New preamble:

Palestinian resistance groups have launched an operation in and around Gaza to fight the genocidal settler state oppressing them. Thousands of rockets have been launched towards the so-called state of Israel, overwhelming the Iron Dome. Settlers and the troops protecting them are being killed in the settlements surrounding Gaza, with many caught by surprise in the first few hours of the operation.

Palestinians are taking many Israeli settlers and soldiers hostage and bringing them back to Gaza. An Israeli general, Nimrod Aloni, has been confirmed captured. Palestinians are also taking military and civilian equipment back. Drones and MANPADS appear to be in use, and a number of Merkava tanks have been destroyed/disabled and their occupants removed and taken hostage. Palestinian forces appear to be heading in two main directions so far: southeast in the direction of Be’er Sheva, and along the coast in the direction of Ashkelon, but settlements all around Gaza have been assaulted and taken. It is obviously unknown how far they intend to go, or what their intermediate goals are.

Israel is bombing the Gaza Strip with aircraft, destroying buildings. It appears that their intelligence on the location of Palestinian forces outside of Gaza is very poor, and haven’t been able to meaningfully strike them. Netanyahu has given a statement declaring that Israel is in a state of war. Iran has issued statements in support of the uprising, and Israel has responded with hostility to those comments. In all, the IDF appears to still be in a shockingly bad state hours after the assault began.


Old preamble on Antarctica:

expand

Much of the information for this news post, including both the images in the preamble, came from this article at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which has been circulating in the media lately.

Image has been taken from this article.


Antarctica has had a uniquely bad year.

While the sea ice extent in the last 50 years or so has been very gradually declining, it has done so very slowly on average - by 0.1% per decade. This began to change in 2016:

Even so, this year is different, showing a remarkable decrease in the maximum sea ice extent. It is unconfirmed (I think) but this year may be the first in which the maximum extent fails to reach 17 million square kilometers - and is more than one million square kilometers lower than the previous record low maximum in 1986.

The fall in sea ice has been linked by some researchers to warming in the uppermost ocean layer caused by lateral and upward mixing of warmer water. The ocean is a gigantic heat sink, and has been absorbing much of the excess heat that humanity has generated via the greenhouse effect. But put enough heat into a heat sink and it will eventually fill up.

These changes in sea ice extent is no mere abstract climate worry or scientific curiosity. It is having a direct, catastrophic impact on the Antarctic’s ecosystem. Emperor penguin colonies have had trouble breeding, so much so that:

…there is high probability that no chicks had survived last year in four of the five known emperor penguin colonies in the central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea. This was because the sea ice had melted well before chicks would have developed waterproof feathers. … Today’s report says about one-third of the 62 known emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica were affected by partial or total sea ice loss between 2018 and 2022.

And, last year, scientists conducted a study on the two plants that are able to grow near Antarctica, looking at a single Antarctic island for simplicity, and found that the populations of these plants had exploded in the last decade - growing as much in the last decade as they had in the last 50 years - due to rising air temperatures. It was warm enough for the scientists to wear shorts and remove their shirts.


The Country of the Week is Syria! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The weekly update is here!

Links and Stuff

The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.


Resources For Understanding The War


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.

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.


Telegram Channels

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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

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.


Last week’s discussion post.


  • LargePenis [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    88
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Finally time to post my Lebanon-Syria trip report:

    • Flew to Beirut, Lebanon with my wife, where I spent 3 days with my family there, staying with my Putin stan communist uncle. Mostly just caught up with random cousins in random cafés serving the most incredible food of all time. Ate a half meter shawarma. I was coincidentally in Burj Hammoud, an Armenian neighborhood, the day the Azeri war started. Witnessed a fist fight between two older Armenian men who were fighting over whether Pashinyan is a cuck or a victim.

    • Took a cab to Damascus two weeks ago, which was pretty straightforward and I went in with my Lebanese passport so that no westerner knows I was there. Chilled in my mom’s family house in the Damascus suburbs and just took in the vibes. Ate amazing food every single day. Did the usual Damascus tourism stuff around the Umayyed Mosque, Souq Al Hamidiya and the rest of the old town. Went to the Sayyida Zainab shrine with my wife because she’s Shia and they like their shrines. She went back to Beirut after a few days, because her cousins from Iraq travelled to Beirut and she haven’t seen them in years. Signs of war aren’t really really there in Damascus, You can feel the insane poverty everywhere since the sanctions and disastrous financial policy has fucked the country, but Damascus is still a beautiful city with barely any destruction except in a few suburban residental areas.

    • After chilling for a few days, I did a little heartbreaking tour with my cousin. We took his car from Damascus and just drove north on the main highway. We went through Homs, Hama and Aleppo. Most traumatic two days of my life with no competition. The Syrian countryside has just been destroyed, and it’s even worse in the cities. Everyone should be blamed for these tragedies that are present in almost every street in especially Homs and Aleppo. Schools and apartment buildings are just completely destroyed, I can’t even describe the sadness of walking into a bombed classroom with x/x/2011 still on the chalkboard and random books burnt on the ground. Families have been ruined by the war itself, but also from the unnecessarily vicious government oppression that let the war happen in the first place. Every American and Russian that has financed and supported this shit should be subjected to a bombing campaign.

    • Went back to Damascus and stayed the last 2 days of the trip in a cousin’s farm around an hour outside of Damascus. Ate some amazing fruit there and was met with amazing hospitality by the rural folks. Sadly also felt the effects of the insane poverty there in the villages. Met a random Chinese delegation that was responsible for some project in a village, they were some really serious dudes and kept measuring the ground at a bunch of locations with some cool tech that I haven’t seen before. Smoked locally grown weed, which was weird and fun.

    • Went back to Beirut with a cab again. Just chilled and let my thoughts about Syria play around a little in my head. My communist uncle took me to George Hawi’s grave again and kept calling Zelensky lots of homophobic things during the ride. Ate more amazing food. Trip ended there and I flew back yesterday.
    • GVAGUY3 [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      1 year ago

      Assad is very bad. It is interesting how he survived as long as he did. I hope you are alright after all the tragedy you saw.

      • LargePenis [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        The grave is in his home village, Bteghrine, around 45 mins outside of Beirut up in the mountains. There’s a little gate to go through before reaching his grave, but my uncle goes there a few times a year so he knows everyone and we got in with a few nods. From all the pure unfiltered shit of the Lebanese Civil War, Comrade George Hawi was by far the most honorable man there.

        Idk if I will ever be able to return (trans, lol)

        oh yeah that won’t be easy lol