Very interesting that Hamas has re-activated the fighting in northern Gaza after Israel committed to Rafah. Obviously it makes Israeli propaganda about "dismantling Hamas" very silly in retrospect but that's not the main reason to do it, I imagine. I suppose it's about forcing Israel to re-commit troops to the north and spread them thinner? Definitely shows that Hamas has retained its organizational and fighting capacity even as we're over eight months since October 7th, which is encouraging.
The American version of convergent evolution and carcinization. Every corporation in America is gradually transforming into an investment firm, even the ones that are supposed to supply resources to the investment firms and their employees (food, manufacturing, transportation, etc), until the whole thing is so imbalanced that it topples over and 100 million people with job positions like "Executive Vice-Manager to the Deputy Officers of the Logistics Division to the Central Exchequer" suddenly become homeless
The China-Russia statement in a nutshell:
- The rise of multipolarity, in particular the strengthening of developing countries, is a process that is objectively occurring. Some countries are trying to fight this trend with hegemonism, masquerading their harmful politics under the guise of a "rules-based order". Russia and China want to use bilateral relations to build a more democratic world order.
- No country should gain security at the expense of another country's security.
- There are two fundamental principles that should be upheld. First, there should be no neo-colonialism nor hegemonism; countries should be able to freely pick whatever political, social, and economic systems they desire without pressure from outside, especially not sanctions. Second, the UN Charter should be the backbone of a multipolar world order.
- Countries which are trying to exert hegemonism, provoking regional tensions, etc - that is, the United States - are bad, and are using a Cold War model for modern times. This endangers the security of everybody.
- The United States is trying to exert military dominance everywhere via missile defense systems, various missile programs, military bases, submarine deals, etc. This is bad.
- The United States is trying to contain both Russia and China in particular using the aforementioned tactics. This is very destabilizing and bad.
- The United States should not use biological nor weapons in outer space to further exert military dominance. Those things should be off-limits to any country.
- The United States is provoking the DPRK and trying to cause a new war on the Korean Peninsula. The United States should take responsibility for Afghanistan and help them, rather than sanction them.
Then there's all the cooperation stuff between Russia and China:
- Deepening military cooperation, including joint air and naval patrols.
- More bilateral trade and investments, including in shipbuilding, civilian aviation, cars, equipment manufacturing, electronics, metallurgy, mining, etc.
- Deepening energy cooperation, including in nuclear energy, with the wider goal of keeping international energy stable.
- Further usage of local currencies in bilateral trade, more banks and institutions in that regard, etc.
- Education and scientific cooperation, study abroad programs, the teaching of each others' languages, etc.
- Cooperation in mass media, basically just doing journalism better and at higher quality.
- Cooperation inside various international organizations like the UN, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, the SCO, BRICS, etc.
Back in the Bakhmut days, we used to be thankful if the advance totalled an apartment complex per day! Now, these youngin's are so impatient, they think a northern offensive that doesn't reach Kharkiv in a week is "stalled"! What has the world come to!?
...perhaps more on a foreign policy level than domestically...
the fear of entering a school Uvalde-style was combating the desire to commit violence at anything that meets their gaze
Friendly fire deaths estimated at 10%
this is a tricky statistic because it's simultaneously true that:
a) the Israeli army is incompetent when fighting people with more advanced weaponry than pebbles
b) urban warfare is chaotic and scary no matter who's doing it, so firing on your allies accidentally will almost certainly happen from time to time
and c) Israel is deeply invested in lying as much as possible about how well they're doing in the war and making Hamas seem weak, so they will blame the deaths of troops (where they must be reported and cannot be reasonably hidden) on any other factor than Hamas, including even friendly fire that makes them seem incompetent; better to be seen as clumsy than the reality which is that they cannot even defeat the prisoners they stuck in a genocidal concentration camp
Enemy media :
Yesterday, #Hezbollah recorded its greatest success since the beginning of the war and destroyed one of the most expensive and advanced defense systems. A #Hezbollah drone worth 20,000 shekels targeted a multi-billion project east of Tiberias yesterday
The occupation army announces that #Hezbollah targeted the Sky Dew balloon, the large surveillance balloon,at an air force base near Tiberias, which is of great importance for monitoring air threats in the north, especially drones.
The #Israeli Ministry of Defense boasted of the spy balloon's superior ability to monitor #Lebanon and #Syria. 24 hours later, #Hezbollah targeted the balloon with a suicide drone.
Article from Israeli state propaganda on the topic.
