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.reuters.com/world/biden-us-does-not-support-taiwan-independence-2024-01-13/
U.S. does not support Taiwan independence, Biden says
It’s very clear when Liu Jianchao met with Blinken the day before Taiwan’s election.
The consensus between the US and China about how the election would affect cross-strait relations had already been decided before the election was even held.
The consensus being the US will continue to provoke and send weapons to Taiwan while tellling China “don’t worry bro those cruise missiles and patriot SAMs are all shit anyway right?”
Meanwhile the Chinese will continue to act like liberal fools with increasingly worrying signs of irreversible brainworms. I was going to post about that meeting but there is no point being overly negative. But I’ll just say, this is communist party. The fucking communist party is saying this shit while the current timeline is we literaly have an ongoing genocide trial against an American sponsored actor.
“China remains firm in pursuing an independent foreign policy of peace and is committed to peaceful development,” Liu said. “President Xi Jinping reiterated during his recent visit to the United States that China will not fight a cold war or a hot war with anyone.”
Liu assured his audience that China does not seek to alter the world order.
“China does not seek to change the current international order, still less reinvent the wheel by creating a new international order,” Liu said. “We are one of the builders of the current world order and have benefited from it.”
Beijing’s goal, Liu said, is to “deliver a better life for the Chinese people.”
“So we don’t really have any hidden agenda. Overtaking the United States is not our goal,” he said.
Liu signaled that Beijing could move away from its “wolf-warrior” diplomacy that critics say has alienated China from the West.
“I think that the fundamental goal of China’s diplomats would be to contribute their efforts in making sure that China’s relations with other countries be warm and cooperative,” Liu said. “And by that, we mean that we try to create a favorable international environment for China’s modernization.”
Lol try being warm and cooperative when people when they’re being bombed to shit, what they needed is material and maybe even military help not… whatever this is.
China continues to take the hammer and smash the point on anyone thinking there is some grand strategy or plan to fight the US. No the UNSC vote is their true nature. They wont fight anyone anywhere, they clearly saying this over and over. Heck I’d even be worried if I was in Iran too, don’t put too many chips on betting China will do anything but send angry letters about how this is not ok guys lol.
They say Taiwan is a red line, meanwhile the US is ready for Pelosi incident 2.0.
“China does not seek to change the current international order, still less reinvent the wheel by creating a new international order,” Liu said. “We are one of the builders of the current world order and have benefited from it.”
China doesn’t really have a choice but to fight the US either way, regardless of what they say about trying to be besties with the West.
Beijing’s goal, Liu said, is to “deliver a better life for the Chinese people.”
And this is why. The US cannot allow this to happen. It’s not a case of “Oh, we’ll just keep the current order in place but we’ll just be friendly communists in it. Multipolarism? Never heard of it.” The very existence of Chinese development, both inside and outside of China, is an existential threat to the US and imperialism everywhere. They exist in contradiction. One must win; the other must lose.
This is why I don’t really care about the rhetoric of the Communist Party. It doesn’t matter what they say, or what their intentions are - history will march on all the same, events will develop, and they will be forced to respond to them. They will respond in line with their material interests. Those material interests will be diametrically opposed to the United States. Therefore, conflict develops, while everybody is fawning about what great friends China and the US are and can be.
Shit like this is exactly why the Global South admires Putin and Russia more. You don’t see rebels waving Chinese flags for a reason.
Yeah it’s pretty pathetic that Iran and Russia are leading the progressive fight against the imperialists and China is being a cucked little coward about it.
Third world isn’t going to forget this, and a communist could have been leading the charge but instead it’s Liberal states doing it. Pathetic. Complete whiffed opportunity, communism had a great opportunity to advance that they selfishly failed to grasp
The consensus being the US will continue to provoke and send weapons to Taiwan while tellling China “don’t worry bro those cruise missiles and patriot SAMs are all shit anyway right?”
This literally means nothing if the ROC military will not fight. Taiwan doesn’t have the Taiwanese equivalent of Azov neonazi fascists or genocidal religious Zionists that will fight. Taiwanese separatists are largely libs who try to dodge conscription, the ROC military is still a KMT institution, and everyone else just wants the status quo. Let’s look at the recent election where the pro-independence president won with only 40% of the vote. Does that look like a political environment where Taiwanese independence would actually be declared without massive backlash from the military and the people in general? The last DPP president who won with that margin winded up in jail on corruption charges.
And the rest of your comment is just you repeatedly taking their diplomatic niceties at face value. Russia also abstained from the UNSC, so is that their “true nature” as well?
They say Taiwan is a red line, meanwhile the US is ready for Pelosi incident 2.0.
The last Pelosi incident made the DPP ate shit in the local elections, so I don’t think it’s disadvantageous if the US’s actions cause the DPP to eat more shit.
