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:
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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.
Zelensky tweet:
Reading this shit makes me feel like I'm losing my mind. Not a peep from western sources about Zelensky reaffirming commitments to sovereignty with Azerbaijan, who's just wrapping up an illegal invasion and ethnic cleansing operation.
the almost complete lack of real action on Azerbaijan in response to their actions is one of those big enlightening moments reaffirming that the "rules-based international order" really is just completely fucking made up. ethnic cleansing just demonstrably happened, we have actual images and videos of a hundred thousand people being forced to leave their homes.
every single liberal who has said some variant of "the days of Nazi fascism have returned, there's genocide happening RIGHT NOW in China/Russia, we must do all we can to resist. our children and grandchildren must not look back on us and wonder why we did nothing. #neveragain" and has nothing to say about Nagorno-Karabakh, or is just saying "wow, huh, this sure is a complicated thing going on; see, on both sides here there's interesting arguments and evidence..." or at most some flaccid statement of "this is a bad thing and we should probably do something idk"; every single liberal like that should put their fucking clown makeup on and never waste valuable electricity posting their shitty, useless opinions online ever again.
in a vacuum they're actually correct, but they've gotten reality completely inverted. the oppressors (e.g. Israel) are actually the oppressed (Palestinian fireworks giving poor grandmothers heart attacks!!!). the victims are actually the aggressors. during WW2, these same people would be arguing that the proud, historic German state led by that dashing lad Hitler was being unfairly demonized by the vast imperialist Soviet state, and that we must make sure that the poor German victims who have insufficient land to develop aren't being oppressed and victimized by the Russians, who have hoarded land and resources from the Baltics to the Pacific.
if Iran or Venezuela or whoever forced a hundred thousand people to leave a region under threat of violence, with photos and video and shitloads of witness testimony, then there would be dozens of articles every single day on it, the West would be putting sanction after sanction on them, an organization trying to help would win the Nobel Peace Prize, there would be a stupid fucking bill in the US Congress proposed with the acronym "NOCLEANSING" that becomes law 5 minutes later - the works.
Think of all the flags liberals could buy to show their support!
There's a reason Zelenskyy looks to Israel as a model to follow for a post war Ukrainian state, and congratulates Azerbaijan on ethnic cleansing. It's the character of the Ukrainian state.
No doubt, I'm not shocked that Zelensky is doing or saying these things, it's the western reaction and rhetoric that bothers me
LIB STATUS: SCRATCHED
It shouldn't make you feel like you're going crazy because it makes sense in the same cruelty that you always see with geopolitics. Artsakh was not a legal part of armenian territory. So what transpired there wasn't an invasion per-se. And besides, the ukrainian government wants to promote something between apartheid and cultural genocide in crimea and the donbass, which is what the azeri state ended up doing in N-K. It's the same reasoning behind how China didn't diplomatically re-affirm its commitment to territorial integrity in the wake of the Ukraine War. Because legally Taiwan is a part of China and only exists as a separate territory de-facto.
What's shocking to me is that Armenia seems to have no friends anymore. All debates online between Armenians asking themselves and each other what to do next reveal a complete loss of direction. Some stand by Russia, saying they are the only ones who can do anything. Others say Russia didn't count for much ultimately. A great many online say they must court the West. Some counter saying the West has no presence in the region. Except for, you know, Turkey, which is the NATO marcher state! A few point out the only country who even approaches going out on a limb for Armenia is Iran, with troops at the border and arms sales. But that doesn't seem to dissuade the people who want to court the West. It's like every move the Armenians can move only serves to create a consensus for their political isolation in the region. The best I can find are fringe far right greeks who like to support Armenia as a stepping stone towards their dreams of Megali Attempt 2.0.
I absolutely guarantee you the reaction of the liberals would have been apocalyptic if they’d wanted to use that as a hammer to attack Azerbaijan.
You are falling into the trap of their little game by assuming their intentions are consistent and fair in any way.
You have seen how they’re reacting to Taiwan, which they all agree is part of China. They would declare war on China if it moved to reassert control over its “own land”, like Azerbaijan just did.
I'm not talking about 'the liberals' I'm talking about the positions of the Ukrainian and Chinese governments. If I'm the ukrainian president and I have to fight this war I can't just say that Russia's annexations/referendums are illegal or illegitimate: to make the story stick I have to go beyond and 'stand by the territorial integrity of countries'.
Besides, the Azeris and Armenians ethnic cleansing each other for 30+ years isn't about to give pause to the current government of Kiev. Zelensky literally said that israeli apartheid might be a model to follow in the future.
My mistake then. It’s what I get for posting before coffee.
Armenians should probably join iran. Long ago armenia was ruled by an Zoroastrian iranic ruling class anyways.
I feel that you're in jest but that'd require a war with Turkey and Azerbaijan and I don't wanna tell mom that Rome and Persia are fighting in the caucasus again.
Through Heaven and Earth, he alone is the clowned one