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Bulletins and News Discussion from August 12th to August 18th, 2024 - Marshall Plan: Now As Farce - COTW: Ireland

Image is of one of Ireland's only manned navy ships, the Samuel Beckett. Image sourced from this BBC article.

Putler has been HUMILIATED by the Kursk offensive and this proves that Russia's army is in tatters and unable even to defend its own territory. However, it is simultaneously true that Russia poses an existential threat to countries thousands of miles away, as this recent Politico article demonstrates. Ireland - a country that immediately springs to mind as one surrounded by enemies - is being bullied due to its lack of military.

Despite bearing responsibility for 16 percent of the EU’s territorial waters, and the fact that 75 percent of transatlantic undersea cables pass through or near Irish waters, Ireland is totally defenseless. And I mean completely unable to protect critical infrastructure, or even pretend to secure its own borders. [...] Ireland’s “navy” of six patrol vessels is currently operating with one operational ship due to chronic staff shortages. [...] Ireland simply has no undersea capabilities. How could it, when it barely spends 0.2 percent of GDP on security and defense? And it has, in effect, abdicated responsibility for protecting the Europe’s northwestern borders.

For all we know, the dreaded sea-people from the Bronze Age Collapse could soon emerge from the North Atlantic.

Unfortunately, things are even worse up in the skies. Ireland has no combat jets, and it’s the only country in Europe that can’t monitor its own airspace due to the lack of primary radar systems. Instead, the country has outsourced its security to Britain in a technically secret agreement between Dublin and London, which effectively cedes control over Irish air space to the Royal Air Force. This must be the luck of the Irish — smile and get someone else to protect you for free.

While this is very silly, rearmament has long been a part of US imperial strategy on an economic level. Desai, discussing the US imperial strategy in the WW2 period:

By 1947 [...] the domestic postwar consumer boom was nearing its end. While financing exports became more urgent, the 1946 elections returned a Congress unlikely to approve further loans. Now the Truman Administration concocted the ‘red menace’ to ‘scare the hell out of the country’, enunciated the Truman Doctrine of US support for armed resistance to ‘subjugation’ which launched the cold war, and Congress granted $400 million to prevent left-wing triumphs in Greece and Turkey in 1947.

One reading of history states that the US was so intimidated by the USSR that this forced a policy of massive arms production even outside of official wartime. Why this arms production is not occurring today can be puzzling, and (very reasonably) explained by neoliberals exporting industrial production overseas. However, a different historical reading can explain both the first Cold War, and the ongoing situation in which American weaponry is being almost purposefully given in insufficient numbers to give Ukraine a chance of victory and thus only prolonging their suffering (while generating massive profit for the military-industrial complex):

In this sense the Cold War was not the cause of US imperial policy but its effect. It combined financing exports with fighting combined development by national capitalisms as well as communism. When such ‘totalitarian regimes’ threatened ‘free peoples’, ‘America’s world economic responsibilities’ included aid to countries battling them.

By selling massively expensive weapons to Europe, America could simultaneously guarantee export markets for its industries, trap Europe into reliance on American industries at the expense of their own, and divert European funds away from constructing factories which could compete with American ones. Providing a way to defend against Soviet communism (and now Russian "imperialism") is merely a happy side-effect, and so the lack of effectiveness of American weaponry is causing no great panic among the military-industrial complex, nor an urgent plan to quintuple artillery shell production or Patriot missile production - the deals for F-35s and such are still there, and they are what matter.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is Ireland! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

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Last week's thread is here.

1.6K comments

  • Man, TikTok libs who were fully on board with Palestine a month ago have just fully switched over to being huge Kamala Harris stans and the hate for people who continue to care about the Palestinian genocide is pretty palapable.

    This isn't really News but it's just a pretty crazy shift in vibes that has me, as an American, feeling like no American can be trusted with access to any power ever.

    I feel like maybe a PRC appointed viceroy might be the way to go in the future or something.

  • News mega gang, listen up. Based on vibes, pit in my stomach, voice tone of family in Beirut, and the spirits of George Hawi and Kamal Jumblatt speaking to me:

    Iran and Hezbollah will be attacking Israel before Sunday. If it doesn't happen, I'll show my face here again on Sunday and you're all allowed to call me a dumbass.

