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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
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.
I am more than happy to once again make the argument. Socialists should not give Chinese nuclear fearmongering.
Why? Because nuclear fear mongering is as you say a mere hypothetical. The giant elephant in the room is climate change. If we don’t fight now, we may as well not bother. The future is 100% certain. Billions will migrate and die, mass economic collapse and large uninhabitable regions.
Yes it turns out that 30 years timeframe is the only time frame we got left. Its over otherwise. CPC coping that they’ll just communism their way out of this into the future is like billionaires and their New Zealand bunkers quite honestly.
Regardless, even if climate change is dismissed I believe it is the highest form of hypocrisy for Chinese interests to fearmonger about US nukes while they simultaneously were willing to work against the DPRK’s nuclear program.
Once again Chinese state media gives you the most straight foward position of the party without fail. DPRK bad, DPRK against Chinese nuclear non-proliferation!
Please remember very carefully both China and Russia initially sanctioned DPRK after their successful test in 2016.
We had Chinese “experts” explaining to us how Kim’s nuke stand threatens Northeast Asia
I’m sorry, if damn China doesn’t want they also demonstrated the absolute cowardice in stopping others directly and indirectly.
From the beginning our criticism of China is the lack of Chinese action serves as a barrier that diminishes global south initiative. Vijay Prashad said this in one of the first time I realized China’s inaction can indeed be harmful*.
BTW absolutely funny literaly just this dual purpose ban/“excuse” against the US not even 12 months later but to protect Chinese national interests! China was pathetic here they can and will protect their interests, a Israel sanction/trade embargo was possible even if symbolic.
We don’t need to give China the benefit of doubt anymore, they meet with US officials and shake hands, they literally already made deals in Saudi Arabia. They literaly told the Houthis to “think of the world trade consequences please!”.
IMO socialists should absolutely not tolerate Chinese fearmongering about nukes given their absolute lack of desire to fight the US through any other means. Their absolute lack of solidarity for Palestine(beyond optics and “diplomacy”) and most importantly their very own hypocritical stance towards the DPRK nuclear program.
I’m not sure what the point of your comment since you praise DPRK’s courgage but also repeat Chinese nuclear fear mongering so please excuse me for that. Either way IMO as I said socialists need to move away completely from Chinese excuses.
I could say the exact same about your comment lmao. You just used my comment to soapbox about why you think modern China sucks. If you don’t like China, it’s very obvious that both Russia and Iran are also timid because of nukes. Are you going to blame “Chinese nuclear fearmongering” for that as well? Iran and Ansarallah both don’t have nukes, but it’s very clear one of them is a lot braver than the another. Ansarallah is already going after US aircraft carriers while Iran has not done so despite being more than technologically capable.
Russia and China, you literaly ignored the point of my comment. BOTH OF THEM SANCTIONED DPRK AFTER THEIR NUCLEAR TEST.
Chinese nuclear fearmongering is a shitty argument, “I’m scared of US nukes” and then deny others the right to use these weapons to fight the US, its shitty common sense status quo. Why should they deny others this right? Let the DPRK communists get nuked if it means the US also gets it its at least a win win. Yes Russia and China were hypocritical. Nuclear non-proliferation only benefits the west majority nuclear powers.
IMO Russia’s adhesion to this western consensus was the only way for them to remain relevant.
Also don’t pretend you don’t know the Ukraine situation since 2014. They literaly ignored it because their shitty oligarchs were busy making money in the west. Russia couldn’t fight earlier because of NATO nukes? Nonsense he went after Crimea after all. If that is one reason, its like the 5th or 10th reason not the first.
Iran got their own contradiction to worry about, they set their red lines, talk about great retribution and then fall short. They talk about how they’ll bring great destruction to Israel and then pretend their weapons actualy can’t do anything? If the idea was intimidation they failed on that strategy. Pressing both buttons now is just sad.
Yeah I agree with this? Indeed I mentioned, how is China’s nuclear fear relevant when they told the Houthis to chill out?
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: