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.
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 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.
Yes, the idea and measurement of IQ has many problems, but I think a lot of the discourse around IQ has strayed very far from its current uses and implications. Sadly, almost every conversation I see about it features some kind of misunderstandings or misinformation.
Also, the statistics behind modern IQ scores are very strong, arguably stronger than almost any psychological measure. Though it helps that there’s a m/billion-dollar industry built around developing and standardizing assessments for things like intelligence, academics, learning and memory, and more.
Can you elaborate on that? My understanding was that IQ is not very useful beyond it's original intent, which was identifying learning disorders, and only tends to correlate with competency exams (i.e. SAT scores and similar).
Yeah, for sure! I can info-dump for ages, but I'll try to be brief.
Generally, "intelligence" or "IQ" refers to someone's ability to think about and solve different kinds of abstract problems. The "IQ" that is the focus of most people's criticism is the "Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient" that a test might produce. This is a single score based on someone's performance on like 10 or more different tasks on an intelligence test. Here's a breakdown of the standard intelligence test for adults:
The squares on the right side are the names of specific tasks, and they are designed to capture different kinds of cognitive functions:
The four scores that capture someone's performance on these different areas are almost universally more important and useful than someone's FSIQ, which has them all lumped together. Sometimes, the FSIQ is the simplest way to communicate someone's overall ability to solve problems with their mind. Other times, we don't even report the FSIQ, because there is enough difference between the four areas that the FSIQ isn't actually useful. In contrast, it is always important to look at the composite scores for the different areas, so we can more precisely describe someone's strengths and weaknesses, like if they are better or worse at solving visual/spatial problems than verbal problems; how quickly or efficiently they can process information; how easily can they remember new information; etc. ... Like, you can have two people with similar FSIQ's, but completely different strengths and weaknesses. One person could have a lower than average FSIQ, but score higher than 99.9% of their peers in a specific area. There's a lot of nuance in intelligence testing that gets lost in the "IQ" discourse.
There's also a lot of confusion about what "average" means, and what makes someone above, below, or within average. One thing that makes the 'real' tests different from others, is that they come with a normative sample, meaning the test manufacturer has enough testing data from people of all ages to estimate the average scores for specific age groups. There are important limits to these comparisons though, for example, when assessing people with different ethnic/racial backgrounds and, ironically, neurodivergent people.
When someone gets an IQ score between 85 and 115, that means they are in the average range for their age group. Children and youth are typically grouped by each 1-2 years of age; Adults are grouped by 5-10 years. The average range is also surprisingly large, accounting for 50% or even 68% of people. People have to score a lot higher or lower than the exact average to be considered actually above or below average.
Nowadays, scores from an IQ test are best for describing someone's strengths and weaknesses, and for personalizing supports and recommendations. Measuring intelligence is like half the criteria for diagnosing intellectual disabilities (the second half is about how independently someone can manage everyday living). The diagnostic criteria for specific learning disorders (e.g., difficulties with reading, writing, and/or math) no longer requires intelligence testing, but it is helpful for the descriptive/explanatory piece I mentioned above.
I guess at the core of it, I think there is a cultural issue with "IQ" that psychologists need to do more to address. "Intelligence", as psychologists understand it, is very different than the "intelligence" discussed outside of academia and psychology clinics. For psychologists, intelligence is a very real, meaningful, albeit imperfect construct. It took decades for psychologists to agree on what they think "intelligence" is and how they can measure it. Mfers were so desperate they created new statistical methods, like factor analysis, to measure "intelligence". But these methods are now the standard in social sciences. I'd wager that intelligence is the most researched psychological concept, although idk for sure.
I was not really brief, fml.