Bulletins and News Discussion from August 12th to August 18th, 2024 - Marshall Plan: Now As Farce - COTW: Ireland
Bulletins and News Discussion from August 12th to August 18th, 2024 - Marshall Plan: Now As Farce - COTW: Ireland
Image is of one of Ireland's only manned navy ships, the Samuel Beckett. Image sourced from this BBC article.
Putler has been HUMILIATED by the Kursk offensive and this proves that Russia's army is in tatters and unable even to defend its own territory. However, it is simultaneously true that Russia poses an existential threat to countries thousands of miles away, as this recent Politico article demonstrates. Ireland - a country that immediately springs to mind as one surrounded by enemies - is being bullied due to its lack of military.
Despite bearing responsibility for 16 percent of the EU’s territorial waters, and the fact that 75 percent of transatlantic undersea cables pass through or near Irish waters, Ireland is totally defenseless. And I mean completely unable to protect critical infrastructure, or even pretend to secure its own borders. [...] Ireland’s “navy” of six patrol vessels is currently operating with one operational ship due to chronic staff shortages. [...] Ireland simply has no undersea capabilities. How could it, when it barely spends 0.2 percent of GDP on security and defense? And it has, in effect, abdicated responsibility for protecting the Europe’s northwestern borders.
For all we know, the dreaded sea-people from the Bronze Age Collapse could soon emerge from the North Atlantic.
Unfortunately, things are even worse up in the skies. Ireland has no combat jets, and it’s the only country in Europe that can’t monitor its own airspace due to the lack of primary radar systems. Instead, the country has outsourced its security to Britain in a technically secret agreement between Dublin and London, which effectively cedes control over Irish air space to the Royal Air Force. This must be the luck of the Irish — smile and get someone else to protect you for free.
While this is very silly, rearmament has long been a part of US imperial strategy on an economic level. Desai, discussing the US imperial strategy in the WW2 period:
By 1947 [...] the domestic postwar consumer boom was nearing its end. While financing exports became more urgent, the 1946 elections returned a Congress unlikely to approve further loans. Now the Truman Administration concocted the ‘red menace’ to ‘scare the hell out of the country’, enunciated the Truman Doctrine of US support for armed resistance to ‘subjugation’ which launched the cold war, and Congress granted $400 million to prevent left-wing triumphs in Greece and Turkey in 1947.
One reading of history states that the US was so intimidated by the USSR that this forced a policy of massive arms production even outside of official wartime. Why this arms production is not occurring today can be puzzling, and (very reasonably) explained by neoliberals exporting industrial production overseas. However, a different historical reading can explain both the first Cold War, and the ongoing situation in which American weaponry is being almost purposefully given in insufficient numbers to give Ukraine a chance of victory and thus only prolonging their suffering (while generating massive profit for the military-industrial complex):
In this sense the Cold War was not the cause of US imperial policy but its effect. It combined financing exports with fighting combined development by national capitalisms as well as communism. When such ‘totalitarian regimes’ threatened ‘free peoples’, ‘America’s world economic responsibilities’ included aid to countries battling them.
By selling massively expensive weapons to Europe, America could simultaneously guarantee export markets for its industries, trap Europe into reliance on American industries at the expense of their own, and divert European funds away from constructing factories which could compete with American ones. Providing a way to defend against Soviet communism (and now Russian "imperialism") is merely a happy side-effect, and so the lack of effectiveness of American weaponry is causing no great panic among the military-industrial complex, nor an urgent plan to quintuple artillery shell production or Patriot missile production - the deals for F-35s and such are still there, and they are what matter.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Ireland! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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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Imaginary Venezuelan Goverment 2.0 Update
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she is convinced that Edmundo González will be sworn in as the new head of state on January 10, 2025, when the new period of government begins, despite the official proclamation of Nicolás Maduro as the winner of the July 28 presidential elections
Huge Article
In an interview with Agencia EFE, the former Liberal MP reiterated that the candidate of the Democratic Unity Platform (PUD) won the elections "overwhelmingly"
"Edmundo González will be the new head of state and the new commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, and that depends on what we all do, all Venezuelans inside and outside the country. I trust the Venezuelan people and that's why I know that on January 10th we will have a new president," Machado said.
Machado said that the "whole world knows" that Maduro, in power since 2013, lost the elections and is trying to carry out "the biggest fraud in history" by insisting on his victory, with the help of the institutions and the military leadership.
"Maduro today has zero legitimacy, no legitimacy at all, and therefore it is a moment in which the international community has to leave a very clear red line linked to respect for popular sovereignty," she continued. She also said she hoped that foreign governments would "firmly and unequivocally make Maduro understand that what he is doing, using repressive forces against innocent citizens, which is unacceptable".
The former deputy also predicts that in the coming days, voices critical of Chavismo will continue to grow, because, according to her, the aim is to apply "all the pressure necessary to make Maduro understand that his best option is to accept the terms of a negotiation", something that the dictator has already publicly rejected, as he insists that he won the elections.
Regarding the role that the military should play in this eventual transition, she believes that their most important task is to make Maduro understand "that they are not going to repress the people" and that "they will fulfill the constitutional mandate to enforce popular sovereignty". "It is precisely Nicolás Maduro who is using military force to prevent the transition, [it is he] who has entrenched himself - surrounded by members of the military high command - to ignore the will expressed by the people," she reiterated about the Armed Forces, whose leadership has expressed its unrestricted support for the Chavista leader.
The opposition leader explained that, although the specific points of a transition "are the subject of such negotiations", it is important to highlight "the willingness" of the opposition "to move forward along this path", both with Maduro and with senior military or civilian officials. "It's the best option Maduro has today, and it may be the only one, because trying to maintain himself by force, based exclusively on the use of violence, is unsustainable in Venezuela today," he said.
While maintaining "permanent contact" with González, who is also in hiding, Machado said that it is up to both of them to "continue to increase the pressure", a task they hope to accomplish with the support of Venezuelans and the international community so that "this civic and peaceful protest stays alive".
Asked about the decision to keep her whereabouts hidden, despite the fact that the Attorney General's Office has stated that there is no arrest warrant against her, she recalled that Maduro himself labeled her a terrorist and asked to have her sent to prison, while "hundreds of other leaders are also in hiding" due to these threats, just when the dictator called for extreme police and military control. "We are all working towards the same goal. We will win, we will not leave the streets, we will continue to take this message to the whole world. Edmundo González Urrutia is the elected president, what matters is that the sovereign will of the people is upheld," he concluded.
"We will not leave the streets", but she is hiding?
Can't believe they somehow managed to "as farce" even Guaido
Maybe they thought Guido was the farce and "the farce of a farce is the real deal"?
I wish Venezuela would just publish their results by polling station. How long is this stalemate going to last? They have to do it eventually by law anyway, right?
Yes. The supreme court said the CNE has to publish it.