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

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 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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2K comments

We have comrades from all over the world here, sharing the news of their countries. Argentina, Denmark, South Africa, many others. Usually it’s “bad” news. I understand many of you despise your own countries, and no doubt with good reason. But I sincerely feel you should consider yourselves lucky to not, by cosmic accident, have been born in America. So much evil is done in your name. And on top of that, everyone around you is either oblivious to it or actively cheers it on. When you’re an American you are cursed to sail around on a ship of the damned, witnessing the horrors your shipmates commit all over the world and yet powerless to either stop it or escape off the ship.
- I don't think being American is really comparable to living anywhere else and getting to be on the receiving end of the Great Satan. Like, it does kinda suck to live in the belly of the beast, to feel powerless, but it's not really comparable to the more tangible evils suffered around the world.
  
  Or so I would guess. What do I know, I'm American!
- Alright then you should consider yourself lucky to have been born in America and not in a country that is on the receiving end of your suffering.
  
  There's always some place more shit, you're just doing a leftist-worded-variant of "there's starving children in Africa".
  
  I'd share good news if there were good news to share. I am happy I am not living in America, but that does not mean I have to be happy with the direction my country is headed (America). Should a person living in the UK post about how happy they are about the NHS existing at all, or post news about the NHS being torn apart?
  
  There are plenty of positive news from around the world. China often gives me hope. I do not feel the need to deceive myself or others with positivity about the places that do not produce anything positive and Scandinavia is high up there sadly. All that has been won is slowly being stripped away and the population cheers it on.
  
  Agreed. I'm often met with the reply of "well, it's much better here (Scandinavia) than most other places!" whenever I criticize our country, and it just makes me sad. Like, if I say "our country is part of an extremely destructive and often downright evil western imperialist bloc, selfishly sucking resources out of the global south while actively destabilizing it.", then "but look how much material wealth we have!" isn't a rebuttal - it's just highlighting the problem.
  
  Sure, it feels privileged to complain about living in one of the safest and richest countries in the world, if you ignore the context of those privileges. Any moral person's food should turn to ashes in their mouth if they know their neighbor is starving, and likewise I don't feel happy to live in one of the small, pampered kingdoms in the imperial core - it makes me miserable because its very existence reflects everything wrong with the system. Same applies when people here self-congratulate about our low crime (crime has been outsourced), low corruption (because corruption is mostly a legal part of our political system), social safety net (which is actively dismantled by the same people who praise it) etc. To the extent that we really have these privileges, how did we come to have them? Who suffers so that we can? It makes me go insane how little my countrymen think about this, and how many will frown at you for refusing to join in the self-congratulatory circle-jerk.
  
  Agreed. I'm often met with the reply of "well, it's much better here (Scandinavia) than most other places!" whenever I criticize our country, and it just makes me sad. Like, if I say "our country is part of an extremely destructive and often downright evil western imperialist bloc, selfishly sucking resources out of the global south while actively destabilizing it.", then "but look how much material wealth we have!" isn't a rebuttal - it's just highlighting the problem.
  
  Or if I say "the police are corrupt, here's a list of personal experiences, here's statistical evidence" I get met with "sure, but it's much better than the US!" If I say politicians are corrupt you hear the same thing. When I point out how everything is falling apart, you get the same - "At least we're not the UK!" / "We're doing much better than Somalia though!"
  My complaints are largely that this country is dismantled and no one gives a shit. This country is complicit in so much horror and no one cares, they care so little that they'll vote for Lars Løkke and talk about goddamn Mink Farms.
  
  vote for Lars Løkke and talk about goddamn Mink Farms
  
  When I heard my old boss say that the Mink-saga was the most important political event of our lives, I realized that the man was living in a fundamentally different reality than me. Then again he was a fairly rich business owner, so he had plenty of reasons not to learn fucking anything ever.
  
  All the farmers crying even after they got to basically value the farms themselves... And the rest of us had to pretend like it was a scandal. I hate this country and most of all I hate our journalists
  
  Most pathetic press corp ever, for sure. If anyone had any doubt at that point, their coverage of Nordstream cemented that fact.

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