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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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.
Oh shit, has The Adjuster got got?
https://wjactv.com/news/local/reports-altoona-man-held-questioning-killing-unitedhealthcare-ceo-nypd-pennsylvania-new-york-brian-thompson
First Starbucks, then McDonalds… Looks like their biggest mistake was ignoring the boycott….
In all seriousness, a McDonalds in rural PA is like a gathering place for gossipy, elderly reactionaries. They meet at those places and watch fox news together all morning. Going there was a mistake.
In a sense given the part of PA he was in the mask actually makes you stand out MORE not less because masks are gonna be super fucking rare in that area and even before this it’s the kind of place where people will give you the “why are you wearing that are you a doctor”
Ironically I wouldn’t be surprised if his chances would have better literally being in Brooklyn because while masking is still like 1 percent of people that’s still gonna be a regular thing you will see in crowds of hundreds of people. (Whereas in that part of pa it’s probably closer to 0.1 percent masking rate)
It looks bad. Dude had a gun, a silencer, and fake IDs.
Not getting rid of evidence when you’ve had the time also incredible mistake. Also I would just lay low for a while, avoid public spaces as much as possible
Pretty mind-boggling collection of mistakes if it does end up being him
Idk. You read about a lot of historical crimes, political assassins, commandos, robbers, people get got like this all the time. Like someone recognizes them in a diner on the far side of the country and calls the pigs.
The reverse also true - the absolute bungling of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand… until randomly another opportunity arose.
I get that he didn’t want to ditch the gun too soon, so it wouldn’t easily be found by the NYPD, but if this is him, he waited too long. How do you plan the crime so perfectly, and then screw up the getaway like this?
If I was going to conduct an assassination, which I wouldn’t, I would probably get a hack-saw or a cheap angle-grinder and reduce the weapon to 30 or 40 pieces of scrap distributed across the tristate area ASAP.
Just throw into a decent sized body of water. That’s literally all you need to do.
decent sized had better be pretty big though
Or literally any body of water that isn’t the lake in central park
NYC is next to a pretty big body of water called the Atlantic Ocean. Or, as I saw someone else suggest, take the ferry to NJ and toss it in the middle of the Hudson.
maybe he wanted to get caught
god dammit Adjuster if you wanted to get caught just kill another CEO more sloppily
Oh my God, the killer was Arsène Lupin! He’s going to give a lecture at trial on the stand, then escape before sentencing!
After the last couple of weeks this wouldn’t even surprise me that much
Seriously, given the rest of his actions, this makes the most sense. Not disposing of evidence and going to a McDonalds? I think you’re right.
In all seriousness, apparently he had a manifesto on him so it’s possible he figured this was inevitable and wanted to get his message out for when it actually happened; maybe dude has terminal cancer or something and didn’t have the financial means to leave the country.
What’s curious to me was whether he planned on anonymously releasing the manifesto online if he ended up not getting caught after all (but in this case he would run into the problem of struggling to prove the manifesto came from him)
That makes way more sense to me than that he just forgot to destroy easily-destroyable evidence with several days to do so, not to mention the opportunity to prepare in advance. Might be that he wanted to hold onto proof that he was the guy so that he could get the credit and have the spotlight. This is also a good way to get taken alive. They have to take him into custody for verification, at which point they aren’t going to have the opportunity for a cop to gun him down in the street.
If he was trying to maximize earned media, he executed perfectly. I’d also buy the idea that he’s terminally ill and doesn’t care one way or the other. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Did they go to the McDonalds with a gun, silencer, and fake IDs lmao?
Yes, he did everything right and would have evaded the entire US surveillance state if he didn’t
Fail to get rid of the evidence
Stop in Pennsylvania
Should have kept going ordered a pizza from a burner phone, and most importantly not be the only person wearing a mask within 25 miles
Of corse he was ratted out while at mccdonalds
Bold as brass just going to fucking McDonald’s while the most wanted man in the US.
dumb as bricks.
coming back to this just to say, having him in custody vs getting gunned down in NYC means he could get off on jury nullification. For all the scenarios he gets caught this might be best, although I would expect him to get epsteined before it goes to trial
I think this is a good time to remember that online is not real life. Most boomers’ brains have been so hopelessly melted by decades upon decades of American exceptionalism propaganda (and that goes for non-online non-boomers as well), so whoever is the rat is just following the song and dance they’ve been conditioned to perform
I hope the rat collects their bounty cheque only to get hit by a bus and then get their health insurance denied
They got-a Luigi Nooooo!
I literally told my partner last night that “He probably just went to Pennsylvania or something.”