian population, 3 670 deaths and 15 400 injured), that means 5 434 injuries, for a total amount of casualties of 6729 since September 17. Nearly 7000 casualties in 70 days of fighting… 98 casualties a day on average. And that is without considering the civilian cost with unrestricted Israeli bombings. That is not sustainable long term.
Israel finally eking out some territory isn’t surprising, it’s surprising that it took them so long - when the ground invasion started, a lot of e-ink was spilled exhorting people not to despair when Israel made large and rapid territorial gains. My (uninformed) read is that doing those massive controlled demolitions of border villages are allowing them to now advance a bit further. I’d also be more skeptical of numbers in an asymmetric warfare situation, Russia-Ukraine is two standing armies along a line of contact which presumably makes it easier to count and assess these things. My understanding is that the Israelis are having trouble engaging Hezbollah in a significant way, I don’t think the attrition rate or morale situation are comparable. 60 Merkavas in less than 2 months.
Hezbollah have fighting and fall-back positions layered 10s and 10s of km from the border, and then there are the mountains. They have been preparing for this for 20 years - to hear them tell it, they have more volunteers than they have capacity to train and equip. Every US-Israeli bomb makes as many fighters as it does martyrs.
I mean, Israel has been having significant manpower issues as well. It’s been public for a while that a big chunk of their reservists/on leave soldiers are just refusing to come back to the front, not to mention the dead/wounded. The bombing can continue indefinitely but I don’t know about a ground invasion.
Do you have good sources on the front in recent weeks? I haven’t been keeping up with it lately.
The IDF have 169,500 active members and 465,000 reserves, for a total of 634 500 members. Hezbollah, by their own claims, have 100 000 fighters, including active and reserve personnel. The numbers are not in Hezbollah’s favour here in a manpower attrition scenario.
The updates by this twitter account are usually accurate, a comrade shared it on here a week or two ago, they correctly call attacks as they are happening with regards to Russia/Ukraine, and have some good mapping info on Lebanon/Israel. Don’t worry it’s not some delusional NAFO account, they seem to keep their personal basies out of the reporting and the majority of their following is actually pro Russia.
Do you believe that the Hezbollah of 2006, which beat Israel, is relatively weaker today than the Hezbollah of today? I have seen no evidence that Israel is doing relatively better than they did in 2006, and only evidence to the contrary.
All the pundints say it’s over for Israel
Thanks!
Honestly, I’ve been wrong about quite a few geopolitical events in the last few years, so I don’t want to say anything too definitive. Suppose the next few days will reveal whether a ceasefire is happening.