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.
Spoilering for doomerism
spoiler
Is it me or have the Dems just gone totally mask-off in recent months? Like they were obviously complicit in the genocide before, but they seem to just be fully onboard with genocide and war with Iran now. I guess this is just more posturing for the election, sort of like how they approach the border issue now.
And you know what? Maybe it'll pay off for them. It seems we're in a period of this sort of resignation to barbarism now. Maybe people will embrace fascism with woke characteristics. I certainly have no faith in my fellow Americans. Sure, maybe some polls show opposition to Israel, and there were (emphasis on were) some impressive protests, but what did they accomplish in the end? Americans don't think that deeply about these things anyway. If it does come to war with Iran, you know most Americans will fall in line like the bloodthirsty little hicks they are. They are an eternally pissed off people who love to feel vicariously badass by blowing up those damn Muzzzlums. You certainly won't see any mass protests against an Iran war. Even liberals accept the idea of Iran as being the ultimate bad guy, or a henchman of Putler's Russia. It'll be 2003 all over again - first as tragedy, then as farce, then as farce, then as farce, then as farce....
Plus maybe it'd shake off the malaise that seems to have set it.
Everything is so fucked. I guess this is history, though. Entire peoples can just be wiped out, unjust wars are waged and framed as heroic adventures, and in a thousand years none of it will fucking matter.
Seeing the amount of "leftists" in places like the Hasan sub saying things like "Neither Trump nor Kamala are going to stop the genocide, so we should vote for Kamala to 'preserve the progress we have already achieved' and to 'make it a better environment for organizing' has me on the brink of turning into an unironic JDPON Third Worldist. I probably owe J Sakai an apology, he was clearly more right than I thought.
I'm sure there are some people who think like this, but this is fucking astroturf. Reddit is always astroturfed to fucking hell and back during elections. Communities for internet pundits like Hasan are prime for astroturf.
I mean... yeah. Like I'm sorry, there is no resistance to this. There is no left. It's an aesthetic at best.
Organizing what? Their closets?
This is literally me rn. I'm literally organizing my closet as we speak.
"Keeping the progress we achieved" is how all the left-wing/sucdem parties in europe became neocons.
It is very similar to how they behaved during the Iraq War. Every generation must learn what a scratched liberal looks like. Every generation is taught that liberals are peace-loving egalitarians but then the moment empire wants blood they turn into genocidal racists citing the most obvious bad faith talking points just to carry water for their political class "team".
On the plus side we can organize in that exact context by talking to every person that is seeing scratched liberals for the first time and is horrified by it. There is actually a good number of people who are receptive to opposing rhetoric and just need to be brought into a reading group and attending and organizing actions.
I mean I thought I knew what a scratched lib was like but I guess I never really knew until now. There's a flat out genocide occurring and they still try to condescend to you about nuance and priorities and all this other shit. And now it's escalating into full on jingoism. Really it was that platform or whatever put out during the DNC about how Trump was a coward for NOT escalating with Iran in 2020. Wild.
I guess educating can be helpful, but unfortunately I'm surrounded by chuddery and apathy in my day-to-day life, so I don't think I'll make much headway with anyone.
Going back in time liberals keep doing that stuff. Madelaine Albright on hundreds of thousands, millions of dead Iraqi kids. Support for Apartheid South Africa. Support for Vietnam, which they only opposed moderately and late with a rationale that centered the plight of US soldiers. Bombing every population center in North Korea.
I'm sure I am leaving some out and I intentionally left out the ones that they had sufficient ignorance of or propaganda cover for that it wasn't openly genocidal. But just with the examples I gave, that is one mask-off liberal genocidal moment every 10-15 years.
I do think there is some difference today, which is that the anti-genocide narrative is stronger and more confrontational, in part because of social media and in part because there is a very small but growing nascent left in the US that can say, "that is genocide you fucks". The narrative is not as believably euphemistic or indirect about what the imperial project is doing. It's not, " w have to oppose communist aggression" and then blanket censorship of the extent and damage of the bombing campaign. It's, "Israel has a right to defend itself" against the backdrop of video footage of Zionist entity bombs leveling residential blocks and their politicians announcing an intentional famine.
I am, however, optimistic that much of this is because the resistance has an informational/propaganda advantage that last targets of empire lacked, that the global left is ascendant and can act in solidarity (even if it is not as much as it should be), and that there is a political decay inside the empire that will be ultimately self-defeating. And as such we should do our best to grow so that we can negotiate its downfall and, you know, maybe facilitate it a little.
mOsT LeThaL MiLiTaRy
This is basically my parents. The most important thing to them is stopping
, even though you'd sooner seeing snow in Florida than a Democratic win. There's no way their two votes cancel out all the chuds from upstate New York that have moved here in the last decade.
Sorry, we're certainly not sending our best.
We're trying to convince them all to move to Myrtle Beach instead. It doesn't appear to be working yet.
Nah let them stay in Florida. Upstate New York is so much more pleasant every time I go back.