Al Mayadeen Arabic:

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service announced on Monday that the United States is persuading Israel, "behind closed doors", to accelerate its military operations in the Gaza Strip, so as not to reflect negatively on the election campaign of President Joe Biden.

"The truth is that behind closed doors, the Americans are talking to Israeli leaders in different ways, urging the Israelis to speed up the process and avoid prolonging it because of the impact on Joe Biden's election campaign," the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service said in a statement.

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service reported that the United States, despite knowing that an attempt to destroy Hamas could lead to the martyrdom of a large number of civilians in Gaza, "mobilized the support of the leaders of Britain and Germany to implement this goal".

According to Russian Foreign Intelligence, the White House believes that this is "completely acceptable" and will not deprive Tel Aviv of Washington's support.

"The most important thing is to complete military operations as soon as possible," the statement said.

https://archive.ph/ncxuj

New China cope on the martial side but from an unexpected branch: The Navy!

The US Air Force is training to take down Chinese warships, but China's military has built a 'wicked' problem for it to overcome by Christopher Woody

The US Air Force is working on improving its ability to sink well-defended warships, a reflection of the US military's concern about the growing size and increasing capability of China's navy.

Strikes against maritime targets are nothing new for US pilots, but China's military has spent decades developing its air defenses, installing thickets of surface-to-air missiles on land and on its warships that now pose a "wicked" problem for US forces, commanders say. China has launched new, more advanced ships at steady clip in recent years, building what is now the world's largest navy. It has also sent those ships on more complex operations across a wider swath of the Pacific. That larger, more capable force was on display in August 2022 during exercises of unprecedented size around Taiwan following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to the island.

Were there a clash with China over Taiwan, "the first target that we're going to have to deal with is the ships, because you saw when Speaker Pelosi went to Taiwan what they did with their ships. They put them on the east side of Taiwan as a sort of blockade," Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of US Pacific Air Forces, said at an Air and Space Forces Association conference in March.

"Those ships can put up an anti-access/area-denial engagement zone, which comes from their surface-to-air missiles that they can shoot from the ships. So in order for us to get past those, we've got to sink the ships," Wilsbach said.

'Wicked dangerous'

Wilsbach's comments reflect concerns about the arsenal China has built to counter US military operations, which includes "the world's densest and most integrated air-defense system" along China's east coast, according to Brendan Mulvaney, director of the China Aerospace Studies Institute, which is part of the Department of the Air Force.

That air-defense system is part of China's "counter-intervention" strategy, which is "focused on not necessarily how to defeat the United States piecemeal but how to keep the United States and our allies and partners out of the region," Mulvaney said on a podcast in September.

China's navy plans to fight under the cover of those defenses, and its Type 052D-class destroyers and Type 055-class cruisers could extend that umbrella.

"The surface-to-air-missile systems they have on those tier-one surface-action-group assets is wicked, wicked dangerous territory — significantly more dangerous than anything that's fielded in and around Ukraine," Gen. Mark Kelly said of those warships during an Air and Space Forces Conference in September.

"If you then look at the fact that they have the same systems up and down the coast, if you look at what they can do in terms of jamming across the electromagnetic spectrum, if you look at their inventory of air-to-air missiles, and the list goes on and on," added Kelly, who leads the training and organizing of Air Force units as head of Air Combat Command.

China's military hasn't fought a war since 1979, and its new naval and air forces are untested in combat, but Chinese strategists have studied other wars and learned from other militaries — that likely includes lessons from America's use of "rings of air- and missile-defense management," ranging from combat air patrols by carrier aircraft down to each ship's close-in weapon systems, said Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia engagement at Defense Priorities, a think tank.

"I think it's fair to say that they may even be on par with us," Goldstein said in an interview in May. "China generally gets high marks in air defense, and they've come a long way, and they've gotten a lot of coaching from the Russians."

A weakness in China's naval air-defense network is the inability of its current aircraft carriers, Liaoning and Shandong, to launch airborne-early-warning-and-control aircraft like those that fly from US carriers to direct friendly forces and monitor enemy ships and aircraft.

Those carriers would likely stay near Taiwan during a conflict, protected by China's air force and the "very robust air defense and missile defense" of Type 052D- and Type 055-class ships, Goldstein said.

