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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


  • geikei [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    8 hours ago

    While Russia-China trade reached a record US$240 billion (A$360 billion) in 2023, it has slowed so far this year

    1. Russia-China trade absolutely exploded in 2021-2023. Some plateauing is expected considering Russian domestic consumption and non military manufacturing arent too conductive for huge trade growth and Chinese EV and renewables craze reduces their needs for foreign energy imputs, much of which came and comes from Russia.
    2. China seems to have started using the STANs as middle men in some of their trade with Russia to circumvent some sanctions. Europe jumped to it early on but China basicaly ignored it for the first 2 years of the war and traded with Russia like nothing happened. But over the last 4-5 months the YoY export growth to Kazakhstan, Kyrgizstan, Armenia, Ajerbaijan etc has been >35%. With some months hitting 80-100% for some of these countries. Its fishy as shit and its obvious that a lot of it is trade with Russia

    As for the rest of the comment this seems like half baked Pekingology to me. Psychoanalysing Xi’s tone and word choice. Finding some lib professors and analysts from Shanghai saying their own shit and doing the “they werent cencored by the ever cencoring no freeze peach 1984 CCP so that indicates a change in attitude state wide”. Like, there are probably hundreds of thousands of west loving libs both in the CPC and in chinese univercities and commentators, there are thousands of talks, forums and articles every week across China and China always had reasonable tolerance for these people saying their minds no matter the actual shifts and trends in domestic and foreign policy. We all know these things. Gathering 5, 10 or even 50 quotes from them to make any point isnt too hard. Im 100% sure they could have written the same article last year, and the year before. Hell im sure someone else did.

    Weird for someone as knowledgable as you to continue posting low quality stuff like this along with “ohhhh its so over” commentary. On your 4th account in 5 months no less

    • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      2 hours ago

      The whole point is to show how ridiculous the Chinese libs are, including the thought that Russia is going to lose in Ukraine.

      If you have been following closely the events for the past 2-3 years, you cannot not notice that the recent policies are all lib brained in stark contrast to the purge of the liberals back in 2022-early 2023 when China seemed to want to take on a global leadership role in establishing an alternative bloc to US imperialism. Now China seems content to keep the dollar dominant as long as they don’t have to suffer for it (can’t say the same for the rest of the world though, that’s the point).

      We’re now approaching the end of 2024 and it’s clear to me that the libs are back in charge. I honestly think that ending Zero Covid in early 2023 marked the first victory turn for the liberal faction and many things that followed since then have their fingerprints all over the place.

      I’m simply waking up earlier than the others here, but soon enough everyone will have to wake up from the same dream.