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.
Getting real sick of all the winging liberal comments about “oh I dread what Israel will do to them after this.” The west has such a fetish for losing and inaction. They took a risk and thus far it’s been pretty successful, and ultimately we’re not making decisions for the Palestinians, ultimately our job is to support the Palestinians because ultimately they are right to attack Israel like this, and then condemn Israel when they inevitably do react. I mean what should they do instead? Sit around and get genocided as the US ensures they are increasingly isolated in the region and wait for the westerners to vote in the moderate wing of fascism who doesn’t even and has never supported Palestine?
Anyway, I’m gonna stay off Reddit for today. Even the pro-Palestine comments are insufferable
Also I hate to say it but it’s nice to have a conflict I can support. I was getting real sick of the “critical support” thing. I don’t like Russia and I hated having to agree with the objectively worst USians on anything. Nice to have both the libs and the fascists hating me once again.
I get your take, although the media perception we have of Palestine is all the bombing and violence committee by Israel in Gaza and once again since the start the Russians in Donbas also have 8 years of videos documenting the same type of violence too, shelling, missile strikes etc. The only reason one had to do "critical support" shit was to allow us to have a nuanced discussion with other socialists, it is not meant to be your real position when engaging with libs. I mean, who gives a shit about critical support when the year is 2023 and the liberals are bending backwards to defend the SS? They're literally telling us to take our nuanced positions and shove it.
The only difference here IMO is we actually got coverage of these events in Gaza throughout the decades, in fact so much so to even deny Israel ever attacks Gaza is an extreme position.
But you go into a room with the same people and tell them "but the Ukrainians never attacked anyone in the Donbas region" and instead of being ridiculed you'd get nods and a round of applause. If I didn't see it surely it must not have happened. As we saw the narrative they pushed was "unprovoked", "innocent". They claim that about Ukraine because Patrick Lancaster was an obscure YT channel not a cable news segment every day or week.
So yeah as I said I get where you're coming from, but critical support is something we use to engage with other leftists, it should not be what makes you always go "Oh I support Russian side but [spends one hour describing the religious conservative hellscape after the fall of the USSR]".
If you're engaging with a lib I think it should go more like "yeah I support the Russian side, and you're literally supporting Nazis, either get a grip of reality or go fuck yourself". People post the no half measures meme, but really we're so past the point of reasonable debate now.
Hamas is still a critical support for me. I fully support Palestinians in their fight against Israel while recognizing that many Islamic military groups have politics I find reprehensible. Both of these things can and should be true.
This will certainly separate the wheat from the chaff. All the 🇺🇦 emojis talking about how Ukraine is oppressed like Palestine about to show their whole asses