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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CW: animal abuse
So, today here in Brazil a case made headlines: a nine-year-old broke into a vet hospital, tortured and killed 23 animals... I don't know what to say, this is one of the most brutal things I've read in a very long time, really fucked me up. How does this happen? How can a child be capable of such cruelty? Isn't there some kind of innate empathy towards other mammals? What the fuck is going on inside that boy's brain?
Man, jesus fucking christ... this world can be a very grim place sometimes
Jesus Christ how do you even deal with such a young child capable of something as brutal and inhumane as that???
Dead serious, he’d be lynched in Guatemala. We have been known to do it with kids who did similar things.
I’m wondering where in Brazil this happened because the location can say a lot about what it was that drove him to that mindset.
Dead serious, he’d be lynched in Guatemala. We have been known to do it with kids who did similar things.
This is an exaggeration right? There's no good reason to kill kids.
The scale of ignorance concerning brain health (especially in children) is one of humanities worst banes
The horrors studied in neurocriminology are not widely known, there are millions of people out there with brains that are literally half melted or shriveled into husks barely recognizable as brains and it all has a direct casual relation to capitalist depravity
I don't think that's true, although hypothetically even if it was, immorality is not a product of a lack of intelligence.
Brain damage does not always manifest as a lack of intelligence, in many cases it can simply manifest as a lack of empathy among a multitude and combination of other states of mind
I'm not a biological determinist, simply pointing out the condition of our brains are a determining factor in countless cases that would baffle "normative" people
From what Ive read it was in the state of Parana which Ive never been to personally but I dont think it's much different from the rest of the country, very few details have been released about the kid but apparently he lives with his grandparents and showed no signs of aggression prior to this. The brutality, number of victims plus the young age of the prepetator are just so shocking all together. Most people here are also saying a lot of stuff similar to that or to the very least of locking him up and throwing away the key at minimum.
Psychiatric care and medication.
Doesn't work for pathological failures to develop empathy.
It's a deeply uncomfortable problem. Some people, starting in child hood, never properly develop empathy, the ability to assess risks, or the ability to understand the boundaries and rights of others. The causes aren't well understood but there seem to be both organic issues people were born with, and behavioral issues they learned. ie - someone may be born with a tendency towards seriously deficient empathy, but the problem was significantly worsened by abuse. Damage to the brain can also cause severe changes in personality, emotional regulation, aggression, and risk assessment.
Sometimes the problem is something in the kids environment - Abuse, maybe chemical exposure, and removal from that environment combined with therapy will allow them to heal. Other times there's no obvious cause and no fixing it and you have a child who is erratic, aggressive, unpredictable, and dangerous. And there's really no cultural script for that anywhere. Many, maybe most, societies on earth still believe in a magical soul or personality that exists separately from the physical brain. They still believe in concepts like good character, willpower, and free will and think that anything someone does they chose to do starting from the position of a "normal" mind. And that's just not how it works. Our personalities and mind are entirely physical phenomena that arise and ride on top of the complex operation of the brain and body. If the brain is injured, or develops abnormally, there can be permanent damage to the personality, permanent behavioral abnormalities, some of which can be very extreme.
It's not common at all, it's very rare. Even people with anti-social-personality disorder are on a wide spectrum of behavior, but when it's bad it's real bad and when it's a child pretty much no one is prepared to deal with it.
I've heard of kids with Tourette's having violent outbursts that went away completely with medication.
Until the kid has gotten psychiatric care and been medicated you can't know whether this kid will be broken forever or if they have a hope of returning to a normalish life.
It's an ongoing problem. In the us at least there is no way to deal with children with extreme violent behaviors until they commit a crime that results in imprisonment.
Its not something most people would expect to happen from a child so young I assume. I hope at least this kid gets some serious psychological help for the sake of everybody, going after animals can quickly evolve into going after humans eventually from what I know.
If they examined that boy's brain, it probably resembles a raisin
That's usually the case with that level of childhood psychosis
Has to be a developmental disorder. That is grim
Likely anti-social personality disorder + abuse towards the child. Kids aren't magically kind or gentle.
Edit: I shouldn't armchair diagnose. It could be all kinds of things - a one-off psychosis that will never -re-occur, exposure to chemicals or drugs, the result of a traumatic brain injury and this is the first manifestation too extreme to be ignored, abuse, or maybe the kid even thought they had some bizarre rational reason for their behavior.
Could be all kinds of things. Maybe a permanent problem, maybe a one-off abberant behavior, maybe something that can heal over time.