I'm not gonna lie to you - I thought Israel would have started shit with Hezbollah by now which would have derailed whatever megathread theme I had planned, so I didn't bother planning one.
If you want a decent couple pieces going over what Hezbollah has done to Israel, then have a look at How 'Israel' Has Lost The North and Hezbollah's Quarterly Report. It's not exactly the most professional analysis, as you'll see if you read it, but it gets the point across and relies on evidence. In essence, Hezbollah has pushed the Israelis back tens of kilometers and decimated their border infrastructure, all while unveiling anti-aircraft missiles that have forced Israel to reconsider bombing runs. They still probably have the ability to turn various towns and cities in Lebanon to rubble, but Hezbollah can do massive damage back to Israel in turn. This has gone on so long with so little meaningful opposition by Israel that border settlements are going a little haywire and tentatively declaring independence from Israel and saying they don't want IDF troops there anymore. I don't take these terribly seriously from a military standpoint but it is indicative of the Zionist settler mindset crumbling over the last 9 months.
We're now at the point where Israel kinda has to go to war against Hezbollah or the entire Zionist ideology of military deterrence and expansion via illegal settlements simply no longer functions, but that war will also lead to massive destruction for military and civilian facilities (ports, power stations, war factories, etc) which is a massive problem for Israel's continued existence. Hamas continues to function inside Gaza despite the surface occupation of significant areas, including the Gaza-Egypt border, and attrition there is leading to big materiel and psychological losses for Israel too. And Yemen has, for all intents and purposes, prevailed against America's failed attempt to thwart their blockade - with some in the army claiming it's the most intense naval battle America has faced since WW2 - and missile strikes are tentatively beginning to hit or at least threaten ships in the Mediterranean Sea.
Nukes are still lurking quietly in the background, of course, but the Resistance is perfectly aware of that and still seems confident to go ahead with operations, so I can't really do anything but shrug and say that I trust them to do what's right.
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 Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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.
Never turn off this website again. I saw the Bolivia news, rushed to the news mega and saw the gates of heaven locked. My hands started trembling as I realised that I had nobody to talk to about internal Bolivian politics. Out of desperation, and may Allah forgive me for these words, I started tweeting. Astaghfirullah wa atoub ilayh
Just citing Biden’s twitter account here… he is “appalled” at the protest of land being auctioned off in occupied Palestine (where all the violence came from the Zionist side) but merely “disturbed” that a white American woman tried to drown a Palestine child in a pool recently.
In a bid to increase productivity in its economy (now mostly owned by Northern Europe after the financial crisis) and 'fill gaps in skilled work' Greece is now moving to a 6 Day Work Week in many sectors.
Congratulations European technocrats, you've managed to roll back hard won progress by almost 200 years.
Haven't been on here for like 2 weeks aside from lurking/reading, but I wanted to remind you how it's been 1 month and a half and the media is still ignoring the fact that the Israelis have been breaking the Egypt-Israel peace treaty for the last 45-50 days ish.
Gotta say that coups these days are embarrassing. What happened to taking the TV station, having a guy with a goofy military hat deliver a speech on live TV, shooting the president, shutting down the capital, making calls to Washington DC and suspending the constitution. The real pros of the 60s are all dead.
any officer after 1991 can't coup. all they know is cia, declare martial law, post on twitter, be white, eat shit and die
Sharing this article only to highlight how the propaganda machine works.
The article first talks about how all these very important people (Biden, Newsom, Bass) are condemning pro-Palestine protestors for targeting a Jewish synagogue.
The last part includes several sympathetic interviews with members of the congregation.
Sandwiched in there is a brief mention of why that specific synagogue was protested at the specific time: there was a presentation/meeting going on about buying up land in Gaza. So… just a little “how can we take advantage of the genocide and ethnic cleansing going on?” shindig. Never is anyone on the pro-Palestine side even interviewed to give their side.
The way it is written gives the uncritical reader (most readers) the impression that Jewish congregants are being targeted just for being Jewish. That they give a mention of the stated reason is irrelevant when you soak your article in condemnations from government officials and when you only provide statements from one side.
