news

Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades:
—
Early this Friday morning, 27-10-2023, the enemy attempted to conduct a landing operation on the coast of Rafah in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. Our fighters discovered the attempt, confronted it, and clashed with the enemy, which necessitated the intervention of the zionist air force to rescue their forces. They fled towards the sea, leaving behind a quantity of ammunition.

It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom.
Al-Qassam Brigades
Friday, 12 Rabi' al-Thani 1445 AH
Corresponding to October 27, 2023

i rewatched battle of algiers last night (goes hard)

but i dont think ive ever been quite so confized by a wikipedia article regarding how independence and the FLN actually shook out. can't find much about social programs besides "high human development index" either

what have they been cooking over there?

US Marine rapid response force moves toward eastern Mediterranean, sources say

A US Marine rapid response force is moving toward the eastern Mediterranean Sea, according to two officials — amid concerns over the war in Gaza broadening into a regional conflict.

The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, aboard the USS Bataan amphibious assault ship, was operating in the waters of the Middle East in recent weeks, but it began making its way toward the Suez Canal late last week, the officials said.

The Bataan is currently in the Red Sea and is expected to pass into the eastern Mediterranean soon, one official said.

The move will place the Marine unit closer to Lebanon and Israel as the US is warning citizens to leave Lebanon. One of the typical roles of a Marine Expeditionary Unit is to help civilians evacuate.

CNN has reached out to the US Defense Department for comment.

On Tuesday, the White House said it would be “imprudent and irresponsible” not to plan for a possible evacuation of American citizens from the Middle East, including Israel and Lebanon. But at the time, National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby said, “We’re not at a point of execution right now.”

But on Friday, as Israel expanded its ground campaign in Gaza, the US embassy in Beirut once again urged Americans to “leave now,” warning that the best time to leave a country is “before a crisis.”

Earlier this month, the US State Department raised the travel advisory level for Lebanon last week to Level 4: Do Not Travel.

More background: The US has warned there is an “elevated risk” of the war between Israel and Hamas spilling over into a broader regional conflict, despite the efforts of the Biden administration to keep the fighting contained to Gaza.

One of the highest risks comes from Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where there is an ongoing, if still low-level, exchange of hostilities with Hezbollah, a powerful Iranian proxy.

In 2006 during the last war between Israel and Hezbollah, the State Department ordered a non-combatant evacuation for American citizens in Lebanon, ultimately evacuating approximately 15,000 Americans in about two weeks.

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-10-29-23/h_1d760e7dde96328e0317c21aa1c45aea

US Announces $150 Million Weapons Package for Ukraine

The Biden administration on Thursday announced a new weapons package for Ukraine worth $150 million that includes ammunition for HIMARS rockets, air defenses, artillery rounds, and other equipment.

If it's going to eastern europe, it's not going to the middle east. Probably means less civilian casualties then, so good-ish news?

The weapons are being provided under the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the US to send weapons straight from Pentagon stockpiles. The $150 million is being pulled from funds made available by a Pentagon “accounting error” that overvalued previous weapons sent to Ukraine.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon said it still had $5.4 billion in drawdown funds available from the money freed up by the error. Based on the weapons packages that have been announced since then, the Pentagon has about $5 billion left to ship weapons to Ukraine until Congress authorizes more.

The Pentagon also released a fact sheet on Thursday that said the US has committed $43.9 billion in military equipment for Ukraine since Russia invaded in February of last year. Congress has authorized a total of $113 billion in spending on the war, which also includes economic aid, money for the Pentagon to replenish weapons, funding for troop deployments in Eastern Europe, and other types of spending.

President Biden has requested another $61.4 billion to spend on the proxy war as part of a $105 billion spending package that includes military aid for Israel, Taiwan, and funds for border security.

Wasn't it $100 billion? I guess they're adding an additional $5 billion just because

AJ screenshot of the jenin road Israel bulldozed last night, incidentally right next to the shrine to the murdered journalist

Context for the Venezuela situation:

Chevron Muscles Into Hottest Oil Patch With $53 Billion Purchase, it's in Guyana

Security incident in Erez in Gaza’s envelope, seems Resistance fighters encircled Zionist forces gather near Gaza borders

Al-Qassam confirmed targeting two israeli occupation tanks and destroying them. The tanks were attempting to advance from north-west Gaza.

Yup, israelis suspect infiltration, armed confrontations ongoing in Erez in Gaza envelope

Remember Antisemitism cow?

reposting my magnum opus, cause

Emphasis mine.

The Israeli military appears to have begun an invasion of Gaza, without announcing it, sending troops into the enclave in what appears to be its longest and most ambitious ground incursion since Hamas carried out cross-border attacks on Oct. 7.

Troops advanced into the northern part of the enclave on Friday evening, accompanied by a massive aerial and artillery bombardment, and remained there on Saturday evening, according to military officials. The military has not publicly described the operation as an invasion, and the maneuver appears more limited at this point than some experts had predicted.