But China's newest carrier, Fujian, has an electromagnetic catapult that will allow it to launch the KJ-500 airborne-early-warning-and-control plane, extending China's radar coverage and providing "a major jump" in capability, Goldstein said.

Old skills, new focus

US pilots have trained to sink warships since the early 1920s, well before the Air Force's founding in 1947. That mission has remained part of the service's repertoire, even during recent ground wars.

"I can tell you from experience in 2007, although my unit was in the thick of considering waging warfare in Iraq or Afghanistan at the time, we executed a Pacific theater deployment and specifically integrated with the Navy and other partners," John Baum, a former US Air Force F-16 pilot, said in an interview in March.

"And of course, maritime strike was a training skill set that we worked on then," added Baum, now a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

The Air Force's attention to the maritime-strike mission has varied over time, however, and recent milestones in training and weapons development indicate a renewed focus on being able take down enemy ships.

A major exercise in November 2022, called Green Flag-West, departed from its traditional focus on air-to-ground missions with the US Army and saw Air Force pilots work with the Navy "on facilitating air operations in maritime surface warfare missions, air-to-surface," the service said.

In another exercise a few weeks later, Air Force Weapons School students worked with Navy units on the school's "largest-ever over-water joint counter maritime exercise." Col. Daniel Lehoski, the Weapons School commandant, said afterward that a war in the Pacific would be "a maritime fight" and that it was the school's responsibility "to produce graduates who have both the capability and confidence to build, teach, and lead in the joint, maritime environment."

A maritime focus was also evident this year in the major air-combat exercises known as Red Flag at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Red Flag 23-1 in February expanded its training area to include airspace over the Pacific for the first time. Red Flag 23-3, held this summer, incorporated a US Navy carrier strike group as it conducted a pre-deployment exercise. It was "the largest adaptation" of Red Flag in its 50-year history, Kelly, of Air Combat Command, said on social media.

Another Air Force official said Red Flag and other drills have made "an exponential leap" toward Pacific-focused scenarios over the past decade, adopting training that includes the "unique challenges" of "flying sorties over exposed ocean."

The Air Force is also updating its arsenal for maritime operations. It has tested a modified version of its Joint Direct Attack Munition, known as "Quicksink," to meet "an urgent need to neutralize maritime threats" and studied the use of other weapons in austere environments like those in the Pacific region.

The service is also looking for new anti-ship missiles. This spring, it announced plans to buy 268 Joint Strike Missiles over the next five years, which an official said would "bridge that gap" until it acquires more of the larger Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, which the Navy and Air Force both want and Lockheed Martin is scrambling to build.

New targeting systems have only made it easier "to find, fix, track, and target a ship," Baum said. "Now we have all-weather capabilities with new sensors on airplanes and also new weapons and fusing options available, so the targeting scenario, frankly, is much easier today than it was in the past, even 15 or 20 years ago."

While there are "different considerations" for finding targets on land and at sea, "from a technology standpoint, the Air Force has been committed to be able to hold any target at risk at any time on the planet," Baum added. "I don't think that that's any different considering the [Indo-Pacific Command] area and maritime targets."

Air Force officials know China's military will try to use the Pacific's vast distances to challenge their operations and are making adaptations, including developing more dispersed air bases and investing in more efficient tanker aircraft and in drones that could fly ahead of crewed jets.

But the recent focus on integrating with naval forces is a sign the Air Force knows jets and bombs alone may not be enough to sink better-defended warships operating over greater ranges. Wilsbach said in September that training by Pacific Air Forces has emphasized "stacking effects" to bring more weapons to bear.

"The stacking of effects starts in cyber, then there's a space, then there's an air, there may be a surface, and there may be a subsurface component, with electronic combat happening — all needing to arrive on the target coincidentally," Wilsbach said.

"In a dynamic environment where aircraft and ships and perhaps ground units from the Army, with satellites traveling through space, all have to synchronize in time and space so the effects occur at the same time on the target — so you get munitions on the target to destroy and hopefully sink the ship, as an example — that we are working on constantly," Wilsbach said.

No news from the Volcano front, the lava is holding steady at about 800 m below the surface. Residents in some neighbourhoods were allowed to collect their belongings. Some of them had left the town before the official evacuation so they didn't have much.

