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.
The vassalization of Europe is now complete. The Ukraine war has succeeded in turning Europe away from China as an export market, and towards the US. In other words, Europe now depends on the US for security, energy and its consumer market.
This is to be expected because Europe now needs to earn dollars to pay for its energy bill, and to earn dollars you gotta sell stuff to Americans. America gets free stuff from a dependent Europe simply by starting a war between Ukraine and Russia.
lol holy shit Europe got neocolonized 🤣
You absolutely hate to see it (not that I expected any better from the EU, of course)
europe became an american appendage since the marshall plan, then fully after the suez crisis and completely after the war of economic aggression against the east bloc nations.
See my other comment. There have been at least 5 major attempts at rebellion.
The Europeans aren’t stupid. They want to be out of the US sphere as well. Russia is perfect replacement for the US here, and Putin knew exactly what Europe needs and had lobbied for Russia joining the EU since the 2000s.
Russia has everything that the US can provide but cheaper.
Raw materials for European industries? Check.
Military equipments and technology? Check.
An educated workforce with a strong technical and scientific background? Check.
Geographical proximity and a bridge between the EU and China? Check.
This is why Europe needs to be defeated.
Yeah people talk about Putin being naive or whatever but if his plans had worked, Russia would be in an incredible spot right now. US just preferred to cripple its own vassals over "losing" them
It would be the US that is getting kicked out of NATO.
And then they still won't push the communism button
Yeah if Putin and Merkel have gotten their way, there wouldn’t be a communism button to push. Now, maybe there’s a 5% chance.
Not really sure how the graph is supposed to indicate any sort of drastic change in this regard. The share of exports to the PRC is 4/9 (44.(4)%) that of the share of exports to the US, which seems to not differ that much from the pre-COViD ratio of about 49%. This is also obviously much better than the situation in the 2000s (pre-crisis ratio in 2007 being 25%, for example).
NATO Europe has been subservient to the US since the end of WW2.
This is not true though. There have been numerous major attempts at rebellion from the Europeans and every time they had to be put in their place.
I will skip over WWI but it is worth noting that the US plan to destroy Europe was already in play since the 1910s, when the US demanded the Allies to repay their war debt, which directly led to WWII as the European powers squeezed the defeated Germany to pay reparations so they can in turn pay back their debt owed to the American creditors, and this led to the rise of Nazi Germany and WWII.
Post-WWII, the limits of Bretton Woods were soon felt by Europe, and by the late 1960s, the US had printed so much dollars in Vietnam that the French Indochina banks simply did not know what to do with those dollars. This resulted in the French President Pompidou demanding that the US pay them in gold (as per Bretton Woods agreement) rather than paper dollars, and led to Nixon abruptly abandoning the Bretton Woods. The French got nothing in the end. This was their first punishment.
The second attempt occurred in the 1990s, following the dissolution of the USSR. Seizing on the non-financialized Soviet industrial assets, the European capitalists were able to convert them into a vast amount of finance capital that enabled the creation of European Union (formerly EEC) in 1993 and the currency euro that was formalized by 1999. This was also a major attempt at directly challenging the hegemony of the US dollar. A prominent clause in the Maastricht Criteria is that EU member state has to stay within 3% of GDP deficit spending. In response, the Balkans were immediately destabilized and forced the EU countries to militarize and overspend their budget. As a result, Euro plunged from ~1.2 EUR/USD to 0.85 EUR/USD by 2000. This was Europe’s second punishment.
The third attempt happened in the 2000s when Europe realized that they needed to seek energy sovereignty to improve its chances of decoupling. They found in Saddam the desire of Iraq to sell their oil in euro instead of the dollar. This also involved the Chevron “bribery” case during which they “illegally paid” Iraq with the oil purchased from 2001-2002 under the UN “oil-for-food” program. The result was that Iraq was immediately invaded in 2003, ending this nonsense that the Europeans started. Chevron was also subsequently fined in 2008 for its illegal kickbacks made to Iraq. This was the third punishment.
Concurrently, apart from Iraq, Europe also sought a long term and steady energy supply from Russia. This led to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004-2005, which eventually led to the construction of Nord Stream pipeline that flows directly from Russia to Germany, bypassing Ukraine. Their chances came during the 2009 financial crisis, which dealt a serious blow to the US finance capital. With Nord Stream I coming online in 2011, the EU was able to reinvigorate its manufacturing sector (mostly high tech industrial products and vehicle exports). This needed to be disciplined - and so the Maidan Revolution happened in 2013, and led to the Ukrainian Civil War in 2014-2015. This was the fourth punishment.
The fifth and final punishment is now. Nord Stream 2 finished its construction in 2021, and was met with various regulatory red tapes that perpetually delayed its commission. At the same time, Russia and China signed a 30-year natural gas supply contract to be paid in euro. This needs to be immediately disciplined - and so the Russian invasion of Ukraine began and the sanctions against Russia also cut off their energy supply to Europe. When Europe was about to fold in the summer of 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines were bombed, which completely broke any possible alternative energy source for Europe.
And with the loss of energy sovereignty, this permanently puts an end to the sovereignty of the EU.
When you say "permanently", that's only as long as the USA is still a hegemonic power. How long do you think they'll continue to be able to control the world through threats of violence? How well will threats of nuclear strikes work against a union where several countries also have nukes?
I think the US strategy is to call everyone’s bluff about nukes. No country would be willing to use their nukes as first strike (maybe apart from Israel and the US itself) so as long as countries are backing down from doing so, the US gets to keep bullying the others.
And we have to remember that the MAD is not a proven deterrence. It just hasn’t failed, yet.
I am going to note that you assert that with the only proof being that Europe never could defy the US since WW2. In other words, Europe has been subservient to the US since WW2.
I mean, they could earn dollars by selling to the global South that is dollar-laden, but then they've have to sell at rates closer to the non-imperialized value.
The last 2.5 years of Fed rate hike had pretty much exhausted the capital flight from Europe and the Global South back to the US. This is why you see countries like Egypt, Sri Lanka, Pakistan went into famine and energy shortage because they had run out of dollars. This is also why there are two dozen African countries now on the verge of default. There are no more excess dollars from the Global South - this is why Europe can only turn to the US.
Ah, I hadn't followed the balance of payments very closely. Thanks for the update!