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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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.
Today has been the wildest day in college football in a while.
#1 Alabama lost to unranked Vanderbilt. I don't even know how to properly describe this one for foreigners. It's like the US losing to Singapore in Olympic basketball.
#4 Tennessee lost to unranked Arkansas
#10 Michigan lost to unranked Washington
#11 USC lost to unranked Minnesota
~~#8 Miami most likely going to lose to unranked California (Berkeley)~~ Those Berkeley hippies blew it!
EDIT: I'm just gonna post some links to the Bama-Vandy game/aftermath to let y'all enjoy the fun of college football a bit.
::: spoiler Tweets Two weeks ago, legendary former University of Alabama Crimson Tide head coach, Nick Saban, who retired this year, said the stadium of the Vanderbilt University Commodores is the only stadium in the Southeastern Conference (the Premier League of college football) where it isn't hard for a visiting team to play. Vanderbilt is known as the "Harvard of the South", and Bama is basically only good at sports. University of Alabama Crimson Tide football is by far the most important cultural and economic driver in the entire state of Alabama. The Crimson Tide are kind of like the ManU of college football. Bama is 62-20-4 as of today versus Vandy. This is the 3rd time Vandy beat Bama since segregation ended in 1964.
https://x.com/CFBRep/status/1842712609503543668
https://xcancel.com/CFBRep/status/1842712609503543668
After Vandy had secured the victory in the game (but before it technically ended) one of the Bama players had a straight up toddler-style temper tantrum:
https://x.com/Sportsislife831/status/1842715345775140911
https://xcancel.com/Sportsislife831/status/1842715345775140911
Vandy fan's rush the field after the game officially ends:
https://x.com/mattstahl97/status/1842717032632209684
https://xcancel.com/mattstahl97/status/1842717032632209684?
Vandy media people troll Nick Saban for previously mentioned comments:
https://x.com/barstoolsports/status/1842722078820061212
https://xcancel.com/barstoolsports/status/1842722078820061212?
As is often customary, Vandy fan's tear down the goal posts in the stadium:
https://x.com/smokiesvol/status/1842716872640167967
https://xcancel.com/smokiesvol/status/1842716872640167967
Goal posts is now exiting the stadium lol:
https://x.com/FanaticsBook/status/1842718959763607833
https://xcancel.com/FanaticsBook/status/1842718959763607833
Vandy students carry the goal posts down Broadway in Nashville, which is a famous high street in Nashville where pretty much all of the nightlife is:
https://x.com/AGrisham247/status/1842729657537278019
https://xcancel.com/AGrisham247/status/1842729657537278019
https://x.com/Dylanwx03/status/1842731237946855594
https://xcancel.com/Dylanwx03/status/1842731237946855594
Vandy fan's/students walk 3 miles from the stadium to the Cumberland River, to throw the goalpost into the river (throwing a goalpost into a body of water is also kind of a thing in college football after a big win lol):
https://x.com/HunterHoagland/status/1842737877337231788
https://xcancel.com/HunterHoagland/status/1842737877337231788
i blame you, personally, for this loss. Fucking Miami sleeper agents in my news thread
How dare you accuse me of being an ACC ref!
Can you explain this in terms for people who don't understand basketball?
What sports do you know? It's basically just like what should be the best or one of the best teams losing to a team that they should beat 100% of the time.
Only my local football code, if that. Comment was kinda trying to point out the irony of explaining one US-centric sport by reference of another US-centric sport. I do appreciate that it is a great upset in terms of the dominant team (though... I probably didn't need to know Singapore was weak at basketball though to work that out)
I mean I feel like it's not some secret that the US is really good at basketball and Singapore is a tiny country that can't compete.
Yup, got it by inference ๐ thabk you for the sport news
It's Slovenia beating Japan in Sumi wrestling
It's North Korea reaching the quarter finals and beating Italy in their 1966 World Cup debut, becoming the first men's Asian team to make it to that stage of the world cup.
It's easy, first you have to understand what it means to be unranked, so you need to know about the ranking
So after reading that it should make perfect sense
Can't fucking believe we lost to Bama last week
Don't follow spurts too much but it seems from a casual observer Michigan has this rule where our national teams suck but our college teams kick ass or vice versa but we can't have both. The Tigers and Lions are doing uncharacteristically...ok-ish this year so maybe hell has frozen over or theres a transition with Mars in retrograde or something.
As someone who is not from the US, this is like saying "it's like the US losing to Singapore in Twenty20 cricket"
Southeners wishing for one more happening after that hurricane
Monkey paw curls:
Inside of me there are two wolves. One is happy because UW avenged the championship game. The other is upset because I really wanted this season to be a total bust for Washington to avenge the Pac 12.