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.
https://www.cnn.com/cnn/2024/01/11/middleeast/un-security-council-houthi-attacks-resolution-intl-hnk/index.html
Ansarallah response:
https://twitter.com/resistance_sa/status/1745546981932474811
https://nitter.net/resistance_sa/status/1745546981932474811
EDIT: Apparently the resolution from the security council did not authorize the use of force.
Your brazen attacks, our military strikes
commercially vital? who gives a fuck that little maersk ladyboss can't buy a new shit painting.
I mean, the Suez Canal and Red Sea is commercially vital for our global economy. That's why it's a good point of leverage.
They fail to mention they could return everything to normal if they simply have Israel stop its active genocide and enact a ceasefire. That condition of the Yemenis is always downplayed or ignored, taken off the table as even an option. Should we have 0 middle eastern wars or 2? The US media lives in a delusional world where they can just have 1 in Gaza and the rest of the middle east doesn't get to respond.
you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?
UPDATE: little doggie bit after announcing it beforehand, something you definitely do when you have real military objectives
I kinda wish that just this was Ansarallah’s response:
The US's previous objective in Yemen was to kill as many Yemenis as possible. It tracks.
yeah I guess I should have said "military ~~objectives~~ targets"
to be fair, the UN of 2023 would probably feel the same way about anybody attacking german ships during ww2
Russia, China and every single state on the security council can go fuck themselves, the lives of Palestinians and Yemenis are not conditional, enjoy those supply chain price hikes you capital worshiping hogs
Yeah, big China L here
Why do they keep placating the West when the West acts in such blatantly warmongering bad faith ways? The favor will not be returned for them. They failed to veto resolutions leading up to Iraq and Afghanistan as well, but at least then you could argue China was too weak and had to bide its time. What's their fucking excuse now? It's pathetic cowardice.
Apparently the resolution was just tut-tuting Ansarallah and didn't authorize use of force. That's what I get for using CNN as a source.
Not that it’s a lot better, but Russia and China did not vote for it, they abstained.
If they aren't veto-ing it, they're voting for it. Abstaining is just how cowards vote Yes.
The resolution was written so that a veto would be seen as legitimizing piracy during peace time. It doesn't change any international law or open the way for an invasion.
Which parties would care about that, though? The US bloc is already at war with Russia and hell bent on starting a war with China. Everyone else in the world knows the score and what's really going on.
The resolution does nothing to change anything. It just reaffirms current international law with a side of "pleas let boats go".
Who stands to gain by opening a dispute over whether shipping lanes should be safe? Surely it is not in the interest of nations who rely heavily on exports like say Russia and China.
Who cares how it would be "seen"? Westoids? Who gives a fuck. Stop appealing to these people. It does pave the way for military action and gives US/UK rhetorical casus belli and a veneer of legitimacy
Russia China and Algeria are all on record after the meeting saying that the resolution doesn't change anything and it can't be used as justification for war. If the security council were voting on a resolution to start a war in Yemen they would have vetoed it. Instead the USA used maximum weasel words to try to get as close as they could to a denunciation without calling for war. Its just political posturing it has no real actionable value.
So if it’s just posturing why couldn’t Russia and China posture in a good way instead of a way that makes them look like cowards?
Shit. just refreshed and saw the strikes on Yemen. Yer right Russia and China are being cucks.
Spineless.
from https://nitter.net/AryJeay/status/1745571677579227547
🥺
Russia and China are pussies
The resolution is about protecting international shipping. Its worded in a way that if it didn't pass it could be seen as supporting piracy. It doesn't do more than say "boat stealing bad" and it doesn't change anything.
Just listened to Algeria's statement on it (one of the countries that abstained) and to paraphrase it said "Security in the red sea is important and Algeria respects that will which defies national borders and all countries must be united on it to make sure trade flows, but sadly our primary concerns in your order weren't taken into consideration, we consider all military interventions in the region especially in Yemen must be taken with caution, any intervention can hold dangers that will destroy all the efforts lead by the UN to calm the situation in the region, truth is that the last negotiations between Ansarallah and Saudi Arabia had opened hope in our region to deescalate the situation and bring peace and stability on the people of Yemen. Second thing is that my crowd worked hard with the decision makers to bring up the importance of not ignoring the logical link that we all see, the link of Ansarallah attacks on the ships and what was happening for 3 months on Gaza, Ansarallah say that themselves, also the council can not ignore the feelings of the Arab and Islamic world because of the indiscriminate bombing of innocent civilians and the massacres committed on women and children that killed 23000 Palestinian civilians in 3 months, and I don't like using these numbers, we have 300 dead every day, this is the deadliest conflict in the world. In the end, if you need a relation between the decision done currently and what's currently happening in Gaza, last Wednesday were we 15? no there was a 16th member, the representative of the occupier, the representative of the executioner in Gaza, so for that we prefer abstaining to this decision, because we do not want to be related to a text that ignores the lives of 23000 souls that were lost in these 3 months".
I just read that it didn't authorize use of force, which is probably why they abstained instead of vetoed.