Bulletins and News Discussion from December 2nd to December 8th, 2024 - May A Hundred Hazel Flowers Bloom - COTW: Russia
Bulletins and News Discussion from December 2nd to December 8th, 2024 - May A Hundred Hazel Flowers Bloom - COTW: Russia
Image is of one of the six salvos of the Oreshnik missile striking Ukraine.
The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile that appears to split into six groups of six submunitions as it strikes its target, giving it the appearance of a hazel flower. It can travel at ten times the speed of sound, and cannot be intercepted by any known Western air defense system, and thus Russia can strike and conventionally destroy any target anywhere in Europe within 20 minutes. Two weeks ago, Russia used the Oreshnik to strike the Yuzhmash factory in Ukraine, particularly its underground facilities, in which ballistic missiles are produced.
Despite the destruction caused by the missile, and its demonstration of Russian missile supremacy over the imperial core, various warmongering Western countries have advocated for further reprisals against Russia, with Ukraine authorized by the US to continue strikes. Additionally, the recent upsurge of the fighting in Syria is no doubt connected to trying to stretch Russia thin, as well as attempting to isolate Hezbollah and Palestine from Iran; how successful this will have ended up being will depend on the outcome of the Russia and Syrian counteroffensive. Looking at recent military history, it will take many months for the Russians and Syrians to retake a city that was lost in about 48 hours.
Even in the worst case scenario for Hezbollah, it's notable that Ansarallah has had major success despite being physically cut off from the rest of the Resistance and under a blockade, and it has defeated the US Navy in its attempts to open up the strait. Israel has confirmed now that their army cannot even make significant territorial gains versus a post-Nasrallah, post-pager terrorist attack Hezbollah holding back its missile strike capabilities. In 2006, it also could not defeat a much less well-armed Hezbollah and was forced to retreat from Lebanon.
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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.
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Hezbollah: Following the repeated violations initiated by the Israeli of the cessation of hostilities agreement announced to come into effect at dawn on Wednesday, November 27, 2024, which take various forms including firing on civilians and airstrikes in various parts of Lebanon, which led to the deaths of citizens and the injury of others, in addition to the continued violation of Lebanese airspace by hostile Israeli aircraft reaching the capital Beirut, and since the reviews of the relevant authorities to stop these violations did not succeed, the Islamic Resistance carried out an initial warning defensive response this evening, Monday, targeting the Ruwaysat al-Alam site belonging to the Israeli army in the occupied Lebanese hills of Kafr Shuba
Makes me wonder what the point of the ceasefire even was, from the Israeli side especially but also Lebanon's side. Like, I'm sorry, the West has proved itself agreement-incapable for centuries. Fool me once, shame on you. fool me five million, six hundred and forty one thousand, five hundred and four times, shame on-- you can't get fooled again.
It's why some commentators saying things like, to paraphrase, "There's a new system of warfare that America is using - they've turned even diplomacy into a weapon of war" - it always makes me scoff. There might be something there about how Israel has been uniquely targetting journalists and medical workers when those people have usually been allowed a significant degree of protection - prior to 2023, the idea of just straight-up firing at and killing somebody in a very visible PRESS vest, regardless of whether they're on the enemy side, would have been seen as pretty abhorrent and the domain only of universally-agreed-to-be terrorist organizations like ISIS (at least, universally agreed outside of Western intelligence agencies) - but diplomacy has been a subsection of warfare for thousands of years. It's how you do violent atrocities, ethnic cleansing, backstabbing deals, etc if you don't physically want to get blood on your hands. Diplomacy is and has always been a critical part of domination.
for Israel, the ceasefire was brilliant. they were able to continue killing and displacing people while stopping Hezb from fighting back. apparently they were also able to advance further into Lebanon than they were before the ceasefire. and now the Western press completely ignores all the ceasefire violations. if Hezb starts fighting back, they'll all start going "well we tried a ceasefire and these terrorists didn't accept it". it was a big strategic error on Hezb's part to accept this 'ceasefire'.
They were doing photo ops at the Litani on the final day, and people have returned to their homes in the South. What do you mean by the IDF being further into Lebanon now?
@ 3:18, but watch the whole video
I've heard the same from journalists and those in the region
Hmm I’ll wait and see i suppose
I think they just want to be able to blame Hezbollah when the ceasefire collapses.
