Image is of one of Ireland’s only manned navy ships, the Samuel Beckett. Image sourced from this BBC article.
Putler has been HUMILIATED by the Kursk offensive and this proves that Russia’s army is in tatters and unable even to defend its own territory. However, it is simultaneously true that Russia poses an existential threat to countries thousands of miles away, as this recent Politico article demonstrates. Ireland - a country that immediately springs to mind as one surrounded by enemies - is being bullied due to its lack of military.
Despite bearing responsibility for 16 percent of the EU’s territorial waters, and the fact that 75 percent of transatlantic undersea cables pass through or near Irish waters, Ireland is totally defenseless. And I mean completely unable to protect critical infrastructure, or even pretend to secure its own borders. […] Ireland’s “navy” of six patrol vessels is currently operating with one operational ship due to chronic staff shortages. […] Ireland simply has no undersea capabilities. How could it, when it barely spends 0.2 percent of GDP on security and defense? And it has, in effect, abdicated responsibility for protecting the Europe’s northwestern borders.
For all we know, the dreaded sea-people from the Bronze Age Collapse could soon emerge from the North Atlantic.
Unfortunately, things are even worse up in the skies. Ireland has no combat jets, and it’s the only country in Europe that can’t monitor its own airspace due to the lack of primary radar systems. Instead, the country has outsourced its security to Britain in a technically secret agreement between Dublin and London, which effectively cedes control over Irish air space to the Royal Air Force. This must be the luck of the Irish — smile and get someone else to protect you for free.
While this is very silly, rearmament has long been a part of US imperial strategy on an economic level. Desai, discussing the US imperial strategy in the WW2 period:
By 1947 […] the domestic postwar consumer boom was nearing its end. While financing exports became more urgent, the 1946 elections returned a Congress unlikely to approve further loans. Now the Truman Administration concocted the ‘red menace’ to ‘scare the hell out of the country’, enunciated the Truman Doctrine of US support for armed resistance to ‘subjugation’ which launched the cold war, and Congress granted $400 million to prevent left-wing triumphs in Greece and Turkey in 1947.
One reading of history states that the US was so intimidated by the USSR that this forced a policy of massive arms production even outside of official wartime. Why this arms production is not occurring today can be puzzling, and (very reasonably) explained by neoliberals exporting industrial production overseas. However, a different historical reading can explain both the first Cold War, and the ongoing situation in which American weaponry is being almost purposefully given in insufficient numbers to give Ukraine a chance of victory and thus only prolonging their suffering (while generating massive profit for the military-industrial complex):
In this sense the Cold War was not the cause of US imperial policy but its effect. It combined financing exports with fighting combined development by national capitalisms as well as communism. When such ‘totalitarian regimes’ threatened ‘free peoples’, ‘America’s world economic responsibilities’ included aid to countries battling them.
By selling massively expensive weapons to Europe, America could simultaneously guarantee export markets for its industries, trap Europe into reliance on American industries at the expense of their own, and divert European funds away from constructing factories which could compete with American ones. Providing a way to defend against Soviet communism (and now Russian “imperialism”) is merely a happy side-effect, and so the lack of effectiveness of American weaponry is causing no great panic among the military-industrial complex, nor an urgent plan to quintuple artillery shell production or Patriot missile production - the deals for F-35s and such are still there, and they are what matter.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Ireland! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
do you seriously think the Russians have won a single victory in any theatre of this war so far which is close to comparable to the scale of victories the Red Army and western Allies were winning by 1944
like do you actually believe there’s any point of comparison between those military-industrial superpowers, one of which was a revolutionary socialist republic, and the half-failed neoliberal state of Russia vs the failed neoliberal state of Ukraine
mfs see the Russians take maybe three significant towns in their whole summer offensive and think “ah yes a modern Operation Bagration”
This conflict is not on the scale of WW2 so of course not, you’re not really comparing apples to apples here and setting an absurd standard where it makes no sense. Russia has won many decisive victories though, such as shutting down the 2023 counterattack completely, bahkmut, avdiivka, mauripol, securing a Crimean landbridge & restoring water to Crimea. In fact, everything they have done has pretty much been a victory outside of random sloppy losses on occaison. The supposed “Ukrainian victories” of Kiev, Kharkiv, etc. were just retreats where Russia moved to more advantageous positions for attrition warfare and flexed back to defensive lines - they’ve won every battle from an attrition and losses standpoint.
What is the point of this whiny shit? Seriously? Nobody here thinks modern Russia is a socialist superpower, we just know it’s less rotten and decayed than the West is. Every problem Russia has the West has tenfold. Now stop your doomer bullshit and realize what side you’re on. What’s with this psychodrama about rUsSiA iS HuMiLiAtEd, PuTlEr HaS TiNy DiCk posting you do?
you made the comparison in the first place dude
this is fucking laughable and as bad as NAFO posters who refuse to accept that Ukraine is losing the war
i would be in prison or worse if I lived in Russia because I am a transgender woman and an anti-imperialist communist. fuck off telling me to take anyone’s side other than the international proletariat.
I’m a different user than Parzivus that you responded to.
No it’s the truth and I really don’t like your fucking tone young shitholeislander. I don’t think you understand the scale of how large Ukraine’s army was pre-war and how much it has mobilized and received in aid. Russia has had to defeat multiple massive armies in the size of millions of infantry, thousands of tanks, they are playing it as safe and slow as they can because there’s no rush for them and overcommitting could lead to bad outcomes whereas the slow and steady method is surefire.
shut the fuck up, rainbow imperialist arguments have no power on me. I heard this shit from Zionist enough about how “if you were gay the Palestinians would throw you off the rooftops”. I grew up in the Arab spring, I saw the “progressive” veneer on the death cult of imperialism and it killed people I knew. The so-called human rights NGOs getting buddy-buddy with ISIS to take over my home. I will support decolonization and anti-imperialism full stop which means revolutionary defeatism no matter the draping. If you are a westerner that means you side against your own empire first and foremost, not this “eh I’m on some mythical and pure third side that is sitting on the sidelines”.
That mythical and pure third side sure was nowhere to be found when I needed it, but Russians have helped Syria.
Z
any talk about Western LGBT support only applies inside the imperial core, and even then it’s barely real. gay people can get married (sometimes) and trans people can get hormones (sometimes) but how many are in poverty and barely able to cope with their situation due to job discrimination and lack of support structures? how many cannot afford gender-affirming surgeries? it’s better than being actively oppressed, but we need higher standards than “not being arrested on sight” if we’re going to talk about uncritical support for Western LGBT laws to the extent that we withdraw support to enemies of empire because they have shitty LGBT laws.
besides, none of our lives are worth more than the life of a Palestinian or Syrian or Libyan or any other nationality and Biden, Harris, and thousands of other imperialists would not even briefly hesitate to recreate Gaza inside their own countries if they thought it would benefit empire. they bestow rights upon those who are deemed human, and will just as easily strip those rights without any regard for “optics” or “social progress”. the United States and its allies have killed more gay and trans people than Putin could even dream of doing, both due to direct murder and due to a slow death by impoverishment or starvation. assuming that the US killed 1 million Iraqis, then that’s about 70,000 dead LGBT-identifying people if the American percentage of LGBT people (~7%) is universal. in one country. in one war.
first they came for the Palestinians. revolutionary defeatism is the only sensible strategy in this environment.
The West doesn’t even have “not being arrested on sight” if you’re racialized. Black trans women get arrested on sight for presumptive involvement in sex work so much that they say they got picked up for “walking while trans.”
“In one American study, the largest-ever survey of transgender and gender non-conforming people, 41 percent of Black trans women reported having been arrested or jailed because of their gender identity” - Robyn Maynard, Policing Black Lives
It’s even worse if you’re found with condoms on your person, that becomes “evidence” that you are engaged in sex work. So trans sexuality is inherently criminalized, as of course no one would choose to have sex with trans people if it wasn’t some sort of illegal transaction.
Truly the amount that economically secure, educated white queers are disconnected from the realities of further marginalized queer people domestically is astounding, and the fact that this disconnect allows them to position whatever colonial monstrosity they call home as being more “progressive” than the victims of imperialism that they castigate as being queerphobic is endlessly frustrating. But of course, having a vector of oppression such as queerness is seen to render them as pure victim, as completely divorced from the way they personally participate in and benefit from imperialism. As if queerness can wash away the blood that stains our hands.
Endlessly tired of imperial core queer “solidarity” being based around nebulous demands for “human rights” that, to no one’s surprise, often results in siding with the state against its enemies because they’re just so backwards while people in the core are languishing in jail/detention centres and those queers abroad that are supposedly in need of saving get delivered aid missiles and IMF austerity.
No mythical third party sure but I don’t think you would be looking for one if ur posting “Z” in random internet arguments lmfao nerd shit
Rather be a nerd than a chauvinist
Ah yes, the Russian Federation, famously not chauvinist. Basically Anti-chauvinist am I right fellas
chauvinism means privileging yourself and your own kind. It’s used in the sense of Social Chauvinism, the tendency of selfishness and lack of international solidarity when people are “patriots” for their own imperialist state instead of being revolutionary defeatists. It’s not used in the traditional “chauvinism is misogyny or bigotry” sense.
you’re a westerner. That means any anti-Russia pro-West things you do are chauvinistic
Russia is one of the most active and militant opponents of the western hegemony right now. Critical support is a thing, which are to be used in situations like this. Russia’s defeat would not magically turn them into a pro-lgbtq+ socalists reborn USSR, but them getting cut off from the west, will lay the foundation for its re-industrialization and reemergence of a new soviet union. Besides Russia shields and supports Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and many other “based” states, without russia, many of them fill be easy pickings for the us. The US left having the “moral high” ground, is a completely meaningless for the third world.
ffs
I’m referring to the battle of the bulge, which is why I said allies and not soviets
Russia is not trying to take land. They are trying to MINIMIZE casualties while draining NATO. Listen to any Russian diplotmat instead of CIA media.
Who cares? It’s fucking Russia. Westerners aren’t capable of holding Russian territory. Just ask the Swedes, the French, and the Germans. Westerners high on Western chauvinism always underestimate Russia regardless if it’s a feudal tsardom or part of the Soviet Union. They invade Russia, take a few kms, go “damn, Russia is fucking big, but we can still take them Asiatic slavs on” take some more kms, and overstretch their supply lines due to the consequence of Russia being fucking big. Not sure why the doomers here think Ukrainians would be the exception to the rule.