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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Your Tuesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Thursday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Saturday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
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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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 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.
Your Thursday Briefing
Poland's new PM, Donald Tusk, has taken the public broadcaster off the air, and the heads of the TVP state broadcaster and Polish Radio were replaced to "depoliticize" them and have them provide "reliable information". The fascist PiS party has said that this indicates Poland is heading towards dictatorship, while the PiS-controlled media regulator has said this is “an act of lawlessness and recalls the worst times of martial law,” a reference to 1981. Polish nationalists have been trying to occupy state TV offices to protest.
South Korean carmaker Hyundai has announced that it is selling its factory in Russia for $77. Not $77 million or thousand, just 77 bucks. This means they will have a loss of $220 million. It wants to transfer its St. Petersburg assets by the end of the month. Non-western brands will likely fill the void; Russia is already China's largest car export market.
Ethiopia and Egypt have once again failed to reach an agreement over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which will ultimately produce 6000 MW, enough to turn Ethiopia into a net exporter of electricity. Egypt obviously does not want the downstream water to be curtailed, while Ethiopia wants to generate electricity, but despite repeated attempts to find a compromise between them, none have been reached so far. Ethiopia is not pausing its operations despite a lack of agreement, continuing to fill up the reservoir and get the dam fully online.
In the midst of an economic crisis caused by gestures vaguely, Ghana, the world's second largest cocoa producer, is having production increasingly disrupted by illegal mining and smuggling. To survive, farmers are having to sell their land to illegal miners, which is more profitable than growing cocoa. Ghana has gone from ~1 million tonnes of cocoa in 2020 to 750,000 tonnes for 2022-2023, and ~700 tonnes for 2023-2024. Ghana's government tries to increase the profitability of cocoa production by first buying the cocoa and then selling it on to private corporations and thus can boost prices for producers (and agreed to a 63% increase this year) but this is insufficient.
A town in Michigan has successfully fought the insidious communist influence of China by protesting against an American subsidiary of a Chinese company that wanted to build an electric vehicle battery cell factory in their town which would have provided 2500 jobs. Xi Jinping is reportedly day-drinking after failing his mission to destroy American democracy by establishing a surveillance network in Michigan via tracking microchips maliciously inserted in the batteries. Long live the gasoline car!
Russian Defense Minister Shoigu has estimated that Ukraine has lost over 383,000 troops, killed and wounded, since the beginning of the war, as well as 14,000 tanks, IFVs and APCs, 553 warplanes, 259 helicopters, 8500 artillery pieces, and MLRSes.
Allegedly, the Golani Brigade has left Gaza to reorganize their ranks
Today, we have:
And a speech by Abu Obeida, the main points:
funny name
Did you mean to say " day-drinking after failing in his mission"?
Yes, although I have since been informed by Xi that he has a new plan and he's going to Arizona next
o7