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.

  • 1000mH [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    43·
    6 months ago

    Pentagon failed to track Ukraine arms worth more than $1bn, says watchdog | Financial Times

    The Pentagon failed to properly track more than $1bn worth of weapons the US provided to Ukraine, according to a watchdog’s report that could fuel concerns about whether the arms had been diverted from Kyiv at a time when Congress is weighing whether to send more military aid.

    The report from the defence department’s inspector-general did not offer an assessment on whether the weapons had been diverted but found that the US did not appropriately monitor at least $1bn of $1.7bn in weapons sent to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour nearly two years ago.

    The exports covered by the report include shoulder-fired missiles such as Javelins and Stingers, switchblade or “kamikaze” drones and night vision goggles.

    The equipment that was designated for so-called enhanced end-use monitoring covers only a small part of the more than $44bn in lethal aid the US has provided since Russia’s invasion.

    “It was beyond the scope of our evaluation to determine whether there has been diversion of such assistance,” said the report, which was published on Thursday. It added that the high rates of missing or unaccounted for weapons “may increase the risk of theft of diversion”.

    A defence department official said: “There is no credible evidence of illicit diversion of US-provided advanced conventional weapons from Ukraine.”

    The inspector-general’s report shows that the practices employed by US diplomats and military officials to track weapons fell short of the stringent monitoring processes the Biden administration has cited as part of its argument for additional assistance. That is likely to intensify concerns in Congress and the American public about how taxpayer funds are being spent.

    The report found that US diplomats and military officials experienced logistical and personnel issues that contributed to their shortfalls in tracking aid inside Ukraine as well as neighbouring Poland, where the US maintains a logistics hub.

    It also assessed that even if the Pentagon improves its monitoring methods, tracking changes to the inventory will continue to be challenging.

    The debate on approving more assistance for Ukraine has grown increasingly fractious in Congress, especially among Republicans. House and Senate Republicans have demanded that President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats agree to a border security and immigration package in order to pass tens of billions in additional assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

    Republicans have demanded that the White House provide more accountability for the aid as well as lay out a strategy for US support for Ukraine and a pathway to resolving the conflict.

    yea

    • zephyreks [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      17·
      6 months ago

      Logistical and personnel issues in distributing more than a billion dollars? You’d think part of that billion dollars would include logistics and personnel…

    • carpoftruth [any, any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
      17·
      6 months ago

      Wait so the US has sent 44b in weapons to ukraine, this audit was related to 1.7b worth of weapons that were marked for enhanced monitoring, and less than half was monitored per that standard.

      Europe is in for some excitement in the future

      • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        16·
        6 months ago

        me: “feeling a compulsion to engage in risky self-destructive behaviors”

        therapist: “like what?”

        me: “flying over central and eastern Europe on a 737 Max”