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Bulletins and News Discussion from December 23rd to December 29th, 2024 - The War on Christmas: Hypersonic Holidays

Image is from Futurama.

Happy holidays, fellow godless communists. We are in year three of the Five-Year Plan to eliminate all Christmas cheer and create a world free of the joys and festivity of Christmas. Nobody should have to be reminded that in our concrete brutalist communist strongholds, NO ornaments are allowed in December. Please report any Christmas trees, snowflakes, baubles, and presents to the evil secret police, and anybody caught violating their Volcel Pledge by having a tentative kiss under a mistletoe will be shot on sight.

Developments lately have been grim. Our Supreme Communist Dictator Brandon is being removed from office by Christmas-loving patriots, and soon, Christmas will adorn the White House for another four years. This is obviously very disappointing, but while Christmas joy is strictly prohibited, good vibes are still strongly encouraged. Revolutionary optimism (a term we only bring out when things are going very badly and we need to be delusional) shall triumph over defeatist rhetoric by stooges of the Christmas regime.

We must have hope. Our foreign allies aiding us in destroying Christmas now possess hypersonic weaponry, allowing us to compete with and overcome the engine technology powering Santa's sleigh. Abroad, they have destroyed factories and hit cities with missiles travelling at unimaginable speeds into precise targets, while the Christmas regime struggles to produce their own such missiles, as they are still reliant on aircraft bombing campaigns. Precision has a quality all its own, or something along those lines. We just have to hold out another two years or so, and I swear to you: we will live in a world without this accursed holiday.

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697 comments

  • Back from my self-imposed Hexbear exile, I needed to turn off news (which dramatically failed) and stop reading some of the weird ass tantrums here. Now some unrelated points as usual:

    • Situation in Syria is slowly reaching a new chaotic state. Numerous sectarian clashes between HTS and Alawites, and Kurds vs Turkish-backed fighters in the north. The main cities are still calm and in an optimistic mood though, I was in a video call with my cousin on Monday and he filmed some of the markets and main squares in Damascus, it looked pretty calm and people are still in some sort of revolutionary euphoria. Iraq 2003-2007 is still definitely on the cards, sectarian battles and stuff like that will escalate and reach a climax before things settle. The new government from a pure bureaucratic standpoint are doing okay imo though, things are slowly returning to normal and somehow functioning.
    • Russian crossing of the Oskol was strangely uneventful, they just crossed from 2-3 points and established a pretty solid bridgehead on the other side of the river. I expected some grand battle when they would inevitably cross the river one day, but it was pretty anticlimactic and Ukrainian troops on the west bank of the river seem to be unprepared and outnumbered even by some Russian troops without heavy equipment. Kurakhove, Velika Novosilka and Toretsk seem to be wrapping up by the end of January, next step is probably Pokrovsk until some bigger Russian movements by summer 2025. The war in the current pace still doesn't reach any final stage until summer 2026.
    • Visiting Iraq with the wife and the kid in around a month, you'll get a trip report and some non-doxxing pics if things permit.
    • I don't like how things are going in Iran, the country seems to be entering a hard period of decline and they'll be Syria'd by Trump and Israel if they don't get their shit together soon.
    • This website has some of the dumbest drama I've ever seen lmao, grow up

  • Luigi is pleading not guilty
    Kinda interesting that the state went for the terrorism angle but the feds are treating it more like a targeted murder. It's somewhat contradictory and could make it difficult for some of the charges to stick.

    • As well as the state-level charges, he is also accused of federal (national-level) stalking and murder offences that could lead to a death penalty sentence.

      You think they’ll risk him becoming a martyr to make an example?

      • It's a common prosecutor folk wisdom that it's good to gamble on the death penalty because if its on the table then the jury will be more likely to be filled with regimepilled sickos who vote guilty in the name of state violence no matter what.

      • The harder the charges they go for, the more likely there's gonna be nullification.

  • Only 12 aid trucks (roughly 200,000kg) of aid has entered the northerh half of Gaza since October 2024, or in a span of 2.5 months. Source: Oxfam

    piSSraeli sources of claim the amount of food in Gaza has increased to ~3,200kcal per day, equal to Sweden. The actual figure is between 20 to 50kcal, less than a quarter of Auschwitz

    200,000 kilograms is what is needed to adequately feed a single 25-story apartment tower such as the Tygerberg's 1,100 residents in the same span of time.

