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.
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.
FT - Israel races to supply anti-missile shield: Intense war demands have left the IDF relying on the US to fill gaps in air defences
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.
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 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.
Oh wow?
https://t.me/PalCommie/3167
Lol we were discussing all of this shit before the invasion of gaza even started.
Holy cope lmao
yeah we totally just let our airfield full of F35s get hit 40 times, it was us holding back!
Herbollah's 👏👏👏
I prefer thembollah!
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.
So, yes, the US commentariat/politico types have been cheering for war with China, that's true. However, the Pentagon tends to have a bit more sober and realistic analysis of conflicts/potential conflicts, because they are the ones who would actually have to fight it. A lot of the first IS government officials/employees to say either outright or leak to the media on background than the war in Ukraine isn't/hasn't been going well, and that the Ukrainians will need to make peace, have been Pentagon officials. Of course, there are definitely people in the US military that want war with China. There are various factions to the US military like there are in any other organziation. I am just a lot more skeptical of how much the Pentagon actually wants a shooting war with China, at least relative to how much the politics sickos who don't have to actually fight want a war.
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.