  • Zak Cope, third-worldist marxist and author of Divided World Divided Class and mentioned fairly regularly on Hexbear, has gone completely off the deep end. October 7th was too much for him.

    He's now stated his full support for free-market capitalism and colonialism, and is advocating for the rules-based international order as a way to protect from Russian and communist influence, is drawing equivalencies between Nazis and the Soviets, is saying that unequal exchange is not real, centralized planning is impossible, quoting Thatcher, etc.

    For many western leftists, now that oppressed people are actually beginning to fight back in (necessarily imperfect) ways, rather than being pitiable victims marching into the sea as Gandhi wished, all left-wing values go out the window and they realize their class interests are aligned against these uprisings. I must admit that I thought a big exposure to the literature and even writing a significant book on the subject would inoculate a person against taking the complete opposite values less than a year after they held those values, but Zionism is a stubborn little tumor which can rapidly take over the body once it awakens.

  • Happening now: Israeli ambassador to the UN goes on hysterical genocidal screed at UNSC, stops himself every 2 seconds to emphasize that Arabs are terrorists, and again every 4 seconds to scream and moan

    about the UNSC falling for “terrorist lies”, ends Hitlerite speech with “WE ARE THE DEFENDERS OF CIVILIZATION” and storms out of the room

  • Visiting someone who has cable news on. First time i've seen cable news in a long time, and there's a lot of super carefully engineered psychic damage inducing electoral propaganda. And you know what? American electoralism isn't just largely pointless, it's actively evil. It's indoctrinating people in to a completely false reality disconnected from any either domestic or foreign political realities.

  • A representative from the Vatican City State delivered credentials to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, giving legitimacy to his government in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church.

    Far-Right latino catholics and protestants really pissed rn lol.

  • Come on do something Mr Khamenei, my hexbear reputation is on the line here. What if my son finds out that his dad became TinyPenis after being let down by the Axis of Resistance

  • Capitalism is when no food.

    A million Argentine children skip meals each day due to poverty

    Over half of families with children had to stop buying basic foods because they couldn’t afford them, a UNICEF report has found

    In Argentina, over one million children are skipping meals each day because their families cannot afford food, according to a UNICEF report published Tuesday. The number of households who cannot make ends meet has risen significantly since 2022.

    An April study of households with children found that 7% of children and teens, and 30% of adults, had to skip at least one meal a day because they couldn’t afford food. The report showed that seven in 10 children were poor in April. Poverty was defined as either economic poverty or deprivation of basic needs such as education, social protection, or adequate housing.

    In a context of growing economic and social inequality, 52% of households with kids stopped buying essential foods because they could no longer afford them. This is 11 percentage points higher than in June 2023, and the highest since UNICEF started conducting these surveys in 2020. This number represents 3.3 million households, which are home to almost 7 million children.

    According to UNICEF’s data, 90% of these homes stopped buying milk, meat and other similar products. “The intake of foods crucial for the nutrition of children and teenagers (meat, vegetables, fruit and dairy) has significantly dropped, while it has increased in the case of cheaper and less nutritious foods (pasta, flour and bread),” the report read. In 48% of the homes surveyed, the monthly income wasn’t sufficient to cover basic household expenses. This was seven points higher than last year, and 15 points higher than in June 2022.

    The situation gets worse when the head of the household is unemployed, on welfare, or a single woman. Almost a quarter (23%) of families also stopped buying medicine, while 32% stopped going for medical or dental checkups. Many had to borrow money or spend their savings to cover basic expenses.

    In the 12 months prior to the survey, a quarter of teenagers had jobs, UNICEF found. A further 12% were looking for work.

    UNICEF’s numbers are in line with recent studies on poverty in Argentina. An analysis of official data by the Argentine Catholic University’s Social Debt Observatory released last week showed that seven out of 10 children were poor in the first quarter of 2024. Poverty hit 55% and destitution rose to 20% in the first three months of the year, the observatory found.

