Image is of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of Ansarallah.
The death of Zionism has just massively accelerated.
previous preamble
BRICS has expanded to include Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Argentina is currently experiencing technical difficulties due to the election of the ancap clown Milei - once he's out of office, maybe they can try again.
I don't really have much to say about this one way or another. BRICS has, so far, made only nervous and small steps towards challenging US hegemony. This isn't really that unexpected, as only China and Russia are the real "true believers" in ending US hegemony (and even then, China's government either believes, or is pretending to believe, that reconciliation is still possible). Brazil, India, and South Africa are less enthralled by the concept of dethroning the US, most especially India, who had to make a firm decision in 2023 whether they were going to be on the side of America, or on the side of the Global South, and chose the former, strengthening their military relationship. They're still best of friends with Russia, but they are very obviously the sussy imposter of the BRICS group.
The prospects of BRICS are only really loosely correlated with the prospects of multipolarism, though. It's not a process that hinges on BRICS's successes or failures. It is coming because the contender states (in Desai's terminology) are irreversibly rising, and the US is irreversibly falling. If it will not be BRICS that leads, it will be a different organization. A better world is not only possible, but inevitable - unfortunately for the US.
I'm taking a week off the updates because I've been swamped lately, and also feel the need to reconfigure (and find new) sources. Needless to say that I've grown tired of Financial Times headlines, even if they do represent the actual views of the bourgeoisie.
The Country of the Week is Ethiopia! 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.
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.
I hate men who say Asian women are easy. We are not. The women you see on social media that want only white men in Asia are club girls who are often drunk and very shallow. Sometimes you also see poor women who see white men as having lots of money. The rest of us do not want you if you approach us with your terrible fashion sense and bad body odor.
One of them approached me today and asked if I like white men. I told him no and he look like I just slapped him.
what an absolutely dogshit pick-up line
I still failed to see how “”traditional asian women” are easy. My grandmother literally ran the household and managed finances. She was also the one threatening my grandfather to be sent to a old folk home if he misbehaved.
IA lot of people think that traditional gender role is ''based'' because women are docile don't understand that there are also role for men that modern retvrn people can't even dream to accomplish.
You should slap him, with a bear mace
Mao's revolution and its consequences have been very good for women
I'm more laughing since it's also accurate in my direct family here in Alaska and my extended family in Korea.
that deserves a slappin'
Are you in an Asian country?
I mean, it is true that there is a white worshipping culture and negative stereotype against their own in Asia (at least among Chinese). Like, if you’re white in China, you’re going to have it very easy. If you’re making business deals, “Westerners are more trustworthy!” compared to our “local merchants who only like to deceive people.” This permeates even at very professional level (at least in my occupation, which is full of highly educated people).
I think the real turning point really happened when Trump became president. That shattered a lot of Chinese people’s image of the West lol. Trump has probably done more to damage the white people’s image in Asia compared to any other Western leaders before him. That, and the West screwing up the Covid response, has had a palpable impact on how Chinese people perceive the Western world.
This is especially real in Private ESL Schools where sometime Asian Teachers can be replaced by White Teachers from eastern Europe who can barely speak English because the latter is white.
the image of the west didn't really shattered that much except for the US. There are still a lot of people who still perceive Australia, New Zealand and Canada as better than China, partly due to the lack of geopolitical knowledge
Not anymore. I am from Taiwan and have been living in Latin America for the last five years. I still get approached by white foreigners and remember how much I hated them in Taiwan. I always thought Mainland China had it worse than we do. Most Taiwanese have that attitude towards Japan and Japanese in Taiwan can be just as bad.
I once spent a few months in Hong Kong for work. The first 2-3 weeks were… awkward since most of my coworkers just assumed since I was a white guy from America I was obviously there just to meet local women (I wasn’t - I was in a situationship back home and I didn’t even really want to be there, I was forced to go). I don’t blame them for that assumption, because literally every other western dude there was there for that reason. But once everyone caught on that I wasn’t there for that things were much more chill and I had a pretty good time with everyone after that.
Vietnam is like my dream vacation and as a white presenting guy I'm constantly worried about talking about it because of that stereotype.
Simply bring a group of people in relationships
My dream involves a motorcycle and a month lol
please tell me you snickered at him while saying no to the creepiest conversation starter ever
My nose was curled because he smelled bad
I do find it odd when Asian American incels have this weird hate cuck fantasy where Asian girls are throwing themselves at white guys at every corner. In my experience, most Asian girls tend to talk down on white guys and avoid them. I swear people need to stop watching porn for their own mental health.
They need to delete reddit/ifunny
Next time just slap him it'll be more satisfying and he deserves it.