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.


      • notceps [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        47
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        It’s not just german politicians out of morbid curiosity I went onto german reddit-logo and oh boy, south africa is putin, yemen is putin and just in general german people just have the worst brainworms.

        Top 5 Shipping Companies: Schweiz,Italien,Dänemark,Frankreich,Deutschland,China

        Auf China kann man sich nicht verlassen, eh klar. Die Schweiz ist sicherheitspolitisch ein freerider, ist leicht neutral zu sein, wenn man von verbündeten Demokratien umzingelt ist, die zwischen einem und Russen und Terror stehen.

        You can’t rely on China, that’s obvious. Switzerland is security politics wise a parasite, it’s easy being neutral when you are surrounded by allied democracies (fucking citation needed), who stand between them and the Russians and the terror.

        Dass Deutschland,Dänemark,Frankreich,Italien an der jetzigen Operation nicht beteiligt sind, finde ich aber beschämend. Insbesondere Deutschland und Dänemark sind maximal exportorientierte Staaten. Da riskieren mal wieder die USA und UK ihre Leute für unseren Profit, damit die Schiffe von Maersk und co ankommen und deren Crews keinen Schaden nehmen.

        I find it shameful that germany, denmark, france and italy are not part of the current operation. Especially germany and denmark are exportoriented countries. (Not for long anymore Heinrich). The USA and UK risk their people for our profit, so that ships from Maersk and company arrive and their crew doesn’t get injured.

        Frankreich braucht auch keine großen Töne spucken bzgl unabhängiger EU, die spielen bei freedom of navigation missions auch nur eine kleine Geige. Hacken zu gerne auf jedem irgendwo intervenierenden Land rum, selber wollen sie nur ihre eigenen Ex-Kolonien unter Kontrolle halten und scheitern dabei

        France can’t really boast about their part, they’re not really a player in freedom of navigation mission (Freedom to navigate where? The genocide country?). They love to bash every interventionist country, themselves they want to keep their little ex-colonies and are currently failing.

        Das am jetzigen Militäreinsatz einzige beteiligte Land der EU ist die Niederlande.

        Some bullshit about the dutch who are depraved people

        Edit: I would look for more stuff but holy shit all these little Eichmanns are just so fucking disgusting literally breaking my hitler-detector, they all thinks its shameful that germany is not killing enough brown people, that germany is not being more like the USA.

        Edit Edit: This set me off more than it should because I just haven’t been on reddit-logo for a long time and I don’t use social media in general but holy shit how fucking vile all of those people are fucking Goebbels and Göring would blush at these pigs wanting their trough to be filled with blood because their toys get delayed by a week.

          • notceps [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            21
            ·
            6 months ago

            Germany is having a pre ww1 German Empire moment, back then bemoaning that they were coming late to the scramble for africa and now bemoaning that they are coming late to the rules-based imperialism game. Russia is their big geopolitical opponent and all, and since it lines up it’ll be just a few years when germany unveils their newest innovation calling it Namaqualand 2 because they need a new source for Mezzo Mix or some dumb treatbrained shit like that. First as tragedy then as a farce.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              13
              ·
              6 months ago

              It’s hilarious that Russia, “with an economy smaller than Italy” is capable of fighting a real knock down dragged out war and most of Europe can’t even conjure enough military power to torment their former colonies.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          edit-2
          6 months ago

          Russia and “the terror”, which rather famously only invaded Germany once, and when they did they helped build a progressive, stable state that was an economic, scientific, and cultural leading nation in the world. And they invaded germany reluctantly bc checks notes germany invaded Russia, slaughtering every Jew and Slav and Pole they encountered in the “Holocaust of Bullets”, encircled Stalingrad and murdered a million people, and were then driven back to Berlin which was liberated from the Nazis. Europeans (pejorative)

          I find it shameful that germany, denmark, france and italy are not part of the current operation. Especially germany and denmark are exportoriented countries. (Not for long anymore Heinrich). The USA and UK risk their people for our profit, so that ships from Maersk and company arrive and their crew doesn’t get injured.

          When you don’t know that you’ve been vassalized and the Americans are doing it entirely for their benefit with England tagging along in a desperate attempt to seem like a real, functional country capable of doing genocide like the big boys.also, if they knew who us-foreign-policy crews most container ships they’d probably be less concerned.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        23
        ·
        6 months ago

        There was no real ideological break between the third reich and the fourth reich. The whole Red Army Faction campaign against the Nazis, which I cannot stress enough happened in the fucking 70s, fully 25 years after the War, happened because a new, post-war generation of Germans realized they were living in a Nazi state and tried to fight against it. The fourth Reich only began to acknowledge the holocaust in a serious way in the late 80s, and unfortunately the influence of the gdr, which was flat out conquered by the fourth reich, does not seem to have resulted in a serious shift in german foreign policy. Plus, they’re capitalists, by nature a genocidal economic system that demands the occaisional destruction of entire people’s standing in the way of it’s goal of exploitation and enslavement.

        • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          edit-2
          6 months ago

          Yeah. The capitalists behind Nazi Germany’s fascism got off quite easy in terms of prison sentences (those which actually received them) and were eventually restored materially. They and their companies survived just fine and prospered. Most of the corporations are still around today. There should be no doubt that fascism won in Germany, just like it always has in the U.S.

          People are waaaaaaaay too distracted by aesthetics.

      • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        36
        ·
        6 months ago

        My experience is generally that there was never really any reckoning with Germany’s past, only a cultural admission. The children of the 60s onwards may have rallied against the cultural silence surrounding the holocaust but much of social heirarchy stayed absolutely the same. Actually radical groups were mostly defeated, killed, imprisoned, or disgraced. And that generation of germans succeeded only in so far as forcing the country to acknowledge its crimes, but not really confront them, never mind learn from them. There’s a deeply prideful conservatism that often goes largely unspoken in Germany, that is open enough to feel cultural guilt at large, but not really willing to risk blowing up what societal bonds and norms they do have.

        In my own extended German family, I had at least one figure - a lynchpin of the broader family - who spent almost all his money getting people out of Germany as it got worse, and then deserting (possibly killing an officer to do so, although that was always murky) when he was conscripted, and fleeing to the UK. And even he dealt with one of his daughters marrying a former SS officer by simply giving them the lifelong cold shoulder, inviting her but freezing him out of family gatherings etc. There was this idea that to be so shamed by the anti-Nazi majority of the family was somehow punishment enough after the war, and as I got older I’ve never understood how you could look a man who still had his SS uniform in the eye and not think that a bullet was more appropriate than being disinvited from Christmas and weddings.

        So Germany has this odd and unholy mixture of acknowledging some sort of cultural guilt, like a quieter version of the performative land acknowledgements or virtue signally of US libs, combined with a sort of English, stiff upper lip ‘it’s indulgent to complain or make too much of a fuss’ attitude. And it results in a country that is filled with solemn rememberences for the Holocaust but no real material attempt at self-improvement or change on a structural level. It’s a shamed, but largely unchanged, nationalism in contrast to Britain’s more hysterical, embarrased nationalism. But it’s just as insidious and deeply rooted as it ever was in general.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      39
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Germany saw how embarrassing Israel’s legal defence was, and decided that they need to intervene because it was just too much for them to take.

      Israel accusing South Africa of being Hamas’ legal team, only to get Germany to be their legal team. Every accusation a confession.