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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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.
4.6 Earthquake on the Richter scale registered in the Iranian desert, which apparently rarely sees earthquakes. I see some speculation online it might have been nuclear tests.
Does anyone here have any information that would confirm or disprove this? Would an underground nuclear test potentially cause a 4.6 Earthquake alarm?
From what I can gather, that can be approximately the size of a nuke, but it depends on the strength
An underground nuclear blast can be differentiated from an earthquake via a network of seismometers, because a nuke is explosive in all directions, whereas an earthquake occurs along a fault, so there will be a relative push in one direction and a relative pull in another, so by comparing all the readings you can determine if it's a nuke or an earthquake. Therefore, if it is a nuclear blast, then the West (and every other country in the region) probably knows it, and Iran knows that they know it.
It's very difficult (probably impossible) to keep nuclear testing a secret in the modern day. It's why Iran can't just rock up to Israel and be like "oh yeah btw, we just developed like 100 nukes in secret over the past few months, fuck you" because unless they want to just assume that their untested nukes will work, they will have to test them, and if they test them, Israel/the US will know, and there will be a gap of time in which Iran could get nuked (or conventionally bombed) but they cannot respond
This is what Wikipedia says about underground nuclear testing, citing some pretty legit sounding academic articles so I think it may be debooonked unless further evidence arises
Well, there's a difference between a nuke triggering an earthquake and a set of seismometers detecting a big seismic event
If the confirmation is that this is explicitly an earthquake then no, it's probably not a nuclear weapons test
if everybody reporting the big seismic event is just assuming it's an earthquake (which is a pretty safe assumption considering virtually every big seismic event is an earthquake) then who knows
all a "4.6 magnitude event" means is that a lot of energy just released at a particular location under the earth
It's silly to assume that there is even a possibility that iran is testing nukes, let alone has them.
It's just an earthquake. I don't think we should entertain the other thought any further. It's just nonsense.
Edit: Iran had similar magnitude earthquakes this year; one in June and another just 2 months later.
Because odds that a nuke was developed by a country being sanctioned to hell and back are just astronomically slim.
I remember reading another quote that was a vague threats from the IRGC about a secret weapon. I interpreted it as Russian EW or an actual hypersonic maneuverable missile that wasn't used yet.
I don't want to attack you for the speculation, and I'm sorry if I came off that way.
Didn't they get help from the USSR? Russia would never think about giving a crumb of help to Iran to develop a nuke.
The USSR helped them build a nuclear research facility, but yes you're correct in that the DPRK developed the actual weapons on their own.
But that doesn't give any credence to the idea that Russia would help Iran develop a nuke.
I guess you're right in that Iran can develop its own nukes just like the DPRK.
I'm still going to stick to my belief that it's just an earthquake.
You're correct about that, friend.
Not from the USSR. When the USSR collapsed, some of former Soviet scientists in the nuclear industry who lost their jobs ended up in the DPRK and a few other peripheral countries to help them with their nuclear programs.
Yeah you're right, I should've read more before posting.
Thank you for the additional information
You're saying that Russia under Putin- the same Putin that wanted to join NATO after very clearly being told to fuck off by the rest of Europe, and only recently invaded Ukraine after years of allowing ethnic Russians to be blown to bits by Ukrainian Nazis- would help Iran get nukes?
That Putin?
For God's sake I get that everyone doesn't want Iran to get bombed and invaded but it's a damn earthquake.
They have them several times every year.
they developed Hypersonic Missiles and Drones .. your logic is not coherent ,
they do have a Nuklear Programm , there is no Doubt about it .
they are threathend by nukes , there is no doubt about it.
Also Most Nuklear nations developt their weapons under Sanctions
North Korea , China , Russia , Pakistan ...
I'm not doubting that, I'm saying they probably haven't used them on the entity yet and are keeping them for future use. Hence the vague threats about a secret weapon from Iran.
Your other points are still correct, I don't have an argument against those.
But I'm still going to stick to my belief that it wasn't a test bc a medium sized earthquake happening in a country that is prone to medium sized earthquakes isn't enough to speculate about nukes.
If they lit the candle, we'll know before the day is through.
Nuke! its the nuke! , I assume reational Actor in Iran and it would be extremly Irrational for a Rational Acter to be daily threathend by Nukes without aquiring nukes.
please let it be the Nuke.
Nukes are nice, and all, but how cool would it be if they had an earthquake machine? They would obviously need to test the earthquake machine before deploying it.
there is a highten Risk of Nuclear war as long as Iran DOES NOT HAVE A NUKE.
Historicly speaking there has never been a nuklear attack against a Nuklear Power , there have been 2 Nuklear Attacks on a Non Nuklear Power..
As long as America and Israel have nukes, every single AES and anti-imperialist nation must have them as well. I would rather the world be bathed in nuclear hellfire than Israel and America dominate in eternal hegemony
Literally every time Netanyahu scratches his buttcheeks then licks his fingers to form a thought is a close call because he might just think of nuking Iran.
Don't nuclear tests have a noticeable different signature than natural earthquakes?
Yes. Since earthquakes are two tectonic plates sliding past each other, you get a slightly different pattern based on whether the plate moved toward you or away from you (heavily simplifying but you can tell the difference on a seismograph). A bomb sends a big wave out in all directions and every station will get a reading as if the plate moved toward them.
Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world?
Or they haven't moved rocket material and they got exploded
This reality is more likely than the reality that Iran tested a nuke.
But it's probably just an earthquake. The region is prone to them.