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.
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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 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.
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From the thread body text:
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.
Is this true? I thought last we checked the average amerikkkan was big into genocide and such. Would be nice to see a bit of humanity from them. Was the perception different in the 50s?
Hard to say, but I just got perma'd from my states sub on
for daring to tell liberals trying to guilt people into voting Democrats over womens rights that they clearly don't have any solidary with Palestinian women and their rights. I'm moving in a few weeks. Probably will be time to make a new account on a new IP address soon.thought last we checked the average amerikkkan was big into genocide and such.
I'm sure there are ways this is true, but the current genocide in Gaza is incredibly unpopular and the very large majority of Americans want an end to Israeli aid.
Probably only 25% of Americans actually benefit in a material way from imperialism (settler colonialism is a different matter).
Can you tell that to the like 75% of people I encounter god damn it
I mean, it is theoretically unpopular in terms of polling. But Americans aren't actually doing anything about it, for the most part. They don't attend protests or rallies, they won't commit to not voting for the administration doing the genocide, they don't join orgs.
Obviously some do but the statistics would be stark in contrast. Say 70% say they are against the genocide of Gaza but only (roughly) 0.1% will actually join an org or do any work on it. (Roughly) 1% will actually go to an action, literally just be present.
In reality, Americans like to feel like they are the good guys and against bad things but they do fuck all about it, including even educating themselves, and when they do take action it is almost always what the bourgeois political class tells them to do.
Probably only 25% of Americans actually benefit in a material way from imperialism
Nope. Wrong. 100% of westerners benefit from imperialism. usa is built on genocide americans benefit directly from that imperialism. Oil is only as cheap as it is because West Asian oil producers live in fear of war. Anything manufactured overseas is cheap because imperialism has supressed living conditions and wages through violence or the threat of it.
usa is built on genocide americans benefit directly from that imperialism
I did specify settler colonialism as distinct.
Anything manufactured overseas is cheap because imperialism has supressed living conditions and wages through violence or the threat of it.
Yes, things are "cheap". But real wages are much lower than they used to be when Americans actually played a part in manufacturing, so their relative purchasing power is actually declined. In the same time frame, every single component of the social democratic safety net has been shredded. The expansion of production imperialism and mass labor exploitation from the global south has coincided exactly with the degradation of American life along every single measurable axis.
Huge numbers of Americans live in cities and homes built before the Cold War and especially long before unquestioned US hegemony, and they can't afford those. No infrastructure that isn't a highway (which actively makes life worse in every metric) has been built since before WWII. Every piece of water, sewage, electrical, other utility infrastructure is in deep disrepair. Healthcare is completely inaccessible for millions and millions of people. Education is abysmal. Depression and obesity run rampant. Millions of people are killed by drug epidemics, COVID, and cars.
The benefits of imperialism are funneled to the capitalist class and the labor aristocracy, which is absolutely real but limited to a large minority. The majority of the US working class has received nothing but piles of plastic garbage and garbage that resembles food. In no quantifiable sense has the extension of US imperialism improved the lives of most Americans.
Edit: we should never forget that the fundamental feature of imperialism as we understand it is the dominance of monopoly capital. The effects of monopoly in the imperial core are also extremely bad for the working class, and the US today is more monopolistic than any large country has ever been.
yes those masses and growing of homeless and those bleeding out in gutters in ghettoes and those being wasted away dying at 50 in lumpenized meth-addicted post-industrial towns and those in run down slum neighborhoods with poisoned water, and those lining mass prisons wall to wall in greater proportion than anywhere in history really 100% benefitting because of cheap oil and 2ndhand toasters.
to say nothing of capitalism's contradictions being definitionally impossible to outrun. The rate of profit always falls. Anti-imperial and de-colonial struggles will always continue until they win. China is only growing as well and actively has been speeding this up for ages. Monopoly capital being financialized in globalized firms and stored in swiss banks etc. does jack shit for many but the few who own it and the tiny number of middlemen. This just smacks of a detached and privileged position that comes from not spending a lot of times in truly poor and destitute and broken and left-behind areas even in the US in the 'heart of the beast' so to speak. Idk how anyone who's lived and worked in these kinds of places could say this kind of stuff and the other ultra handsitting stuff you said elsewhere, which also erases a long history of struggle which prompted multiple waves of reactionary crackdowns and criminalization and both bureaucratized and street white terror campaigns for a reason.
