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.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


  • carpoftruth [any, any]M
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Yes I agree, there was not very much in the show about the reasons for the sino-soviet split or why China was so antagonistic to Vietnam. I'd like to learn more about the sino-soviet split in general, it's not something I have a good understanding of. if anyone has articles/podcasts to refer to on this I'm open to. I guess books also, but I have too big of a reading list already so I'd appreciate something more digestible.

    • MelianPretext [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      There's the ideological reasons that all historically conscious leftists know about and while they were the pretexts for the split, I've come to the position over time that they don't represent the core issue that initiated it. As such, there's a fundamental relationship dynamic that should be clarified before anyone gets into studying the deeper weeds of the various grievances that propelled the split. This dynamic is also the principal lesson of value to AES and socialism today which to learn from in preventing such a catastrophic inter-fraternal relationship rupture from repeating itself under the same lines.

      As a background, I would argue that the fundamental problem with the entire Comintern movement post-WWII was that it took the system of democratic centralism from the state level to the inter-state level. This was driven by the noble goal of finally breaking down the petty national divisions that bound human society for all of its existence through grasping the historic opportunity presented by the 20th century socialist revolutions and the historic atmosphere of internationalism.

      The problem is that, in practice, inter-state democratic centralism led essentially de facto to the leadership of the socialist bloc by the first worker's state, the USSR. This would not be so intolerable if it weren't for the coincidence that nearly all socialist states that came into existence after WWII, with the sole exception of the DDR, were countries that had been the historic victims of colonialism and imperialist control where the indigenous populations had always yearned to finally take control of their own nations. This was true across the socialist world - of Poland, of Czechoslovakia, of Yugoslavia, of China and of the DPRK. The socialist revolutions were therefore also simultaneously struggles for national liberation. For these countries to win their independence and sovereignty - only to immediately be expected to subsume themselves under Comintern democratic centralism as led by the USSR - posed a serious tension that eventually snapped to catastrophic consequences. Comintern internationalism and inter-state democratic centralism were therefore arguably noble ideas, yet also ultimately idealistic, utopian and unfortunately ahead of their time. Implemented in the context of the mid-20th century, they could only end up clashing with the historical conditions of the USSR's new fraternal socialist partners.

      No Soviet leader seems to have truly ever grasped this contradiction, including Stalin. The split with Yugoslavia, through his quite heavy-handed attempt to depose Tito within the CPY and then expelling Yugoslavia from the Comintern, was one of Stalin's actual and serious errors. Kate Hudson's work "Breaking the South Slav Dream: The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia" argues that this was all precipitated by Tito's refusal to submit to Soviet supervision of its foreign policy under Comintern democratic centralism. MLs of the day largely sided with the USSR and denounced "Titoism" for its introduction of market forces as a horrifying betrayal. Tito's refusal to submit to democratic centralism (i.e. the CPSU) was then portrayed as akin to Trotsky's own actions. Obvious, given the conditions of AES today, principled MLs are more sympathetic to the aims of the CPY, but the Yugoslavs at the time were virtually ostracized. Yugoslavia was then isolated from the entire socialist bloc with all Soviet aid withdrawn and it is alleged by Hudson that the CPSU promoted several purges in the other Parties in Europe to remove "Titoist sympathizers."

      This inevitably forced the SFRY to turn to the West and exacerbated its experiment with market socialism, which the USSR denounced, into an outright submission to Western capital in many aspects in order to receive desperately needed assistance for its post-war reconstruction, introducing various institutional contradictions that would later culminate in the IMF debt spiral that the SFRY found itself in the 1980s. The refusal by the CPSU to allow Yugoslavia to propose a Balkan federation with Bulgaria was also perceived by the CPY as Moscow's fear of an enlarged socialist state becoming a rival within the Comintern. The situation deteriorated to the extent that the West's scaremongering tactic of the week became that of the "imminent Soviet invasion of Yugoslavia."

      The fracture between the CPSU and the CPY echo the later Sino-Soviet quite tellingly and this is likely by its nature indicative of a general defect in Soviet inter-socialist state policy. In 1989, Deng gave an extremely frank speech to Gorbachev during the latter's state visit on the history of Sino-Soviet relations from the Chinese perspective and he himself characterized it like this:

      I should say that starting from the mid-1960s, our relations deteriorated to the point where they were practically broken off. I don’t mean it was because of the ideological disputes; we no longer think that everything we said at that time was right. The basic problem was that the Chinese were not treated as equals and felt humiliated. However, we have never forgotten that in the period of our First Five-Year Plan the Soviet Union helped us lay an industrial foundation.

      If I have talked about these questions at length, it is in order to put the past behind us. We want the Soviet comrades to understand our view of the past and to know what was on our minds then. Now that we have reviewed the history, we should forget about it. That is one thing that has already been achieved by our meeting. Now that I have said what I had to say, that’s the end of it. The past is past.

