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.
FP article on Ukraine is quite funny. Russia wants to leave captured territory in exchange for Ukraine being neutral, the US wants to offer Russia territory in order to get Ukraine into NATO - https://archive.is/Ylpt9#selection-4797.0-2364.61
Westoids are going to have neither NATO nor land. Why do they think they can negotiate with a losing hand? Russia can merely take its time and get everything it wants.
Stoppable Force meets Moveable Object
In other words, lets keep the meatgrinder going. Its obvious Russia isn't going to take land if NATO is going to end up on its doorstep anyway. Stupid proposal that I'm sure the US and its allies know doesn't have a chance in hell of happening.
Where does the idea that Russia would leave captured territory in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality come from?
That was the premise of the first UA-RUS deal that was close to being signed very early on into the war, but NATO sent Boris Johnson to tell Ukraine that they aren't allowed to negotiate.
CIA daydreams
It's very tragic that Ukraine's defeat has been clearly inevitable for a year now, but all this bloodshed was necessary before the west would begin to consider peace terms.
It was pretty clear from the start that ukraine had no chance at winning in the long term.
Almost certainly true, but I wasn't really thinking about it at the time. I picked 1 year ago because that's when it became clear to me personally.
Wait... what? They're not really going to put UA in nato so what's the play?
The play is getting Russia to take a part of Ukraine for itself in exchange for NATO membership for Ukraine. As a kind of buffer zone for Russia. Obviously, the US would gladly give up whatever part of Ukraine and at least half of the Ukrainian population in exchange for encircling Russia more.
They are gambling that Putin would take territory, since the average Russian would see it as a much bigger win than the usual boring geopolitics manoeuvring. They can put Ukraine into NATO if Ukraine loses and Russia agrees to it, the US would control Ukraine completely if that happened.
To even consider this offer from a Russian perspective, the land gains would have to be considerable on top of the already controlled territory. Additionally, I would assume many of the larger sanctions would have to be completely lifted. Essentially, it would have to appear as a massive stab in the back to the average Ukrainian. Otherwise, Russia shouldn't even think about taking the deal.
I don't think Russia should take even a very good-looking deal.
Simply put, the only deal Russia should agree to is one in which Ukraine does not enter NATO.
Obviously, I lack all the big picture knowledge of the conflict that Putin has, so this is all just armchair general analysis.
Russia literally do not want ukranian land. The reason they push into Ukraine is that they keep shelling civilians in Donbass as well as western Russia. What they want is Ukraine to be neutral and not a terrorist rogue nation controlled by the CIA and state department.
Let’s put it this way: I doubt the West is going to offer Russia a deal they should take. I assume Russia could get much more from a not-so-unlikely Ukrainian unconditional surrender. If Russia thinks they can go for absolute victory they should go for it. Since its the only way for them to long term get the goal of a neutral Ukraine + bufferzone.
The only question is whether Russia can sustain the war long enough for this to happen, which I can't answer.