Edit: turned on Hasan a moment ago, he’s discussing the protest. Pretty awful stuff coming from the Zionist side that was never mentioned in the LA Times article like “sand n-words go home!” And the violence was entirely one-sided (Zionists attacking protestors) but the article never mentions that, it conveniently focuses on “arrests”.
My country is COTW again let's goooooooooooooooooooo
Free AMA for all the Hexbearians today. Ask me anything about Lebanon (and Syria, hell even Iraq because my wife is from there and I've spent lots of time there)
This is such a giant leap in criminalizing homelessness. Like, this has been in the works for a while, and in a lot of ways municipalities have been making homelessness de-facto illegal, but now they can just ticket or arrest people for a basic part of living, a fundamental need of continuing existence.
An interesting comment posted on Naked Capitalism by a traveler to occupied Palestine who sheds a little light on what it looks like far from the front:
spoiler
I just returned yesterday from a business trip to Israel. Some anecdata to share:
the flight there was three-quarters full; the return was entirely full. Lots of families on both. At passport control on the US side of the return most of the people on the flight went through the Israeli passport line, not the US passport line. So it was mostly Israelis leaving, not tourists.
news in Tel Aviv does not show much about what is going on in Gaza. The nightly news was more focused on the fires at the Lebanon border and the death of multiple IDF soldier in a Rafah attack. Nothing really about the counter-attacks and communal responses.
there are protests almost nightly in front of the IDF headquarters and many nights in front of Netanyahu’s personal residence in Jerusalem. The protesters are mostly the secular types (or “State of Israel” types as defined in the Pappe piece linked here yesterday).
even the secular types are rabidly racist against anyone deemed ‘arab’. Was subjected to a six-hour tour of Jerusalem organized by work where the tour guide ranted about ‘the arab mindset’ and went to great pains to point out how Israel was not an apartheid state because a single muslim woman was working as a tour bus driver. Israeli execs at company dinner made multiple casually racist comments about employees at a vendor with Persian surnames being arab terrorists (the vendor and employees are canadian, didn’t matter).
People in Tel Aviv are partying and behaving like nothing bad is going on. If you had been there since last October and were only exposed to local news I doubt you’d have any idea of how bad the situation in Gaza really was. And this feeds into the paranoid/delusional mindset around ‘the arabs’ and ‘antisemitism’.
the touristic industries have completely collapsed. There were no lines in Jerusalem for the big religious sites, we walked right into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and there were maybe 30 people inside the entire complex and no real lines on the tomb and site of the crucifixion. The tour guide said it had been like this since the war started and many in his line of work had gone bankrupt.
most of the big tourist hotels are being propped up by direct payments from the government in exchange for housing settlers from the north who were evacuated. Our hotel, right on the Tel Aviv beach, was at least half full of these people who had been living there full time for months. On the weekends Israelis from outside of Tel Aviv would fill up the hotel for beach going but during the week it was empty except for the housing. We only realized this because there were tons of children during the week who were being shuttled to and from schools and it didn’t make sense that would be happening for tourists.
as an American what stood out to me was the lack of homeless people in Israel because this is utterly inescapable in the US. I guess I’m glad my taxes are ensuring people somewhere are staying off the streets but it made me angry that my taxes are being used to prop up a foreign social safety net at the expense of mine here. The housing market in Tel Aviv is grossly overpriced relative to wages. Most of the people I talked to wanted to immigrate to the US for the higher salaries.
Funny to remember how widespread making fun of the "Soviet Gerontocracy" was in the 70s and 80s in western media and politics. This is so so so much worse. Suslov, Brezhnev and Chernenko at their worst and most decrepit state were monsters of vitality and intellect compared to what we are seeing from Amerikkka these days.
You can put renal failure induced encephalopathy Andropov on the debate stage 5 minutes before he died and Biden would still seem barely sentient comperatively
The "their flag upside down" shit reads as cia to me. If this was on twitter you'd do a search for the phrase and find it in dozens of very slightly differently worded posts by fake accounts.
EDIT:
I'm also convinced that the posts about it on /r/thedeprogram are also feds.
