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.
Comment I made about more mods. Still looking for people.
Edit: say hi to the, at the time of this edit, 4 new mods! Don’t forget to collapse this thread to make it easier for you to browse. I don’t know about how it looks on your end, but on my end this entire thread is expanded and takes a few solid scrolls to get through my bumbling recruitment drive
I don’t think I classify as a certified news megahead, but I’m happy to help out. Who do I message on matrix for an application, again?
That would be Carcosa. You’re always more than welcome to choose to volunteer comms you’re more comfortable with of course, but I’m appreciative if you volunteer to be an NKVD (News Kop Violence Doer. because moderating forums is violence against posters)
Every mod gets a Finnish NKVD knife.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I’m happy to help if you still need. I’m already a mod in some other comms so I’ve already done the application.
alright have fun
We’ll see how many days/hours/minutes it takes me to regret volunteering for such a busy community
We should take it in turns to act as a sort of mod for the week. But all the decisions of that mod have to be ratified at a special biweekly threadBut all the decisions of that mod have to be ratified at a special biweekly thread
The funny thing is, Slashdot had (still has?) something called metamoderation a quarter-century ago. Random users would be asked from time to time to review a few moderation decisions. It should be straigtforward to adapt it to modern forums.
Have 2 mod houses: A house of regulars and a house of randoms.
Why not make it 3 houses and we run a schoolhouse for a hot minute before having one of the houses “accidentally” start a continent-spanning flame war. It’d be the house of Admins, the house of moderators, and the house of posters. (There’s also a secret house belonging to the lurkers but we don’t talk about them because they do their own thing)
We can call it Hexbearian Emblem: Three Internet Houses
this and just as unironically
Yea I started suggesting this half-jokingly but it’s completely unironic now. Mod Summons should be distributed on a weekly to bi-weekly basis, with allowances/deferrals in case of being unable to perform mod duties for that period. I think there should be some sort of threshold, either time on site, # of posts, or some other metric to ensure we’re not appointing wreckers but I think an auxiliary mod corps is worth a shot
Really there’s no reason why moderation shouldn’t be more decentralized/distributed. As you say, you want to have people vetted to a degree for practical purposes, and it makes sense to have people who are dedicated mods for sake of consistency, but an auxiliary mod corps isn’t a terrible idea. There are likely plenty of people who would happily take on the responsibility a week at a time here and there, but wouldn’t want or be able to commit to being a mod full time.
This is not a criticism of the current mods or efforts to moderate the site to-date, just an interesting thing to think about.
There are likely plenty of people who would happily take on the responsibility a week at a time here and there, but wouldn’t want or be able to commit to being a mod full time.
That’s where I am. I’d gladly do my part but it’s not something I want to commit to since I’d be concerned with not being able to fufil my duties on a consistent basis
Sortition gang rise up
please dont worry about that we have had many people who help for a few weeks and then leave. there is no expectation, just as much as you want to do for as long as you want to
I feel the same. I would love to give something back to the community by being a mod but I’m not in a place where I am able to commit to doing it consistently and regularly.
its fairly inconsistent work anyways, like the only time I actually have to put on my thinking cap to actually try and arbitrate shit is when theres some hot button topic that gets people tilted enough to start dropping paragraphs and those tend to be rare. Quite literally the majority of things that get reported is someone forgetting to cw/nsfw something or someone posting a youtube link without the tracker thingy in one of the comms the insidioustrackers bot isn’t a mod in.
Make everyone a mod, and then remove modding powers of those who use them irresponsibly
Every poster a member of the mod team.
But who mods the modmen?
Can I remove my own modding powers?
yes, at the top of the comm sidebar there’s a button that says “leave mod team”
Can god make a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it?
I’d have to be in a better head space to volunteer :/
Well just helping out by letting people know if they forget to give a cw for anything or reporting it so we can do it for you is more than half the battle, so don’t sweat it if you can’t join the ranks of the illustrious order of mall cops
hello
world: [LFG]Serious comm looking for serious individuals
At least one of us has to be somewhat serious, that’s got to count for something
We are the only serious and principled account on this website
A mod account anyone can log into just might work
Bureaucat is a mod of the bureaucat comm
Well one of yous is an admin I’m fairly sure. Not saying who though lol
If HTS and Al-Qaida take over Syria that guarantees another Syrian refugee crisis which guarantees European fascism
It guarantees Syria will lose its UN seat and be open to legal bombing and invasion
It guarantees Turkey will annex all of northern Syria and further tighten its grip over the Kurdish nation
It guarantees a mountain of anti-muslim ammunition in the US…“folks, folks al-qaida is back they took over a whole country, we gotta bomb them”
I’m starting to think checking back on this thread regularly is a bad idea.
