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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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 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.
You're viewing a single thread.
Danish Regime Threaten Sanctions Against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard
Senior officials from the hard right Liberal and Moderate parties that make up two thirds of the reclusive Nordic kingdom's succdem-led right-wing regime has issued new threats against Iran. The two parties are demanding that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard should be placed on the EU’s so-called "terror list", a registry of global south organisations seen by the EU as working against the western bloc's geopolitical ambitions.
In a carefully choreographed appearance in state media outlet TV 2, Liberal Party firebrand Michael Aastrup Jensen said that "We simply have to admit that what Iran is doing in the Middle East and around the world is terrorism." without offering any evidence to back up his bombastic claims. Moderate Party official Henrik Frandsen has admitted to his party's anti-Iranian line, going on the record to say that "With a terror classification, sanctions can be imposed that are significantly harsher than what is currently possible"
The Danish threats follows demands made by Sweden’s supreme leader for a joint Western classification of the IRGC as "terrorists".
- Source: DR (state media), October 14, 2024:
Dog threatens to yap
Why do they pretend they're relevant?
They are horrible pig people and they want to virtue signal to the other horrible pig people how horrible they are. Sabre rattling against Iran makes them seem cool to fellow chuds and if they're very lucky they might even be noticed by the American Liberty Eagle Cheeseburger Institute.
There is also a practical application to this. Denmark and Sweden are among the little Eichmanns of the nations, they're not particularly relevant as direct perpetrators of imperial violence but they do a lot of the boring and unremarkable footwork to keep the empire running. They supply bacon to feed the stormtroopers, they build the instruments used to calibrate the sensors in the parking brake on the F-35 and they help manufacture consent for the empire.
The NATO statelets of Europe acts as laboratories to test what direction the empire should move. If the US says they want to do something they will be expected to actually do it. This is not always optional, sometimes they want to test the reaction of international adversaries or public opinion before committing to a certain policy. This is where the shareholders comes in handy. If the Americans put something on the table it's serious but if the Swedish regime proposes something and it is received badly it can be shut down and it will just be some weird irrelevant Swede yapping.
If, on the other hand, it catches on more statelets can join in and eventually the imperialist policy in question is something supported by "the international community", not just something the yanks want to do.
We saw a lot of this mechanism in play recently when various chihuahuas of western Europe began yapping about long-distance missile attacks deep inside Russia. They tested out the policy, resulting in Russia making it clear how they would react, allowing the yanks to back down without losing face because it was officially not their idea on the first place.
Denmark is important due to Greenland and the Øresund- Restricting russian acess to the Atlantic as well sabotaging (former) russian-german oil pipelines.
Sweden is less important and only relevant to combat russia and was until the 80s a semi-independent country.