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.
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i agree with your position on deng and the current ‘frog boiling’. i think a major factor that will determine how that happens is china’s entanglement with the USamerican economy. while china is reducing its ownership of us debt, it still owns a lot. this means they are deeply invested in the US’ ability to make interest payments. the US can never stop servicing that debt, or else everyone in the world would panic and drop everything connected to the dollar. aadditionally, my understanding of china’s central banking policy is that they cannot force a financial economy to develop, so until that happens organically they are reliant on the west. the financial options the west offers are everything from bonds and other securities designed to absorb excess cash and return a profit to unique corporate structures that allow companies to headquarter different branches in different countries for maximum benefit. that’s the one hand.
on the other, it’s been more than ten years since the tpp and obama’s pivot to asia. in the eye of some warhawks, just as soon as the US can get out of SWANA, they’re going to be right at war in the indo-pacific. if the US continues its hot and cold attitude, then i’d guess china will maintain its current pace of reforms. if the US is humiliated in some major way, then Xi might be able to pull out the big red button at will. i don’t see a path to real aggression against china, but i think major surface fleets are defunct and that china has an overwhelming material edge in a conflict with the US that lasts longer than four days. those in charge of the boats and planes are cut from a different cloth, so they might try and do it. i think the two types of “war” against china that are on the table are either jumping from a broader middle eastern conflict to cut off oil shipments through the persian gulf and the strait of malacca, or boosting the phillipines into a south china sea provocation that calls in the whole regional gang. in the event that we are not all burned away in nuclear fire or its consequences, this ‘proxy’ war could allow china to nationalize industry for the war effort.
no matter what, i think the current pace of reforms is irreversible. there are changes in the world that could cause an acceleration of the reforms, but i can’t imagine how they’d be reversed. the material conditions of people in the urban areas of china that i know are getting to the be the best capitalism can give to a society. if capitalist development is no longer benefiting the people in china, then the communist party will phase them out. the fact the USamerican empire is sprawling outwards in a deathspasm at the same time is either happy coincidence or further proof of the immortal science.
hopefully some brics bucks can manifest
I largely agree with you. I just finished reading Socialism Betrayed (great book, highly recommend it). That book’s thesis is that the major contributor to the collapse of the Soviet Union was the development and growth of a “second economy” - economic activity outside of official channels that could either be legal, illegal, or something in between. The growth of this second economy led to the development within the USSR of an entire social base of individuals with a material interest in seeing the overthrow of socialism. A base about which not only did the CPSU do nothing about, but actually many party members were deeply entrenched in this “second economy”. The book cites a quote from someone who stated that there was NO illicit enterprise in the USSR that would have lasted a month without support from someone in the party.
China is not the topic of this book, but the authors do spend a page or two commenting on what is an obvious question: if this is what helped undo the Soviet Union, what does that mean for China, who has a more legal but vastly larger second economy? The authors express concern and maybe even a bit of skepticism, but not outright criticism (and keep in mind, they were writing in 2004 and in the last 20 years quite a few western Marxist have changed their views on China, like David Harvey).
Reading between the lines, I think they are saying it could work, but what we’ll call Dengism is a very risky move. You have a massive social base in China of people who may very much like the CPC, but also very much like their ability to own a business and get rich. People who will revolt against any strong measures to curtail these markets. In the USSR, this social base saw socialism as a hindrance to their potential. In China this same social base faces no real limitations on their material advancement, so they have no reason to rock the boat.
Long way of saying, I think “boiling the frog” is the only move the CPC can make. And actually, if that’s the move the CPC wants to make I think they will be successful. The bigger question to me is, is that actually what the CPC wants to do? Even talking about the CPC as if there is one voice is a mistake. I’m sure this is the direction Xi would like to go in, but there are also plenty of liberals in the party (IIRC the #2 in the party is a huge, unabashed lib). The party itself is very opaque when it comes to things like this, but I do think it is NOT a foregone conclusion that the dedicated Marxists in the party will win in the end. Boiling the frog I think will work but the party itself needs to be committed to that line, which I am not sure they are there yet.
xi jinping is the second coming of han wudi and drives the american barbarians back across the atlantic into their ancestral homelands
destroys western civilization once and for all and ushers in era of unprecedented peace and prosperity with world governmental institutions that are just the UN/WB/IMF without anglos in charge
after like 50 years it all goes to shit because lmao bourgeois counterrevolution/eunuch takeover/bitcoin
russia annexes china after warlords fail to unite the country after another 50 odd years of fighting (we get cool literature though)
russia becomes chinese, the prophesied han-byzantine empire comes to pass, no one gives a shit
except for the twitter marble statue pfp dudes they mald hard, ukronazis get to claim they were right all along about the asiatic russian hordes
From the outside it seems how Xi operates is once something starts to show it’s excess, he takes action relatively quickly as the housing market or BTFOing the IMF or forming BRICS.
Many things that we are seeing coming to fruition was planned in the 2010’s and I would imagine continue to see in the coming decades. Doing a GND in actual and seeing the results built out and major market moves in the course of a decade is heck of impressive for a country with over 2 billion people.
Understand somethings come sooner than others and you can’t exactly pull the rug, but the west is basically doing that for China and China has done a marvelous job producing domestic and weaning off western dependencies.
I don"t agree with everything China has done (nuke plants) but it’s rapid investment in research coupled with backing their currency with hard assets is a cool thing to see. Now I wish they would do a space mining to destroy scarcity of rare earths but maybe that’s to come who knows? The way we have been absolutely shitting on our space program for the last 20 years I think China has a good chance to be the leader now.
They are best positioned to advance humanity as a whole and bring us closer to a Type 1 civilization.
The west can flail and sanction and sabre rattle, but when China can utilize energy at a much cheaper and efficent rate, they will have won. It would be glaring to our crapitallist class that their stubbornness put us decades if not centuries behind while the rest of the world uses China tech and simoly says we don’t need Europe or the US any more. If anyone can kill oil it would be China. Once that tech is out there the motive and demand for it will collapse.
I would say, rare earths aren’t actually that rare, it’s just the refining process is either expensive or extremely polluting. On top of that, something like 90% of rare earth refining is done in China, and more than half of it is mined in China, so I don’t think they really have motivation to find new sources. They’ve manipulated the markets in the past to prevent anyone else from making a profit in the industry (specifically the rare earth mine in the western US that’s been inactive since the 90’s).
Highly recommend imperialism and the development myth as a necessary book based in Lenin’s theory of imperialism, value added manufacture, and more, to dispel any myths about the opening up and reform within china having a “good” end.
and for those still defending that china will be pressing the big red socialism button any time soon, or even promoting more SOE’s as compared to further marketization, there recent plenary has plenty of details that should pour some water on that. http://english.www.gov.cn/policies/latestreleases/202407/21/content_WS669d0255c6d0868f4e8e94f8.html “While promoting independent operation of natural monopoly businesses in sectors such as energy, railway, telecommunications, water conservancy, and public utilities, we will advance market-oriented reforms in the competitive areas of these sectors and improve regulatory institutions and mechanisms.”
if one cant accurately delineate between khrushchev or deng, between what the NEP was and what “opening up” was, how losing control the states monopoly on trade will affect your countries relationship to the law of value, how modern monopoly works there’s little sense in trying to speculate further. all of these are questions I am still attempting to unravel, but my travels so far have lead me to be more neutral on china’s long term prospects.
of course, all of us are here to defend china from imperialist aggression, but you can take your pick of other more optimistic analysts, michael hudson has clout around here, but his “finance” thesis I have always found to be a bit more vibes based than I like.