  • Feels like we sort of passed over the massive news of the Northvolt (Europe's only EV battery producer) collapse a few weeks back, so I'm going to re-up it here to highlight how monumentally fucked the European automobile industry is long term. Not exactly news to anybody here that's been paying attention, but the staggering mismanagement of what is so obviously a key and strategic piece of European industry is perhaps still baffling. The article's name is "The Northvolt dilemma: can European EVs avoid relying on Asian batteries?", and as the Betteridge law of headlines states, the obvious answer to this question is "No."

    Two months before Northvolt filed for bankruptcy in the US, Robin Zeng, known as China’s “battery king”, had a quick but grim answer as to why European battery makers were struggling to make good products. “They have a wrong design . . . they have a wrong process . . . and they have the wrong equipment. How can they scale up?” the chief executive of CATL told Nicolai Tangen, the head of Norway’s $1.8tn oil fund. “So almost all mistakes together.” The bleak assessment from the world’s biggest electric vehicle battery manufacturer captures the scale of the failure for the industries behind the critical technology for Europe’s decarbonisation, leaving governments, companies and investors at a loss as to how to recraft the continent’s strategy to compete with China.

    Northvolt’s demise means the battle for dominance of the European market is likely to play out between Asian battery makers. LGES and SK On both have European plants, in Poland and Hungary respectively, while CATL has a factory in Germany and a second site in Hungary due to begin production next year. But Tim Bush, a Seoul-based battery analyst at UBS, said there was little prospect at present that the Asian battery makers would be able to help the EU to meet its target for 90 per cent of the continent’s EV batteries to be produced locally by 2030. Bush noted that Korean battery makers were already paring back their investments in Europe, having invested billions of dollars in plants in North America that have been running at low utilisation rates because of lower than expected consumer demand for EVs. Potential Chinese battery investments on the continent were also likely to be complicated by the ongoing trade dispute between Brussels and Beijing over EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, he added. “The Koreans are not expanding, the Chinese have suspended construction and Europe’s new entrants are dropping like flies,” said Bush.

    With European start-ups still behind in their ability to manufacture batteries at scale, industry executives say the only solution may be to continue their reliance on Asian participants until homegrown companies can absorb technology knowhow on battery chemistry, mass production and equipment manufacturing. “We need to find a deal with China because we won’t be able to compete . . . without the support of the Chinese companies that control the mining industry, chemicals, refining and their capacity and competence,” Luca De Meo, Renault’s chief executive, told reporters last month.

    So basically, the Europeans destroyed their only chance of domestic battery consumption by epic mismanagement, and their acquiescence to USAmerican empire means they're fucking up their opportunity to draw Chinese EV investments into Europe proper due to tensions and sanctions, and the US/South Korea can't even begin to supply the necessary battery supply for the EU, so their car industry is basically fucked. The USAmerican destruction of European industry proceeds apace...

    Source: https://archive.is/4Ys7n

  • Is jacobin fucking high?

    One of Karl Marx’s most persistent points, from “On the Jewish Question” forward, is that despite the formal freedoms that we enjoy in a liberal state — the right to freedom of speech, for example, or freedom of religion — we are socially and in fact unfree. (As Bruno Leipold reports in his Citizen Marx, a lot of Marx’s evidence for this claim, particularly about religion, came from travelers’ reports to America, which Marx read assiduously.) That is what it means to live in a liberal society, says Marx: formally free, actually unfree.

    But lately I’ve been wondering whether we are not living in the reverse. Despite the efforts of right-wingers to bend the state in a repressive, less free direction, society seems more and more resistant to these efforts. Producing a situation that is, in some sense, the mirror image of what Marx described.

    You are totally free, unless you protest anything state deems important. Or strike in important industry. Look at my leftist "intellectuals", we are boned

    • They really allow anyone to write there.

      Pro-Palestine campus protests are effectively banned, right? The state doesn't have to be directly involved.

      The attacks on economic rights and economic freedoms provided during the New Deal and Social Democratic era also extents to the social freedoms.

      The only reason why the state allows some dissent, instead of putting people in jail is because it doesn't see much threats.