Lmao what a joke, the MIC can't even make an off road vehicle anymore. They break down when you try to take them cross country. Good thing all war takes place on paved roads then right?
Campaign advisers argue that announcing his intention to only serve one term and signalling that he will choose a younger running mate and cabinet would increase Biden's chances of being the Democratic nominee.
One of the most interesting aspects of a declining empire is the anxiety it creates in those administrating it. There are many factions seeking to undo the decline and they all disagree heavily on how to go about that, the result of this division is that they are tearing it apart even more.
Macron in a lot of ways seems to be following the Obama playbook. He's a young, by most accounts competent manager of an empire in decline wedded to his neoliberal ways while espousing hope and change. Due to the fact that neoliberalism can't actually do anything besides make a small circle of people an immense amount of money, the state atrophies anyway and brings about mass support for the far-right as the only viable alternative. Macron and Obama both will leave office having done their best to make sure a fascist government gets elected.
US mobilisation is occurring. Ignore the bullshit about evacuations, the fleet will be used as a floating base for special forces operations to deploy from under the cover story of evacuations.
been slacking on posting in the newsmega but I can't let this shitpost in verbal form from the Polish president during the Swiss Ukraine summit go unposted:
In the part of the world which I represent, Russia is often called 'the prison of nations', and for good reason, because it is home to almost 200 ethnic groups, most of which became residents of Russia as a result of the methods used in Ukraine today. Russia remains the largest colonial empire, in a world which unlike European powers has never undergone the process of decolonization, and has never been able to deal with the demons of its past. As members of the international community we have to finally say there is no more space for colonialism in the modern world.
Okay, so we're all eyerollingly familiar with the "revolution betrayed, same as the old boss" trope in media and pop history, usually aimed at anything leftist to imply that nobody can ever escape recreating the nightmarish qualities of the status quo, because it turns out that the way things are is just The Way Things Are, for good reason, as nature and your wise betters ordained. It's the natural order, and naive radicals who think they can build something different are destined to be seduced by wealth and power into becoming the very despots they blah blah blah, we know how it goes.
As a cultural artifact of capitalist realism and a method of control, it's a well-examined phenomenon. But I want to examine it as an artifact of liberal guilt. Specifically, guilt for supplanting feudalism and then immediately overseeing the horrors of the industrial revolution both inside the core and without. Seeing the way liberals now are sealing their eyes and ears to any evidence of their ideology's culpability in what's going on in the world, and having observed their Quixotic "cannot fail, only be failed" attitude for some time, the Revolution Betrayed narrative now so obviously aligns with other liberal copes that I'm kind of embarrassed I didn't see it before. They believe that they are the best (only) "realistic" option, that if they can't do it then it can't be done. If their ideology and mode of production has failed to deliver a better world after four hundred years, then that means a better world simply is not possible, and anyone who says otherwise is either lying or stupid.
I think the fact that they think this is inevitable also goes a long way to explaining their semi-mystical view of power. "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" Everyone bows sagely. I don't even necessarily disagree with the basic take here, but they just leave it at this vague truism that is inevitably leveled at those seeking the power to liberate themselves, but not at those from whom people need liberating. Because their power is ordained by law, by the natural order. It turns the phrase into a masochistic civility fetish (literally, like a totem) that whispers to you that it's okay not to fight, that it's "evil" to fight dirty even for your life, and that the most morally pure thing you can experience is defeat. Secular Calvinism and lack of education have done a number on us all here in the states and resulted in generations of highly propagandized "too smart for politics" rubes who are narrow-minded about most things but shockingly credulous about state enemies, utterly sanctimonious but completely lacking knowledge of past and present, liberals, I realized I was just describing liberals, this post is getting away from me.
Anyway, thoughts on "Revolution Betrayed narratives as Liberalism's Pyramid Head"?
Julian Assange expected to be freed after 5 years in UK prison under US plea deal
Article
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has accepted a plea deal with the US government that will allow him to avoid jail time in the states over his leaking of top secret military information.
Assange is expected to plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act and receive credit for time served for the five years he spent behind bars in the UK while fighting extradition to the US, according to court documents and reports.
