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.
Why? Why any of this? What the fuck does the CIA get out of….supporting queer rights in Yemen?
Fifth columns. People who will act against the state and be endlessly loyal to the USA, because if it were to be revealed that they are LGBT, they would be prosecuted, and by being LGBT, they have a natural distrust of the socially conservative government that seeks to limit their rights. Easy targets for blackmail into becoming spies. This was being done by a spy ring after all.
One of the reasons why democratic Germany was decriminalising homosexuality was that they recognised homophobia as a security threat. They reckoned that since they knew for a fact that a nonsignificant part of the population was gay and since they had no reliable way of telling who was gay or not they would have to assume that some of the people handling state secrets or otherwise placed in critical positions were gay. Maintaining a policy and social climate of homophobia meant that these people became easy to compromise for enemies of the state.
Which I absolutely love. It's just so out of tune with western paradigms of acceptance, tolerance, culture war. The GDR flanked the west by decades, partially to solve a purely practical state security issue.
They were also helped by having a materialist scientific way of looking at things rather than an idealist. Party of decriminalisation happened because the democratic German supreme court struck down old homophobic legislation with the argument that there was scientific consensus on homosexuality being a naturally occurring thing.
Just spit balling here but, maybe they imagine it will damage social cohesion (like Russia supposedly sponsors right wing influencers in the West), or maybe it's a way to link up with gay Yemeni's who could be easier to blackmail for intelligence purposes
I guess they might be at the vanguard of a color revolution, seeking more rights in a new government
I think these minority groups are too marginalized to play any pivotal role in regime change. Strictly in numbers, it is a big step down from NGOs focused on issues like women's rights or ethnic / sectarian representation which might represent a double-digit percentage, economically powerful, or geographically strategic segment of the population.
These cut-out organizations exist for the sole purpose of branding to audiences in the imperial core. Should the US and its allies find a suitable candidate or movement for regime change, their endorsement will embew it with a "civilizing" gloss, and justify any interventions made to support them.
It benefits the empire in several ways.
First, recruiting persecuted and marginalized minorities has always been a priority in espionage. If you know someone is gay in a society where gay people are brutalized or killed then you own them. If they refuse to follow orders you expose them and their ife is destroyed. It's part of the justification for why the us was so terrified of gay people in the military and bureacracy during the Lavender Scares (the gdr solved the problem by destigmatizing and supporting gay culture).
Second - openly promoting something highly transgressive will create a reliable reaction. If the Americans are trying to normalize homosexuality homophobic elements will organize against them
firstly, this plays in to western cultural imperialism. The regime can use the persecution of gay people to play on western sympathies and get western support for military interventions.
secondly, it polarizes the local political climate. If homosexuality is associated with american infiltration and subversion this makes it more dangerous to be accepting or supportive. It's a divide and conquer strategy - create a political rift between groups that support or tolerate gay people and nationalists by tying homosexuality up in nationalism. It forces people to choose a camp, pits those camps against each other, and gives the us options for further compromising people and destabilizing politics.
Liberalism.
they are absolutely not doing it for ideological purposes. CIA is by US standards pretty conservative, and has a shit ton of evangelicals and mormons. if this historically fascist organisation is promoting queer rights, they are doing it for self-serving purposes.
The FBI hates LGBTq movements. The CIA exploits them.