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

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 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.

  • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    86·
    3 months ago

    Capitalism is when no food.

    A million Argentine children skip meals each day due to poverty

    Over half of families with children had to stop buying basic foods because they couldn’t afford them, a UNICEF report has found

    In Argentina, over one million children are skipping meals each day because their families cannot afford food, according to a UNICEF report published Tuesday. The number of households who cannot make ends meet has risen significantly since 2022.

    An April study of households with children found that 7% of children and teens, and 30% of adults, had to skip at least one meal a day because they couldn’t afford food. The report showed that seven in 10 children were poor in April. Poverty was defined as either economic poverty or deprivation of basic needs such as education, social protection, or adequate housing.

    In a context of growing economic and social inequality, 52% of households with kids stopped buying essential foods because they could no longer afford them. This is 11 percentage points higher than in June 2023, and the highest since UNICEF started conducting these surveys in 2020. This number represents 3.3 million households, which are home to almost 7 million children.

    According to UNICEF’s data, 90% of these homes stopped buying milk, meat and other similar products. “The intake of foods crucial for the nutrition of children and teenagers (meat, vegetables, fruit and dairy) has significantly dropped, while it has increased in the case of cheaper and less nutritious foods (pasta, flour and bread),” the report read. In 48% of the homes surveyed, the monthly income wasn’t sufficient to cover basic household expenses. This was seven points higher than last year, and 15 points higher than in June 2022.

    The situation gets worse when the head of the household is unemployed, on welfare, or a single woman. Almost a quarter (23%) of families also stopped buying medicine, while 32% stopped going for medical or dental checkups. Many had to borrow money or spend their savings to cover basic expenses.

    In the 12 months prior to the survey, a quarter of teenagers had jobs, UNICEF found. A further 12% were looking for work.

    UNICEF’s numbers are in line with recent studies on poverty in Argentina. An analysis of official data by the Argentine Catholic University’s Social Debt Observatory released last week showed that seven out of 10 children were poor in the first quarter of 2024. Poverty hit 55% and destitution rose to 20% in the first three months of the year, the observatory found.

    The damage this is doing simply cannot be calculated. The very social fabric is being destroyed, slowly but surely. Of course, ancaps and their fascist and liberal allies will see this as “mere numbers”, “poverty rates can go down actually” they’ll say. Yes, sure, but the damage malnutrition does to a child marks them for life. A child that doesn’t have access to quality food at that age develops problems that will follow them for the rest of their lives. This is absolutely degrading the material conditions in which we live, it’s degrading people who never had a shot on their lifes. The effects will be truly felt in 20, 30 and 40 years.

    Capitalism is a crime against humanity.

    • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      23·
      3 months ago

      That’s bleak. People must be insanely angry at the regime. What is the political climate like in Argentina? Are people still on the “elect a nicer liberal next time” level of resistance or is something more substantial brewing?

      Or is the fash able to scoop up the discontent?

      • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        People are still holding on. But I’m not sure for how much longer because it’s looking really bleak. Meanwhile, the country is talking about a huge scandal involving the former president Fernández and her former partner, a case of domestic violence which just came out a week or so ago, so whatever else happens is completely overshadowed by this issue. This scandal also threw a huge part of the opposition into disarray because Fernández, until yesterday, was the formal president of the PJ, the Partido Justicialista, the big peronist party and by extension the main opposition party (it sucks tremendous amounts of ass).

        And while Fernández can fuck off and die for numerous reasons, his scandal couldn’t come at a better time for milei and his administration. This provides excellent political cover that comes at a critical time, just as his government was beginning to show some cracks due to infighting between milei and his sister against his own VP and some congressmen who want to reinstate imprisoned former military and police officers jailed for human rights abuses during the dictatorship of the 70s. Meanwhile milei is pushing for “anti terrorism” bills such as “ramping up cybersecurity” (allowing intelligence agencies to spy on people online I guess, so if I’m gone it’s because they caught me doing shitposts) and “allowing the army to intercede in domestic issues without approval from Congress”, something that not even the military is in agreement of. That, coupled with the transfer of gold reserves broad (which would be a HUGE scandal if the media wasn’t aligned with milei), RIGI, the regime that allows for “massive foreign investments” (cover up for resources being free for the taking) and labour reforms, all of which is not being discussed because Fernández is a mysoginistic piece of shit.

        So I guess everything has a “IN DEVELOPMENT” tag. Still, there are forces at work, there’s still a lot of movement that might be “invisible” to some people. There’s still organizing going on.