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.
The text is the New Yorker's take on Iran building nuclear weapons and Israel and/or the US attacking nuclear weapons facilities. Nuclear weapons spoiler alert - the text is what they always say. Iran could do it suprisingly fast. Key attacking quote...
I quoted the end of the article. In the first part - the reporter talks about meeting Hashem Safieddine in 2012.
What's Next in the Israel-Iran Conflict? | The New Yorker
archive.today • What's Next in the Israel-Iran Conflict? | The New Yorker
In the past few years, with Hezbollah acting as a shield, Iran has inched closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon.
According to a recent report by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, the regime in Tehran had recently begun to undertake "activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so." Most American experts believe that Iran has enriched enough uranium to about sixty-per-cent purity to build about three nuclear weapons.
If the Iranians were to decide to deploy a nuclear weapon, they would need to enrich that uranium to ninety-per-cent purity—a process that could be done in a matter of weeks. Then the regime would have to build a trigger for the device. Some U.S. experts maintain that the Iranians do not yet have that capability, but others think that they are, at least, much closer to it than they were.
In a report published in August, David Albright and Sarah Burkhard, of the Institute for Science and International Security, wrote that Tehran appeared to have shortened the time it needed to achieve "breakout"—acquiring a bomb—to less than six months.
"Iran can make a crude nuclear weapon far faster than commonly assessed," they wrote. That brings us back to Hezbollah: if the Iranian insurance policy in Lebanon has been diminished, Khamenei could decide that the time has come to deploy a nuclear weapon. This could give him a sense of security that recent events have stripped away. "The simplest thing for Khamenei to do is build a bomb," Gerecht, the former C.I.A. officer, said.
Few of the American and Israeli officials I have spoken with believe that Israel, acting alone, could destroy Iran's nuclear infrastructure, especially the underground nuclear-enrichment site at Fordow, south of Tehran. The only air force capable of destroying that reactor is that of the United States.
Like Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama before him, Biden has never ruled out using military force to stop the Iranian regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but he has shown little willingness to contemplate such a momentous action. On Wednesday, Biden said that he would not support an Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear facilities.
That does not mean the Israelis wouldn't attempt one, and a strike that only partially succeeded could put enormous pressure on the United States to finish the job. Israel's success against Hezbollah could encourage the Israelis to undertake more aggressive action against the Iranian regime, including encouraging dissent within the country or even attacking it directly.
What might such a campaign look like? Possibly strikes against Iran's leaders, or its oil-export facilities, or its military bases. In a three-minute video addressed to the Iranian people, released on Monday, Netanyahu suggested that such activities may be about to begin. "When Iran is finally free—and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think—everything will be different," he said.
What is the establishment's obsession in doing dirty bomb shit? Be in dreams of blowing up an enrichment facility or bombing nuke reactors in Russia and Ukraine. There's some serious
lunatics getting far too much attention too close to power.