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.
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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.
The Harris campaign has released a 5 point agenda to "Create Opportunity for Black Men", that, on the surface, appears to be an attempt to steady what I am sure are cratering polls, and cynically, seems to have been created so they have something to point to and blame black men for not supporting her if and when she loses. Among the highlights: legal weed and "protecting cryptocurrency" lmao
If this were a Trump platform, the liberal media would be screaming about him a racist for thinking what's most important to black men is crypto and weed.
I fail to see who this is for. Like anyone positively affected by this was voting Harris anyway, right? Is there some mythical guy who's like "well the genocide was a turn off but if she protects my crypto I'm all in"
manosphere crypto bros, this paired with what obama said shows that libs are going with the narrative that black men suddenly decided to all begone misogyny influencers. like I'm not kidding, thats why there's the crypto stuff becasue all these guys hawk it.
So people that either aren't voting, or are voting for Trump, regardless of this. Trump is already the crypto president after all.
yeah 100% its so dumb.
Its not actually targeted at anyone. These are all just general proposals that anyone would benefit from. This whole thing is exactly what the KHive said "wasn't good enough" in 2020 when Bernie said M4A, student loan forgiveness, and free public college would all disproportionately benefit black Americans, except with way shittier stuff being offered by Kamala. And then there's the crypto bullshit, which is just her trying to claim that her being bought off by the crypto lobby is somehow good for black people.
There's nobody who benefits from legitimizing crypto and spending government funds on it. Even if a few people financially benefit, it is empowering a societal ill. But I see your point.
I meant that none of these are things that can be specifically targeted at black people. It's just general stuff she is saying will benefit black people.
Black people who think "both parties are racist and aren't going to do anything about racism towards me but if trumps president I might have a couple hundred bucks in my pocket while somebody hurls slurs at me."
Probablly not true, but considering democratic messaging is getting Richard Branson's paragliding buddy to call them sexist and insecure if they don't vote for the person who wanted to keep pot illegal so we could keep using black men as slave labor it's pretty much a toss up.
Deeply unserious people
The first bullet is also great:
All the same KHive people who shit talked Bernie when his black agenda was "M4A, student loan forgiveness, free public college" will all be clapping like seals even though it's the same exact shit except worse.
“Black people ain’t having no Bernie”
I might be off base here, but this reads like it appeals to racial stereotypes in the US context, in a patronising way. I don't think this is going to convince anyone. It's the exact type of mindset that pissed off her dad the last time she brought up marijuana legalisation.
We gotta make a sop to black people. What are black people into anyway? They like smoking weed, right?
Not off base, I said the same thing in my comment lol. If this were a Trump proposal, liberals would be screaming to high heaven about how racist this is.
What pissed off her dad?
It was something about weed legalisation and I think Harris was asked if she ever smoked weed, and she answered something along the lines of "of course I have, I'm part Jamaican".
The mentorship program that's big brothers big sisters but just for black people also reads an awful lot like the "pull up your damn pants" initiative
Black men again treated as children, called “boy” and told they need a “big brother mentor” to teach them how to live.
the second coming of pell grants
Sounds a bit like redlining to me, TBH. We won't forgive them. But we COULD if we wanted to!
Is this just a (fake) promise to not do to "entrepeneurial" loans what Biden did to student loans?
The crypto thing is very sus. Why is the government promoting it? Michael Hudson is probably right about it being used to reinforce the USD.
https://www.semafor.com/article/09/26/2024/harris-escalates-her-courtship-of-crypto
Could be, but also crypto has been for quite a while now a playground for Big Finance. And the Dems have been feeding on that through for decades