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.
When are people going to realize 2 state solution is a fantasy that will never happen and Israel will never let it happen? It’s just an excuse to do nothing about the factory farming of palestine. Disappointing messages, even Saudi Arabia’s is better. Do China and Russia want a multipolar world or not? If they are serious about it they must realize Israel must be destroyed
China doesn't export revolution, and Russia is some combination of busy and not really caring (see their lack of support for fellow CSTO member Armenia).
Saudi Arabia - Israel normalizations would be a disaster for BRICS+ and China's earlier Saudi Arabia - Iran normalization. China was given credit for the momentous move in middle eastern peace, they stepped out of their shell to play on the world stage. If it weren't for this attack from Hamas and the Palestinians, the Saudi-Israel normalization talks this week would have likely been successful and China's work undone.
China should be thanking Hamas for saving them billions of dollars and forcing the gulf states into the BRICS+ economic sphere instead of securing them back to the Anglo-American sphere. China should be backing them diplomatically.
This is just meaningless diplomat speak that amounts to “thoughts and prayers”, just as the Soviet-German parade that liberals love to bring up was just stalling for time. They’d prefer to say nothing you can’t just sit it out when something like this happens, so they’re putting out a statement that’s as close to saying nothing as they can get. China isn’t in the business of international intervention so they have to play the word game. They’re not going to provide material support to Palestine because it would jeopardize their own national project.
In the short term it could very well mean the guaranteed defeat of Israel. In the long term it would drag China into a proxy war with the US. They’ve spent decades building themselves up, they can’t afford to make impulsive anti-US decisions before they’re ready to and have it backfire massively.
And China has its own interests in the Middle East. It’s like the USSR buying time with Nazi Germany. Stalin could’ve made grandiose threats early on but getting involved in the war before adequate preparations were made would be even more disastrous then the first few months already were. Sure Stalin would’ve owned Hitler by immediately declaring war, but having even more millions of dead civilians than what resulted even from a cautious approach wasn’t worth it.
It’s the same reason (but on a much smaller scale) that they don’t just launch a naval invasion of California.
China proclaiming “death to Israel” would be cathartic but not much else. Catharsis doesn’t count for much in geopolitics, and it’s insane to trade anything at all for catharsis.
Yes it turbo-sucks. But Chinese foreign-policy has always been milquetoast because that’s how they want to play the game. Epically owning your geopolitical rivals verbally isn’t worth it considering the massive diplomatic blowback that’ll be right around the corner. China wants to play the long game and pick their battles. I’m not saying I support that necessarily, but that’s the path they’ve chosen.
TLDR: China is kicking the can down the road to avoid the risk of stepping in a metaphorical landmine before they’re ready.
It's not exporting revolution to make a diplomatic statement condemning Israel and supporting Palestine. They vote in the UN. They know what the international law is and how Israel blatantly commits war crimes and breaks the UN resolutions non-stop and are in total non-compliance. This is because China is too tied up economically and militarily with Israel, and honestly they should fix that and be criticized about that. China try not to have a shit foreign policy challenge: impossible.
If you’re a tiny island country or someone on the internet then sure. But if you’re China you can’t just put out a statement like that and not expect any repercussions. Israel is the west’s absolute red line in the Middle East and the west still holds significant power on the international stage, even if it is beginning to wane. Crossing red lines is a major geopolitical move and it’s not something you can just do anytime. If you’re unprepared when you do it you can be majorly fucked. China doesn’t want to take a hit just to condemn Israel while nothing materially changes about the situation. You don’t get to multipolarity by scoring verbal dunks on your opponents.
The statement is obviously weaselly both-sides bullshit but that’s what everyone expected from China. I would judge their foreign policy by its ability to achieve long-term goals and not how often they own their enemies. I hate it I hate it I hate it but I also understand the rationale especially as it relates to post-Soviet collapse anxiety.
It's not just about "verbal dunks". China is the biggest economy on Earth and has a lot of trade with Israel. They have massive diplomatic weight. They could apply pressure that would make Israel think twice about invading Gaza. Instead they are taking the cautious path, which was fine when China was alone in the world and isolated but is now nearing disdainful in this moment. What the multipolar world needs is momentum, to be born more must commit to it. China needs to commit. They can't keep playing the "i'll be America's ally but also their enemy" contradictory game for much longer.
China is going to call for a two-state solution using the 1967 borders because that's what both the PA and Hamas call for. They aren't going one-up the Palestinians.
Two state solution is a reality, and this is what a two state solution looks like.
As Edward Said said
What did Saudi say that was better? They also called for a two state solution, to my knowledge.
China doesn't necessarily care as long as countries aren't hostile towards it and does business fairly. Besides, they prefer if israel and the US didn't continue funding terrorists to threaten their country