    • I call this style the "Nuh uh" school of sociopolitical analysis, just assert bullshit without data or even a formal structure and use people who actually knew what they were talking about as a crutch or in this case a punching bag

      • I call it active recuperation, just under the surface: amerikkka decentralized system of education is great as it allows to resist "tyrants" (tyrants in that case is retvrn christians and anyone trying to talk about native genocide). Palestinians and trans people can be hand-waved away to be discussed "later":

        There are exceptions to this rule: the most obvious ones being the suppression of the debate over Palestine and the mobilization against trans people. These all need to be part of our analysis. But the resulting portrait may be more complicated than many of the recent accounts suggest.

        Like that those happened under democrat president? Or maybe that state doesn't care one bit about trans issues, and allows people to fight over it, while being very concerned with palestine (just as it was with black power and peace movement before)

    • Doesn't even make sense. The mirror image would be something like a misrepresentation of the USSR where the government is presented as over-bearing and bureaucratic but through it people's economic/work life and social/non-work life were expanded greatly compared to what their lives would be like under capitalist development.

      Also, when would they say this inversion took place in liberal society exactly? Also, also, if they're pointing out that people are resisting an oppressive state them that's not a mirror image but a 3rd square in their little chart of formally/actually free/unfree.

      Formally free / Actually free (communism)
      Formally free / Actually unfree (liberalism, as Marx described)
      Formally unfree / Actually unfree (fascism?, what imperial society is careening to)
      Formally unfree / Actually free (his "mirror", what I'd say is socialist development?

    • These people are like megachurch owners who quote Marxism like scripture to make themselves sound trustworthy and enlightened, despite not having even a surface level understanding of the material. Western radlibs eat this shit up and the imperial core thrives once again.

  • Baking hope in Gaza: Making Christmas cookies in a displacement tent

    Khan Younis, Gaza – From a makeshift kitchen with a sand floor and a nylon roof, and lacking the most basic equipment, Mayess Hamid prepared Christmas cookies this year.

    Hamid, 31, has been making cakes and cookies for about 10 years, working at one of Gaza’s largest cake shops before it was destroyed in Israel’s continuing war on the besieged enclave.

    Like many in Gaza, she lost her job when the bakery she worked at was bombed.

    “I wanted to start the year with optimism and make Christmas cookies to distribute to the children around me in the camp,” she says as she kneads.

    “The war turned our lives upside down. I lost my income, and my home was destroyed,” says Hamid, who has been displaced nine times since her family left Zeitoun, east of Gaza City, and has now settled in al-Mawasi in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

    “My children are excited, waiting eagerly and trying to help, especially with decorations,” she adds, arranging the cookies in a baking tray.

    Making cookies was challenging because of basic food shortages that are so severe that some parts of Gaza are in famine.

    Israel has largely blocked the entry of aid and commercial shipments since the beginning of the war.

    Drawing from her experience, she substitutes unavailable materials with things she can find.

    “Before the war, I decorated cakes with ready-made sugar paste. Now, I use a mix of liquid cheese and powdered sugar, and it works,” she says.

    Lacking Christmas cookie cutters, Hamid drew stencils on paper using her phone, cut them out, and shaped the dough by hand using a knife.

    “Even simple tasks like baking cookies have become challenges during the war,” she says, arranging the cookies and preparing to bake in a nearby clay oven the whole camp relies on.

    “From gathering materials to shaping dough and baking, each step feels unfamiliar and complicated.”

    As the second batch of cookies bakes, Hamid begins to decorate the first inside her small tent.

    “The war may have taken my home and life as I knew it, but not my passion for decorating and attention to detail,” she says, glancing around her tidy tent.

    While trying to bring a festive feel to the displacement camp, Hamid cannot hide her sorrow that the world celebrates Christmas as usual, while Gaza endures a second year of war and devastation.

    “We try to smile, but our wounds run deep, and there is little we can do. We feel forgotten.”

    At the same time, she still clings to hope that this Christmas will bring peace. Her sole Christmas wish is for the war to end.

    “Just let the war stop. Let the killing and destruction end so we can live in peace with our children,” she says.

  • i know im being a

    but i think such kind of assessment gives too much importance to billionaires' wealth. ofc, the obvious is that it confuses a stock measure, net worth with a flow measure, GDP. billionaires (and the corps) need be gulaged or executed because of their control over the politics, not for their money.

