for the record, if you asked me "do you think it's more likely that they hit a cargo ship or a warship" then I would pick the former, but I can't translate Arabic beyond online translation, which isn't useful for exact, precise translation of intent, of course. if somebody who can translate Arabic wants to go find the statement and give their own stab at it, I would strongly appreciate it.
Reports/rumors from the Twitter news aggregators:
- Ansarallah fought a two-hour battle in the sea yesterday, forcing two US cargo ships to withdraw despite being protected by US destroyers. Apparently Ansarallah managed to strike a US warship directly.
- Iraqi resistance announces that they are escalating their strikes on Israel, now hitting Israeli ports in order to further strengthen the blockade. Eliat and Ashkelon are already out of service due to Ansarallah and Gaza respectively; apparently there was just a very recent strike on Ashdod.
- Hezbollah has hit another Iron Dome battery in northern Israel with drones.
- And, of course, some rumors that the US is considering a withdrawal from Syria, though I don't know how much stock to currently put in those rumors.
I just don't think that the Republicans know how to do anything truly revolutionary (in the fascist sense of course). They're just as mired in the swamp of vibes and narratives as the rest of us; material action and a real understanding of where power originates is beyond them. The fact that this is to do with the border and who is policing it (and thus which faction should have a local monopoly on violence) seems almost accidental - in a very close parallel universe, this whole thing is about Texas Burger Kings not reintroducing a favourite meal to the chud hogs living there, or trying to introduce a mandate that Cheesecake Factories should not have woke workers with dyed blue hair.
Biden is just as bad on the border - that is, in chuds' minds, good - than Trump was. Maybe he's even been worse on it. So it's all just vibes and narratives. You investigate it for more than 30 seconds and the whole issue is revealed to be totally hollow and based on nothing.
Xi looks like he's doing a "look at these trips" joke from 4chan
Chief of the General Staff Gen. Patrick Saunders said preparing for a potential land war would have to be a “whole-of-nation” undertaking. He praised European nations closer to Russia for “prudently laying the foundations for national mobilization.”
Saunders, who has long argued for more military spending and is due to leave his job this year, said that “within the next three years, it must be credible to talk of a British Army of 120,000.”
“But this is not enough,” he added during a speech at the International Armored Vehicles conference in London. “Taking preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing when needed are now not merely desirable but essential.”
He said "Ukraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman, Max Blain, said the government “has no intention” of introducing conscription.
“The British military has a proud tradition of being a voluntary force. There are no plans to change that,” he said.
He added that “engaging in hypothetical wars” was “not helpful.”
Of all the people I'm willing to die for, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, and the fucking King are extremely low on the list
Probably has a lot to do with it. As I understand it, the DPRK also isn't super duper China-friendly, despite Western propaganda depicting them as being best of friends or even the DPRK basically being China's puppet. I wonder if the DPRK's increased relations with Russia will create a similar but different sense of realpolitik balancing between two powers?
So if North Vietnam and South Vietnam were still separate countries, do we reckon that North Vietnam would be a lot like the DPRK right now?
step aside dragon, it's the Year of the Mole
warning shot against a ship
Engels and Marx take turns every year being the award announcer and receiving the award, so they just end up passing the same award back and forth
I gave it a good skim. Pretty much a "here's the current state of the world" sitrep. Quite liked it, though I'm not sure I necessarily agree with calling this stage "hyper-imperialism" as, idk, that implies that imperialism has strengthened from super-imperialism, when it actually appears that we are witnessing its end, or more realistically the beginning of its end. Obviously our resident doomers like Kaplya might be, well, more pessimistic about that.
One part I noted is that they describe when hegemonies fall, they first fall in industry, then in finance, and then finally militarily. I don't think there's anybody who denies that the US hasn't fallen industrially, and obviously the finance part is... well... BRICS10 is putting me on hold when I ask when they're gonna start mass debt forgiveness or widespread de-dollarisation (though de-dollarisation progress in China-Russia and similar bilateral systems shouldn't be dismissed as unimportant). So it's interesting that the US actually appears weaker militarily than they do financially. That's not to say that they don't have the ability to bomb the shit out of countries or assassinating people, but that this doesn't seem to really... achieve much anymore, in a purely military sense. I mean, we're literally currently in a situation where one of the poorest countries on Earth has stared down the US for a couple months now, and even the US is admitting that what they're doing just like, isn't working. Israeli-bound ships still aren't going through the Red Sea. And the DPRK seems to be the exact opposite of deterred.
I suppose the response is "Yes, but if the US decided to bring down the combined might of three aircraft carriers with all their planes on Yemen, then it would be toast." Perhaps, but then another front will pop up thousands of miles away to take advantage of the vacuum. I guess I'm just wary of measuring US military might largely in terms of the amount of money they have invested into it, as the report seems to do. They do also look at US military bases, but even they admit that a "base" can range from a small collection of buildings to a giant complex hosting ten thousand troops, and the US can't be meaningfully militarily present in every country at once if they flare up in a span of a year or two. Are Iraqi and Syrian military bases doing much except getting hit by drones and missiles, wasting Patriot missiles in response, eating hot chip and lying?
on the one hand it doesn't really appear in their interests, I agree, but I guess it's also not not in their interests if attacks continue and escalate. they can't keep the deaths and damage under wraps forever. well, they can, but the material impacts of that death and damage can't be hidden forever - more troops needed to be brought in, more military equipment, more reconstruction equipment to fix the bases and damage, etc.