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.
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
A collab between two of my favorites, Greg Stoker and Jon Elmer:
Failing on All Fronts: Israel Assaults Northern Gaza as Resistance Ramps Up Operations w/ Jon Elmer
By popular request we're bringing on Jon Elmer of Electronic Intifada to talk about the overall situation in the Palestine/Lebanon battle-space and how the IOF will not be able to maintain its operations forever. Israel is also facing social and economic collapse, but we're still a ways from that.
I definitely recommend watching/listening.
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for demonrats thats basically a duel huh. She should just explode his head
Not sure if this is anything but I’m trying to book a flight and hotel, two separate companies, and I’m getting host errors (Cloudflare seems to be fine though?). Weird delays and failures in other websites too. In talking with people over the phone at these companies too they’re getting server/hosting errors as well. Just kind of weird
Edit: also some phone calls just not connecting…strange
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The Last Supper: the Hezbullah's drone attack is a response to the Pagers incident
The "New York Post" newspaper chose a mocking headline, "Beep Beep Boom!", for the terrorist attack involving pagers. Users on the internet responded with a picture of Hezbullah's drone and Whizz_Whizz_Boom hashtag where the whizz is the sound of drones.
The Harris campaign has released a 5 point agenda to "Create Opportunity for Black Men", that, on the surface, appears to be an attempt to steady what I am sure are cratering polls, and cynically, seems to have been created so they have something to point to and blame black men for not supporting her if and when she loses. Among the highlights: legal weed and "protecting cryptocurrency" lmao
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If this were a Trum platform, the liberal media would be screaming about him a racist for thinking what's most important to black men is crypto and weed.
Pro-Palestine solidarity organization Samidoun and Palestinian-Canadian activist Khaled Barakat designated "foreign terrorist organization" and "terrorist" respectively by the US and Canada.
Mandela grandson blocked from entering the UK because he was against the gaza genocide and smoked lammy https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ-VHz7MmrU
Folks, it's time for the latest installation of "Western media finally says the things the news mega has been saying for 2+ years". I'm just going to highlight a couple quotes I think are interesting, but the article is a quick read.
Israel faces a looming shortage of interceptor missiles as it shores up air defences to protect the country from attacks by Iran and its proxies, according to industry executives, former military officials and analysts.
The US is racing to help close gaps in Israel’s protective shield, announcing on Sunday the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) antimissile battery, ahead of an expected retaliatory strike from Israel on Iran that risks further regional escalation.
“Israel’s munitions issue is serious,” said Dana Stroul, a former senior US defence official with responsibility for the Middle East.
“If Iran responds to an Israel attack [with a massive air strike campaign], and Hizbollah joins in too, Israel air defences will be stretched,” she said, adding that US stockpiles were not limitless. “The US can’t continue supplying Ukraine and Israel at the same pace. We are reaching a tipping point.”
As it turns out, profit maximization, lean manufacturing, and just-in-time logistics is not compatible with a rapidly expanding warfront. Apparently, stockpiles and excess industrial capacity are kind of important when you want to fight another country with a peer or near-peer industrial base, let alone multiple.
The US-supplied Thaad battery, which is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles, will sit alongside Israel’s Arrow system. It bolsters Israel’s overall air defences as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government plans its retaliatory strike for Iran’s missile barrage in October, which Tehran said was to avenge the killing of the leaders of the Hamas and Hizbollah militant groups.
Is "sit along side" metaphorical or literal, here? My gut feeling is that this is literal, and they are going to place the THAAD battery, which will be operated by ~100 US troops, next to an Arrow battery, meaning that the strategy is to use US troops as human shields to deter a strike on the interceptor batteries.
“We are not seeing Hizbollah’s full capability yet. It has only been firing at around a tenth of its estimated prewar launching capacity, a few hundred rockets a day instead of as many as 2,000,” said Assaf Orion, a former Israeli brigadier general and head of strategy at the Israel Defense Forces.
