Bulletins and News Discussion from October 14th to October 20th, 2024 - Paper Tigers
Bulletins and News Discussion from October 14th to October 20th, 2024 - Paper Tigers
Image is a frame taken from this video of Iranian missiles raining down on Israel without interception due to a weak and depleted air defense system after a year of war and genocide.
Mao, 1956:
Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn't. It is very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe the United States is nothing but a paper tiger.
When we say U.S. imperialism is a paper tiger, we are speaking in terms of strategy. Regarding it as a whole, we must despise it. But regarding each part, we must take it seriously. It has claws and fangs. We have to destroy it piecemeal. For instance, if it has ten fangs, knock off one the first time, and there will be nine left, knock off another, and there will be eight left. When all the fangs are gone, it will still have claws. If we deal with it step by step and in earnest, we will certainly succeed in the end.
Strategically, we must utterly despise U.S. imperialism. Tactically, we must take it seriously. In struggling against it, we must take each battle, each encounter, seriously. At present, the United States is powerful, but when looked at in a broader perspective, as a whole and from a long-term viewpoint, it has no popular support, its policies are disliked by the people, because it oppresses and exploits them. For this reason, the tiger is doomed. Therefore, it is nothing to be afraid of and can be despised. But today the United States still has strength, turning out more than 100 million tons of steel a year and hitting out everywhere. That is why we must continue to wage struggles against it, fight it with all our might and wrest one position after another from it. And that takes time.
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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.
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Hello newsmega heads, I have a question. Has the USA declined in absolute power since the 90s, or just in relative power? Is it's ability to wage war, maintain alliance and influence other countries less than what it used to be, or does it just face more resistance?
Militarily? Both absolute and relative decline, the invention of a small quantity of high-tech arms does not at all make up for industry shifting abroad, and other countries now have militaries that can take on the American military especially if it insists on dividing itself between a bunch of wars around the world
Economically? Increased absolutely but decreased in relative terms, largely thanks to China which has skyrocketed (and is bringing dozens of countries up with them). The end of the process of dedollarization is decades and millions of deaths away (just as the transition between the sterling/gold standard and the dollar took decades and two world wars which killed tens of millions of people) but the fact that we're even on that path now is a clear sign that alternatives have grown stronger
The MIC today is only good at two things:
- Creating profits for arms dealers
- Killing civilians from the air against non-state powers
I think it's both, but I want to highlight the "more resistance" piece in terms of weaponry. In the 90s rockets and missiles were only owned by very large state actors, and were very expensive. In 2024 you can use drones, relatively advanced drones, and very advanced ballistic missiles for quite cheap. Even non-state actors like Hezbollah have access to a large suite of weaponry that can't really be defended against if used en masse. The nature of warfare itself has changed, and the United States' old "package" of air superiority doesn't mean much these days when it's easy to fire off a pretty advanced rocket and then disappear. That's why they're having such trouble in Yemen, the non-state actors got a lot better and the US has remained the same.
How much are Hezbollah's ballistic missile capabilities due to them becoming more universally accessible vs getting support from Iran?
I'm honestly not sure. It's probably both; the Iranians themselves have made a ton of progress on making missiles cheaper and more advanced for the price, so "support from Iran" is both Hezbollah gets missiles and Iran develops better missile tech to make it easier for Hezbollah to build more missiles.
I think its power to wage war was not good either. Iraq army kinda sucked, Libya was too small to put up a fight and even then it depleted nato stocks to an extent. But there is definitely decline. Vietnam won with supply of Soviets and China. Taliban won without any major countries support
the MIC used to be able to produce something when it came down to it, and that is pretty clearly just not the case anymore. not in the scale or at the cost required for fighting peers
both
Both. It declined in relative power to a combination of recovery and growth in the Global South + the commoditization of advanced tech, enabling even Yemen to be a stone in the Empire's shoes. But the US of the Cold War invested its humongous defence spending into a potential peer conflict. A combination of outsourcing, lean manufacturing and only attacking weak countries that cannot defend themselves left the US a shadow of its former self.
Both, says Scott Ritter