Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread
Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread
Iran has struck Israel.
previous preamble
The continuing fall of the remains of the British Empire is pretty entertaining from the outside: an archaic royal family that is seemingly being smote with disease by God itself for their past crimes; a navy that virtually no longer functions, ramming into foreign ports and under constant repair; and an economy that cannot seem to stop sputtering, fucked whether they're in the EU or outside it. Watching the impacts on people from the inside is a little more worrying, though.
A fifth of the population is in poverty, including nearly a third of all children. These figures have barely shifted since the Labour government in the early 2000s, aside from a decreasing poverty rate for pensioners. Actually, poverty hasn't substantially shifted since Margaret Thatcher. Before her, the poverty rate was around 14%, but her catastrophic policies caused a major increase, and poverty levels since then are still 50% higher than over 50 years ago, because neoliberal economic policy since then has not fundamentally changed. Parties and corporations have impoverished the usual vulnerable groups, such as large families, minority ethnic groups (including half of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households!) and disabled people. These differences are also regional, with the North more impoverished than the richer Southeast (but some of the poorest boroughs are in London, so it's a complex pattern).
With Corbyn's defeat in 2019 mere months before the pandemic began, the Labour Party shifted back towards the right, with left-wingers purged from the party if they did not kowtow to Keir Starmer. This leaves us with a situation where the only substantial difference between the two parties would be on social policy, but it goes without saying that economic policy is the overwhelming factor that determines if minorities can have a decent life. Worker-oriented movements since then have been largely not under the umbrella of major party leaderships, such as the Don't Pay movement in late 2022 that arose in the wake of dramatically rising energy prices where 3 million people vowed to not pay them (which did lead to results).
Most notably recently is the major upset in the constituency of Rochdale - the victory of George Galloway - who is the leader of the Workers Party of Britain, which describes itself as both socialist and socially conservative. This took place both in the context of aforementioned economic troubles, as well as anger over Israel's genocide of Gaza in the British population, especially in British Muslims. It remains to be seen how much of this is an isolated event, especially as Corbyn has, understandably, refused to collaborate with Galloway due to his socially conservative stances. The UK general election will be held at some point within the next 9 months or so, and might well be a shitshow depending on what happens domestically and geopolitically before then; parallels to the current American electoral shitshow with increasing anger over Biden are pretty apparent. The Conservatives are quite likely to lose given 14 years of uninspired rule if current polling is correct, but it truly is a race to the bottom.
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 the United Kingdom! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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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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Good article in this other /c/politics thread: ettingermentum: Biden Might Be Set On a Regional War
Full paywalled text posted by a comrade within.
I read the full article posted by someone there and honestly, I fundamentally disagree with the author’s position that Biden has somehow failed in his Gaza policy, or that he is not acting in the interest of the US (imperialists). If anything, Biden’s policies with respect to Israel-Gaza conflict has been one of his most successful, following Ukraine.
Contrary to the prevailing online leftist narrative that the US is “losing” since the Gaza conflict (in financial, geopolitical terms and international standing), Biden’s policies have succeeded in reasserting the global dominance of the US empire after Trump’s countless debacles making a fool of America as an inept empire. Seriously, go and look at all the “lines” of the American bourgeoisie, whether it is stock market, or the military industrial complex, the real estate, oil and gas sector, you name it. Everything has gone up thanks to Biden.
The only thing that has not gone up is what burdens the average Americans - the working class, but that is none of Biden’s business! He is the representative of the bourgeoisie, not of the working people.
People need to understand that the US is not “losing” anything here. Most of the money spent on Ukraine and Israel is simply money moving between the reserve accounts held by the central banks of various countries that are wholly contained within the Federal Reserve. The dollars never left US shores. And once you understand this, you can see how the US easily wields such destructive power to control the world and assert its domination, while many countries find themselves in varying degrees of crisis when the US simply up the interest rate by a couple %. (Blame Michael Hudson for writing Super-Imperialism and inadvertently teaching the imperialists this immense power of the dollar)
The US is a global legal monopoly, and the dollar is its disciplinary tool to control the rest of the world. The only way to defeat American imperialism is through de-dollarization, which we saw very briefly of in the summer of 2022, when Russia led the way in forgiving $20 billion of African debt, and China forgave 23 interest-free loans in 17 African countries (in addition to the $3.4 billion debt cancelled from 2000-2019). These are the real de-dollarization moves. But beyond that, nothing has fundamentally changed since 2022 (ironic, yes, I know. apparently when Biden said that, he meant the rest of the world as well). The most we have seen are countries trading in local currencies to shield themselves from the impact of US sanctions, but that barely puts a dent in the immense volume and pervasiveness of the dollar all over the world. Africa’s dollar debt alone amounts to $800 billion! And as long as the world does not have an alternative financial structure, the dollar will remain king.
And this is why Biden will be remembered as one of the greatest imperialists in history, surpassing the ranks of Obama, Bushes, and Reagan.
People keep saying that Kissinger was some kind of a genius in geopolitics, and while his advice might have been somewhat realistic in the late 1980s, it would have been completely useless in today’s terms. Post-2009 America simply does not have the capacity to take on China - especially with Europe (even with all its sovereign debt crisis) recovering remarkably well on the industrial front, thanks to the construction of Nord Stream and various raw material supplies from Russia (which is the reason Nord Stream has to go), posing as another industrial and financial rival to the US hegemony.
Same with the “realist” school of conservatives (Mearsheimer et al.), who somehow believe that they can keep Europe and Russia under their leash while taking on China, which is laughable when you spend more than a few minutes thinking about it.
Biden sees through all that. He is acutely aware of America’s position, and that only way the declining US empire can stay on top of the game is to ruthlessly decimate all potential opponents while leveraging its most powerful weapon - the dollar (i.e. finance capital). And that starts with devouring Europe, its closest ally, stoking tensions all over the world , sowing chaos and de-stabilizing all regions from Europe to the Middle East to Africa to Asia Pacific (Ukraine, Israel and potentially Taiwan are simply the intermediary pawns within the broad strategic framework of the US empire), and - if it comes to that - nuclear annihilation.
If America cannot be at the top, then it might as well take the whole world down with it.
Does Biden know this or is it his collection of advisors who manipulate his pudding brain?
Biden as the High Priest of Neoliberal Sect channels the will of the Dark God of Capital. He is but the vessel of the Free Market.
this is the lore for Miyazaki's next hit game, Biden Ring
Fuck did belden ring get cancelled? I was going to do a covering yourself in vaseline so they can't drag you in to the chopper build.