“Some of that gap is a choice by Hizbollah not to go full out, and some of it is due to degradation by the IDF . . . But Hizbollah has enough left to mount a strong operation,” Orion added. “Haifa and northern Israel are still on the receiving end of rocket and drone attacks almost every day.”
Analysts said that defence planners and Israel’s AI-powered air defences were having to choose which areas to protect over others.
More than 20,000 rockets and missiles have been fired at Israel over the past year from Gaza and Lebanon alone, according to official Israeli figures.
“During the October 1 attack, there was a sense the IDF reserved some Arrow interceptors in case Iran fired its next salvo at Tel Aviv,” said Ehud Eilam, a former researcher at Israel’s Ministry of Defence. “It’s only a matter of time before Israel starts to run out of interceptors and has to prioritise how they are deployed.”
We are getting to the point where Israel is having to choose which missiles to let through, which is not a great spot to be in when your population has a very low tolerance for casualties.
Lol we were discussing all of this shit before the invasion of gaza even started.
Analysts said that defence planners and Israel’s AI-powered air defences were having to choose which areas to protect over others.
Holy cope lmao
yeah we totally just let our airfield full of F35s get hit 40 times, it was us holding back!
We are not seeing Hizbollah’s full capability yet
Herbollah's 👏👏👏
We are getting to the point where Israel is having to choose which missiles to let through, which is not a great spot to be in when your population has a very low tolerance for casualties.
You really don't wanna be in a position where you have to protect your civilian centers just on the off-chance that Iran will hit them (even though they and Hezbollah and Yemen don't seem interested in causing mass civilian death and instead strike military facilities) while leaving your airbases and planes unprotected, which are the only functional part of the Israeli armed forces given that their soldiers seem more interested in taking selfies and wistfully gazing out of windows in Gaza and then getting blown into chunks than actually executing a competent invasion strategy.
One has to imagine that reserves are low globally. US'd probably be in a bad situation if something did pop off with PRC but it hasn't made us any less hawkish.
I haven't bothered to really comment on it here, but I am pretty skeptical about the whole "war with China by 2027" thing because it's coming primarily from the US Navy. China is really the only country that arguably justifies the level of spending the US Navy leadership and shipbuilders/weapons manufacturers want. Maybe it's real, but I can't help but have the feeling that it's just a bunch of defense contractors wanting more money and Pentagon staff looking out for their exit opportunities.
Military contractors certainly will look for any basis to justify more contracts, but there is an incredibly strong impulse among the American ultra-bourgeoisie driving the initiative to prepare for war with China. From their perspective, if the United States cannot remain peerless, they have already lost, and the only way they can arrest China's development is through military intervention. It is the only alternative left after sanctions have failed to frustrate China's development of many cutting edge technologies.
Is it at all practical? Is there a material basis for military victory? Probably not. To compete with China on economic, academic, and technological terms with a quarter of the population, profound domestic social reforms need to take place. The US needs to send as many people to universities as possible, needs to employ as many people in PRODUCTIVE labor as possible, ensure that they are in good health, ensure they are housed, stop flushing millions of human-years down the toilet with mass incarceration and premature death, etc. But those reforms would be tantamount to a revolution. They are off the table, and constraining China militarily is necessary to keep them from coming to fruition out of economic necessity. The American ruling class will not sacrifice their ability to have their cake and eat it too. They want to remain the peerless masters of the world while desperately clinging to an utterly backwards regime fueled by an incomprehensible waste of human potential.
Exactly, they can't outcompete China while also basing the economy on layers and layers unproductive parasitism. The problem is, they also can't win a war against China for the same reason, and I think a good number of them realize that.
Hello newsmega heads, I have a question. Has the USA declined in absolute power since the 90s, or just in relative power? Is it's ability to wage war, maintain alliance and influence other countries less than what it used to be, or does it just face more resistance?