  • Elon Musk, using a cheesy voice modifier on his “Adrian Ditmann” account, says MAGA “will have to fucking deal with it” because “Elon is the only one to give these fucking crackheads a voice. You ungrateful motherfuckers, seriously.” “You keep crying censorship this, censorship that, you're not censored, your takes just suck. Get over yourselves.”

  • China is building new detention centers all over the country as Xi Jinping widens corruption purge - CNN

    China has built or expanded more than 200 specialized detention facilities nationwide to interrogate suspects ensnared in Xi Jinping’s widening anti-corruption drive, a CNN investigation has found, as the Chinese leader extends his crackdown beyond the ruling Communist Party to a vast swath of public sectors.

    Since taking power in 2012, Xi has launched a sweeping campaign against graft and disloyalty, taking down corrupt officials as well as political rivals at an unprecedented speed and scale as he consolidated control over the party and the military. Now well into his third term, the supreme leader has turned his relentless campaign into a permanent and institutionalized feature of his open-ended rule.

  • Shortly after Trump's speech, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino released a video declaring that “every square meter of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to belong” to his country. Without mentioning Trump by name, Mulino addressed Trump's complaints over rising fees for ships crossing the canal, saying they are set by experts who take into account operational costs, and supply and demand factors.

    “The tariffs are not set on a whim” Mulino said. He noted that Panama has expanded the canal over the years to increase ship traffic “on its own initiative,” and added that shipping fee increases help pay for improvements. “Panamanians may have different views on many issues” Mulino said. “But when it comes to our canal, and our sovereignty, we will all unite under our Panamanian flag.”

    Trump then took to his social media site to offer in response, “We'll see about that!" He also posted a picture of a U.S. flag planted in the canal zone under the phrase, “Welcome to the United States Canal!”

    Trump is going to push Panama towards China and Venezuela, isn't he? At this point it's US tradition to antagonize a Latin-American country until they seeks closer relations with either Russia or China.

  • Cubans protest against US embargo outside US embassy in Havana

    Hundreds of thousands of Cubans, led by former president Raúl Castro and current president Miguel Díaz-Canel, protested this Friday (20) outside the US embassy in Havana against Washington's trade blockade, a month before Donald Trump's return to the White House.

    The “March of the fighting people against the blockade and the permanence of Cuba on the list of countries sponsoring terrorism” started from the Anti-Imperialist Tribune, an iconic esplanade in front of the US embassy, located on the Cuban capital's main seafront avenue, known as the Malecón. “We are marching now to tell the US government to let the Cuban people live in peace. Down with interference!” said Díaz-Canel, addressing the crowd, who were waving Cuban flags.

    Despite being 93 years old, former president Raúl Castro, who officially retired in 2021, was at the head of the march, along with the Cuban president. “Tear down the blockade” and ‘We're not terrorists, take us off the list’, chanted the participants. “We need them to open their doors to us so that we can trade with all countries,” Rogelio Savigne, 55 and head of transportation at a state-owned company, told AFP. “If there hadn't been the blockade, the difficulties we're going through wouldn't be like this,” said Faustino Miranda (85), a pensioner.

    Díaz-Canel denounced that, “when they persecute and prevent financial transactions [...], they are denying the people of Cuba food, medicine, fuel, goods, supplies and essential commodities for survival.” During his first term in office (2017-2021), Trump, who takes office on January 20, interrupted the historic rapprochement that both countries had begun in 2014 under Barack Obama (2009-2017). Trump applied 243 measures that reinforced the embargo, which has been in place since 1962, including the reincorporation of the island on the US list of “countries that sponsor terrorism”, along with Iran and North Korea. Democrat Joe Biden barely eased these sanctions and kept Cuba on the list, which blocks financial and economic flows to the island.

    According to the authorities, around 700,000 people attended the demonstration in Havana, a figure that AFP was unable to verify independently. Mobilizations like this were started by Fidel Castro in the 1980s and have been organized at times of strong tensions between Havana and Washington.

  • China has sanctioned seven American military companies and their senior executives in response to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, including Insitu Inc., Raytheon Canada, Raytheon Australia, and Hudson Technologies Co.

