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.
How much of the western leftist meltdown over this is just them seeing themselves in illegal settlers and going “wot if landback happens and the savage natives try to kill me?”
Probably most of them.
Some dipshit claimed I was lying about being South African when I said I was against Israeli apartheid, they got real quiet after I posted proof of my nationality...
I thought scaremongering about the evil blacks coming to murder your precious white family was a time-honored South African tradition
I was posting about how anti apartheid activists and Nelson Mandela supported Palestine, for context.
Mandela's Palestine speech is famous, what a weird place to make a stand lol
evil blacks coming to murder our precious white farmers was a whole thing in the 10s, aus
fast tracked visas and all for those white fucksLiberal government made a big guffaw about giving "like minded" white South African farmers 'special attention' on immigration claims. It was a media circus and apparently no such 'attention' was given beyond lip service to our apartheid brethrenDidn't Dutton get called out on this and then back down?
fuckin hell good call, I got swept up in the media push looks like.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-16/south-african-expats-cautiously-welcome-visa-plans/9553694
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-22/white-south-african-farmers-wont-get-special-treatment/9788230
My gut reaction was "these poor fucks are going to get massacred", so engrained is the coloniser mindset.
tbh though if the same thing happened here it'd be just as righteous and deserved
You know full well that I’m referring to those pearl clutching about violence against settlers.
I meant to say I initially felt "this is bad, this is a bad idea", which isn't too far removed from that same pearl clutching. The fact I can reel it back from that to see why it's needed is the next step that a lot of folks are struggling with lol
Right, but I never said anything about negative reactions stemming from concerns that Israel will flatten Gaza. I don’t know how anyone could read that into what I wrote.
It’s incredibly frustrating to vent about so-called leftists doing a complete 180 on Palestine the moment they do something about it and then have someone going “so you think being concerned for Palestinians is colonialist?????”
What? That wasn't my intention, sorry. I'll back out now.
I’m getting old and jaded I guess. It’s hard to tell sincere from bad faith with all the liberals going around these days. Seeing them calling for genocide is making me lose my mind and patience
Happens to all of us. Sorry if I fed into it, was jumping in with sincerity and a goal of understanding lol.
Feels like the western contradictions are bursting at the seams atm, the revisionist project is straining under its own weight. Whether media/narrative and adherents will face up to that or continue fighting to the last ukranian idk, but things are happening and won't stay the same.
It probably is a "bad idea", as they are up against pretty stupendous odds. But there aren't a lot of "good ideas", and the problem comes when not just hoping they'll find better strategies, but transforming that into a moral condemnation. They are fighting a good fight and need and deserve solidarity,
even ifespecially because they are likely to fail.If it is apparent to a bunch of randos on the internet that Palestinian resistance has a great risk of failing and being subjected to the wrath of the vengeful genocidal zionist regime, then that risk must be even better understood by Palestinians themselves. Yet they choose to fight anyways which tells us how desperate and unlivable their situation under settler occupation was before.
For sure.