Israelis from the North are still displaced, and Israel has displayed quite literally zero ability to do anything about it. I'm gonna take an L here: I assumed that the Israeli military still had some vague vestiges of competency that would allow them to meaningfully attack Hezbollah and carry out at least an offensive by now, but no. They're really just fucked, entirely helpless to Hezbollah's many daily strikes.
The Gaza resistance is doing very well too. Lots of attacks reported and lots of daily casualties. The resistance hasn't degraded; it actually seems to have improved since the first days of the war. Plenty of attacks in northern Gaza too, so Hamas is still very much undefeated throughout Gaza despite the propaganda.
Defense Minister Gallant yesterday publically voiced that he opposes the plan for military rule over Gaza, instead wanting a new form of international rule to replace Hamas there. Presumably because he knows that a military occupation of Gaza is untenable and will lead to casualties that Israel cannot withstand for any length of time. An international coalition replacing Hamas is, of course, also not going to work. They'd still have to try and defeat Hamas to exert this plan. They're just trying to put the casualty load on other countries. I wonder if this stuff is designed busywork for the government employees at this point. Like, it's akin to a thinktank asking "When Ukraine conquers Belgorod, will the Ukrainians administer it or will a NATO coalition?" It's geopolitical fanfiction. It's a dude who peaked in high school obsessing over how cool and fit he was back then and assuming he's still just as fit despite being an ailing 40-something year old with double digit physical health problems. This ain't the 1990s anymore, motherfuckers.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said yesterday: "'...relations with the US are collapsing, the middle class is collapsing, they have lost the north' and 'we will not win with this government'"
And Netanyahu is calling for the Palestinian Authority to be dismantled, which is akin to a dog begging for chocolate. There's a part of my brain that is wondering whether Netanyahu is really a secret comrade who also wants Israel to collapse. It takes genuine skill to be this incompetent, to the point where it's a little suspicious.
Israel is doomed.
Not being anti-Russia in Europe is very dangerous
It also matters little, because energy under capitalism is dependent on the infighting between factions of capital. Like the much-mocked German shutdown of nuclear power. Half opportunism to prevent the electoral rise of the green party and half gift to the mining corporation RWE. Had it not happened, it would be the firms dealing with nuclear power supply, etc. to profit. Nothing gets done without the bourgeois benefitting.
I've been in the nuclear trenches a few times (on the pro-nuclear side, though there are very obviously drawbacks and limitations and by no means do I advocate for paving the world with nuclear power plants or whatever the strawman is nowadays) and I've come to realize that anti-nuclear sentiments aren't fundamentally influenced by these well-thought-out arguments that anti-nuclear intellectuals and professionals have. It's much more to do with their profitability and rate of return and investment cost than like, scientific arguments about the amount of uranium/thorium reserves, or potential for disasters, and so on.
As in, the nuclear debate online isn't actually as relevant in the real world as it seems, and a lot of the displayed concern about Fukushima or Chernobyl happening again in government bodies isn't actually the thing that is motivating them, it's just good-old-fashioned capitalism and they're dressing it up. If we're talking environmental impacts, massive oil spills, while certainly widely known about and important points in the fossil fuel debate, haven't really done much to dent fossil fuel production quite like how nuclear disasters affected nuclear energy's reputation. And it takes a shitload of rare resources like cobalt and copper and lithium to create the renewables that would be required to get us to a fully renewable economy even if we assume energy consumption doesn't keep rising over time. The cumulative effect of hundreds and thousands of mines and quarries on the environment (let alone workers) is gigantic, but they're spread out enough (and often located in countries that the average person couldn't place on a map, let alone care deeply about) that they don't feature as heavily in the debate.
So basically I caution anybody who gets too lost in the sauce over the common issues that online debates are about because, while these things are extremely important, these aren't actually the big reasons why capitalists aren't investing heavily in them, so you're kinda wasting your time (even under the assumption that internet debates are somehow productive). Do you think a capitalist gives a shit whether their nuclear power plant has some leakage that raises cancer rates in the surrounding area, so long as it makes a profit? We have to distinguish the discussion over these things versus the material reality.
This is the Guy equivalent of a platypus. Then again, most Americans and indeed Westerners have incoherent political beliefs, so I suppose he's actually the Default Guy in a general sense. I've just recently gone through the evergreen communist experience of listening to somebody vent about political matters and internally becoming increasingly confused at all the contradictory shit they're saying without them even knowing what they're saying makes no sense but introducing them to Marxism 101 at that particular moment sounds both too much effort and unproductive, so you just have to go "yeah, I get ya"