The military has released only brief footage of its advance, and few Palestinian accounts have emerged. Gazan internet connections and phone lines were down and the cutoff of most communications made it difficult to assess the extent of the military action. Hamas’s armed wing confirmed on Friday night and Saturday afternoon that its forces were fighting with Israeli soldiers inside Gaza.

Palestinian telecommunication networks blamed Israel’s bombardment for the wide-scale blackout, which left most people in Gaza unreachable by phone. The blackout sparked fear and panic, according to residents who were able to reach the outside world, as people struggled to get information or check on family and friends.

“The explosions were happening to our left, to our right — from all directions,” said Helmi Mousa, a Gaza City resident who was able to use his cellphone, possibly because he had a foreign SIM card. “The anxiety has been devastating ever since the communications went black.”

[Continues]

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/28/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-news/here-is-the-latest-on-the-war?smid=url-share

Some developments in Argentina regarding the elections:

First, look at this video of Milei talking, he looks super unwell lmfao. He looks neurotic, out of pace, probably even drugged? He's kinda like that, sometimes, but this case in particular makes it a lot scarier. It's not looking good for this fash, turns out an entire life of hate takes a huge toll on your mind and body. May he die soon.

Second, some reconfiguration facing the elections, and they're both good and bad. The main opposition coalition, the neolib Juntos por el Cambio, is suffering from internal conflict. This is due to that fact that the main figure in the coalition, former president Mauricio Macri, forced a deal between his candidate Patricia Bullrich and Milei and he called all JxC voters to choose Milei in the second round, citing that "We cannot allow Kirchnerism to win again" (Even though Kirchnerism is weak at this stage). That's the bad thing: It could give Milei enough votes to close the 6% gap and hand him the presidency. But the good thing is that the coalition is crumbling. Not only they had a terrible election, but now this alliance with Milei has not been agreed upon by all parties involved. Some elements, including neoliberals, called it a treason and ordered not to vote for either candidate, others like the Unión Cívica Radical (which was, way back in the day, a social democrat party like the SPD, now turned semi neoliberal) are trying to break away from JxC and have called their people to vote for Massa. This last part is cool because if Milei is defeated in the second round and JxC enters a period of crisis and possibly destruction, oh that'll be good.

Love to awkwardly photoshop my Zionist propaganda on two and a half year old milk cartons.

I can't really decide which theory is true. Did Hamas actually bypass all Israeli intelligence or did Israeli intelligence let Hamas through so Netanyahu can bring Israeli society together and be in power for a longer period or a combination of both?

https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-13-gaza-strip-and-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem

UNRWA SITUATION REPORT #13 ON THE GAZA STRIP AND THE WEST BANK, INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Also a piece by our boy Bhadrakumar over the weekend: Biden gives booster dose to the faltering Ukraine war. He comes down rather pessimistically on the Ukraine War for Russia. He says that the war in Israel has essentially injected new life into the "democracy vs autocracy" conflict, with Biden pretty explicitly saying that both Russia and Hamas are threats to democracy and thus in some way part of the same axis. Poland's electoral changes do not herald any changes in their support for Ukraine, and Sunak eventually losing to Starmer in the UK also will change nothing.

Essentially, he says that the post-counteroffensive wobbling has been mitigated, and everybody continues to be all-in for the war, including large amounts of funding to keep the Ukrainian economy going. He says that the advantage that ATACMS gives Ukraine is meaningful, and so too might be the supply of Gripen planes, which can operate from narrower, shorter runways including highways, thus meaning that airbases need not be used. The United States has said that the White House is still going to deliver new and increasingly advanced weapons systems in the coming months (which are still under production).

Who can say now that what happens in Ukraine, which is 10000 kms away, does not concern the United States? Biden began his speech on Thursday on a Churchillian note: “We’re facing an inflection point in history — one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come. That’s what I’d like to talk with you about tonight.”

He went on to say, “American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it.”

So, Ukraine war is no longer about the Westphalian principle of national sovereignty and the UN Charter — or even about this being not an era of wars. It is actually about American leadership, American alliances, American values — plainly put, hegemony, NATO, exceptionalism.

Personally, I think this is much too pessimistic and if Israel is caught in a long hot war and the US is forced to supply large amounts of weapons to Israel and the US military bases in the Middle East then Ukraine will naturally receive less stuff, but nonetheless it appears that Ukraine's economy will not be the factor that causes the eventual collapse, due to all the funding. It'll be either the equipment running dry, or the lack of trained men. Given Russia's ability to adapt to new weapons systems used against them, I also think that the ATACMS will eventually be mitigated, as will whatever planes the West sends - the Russian military only continues to grow in power as best as I can see. Regardless of what happens, looks like the war is definitely still on for 2024 - any chance that the US might walk away with its tail between its legs and do the classic move of abandoning its ally as it loses, that possibility has been squashed for now.