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.
Is nationalism always going to inherently clash with union projects like the EU?
As the contradictions tighten I'm noticing that it's almost inevitable that as nationalism rises in EU populations they will inevitably turn on the EU itself, resulting in its destruction. Only a union project with internationalism as a core part of its vision that stamps out nationalism within it can survive because nationalist tendencies will always tend towards splitting from a union for "sovereignty". This is economically to the benefit of other large blocks like the US and also, to the benefit of any looters within those countries that seek to profit from their split.
The EU was founded to prevent the USSR from gobbling up more countries, which nationalists could support because the USSR as an internationalist project was a bigger threat to nationalism, but when the USSR ended the EU lost its reason to exist(for these nationalists) and it became a target of nationalist self-destruction itself.
It strikes me that the only way the EU won't succumb to this in the future is by turning the EU itself into a symbol of national identity that nationalists get behind.
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Yeah, full EU federalization seems inevitable for its continued survival.
The EU is a case of putting the cart before the horse, in that they created a single currency for almost the whole union, in the Euro, before the EU had a chance to become a country or the European equivalent of the USA. Literal scam economics. Unless the EU has a plan to address this massive contradiction, by federalisation or becoming some kind of state or more state like entity, the writing is on the wall for the EU. When the next Greece situation happens, it could really cause some major fractures.
Yeah, eu will go like amerikkka, wp mode. Inside eu nationalists dodge historical grievances like a plague, so its not inherent tension in the union. I think if drops in quality of life didn't happen so close to the migrant waves the fashies rhetoric wouldnt find that much ground.
I'm not convinced it will be as secure because there's more cultural history and the language barriers are a major issue.
Its not as secure cause it doesn't sit its ass in the middle of two oceans. Europeans grumble at each other in some quiant way, but their hatred of arabs and roma shines like a sun.
If anything, more deep lore fashies hate america first, cause they see it as a cultural hegemon it is. French culture and living is not changed by the germans, its changed by americans
I don't think it's just "some quaint way". I've seen anti Polish or anti Romanian racism and violence that is literally identical to any other. I'm not convinced that it can defeat the problem without either internationalist socialist ideology or a massive internal cultural shift to eliminate national identities and unify under one language.
It is identical and maybe i'm wrong here, but i thought anti-pole sentiment with accompanied violence dropped off roughly during "immigrant crisis".
Like i think it roughly tracks who does the low-paying exploitative jobs in western europe (poles/romanians/turks/moldovans->broadly arabs and now ukrainians), kind like racism with usa-characteristics (black->black/chinese/japanese->black/latino/arab)
This is because the argument used to rally the national/ethnic hate is always "they're taking our jobs".
But the argument works because they are taking jobs, its just ethnic blame miscasting allows extra-exploitation rate for porkies, and thus employed by media. Porky can't collect strawberries for 10 bucks/hour in europe, because the math don't work. Equitable socialist answer is remove your profit margins and increase strawberry prices, imperialist answer - punish labor until they accept needed salary.
You can't exactly explain why "your own people" live in a metal box, work for 12 hours a day and don't have healthcare, you can however remove health protection by making those people "not your own"(and they can't speak your language, and police harasses them).
p.s. But usa seems to be working on that "your own people" part with kids proletarianization
Sure but they have a larger economic impact than the local population do. For every migrant that gets added to the community there are extra jobs that appear as a result of the migration. Yes this definitely does mean that porky gets to run some jobs cheaper than others with the migrant labour but when they just decide to close the factory entirely because it's cheaper to run elsewhere the outcome is much worse for the local community, which we've seen happen with Brexit.
Samir Amin on the European Union as a neoliberal project
Good ass interview
There's more too
https://hexbear.net/post/212963
Commenting so I can watch later
but wait, the Maastricht Treaty was February 1992, months after the illegal dissolution of the Soviet Union. just inertia?
I see it as something that was already in the pipeline while the USSR existed, and that it takes a long time for the elimination of the USSR to then also start affecting the EU. And obviously you needed nationalism within the EU to have a reason to rise as well. The 1990s-2008 were overall good for the EU. The best years of neoliberalism.
So yeah, inertia in the new conditions.
Arguably a federal europe would itself be a method towards resolving this but they've done nothing to crush nationalism and/or alter existing national identities into a european national identity so it's not enough.
yes this is why corbyn and I think yanis varoufakis pushed for but they've failed so far due to continued nationalist resurgence