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Bulletins and News Discussion from December 2nd to December 8th, 2024 - May A Hundred Hazel Flowers Bloom - COTW: Russia (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

2198 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Image is of one of the six salvos of the Oreshnik missile striking Ukraine.

The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile that appears to split into six groups of six submunitions as it strikes its target, giving it the appearance of a hazel flower. It can travel at ten times the speed of sound, and cannot be intercepted by any known Western air defense system, and thus Russia can strike and conventionally destroy any target anywhere in Europe within 20 minutes. Two weeks ago, Russia used the Oreshnik to strike the Yuzhmash factory in Ukraine, particularly its underground facilities, in which ballistic missiles are produced.

Despite the destruction caused by the missile, and its demonstration of Russian missile supremacy over the imperial core, various warmongering Western countries have advocated for further reprisals against Russia, with Ukraine authorized by the US to continue strikes. Additionally, the recent upsurge of the fighting in Syria is no doubt connected to trying to stretch Russia thin, as well as attempting to isolate Hezbollah and Palestine from Iran; how successful this will have ended up being will depend on the outcome of the Russia and Syrian counteroffensive. Looking at recent military history, it will take many months for the Russians and Syrians to retake a city that was lost in about 48 hours.

Even in the worst case scenario for Hezbollah, it's notable that Ansarallah has had major success despite being physically cut off from the rest of the Resistance and under a blockade, and it has defeated the US Navy in its attempts to open up the strait. Israel has confirmed now that their army cannot even make significant territorial gains versus a post-Nasrallah, post-pager terrorist attack Hezbollah holding back its missile strike capabilities. In 2006, it also could not defeat a much less well-armed Hezbollah and was forced to retreat from Lebanon.

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.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Sure give him the benefit of doubt and ignore MAGA communism is essentially "what if we did the German national socialists bit but unironically?" It always comes back to this silly idea that there is a path to "reindustrialize" the US as if this is even possible(32s-48s). Once you reject this the entire analysis falls apart.

Time and time again it need to be understood America didn't deindustrialize out of pure greed or naivety, but as a necessary requirement out of the already dire economic situation in the 60s and 70s that lead to neoliberalism.

Factories moved abroad because they're not profitable. In order to be profitable it would require bringing the same levels of exploitation back to American soil, something that couldn't happen during the cold war and can't happen anymore today.

You can be the most naive detached "economist" you want. How do you expect MAGA communism to work at face value when the first priority is to kick the most exploited and vulnerable working population out of the country? Yes put millions of "undesirables" in a death camp at the border then turn around and pretend white chuds will line up to work 12h a day on a factory floor making cheap electronics or clothes?

Is "industry" just iPhones and TVs then? "Oh but America will have highly automated industry!" Yeah that is the point. If the workers can't be at the factories they'll have to be working some other useless shit that creates no value. Japan is a good example of how a high tech industry can't solve neoliberalism. Even without US interference the Japanese economy suffers inherent problems.

The imperial core got extremely low labor productivity growth. This is due to the also incredibly low profitability at home, no investment in manufacturing tech and research because its not profitable equals low productivity growth.

I'm not saying Japan = US at all, but rather the same general hurdle exists for every imperialist nation.

Finaly is not understand the limitations of Trump's own character, there is no plan other than short term political grifiting. He literaly scams his supporters. His merch is all made in China.

MAGA sees themselves as small business owners soon to be millionaires, the usual idiot driving a modern tank and a $800k mortgage even though he will probably not retire and can't afford a serious medical emergency.

Trump and MAGA communism is incapable of looking at these people pointing them to a factory floor and saying "this is where we need you!" because Trump sees himself as a smart money maker guy. A negotiator, investor, business owner. He spends his time golfing etc.

This is exactly why MAGA communism will remain as an online phenomenon. There are no MAGA chuds looking forward to hugging the flag while working on a factory floor.

This is what zero Marxism does to a mfer. You don't need discourse about nationalism and patriotism.

MR got a new post on the US

Also this good comment and mini review of the book Capitalism Unleashed

Andrew Glyn was one of the main exponents of the idea that there was such a profitability crisis in the late 1960s. He made the point in several articles in the 1980s, and then in his final book, ‘Capitalism Unleashed’ (2007).

