Image is of Yemen seizing the first ship in its blockade of Israel (the Galaxy Leader) with a helicopter raid.
Alternate title: What If It Was The Bab El-Womandeb And It Was Just For The Ladies?
Ansarallah is a key component of the broader Resistance movement, backed by Iran, and has been a stalwart member in engineering the ongoing collapse of Zionism. It has steadily escalated both its rhetoric and, rarely nowadays, its actions, proving that the mythical "red line" might actually exist in the world after all, after going MIA in both Russia and China. It has been striking first Israel-owned ships heading through the Bab el-Mandeb - the strait that leads into the Red Sea and then to the Suez Canal - and, recently, has demonstrated its promise that any ships that intend to dock in Israel will be attacked. While this is really only half a blockade, the cost of going around Africa is significant, and Western insurance companies really don't like it when their ships get blasted by missiles and drones. Several shipping companies have already stated their intention to alter/stop shipping routes through the Red Sea, trying to prompt the West to find a "solution".
Despite US naval presence in the area, Yemen possesses the ability to strike the oil refining facilities of the Gulf monarchies, leaving the US in a very difficult position. If they attack Yemen, then not only do Western ships risk being attacked directly, but those oil refineries may go up in smoke depending on if they help the West - and global oil prices will skyrocket, in an already declining world economy - and it might cost several Western leaders their leadership positions, including Biden himself. A regional war could ultimately tumble into worldwide chaos.
Equally, however, the US cannot afford to lose Israel. It is the single most important American imperial outpost, perhaps alongside Taiwan. If Zionism is destroyed as a local destabilizing influence, then the Russia-China-Iran axis will find itself in a leadership position over the region. Israeli military losses in Gaza increase every single day as they advance further into the labyrinth death trap under the obligation to show some kind of military victory, with Hamas' strategy of attrition taking its toll. And Hezbollah sits there, having destroyed most of the border infrastructure, silently threatening the obliteration of Israel's infrastructure under the rain of a hundred thousand missiles.
As world attention gradually shifts away from the Gaza genocide, we continue to approach the brink.
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The Country of the Week is Yemen! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
::: spoiler 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.
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.
Excellent work, comrade
Who are the main entities organizing these protests? Communist parties, etc?
In my view there are two main forms of protests in Argentina. The first, and by far the most common and better organized, are the Piquetes (Picketing). Here a plethora of different political parties, political groups, action groups, unions (independent or federalized), worker cooperatives and social movements of all kinds carry out a march and a blockade of bridges, roads or avenues. Every Piquete is different, it mostly works like a single-purpose Confederation with a somewhat descentralized leadership. The Piquete is organized through dialogue between common Piquetero groups, in these discussions a date is set, the goals and the demands that are to be made, after which other groups are also invited to participate if they so desire.
These Piquetes can have a large variety of different groups participating in different manners, as I said before. For example: You could have groups represented by the Trotskyist parties (like Polo Obrero) marching alongside an union of workers of the popular economy (like Unión de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular, UTEP), a peronist social movement (Like Movimiento Evita), people organized against police violence (Like CORREPI and other human rights orgs) and a federation of small Cartoneros cooperatives (Cardboard collectors), among other groups. The participating groups share a common demand but in the detail they might also have opposing demands and ideals, but they agree on sharing the same space and help each other out if necessary. They are very dynamic protests, full of colors due to every group carrying their own banners and flags but also due to the broad ideologies involved (Like you could have a group flying a flag with the face of Ché with a big hammer and sickle and next to them another carrying a banner with the face of Perón). The core of the Piqueteros is basically the downtrodden, the most marginalized workers who organized around their own groups to make demands. Here you will find from factory workers, dockyard workers, teachers, Comedero workers (People who set up feeding houses for the extremely poor) to cardboard collectors, it is THE underclass of Argentinian society, organized and motivated and soon with nothing to lose, and therefore nothing to fear. You can imagine how racism plays a role in this, the upper classes absolutely despise these people and don't want them around at all.
The other kinds of protests are the one you usually see everywhere, people gathering in plazas to make certain demands. Some of these protests are not organized (like the one from last night) by any political party or group, which means people took on to the streets on their own to protest. Others are called from the media, like literally, they are organized by the neoliberals as a way to show power, these include protests against Fernandez' measures during Covid pandemic (Open up, basically) and such, it is mostly made up with middle and upper class people in quite privileged neighborhoods.
Thank you!