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.
Thoughts on how this could affect US congress and funding for Ukraine, Israel and other projects? Forgive me for the sin of doing washingtology and indulging in some voteball speculation.
Obviously Israel is gonna get defense money and aid, that’s a given. US politicians like 99.99% bootlick Israel so that’s not even in question. What’s gonna have to give in order to get a deal done here quickly?
Factions:
Gaetz (noted Israel bootlicker extraordinaire) and his 7 anti-Ukraine crusaders in the house, all GOP
The RINO neo-con cucks that compose the GOP proper. They want money for Ukraine and Israel, but more for Israel and less for Ukraine so their oinking hogs will calm down a bit. Plus if there’s any zero sum limitations, they will want to give preference to Israel over Ukraine
Democrats (slava Ukraini and slava israeli, they slava all over them both) can form a coalition with either Gaetz’s rag tag team or the RINOs to form a majority. I think most Democrats might be more invested in Ukraine currently than they are in Israel, but maybe I’m wrong here. They seemed obsessed at a fervor I never see for Zionism, which is more cold and calculated.
Who do they side with? Who gets money? Does Ukraine get lots of funding? An all-in-one deal like Biden proposed for huge levels of funding locked in?
I tend to think that Israel may dominate politics in the US for a bit and Ukraine will fall lower in priorities, but Dems will still get some money to them.
Someone else asked what was the chance of a cease fire recently from 1-10 I wrote 12.
But now it may be a 9.5, I think it is quite possible this is a major blow to the pro-Ukraine group in favor of the anti-China group. There was always this stalemate that depended on the illusion that Ukraine if not winning could at least still "win". But I'm sure the top branch is aware of the Ukrainian casualties, the CIA wont lie like that, what they will do is manufacture a narrative and this was the main issue the Ukrainians just said repeatedly "oh it doesn't matter if we got 200k or even 500k casualties we can just mobilize more".
Meanwhile even if they knew Zelensky was BSing they still couldn't simply ditch Ukraine lest they admit they "lost" the war anyway. But this may just be the perfect excuse basicaly a new narrative like "sorry, we tried our best to defend freedom and democracy but we must focus elsewhere now, we have more important ~~vassals~~ freedom loving people to defend". Also keep in mind they preemptively set up that narrative that Putin wanted to conquer and annex Ukraine completely and since that didn't happen he "lost" already. Its vietnam 2.0, make your own reason why you didn't just get your ass kicked.
Given the utter failure of the offensive the critics can now also point to another real data point, support for Ukraine is making the US weaker across the globe and Israel is only the first sign of "unimaginable" events. If everyone was anxious about what China could do in Taiwan but held back because they "trust" the CPC then this even will be very useful in driving that fear again.
So from the perspective of if I was one of those US ghouls I imagine there will be a significant shift in US relations with Zelensky, if there were no deadlines surely there will be now and the chances of this war going beyond 2024 dramatically decreased.
Take with a grain of salt though this is just early impressions.
Surely there won't be any negative consequences from arming, training and emboldening Ukrainian Nazis and then Stabbing Them in the Back™ because Israel needs money.