In essence, the post-war reconstruction and restocking boom was largely spent by the early 1960s. The transfer of workers from agriculture to industry in Western Europe was largely complete by the same time, and of women from home work into industry and services (following the mass adoption of domestic labour saving appliances) by the mid-1960s. Per Robert Gordon, the ‘low hanging fruit’ of innovation had been plucked and consumed, and Pareto optimal innovations became scarce – innovation becoming more capital intensive as well. Public expectations of rising living standards had become entrenched. As productivity growth began to tail off a gap arose between those public expectations and the ability of the economy to deliver. Corporate profits began to stagnate, and then fell the gap was filled by means of improved wage settlements without corresponding productivity gains. The guns-and-butter policies of the US aggravated inflation and imperilled the Bretton Woods system of semi-fixed exchange rates, thus exacerbating the gap. All this led to strife in countries like France or Italy in 1966-69 with wage settlements being at the expense of corporate returns and governments capitulating to unions, all to the intense chagrin of the boss class. The middle classes also responded to the problem of the gap in their own way, chiefly by starting to speculate on the value of their own homes – ultimately a far more potent response than that of ‘militant’ unions.

Union power, in turn, provoked a corporate reaction (see Alex Browne’s essay in Phenomenal World for a new discussion of the US context) and the decision to invest heavily in developing nations – in effect a decision to globalise the Marxian reserve army of labour in order to tame unions at home. It has sometimes been said that the corporate class values the discipline of the sack above almost anything else, and the effects of the globalisation of credit and the labour supply bore fruit in that regard during the 1980s as the bosses returned to power with a vengeance.

At this point "Financial capital" vs "industrial capital" may as well be Harry Potter for economists imo. Once more for the "economists" at the back, the US isn't going back to 1950, stop dreaming about it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The guns-and-butter policies of the US aggravated inflation and imperilled the Bretton Woods system of semi-fixed exchange rates, thus exacerbating the gap.

Can anyone elaborate on what this means?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I believe he was talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_versus_butter_model and the inflation crisis soon after during the Vietnam war.

In general this https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/keynes-and-bretton-woods-70-years-later/

But Bretton Woods did not save world capitalism indefinitely. The agreement with its fixed exchange rates, dollar supremacy and international institutions run by the US appeared to work during the Golden Age of 1946-65 mainly because the profitability of American capital after the war was very high, and also rose quickly in Europe and Japan, with its cheap surplus labour and new American technology.

America’s economic hegemony began to slip as its relative trade and growth superiority slid from the mid-1960s onwards in the face of the cost of the Vietnam war, and Franco-German and Japanese trade success. When the US economy no longer ran a trade surplus but instead a widening deficit, the dollar came under pressure and eventually came off its quasi-gold standard in the early 1970s, signalling the end of the Bretton Woods era.

With the collapse of profitability of capital in the major economies from the mid-1960s, everybody fought for trade share, devaluing their currencies. The IMF had to try and force various governments with financial crises to maintain fixed rates with the dollar through austerity (‘internal devaluation’). In the ensuing neo-liberal era from the 1980s onwards, trade tariffs were reduced to benefit America, but ‘globalisation’ of capital led to the rise of Japan, Korea and China as competitors in world markets to the US and Europe. The Keynesian dream of ‘two great nations’ organising global cooperation and a new world economic order was no more than that: a dream.

The chart below shows that American exported capital globally in the post war period. But eventually American capital had to fund it not by a trade surplus, but by borrowing. American companies continued to invest abroad profitably and Japan and Europe recycled their trade surpluses into dollar bonds, thus keeping the cost of borrowing cheap for America. This was a great way for the US to sustain profitability through its dollar hegemony.

“Essentially, the US economy has been able to borrow cheaply from the rest of the world, and then invest those funds in companies around the world. The average return on equity over sustained periods of time is higher than the return on debt. The gap has been between 2.0 and 3.8% per year since 1973.” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas discusses this pattern in “The Structure of the International Monetary System,”.