    The damage this is doing simply cannot be calculated. The very social fabric is being destroyed, slowly but surely. Of course, ancaps and their fascist and liberal allies will see this as "mere numbers", "poverty rates can go down actually" they'll say. Yes, sure, but the damage malnutrition does to a child marks them for life. A child that doesn't have access to quality food at that age develops problems that will follow them for the rest of their lives. This is absolutely degrading the material conditions in which we live, it's degrading people who never had a shot on their lifes. The effects will be truly felt in 20, 30 and 40 years.

    Capitalism is a crime against humanity.

  • kamala harris being considered "youthful" when she'll be 60 on election day just tells me the bar is on the ocean floor. lmao obama was 47, bush was 54, clinton was 46

    she's not even gen x, she's just a (late) boomer and would be america's 5th boomer president lmfao. love how when biden said he's "passing the torch to the next generation" he just meant from his silent gen ass back to another boomer

  • Donald Trump criticizes Kamala Harris and says that the Democrat, if elected, will implement a “communist system” in which “everyone has access to health care”.

  • i really love when there are big brawls in parliaments, like people punching each other in the face and shit. It gives politics a very realistic outlook, it makes it feel very alive and real. I want MY representatives to break some noses and kick opposition members while they're on the floor. I want my representatives to have fucking blood in their veins, none of that "yes uhm sir mr hitler sir let us uhm debate why we shouldn't exterminate non whites sir" liberal bullshit. NO MAN, go and punch that motherfucker in the nose RIGHT NOW.

    (I'm talking about this in the context of a brawl which just happened in the Turkish Parliament)

    I remember the puppet Korea used to have lots of brawls in their Parliament, aye, I can respect that. If people are punching, kicking and spittin' blood over politics, well, at least these people feel something. They're not truly dead inside. Plus it's fun to watch on video.

    I loved that moment I think it was in Taiwan, where a member of parliament stole the bill from the opposition and ran away with it LMAO. That is so good. I want people like that.

  • a little bit of analysis about Kursk

    The only thing I'd want to add to Mikael's excellent analysis here is that the Russians are actually fighting a much more conventional area defense than we've seen in the very static fighting in the Donbass. They're not trying to stop Ukrainian drives at the screen line like we saw in the Hundred Days, they're instead diverting them into engagement areas between their front line of screening troops and the main defensive line 5-10km to the rear and destroying them there. Ergo why we've seen Ukrainian units just go on these long runs in the last couple days - way past where the front line should be - and then get wiped out in what look like complex ambushes. That's... actually just how you do a very normal area defense.

    Why have the Russians changed tactics? Two reasons. First, in Kursk they - paradoxically - have space to fight. The Donbass is a cramped theater where real estate is at an absolute premium. They're either backing up into the sea, key lines of communication, or critical urban areas there. There's actual operational space in rural Kursk. Second and relatedly, the "forward" defense we're used to seeing in the Donbass will not inflict crippling casualties on an attacker quickly for the simple reason that attacks often fail in the "cone of fire" in no man's land or even behind the attacker's front line, allowing defeated units to easily withdraw. In a conventional defense the attacker is defeated in a kill zone behind the screen line and it is far easier to annihilate an attacking force. Ergo why we're now seeing huge AFU equipment losses, with entire Ukrainian companies burning out behind the ostensible Russian "front."

    Having found themselves in battle with the AFU's strategic reserves, the Russians now very much intend to use the Battle of Sudzha-Korenevo to destroy as much of those reserves as possible. Even if that means scaring some war mappers on the internet.

  • 372 years ago, on this day in 1652, the Act for the Settlement of Ireland was passed by the English Parliament, preceding the greatest exercise in ethnic cleansing in early modern Europe.

  • Canada's foreign worker program a 'breeding ground for contemporary slavery,' says UN report

    Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program serves as a "breeding ground for contemporary slavery," according to a scathing UN report examining Canada's efforts to limit unfair labour.

    The program allows employers to hire foreign workers to fill temporary jobs when they can't find qualified Canadians. The number of workers employed through the program has grown considerably in recent years. According to the UN report, there were just over 84,000 permit holders in 2018. In 2022, there were nearly 136,000. Most of them worked in agriculture and related labour sectors.

