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
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.
Is the IOF literally actually completely incapable of fighting actual Resistance fighters? From what I've seen they've done literally nothing but attack and murder civilians and children, but I've never seen them fighting someone who shoots back, at least not without standing in an open window and getting domed. Do you think they're actively trying to avoid Resistance fighters?
It's telling when Israel friendly sources cite the lack of civilian damage as evidence of the failure of resistance missile attacks
My speculation:
Most people can't commit atrocities. It really fucks them up even if they've become propagandized. Those who truly believe the propaganda truly believe they're superior to their enemy and don't respect them. This is why fascism must definitionally be self defeating. Many of the soldiers in the iof are conscripts whose only action is taken against defenseless civilians or extremely poorly equipped resistance in Palestine.
I've never been to any conflict but what I've seen makes it horrifying. Yet I recognize that resistance fighters must know the reality and engage anyway because to not fight against an invading force dooms their people to the Palestinian fate which is worth dying in pain and terror to avoid.
On the Eastern front in WW2 the soviets had a reputation of fighting to the last person despite 10s of millions of deaths. In the end, they prevailed. There wasn't a realistic option to surrender or compromise in the face of genocide.
I don't think the iof will succeed as grim as it is to watch them attempt an invasion. The reality of ambushes, ieds, rockets, drones and people willing to die can't be covered with propaganda. They'll experience the reality of entrenched guerilla resistance and bleed to death like the Americans and every other state trying to control millions of people.
You're absolutely correct that most people, even those who have been raised and indoctrinated into these fascist societies, are not able to commit mass murder without damaging their psyche. One of the reasons Nazi Germany made the move from the Holocaust by Bullets to the death camps was the men commiting these massacres would completely break down because of what they were doing. And these were all volunteer death squads, no one was forced to participate in these mass murders, and even the most dedicated Nazi true believers were falling apart.
I think it's one of the reasons isn'trael relies on indiscriminate bombing, it's a way to distance the murderers from the realities of their actions. Plus collapsed buildings are ready-made mass graves, no digging required
I have a theory that I wish some academic would research… that war crimes and atrocities were the norm for US soldiers in Vietnam. I believe the savagery of US troops in Vietnam could only be matched by the Nazis in the 20th century. You don’t hear it now quite as much but soldiers coming back from Vietnam with major PTSD was a big deal from the 70s through the 90s. Like, PTSD on levels not seen in prior American wars. This was always played off as “they have PTSD from seeing their buddies killed”; but like, that’s just the norm for war, you see your combat mates get killed. I don’t even think Vietnam was exceptional in this regard - the odds of seeing someone you fight with get killed. But I think this was all a cover for the real reason US Vietnam vets saw incredibly high rates of trauma: they were committing far more war crimes than actual “war”.
It's hard to say, because PTSD research is still relatively young there are lots of historical reports of symptoms that match PTSD throughout history. It's possible that it's kind of like ASD, wherein diagnoses are increasing not because it's becoming more prevalent, but because we have started looking for it and are better at diagnosing it now.
I know another theory that some people have is that the invention of modern transportation methods like cars and helicopters have resulted in troops seeing combat much more regularly than they have in the past. Modern guerilla warfare like in Vietnam, where US soldiers would have to be on guard 24/7, is also probably a much higher baseline of stress than "old school" war fighting where people marched to a battlefield, had a battle, and then got a break from battle for a while until you marched to the next battlefield.
Modern transport methods also means there is less time troops to compartmentalise, make peace, and come to terms with what happened at the end of their deployment or battle, alongside and with people that went through the same things and saw the same atrocities. At the end of WW2, US troops went home on boats, where they could talk with their comrades for a few weeks about what happened, and prepare for "normal life". In Vietnam, US troops went home on a plane, and in less than a day, they'd be back in the USA. No time to deal with what happened.
