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.
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.
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.
::: 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.
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Somehow we have “spent 5% of our budget to destroy 50% of Russia’s military” yet their military is also “supercharged”.
I thought this was the best investment Americans ever made according to the neocons? Doesn’t sound all that great if Russia is even stronger than they started
It's not polite to remind people of spurious arguments they made in the past that are now inconvenient. Come on, we have norms for a reason
"We have to degrade Russia and drive a wedge between Putin and Xi for our final confrontation with China"
Enacts a war that drives Russia permanently into the arms of China, builds a military alliance between Iran and Russia, strengthens the military and economy of Russia....
Nice work neocons! I'm actually glad Biden is such a dipshit and somehow stumbled into a situation in which all of America's adversaries are aligned and build military alliances. The smart hegemon of yesteryear would have isolated and picked off these nations one at a time with UN coalitions, but they fucked it up.
Step 1: Arm Ukraine to fight Russia, buy time with the Minsk accords as we know Putin isn't aggressive and likes to do things diplomatically if he can.
Step 2: Well, shit. There goes the JCPOA. Well, this is still salvageable, but it'll take a little more finesse, so once Biden is president things will be fine.
Step 3: Invent atrocity propaganda around China to try and isolate them diplomatically and provide a reason to re-enact protectionist industrial policies as we break a little with neoliberal orthodoxy; and we also arm Taiwan at the same time.
Step 4: Okay, fuck, the pandemic derailed things a little there but we're back on track.
Step 5: Start the Ukraine War! Russia will have collapsed by summer 2022 and we'll have Nalvany or somebody else in power to help us take on China.
Step 6: ...Russia will collapse any day now...
...
Step 15: Shit. Okay, well, China has recovered from the semiconductor sanctions. Uh, shit. They control most rare earth production so now we have to invest more in those...
...
Step 27: Goddamn it, with the counteroffensive failed, Ukraine's probably toast. This is still okay, as long as the 12th sanction package works and we keep Europe under our thumb and reliant on our energy supplies.
...
Step 36: ...okay, listen. What we need to do now is declare war on Yemen. Yes, I swear this has something to do with fighting China, it's really simple--
fast forward to 2036:
Step 287: Okay, so, our global hegemony is mostly degraded, our military capabilities are a joke, and climate change is really fucking up the mainland US, but listen, if we just invade Brazil, we can reverse our fortunes and finally work back towards fighting China...
Well you see, that’s what we journalists call blatant lies.
And now we are telling the truth. Why are you throwing our lies back in our face?
Does not check out. So called mainstream media "journalists" would never actually call them (blatant) lies. If they ever bothered to retract them on the bottom corner of page 37 of some printing three years after the fact, they'd just be "minor errors".