    The report, written by UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery Tomoya Obokata, says the program puts workers in an unfair power imbalance with their employers.

    For example, if a worker is fired, they may be deported. Some workers are deliberately not informed of their rights or too fearful to report exploitative working conditions, wrote Obokata. Many of them are also ensnared in debt bondage while participating in the programs, according to the report.

    Because workers lack access to justice, they are at risk of a variety of other abuses, Obokata wrote.

  • Under the reign of King Brandon the Feeble-minded, the people languished in despair, but with Kamala the Awkward enthroned upon the Throne of Skulls, it seemed as though the very heavens smiled anew upon the realm. Priests and sages divined hopeful prophecies of triumph over the Orange Troll King, reading them in the entrails of their sacrifices. They proclaimed Kamala the Awkward as pure and unsullied by sin. The might of the Orange Troll King appeared to wane, and he grew weak and weary. The scandalous revelations of the unnatural proclivities of his lieutenant, known as the Vance, bewildered and demoralized the trollish hordes.

    So diminished was the power of the Orange Troll King that he found himself compelled to ride up to Lord Elon the Divorced, to abase himself and kiss his ring, indulging in the latter's disgraceful vanity, all in the desperate hope of forging an alliance with him and his repulsive subterranean minions.

  • Twitter user @EmissaryOfNight shares what is allegedly the US's vision for a resolution of the Gaza genocide: https://xcancel.com/EmissaryOfNight/status/1824237079011926458

    Assuming this is accurate, the only way this deal gets accepted is if the Palestinians living in Gaza are truly broken. The idea that not only "terrorists," but any "armed group" in Gaza should lay down their weapons while the colonizers get to keep their nuclear weapons is preposterous. That they would trade their arms for the promise of an unimpeded flow of aid. This is the exact state of affairs which lead to Gaza being turned into the biggest concentration camp in history, with the colonizers literally imposing quotas on the number of calories being shipped into the ghetto.

    The idea that a "transitional period" needs to be imposed from outside. Installing the PA in Gaza will work just about as smoothly as installing Guaido in Venezuela. It's a farce.

    If this is seriously what they're pushing in these negotiations, these negotiations will not last very long. Jacking off into a toilet would be a more effective use of our diplomatic resources.

  • I have started noticing, in the last year or so, a reversal in WestTM in regard to green energy rhetoric (EV and solar in particular) and is becoming worse and worse as time goes by.

    This is not the usual global warming denial. In fact you rarely see outright denialist any more (what are they gonna argue about any more anyway, since it is plainly obvious what is happening in the world...).

    What you do see from MSM, to YT channels, to everything, is an effort to downplay or even dismiss the potential positive impact EV and solar technology could have and already has in regard to global warming and our way of life in general.

    It's quite obvious that this is a result of what is happening in China.

    I believe Burgeristan and their puppets thought (10+ years ago) that they would become world leaders in EV, solar and other green technologies.

    They thought they could monopolize the industry and sell it to the rest of the world as the only possible solution.

    If you didn't subscribe to their, ridiculously overpriced, Greenflix service you would be deemed a barbarian third world nation that leads humanity to catastrophy (which of course we, the West, had nothing to do with...) and you would have many sanctions imposed on you.

    So for a time almost everyone went along with green technology in WestTM*.

    Green roofs, green roads, green new deals, you name it.=

    There was only one problem.

    Burgeristan is run by complete idiots.

    They thought that we are in the 30s and 40s where US still had semi-competent captains of industry that could compete with the rest of the world or that they had a political elite that was actually capable of multi-year planning and wasn't completely subservient to the economic elite.

    Instead what they got was the Cybertruck and Solar Freaking Roadways.

    So what now?

    I believe the rhetoric against EVs and Solar is gonna get much worse for starters. The "China is spying on you don't buy from them" is not gonna fly for long.

    What we are gonna see more and more is a focus on the technologies themselves. "These technologies are not viable/profitable" is what you are gonna hear.

