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:

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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.

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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.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Ukraine’s Unraveling, the Funding Row, and Coalition Wobbles

    A follow-up post by Naked Capitalism to the recent article on Ukraine. The introductory paragraph is a good summary:

    Economist Herbert Stein famously said, “That which can’t continue, won’t.” That applies to Ukraine. It is increasingly becoming obvious that Ukraine can’t prevail in its proxy war with Russia. Absent a nuclear war or some Yellowstone-caldera-blowup level natural disaster in Russia, the fact that Ukraine can only pursue a war of attrition against the much better resourced Russia means Ukraine will lose on the battlefield. How total that loss is in military terms is a matter of Russia’s resolve and willingness to continue to commit men and materiel. But it is still striking to see Russia doubling down on a battlefield resolution even as the West clearly needs some way out but can’t, as they say in Maine, get there from here.

    To summarize the article, Yves argues/points out that:

    • The lack of funding to Ukraine due to the continuing resolution is a bigger hit than cynics (like me) think
    • Now that the Ukraine funding has been denied, the curse has lifted; Congress will find it easier to propose either lower spending or completely oppose any spending.
    • Gaetz is the big force in Congress working to try and keep Ukraine funding off the table, and is clearly wary of McCarthy signing a secret deal with Biden to get the funding through anyway. Heartbreaking.
    • In all, the United States is visibly wobbling on Ukraine support. (I personally think that things will stabilise and support will continue for the short and perhaps medium-term, say 6-9 months, but I can't see support for Ukraine growing over time, and this episode is foreshadowing a later break).
    • This wobbling is occurring when key Russian politicians, like Lavrov, Shoigu, Volodin, Medvedev, and others taking a more maximalist goal of militarily forcing Ukraine to capitulate, or even ending its existence.
    • Yves brings up Mercouris' observation of Russian recruitment ads that portray campaigns against Odessa and Kiev (which would necessitate bringing a significant force west of the Dnieper in two very different locations, which itself necessitates a pretty massive advance that would be a total break with the current tempo of the war, at least if they want to achieve this before the Earth is swallowed by the Sun).
    • There is still no serious, sustained effort by the West to ramp up military production to even match Russian output, let alone surpass it, even with the pretty substantial amount of money (hundreds of billions of dollars) that has been poured into the war by the West so far.
    • The fractures in Europe are no longer behind-the-scenes matters with their only evidence being whispers from insiders - we all saw Poland's spat with Ukraine (even if it trying to be tentatively healed over) and we have all seen Slovakia turn away from supporting the war. Poland also may become more anti-Ukraine depending on how the elections go.
    • European polls for anti-EU/NATO parties seem to underestimate their support, which is kinda sussy - Orban was predicted to lose and he won massively; Slovakia's Smer was predicted to be on the knife's edge or even beat by the opposition and won by over 5 points. It is possible that a similar thing might happen in Poland, or even other European countries in the future.