Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn’t an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.
Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia’s oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that “align themselves with BRICS.” Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I’m not sure what exactly “alignment” means, but it could be pretty bad.
Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It’s easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).
Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I’m cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it’ll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn’t impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
A second ship has been sunk by Yemen for attempting bypass their blessed blockade of zionazi ports!
spoiler
https://english.masirahtv.net/post/48996/
(Image is of the sinking of the first ship, Magic Seas. A full video can be viewed here. Its awesome.)
Captcha ass photo series
Sir, a second ship has hit the ocean floor
Video of second ship pls
Why are the escalating their response to active sinking of vessels now? Is there a pattern to the ships they’re sinking? I feel like this started happening suddenly, did I miss something?
Only pattern for now is Liberian flagged, Greek owned bulk carriers being sunk in combined attacks with cruise missiles, ballistic missiles/artillery rockets, and water borne IEDs (unmanned surface vessels rigged with explosives), along with skiffs/light manned vessels circling the ships and firing RPGs. In the case of Eternity C, the crew was prevented from disembarking, some were rescued by the EU Navy mission (6-7), some were captured by Ansarallah/Houthis, 3 died, and an unknown amount of crew are lost at sea.
Aan for why these actions have restarted since November/December 2024, it could be that war with Israel is expected, to try draw the US and Israel in and remove attention from Iran, force the fight to be on two fronts.
I think a good way to look at this would be, what outcome would towing the ship to a Yemeni port serve? israel would just bomb it like they did to the one who surrendered a while back.
May as well sink it out in the ocean where it won’t block up a pier. But also, what other option is there? Once the ship disobeys, and is stopped, either you tow it in or sink it. I’d suppose you could leave it adrift but you’ll likely have to interdict it again once a new crew comes.
i can’t comment on any causation, but israel has escalated its attacks on Yemen in the last week, destroying ports, power stations, and other civillian infrastructure in Yemen. i’m not 100% sure about the timeline, but it could be a tit-for-tat kind of thing?
Used spoiler this time for easier scrolling 🫡
The opening frame of the video, did they drop the “problematic” bits of the slogan?
Or is it a different flag altogether?
Its the logo for their Media office.
The Media
The Military
The Yemeni
“Yemeni Military Media”
Thanks!
It would be a very concerning development if the sarkha were to be changed…
Firefox translated it as “Media Al-harbi Yemeni” so I think it’s just the media outlet stylized similar to the banner.
Cool thank you. What do you use for OCR translation in FF? I’m finding yandex is decent but it didn’t work on this pic.
I just highlighted the text in the image on my phone and ‘Translate Text’ came up. I don’t think I have a plugin installed.