    The next step will probably be Burgerland developing their own version of "green technology". Maybe focus on hydrogen, "clean coal", maybe something else who knows**. They will probably give it some asinine name like "Green Freedom" or something...

    Then they will try to create a new Edison vs. Tesla, Direct vs Alternative Current situation and will use their military/economic influence to force countries to adopt their inferior technology.

    They will fail of course because again they are run by complete idiots (and I'm not even taking politicians into account, they have no say in this anyway...) but what else are they gonna do at this point. They can no longer compete with China. This is their only play.

    So when that finally fails (because you know at the end of the day even puppet nation have a survival instinct) all that they will have left will be an empty anti-China rhetoric.

    Their barbarian germanic protestant syphilitic brains could not imagine a "non-white" nation surpassing them. But here we are. So instead of taking all the ill gained surplus value they extracted from the rest of the world for 300 years and actually invest it in something sustainable, they just want to go and kill their neighbor's mule.

    Judging by what is happening in the last year or so, I would say we might see a complete reversal in 2-4 years with people that previously where telling you to vote insert status-quo party otherwise "X guy comes and it's the end of the world (due to global warming)" now they will call you a China puppet for wanting the most affordable green high-tech in the world made by China.

    Sorry for the long thread. I was thinking about making a post about it but I'm not sure people outside the news mega give a damn about these things anyway.

    *Fossil fuel industry at that point was playing both sides. They knew that the world moving from fossil fuels was inevitable, but they wanted that transition to happen on their own terms. It had to be gradual so that they kept making superprofits and they had to create and control the new "green" monopoly.

    **I wouldn't be surprised at all if lets say someone like Elon Musk does 180 in regard to EVs. Maybe he will pivot to another technology or maybe even he finds an excuse to outright sell Tesla (somehow...) and pivot to another grift altogether. That's if he manages not to go bust until then...

  • So this might end up being cope, but I'm starting to think we are seeing a modern version of the Battle of the Bulge happen in Kursk.

    At first, it seems like a major L for Putin as the thinly guarded Russian border is overwhelmed by what looks like another PR stunt by Ukraine. But after a couple of days it becomes obvious that this is actually a major offensive by Ukraine. As Ukraine pours in thousands of troops from the Donbass front into Kursk. We are now getting reports that Ukraine planned to go much further into Kursk than they did and possibly wanted to capture the nuclear plant in Kurchatov to do some kind of nuclear blackmail to force Russia to make major concessions.

    This obviously isn't working as their incursion been halted/severely slowed down. Sure it's another propaganda W, but they are taking massive casualties, while simultaneously weakening the Donbass front and failing to force the withdrawal of substantial Russian forces from Donbass. Even Ukraine NAFO cheerleaders aren't happy about this one.

    So Ukraine now has to choices: Option A is to double down and pray they can hold out and make some gains and remove some Russian troops from the Donbass. Or option B which is to cut their losses and take the L (Ironically what Hitler did several decades ago during the Battle of Kursk).

    Either way is would be some kind of poetic irony if the modern Kursk battle ended up being the nail in the coffin for the Kiev regime just like the 1943 battle of Kursk was described as the "last gasp of Nazi aggression" for Germany.

  • Nagasaki mayor Shiro Suzuki defended today his decision to invite Palestine instead of Israel to the peace ceremony. The threats from U.S. and its vassals to boycott the annual event to commemorate the hibakusha could not work on the mayor, whose parents were a-bomb survivors.

    On 2 August 2024, Suzuki announced that Israeli ambassador Gilad Cohen was not invited to the ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki due to concerns over potential protests related to the Israel–Hamas war. In response, the ambassadors of the United States and the United Kingdom chose not to attend the event on 9 August and sent lower-ranked diplomats instead. The ambassadors of Russia and Belarus were also not invited to the ceremony, while the Palestinian ambassador was invited.

  • democrats be like: hell yeah, kamala is popular with the kids. she's so fucking rad and 1337. they'll love her more when she sends another 80 billion dollars of aid to "israel".

  • Remember five years ago when every westerner was lining up to service Jimmy Lai and was going apoplectic that China was going to gulag everyone in Hong Kong? Weird how nobody still gives a shit

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