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.
Your Thursday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Saturday 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.
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.
Argentinian Congress at 2AM, people are getting more and more frustrated with the current government. I honestly didn't expect this kind of reaction so soon, almost the entire city of Buenos Aires erupted in protest mere minutes after milei's announcement of total economic deregulation.
Javier Milei outlines chainsaw deregulation plan for Argentina’s economy. The President plans to strike down or modify at least 300 pieces of “collectivist” legislation that he claims have “impeded, hindered an stopped” the country’s growth. . Pay close attention to the language he uses, apart from average neoliberal bullshit like "state persecution of businesses", he uses the word "collectivist", cold-war era shit. He's stuck in cold war mentality.
Milei's top 30: Economic reforms outlined by president in speech. President Javier Milei outlines 30 key reforms he proposes to deliver in a sweeping reform blitz aimed at deregulating Argentina's economy and modifying labour and rent legislation.
Some very important shit in there. Some are already saying this is outright illegal, but he's willing to push through with it. A few things: Rent Law is extremely important, because it gives tenants some protection against landlords. Without this law, landlords can set the value of rent as high as they want and renting becomes a mere "negotiation in the free market" between two completely unequal actors.
The elimination of the Land Law is very important as well, this law establishes that only 15% of the total productive lands in the country can be owned by foreigners and only a maximum of 1,000 hectares can be owned by individuals or corporations. This means that now foreign capitals can buy immense territories for very cheap for "investment", like they did under the presidency of Roca with almost the entire Patagonia in the late 19th Century. This goes in hand with the amendments done to the Firefighting Law, which deregulates it. Yes, he wants to deregulate firefighting. Maybe huge swaths of land can be set on fire on purpose, then declared "useless" by the state and sold for very cheap to some oil billionaire...
Labour reforms are pure neoliberalism: no indemnizations to fired workers, restricted strike rights and "test periods" for new workers goes from three months to eight months, which means people can get employed for eight months, fired and nothing will happen to the employers. The "test period" is basically when you work without a proper contract, and few rights.
All state companies and assets will be privatised, but first they will be converted into S.A.'s.
Healthcare will have no price controls, they can set it to whatever they want. Football clubs are now free to privatise: For the most part, football clubs in Argentina are owned by their own fans who pay a monthly subscription to the club's facilities and services, these fans also have a right to elect their representatives within the club, thus creating a (somewhat) democratic system. Football clubs in some countries of Europe, like England, are privately owned and operated as mere corporations, they hold no elections because they have no democratic institutions, see Manchester United or Manchester City, owned by big capitals from the US and UAE respectively. He wants to do away with this, because privatisation is a doctrine that is to be applied to EVERY aspect of society.
And more. But it's not all defeats after defeats. Today we were victorious against their "security protocol" as protests and blockades took place all around the country, and yours truly was involved in organizing some protesting. More on that tomorrow.
Tough months ahead. January and February are going to be incredibly hard. But we must count on our strenghts and our knowledge for today I saw people uniting and chanting together, even people who voted for milei and immediately felt betrayed. It's okay, they are victims too. We will find ways and mechanisms to survive and create solidarity. Capitalism is dying and we refuse to die with it.
That's so rad.
Best of luck out there comrade, singing ALW Evita in the shower for y'all.
Excellent work, comrade
Who are the main entities organizing these protests? Communist parties, etc?
In my view there are two main forms of protests in Argentina. The first, and by far the most common and better organized, are the Piquetes (Picketing). Here a plethora of different political parties, political groups, action groups, unions (independent or federalized), worker cooperatives and social movements of all kinds carry out a march and a blockade of bridges, roads or avenues. Every Piquete is different, it mostly works like a single-purpose Confederation with a somewhat descentralized leadership. The Piquete is organized through dialogue between common Piquetero groups, in these discussions a date is set, the goals and the demands that are to be made, after which other groups are also invited to participate if they so desire.
These Piquetes can have a large variety of different groups participating in different manners, as I said before. For example: You could have groups represented by the Trotskyist parties (like Polo Obrero) marching alongside an union of workers of the popular economy (like Unión de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular, UTEP), a peronist social movement (Like Movimiento Evita), people organized against police violence (Like CORREPI and other human rights orgs) and a federation of small Cartoneros cooperatives (Cardboard collectors), among other groups. The participating groups share a common demand but in the detail they might also have opposing demands and ideals, but they agree on sharing the same space and help each other out if necessary. They are very dynamic protests, full of colors due to every group carrying their own banners and flags but also due to the broad ideologies involved (Like you could have a group flying a flag with the face of Ché with a big hammer and sickle and next to them another carrying a banner with the face of Perón). The core of the Piqueteros is basically the downtrodden, the most marginalized workers who organized around their own groups to make demands. Here you will find from factory workers, dockyard workers, teachers, Comedero workers (People who set up feeding houses for the extremely poor) to cardboard collectors, it is THE underclass of Argentinian society, organized and motivated and soon with nothing to lose, and therefore nothing to fear. You can imagine how racism plays a role in this, the upper classes absolutely despise these people and don't want them around at all.
The other kinds of protests are the one you usually see everywhere, people gathering in plazas to make certain demands. Some of these protests are not organized (like the one from last night) by any political party or group, which means people took on to the streets on their own to protest. Others are called from the media, like literally, they are organized by the neoliberals as a way to show power, these include protests against Fernandez' measures during Covid pandemic (Open up, basically) and such, it is mostly made up with middle and upper class people in quite privileged neighborhoods.
Thank you!