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.
I wouldn't put ISIS in any team. All that coverage from way back when about how Turkey was making common cause with ISIS is from a time when the US and Turkey were aligned in Syria. Turkey just became a scapegoat by failing to hide their dealings well enough. Plus, what ISIS even exists anymore?
Otoh, I'd put Israel on far too many teams all over the world. They sell arms and intelligence work to pretty much anyone. Plus they are in Syria for themselves. They are anti Syria and anti Iran, period. But they aren't in Afrin or anything. Turkey's proxies in Syria are their own.
The arming and free movement over the Turkish border are sufficient for me to agree that ISIS and TFSA are functionally identical and work together in all respects within Syria. I only grouped Israel with Turkey because they also were supporting ISIS and they have no conflicting interests against Turkey at all, they have no need to "play chicken" against each other since they both want the exact same thing in Syria.
I don't think so. Israel wants a weak Syria/Iran. Turkey wants to end the defacto PKK territory. These are not the same thing. In theory, Assad and Turkey could have a common enemy there. It's just not possible for them to cooperate all that much. The history at the border and the situation on the ground makes it impossible. That is not to say the situation isn't fluid enough where the factions involved aren't always in touch with each other, exchanging favors and so on. But Turkey and Israel aren't cooperating on the level that the PKK/US or Assad/Russia/Iran are.
I want to reiterate though. What ISIS is there anymore?. Syria's stalemate is between Turkey's proxies in Afrin, the PKK/US in the northeast and Assad everywhere else. Those pockets of grey in livemap likes to draw almost feel like they only exist so people can announce they've killed an ISIS leader years after they were at all relevant.
There are remnants of ISIS/Al Qaeda/TFSA in control of Idlib and within Turkey (some of them retreated back over the border). I use the term ISIS as a blanket term when talking big picture of Syrian geopolitics because they are functionally the same whether or not their organizations are merely in coalition instead of one organization. Like I said, they just killed 80 Syrian cadets with a drone in a graduation ceremony.
So does NATO and Turkey.
I think that's a justification for Turkey and not the underlying reason for their occupation. At most it's a secondary objective. They primarily wanted to overthrow Assad and install their own jihadist puppet government. This is also what Israel wants.
You're right that their interests aren't exactly identical in the long term, but they are very much aligned in the short to medium terms and they share allies. Like I said, there's no reason for Israel and Turkey to play chicken against each other is the point. They operate in different areas and align on everything.
I absolutely disagree there and I think our views on the issue are irreconciliable, really. One thing is to consider that 10 years ago NATO was more or less unified under project regime change in Syria. But that was a decade ago. Syria was falling apart and the PKK was fighting off ISIS. Now ISIS is irrelevant and the PKK are an american proxy in the region. The turkish economy is also spiraling and Erdogan is begging for money from all of his former enemies - from the gulf to Moscow. Priorities have changed.
For an instance, I think that the more obvious reason why Turkey and Israel they don't have to play chicken against each other is precisely because their objectives run in parallel. If Assad had the power to wipeout the PKK tomorrow, the turkish priority would change to minimizing the number of refugees from a continued civil war. The israelis have been in the golan heights since forever. Why would the turks and the israeli play chicken against each other for a reason other than the fact that israeli soldiers aren't guarding PKK controlled oilfields atm?