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.
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.
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 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.
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.
I'm gonna wait and see what China actually does in the future
I don't know if I'm being silly but I merely think they're using diplomatic language to diffuse tensions in a currently unstable environment. Delaying an inevitable conflict does work in China's favor if China continues to gain strength while the US declines.
Are they not just trying to buy as much time as possible before the inevitable? I don’t buy that the CPC simply doesn’t understand contradictions
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.
To be fair, Putin’s Russia would have taken up on the same offer from the West too if they had been given the chance.
Unfortunately, China has something the US wants (a vast reserve of cheap labor), while Russia doesn’t and instead it has everything that made them a direct competitor of the US empire (raw resources, military technology, highly educated labor force). And so, it had to be shock therapy for the Russians.
Yep. Major L for global communism in the 21st century.
the naivety is absurd. extremely worrying
The naivety of the Chinese civilization is literally the main plot of the Three Body Problem series
major spoilers for the trilogy
The Trisolarians represented imperialist Japan, and now the imperialist WestIn the books, Humanity (China) naively believed that a technologically superior foreign culture could save them and help them evolve, only to realize that its intention has always been to invade and colonize Earth.
Then, they naively thought that the Trisolarians could be reasoned with, only to find out that their enemy has never been interested in co-existing with Humanity. In the books, it was made very clear that this has nothing to do with morals, the Trisolarians were doing what they believe was their only means to survive in the universe (read: imperialism is shaped by material forces and has nothing to do with the personal morals of its leaders or the beliefs of its culture).
spoiler MAJOR SPOILERS FOR BOOK 2 BELOW:
At one point, Earth managed to circumvent certain technological limits imposed by the Trisolarians (read: sanctions) and for the first time, seem to have surpassed the Trisolarian tech. The people on Earth started to re-gain their confidence, and even began to feel disdain about the invading Trisolarians who are already falling behind. They started to misinterpret signs from the Trisolarians as “being afraid of us, wanting to surrender/negotiate/bargain with us”, which ultimately doomed the Earth.
:::
:::
Netflix has a Three Body Problem show coming out soon. I am sure it will be an excellent series with high production value and great storytelling, but I’m also certain that the core message of the books will be missed. It is at its core a very Chinese story.
As an aside, there's also a recently released Chinese TV show adaptation of the books, which IMO is actually pretty good.
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
You can mock China for their comical risk aversion but they organized a detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran right before this shit kicked off. And I mean, that's only the tip of the iceberg. It would be silly to be satisfied with their methodical geopol shit but I don't understand what people expect them to do.
I mean I do actually, I think a lot of people expect China to act as USA II and do a counter intervention.
Overt diplomatic attacks against Israel and Us would be a start. How about stop posturing as neutral cowards and get aggressive in sanctions and the UN? Definitely take a stance and start denouncements.
Basically I want them to adopt KJU as their foreign minister
People here really are falling for diplomatic pleasantries while the PRC has been bribing Taiwanese military to surrender behind the scenes, not that the KMT-dominant military has ever been ideologically or politically motivated to fight for Taiwanese separatism in the first place. The long-term favors peaceful reunification, and given how so many ROC military with questionable loyalties has been caught with much more still undiscovered, I suspect the military will simply coup any ROC government that officially declares Taiwanese independence after being threatened with an invasion by the PRC. The ROC was a KMT military dictatorship that enacted martial law for over 40 years, so what's a little military coup in comparison?
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?
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.