Bulletins and News Discussion from December 18th to December 24th, 2023 - Chad el-Mandeb - COTW: Yemen
Bulletins and News Discussion from December 18th to December 24th, 2023 - Chad el-Mandeb - COTW: Yemen
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.
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.
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Colorado Court Disqualifies Trump From Appearing on 2024 Ballot
The Republican politician denied any wrongdoing and attacked the case in Colorado against him as baseless.
On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump is ineligible to run for president in 2024 because of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The State authority should disqualify the former U.S. president from appearing on the ballot in 2024 presidential election.
The Supreme Court, in a 4-3 opinion, found that Trump is barred under a provision of Section Three of the 14th Amendment that prohibits people who engaged in insurrection from running for office and ordered the Secretary of State of Colorado not to list Trump's name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot or to count any write-in votes cast for him.
Colorado's case is the first of many legal challenges across the country to result in a ruling disqualifying Trump from the ballot as the former president seeks the 2024 Republican nomination, also marking the first time in history that Section Three of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and attacked the case in Colorado and similar lawsuits in other states against him as baseless and anti-democratic.
The Colorado Supreme Court stays Tuesday's ruling until Jan. 4, 2024, the day before the deadline for the Secretary of State to certify its presidential primary ballots, pending a likely appeal requiring to include Trump's name on the March 5 primary ballot unless the federal justices order otherwise.
It's a near-certainty the case will head to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Denver Post predicted, adding that Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump's campaign, promised to file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court quickly. He called the Court's decision "completely flawed."
All seven members of the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by the state's Democratic governors. The suit was filed in September against Trump and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, but the legal battle has always been between the plaintiffs and Trump's legal team.
Section Three of the 14th Amendment says officials who take an oath to support the Constitution are banned from future office if they "engaged in insurrection." The Civil War-era constitutional clause is designed to disqualify anyone who took the oath of office in the Confederacy from running for public office. It does not explicitly mention the presidency and has only been applied twice since 1919.
The Colorado Supreme Court's majority on Tuesday reversed a lower court's decision that the president was not an "officer" under the Constitution; therefore, the clause did not apply. Trump has frequently claimed "presidential immunity" in legal cases against him, trying to also have the felony charges against him dismissed.
"We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits," Cheung said in a statement.
Nevertheless, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected his "immunity" claim on felony charges, ruling Trump's time in the White House did not give him the "divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens."
Trump's team was counting on the winding appellate process to delay the trial past the November 2024 election. Lawsuits citing the 14th Amendment against Trump were dismissed early by courts in many states, including Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Arizona, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Florida.
It is kind of bonkers that this is even a thing that they can do, obviously we all know the US is a totalitarian capitalist regime but even if we briefly accept the definition of democracy that libs have where democracy = able to vote for one of two similar candidates on one day every four years and having zero power on the other 1459 days, this is a pretty obvious violation of that
I couldnt really care less about it because it doesnt impact the left regardless, if we put up a candidate left of Mussolini then the CIA would put their ballot (sniper bullet) in the ballot box (their skull) if they got close to power, without all this law bullshit, but even so
It's also just silly, in 2016 Clinton won Colorado with a 5% margin. Trump isn't likely to win Colorado even if he's on the ballot, so this is just thumbing their nose at democracy and riling up the GOP base in every other state where Trump definitely will be on the ballot