      More contacts are being made between our two countries. After bilateral relations are normalized, our exchanges will increase in depth and scope. I have an important suggestion to make in this regard: we should do more practical things and indulge in less empty talk.

      https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1989/196.htm

      The Soviet policy of Comintern and socialist bloc leadership through a form of inter-state democratic centralism by design prevented the treatment of fraternal states as equals. There was already the power, resource and economic asymmetries between the USSR and every other socialist state that prevented any claim to equality on material grounds and all of that combined with such a policy meant counterparts like Yugoslavia and later China found it difficult to see the relationship as one between equals. Given that the USSR's socialist partner states were nearly all countries with histories of national subjugation and thus had a particular desire to be treated as a sovereign and independent polity for once, the potential for relationship conflicts was, in a sense, inevitable and such a dynamic of "inequality" was what Deng himself identified as the actual root problem that defined the Sino-Soviet relationship.

      To that end, it could be argued that the USSR carried through with such a mentality all the way to the very end with Gorbachev, who completely went over Honecker's head to discuss the terms of selling out the DDR to Kohl and the US directly, something that Honecker's memoirs written in jail (after being sold out by Yeltsin who allowed him to be extradited from Moscow to the former DDR in a perverse BRD orchestrated show trial on his "crimes") bitterly recount.

      • carpoftruth [any, any]M
        ·
        2 months ago

        Fantastic post comrade, thank you for laying this out in such clear terms deng-salute

      • DPRK_Chopra
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        deleted by creator

      • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Make this a post somewhere, it's a good analysis that I think deserves feedback in its own thread. I'm not an expert on this stuff and so can't challenge it, but I think it deserves some good challenge to sharpen it into a real article or something.

    • Vidiwell [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Where to even begin? Yugoslavian regional desires? Vietnamese Doi Moi and how it emerges from Le Duan and how that stems from the differences in the north and the south's unequal development despite a common struggle? Che's writings on USSR/Cuba/Free Trade/Sugar? Defining what differs between Khrushchev or Deng(its nothing)? How soviet "social imperialism" is in retrospect clearly subordinated to American imperialism and now China repeats the same mistakes today. The eurocommunism-maoist split and how that really does derive from various European communist parties and just about every single USA communist parties revisionism, which plays out now in various rightist deviations towards what "actually exists" and from that "what is actually possible".

      And of course all of this precedes the answer to why post colonial bourgeois nationalism flared up in border struggles with Vietnam and China, and now regrettably we have a china that continues many of these trends. Laos and Vietnam still at least exist as a good model of interstate relations, or much of the Soviet unions internal borders at least before capitalist restoration and the return of genocidal ambitions we see today.

      not to be trite with you, this question is massive, and arguably as fundamental to communism as any other question nowadays, given its real applicability on how revisionism re-asserts itself time and time again, although its particular contours are obviously not at all limited to "who gets to own a couple islands along the amur river". No easy book to start with, but Albania-China relations is probably as good a starting point as any.

      • geikei [none/use name]
        ·
        2 months ago

        The USSR coming closer to nuking China than arguably any other country has since WW2 didnt help

        Also

        why post colonial bourgeois nationalism flared up in border struggles with Vietnam and China, and now regrettably we have a china that continues many of these trends.

        China has diplomaticaly resolved the large majority of the border and maritime disputes it found itself in with the establishment of the PRC due to the massive changes from decolonial movements in the region, constantly changing and uncertain borders for China in the previous period, lack of border treaties with its neighbors before 1949. Often by surrendering the majority of the disputed ereas to the neighbouring country. Since its inception the PRC resolved border disputes with Vietnam, Myanmar, Nepal, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, North Korea, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Russia without maximalist demands, without domination through coercion and without lasting negative impact on their relations (from that aspect at least).

        • Vidiwell [any]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          The point that the USSR would have invaded China due to the cultural revolution(or perhaps you are referencing something else I am completely unaware of) is absurd. It only intervened when bourgeois counter-rev was impending within the warsaw pact when it was invited.

          The real nature of the question here is not persay the thought process behind how someone could mistake the USSR as an imperialist power equal to the USA, but how the theoretical underpinnings there intertwined with the great proletarian revolutions struggles within military politicization. Once we have that we do not have to throw the idea away wholesale, and it certainly ties into social imperialism in a real sense, and SPD's being critiqued by Lenin as an origin of that phrase. I do not have persay finalized thoughts there.

          To your second point it feels a bit callous to list off a couple points and not grapple with the fundamental failure of decolonizing the world along socialist lines. Certainly China, the USSR, and Mongolia were able to draw reasonable borders all together, but the sino-vietnam-cambodia war is just one example that is clearly formed by colonialism and chinese revisionism and persists to this day. And that underlying issue, not making up a tally of W's and L's, is what I am interested in. But certainly point taken that successes are possible, although quite a few of them likely have to due with quelling nationalistic urges in border regions more so than socialist-oblige.