Image is of Assad and his family.

After less than two weeks of retreating with few shots fired and little resistance, the SAA has retreated into, well, a state of non-existence. This thereby ends a conflict that has been simmering for over a decade. With the end of this conflict, another begins: the carving up of what used to be Syria between Israel and Turkey, with perhaps the odd Syrian faction getting a rump state here and there. Both Israel and Turkey have begun military operations, with Israel working on expanding their territory in Syria and bombing military bases to ensure as little resistance as possible.

Israeli success in Syria is interesting to contrast against their failures in Gaza and Lebanon. A short time ago, Israel failed to make significant territorial progress in Lebanon due to Hezbollah's resistance despite the heavy hits they had recently taken, and was forced into a ceasefire with little to show for the manpower and equipment lost and the settlers displaced. The war with Lebanon was fast, but still slow enough to allow a degree of analysis and prediction. In contrast, the sheer speed of Syria's collapse has made analysis near-impossible beyond obvious statements like "this is bad" and "Assad is fucking up"; by the time a major Syrian city had fallen, you barely had time to digest the implications before the next one was under threat.

There is still too much that we don't know about the potential responses (and non-responses) of other countries in the region - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Russia, for example. I think that this week and the next will see a lot of statements made by various parties and an elucidation of how the conflict will progress. The only thing that seems clear is that we are in the next stage of the conflict, and perhaps have been, in retrospect, since Nasrallah's assassination. This stage has been and will be far more chaotic as the damage to Israel compounds and they are willing to take greater and greater risks to stay in power. It will also involve Israel causing destruction all throughout the region, rather than mostly localizing it in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Successful gambles like with Syria may or may not outweigh the unsuccessful ones like with Lebanon. This is a similar road to the one apartheid South Africa took, but there are also too many differences to say if the destination will be the same.

What is certain is that Assad's time in power can be summarized as a failure, both to be an effective leader and to create positive economic conditions. His policies were actively harmful to internal stability for no real payoff and by the end, all goodwill had been fully depleted. By the end, the SAA did not fight back; not because of some wunderwaffen on the side of HST, but because there was nothing to fight for, and internal cohesion rapidly disintegrated.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

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 Telegram Channels:

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.

  • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
    ·
    15 days ago

    As long as Brazil remains the biggest player willing to throw its weight around like with Venezuela? Possibly. Brazil doesn't care about Peru/Ecuador/Chile. Only Mercosur countries, and Venezuela, possibly Bolivia are relevant.

    I know I'm repeating it but the Venezuela-BRICS-Brazil issue is not over imo. It will re-appear if Lula decides to try to "man up" as a nationalist again.

    For Brazil-Venezuela though I think nothing fundamentaly changed in recent years and Brazil is still very much influenced by US interests, specialy through the financial markets which in turn is the characteristic Brazilian "advantage" given it is among the world's highest interest rates. Brazil is a rentier capitalist economy.

    BRICS can't change this because China themselves benefit from these agricultural imports/industrial exports duality. Of course BRI is the biggest driver for China to grow their influence too, Chinese capital needs other destinations besides the US, this is all the BRI is for, altruistic reasons or not, China got a lot of money and they can't keep just buying US bonds and stuff(this was long discussed before)

    I think China could and should pressure for Venezuela's sake. But at the same time Brazil is an important partner and alternative so its tough to see either China/Russia making a favor for Venezuela.

    How much you put into this source is up to you, imo its pretty accurate in this quote The Great Balancing Act: Lula in China and the Future of U.S.-Brazil Relations

    On the other hand, Brazil uses China’s champion of the Global South narrative to seek a more active position in shaping global governance in an emerging multipolar world. However, there is a fine line between using the relationship with China to counter historical diplomatic and economic dependency on the United States, and outright bandwagoning on Beijing’s vision for a new international order. There is also concern growing among some Brazilian foreign policy analysts and officials that, if left unchecked, the growing relationship with China might lead not to strategic autonomy, but dependency. The unbalanced nature of bilateral trade raises important questions in this sense. Points of Tension

    Despite the developing relationship, there are important bilateral points of tension. Brazil’s main grievance is the unbalanced nature of bilateral trade. Brazil’s exports to China are concentrated in mineral and agricultural commodities, mainly soybean and iron ore. Meanwhile, Brazil imports mainly high value-added manufactured goods from China.

    In a broader sense, Brazil sees its relationship with China to increase desperately needed investment in the country’s economy and place it on a sustainable economic footing—investments of a kind that the United States has not been able to furnish. Lula’s other mission in this visit was to increase productive Chinese investment and innovation in Brazil, too. While China has increased its level of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Brazil, the United States is still the top provider, investing almost $200 billion in 2022—four times as much as China. And unlike trade with China, 55 percent of Brazilian exports to the United States in 2022 were high value-added manufactured goods, which add more jobs to the economy and contribute to stable revenue streams.

    Yes that is from 2023 and yes Lula talked with Xi recently and signed more deals, how relevant is this given the current neoliberal attack succesfuly destroying Lula's government? You tell me.

    Again the reason these sources are valid is they're not just reporting on what leftists think, but what Brazilian capitalists think and they have an influence on FP. If Brazilian capitalists are worried Lula is too pro China then he may well continue to balance this act.

    I could argue there is an industrial dependency case here too since this US money is just buying Brazilian bonds and earning one of the highest interest rates in the world etc.

    Americans were taking USD loans in Japan and then buying Brazilian assets and bonds.

    Graph 3 shows how the differential between the nominal interest rates of Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Japan grew from 2021 onwards. The differential grew first for Brazil, then Mexico, and finally Colombia, which showed its attractiveness to international investors. The spread has allowed yields of up to 10.25% in Brazil, 10.50% in Mexico and 11.50% in Colombia through "Carry Trade".

    On the balance between attracting US investment(dollars) while necessitating an open relationship with China for agricultural exports is a real undeniable issue.

    So how what is the path forward? I can't say anything other than the strength to resist Trump's desire to fuck with Venezuela is tough to imagine given Lula got his own an election to worry about.