  • Fox News reports that on the same night a U.S. Navy F/A-18 'Super Hornet' was shot down over the Red Sea, the USS Gettysburg fired an 'SM-2' interceptor missile at another F/A-18, missing it by about 30 meters.

    Wtf is this? Biden is executing Order 66?

  • The U.S. has sanctioned Bidzina Ivanishvili, founder and honorary chairman of Georgia's ruling Georgian Dream party, for 'undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia in favor of the Russian Federation.'

  • mr president, a second south korean president has been impeached

    Lawmakers from Yoon and Han's ruling People Power Party (PPP) protested after National Assembly speaker Woo Won-shik announced that only 151 votes would be needed to pass the impeachment bill.

    This meant that, unlike the 200 votes required for Yoon's impeachment, no votes from ruling lawmakers would be needed this time for Han to be impeached in parliament.

    Ruling party MPs gathered in the middle of the voting chamber chanting, "invalid!" and "abuse of power!" in response, and called for the Speaker to step down. Most of them boycotted the vote.

    The opposition first filed an impeachment motion against Han on Thursday after he blocked the appointment of three judges that parliament had chosen to oversee Yoon's case.

    Korea's Constitutional Court is typically made up of a nine-member bench. At least six judges must uphold Yoon's impeachment in order for the decision to be upheld.

    There are currently only six judges on the bench, meaning a single rejection would save Yoon from being removed.

  • The case of Uri, the man born in the USSR (a "Soviet Refugee" as he likes to present himself) who is now an "israeli" settler and lives in stolen land. Here's the case of a man who is a complete lost cause, a man who you simply cannot reform and integrate back into society as a functioning member because Genocide is rooted deep within their soul and only death runs in their veins.

    There's a special kind of piece of shit in the world. Sure, there are a lot of people who simply hate the Palestinians (for whatever reason) and would like to see them dead. There are people who show no compassion towards them, who see them are mere numbers that will one day show up in history books as "total deaths". They're completely unable to see them as fellow humans, therefore they're completely unable to share the same feelings with the Palestinians. There's also a lot of people, people with good intentions, who see the hardships of the Palestinians and immediately form a connection with them, empathy as it is called. It's natural to humans. Zionists are contrary to human nature because not only they inflict severe damage into the people they have decided to hate (people who have done no wrongdoings to them to begin with) but they are unable to see it as well.

    Uri is different. Uri is able to see Gazan's sufferings, the hardships. He knows they are starving, they are cold, they have nowhere to go. They know life is shit for them right now. Uri sees all that and almost forms a bond with the Gazan, he knows when he's cold there's a Gazan kid who is also cold, and hungry. But instead of going along with our nature, of having empathy, he throws all that out and feels good. He feels good at the fact that Gazans are starving and dying by the hundreds. He can see and feel their suffering but he loves it. He can see them as human beings, he knows suffering is a thing, but he absolutely loves to idea of inflicting suffering upon people that have done nothing to them but do "get in the way" of his pathetic ultranationalistic project.

    He is a massive piece of shit because he tricks nature itself. He tricks all of us with his words, first time I've seen it I was thinking the guy was being empathetic with the Gazans, but no, it's the contrary. He's a special kind of piece of shit, one that knows some people are in the absolute shit right now and asks for more. He's aware, almost feeling sorry, but he keeps on going, just like the many Nazis who knew what they were doing and kept doing it anyways. It's not that he doesn't care about Gazans, he does but in a sinister way.

    This is but one sample of many within the "israeli" society in particular and western society in general who feel that way. There are people who deny there's genocide either because they really believe there is no genocide or because they're too afraid to be one of the baddies and there's people who don't waste time and celebrate genocide while asking for more. The latter is at the bottom of human decency, the scum of the scum, the irreparable.

    It is also important to remember that everything that "israel" does will be accounted for in the future. We are firm believers in the "fuck around and find out" formula, it just never fails. "israel" will find out, don't you ever think the pain, the misery, the destruction, the death and the suffering they've inflicted upon millions will just go about unpunished. Everything they do, and I really mean everything, will come back at them like a boomerang. It's not "karma", it's them digging their own fucking grave.

  • Panic in global metals markets as China rare earth export bans close brokerage hubs (Disclaimer: I'm unfamiliar with this author, I just came across their video version of this article through the youtube algo)

    The Chinese bans are pushing metals prices violently higher, and causing panic across defense sectors where these materials are vital for aerospace, ballistics, and munitions.