Regarding Iceland as a whole.

A hundred years ago it was the poorest country in Europe, until WW2. After nearly a thousand years of "licking death from a shell" the people were brought into the 20th century by way of massive infrastructure projects to turn the country into a fleet base for the Battle of the Atlantic. Since then the country has been under the heel of the US like everywhere else. Leftism is mainly expressed politically with traitorous left greens and spineless socdems. Although union membership is incredibly high since the country industrialized in tandem with the birth of the labour union struggle worldwide.

It was an ideological battleground in the Cold War, with leftists being spied on and harassed and barred from important jobs. Still, there was a kind of balance, the fabled Nordic Socialism™️

It got hit hard by neoliberalism after the fall of the Soviet Union. Deregulation, privatization and austerity has been the agenda of every government since.

Entry into the EEA has not helped, for example it requires that there be competition on the electricity market, which is just preposterous for an island with no electric connections to any other country.

Satellite imagery shows a water plant in Gaza City burned down amid a dire water shortage. - nytimes.com

Archive.today usually fails on the NYT Gaza war update page.

Fuck. I chopped off the final sentence...

Israeli tanks and other military vehicles were stationed less than a mile away.

US CPI prints 3.2% below 3.3% expected... Health insurance costs have a new formula and, oh look, they're down by 34%.

Completely unrelated, I'm sure.

The west's latest harebrained scheme to harass Russian oil exports: Weaponising environmental protections

Denmark could block Russian oil tankers from reaching markets (Financial Times)

Denmark will be tasked with inspecting and potentially blocking tankers of Russian oil sailing through its waters under new EU plans, as western powers scramble to enforce a price cap the Kremlin has learned to avoid.

According to three people with knowledge of talks in Brussels, Denmark would target tankers transiting the Danish straits without western insurance, under laws permitting states to check vessels they fear pose environmental threats.

Western insurance. The benighted savages of the jungle can clearly not be trusted to run an insurance company.

The proposal comes as western officials admit that “almost none” of Russian crude exports were sold below the $60 a barrel cap last month, 11 months after the G7 group of developed nations imposed the measure in response to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The EU is concerned that non-western insurance policies may not be effective in the event of an oil spill.

No they're not. They're grasping for straws to enforce their impotent price cap and making up bullshit excuses for breaking the rules of their own rules-based international order.

I just realised that I made this joke right before we learned about IDF cum extrection unit

https://hexbear.net/comment/4198378

Belize Takes Action against Israeli Government

"We have called on Israel to implement an immediate ceasefire and allow unimpeded access of humanitarian supplies to Gaza."

The government of Belize announced on Tuesday a series of measures with immediate effect against Israel due to its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza.

Belize "has repeatedly condemned the actions of the IDF in Gaza," the government stated in a press release, noting that since October 7, "Israel has systematically violated international law, international humanitarian law and the human rights of Gazans."

The government decried the continued suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, under total siege by Israeli occupation forces, with the necessities of life - water, food, electricity, medical supplies - cut off.

"More than one million Gazans are internally displaced as a direct result of the war," the statement said, while condemning the relentless bombardment by Israeli forces "which has killed more than 11,000 innocent civilians, mostly women and children."

Furthermore, it said, "We have called on Israel to implement an immediate ceasefire and allow unimpeded access of humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Despite our requests, Israel has not ended its violations of international humanitarian law or allowed humanitarian workers to alleviate the suffering of millions of Gazans."

In this regard, the government announced a number of measures, including the withdrawal of its agreement for the accreditation of H.E. Einat Kranz-Neiger, Ambassador-designate of Israel to Belize, as well as the suspension of all activities carried out by the Honorary Consulate of Israel in Belize and the appointment of the Honorary Consul.

In addition, the government of Belize suspended all activities of the Honorary Consulate of Belize in Tel Aviv, Israel, and withdrew the appointment of its Honorary Consul and its application for accreditation of Jonathan Enav as Honorary Consul of Belize.

These measures with immediate effect were taken "with the approval of the cabinet and other PUP members of the House of Representatives, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Immigration," the government said.

