Bulletins and News Discussion from December 9th to December 15th, 2024 - Assad Must Go
Bulletins and News Discussion from December 9th to December 15th, 2024 - Assad Must Go
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.
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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.
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It appeaers the south Korea president had a travel ban due to investigation. Leads me to my question to hexbear users. How do you guys feel in general about the fact that at one point half of south Koreas living presidents were arrested?
The joke here is that there's a competition between the state governors of Rio de Janeiro and presidents of South Korea. So in my opinion super relatable.
The thing is that in the political arena everyone is a jackal. For the powerful, Rule of Law is not a protection from the State power, but something that calibrates and defines the moves you can make in the political game. Politicians are always on the lookout for weaknesses, scandals and such which can advance their career by destroying others'. The political environment in South Korea just ensures a steady supply of ammunition.
Yes, capitalist nations all have political corruption. Even the ones bold enough to make corruption legal, like the United States or Canada, do have people who go out of their way to make money illegally. The most baffling aspect of the Eric Adams case is how it seems nobody involved realized that everything they did would have been legal had they done it just a little bit different. But South Korea is on a different level. A country where 4 years ago 15% of GDP was owned by Samsung. One year ago it was 20%. You cannot govern South Korea without being 'corrupted' by the Chaebols. The job of South Korea's President has got to be coalition building between the elected bodies and the Chaebols. To govern is to be corrupt.
Learning about the Satraps of the Empire is so wild to me. Canada is a mining/oil industry in a trenchcoat, SK is 5 companies in a trenchcoat, Australia is a PMC force we outsource our warcrimes to in a trenchcoat.
Jesus I knew the share of the GDP was large but I didn't know it grew that fast
The worst thing is that if you add all the Chaebols together, not just the big three, the share of GDP is like 80 to 90 percent. It's an insane level of capital concentration.
Yeah I heard the share was around that much. But it seems that Korea doesn't seem to have lobbying like the US or such?does that mean that it would have been even worse if that were the case?
From what I understand, lobbying in South Korea is done through a corporatized environment. There's no 'free market' of lobbyists and consultants like in the US, instead each major corporation has their in-house lobbying department:
The primary task of government relations workers, otherwise called intelligence officers, is to reflect and work toward their companies’ interests in the face of legislative, judicial and administrative institutions. They should be able to prevent their top executives from being indicted or convicted, help scrap regulations that hurt their interests, induce the passage of bills and influence policies that would work in their favor.
They are the ones who regularly frequent the National Assembly and maintain nonstop contact with the police, the National Intelligence Service and the National Tax Service to collect information and pay the bills when any relevant figures, including reporters, get together. A whirlwind of confidential intelligence naturally converges on these intelligence officers, so it’s not too far-fetched to say that the information those workers acquire is powerful enough to determine the fate of their companies.
Yet, even though these officials are essentially performing the duties of a modern-day lobbyist, Korea bans any and all paid lobbying activities.
Criminal law stipulates that any donation to a lawmaker should be done “unconditionally,” which can be interpreted broadly, and even more loosely enforced. That means corporate government relations employees in Korea have traditionally had to walk a fine line between legality and illegality. “Covert lobbying has the potential to easily stir corruption,” said an aide to a lawmaker who asked not to be named. “Various secret expedients, including bribery, are mobilized as government relations workers do their jobs.”
It's a matter of emphasis, I think. You don't have 5,000 consulting firms to choose from. Instead you just have the consultant that Samsung or Raytheon hire to advance their interests. On top of any family connections and class-based connections that people develop through marriage, school and work. My impression is that the United States only has an extra layer to its lobbying marketplace, which the South Korean elites would rather not have to rationalize.
I would add that in the US there is also a lot of lobbying and "government relations" in house - with external lobbyists used for surge capacity or specific political connections
There's a good (related) book on it, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade by Ha Joon Chang
It was all built through collaboration between the state and chaebols.