I think it's both, but I want to highlight the "more resistance" piece in terms of weaponry. In the 90s rockets and missiles were only owned by very large state actors, and were very expensive. In 2024 you can use drones, relatively advanced drones, and very advanced ballistic missiles for quite cheap. Even non-state actors like Hezbollah have access to a large suite of weaponry that can't really be defended against if used en masse. The nature of warfare itself has changed, and the United States' old "package" of air superiority doesn't mean much these days when it's easy to fire off a pretty advanced rocket and then disappear. That's why they're having such trouble in Yemen, the non-state actors got a lot better and the US has remained the same.
How much are Hezbollah's ballistic missile capabilities due to them becoming more universally accessible vs getting support from Iran?
I'm honestly not sure. It's probably both; the Iranians themselves have made a ton of progress on making missiles cheaper and more advanced for the price, so "support from Iran" is both Hezbollah gets missiles and Iran develops better missile tech to make it easier for Hezbollah to build more missiles.
The MIC today is only good at two things:
- Creating profits for arms dealers
- Killing civilians from the air against non-state powers
Both. It declined in relative power to a combination of recovery and growth in the Global South + the commoditization of advanced tech, enabling even Yemen to be a stone in the Empire's shoes. But the US of the Cold War invested its humongous defence spending into a potential peer conflict. A combination of outsourcing, lean manufacturing and only attacking weak countries that cannot defend themselves left the US a shadow of its former self.
Militarily? Both absolute and relative decline, the invention of a small quantity of high-tech arms does not at all make up for industry shifting abroad, and other countries now have militaries that can take on the American military especially if it insists on dividing itself between a bunch of wars around the world
Economically? Increased absolutely but decreased in relative terms, largely thanks to China which has skyrocketed (and is bringing dozens of countries up with them). The end of the process of dedollarization is decades and millions of deaths away (just as the transition between the sterling/gold standard and the dollar took decades and two world wars which killed tens of millions of people) but the fact that we're even on that path now is a clear sign that alternatives have grown stronger
I think its power to wage war was not good either. Iraq army kinda sucked, Libya was too small to put up a fight and even then it depleted nato stocks to an extent. But there is definitely decline. Vietnam won with supply of Soviets and China. Taliban won without any major countries support
the MIC used to be able to produce something when it came down to it, and that is pretty clearly just not the case anymore. not in the scale or at the cost required for fighting peers
In my petty podcaster parasocial disgust news:
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know your enemy are such lib cowards, dissent affiliation is truly mark of a shitlib
ooh we've changed after equivocating war on iraq, boohoo, eat shit, leiffer simps.
I told a liberal the other day that I hope she will be blessed with the same healthcare that Biden/Harris have given Palestinian women. I don't think she appreciated that lol
Being blessed with the same healthcare that American women are getting is already pretty grim, depending on the state
>Yeah itd be worse, worse for me personally!
Revolutionary Dinner Party Podcasters, lets get back to brunch!
They aren't revolutionary (or marxists, more socdem), but like, i thought they were decent-ish morally people
Wes Streeting has called to force people on the dole to take Ozempic.
This is what happens I suppose when you put someone who believes the NHS is a cult in charge of healthcare.Mr ban puberty blockers, who once compared their usage to medical experimentation, now wants to carry out unethical medical experimentation on the unemployed.
Offering people struggling with obesity a medical treatment that improves their health and quality of life is certainly a good thing to do. Forcing people who are unable to decline because you hold the entire material basis of their life hostage to undergo a medical treatment because you are ideologically committed to see societal ills as individual fillings is a fucked up and evil thing to do.
Also, how will the chuds react when they give the the scarce expensive drug that rich people buy on the grey/black market to the unemployed? Handouts for lazy, fat people who are undeserving of life itself and who should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
Offering people struggling with obesity a medical treatment that improves their health and quality of life is certainly a good thing to do. Forcing people who are unable to decline because you hold the entire material basis of their life hostage to undergo a medical treatment because you are ideologically committed to see societal ills as individual fillings is a fucked up and evil thing to do.