BREAKING

The IDF is claiming they found Hamas hiding in syringes. This was done by dastardly Hamas using HIStK technology. The procedure is named after the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids movie.

While Fetterman deservedly gets raked over the coals for his stance Israel, the thought occurred to me to check in on another Democratic senator - Kyrsten Sinema. Maybe this is cheating because libs hate her too. But I thought, eh, she’s nutty enough, maybe she has a not as dogshit take on Palestine. But nope! Every bit as bloodthirsty and deranged as Settlerman:

I lost track. Wasn't this debunked last week?

Never going to forget when American anarchists attacked me for saying this graffiti is a hate crime.

Musk did a favor banning my account 🙏

mr bai den ur fired

What is Hamas actually? In the west you get a cartoon image of bloodthirsty non-white terrorists, a mashups of every sensationalist trope about Isis, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, sprinkled with some Nazi stuff for flavour.

But what is the real life Hamas actually like? What is their ideology and praxis outside of national liberation? What did they do while governing the Gaza Strip and where do they fit into the context of class struggle?

The IDF cum unit is a direct insult to volcels. You can't be a zionist AND a volcel anymore

BNE: Putin holds a third oligarch meeting

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a late-night oligarch meeting on November 16 where dozens of Russia’s top oligarchs expressed anxiety over a wave of nationalisations since the start of the war in Ukraine just under two years ago, Vedomosti reports.

As reported by bne IntelliNews, there has been a tsunami of M&A deals in the last year, as leading Russian companies and people close to the government have snapped up the businesses of departing multinationals. Amongst the victims of forced takeovers have been some leading Russian companies like Tinkoff bank and Yandex that have been acquired, or are being acquired, by state-owned businesses of people close to the Kremlin.

This is the third time that Putin has called in Russia’s business elite for a meeting. The first was held on July 28 just after he took office for the first time in 2000, where the president famously made the pact: keep what you got but stay out of politics.

The article discusses the first and second meeting, then:

The details of the third meeting, held between 10am and midnight on November 16 remain vague, as few of those that attended where willing to talk, but leading Russian business daily Vedomosti reports that one of the topics of conversation was the rising anxiety amongst Russia’s captains of industry over the Kremlin’s aggressive policy of taking control of some of Russia’s biggest businesses. At the meeting with dozens of Russian business leaders they complained of the increasing number of nationalisations that have occurred since the invasion of Ukraine, according to anonymous sources cited by Vedomosti.

The sources highlighted the trend of state seizures of private businesses over the past year and a half as "frightening" and expressed alarm. While officials attempted to address the 80 business mens' concerns during the two-hour meeting, participants left with the impression that the Kremlin would also raise taxes for increased war spending, rather than tightening fiscal policies, and that would also cause them problems.

The stated purpose of the meeting was to discuss ways to “improve Russia's investment climate” in the face of extreme Western sanctions and create conditions for companies transferring assets to Russian jurisdiction from "unfriendly" countries. However, the meeting can be characterised as yet another addition to Putin’s pact with the oligarchs: “… and pay more taxes to support the war effort or I will take your companies away after all.”

...

The sanctions were designed to starve the Kremlin of funds to fuel its war machine and that goal has clearly failed. After reporting deep twin deficits in December 2022 and January 2023, the economy has made a strong recovery and the economy is on course to turn in 2.2% growth this year, while most of the rest of Europe is teetering on the edge of recession. “The worst is over”, declared Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin at an economic conference in October. The realisation that sanctions have failed to do enough damage to Russia to end the war quickly is starting to sink in as epitomised by a Wall Street Journal editorial on November 16 entitled “It's Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia's Defeat”, which admits sanctions have failed. “At the front line, there are no indications that Russia is losing what has become a war of attrition. The Russian economy has been buffeted, but it is not in tatters. Putin’s hold on power was, paradoxically, strengthened following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed rebellion in June. Popular support for the war remains solid, and elite backing for Putin has not fractured,” the Wall Street Journal wrote.

Russia has survived the first two years of a proxy war against the West, but analysts are unanimous that the sanctions will tell over the longer term. Putin’s third oligarch meeting was all about getting ready for the problems to come, not the problems he already has to cope with.

