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.
In other dying empire news, the US Navy's recently released Navigation Plan has the primary goal of preparing the Navy for war with the PRC by 2027. The plan also reads like a hybrid between marketing speak and a r/worldnews comment
I do wonder how feasible all this is with US manufacturing being what it is and the continued lack of recruits. Even a situation where they gain more out of economic necessity doesn’t make up for the lagging infrastructure and waste of money on the private sector.
I'm usually one to err on the side of caution when it comes to estimating America's strength, the PLA certainly isn't relying on wishful thinking when they assess the strength of the U.S. military; so I won't either. However, practically all signs point to U.S. shipbuilding being extremely cooked. The best comparison of the relative effectiveness of a country's shipbuilding industrial capacity comes from their share of merchant tonnage. From that, the PRC produces half of global tonnage in civilian ships every year, while the U.S share is 0.2%.
American shipbuilders survive entirely due to military contracts, where their performance is characterized by cost overruns, poor workmanship, and constant delays. On the other hand, the luxury of choices offered to PLANF procurement means China can launch new naval vessels at a rate and price magnitudes better than the U.S. navy. Comparing the difference in production efficiency between the two countries, and it's like how in WW2 the USSR spent one-one hundredth the man hours to build a single T-34 as the Nazis did for a Tiger tank (not an exaggeration, the costs were 3000 man hours for a T-34 and 300,000 per Tiger). And half the T-34s wouldn't break down before arriving to the battlefield.
What lingering advantages the United States would have in a naval conflict come down to their inertia and (IMO) still superior air power. Both edges are fading fast, and 2027 may well be what the Pentagon has determined to be their "point of no return" after which PLA dominance in the Taiwan strait will be undisputed.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact there is a complete disconnect between what the actual state of the USN is and what the general public think the state of the USN is.
The general public are convinced the USN is still by far the most powerful navy in the world with no one even able to compete and so they are not really cognisant of the very real issues facing the USN today. If the public don't really know about these issues then they're not going to vote for politicians who know or care about these issues which exacerbates things even more.
The public will hear the USN has 11 aircraft carriers and assume the USN can send all 11 out to pummel whatever poor country is on the other end of the barrel when in reality the USN doesn't even have 11 carrier air wings due to budgetary conditions and is currently undergoing a severe carrier shortage and quite literally had to divert an entire carrier strike group whose original mission was to perform FONOPs in the South China Sea over to the Red Sea to deal with the Houthis last year because there was literally nothing else available to send. That's how bad things have gotten.
The public has no idea about how there will be a severe cruiser shortage in the coming years once the Ticonderoga-class is forced to retire without any replacement due to CG(X) falling flat on its face years ago. The USN's stop-gap "replacement" for these cruisers is the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer but even then it's less capable in terms of VLS complement. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is at the very limit of its original design and yet the USN has no replacement for it yet with DDG(X) delayed as it is.
Meanwhile, the PLAN's actual capabilities are increasing at a blistering rate, with destroyers like the Type 052D being very capable in their own right and cruisers like the Type 055 having practically no proper equal in the USN's inventory aside from their own cruisers that are about to be retired. And yet the public perception of the PLAN is simply a big navy that comprises of hundreds upon hundreds of useless and tiny patrol vessels with no big capital ships equivalent to those in the USN's inventory. Meanwhile the Chinese naval industry is nowhere close to sprinting. If anything, it’s moving at a rather conservative pace. They’re producing single carriers and single-digit submarines out of yards which could churn out many times that, but then again the PLAN loves its steady iterative cycles. After they’ve settled on a mature design, then you’ll start seeing mass production the way they printed frigates and destroyers. But they are in no hurry to produce large numbers of subpar vessels. It’s much more of a jog than a sprint.
This massive overestimation of American capabilities and a serious underestimation of Chinese capabilities is what is worsening the issue so badly in the US. The public is convinced the USN alone could steamroll the entirety of China's military in an engagement over Taiwan when in actuality the combined efforts of the USN + USMC + USAF would arguably barely even be able to hold the Chinese off at this rate. If there is no sense of concern or urgency in the public's eyes, there will never be a sense of concern or urgency in Congress which is why for the past few decades the USN has been raising alarm bell after alarm bell only for Congress to basically completely dismiss them.
If this does not change soon, by the 2030s you are likely going to see a PLAN that overmatches the USN in both capability, quantity and tonnage. If that happens, it'll be too late for a course correction. The US will be forced to relinquish the Western Pacific to China since they will simply lack the capability to challenge them. Or provoke a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in order to start a nuclear war
This harkens very closely back to the attitude and position of the RN with respect to the USN back during the pre-WW2 era. The RN still held the advantage in most areas, tonnage especially, but the USN was catching up fast. Now, the USN is where the RN was and the PLAN is where the USN was
Also, its not just about the big boats, since missile saturation is very important in modern surface naval combat, China has a shitload of smaller shipyards that can churn out Type 22s and Type 054As if the need arises at a scale that US shipyards + their south Korean vassals can't hope to achieve.