Pitched battles where two roughly equal bodies of armed men charged at each other were actually quite rare in the history of war. Far more common was skirmishes, extended marches with harrying, sieges and sieges being relieved. Usually one side was superior to the other or one had more mobility or range, so one would pursue the other group. Attrition via weather, starvation and disease was the primary way to defeat a superior foe, "guerilla" tactics were still used.
Ambushes and hit & run tactics were also frequent, as were the sacking of villages and towns to apply pressure to the other sides' economic and resource base. Massacres were common.
The type of war depicted in Lord of the Rings and Hollywood films just didn't actually happen all that often. War was messy as it is now.
This is basically the book Kill Anything That Moves
my dad when he was a college student in the US rented the attic of a Vietnam war vet who killed himself while my dad was out of the house
since my dad is Asian I wonder what the vet thought about him. was he racist? was he trying to atone for what he did?
There’s no atoning for what he did, and I’m sure this guy knew it too. Probably just couldn’t live with what he did. Was he racist? Probably, but that’s more because white Americans of that generation are almost all racist (unless they are explicitly anti-racist, like some are).
the Uvalde Police Department would probably engage resistance fighters more effectively
At least they know how to hide lmao
They haven’t been able to take the border region of Lebanon and they’ve been trying for like two weeks now.
First time?
Their cowardice is legendary
their bravery is matched only by their morality
It's sort of poetic in a fucked up way how this applies to both sides but in completely opposite ways
too busy working on their tiktoks and tinder profiles between war crimes to actually achieve anything militarily
I don’t think the IOF cares about scoring wins against Resistance fighters. Their strategy in Gaza and Lebanon is to terrorize and genocide the population in order to either get Resistance fighters to lose the will the fight or for the population to turn on the fighters. And since neither is likely to happen, the IOF will “settle” for genociding hundreds of thousands.
The Zionist entity has been using its "attack everything civilian" strategy since its inception. It established itself through British-backed terrorism and apartheid. It started every war by bombing/shelling civilians. Its entire apartheid system is premised on intimidating and disabling and killing civilians.
They don't even try to fight the militias and armies, which helps create the truth that they also cannot. They are entirely dependent on civilian bombing campaigns backed up and supplied by the Americans.
There are many similarities here with the Americans thenselves. America's military strategy places troops and occupations as the very last step in a series of attacks on a smaller opponent. They create sanctions to starve the people and kill them through neglect, bomb out infrastructure and civilian areas, and depend on air superiority in all situations. When they try to fight without it against trained guerillas, they fall on their faces and retreat or die. For all their "tough guy" aesthetics, American troops can barely do anything at all unless they have the option of pointing at a location and saying, "bomb that pretty please".
Both cases require the dehumanization of the designated enemy and a rationale for why they are deserving or why their suffering is part of the natural order. Prior to The War on Iraq was over a decade of sanctions that caused math death and disposession. Americans barely even thought about it and when they did they received a single, consistent message: Hussein was a dictator that needed to be punished, all of the suffering indicted by Americans was actually his fault, and also that's just the cost they have to pay for our interests in Iraq. Hunger, lack of medicine, rolling brownouts, those did not register for most Americans. Not even a thought was spent on that for years at a time. Israeli Zionists are similar but due to proximity and the obvious they are sometimes forced to think about Palestinians. They do actually succeed in ignoring them and the violence they do against them most of the time, though. This is why there was a rave next to Gaza. It was not likely any kind of attempt to sneer at Gazans. It was pure disregard for Gazans. They only care to the extent that they are made to feel uncomfortable.
Idk much about combat but this doesn’t look super tactical. Anyone speak Hebrew?
https://t.me/LebUpdate/45558
Hmm, was deleted
We really gotta start saving these videos to tankietube for preservation purposes
I've started saving videos even when it's too gruesome for me to watch, just as an archive in case it gets deleted. so much shit gets deleted
I do recall a firefight inside an apartment in Gaza but I think that was an ambush. no confirmation the iof intentionally engaged Hamas there.
Ya I remember that ambushed by Hamas. Definitely did not intend to fight anyone there
killing as much people as possible its beneficial for the settlers, so of course thats their strategy.