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:

Show

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.

Show

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

    The part about the increased use of drones is fascinating. The droneswarm future is not only coming, it's here.

    FPV usage in particular is simply through the roof, and anyone who’s been watching footage on the usual channels can confirm this. Below you can see a Ukrainian account lamenting how unsustainable the new Russian onslaught is to the Ukrainian AD:

    Show

    ...

    Business Insider writes that Ukrainian assets can’t go longer than 10 minutes without being struck, a new riff on the old famous revelation that Ukrainian soldiers’ life expectancy on the Bakhmut frontline being measured in moments.

    "Today, a column of tanks or a column of advancing troops can be discovered in three to five minutes and hit in another three minutes," Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy commander of Ukraine's HUR military-intelligence service, told The Wall Street Journal.

    "The days of massed armored assaults, taking many kilometers of ground at a time, like we did in 2003 in Iraq — that stuff is gone because the drones have become so effective now," Bradley Crawford, a retired US Army sergeant who's an Iraq war veteran, told the newspaper.

    It’s why Ukraine is not only now dangerously low on mainline heavy armor, but even SBU head Budanov has admitted that current and future assaults will continue to be carried out on foot, indirectly corroborating our reports that Ukraine now conducts primarily “meat assaults” with no mobile armor.

    According to a Russian correspondent:

    "In other words, our troops have been showing remarkable stability for the past month. And most importantly, our military has found a certain formula for conducting combat operations that allows them to destroy the enemy at a rate of 500,000 people per year, while suffering minimal losses." ... "...we get a forecast, according to which our losses in case of Ukraine's continuation will steadily grow, and ours, at least, will remain at the same level, but in the long term should become even lower. And here we can only wait for the enemy's losses to become so high that he will simply no longer be able to resist."

    "The conclusion from all of this is very simple: if we take only the situation on the battlefield, we actually have nowhere to hurry. But, of course, there is still politics - and it may dictate a different logic of events."

    ...

    Lastly, in the final—and perhaps most foreboding—bit of statistical analysis, we have new data that appears to show Ukraine’s current population has dropped to even lower than some of the worst predictions. Recall that Ukraine started off with nearly 50 million people at its peak. Some have suggested they still retain as much as 35-40M. A New leaked census document shows Ukraine currently at 23 million.

    Just weeks ago, Medvedev had released a statement that pro-Ukrainians ridiculed and laughed at, where he stated that Ukraine is actually currently below 20 million.

    Meanwhile, the UK's Defence Minister has suggested that Ukraine begin mobilizing more of its younger men (right now the average - average! - age of a Ukrainian soldier is over 40, by the West's own admission) rather than try and preserve them for the future.

    Essentially, it looks increasingly likely that the worst propaganda against the USSR's actions in WW2 - the human wave attacks, the lack of weapons, etc - may soon be enacted by Ukraine. The calculus appears to be that if Ukraine has 100,000 soldiers to send literally jogging, perhaps with the odd tank here and there, towards a Russian defence line, and that defence line has less than 100,000 bullets, then victory is inevitable.