    US miners are reluctant to invest in new production, arguing that China could simply relax restrictions in the future and prices would fall below their cost of production. But industry insiders admit that any production in North America and Europe would fall far short of demand, and would take years to come online.

    Gotta love when one hand of capital can't cooperate with the other hand because it might negatively impact their profit margins in the short-term. Nevermind that the military arsenal the west uses to maintain the current world order - bullying other nations into selling us their resources and labor for violently-low prices - is itself still heavily reliant on those nations exporting materials to us. I'm sure that contradiction won't blow up in

    's face at all.

    Meanwhile China stays winning

  • Brazilian liberal, pro-Lula da Silva mayor upsets the Zionist community in Brazil with a Christmas message.

    In a Christmas message, Alexandre Kalil, former mayor of Belo Horizonte, published: “Just a reminder that Jesus was Palestinian, a refugee, poor, persecuted, tortured and murdered for preaching equality, social justice and love”.

    Alexandre served as president of Clube Atlético Mineiro, a football club based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil that competes in Campeonato Brasileiro, the top tier of the Brazilian football league system, as well as in the Campeonato Mineiro. Alexandre is of Syrian descent, he is the only son of former club president Elias Kalil. Alexandre Kalil's career in Atletico started in the early 1980s, managing its volleyball team. He was also the football director and the president of the deliberation council.

  • During Carter's presidency, the U.S. continued to support Indonesia as a cold war ally, despite human rights violations in East Timor. The violations followed Indonesia's December 1975 invasion and occupation of East Timor. Under Carter's administration military assistance to Indonesia increased, peaking in 1978. This was antithetical to Carter's stated policy of "not selling weapons if it would exacerbate a potential conflict in a region of the world".

    The Indonesian invasion of East Timor, known in Indonesia as Operation Lotus (Indonesian: Operasi Seroja), began on 7 December 1975 when the Indonesian military (ABRI/TNI) invaded East Timor under the pretext of anti-colonialism and anti-communism to overthrow the Fretilin regime that had emerged in 1974. The overthrow of the popular and short-lived Fretilin-led government sparked a violent quarter-century occupation in which approximately 100,000–180,000 soldiers and civilians are estimated to have been killed or starved to death.

  • Macron announces France's fourth government in a year

    this fucking guy.

    Both Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu and Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot kept their jobs, the presidency said.

    Mr Lecornu, a 38-year-old loyalist with a keen political nose, has served in every government since Mr Macron's first election as president in 2017.

    Conservative Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who has vowed to crackdown on illegal immigration, and right-wing Culture Minister Rachida Dati, also stayed in their posts.

    Mr Bayrou had hoped to bring in figures from the left, right and centre to protect his government from possible censure, but his 35-member team does not include any members of the left-wing coalition New Popular Front.

    Just before the official announcement, right-wing politician Xavier Bertrand, who had been tipped for the health ministry, announced he would not be part of the government.

    He alleged that it had been formed with the implicit "backing" of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who will play a key role in ensuring its survival.

    • Liberals allying with fascists? :no-waying:

    • For anyone who doesn't follow french politics the fact bayrou got the PM position is hilarious btw. And all the gov picks are like bottom-of-the-barrel rejects and opportunists, everybody knows this gov won't last long and nobody wants to be in it. I think macron's playing for time. Remember how people used to say the 4th republic was "so unstable" because of the changes of governments and that's why it failed (which is not really the case)? We've had the shortest-lived governments in 2024 under macron, way shorter than the 4th republic ever got.

      • Also rumors are that macron did not want to give it to Bayrou but he threatened to remove the backing of the modem and his MPs so macron was basically forced to. Lots of internal fighting at the moment as well in the centrist/liberal camp, previous PMs and ministers under macron now fighting and backstabbing, throwing revelations to the press, etc.

      • Actually the part about the Barnier government being the shortest-lived is false. It's the shortest lived since the foundation of the Vth Republic in 1958, by far (only 84 days); but the IVth Republic had many short-lived governments (the 2nd Ramandier government (29 days), the André Marie government (33 days), the second Schuman government (2 days!)… and all these – and three other longer-lived governments – are only in the two first years of the 4th Republic).

