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.
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.
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.
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
Although there were early concerns about earthquakes arising as a result of underground tests, there is no evidence that this has occurred.
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.
why? not saying it's wrong that it's better to assume it's just an earthquake, but tensions are at an all time high and their ex-FM made a cryptic comment about Iran making nukes recently: "if Iran were to make nuclear bomb now it would take less time than ever before." fever didn't source it though so I can't link it but he's generally been good about posting iranian news since he lives there
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.
no ussr refused to help with developing a weapon. they didn't even test their first weapon until 2006. and DPRK definitely would send help if it was asked for
is yourreasoning 90 % assuming shit ,then speaking arrogantly about this assumtion ?
UDSSR ended in 1991 , North Korea developed Nukes under sanctions . They did not get help from a non- existing country. And if you Assume "Russia helping" , why do you not "assume russia helping" here as well .. Because you "Know" that they would help Korea apperently , but also "Know" that they would never help Iran ???
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 developed Hypersonic Missiles and Drones .. your logic is not coherent ,
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.
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.
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.
one one hand I get it on the other hand I'm extremely apprehensive about there being heightened risk of nuclear war, I understand it's necessary (look at libya) but still nervous about it
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.
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.
i dont think it's apparent at first you need to look at them closely and compare them to natural earthquakes but yeah like everyone has said if it was the west should know and will let everyone know even if Iran didn't announce it for some reason either