Sure, I get that angle hypothetically, perhaps it might cause some people inside Lebanon who already hate Hezbollah to blame them even more and work against them, but what was the reason for Hezbollah agreeing to it in the first place? "Oh no, the West might believe that we're terrorists if we don't sign this deal!"? They already believe that! They've pumped weapons into Israel dedicated to your explicit and total destruction as an organisation for years! You aren't gonna get Biden or Macron to be like "Aw jeez, Netanyahu, I really liked that Nasrallah fella, please stop violating the ceasefire." They already hate you, there's nothing you can really do to make them hate you even more, so there's no reason to sign a ceasefire if you know that a) it's going to get broken by Israel, and b) when it does break, they'll blame you for it.
For Hamas, the only time a ceasefire occurred, it actually did have a tangible outcome, because it allowed an exchange of Palestinian and Israeli hostages. Even if we all knew that Israel would just go arrest another 10,000 Palestinians for the crime of walking down the street in their own neighbourhoods, there was at least something everybody could point at there as being the point of it. For this ceasefire, all that appears to be happening is that Israel has... maybe turned down the bombing a little? They're still bombing and firing at Lebanese people, though. If Hezbollah calculated that they could go no further without Lebanon descending into civil war and had to sue for peace, then they might as well just hunker down now and not bother militarily responding to Israel because the same people who would have fought against Hezbollah for not signing the deal will now fight against Hezbollah for signing the deal and then "breaking" it (after Israel has broken it a dozen times).
On the other side, the reason for Israel signing the deal is also quite confusing if they didn't actually intend to meaningfully change strategy regardless of what a piece of paper says, they might as well have just kept up the charade of being just one week away from a deal for the next straight year, like the strategy is with Hamas. What, it might boost world opinion of Israel to sign a ceasefire? Let me know when World Opinion develops anti-air technology or can fire missiles at Israeli military sites.
“During the Vietnam War... every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”
Israel will try to blame Hezbollah but I don't think serious people around the world will believe it. That's useful for the Axis of Resistance, because it shows Israel as a belligerent and deceitful actor on the international stage.
And what does this ceasefire cost Hezbollah? Not much, if anything at all. The bombing slowed down, and that's good, and Israelis have not returned to the North and so the pressure on Israeli society remains high. When the ceasefire collapses it's just a free chance to discredit Israel.
Israel, meanwhile, needs to placate both internal and external forces that want this conflict to either end or stop being on TV. The ceasefire is a figleaf that lets those interests pretend they are being listened to, and when the ceasefire collapses they can blame Hezbollah instead of Israel. Then they can take ceasefire off the table.
It's a mess of contradictions.
I think Hezbollah made a mistake by not vehemently coming out against this ceasefire. It's clear to anyone with eyes that Israel and the US can't be trusted, and the wording of the ceasefire reflects that. This would have been a good opportunity to drive a wedge into the Lebanese ruling coalition and make a lot of people lose faith in the Saudi- and Israel-backed parts of the government that have compromised Lebanese national sovereignty and allowed Israel to occupy parts of Southern Lebanon now. Maybe the Lebanese government ends up with egg on its face anyways, but we will have to wait and see.
I'm also still shocked that anyone is seriously letting the US be the "enforcing/neutral 3rd party" on any of these deals. If I were a Resistance negotiator, I would pretty much be pushing for only China to be in that role.
The goal of this ceasefire seems to be primarily to 1) give Israel the cover it needs to keep attacking Lebanon while tying Hezbollah's hands domestically and diplomatically, 2) give Israel the breathing room it needs to return settlers to the north 3) allow the front to shift to Syria and further take eyes off Gaza.
"they've turned even diplomacy into a weapon of war"
I think I just heard a loud groan originating from the direction of Carl von Clausewitz's grave.
They’ve turned even politics into war by other means 😱 😭
I think the point of the ceasefire was to shut up the Lebanese government. The western friendly parts of the government were blaming civilian casualties on Hezbollah and Hezbollah were saying "Even if we stop fighting they will keep bombing because they are genocidal maniacs." Now Hezbollah are calling the various ministers saying "is this enough proof for you?"
The strategy is to divide and conquer, and now the puppet government in Lebanon can collaborate with the empire with a "good conscience".
The point was to attack Syria without hezbollah doing anything. The empire is activating any conflict that it possible can.
They're so excruciatingly detailed because they know the blame will be put on them. Long live the resistance.