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.
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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 Tuesday Briefing
Developing countries spent $443 billion in 2022 to service their public debt, which could have otherwise been spent on social welfare, infrastructure, or climate change mitigation. This is 5% higher from a year earlier and could increase by 10% in 2023-2024. For the world's 75 poorest countries, their debt service payments are predicted to rise 40% over 2023-2024.
Germany and Norway's Equinor have signed a €50 billion deal, its biggest long-term gas contract in nearly 40 years, supplying Germany with 129 billion cubic meters of gas up to 2039, or a third of the country's industrial demand. Norway supplies half of the EU's piped gas. Meanwhile, German business sentiment continues to fall, particularly in the construction industry, which is at its lowest since September 2005.
Iraq has held its first provincial elections in a decade, with a turnout of 67%.
In Kazakhstan, the Chinese company Shipbuilding Industry Corp., is exp-- wait, what? Shipbuilding Industry Corp.? Shipbuilding Industry Corp?! Oh yeah, let me call my fucking agricultural company "Food Growing Inc." We should have named Hexbear "Online Communist Forum" instead. ...anyway, they wanna build container facilities in the port cities of Aktau and Kuryk, and other Chinese companies also want to modernize and improve railway lines and their throughput in Kazakhstan and in Kyrgyzstan. There's also increasing air connectivity to China in the region.
Sisi in Egypt has won the presidential election with 89.6% of the vote, with a turnout of 66.8%, the highest in Egyptian history.
US Steel has been sold to Japan's Nippon Steel in a $14.9 billion deal, with several US politicians vowing to block it in a very non-free market move.
Chileans have rejected the new constitution drafted by the far-right. A year ago, they also rejected a left-wing constitution. So now we're just back where we started, with the Pinochet-era constitution. What a tremendous waste of time.
Colombia's drug war is flaring up again after the FARC, the largest armed revolutionary group in the country, entered peace negotiations in 2016. With this, the drug vacuum was filled by organized crime, due to a lack of alternative ways of generating money for many Colombians. The ELN, a Marxist revolutionary group, is training to take on narcotraffickers, as it was designed by the CIA and the Pentagon.
Several global maritime agencies, as well as fossil fuel giant BP, have paused all transit through the Red Sea until further notice due to missile and drone threats. This is a capital strike against the West to force them to address Yemen by targeting Ansarallah - and they are, through "Operation Prosperity Guardian".
I like it when a company does what it says on the tin.
Every Chinese state owned company is like that. Norinco is just "China Weapons Industry Company" in Chinese, Sinopec is just "China Petroleum and Chemical Works Company" etc