🛑|🇸🇾 Syria’s SANA agency: Individuals linked to terrorist groups who were responsible for filming fake scenes in several neighborhoods of Aleppo to give the impression that terrorist groups had taken control of those areas were apprehended.
deleted by creator
Looks like Assad’s lost Aleppo. Video of HTS forces in the city center seems pretty legit to me.
A counter offensive will happen but Aleppo is going to be fucked and it will take a long ass time to get them out.
Is there a comprehensive post anywhere with assad chemical weapons debunking or something? It’s suddenly relevant and even if I show things like OPCW’s report the libs respond with “that’s just one attack”.
Turkey fucking sucks. They are 100% responsible for the shit that is going on in Syria. Let’s not forget they pushed into syrian territory held by kurdish militias (and still gifted us with destroyed Leopards) and directly supports Al Qaeda remnants in Idlib. They are one big imperialist hellhole that acts in coordination with “israel” while being a long standing member of NATO (which grants them protection) to just fuck everyone up. Their shit militias stand idle while Gaza is being massacred too.
May erdogan drown on his own blood.
Apparently, there’s a Syrian-Russian response to the rebel updates that have come
“The joint Syrian–Russian air force began to intensify its operations as the overlapping picture of the field became clearer, and the sites that the terrorists entered since dawn yesterday were monitored,” the correspondent added.
According to the Russia Reconciliation Center, at least 400 militants and fighters belonging to other groups have been killed.
The Syrian air force continued to strike HTS positions in the Idlib and Aleppo countryside on 29 November.
Meanwhile, extremist opposition groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) say they have seized the entire western Aleppo countryside despite several towns being recaptured by government forces. Damascus’s troops have also sustained heavy losses.
HTS-led factions announced early on 29 November that they took the towns of Miznaz, Kafr Dael, Al-Barqoum, Babis, Bashqatin, Bashantra, Al-Kasebiyeh, and Al-Arbikh. They said later that morning that they had taken over several other towns.
The extremist factions claimed on Friday afternoon to be two kilometers away from the center of Aleppo city after battles with government troops in the New Aleppo neighborhood.
Extremist fighters were also said to be close to the M5 highway, controlled in part by Syrian and Russian troops.
“Our units have not finished completing the operations of removing mines and securing them from war remnants, and until this task is completed, the western Aleppo countryside will remain a closed military zone. After completing these operations, the region will secure the return of tens of thousands of families to their homes from which they have been displaced for four years, God willing,” said Hassan Abdel Ghany, the spokesman of a recently established HTS-led operations room.
Some news from Syria, Lebanon, occupied Palestine, and the Donbass. Note, regarding Syria specifically, I’ve heard from numerous sources that large numbers of Syrian reinforcements are heading towards Aleppo.
Allied Syrian military and Russian Aerospace Forces eliminated another 200 Western-backed al-Queda terrorists over the past 24 hours: https://www.rt.com/news/608432-russia-bombs-jihadists-syria/
The Syrian military also destroyed dozens of terrorist-operated vehicles and shot down 17 drones: https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/11/29/738165/Syria-kills-injures-hundreds-terrorists
The Zionist invaders again violated the “ceasefire” and invaded the southern Lebanese settlement of Markaba and continued attacking Khiam: https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-army-pushes-deeper-into-south-lebanon-as-ceasefire-violations-intensify
Zionist genocidal attacks massacred another 70 civilians in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya: https://tass.com/world/1879969
Russian forces liberated the eastern Donetsk People’s Republic settlement of Razdolnoye: https://s5.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Razd.mp4?_=1
Christ, the situation in Aleppo is fucking bleak. Shameful something like this can happen after a decade of civil war, the shit Aleppo has seen already is too much to bear. What a shitshow.
Blinken really is an overlooked little snake. Any other era would have recognized him as a modern Kissinger but for some reason all the credit keeps going to Biden. I guess it’s good for Blinken that he can fly under the radar while continuing to do evil shit around the world.
Might be an unpopular opinion, but I honestly suspect that a Trump presidency might be even worse for Ukraine. Especially in the long run.
Why? Their whole strategy is to basically do a “ceasefire”, which would basically be a Minsk 3 and freeze the conflict for a while and allow Ukraine to rearm before a more bloody continuation of the war occurs again. At best Trump might kick the can down the road and cast blame on president Gruesome Newsom in 2029 when both sides go to war again.
You might ask, why would Russia go along with this since they are winning? Because the Russian government is full of neoliberals and has been dragging their feet for 10 years now. It wouldn’t surprise me if Russia agrees in exchange for getting the 100 billion back.
So the US plan is to just escalate violence all over the world until somebody punches back and we start another world war? Am I reading the situation right?
This seems like it’s going to be an incredibly difficult winter. All the news has been bad recently and it looks like it’s only going to get worse.
How is everyone feeling about the short term future? Because it seems like bad things are coming everywhere
