Bulletins and News Discussion from August 12th to August 18th, 2024 - Marshall Plan: Now As Farce - COTW: Ireland
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.
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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 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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The president of México AMLO, on the election in Venezuela , mentions that everything was going well until Sunday night when things started to go wrong. He claims that the following Tuesday, the secretary of USA, Anthony Blinken, the OAS and more countries came out to demonstrate in favor of a candidate. He proposed to wait for the resolution of the electoral bodies
Mexico refused to take any action other than waiting for the Venezuelan Supreme Court to prove that the elections were fair and that Maduro won. Brazil and Colombia tried to reach an agreement to hold another election, but this was quickly ruled out as an option, because no one accepted this and Gonzalez said he would refuse this option, because he basically said that there is no way he could win an election against Maduro.
The liberal newspapers in Brazil and Colombia, from what I've seen, are already saying that Lula and Petro will probably end up recognizing Maduro, since they really need to have diplomatic relations with Venezuela. They keep trying to push a narrative that Lula and Petro are bad because they are supporting the ebiquitous dictator Maduro and this will affect the electoral results of their coalitions.
The US seems to keep saying that Gonzalez won, but they don't really recognize it. Gonzalez and Machado are currently hiding somewhere, probably in Panama or Miami. Diplomats from Panama, Peru and Argentina have been expelled from Venezuela. Meanwhile, Maduro has banned Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter and Tik Tok. The situation on the streets seemed to have calmed down, apart from an unrelated gas explosion accident, nothing really happened.
Brazil said that it does not recognize Gonzalez electoral results documents, and will wait for the CNE and Supreme Court results. I believe Colombia also is going to do the same.
Lula didn’t support Maduro as soon as the election was called?
Fucking :LIB:
Imagine watching your successor get couped, followed by a far right maniac, then having your election victory against him called into question (by dumbasses), but still falling for a State Department coup attempt in another country.
Lula didn’t support Maduro as soon as the election was called?
He didn't recognize it, nor did Petro (Colombia) or AMLO (Mexico). Lula sent his right hand advisor to Venezuela to spend election day with Maduro, it seems he tried to talk to Gonzalez and Gonzalez refused. When the results came in (80% were counted), Gonzalez refused to recognize them, the US puppets supported Gonzalez (extreme right-wing governments of Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador and the neoliberal governments of Uruguay and Panama, and the traitorous Chile. El Salvador also refused, but Bukele is not liked by the US either and is accused of unfair elections, which, to be honest, probably happened in El Salvador).
Only Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Honduras were the only Latin American countries to recognize Maduro immediately after the election. Colombia, Brazil and Mexico said they would recognize whatever the Supreme Court said. They also pressured the OAS and the US not to recognize Gonzalez and not to take further action. Paraguay and Uruguay initially supported Gonzalez, but say they also believe the US screwed up and Gonzalez lost.
Lula recently spoke in an interview about Venezuela and said that the election was fair and free. He also said that if the opposition had a problem with the election, they should have gone to the Supreme Court and complained about it, asked for a recount or something. He also said that Maduro has the right to prove that he won the election and that if Maduro proves it, the opposition should accept the fact instead of crying about it. It seemed that Petro and Lula were trying to resolve this crisis without affecting their popularity, which would affect their coalitions in the elections. But this whole crisis in Venezuela seems to have been overshadowed by other things happening internally in Brazil and Colombia.
Based AMLO, inshallah sheinbaum follows in his footsteps, as much as we distrust Latin Americans with German last names
as much as we distrust Latin Americans with German last names
inshallah sheinbaum follows in his footsteps,
Fuck that! AMLO was ok but only in comparison with past Mexican Presidents. Hope that she opens reeducation camps for fascists and kills all the landlords.
Sure, but I’m being (brace for liberalism) realistic. Yes AMLO was a disappointment for the left, yes, just like evo, he exploited the environment with a socialist framework, And Also I believe he is a pioneer for Latin American leftism and I desire more people to fall on his side rather than the PRI/PAN/Bukele/Bolsonaro camp