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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    93·
    1 year ago

    My Reddit account had to be manually approved today because I got mass reported by Israeli bots for posting the legal testimony of Vaughan Lowe for South Africa at ICJ yesterday. I just copy pasted exactly what he said, and that was too much for the Zionists apparently. It’s actually really interesting how he breaks it down. Even by the “rules based world order” Israel is committing genocide. Well worth reading, if you didn’t watch South Africa’s case yesterday.

    https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2024-01-11-in-full-vaughan-lowe-kc/

    what got me mass reported

    The exercise of the right of self-defence cannot justify or be a defence to genocide

    I should address the question of self-defence. In its Advisory Opinion in the Wall case the Court noted that the threat that Israel argued justified the construction of the Wall was not imputable to a foreign State, but emanated from territory –the Occupied Palestinian Territory – over which Israel itself exercises control. For those reasons the Court decided that as a matter of international law the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter had no relevance in such circumstances.

    Twenty days ago the Security Council affirmed yet again that Gaza is occupied territory. Though Israel refers to a complete withdrawal from Gaza, it has retained control over Gaza – over access by land, sea and air, and over key governmental functions and supplies of water and electricity. The tightness of its grip may have varied; but no-one can doubt the continuous reality of Israel’s grip on Gaza. The Court’s legal holding from 2004 remains good.

    What is Israel is doing in Gaza, it is doing in territory under its own control. Its actions are enforcing its occupation. The law on self-defence under Article 51 of the Charter has no application. But that is not the main point.

    The main point is much simpler. It is that no matter how outrageous or appalling an attack or provocation, genocide is never a permissible response. Every use of force, whether used in self-defence, or in enforcing an occupation, or in policing operations, must stay within the limits set by international law, including the explicit duty in Article I of the Convention to prevent genocide.

    South Africa believes that the publicly-available evidence, of the scale of the destruction resulting from the bombardment of Gaza, and the deliberate restriction of the food, water, medicines and electricity available to the population of Gaza demonstrates that the Government of Israel – not Jewish people or Israeli citizens: the Government of Israel and its military – is intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, and is doing nothing to prevent or punish the actions of others who support that aim.

    The point is not simply that Israel is acting ‘disproportionately’: the point is that the prohibition on genocide is an absolute, peremptory rule of law. Nothing can ever justify genocide. No matter what some individuals within the group of Palestinians in Gaza may have done, and no matter how great the threat to Israeli citizens might be, genocidal attacks on the whole of Gaza and the whole of its population with the intent of destroying them cannot be justified.

    And no exception can be made in a provisional measures Order to allow a State to engage in actions that violate its obligations under the Genocide Convention. It is unthinkable that a court would ever do such a thing. That is the simple point in this case: genocide can never be justified in any circumstances.

      • very_poggers_gay [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        32·
        1 year ago

        /r/worldnews instills an intense existential dread in me.

        I got perma’d after like 2 pretty mild criticisms of israel back in October, yet it still comes in to my feed. i used to cope by reporting the obviously TOS-violating comments that are widely accepted and shared on that subreddit, because i often got notified by reddit admins that they were suspended or banned…

        Really, every thread is a just a racist, zionist, mass murder normalizing, genocide denying circlejerk. And I wonder: How many comments are from real people expressing their actual views? How much of it are paid comments (is that even a thing)? How much of the comments are AI generated? Regardless, it’s scary to think how effective of a tool an online forum like that can be for propaganda.

        • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          21·
          1 year ago

          I remember first going on world news in 2016 and they were trying to justify the Iraq war after Trump said it was a mistake during his first presidential campaign. They were actually arguing that the WMDs existed. The levels of delusion were incredible.

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        12·
        1 year ago

        Thankfully I only stick to sports discussion and local subreddits on Reddit. Maybe some niche video game and entertainment ones too. I haven’t been on any other subreddits in years. I have no idea what the world news idiots are saying.

    • zephyreks [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      37·
      1 year ago

      South Africa is on a roll at the ICJ. This statement is what you give when you know that you’ve already won the genocide claim. That’s taken as a precondition for this statement.