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.
Do the explosives not ignite from gunshots? I’ve seen Russians machine gunning Ukrainian unmanned boats successfully
Generally they do not. Most modern explosives will only detonated with an initiating explosive, which is to say a small but powerful explosive in a fuze.
Bullets don't have nearly enough energy. And many modern explosives won't detonate if burned, either. C-4, for instance, won't explode if burned.
Generally speaking if you want to set off explosives with a gun you need a pretty big gun that is fighting high-explosive rounds itself. Old fashioned lead won't do it.
How do you explain footage of what appears to be machine gun fire destroying unmanned boats in Ukraine? Is it just because it’s higher caliber or explosive rounds?
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/108007
https://t.me/intelslava/64721
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/97026
https://t.me/intelslava/61558
I can't make out much in the first video.
The second video is filmed from an Mi-24vp navy Hind gunship. The helicopter gunship is fitted out with a 23mm Gsh-23 autocannon and it likely firing high explosive or high explosive incendiary rounds.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gryazev-Shipunov_GSh-23
Looks like the helo in the third video is a Ka-29 Kamov assault variant. From the sound of things it can be equipped we several kinds of guns including a 30mm gun pod, a 23mm gun, and a 7.62mm minigun. You can hear the distinct sound of a minigun firing as well as another gun, so my guess would be it's firing hei or he from one of the large caliber guns.
Okay yeah, when the cameraperson looks out the windows you can see the twin barrels of the 23mm gun pod, so that's must likely what the not-gatling fire is.
https://weaponsystems.net/system/166-Kamov+Ka-29TB
Fourth video, again, i'm afraid there isn't enough information.
There are situations where small caliber ammo can cause explosions - if a fuel tank is ruptured and then set off by a spark, for instance. But for the most part if you want to detonate high explosives you need to hit them with another high explosive, either the small amount of powerful explosive that's loaded in a fuze or a projectile loaded with he.
Thank you for the informative response, I was genuinely curious.
Yeah, anytime. Years of playing Arma have given me weird powers of pissing my pants when I hear the distinct sounds of a Soviet era attack helicopter.
Weapons are absurdly complex and there's really not much reason to know about them so it's natural to have questions about how these things work in the wild.
Fun trivia: the Russians take 23mm cannon barrels that aren't up to spec and saw them down to make 23mm shotgun barrels used to fire enormous "less lethal" shells of rubber balls and teargas at prison riots. By comparison a normal 12ga shotgun is 12.7mm
I can't view those Slavyangrad videos but the other two I can. The first intelslava video something explodes so I don't think it's just bullets. In the second video it's a fucking helicopter gatling gun of some sort those are definitely 50 cal rounds being fired at the boat and a shit load of them too.
Yeah sounds like it was mostly high caliber HE rounds