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.
Zak Cope, third-worldist marxist and author of Divided World Divided Class and mentioned fairly regularly on Hexbear, has gone completely off the deep end. October 7th was too much for him.
He’s now stated his full support for free-market capitalism and colonialism, and is advocating for the rules-based international order as a way to protect from Russian and communist influence, is drawing equivalencies between Nazis and the Soviets, is saying that unequal exchange is not real, centralized planning is impossible, quoting Thatcher, etc.
For many western leftists, now that oppressed people are actually beginning to fight back in (necessarily imperfect) ways, rather than being pitiable victims marching into the sea as Gandhi wished, all left-wing values go out the window and they realize their class interests are aligned against these uprisings. I must admit that I thought a big exposure to the literature and even writing a significant book on the subject would inoculate a person against taking the complete opposite values less than a year after they held those values, but Zionism is a stubborn little tumor which can rapidly take over the body once it awakens.
Lmaoooo every NATO-leftist exposes themselves too easily with the right trigger. Ever see that movie, who framed Roger rabbit? Remember that scene where judge doom says a toon can’t listen to “shave and a haircut” without chiming in to complete it?
It’s the same thing with NATO-leftists and any adversary of NATO. They’ll at first claim to be against NATO imperialism but all you have to do is nudge them just enough before the usual “left critiques” of every AES country spews out.
Our org actually implemented questions about these countries for new applicants and it’s done wonders to fix our liberal and Fed problem.
can the feds really not contain themselves when trying to get it. Isnt blending in their entire job lol
Credit to @RepublicanMLM on Twitter for these images. There’s more there if you wanna see the 180 degree mentality shift but it’s indistinguishable from your average anti-communist vampire capitalist so there’s not much even of comedic value tbh.
“socialist governments always run out of other people’s piss and I’m a big pissbaby so we need free piss capitalism” - this guy, presumably
Cope by name, Cope by nature I suppose
Zak Cope-Seethe
Zak cope-seethe-mald
Third-worldist to neocon pipeline lmao
Third-worldist: The Global South is impoverished by the imperial core.
Neocon: And it should stay that way.
Smart reactionaries know how the world actually works, and they know they get to benefit from said unjust system.
It is not at all surprising to me that the third-worldist who regularly ignored the progress of China would become a free-trade jockey. I would guess he is counting Chinese poverty alleviation under ‘free-trade’. What a joke.
Managerialism intensifies
Have we ruled out a sharp blow to the head bc sometimes brain trauma turns people in to Nazis. Which should be a bit but isn’t.
Apparently, he’s from Belfast. I guess we now know which side he’s on. It’s settler solidarity.
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Oh really, could you share a resource for the change in J Sakai? I couldn’t find anything with an internet search. What a shame.
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Not really doing himself any favors with regards to the fed allegations. Maybe his brain broke over having to choose sides between two white proletariats lol.
J Sakai had some weird takes too on that article he wrote on fascism. And FWIW Torkil Lausen thought the conditions to win the war weren’t there. There was another article on that same blog interviewing someone from… I think PFLP and politely told him that he didn’t know shit. No one is immune to dogshit takes and I think there’s a difference between being incredibly wrong and whatever is going on in Cope’s brain now.
yeah like holy shit, this is just a full cognitive reset. somebody took him into a top secret neurology lab and hooked up some electrodes to his brain to invert every single one of his beliefs. usually this kind of thing is a slower process of gradually losing faith in communism after either witnessing defeats. or improvements in your own prestige and economic standing which turn you against redistribution and radical action because you’re personally benefiting now. or being included more in liberal institutions promoting the idea that you can change things from the inside without a revolution - plus, it would be rude to go against all your new buddies on the board!
you don’t usually witness a single event and its aftermath and in mere weeks/months go “well, that’s it. everything I once believed in now completely incorrect and I’m joining the people I was once fighting” I mean, you can get reddit libs who are like “I was once the most radical communist EVER but then the woke people came along with their pronouns and now I believe that Hitler had some good points” but we all know they aren’t serious; Cope wrote whole books and shit
I think this is what happens when you never talk to or interact with the people you write about.
he actually just decided to do real praxis by going deep undercover into the black heart of terf island to destroy it from within, he requests that everyone call him by his codename agent seethe going forward
Zak Cope is a complete traitor and definitely the kind Lenin would’ve shot.
Damn, I hope John Smith doesn’t turn out to be a disappointment either. I found a recent interview by him https://links.org.au/twenty-first-century-imperialism-multipolarity-and-capitalisms-final-crisis-interview-john-smith and uh oh
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This reminds me of my disappointment with the Prolekult video on the topic when the Ukraine war broke out. Pretty much simplifying it to an imperialist struggle between Russia and the West. And every other leftist group in my area had the same take, at best. Then Oct 7th broke their brains further. What a wasteland here in the West.
Did he have a stroke or something?