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.
The weekly update is here on the website.
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.
The bulletins site is here!
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.
Anyone knows if this is real or just cope?
No, this is absurd. Ukraine is actually killing 135% of Russian recruits monthly and Ukraine has already won the war by installing a clone of Putin as president. The real Putin is in prison in the Hague.
It's within the realm of possibility, though probably inflated. The problem is that they are not considering the casualties on the Ukrainian side. Russia has a functioning air force, artillery superiority, sheer numbers of equipment, and better training. Chances are that the casualties are somewhere around 2:1 in Russia's favor. Even if that ratio was flipped, Russia would still "win" the war simply due to having more available manpower and equipment.
This equates to what, 150-180k KIA and seriously wounded on the Russian side since the war began. This sounds like an overestimate but it's plausible in a world where the AFU has lost 500k by the same metric. "seriously wounded" is an ambiguous phrase. I could see that number maybe on the high end if you include dpr/lpr militia as well as Wagner cannon fodder, but not RF proper.
Some random NATO official is once again regurgitating Nazi talking points of Russians throwing bodies away. Meanwhile these dipshits continue to ignore Ukraine's own casulaties. If the war was a question of mathematics then why the fuck would you support a country 1/3 of the size to begin with?
Its nazi racist BS all the way down and if you even spare a thought over Ukrainian people you'd realize the EU gives zero actual fucks about their lives because it realy doesn't matter how many Ukrainians die as long as more Russians die in return so it is always the same shitty talking point.
You don't need to waste a single moment considering the shit they say really.
Now for a real discussion of Russian casualties my stance is it is completely irrelevant. This was an issue before the 300k mobilization last year. Since then Russia realized they needed to increase recruitment and be willing to mobilize more in the worst case. So the outcome here is settled. Russian society long ago accepted this cost, certainly what I saw from the Russian telegram channels everyone was even saying how it was a mistake to not have mobilized more troops to begin with.
So whatever idea or narrative there may be that Russia is running out of troops or that people don't want to fight, its nonsense. The best case scenario for western narratives is cases of actual Russian blunders and failures, Kherson retreat was criticized, Prigozhin had some small popular support from people who thought the military was too soft, not escalating hard enough and obviously incompetent.
I should also mention for some time now the consensus was that if somehow there was a "coup" to replace Putin, his replacement would be someone even more hawkish not less. I don't want to say Russia is holding back, but they are not treating this as WW3 either, its maybe 25% of their real potential in terms of combined active troops and equipment.
But outside of that let these idiots talk about Russian bodies all they want, a random NATO official is on par with some random twitter bot or an r/worldnews comment.
It's real enough for Estonians
I don’t believe him lol.
Every accusation is a confession with these guys
Alright, are the Russians Orks or Tyranids? They really need to get their 40k lore in order smh.
But for real, while I'm sure the Russians have taken some significant losses over the course of the war, Ukraine has lied about their combat performance so much I'm hesitant to believe that this number isn't inflated. The whole thing about the majority of Russian troops being untrained cannon fodder seems like pure projection too, obviously there were the Wagner penal units and the like which would probably qualify but most Russian troops seem pretty standardised while I've seen plenty of asthmatic 48 year old uncles with barely any training being deployed to the frontlines by Ukraine (even in western media articles).
Cope. is out of people and is asking for 500k troops. Where he gets them from? Don't know.
Ukraine military seeks extra 500,000 soldiers - President Zelensky
Ukraine’s army is struggling to find good recruits
Ukraine’s army is running out of men to recruit, and time to win