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.
Hi I need something for an argument what was that recent report from a major western ORG that was like admitting that Russia doesnt have megolomaniacal irredentist plans to take over all of eastern europe or whatever it was?
I’m talking to someone who legitimatly thinks Ukraine SHOULD give up Donbas and especially its claim to Crimea but thinks it should still have the right to join NATO and thats why the ceasefire isnt tenable, and the reason for that is that he thinks that Ukraine needs some form of protection because Russia will definitely just invade again in two years if the ceasefire is agreed to as is.
I’d the person is that break poisoned, work on fixing their natoid tendencies first. Until they understand nato is evil you won’t make lasting progress.
No progress would be made there because they are aware of and hate all of NATO’s war crimes and evil acts. Like they literally already think they’re bad. Problem is they believe strongly in self determination for ethnic groups. Like its an almost Maoist pro-natlib position on Ukraine, just with the added “NATO is a necessary evil to be a bulwark against Russia”.
They have unresolved internal contradictions somewhere because that’s a brain dead combination of takes.
Get them to read fanon, if you aren’t giving them too much credit (which is my opinion on what is most likely given how lib they sound, imagine valuing self-set and supporting nato, couldn’t be a well-read individual) the experience should shatter at least some of their Westwood brain rot
You can’t deprogram brainworms such as this, they need to deprogram themselves.
But sure send them a bunch of links, then leave the convo.
No reasonable person could think that NATO is some kind of moral choice. Morality does not enter the calculus. NATO is constant sabre-rattling for the Western hegemony, Nothing more nothing less.
So they must think Western hegemony is morally good. They also probably think that USA was the lesser evil in the Cold War 1.0
How about the general secretary of NATO admitting that the war happened because of NATO expansion? The following is an article by Jeffrey Sacks talking about it: https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/nato-chief-admits-expansion-behind-russian-invasion
This is not exactly what you ask but the quote of Stoltenberg is pretty telling:
lol let’s see some of these dozens of quotes I’m sure it’s just stuff like “Ukraine cannot join NATO”
they’re going to need to be more specific here and provide the link, and I’m skeptical that said article was “published by Russia” as in the Russian government, and is openly genocidal. Either it’s official boring crap they are misinterpreting or some crank article that’s not endorsed by the state. The Russian government is extremely boring in it’s published and official statements.
first one was torpedoed by BoJo and the west, and it was Ukraine that initialed it but then later backed out and killed their negotiator as a traitor. The grain deal was always a joke and Russia should not have entertained it in the least. The perfidious lying ukrainians were using it to smuggle weaponry and launch drones to attack Crimea. They cannot abide by a deal and thus cannot be dealt with.
Yes Russia will be annexing the parts of Ukraine that have a referendum to leave Ukraine. Ukraine had a civil war and spent a decade killing its own civilians in the East and persecuting them. If those civilians want to leave Ukraine then so be it, that’s their right and Ukraine has failed its duties to its people and thereby lost legitimacy to rule.
Are they referring to the ZNPP? The one that Ukraine has shelled non-stop for 2 years attempting to cause a nuclear meltdown to draw in NATO? This is damning on Ukraine, not Russia, and shows them as irresponsible stewards who honestly shouldn’t be trusted with any nuclear power whatsoever. How the west treats Iran is how Ukraine ought to be treated, with forced de-nuclearization because they are reckless insane terrorists who weaponize them.
That was Ukraine. Ukraine benefitted strategically from the flood and it slowed Russian advances and created a natural fortification. Look at who benefits when both accuse each other.
all nations at war commit war crimes. Russia has done far less than Ukraine which uses criminal battalions of neo-nazis and deliberately targets civilians constantly.
The Ukraine is a fake country recently invented by rightwing freaks. Who cares.