You can be oppressed by the system but also directly benefit from it. The 2 are not mutually exclusive.
The benefits of being in the imperial core trickle down even to the people living in the cracks. The higher rate of dug addicted homeless in America is not just because of wealth inequality but also because homeless drug addiction outside the imperial core is an extremely short existence. Try being drug addicted and homeless Mexico or Russia and watch your life expectancy get cut in half.
Don't make assumptions about who I am and what I have seen. I was homeless for most of my 20s. I spent a couple winters living under bridges in america because being a homeless bum in California with no government assistance was easier than being homeless in my home country.
Oh sick, I'm very pleased to hear this. I thought amerikkkan israeli support was big, a tiny silver lining, ty.
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Yes ultimately it doesn’t matter what most Americans think because we don’t live in a democracy and most Americans are too complacent to cause any type of disruption or pressure
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Not a chance of a revolution. Labor Aristocracy is too effective. Rome took 375 years to collapse after the term "Bread and circuses" was coined and in the end it was external pressures that destroyed it.
Disaffection by the working class is enough to hollow out the empire but without pressure from the outside the super structure can hold up to internal problems.
totally shameless hand-sitting opportunism, and ignores the multiple waves of mass radical and communist movements which were the reasons behind things like the multiple red scares and COINTELPRO etc. in the US. Rome and bread and circuses? This is silly copy paste idealism. half a millenia ago. these are fundamentally different worlds and different societies with fundamentally different economic and political structures and relations. different class relations (and very intermingled class relations compared to the slave empire of Rome), different information and media dispersal and connectivity between regions and capabilities of elevated consciousness, greater ability to bridge linguistic divides, all kinds of huge differences that make this nonsense to say. And also, is opportunism definitionally. And spits in the face of those who have been and are in the struggle every day, organizing workplaces, communities, prisons, students, etc. many who've given their lives and freedom for the struggle and continue to struggle.
totally shameless hand-sitting opportunism,
Where did I say americans shouldn't be doing anything? Organizing in the imperial core is important but it is only going to weaken the empire. Empires die when the core is weakened and over extended and the façade gets cracked by a failed conquest, a rebellious vassal, or peer adversary.
ignores the multiple waves of mass radical and communist movements which were the reasons behind things like the multiple red scares
Of course internal security apparatuses are required to keep subversive ideas down. You seem to be ignoring the fact that each of those measures worked and pushed back any hope of revolution for decades. Sorry for not pointing out every revolutionary group that didn't overthrow america.
You highlight a lot differences of the material conditions between Rome's collapse and now but you aren't explaining how those different conditions make revolution in the imperial core more likely. Even if you did come up with those explanations there would be a counter argument for each why that makes it harder to get americans to fight against fascism.
I'm not insulting anyone by being realistic in not expecting the masses of america to rise up. What is insulting is pretending like hypothetical organizers would say "we are ready to overthrow the usa on monday." I'm fairly certain anyone who has unionized their workplace will tell you that most workers are scared and that is legal and will materially benefit them. You are insulting real organizers by suggesting that its possible to convince americans to risk their safety and happiness for no material benefits to themselves.
Do something useful instead of getting mad that I can see what is plainly obvious, liberals are closer to fascists than comrades. Go bully some sucdems to give up on electoralism instead of getting getting pissy at me for recognizing that western working class people are still to treat stuffed to be bothered opposing fascism.
Only if there’s major crises and some very bad years. As of now, no shot. However crises and bad years are incoming
fat chance. I don't think commies in the core have a right to do nothing though since revolution is unlikely, they should be getting prepared and also doing anything they can to hinder the war machine and throw a spanner in the works. Likely it will be external pressures that shut this thing down, but internal pressures help :)
No disagreement from me on this.
That one Harvard poll that found a slight majority of Gen z supported Israel.
The rest of the generations were worse than the last.
At the time it was true and important strategically, because US troop morale and buy-in was low. That made desertion and fragging real risks. This negative combat multiplier effectively counteracted a lot of the technological and resources advantages of the US.
Now, idk. It manifests somewhat in recruitment problems. But we don't see much in the way of effective industrial sabotage that we see in the latter half of the 20th century.