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.
Iran seized its oil tanker back. Get owned AmeriKKKan pirates
Can you help me understand this in ASoIaF terms?
The Pahlavi family being the Starks of course.
Fucking libs.
What part of ASOIAF do they interpret to mean “monarchy is good”? Pretty sure the whole thing is a damning exploration of the shittiness and reactionary nature of medieval feudal society. Even the best kings in ASOIAF history basically just didn’t cause wars and kept the realm stable, the worst were all inbred sociopathic monsters and sadists (Aegon I, Aegon II, Maegor the Cruel, Aerys the Mad King, Jeoffrey Baratheon, Baelon Greyjoy, Euron Greyjoy, Cersei Lannister), or drunk philanderers who let everything devolve into chaos like Robert Baratheon or Aegon the Unworthy. The kings of Age of Heroes are likely mythologized and not literally real (such as the Grey King, who symbolized a mariner culture from the East and not specific individuals; or Brann the Builder who symbolizes human-children of the forest cooperation & the things that can be built when two species co-exist and cooperate instead of war).
Basically the only places in the world where it’s a good place to live (for smallfolk) are Braavos and Dorne. Braavos is specifically not a monarchy, and Dorne is so isolated from the other kingdoms they just kinda chill and do their own thing. The Axis of Resistance is basically The Brotherhood without Banners, a ragtag coalition of broken and re-formed militias who resist military occupation through prolonged guerrilla tactics, who fight for an actual noble cause even if they believe it to be doomed - their leader being martyred over and over but keeps resurrecting via the divine intervention of the one true god (peace be upon R’hllor)
remember all that stuff about how Russian nukes don’t work? well, add another one to the “it’s all projection” pile
(archived)The aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles that have formed the land-based leg of the nation’s nuclear deterrent triad for half a century can no longer be upgraded and require costly replacements, Adm. Charles Richard, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said Tuesday.
“Let me be very clear: You cannot life-extend the Minuteman III [any longer],” he said of the 400 ICBMs that sit in underground silos across five states in the upper Midwest. "We can’t do it at all. … That thing is so old that, in some cases, the drawings don’t exist anymore [to guide upgrades]," Richard said in a Zoom conference sponsored by the Defense Writers Group. Where the drawings do exist, "they’re like six generations behind the industry standard," he said, adding that there are also no technicians who fully understand them. “They’re not alive anymore.”
I love using highly destructive weapons that I don’t fully understand!
Praise the Omnissiah!these are apparently going to be replaced… starting in 2027. And here’s a great bit about that:
The new missile to be phased in over a decade from the late 2020s are estimated over a fifty-year life cycle to cost around $86 billion.
On 14 December 2019, it was announced that Northrop Grumman had won the competition to build the future ICBM. Northrop won by default, as their bid was at the time the only bid left to be considered for the GBSD program (Boeing had dropped out of the bidding contest earlier in 2019). The US Air Force said: “The Air Force will proceed with an aggressive and effective sole-source negotiation.” in reference to Northrop’s bid.
You see, the free market ensures superior technology by letting different companies compete and thus allowing for the best solution to be picked! Except when, you know, there’s only one competitor and they just win by default.
The US Air Force said: “The Air Force will proceed with an aggressive and effective sole-source negotiation.” in reference to Northrop’s bid.
The USAF negotiation tactic “We’ll keep shoveling money in front of them until they ask us to stop” has worked wonderfully in the past!
they’re like six generations behind the industry standard," he said, adding that there are also no technicians who fully understand them. “They’re not alive anymore”
