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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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.
Greenwashed: IKEA’s Destructive Forestry Practices Revealed
IKEA, self-proclaimed champion of responsible forestry, has been exposed clearcutting Romania’s old-growth forests, leaving barren “lunar landscapes.” Despite promises of sustainability, critics slam their monoculture oak replanting as profit-driven greenwashing. Forestry experts call IKEA’s practices “completely of the mark”.
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“We love wood, we love forests!” So declares IKEA, the global purveyor of disposable furniture, in a glossy promotional video. Staying true to their Scandinavian rainbow capitalist branding, IKEA extols the virtues of wood as a sustainable material, backed by lofty claims of eco-friendly forestry practices.
In Romania where IKEA is the largest owner of forests, the Carpathian old-growth forests are not feeling the love. Drone footage from a forest near the Ukrainian border shown in a recent documentary by Danish state media DR shows how large square patches of what used to be pristine woodland has been cut completely clear, resembling what a forestry expert calls “a lunar landscape”. A total of 12 hectares has been cut down with IKEA planning to fell the entire forest.
Using a staggering 20 million cubic metres of lumber a year, IKEA is one of the world’s largest consumers of wood. If all the logs used by IKEA were put next to eachother they would reach around the globe seven times.
The lumber from these forests bears the FSC stamp, assuring the guilty conscience of eco-conscious consumers that the wood has been harvested in an ethical and sustainable way. The Romanian FSC standards requires loggers to leave at least one large old-growth, a so-called habitat tree, tree per hectare standing to help flora and wildlife recover. It is also against the standards to cut down trees with birds’ nests. Romanian standards are already lax, with for instance Danish FSC standards requiring at least five habitat trees per hectare. The drone footage shows that not a single tree has been left standing.
The drone footage tells a different story: not a single tree has been left standing in the clearcut areas. In another Romanian forest, IKEA left behind a single, severely damaged tree with a broken canopy—technically fulfilling the bare minimum FSC requirements. Jacob Heilmann Clausen, a forestry expert from the University of Copenhagen, criticized this approach, pointing out that a truly sustainable practice would leave many more habitat trees intact. He calls IKEA’s practices “completely off the mark for what you would call sustainable forestry in 2024”.
Destroying The Forest To Save The Forest
When confronted with the damning drone footage, Simon Henzell-Thomas, global director of climate and environment for Ingka Group, IKEA’s parent company, conceded that no habitat trees remained in the clearcut areas. He explained that habitat trees would eventually be located in the untouched portions of the forest—once logging in those areas is complete. In his words, habitat trees are implemented “on a landscape level, not hectare by hectare.”
Henzell-Thomas further claimed that IKEA has had a positive impact on Romania’s forests since it began logging there in 2015, boasting that the company has “saved” the forests and increased their density. “We love wood, we love forests!” he exclaimed, echoing IKEA’s promotional mantra.
Illegal logging remains a serious problem in Romania. Local contractors of IKEA has been fined for overharvesting, for damaging remaining trees and for constructing illegal logging roads.
“Newspeak Invented For The Occasion”
Simon Henzell-Thomas rejects the term clearcutting to describe IKEA’s practice of removing every single tree in a logged area. He insists that IKEA “improves” the forest by planting new trees to replace those felled. After completely razing an area, IKEA replants small oak saplings encased in plastic tubes, resulting in a monoculture rather than a diverse ecosystem.
Henzell-Thomas refers to this approach as “substitute cutting” and asserts that it is a well-established forestry method. However, two forestry experts consulted by DR had never encountered the term. “I think it’s a form of newspeak invented for the occasion to distract from having done unsustainable logging,” said Jacob Heilmann Clausen.
Defending the practice of “substitute cutting”, Henzell-Thomas claimed that IKEA is replacing invasive species with oaks. “It is better for the soil and better for the long-term health of the forest” he claimed.
Jacob Heilmann Clausen points out that an oak monoculture is certainly not going to improve biodiversity.
Moreover, the trees being cut down by IKEA are not invasive species but native ones, such as hornbeam. Henzell-Thomas claims that oak is “more suitable” for the mountainous area. Although not mentioned by the IKEA representative, oak also happens to be a more commercially valuable species than hornbeam.
The FSC organisation, of which IKEA is a founding member, refused requests for an interview with DR but in a written response that have stated that they “take input from experts seriously” and said they investigate credible concerns.
- Source: DR (state media), December 10th 2024
