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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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.
Man, TikTok libs who were fully on board with Palestine a month ago have just fully switched over to being huge Kamala Harris stans and the hate for people who continue to care about the Palestinian genocide is pretty palapable.
This isn't really News but it's just a pretty crazy shift in vibes that has me, as an American, feeling like no American can be trusted with access to any power ever.
I feel like maybe a PRC appointed viceroy might be the way to go in the future or something.
News mega gang, listen up. Based on vibes, pit in my stomach, voice tone of family in Beirut, and the spirits of George Hawi and Kamal Jumblatt speaking to me:
Iran and Hezbollah will be attacking Israel before Sunday. If it doesn't happen, I'll show my face here again on Sunday and you're all allowed to call me a dumbass.
Pope Francis says the IDF is commiting terrorism
Under no circumstances do you have to hand it to the Catholics but this is cool at leastZak Cope, third-worldist marxist and author of Divided World Divided Class and mentioned fairly regularly on Hexbear, has gone completely off the deep end. October 7th was too much for him.
Show
He's now stated his full support for free-market capitalism and colonialism, and is advocating for the rules-based international order as a way to protect from Russian and communist influence, is drawing equivalencies between Nazis and the Soviets, is saying that unequal exchange is not real, centralized planning is impossible, quoting Thatcher, etc.
For many western leftists, now that oppressed people are actually beginning to fight back in (necessarily imperfect) ways, rather than being pitiable victims marching into the sea as Gandhi wished, all left-wing values go out the window and they realize their class interests are aligned against these uprisings. I must admit that I thought a big exposure to the literature and even writing a significant book on the subject would inoculate a person against taking the complete opposite values less than a year after they held those values, but Zionism is a stubborn little tumor which can rapidly take over the body once it awakens.
Visiting someone who has cable news on. First time i've seen cable news in a long time, and there's a lot of super carefully engineered psychic damage inducing electoral propaganda. And you know what? American electoralism isn't just largely pointless, it's actively evil. It's indoctrinating people in to a completely false reality disconnected from any either domestic or foreign political realities.
Happening now: Israeli ambassador to the UN goes on hysterical genocidal screed at UNSC, stops himself every 2 seconds to emphasize that Arabs are terrorists, and again every 4 seconds to scream and moan
about the UNSC falling for “terrorist lies”, ends Hitlerite speech with “WE ARE THE DEFENDERS OF CIVILIZATION” and storms out of the roomA representative from the Vatican City State delivered credentials to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, giving legitimacy to his government in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church.
Far-Right latino catholics and protestants really pissed rn lol.
On holiday and a bunch of yanks and white south africans having an open conversation about how the idf can kill anyone in their sleep and how apartheid wasnt exactly nice but at least it was good for the economy. First time ive encountered the famed zionist lib. Awful people.
Minor but still significant victory for LGBT rights in China https://www.attitude.co.uk/news/world/chinese-court-recognises-two-legal-mothers-in-landmark-lgbtq-ruling-471531/
Come on do something Mr Khamenei, my hexbear reputation is on the line here. What if my son finds out that his dad became TinyPenis after being let down by the Axis of Resistance
Capitalism is when no food.
A million Argentine children skip meals each day due to poverty
Over half of families with children had to stop buying basic foods because they couldn’t afford them, a UNICEF report has found
In Argentina, over one million children are skipping meals each day because their families cannot afford food, according to a UNICEF report published Tuesday. The number of households who cannot make ends meet has risen significantly since 2022.
An April study of households with children found that 7% of children and teens, and 30% of adults, had to skip at least one meal a day because they couldn’t afford food. The report showed that seven in 10 children were poor in April. Poverty was defined as either economic poverty or deprivation of basic needs such as education, social protection, or adequate housing.
In a context of growing economic and social inequality, 52% of households with kids stopped buying essential foods because they could no longer afford them. This is 11 percentage points higher than in June 2023, and the highest since UNICEF started conducting these surveys in 2020. This number represents 3.3 million households, which are home to almost 7 million children.
According to UNICEF’s data, 90% of these homes stopped buying milk, meat and other similar products. “The intake of foods crucial for the nutrition of children and teenagers (meat, vegetables, fruit and dairy) has significantly dropped, while it has increased in the case of cheaper and less nutritious foods (pasta, flour and bread),” the report read. In 48% of the homes surveyed, the monthly income wasn’t sufficient to cover basic household expenses. This was seven points higher than last year, and 15 points higher than in June 2022.
The situation gets worse when the head of the household is unemployed, on welfare, or a single woman. Almost a quarter (23%) of families also stopped buying medicine, while 32% stopped going for medical or dental checkups. Many had to borrow money or spend their savings to cover basic expenses.
In the 12 months prior to the survey, a quarter of teenagers had jobs, UNICEF found. A further 12% were looking for work.
UNICEF’s numbers are in line with recent studies on poverty in Argentina. An analysis of official data by the Argentine Catholic University’s Social Debt Observatory released last week showed that seven out of 10 children were poor in the first quarter of 2024. Poverty hit 55% and destitution rose to 20% in the first three months of the year, the observatory found.
The damage this is doing simply cannot be calculated. The very social fabric is being destroyed, slowly but surely. Of course, ancaps and their fascist and liberal allies will see this as "mere numbers", "poverty rates can go down actually" they'll say. Yes, sure, but the damage malnutrition does to a child marks them for life. A child that doesn't have access to quality food at that age develops problems that will follow them for the rest of their lives. This is absolutely degrading the material conditions in which we live, it's degrading people who never had a shot on their lifes. The effects will be truly felt in 20, 30 and 40 years.
Capitalism is a crime against humanity.
