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.
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.
We can imagine him saying to the Russians: 'Ok, now you have a piece of Ukraine east of the Dnieper River, and I have a piece of Russia.' He knows that the only possible end for Ukraine is negotiations. There's not going to be a big victory over Russia, forget it.
But Zelensky knows that when the peace treaty comes and there will be peace talks, he has something to sell to Russia to balance Russia's claim to the Donbas.
They are so behind on their narrative switch that they are rolling this out at a time when Russia has already recaptured all sections of Kursk except Sudzha. They won't manage to hold the territory until the end of the year, let alone until any negotiations actually take place.
And a month after Ukraine is driven out of Kursk, this Bratwurst Brain is going to come out claiming that the real goal of the Kursk operation was always to inflict mass casualties on the Russians all along, a statement impossible to disprove by anyone since there's no accurate, unbiased information on casualties, let alone information that Westeners would actually believe.
See those articles also come out of Denmark every now and then, less so now that Ukraine is visibly losing and our Prime Minister didn't get the job as GenSec of NATO, and they always use the same 3-5 different "retired" officers who teach at the Danish Defense Academy. They're usually so unbounded from reality that I've dubbed the DDA "the greatest bastion of anti-imperialism Denmark has produced in a while", since the shit they say is basically just NAFO-shit with fancier wording.
The Ukrainians were warned that Russia was mobilising. But the Ukrainians, let's be honest, were fighting among themselves. The Ukrainian [politics] were deeply corrupt and I don't think they took the threat very seriously. So when the attack did come, it came as a big shock.
The Russians also believe that the Donbas region is Russian, because so many people there speak Russian, want to be Russian.
He knows that the Donbas region let the Russians in to help them fight the civil war. He's just playing stupid. He knows exactly what's going on here.
They are paranoid and they always will be because they think the West is technically better and richer.
The definition of
The way this downplays then fearmongers, then downplays then fearmongers again is just a trip on its own.
That's because he knows exactly what the truth actually is, and he's doing a very bad job pretending to be stupid.
But but but I thought Putler was hell bent on reconquring the lost USSR territory in Europe and that's why we had to blow up our economy and kiss US and Wall Street's ass as they blazingly blow up our entire energy infrastructure in front of us!