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.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
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.
Harden your heart, oh Putin. Increase your attacks.
it's not even a question anymore (if it ever was), this was a US/Israeli coup.
The composition of syria's new government
I'm hearing that it's literally the same as the Idlib government they've been doing for years and it's supposed to stay in place until March 2025
"...not a single minister from an ethnic or religious minority, no women, and not even other opposition factions"
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Uyghur's in Syria found missiles and warn china that they're coming for them.
The sooner we find out what the new regime intends to with these guys the better, they gotta be crazy to let syria be a launching pad for terrorism into china. I don't even know if china would invade to stop it, this whole syria thing has probably further convinced china that foreign intervention is a grift. Probably would just try to get some UN resolutions passed to resolve the issue, it'd be interesting to see if the US would veto it.
Obviously these fellas can't launch these at china from syria but they could smuggle them out.
Perfidious Albion boasts about successful testing of directed energy weapons for anti-drone warfare mounted on a Wolfhound (6 wheel vehicle).
https://archive.is/CwrIc
I assume it uses a lot of juice. Probably still vulnerable to attack if the drone flies very low. Or if there are multiple drones it's probably fucked?
Ex-defense chief suspected of plotting war with North Korea to justify martial law
Kim Yong-hyun is said to have called for strikes on sites from which North Korea was launching trash balloons and sending drones over Pyongyang
spoiler
https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1172239.html
There are mounting suspicions that former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun intended to justify the declaration of martial law or a state of united defense by instigating a military conflict with North Korea by ordering strikes on the sites from which the North was launching trash-filled balloons and flying unmanned drones to Pyongyang.
Democratic Party lawmaker Park Beom-kye revealed Monday that he received a tip-off from a military whistleblower that the unmanned drones North Korea claimed Seoul had sent to Pyongyang in October were indeed sent on orders of the South Korean military — more specifically, on the orders of the former defense minister.
“The Defense Counterintelligence Command, formerly led by Yeo In-hyeong, yet another high school classmate of Kim’s, planned the specifics of the operation,” Park claimed, suggesting that it was “clear that this plan was conceived to offer a pretext for the invocation of martial law.”
A reference document on the operation of martial law troops and a joint investigation headquarters issued in November under the orders of Yeo, made public by the Democratic Party on Sunday, show that the Defense Counterintelligence Command reviewed the possibility of the simultaneous declaration of martial law and united defense to execute military responses and control public order and security in the event of a crisis, such as armed conflict with North Korea.
The document claimed that martial law and united defense could be declared simultaneously in the case of “enemy infiltration, provocation and domestic circumstances.”
According to current law, martial law is to be declared “in time of war, incident or other equivalent national emergency,” while united defense — a way of consolidating the country’s defense elements under a unified command — should be declared to respond to the “enemy’s infiltration, provocation, or threat of infiltration or provocation.” Both must be declared by the president.
Before publicizing the contents of the document, Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Ki-heon claimed to have received information on how, only one week prior to the declaration of martial law, Kim had ordered Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairperson Adm. Kim Myung-soo to “fire warning shots before striking launch sites of North Korea’s trash-filled balloons” if any such balloons were seen floating in South Korean skies.
For that to happen, South Korean soldiers would have to attack North Korea’s southwestern Hwanghae region, where the trash balloons are being sent from, which could easily escalate into a limited war.
In response, the Joint Chiefs of Staff denied allegations about such orders on Saturday, claiming that “no orders intending to escalate conflict took place.” However, it did not deny the discussions on targeting launch sites, saying, “The military conducts discussions on various operational situations from time to time.”
According to military officials, Kim Yong-hyun expressed a desire to strike the launch sites of North Korea’s trash balloons, but Kim Myung-soo responded by saying that such a move would be inconsistent with the current response policy, which stipulates that such strikes should only take place in case of tangible harm.
In September, as trash-filled balloons continued to cross the border, the Joint Chiefs had said that the South Korean military would take “decisive military action if it was determined that serious damage to our national security has occurred or if North Korea crosses a line.”
The Joint Chiefs said they were unable to confirm information in response to questions concerning the unmanned drones supposedly flown into Pyongyang.
By Kwon Hyuk-chul, staff reporter
Tiktok is telling me that the adjuster's family wealth was from a network of nursing homes. They were generally of very poor quality to say the least (I'm fucking disgusted, but that's US healthcare/elder care for you, nothing too new), and his LinkedIn shows that he volunteered at these homes.
It's likely that his experiences witnessing industrialized elder abuse had a strong effect on his views.
@tiffanycianci is the creator who pulled the research into a video if you want to look it up. Someone should grab it and post to tankietube or something.
Jeffrey Sachs is about as liberal and otherwise problematic as Mearsheimer, but this seems like a pretty good analysis in terms of the geopolitics. (The motivational shit is pretty stupid, though, like thinking that between the U.S. and Israel it is Israel that calls the shots, and not giving the most zealous Zionist over the last 50 years of U.S. politics his due.)
China’s ‘explosive’ ironmaking breakthrough achieves 3,600-fold productivity boost
Known as flash ironmaking, the method “can complete the ironmaking process in just three to six seconds, compared to the five to six hours required by traditional blast furnaces.”
According to calculations by Zhang and his colleagues, the new technology could improve the energy use efficiency of China’s steel industry by more than one-third. As it eliminates the need for coal entirely, it would also enable the steel industry to achieve the coveted goal of “near-zero carbon dioxide emissions”, Zhang’s team added.They're already done pilot testing and are rolling out commercial versions of the required machinery. Could be huge for countries with large reserves of low and medium quality steel.
I’m kind of interested to hear what news heads think of Ataturk and his legacy. Been reading about the history of Turkey and I find him to be a very interesting figure.
I still can't believe that the shooting happened right as I started a playthrough of Luigi's Mansion. This is so surreal.
Watch me start a playthrough of New Vegas and another CEO gets dunked on by someone called The Courier
A talk about a Chinese review of Sinwar's book the thorn and the carnation, some discussion of the parallels between the Palestine occupation and in Japanese occupied China, also of popular sentiment in China about the situation in Palestine.
This morning, the Israeli army reached Qatana, about 20 kilometers from Damascus. Israel is advancing into Syrian territory to fulfill Netanyahu's vision of a “Greater Israel.” Last night, Israel claimed to have conducted its biggest air operation in history against Syria.
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