Image is of the aftermath of an Israeli bombing of Beirut in 2006.
We are now almost one year into the war and genocide in Gaza. Despite profound hardship, the Gazan Resistance continues its battles against the enemy, entirely undeterred. Despite Israeli proclamations throughout 2024 that they have cleared out Hamas from various places throughout Gaza, we still see regular attacks and ambushes against Zionist forces. Just today (Monday), Al Qassam fighters ambushed and destroyed another convoy of Israeli vehicles. The predictions early on in the war were that Israel would defeat Hamas in mere months, needing only until December, then January, and so on. This has proven very much untrue. Israel is stuck in the mud; unable to destroy their enemy due to their lack of knowledge about the "Gaza Metro" and, of course, a lack of actual fighting skill, given how many times I've seen Zionists getting shot while they gaze wistfully out of windows.
The same quagmire will occur in Lebanon, only considerably worse. Both Nasrallah and Sinwar possess a similar strategy of luring Zionist forces onto known, friendly territory, replete with traps and ambushes, to bleed them dry of equipment, manpower, and the will to continue fighting. The scale of the invasion could fall anywhere on the spectrum from "very limited" - more of a series of raids on Hezbollah positions than truly trying to occupy land - to a total invasion which would seek to permanently take control of Southern Lebanon. Neither is likely to destroy, or even substantially diminish Hezbollah's fighting abilities. This is not wishful thinking: Hezbollah has convincingly defeated Israel twice before in its history, pushing them from their territory, and both times Hezbollah had almost no missiles and a limited supply of other equipment, relying on improvisation as often as not. The Hezbollah of 2024 is an entirely different organization to that of the early 2000s.
Attempts to drive wedges between Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanon are also unlikely to succeed. Hezbollah is not just a military force, it is extremely interlinked into various communities throughout Lebanon, drawing upon those communities to recruit soldiers. Throughout its history, it has provided education, healthcare, reconstruction, and dozens of other services one would attribute to a state. Amal Saad's recent suggestion of using "quasi-state actor" as a more respectful replacement for the typical "non-state actor" seems advisable. And the decentralized command structures, compartmented leadership, strong succession planning, and aforementioned community ties almost entirely neutralizes the effectiveness of assassinations. Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem has confirmed that Hezbollah's path has been set by Nasrallah, and his martyrdom will not stop nor even pause their efforts. Additionally, he confirmed that despite the recent attacks by Israel which nominally focussed on destroying missile depots, Hezbollah's supply of weapons has not been degraded, and they are still only using the minimum of their capabilities.
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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.
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-u-s-navys-missile-production-problem-looks-dire/
An article from the
Burger Eagle Freedom CenterAmerican Enterprise Institute from a few months ago about the Imperial Navy’s missile production. The two USA ships that attempted to intercept Iranian missiles on Monday launched 12 missiles between them. The 2025 military budget, and allocations for the next five years, will produce 12 SM-Block IIA missiles annually. While about a hundred of another missile type has been ordered, this is apparently 10% of the number ordered in 1985. This year, the White House has passed several budget cuts for USA Navy missile production. Point and laugh.https://archive.is/cGiyS
Warning for Haaretz, but it’s the absolute other end of perspective on “20 F-35s destroyed”. And they give satellite imagery of the Nevatim base after Monday. The cope about missile interception might be entertaining for some. While the destruction of 20 F-35s is probably exaggerated, the F-35 has something like a 30% mission capability rate. So while the warning from Iran likely let them get some of their F-35s in the air, at most a third of them were actually capable of missions. Now i am not a plane person, but i believe a plane that isn’t fully mission capable can still be flight capable. So if we very generously flip that ratio and say only 30% of F-35s could not fly, there were at least 6 planes grounded when the missiles hit. The red circles in this top image are a bit strange to me, because the entire top row of cubbies (?) is covered in what look like blast marks to me. It’s possible only one plane has been destroyed, but individual F-35s fail all the time. Maybe “israel” has too much invested in its reputation to come up with a training accident story, but it seems likely several were damaged if not destroyed.
Fully mission capable means way more than just being able to fly, it's a whole pile of stuff. Fully Mission Capable means that a piece of equipment can do all the missions it's designed for. In the case of fighter jets, that may be air to air interception, air to ground attacks, etc. for an F-35 that is supposed to be a stealth aircraft and whose stealth surface is finicky and requires a lot of maintenance, an F-35 could easily be not defined as fully mission capable but still be able to fly.
This isn't to say that Israeli F-35s are all good (or not), just that looking at average FMC rates of F-35s or any air asset is not a good way to estimate how many might be grounded during an attack.
The portion of the base that holds the F-35's is a few hundred meters north of the current released satellite images. All we've seen so far is the tanker/air recon section of the base that keeps large planes out on the tarmac. Those "blast" marks from heated or oiled tarmac from four engined planes.
Tankers might be a better target than F-35s. The west's tanker fleet is quiet small.
Yeah if I was Iran I'd want those tankers dead. Mostly because the F-35 can't reach Iran without refueling.
Those marks are from normal operations? Not doubting, just inquiring.
This is from before the attack. Looks like the IDF just run some nasty oily planes.
Just checked, these are the tankers, they're super old narrow engined 707's. Very oily leaky designs, plus half a century of usage.
Excellent sleuthing. I had made a misinformed comment earlier in the thread which I've now corrected, thanks.