        Nevertheless your general point is valid, the current regime is in crisis, especially given how – contrary to the IVth Republic – it was built from the beginning to favour stable majorities led by the president, yet now the ruling party cannot get a stable majority despite it all, and the president is opposed even in his own liberal bloc. I just wanted to point it out since the comparison with the IVth Republic is one of the main points of your post; but I think you are right in that ça sent la fin de règne…

    • And they brought back all of the most clownish clowns that have ever clowned in the past decade of French politics: Darmanin (as minister of justice, which is already hilarious), Panier-Runacher, Borne, Montchalin, Aurore Berger, and even MANUEL VALLS!!! They're scraping the barrel of the most soulless ghouls and the most corrupt morons, I'm surprised Schiappa isn't in government this time around; regardless, it still probably is the most hilarious government in history. Anyways at least the memes will be good

  • In the last month of the year, the Russian government is pouring huge amounts of money into the economy. There are settlements under government contracts, advance payments for new government contracts, and much more.

    The scale of spending can be imagined using 2023 as an example. Exactly one year ago, at the beginning of December, the federal treasury held 13.2 trillion rubles of government funds in bank accounts. During December, government funds decreased by 2.6 trillion. Slightly less was spent through off-budget sources. How much can be judged by the growth of the money supply.

    In December 2023, the M2 aggregate grew by a record 5.83 trillion! Subtract 1.4-1.5 trillion in loans, and you get more than 4 trillion rubles. As of December 1, 2024, the Treasury holds almost 14 trillion in bank accounts. Most likely, no less than last year will go into the system, and taking into account inflation, even more. About 3-4 trillion. Plus off-budget. We will see specific figures in January.

    The government fights back against the central bank’s monetary austerity. It’s better late than never. The central bank will, predictably, raises key rate early next year because “spending more money into the economy means more inflation”.

    A tug of war situation where we will have to see if the government will run out of money to spend first (since they don’t control the money printer) or if the central bank’s key rate will lose its efficacy first?

    This is a war of attrition between the industrial and finance capital within Russia that has been going on for more than two years.

  • Ukraine is in a very serious shortage of infantrymen and can't keep up with the war and it's terrible demands. Not only they're forcing everyone they can into the frontline troops, but they're also recruiting specialists from specialized units as frontline infantry, in this case, from Anti-Aircraft units. This is more or less what happened around 1943 when the Luftwaffe started to press surplus men into the "Luftwaffen-Feld-Divisionen", that is, infantry formations made up of anti-aircraft artillerymen, mechanics, airmen and other Luftwaffe personnel, sent into battle with disastrous results. As the nazis suffered worse shortages of infantry, they started to empty the Kriegsmarine's ships from men and formed "Naval Infantry" units that were desperately thrown against the Soviet onslaught with little training, again, with disastrous results. When you have to send your specialists into combat as infantry it means you're completely fucked.

    THE GUARDIAN: Ukraine faces difficult decisions over acute shortage of frontline troops ::: spoiler spoiler

    Depleted army is increasingly made up of older men, but Zelenskyy is reluctant to lower mobilisation age from 25

    On a recent icy afternoon in the western Ukrainian city of Kovel, a silver-haired man in military fatigues prepared to board a train. A small boy hugged him at the knees, reluctant to let go. “Come on Dima, say goodbye to grandad,” his mother told him, pulling him away. A few minutes later, the train pulled out of the station with the man on board, headed on a long journey to the east of the country, towards the frontlines in the fight against Russia. Daughter and grandson, both in tears, waved from the platform.

    Similar scenes now play out frequently in Ukraine, where the depleted and exhausted army is increasingly made up of older men. As the country approaches three years of full-scale war with Russia, and waits uneasily for the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, an acute personnel shortage at the front presents a dilemma.

    President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has resisted public calls from the Biden administration to lower the age at which men can be mobilised from 25, where it currently stands, to 18, citing the sensitivities of sending younger men to fight in a society that already faces a demographic crisis. But with Russia continuing to find fresh recruits for its grinding advances, the army is struggling to find enough people to fill the gaps at the front.

    A series of interviews with Ukrainian officers, who spoke anonymously, given the sensitivity of the issue, paint a worrying picture for Ukraine’s war effort.