Russia has already transformed from an open, largely private sector economy with an open current account, to a closed system where the state’s share and interference in the economy has rapidly escalated. The threat of nationalisation is seen as a component of Russia's approach to punishing countries that have seized Russian in the rest of Europe, but well connected opportunistic entrepreneurs are also making use of the war chaos and the complete shake up nearly ever sector to enrich themselves and establish new empires, as bne IntelliNews reported in Russia’s new business elite.

The evil Palestinians watched Neflix and switched it to Arabic lol

~6m ago

‘Violent attack’ on Gaza’s al-Ahil hospital: Red Crescent

Al-Ahil Hospital in the Gaza Strip is currently under siege by Israeli tanks, the Palestinian Red Crescent wrote in a statement on Facebook.

The organisation said that their teams are unable to move to reach and treat the inured.

Last month, an explosion, which Israel denies responsibility for, hit the hospital, killing at least 500.

- Al Jazeera

I think bangladeshi workers are still going strong (unless i read an old story)

Chuds when Xi visits San Fransisco

From Bloomberg

Pentagon moving ahead on Israeli requests:

2,000 Hellfire missiles for Apaches

30mm chain gun ammo

57,000 155mm shells

400 120mm mortars

PVS-14 NODs

M141 shoulder-fired bunker-busters

75 JLTVs

300+ Tamir interceptors

I edited a Dr.Seuss propaganda poster to be of the current situation lol

Our posting spree has (kinda) ended, with us failing to breach the 3951 comment threshold for five consecutive megathreads. Nonetheless, last week's megathread was still the sixth largest ever, so not too bad!

Given that I've switched Country of the Week, it is now guaranteed that Hezbollah will start a massive war just to spite me.

The Country of the Week is Iceland!

As mentioned in the preamble, feel free to post or recommend any material related to Iceland, whether from a thousand years ago or yesterday. You can post it anywhere in the thread, but you can also reply to this comment if you wish.

If you're feeling particularly ambitious and want homework, you could take on any or all of these questions (no reward, but I'll be very proud of you):

• Who are the main political actors? Are they compradors, nationalists, international socialists, something else?
• What are the most salient domestic political issues; those issues that repeatedly shape elections over the last 10, 20 years. Every country has its quirks that complicate analysis - for example, Brexit in the UK.
• What is the country's history? You don't have to go back a thousand years if that's not relevant, and I'm counting "history" as basically anything that has happened over a year ago.
• What factions exist, historically and currently? If there is an electoral system, what are the major parties and their demographic bases? Are there any minor parties with large amounts of influence? Independence movements? Religious groups?
• How socially progressive or conservative are they? Is there equality for different ethnic groups, or are some persecuted? Do they have LGBTQIA+ rights? Have they improved over time, or gotten worse?
• What role do foreign powers play in the country’s politics and economy? Is there a particular country nearby or far away that is nearly inseparable from them, for good or bad reasons? Is their trade dominated by exports/imports to one place? Are they exploited, exploiters, or something in between?
• If applicable, what is the influence of former colonial relationships on the modern economy and politics?
• Is the country generally stable? Do you think there will be a coup at some point in the future, and if so, what faction might replace them?

The previous country was Lebanon. Don't miss @LargePenis@hexbear.net's two small AMAs on Lebanon here and here!

This is our Geopolitics Reading List so far! Please chime in with suggestions!

General Theory:

• Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson.
• Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis, by John Smith.
• Superexploitation and the Imperialist Drive of Capitalism: How Marini's 'Dialectics of Dependency' Goes beyond Marx's 'Capital', by Andy Higginbottom.
• Capital Volume 3 Lecture Series, 32 videos, 10-15 minutes each, by Andy Higginbottom.
• World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, by Immanuel Wallerstein.
• Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire, by Radhika Desai.
• Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy, by Radhika Desai.

Canada:

• Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination, by Tyler Shipley.

Chile:

• 1000 Days of Revolution: Chilean Communists on the Lessons of Popular Unity (I cannot personally find an online version).
• Santiago Boys Podcast, analyzing Allende's government and Cybersyn.

Lebanon:

• A History of Modern Lebanon, by Fawwaz Traboulsi.

United States:

• Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture, by Oswaldo Zavala.

Venezuela:

• Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions Among the People, a longform article by Steve Ellner.