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.
Tomorrow (11 January) at 10:00 to 12:00 CET, South Africa will be presenting their case before the ICJ.
And on Friday at the same time, Shitreal will be doing the same. Hm y'all wanna bet it is just going to be basically nothing but Nazi apologism and rapacious use of the hard-R like a million simultaneous Call of Duty matches on Xbox Live?
My prediction i that Israels response will basically be a mix of "it can't be genocide because there are still living Gazans" and "but look at all our humanitarian efforts!"
And also trying to argue that there actually are situations where genocide is a permissible and proportional response/there are situations where you definitionally cannot commit genocide no matter your actions.
Who knows, Diapereal might even suddenly claim that "South Africa is persecuting Muslims" just to cater to its primarily honky audience as a distraction, while Gaza is besieged and Mossad is busy deciding where in Johannesburg "the Hamas secret megafortress" is located
It doesn’t matter what the facts are or what South Africa or Israel argues. Whether or not they are acquitted is entirely dependent on what the US wants to happen.
Material change in the war is entirely dependent on whether the US pulls aid or not, but I don't think the import of this case rests entirely with the US like you say. Russia and China have a big choice to make in whether they support SA or Israel. Regardless of the outcomes of the case in the context of the ICJ, Russia and China will send an important message to the rest of the world with their vote. If they vote that yes this is a plausible case for genocide they will open themselves up to their own genocide charges but they will show they are serious about having a moral compass on the world stage. If not, they will take the easy way out but will undermine efforts to create alternatives to the golf course based international order. The immediate, direct material impact of this case is probably quite small, but legal cases like this are nevertheless relevant over the intermediate term. If these legal cases didn't matter at all, there would be a lot less effort to silence and erase them.
$10 that Israel argues the entire nation of Gaza is being used as a human shield.
What happens after presenting cases? There is a vote by different countries on whether or not the case has merit I think - does that happen right after these statements on Friday or what?
Guess we'll see then. A
will probably be held while "investigations commence".
"Investigations commence" being cracker-speak for getting shit-canned in the UNSC or dragged on for years because neither Palestine or South Africa, you know...
That lawyer who was on Democracy Now a week or so ago said he thought they'd probably rule within a week or so. It's probably not going to be instant, but also isn't going to take a metric eon like e.g. the U.S. Supreme Court does.
Perhaps sub-tones of "prosecuting this case in court is also literally the Holocaust against ~~Israel~~ Jews, so it's South Africa who is guilty".