    “The people we get now are not like the people who were there in the beginning of the war,” said one soldier currently serving in Ukraine’s 114th territorial defence brigade, who has been stationed in various hotspots over the past two years. “Recently, we received 90 people, but only 24 of them were ready to move to the positions. The rest were old, sick or alcoholics. A month ago, they were walking around Kyiv or Dnipro and now they are in a trench and can barely hold a weapon. Poorly trained, and poorly equipped,” he said.

    Two sources in air defence units told the Guardian the deficit at the front has become so acute that the general staff has ordered already-depleted air defence units to free up more men to send to the front as infantry. “It’s reaching a critical level where we can’t be sure that air defence can function properly,” said one of the sources, saying he had been prompted to speak out by a fear that the situation was a risk to Ukraine’s security.

    “These people knew how air defence works, some had been trained in the West and had real skills, now they are sent to the front to fight, for which they have no training,” said the source.

    These men are too valuable. These people know how complex systems like S300 and Patriot work, including their radar systems, aiming systems, the nature of the enemy's weapons and capabilities... they're too precious to just throw into a frozen trench to die to a 25$ commercial drone that drops a decades old F1 grenade. Plus they have little to no infantry training.

    Commanders can use the orders to send soldiers they do not like to the front, as punishment, said the source. There is also a fear that, equipped with sensitive knowledge about Ukrainian air defence positions and tactics, there is a risk of these soldiers giving up important information if they are captured by Russians at the front.

    Last month Mariana Bezuhla, an outspoken and controversial MP, claimed in a post on Telegram that air defence troops were being transferred to infantry units, leading to worse success rates for Ukraine shooting down Russian drones. Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the air defence forces, confirmed at the time that the transfers were taking place, saying they were “very painful”. But he denied that it was affecting shoot-down rates.

    Those the Guardian spoke with said the increasing demands for transfers were making it hard to run the air defence units properly, however. “This has been going on for a year but it’s been getting worse and worse,” said another source, an officer working on air defence. “I’m already down to less than half [of full strength]. In recent days the commission came and they want dozens more. I’m left with those aged 50-plus and injured people. It’s impossible to run things like this,” he said.

    While the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 saw lines of Ukrainians ready to volunteer, and hundreds of thousands of people have willingly gone to the front since, mobilisation has been a major challenge for Kyiv for the past year, with squads of recruitment officers roaming the streets and handing out call-up papers. Men of conscription age have been barred from leaving the country since the start of the invasion.

    Most Ukrainians understand the need for mobilisation, but the policy is unpopular on a personal level, and the recruiting squads often face anger and abuse as they look for new conscripts. In a telling sign of the changing attitudes in the country, a poll by the Kyiv-based Razumkov Centre over the summer found that 46% of respondents agreed that there was “no shame in evading military service”, while only 29% disagreed.

    The personnel shortage has soured relations between Kyiv and Washington over recent months. Officials in the Biden administration felt irritated that Zelenskyy and other officials frequently demanded more weapons, but were unable to mobilise the requisite manpower to fill the ranks. “Manpower is the most vital need” Ukraine has at the moment, White House national security council spokesperson Sean Savett said in a statement last month. “We’re also ready to ramp up our training capacity if they take appropriate steps to fill out their ranks,” he said.

    Ukrainian officials felt the public calls by the US to lower the mobilisation age to 18 was insensitive and inappropriate. Ukraine expanded its mobilisation drive in April, lowering the call-up age to 25 from 27, but a majority of Ukrainians, even those at the front, are wary of lowering it further, citing a need to protect the younger generation. Many soldiers say that the way to boost mobilisation rates is not by lowering the call-up age but by offering better incentives and more training. “It’s not about age, really, they need good conditions and motivation,” said the soldier from the 114th brigade. “Eighteen-year-olds are still children. Maybe they could lower it to 23 if necessary, but there are still enough people in Kyiv who could be mobilised but don’t want to go,” he added.

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    Ukraine is facing a massacre while their elites and their US "friends" are filling their pockets with easy money. Instead of looking for a diplomatic way out of this mess, they insist on sending more men towards their pointless deaths. Ukraine fought well, they accepted the Russian invitation to fight and fough well, but sometimes you gotta understand that you lost, that no matter how many people you throw into the meatgrinder it's over. The killing must end at some point, it's insane.

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