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.
US Politicians are unhappy that Zelensky isn't going all the way with "to the last Ukrainian".
But the answer is obvious -- if he lowered the conscription age to 18 it would destroy the country's last hope for rebuilding after the war, and it could even lead to revolts that would threaten his position.
There's a reason the war has been seen as a late millenial to gen X war in Ukraine and you see so many older men in war videos, there just aren't many younger Ukrainians in existence. They have been exempted from conscription to try save any potential future of Ukraine. The country has been in a grim situation for decades, GDP and GDP per capita of Ukraine have been below the levels of quite a few "third world" countries since before the war. It's just not seen that way in the Western world because Ukrainians are seen as white and European, for now.
Nice to know that behind all the "Western Civilization" brotherhood shit, westerners will always view us pathetic suck up Eastern Europeans as human cattle
I can't wait for my country to get dragged into this shit so my home can get bombed,but it's all ok, because we're taking it all like good little meat shields so that the superior whites can live in their gardens while we continue to belittle our history and believe that we could be part of that if only not for those damn Ruskies
No matter their faults,no matter the Nazi ideology that festered,no matter the hatred that now rules there,I cant help but weep for those poor people
Not the azovists,not the Canadian Ukrainians,but the people in the villages,the children,the city dwellers who didn't participate in pogroms,who foolishly believed Europe would let them in
Ukraine is no Israel,those people are native to the land,and to see such senseless slaughter for the service of compradors and Yankee tyrants fills me with sorrow and makes my blood boil
For all of its faults,for all the evil it committed throughout it's history, Ukraine didn't need to go through this
No country,sans settler colonies, deserve to be systematically destroyed in such a manner
When I think of Ukraine,the first thing that comes to mind is not the twisted Azov monsters,not the snarling jackals that rule with Washington's consent,for me it's tiny lights on the horizon,a city in the distance, almost identical to mine,where people like me live,where there once was quiet and peace,where the Danube gently flowed between islands of reeds and singing birds,where the only sounds at night were made by crickets and other nighttime critters
Now the lights remain,but they are joined by the flashes of explosions,the night is no longer quiet,with alarms blaring from phones, warning people to take shelter, joined by the echoes of booms far away,the beauty of nature ruined by the conflict of man
I'm sorry if this sounds pretentious,but this is how I feel about the whole situation
When I'm home,I occasionally stare out of the window and wonder what would have happened if I was born just a little more to the north.Would I have been sent to die as cannon fodder on the fields of Donbass?Would I have fled and become a stranger in a strange land, accepted only as long as it is convenient,only to be discarded when the war didn't turn out the way the West thought it would? I keep hearing that I'm safe,I'm in a NATO country,they wouldn't dare attack us! Might have even believed it,had I not seen people who live in a place just like mine,that I could see from my own window have their world and safety shattered by this conflict.
I agree with you completely, this is all incredibly tragic, and all the more so because it's really the second time they've destroyed their country on account of believing the false promises of the west. Those of us born in the eastern block know we already went through a self-inflicted destruction of our countries in 1989/91, and the worst thing is when you listen to the news in these countries and even when you hear how some of the people from your own family or acquaintances speak, it seems that enough of our compatriots are willing to do it again that the same could easily happen to us after Ukraine. I don't understand how eastern Europeans can have such a collective inferiority complex that leads us to want to commit national suicide just to be a part of the "West", or as the latest eurofash rhetoric calls it the "European family". Fuck the "European family", who would want to be part of this genocidal warmongering racist "family"? At this point i'd rather be part of the Русский Мир than this current Europe, and i don't even speak Russian!
Even their "family" is segregated, with them keeping the eternal Schengen dangling in front of the two easternmost countries, like we're half members,dogs begging for the scraps of their master's table
Fucking disgusting that our naive youth keep believing that we need to become more like the Hitlerite Austrians and Butchering Dutch who cut down our forests and won't even offer this miniscule concession
My only hope is that PSD is self interested enough to not fully kill the country and that the coopted traitors that destroyed socialism here will betray the US when the time comes
God help us if AUR or, even worse USR ever become prominent,they are from top to bottom Atlanticist
I can't believe I'm saying this,but I'm rooting for the corrupt elites in the case that they aren't fully bought out
I'll be honest, i just don't see any way out for Romania at the moment, it's all become too depressing for me to even visit there anymore. There seems to exist no political group in the country that isn't either totally subservient to Brussels/Washington or a bunch of Iron Guard fanboy nutjobs. This just isn't the country that built Casa Poporului and Hidrocentrala Portile de Fier anymore, it's become a Yankee worshipping, self-hating abomination.
Personally I'm still here for the time being,but in a year I'll be doing the Romanian Hajj to the west so I can continue my studies
One small disagreement I have is that,while impressive,Casa Poporului maybe wasn't the best idea. It tore down a lot of historic areas and frankly,if we really needed a Romanian Pentagon that badly,we could have built one on the outskirts of Bucharest,or not smack dab in the center of the city.
ukrainians who have fled to america and europe are going to to realize that their home was destroyed for american imperialist ego. I can only hope they do something more useful than adventurism against the great satan but
No, they won't, that's the tragic part. They'll still keep blaming Russia. Only those in Ukraine itself will realize it, at the very latest when it's Russia that inevitably picks up the pieces and rebuilds the country after the Kiev junta has been driven out.
If they do this it's total demographic decline, there aren't even a lot of 25 year olds left and really you oughta wait for people to have children before sending them off to die
That's sure to go well, replacing the entirety of the male adult generation Z population in Ukraine with immigrants after they all die in the war. In Ukraine, a country known to have such an accepting culture to foreigners that they have Nazi Azov brigades, and black volunteer fighters are warned about being called racial slurs, including the n-word, before volunteering. Even when evacuating the country at the start of the war, black people were put on seperate trains.
Even if Ukraine was a fully accepting non racist country, replacing an entire gender of a generation with people from another culture would challenging. In Ukraine, it's a disastrous idea.