Also, how will the chuds react when they give the the scarce expensive drug that rich people buy on the grey/black market to the unemployed? Handouts for lazy, fat people who are undeserving of life itself and who should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
Offering people struggling with obesity a medical treatment that improves their health and quality of life is certainly a good thing to do. Forcing people who are unable to decline because you hold the entire material basis of their life hostage to undergo a medical treatment because you are ideologically committed to see societal ills as individual fillings is a fucked up and evil thing to do.
Also, how will the chuds react when they give the the scarce expensive drug that rich people buy on the grey/black market to the unemployed? Handouts for lazy, fat people who are undeserving of life itself and who should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
New weight-loss jabs could be given to unemployed people to help them get back into work, Wes Streeting has suggested.
Yea that's why people aren't working, because they are fat. Not because of austerity.
And wouldn't buying Ozempic at market rate blow up the budget "hole" even further?
Failed "assassination" "attempt" on the king of Morocco, his convoy got hit by the worst most pathetic molotov cocktail I have ever seen like wow it was bad
telegram link, https://t.me/AL24newschannel/40379
I'll see if anyone upoaded it somewhere else
DPRK promises to retaliate against ROK for having a drone violate DPRK airspace. DRPK usually ends a press statement like "if ROK/US continues, we will retaliate" or like "we're warning you, please don't do this again". This press statement is different in that the conclusion is a direct promise. The tone is changed. "The provocateurs will have to pay a dear price."
Press Statement of Kim Yo Jong, Vice Department Director of C.C., WPK
Pyongyang, October 15 (KCNA) -- Kim Yo Jong, vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, issued the following press statement on Tuesday:
We secured clear evidence that the ROK military gangsters are the main culprit of the hostile provocation of violating the sovereignty of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea by intruding into the sky over its capital city.
The provocateurs will have to pay a dear price. -0-
www.kcna.kp (Juche113.10.15.)http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/96a1d0b468adc047aa85aaca679cd626.kcmsf
https://archive.is/sl8KV
uncritical support for the DPRK in its heroic struggle to liberate occupied Korea from the genocidal American empire
Will this turn into China’s Ukraine if war between them kicks off?
i think it's becoming more and more clear that russia and china have mostly achieved strategic overmatch in northeast asia. obviously, this is in large part due to the complete lack of depth of all the us lackeys in the area, but there are logistical elements to consider, as well as iran's spectacular showcasing of the ineffectiveness of western air defences in general. additionally, the constituency and elites of japan and samsung are ideologically less captured than america's european satrapies, if only due to language differences. japan in particular, being the largest and perhaps most loyal running dog, has been very cautiously testing the waters via more extroverted trade policies in asean since the two plaza accords and has engaged in... well, strange and uncharacteristic behavior that could be interpreted as reconciliatory in recent months. as such, it seems unlikely that imperial provocations in the region will be met with as much success as they have in ukraine.
on the contrary, northeast asia at this point is more of a liability than anything. if we generously assume that the imperialists do well in all their efforts elsewhere, then the korean peninsula can serve as an anti-imperialist release valve to divert pressure away from the other fronts. this is amplified by the fact that the imperialists are running a war of optics and narrative, and the bad optics of allowing allies to be categorically abandoned is worse than actually losing men and materiel. conversely, if the imperialists are on the backfoot, then it follows that activation of this theater will only serve to stretch them even further. it goes without saying that the american best case scenario is for both japan and samsung to obediently destroy themselves against the asiatic hordes of the east, but the possibility of this happening really hinges on american successes (that is, successful displays of continuing american dominance and thus legitimacy) in the european and mena theaters.
overall, it feels like america is in a bit of a bind at the moment. the only way it can win is if it can indirectly get its vassals to destroy themselves, but the only way it can for sure get its vassals to destroy themselves completely is through a successful direct intervention.
tldr; no, because the world's most based millenial will just initiate bakhmut 2: ballistic boogaloo and turn seoul into the moon 10 hours after hostilities commence. also they won't be able to get him because word on the street is that they had him send his guys to teach the irgc how to build tunnels.
we do a little trolling (this was down for 3 hours, lmfao)
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