Assange, of Australia, was charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information for releasing classified reports of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on his WikiLeaks site, according to the documents.
He’s expected to be released from UK custody after he pleads guilty during a federal US court hearing in the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the US this week.
Watched the Debate for fun and giggles and was not disappointed. It's real Falling Roman Empire hours, all we need is for Trump to pay the secret service to make him the president and history has repeated itself as a farce
french settlers are forming paramilitaries to continue their occupation and colonialism at any cost, france refuses to grant independence, shit is getting heated
Something I wonder about when I post in threads like this is the possibility of it being sifted through one day by historians, of some sort. Whether that’s internet archivists digging around the wreckage of the old worldwide web for lost media 20 years from now, or scholars from a post-internet empire 5 centuries from now trying to salvage whatever data they can from what they view as the height of human civilisation. Just as the tiniest Roman shopping list carved onto stone would give us insight into what life was like for a distant ancestor of ours, our posts could give our descendants a glimpse into our world.
If you are a curious scholar or even a passionate amateur sifting through the digital detritus of the 2020s to learn what life was like in the leadup to the third world war, i have only one message for you: MARG BAR ISRAEL
I've pointed out on many occasions that the Russians have the capability to launch a strategic offensive in Ukraine basically any time they want to.
But what I have not addressed is conditions. What would they want it to look like? How would they know when to "roll tanks?"⬇️
Critical to this analysis is just how successful the Russian decision to adopt a "ground and pound" approach to destroying the Armed Forces of Ukraine has been. Despite the full and enthusiastic backing of NATO and a Ukrainian numerical advantage for much of the war, the Russians have maintained a lopsidedly positive loss-exchange ratio against their enemies throughout. Ukraine is going into demographic collapse while Russian society at large has barely noticed the war.
@MNormanDavies pointed out some time ago that the Stavka has placed a heavy emphasis on efficiency in this war. Many Russian decisions at the operational-strategic level can be explained simply by their seeking the most efficient means to inflict mass casualties on the AFU with the lowest risk to themselves. Thus, any decision to transition to high-speed, mobile warfare from low-speed, positional war can be expected to follow that rubric. In other words, the Russians will launch an offensive to rout the AFU after its back is broken in positional war, rather than attack seeking to "change the game" and defeat the Ukrainians in mobile war. The "game" heavily favors the Russians and they're not in a rush to change it!
The difference between these scenarios can be seen quite easily by comparing two very successful offensives: Operation Bagration in 1944 and the 1975 Ho Chi Minh Offensive. Bagration routed the once-mighty Army Group Center - at the cost of 180,000 killed in action, three times the total Russian death toll of this war. I'm sure the Russians would much prefer the 8,000-strong butcher's bill of North Vietnam's war-ending 1975 operation - and they have the strategic insight to see that modern Ukraine, as a corrupt and deeply dysfunctional garrison state propped up by endless foreign aid, is far more akin to South Vietnam than Nazi Germany.
So what does this look like in practice? The Russians are going to keep poking and prodding in their usual methodical way until part of the line collapses "in depth," and then all hell is going to break loose. That could actually be quite soon - for instance, the recent Russian maneuver in Kharkov was likely intended to accelerate this timeline - but regardless, the State Department will be warming up their helicopters shortly afterwards.
As an addendum, it's just occurred to me that the Ukrainian Hundred Days Offensive of summer 2023 could be likened to Lam Son 719 as a poorly conceived and executed offensive maneuver by an army that had no real idea what it was actually getting itself into... perhaps a topic for examination later.
Adoptee diaspora are often some of the most insufferable people. In Guatemala a lot of them get adopted by bougie liberals who fill their heads with US/ white superiority complexes. Then they occasionally come here with their white partners and tell us we’re stupid and backwards for not doing things their way like embracing neoliberalism more.
I bring them up because one of them got into our org and began his NATO-leftist bullshit almost immediately. Tried to purge me for being “imperialist” because of my positions on Russia/Ukraine war.
He ended up getting purged instead. He now lives in a gated community with his white wife where he continues to post about how our org has been compromised by Russia.
Guys I don’t think Biden has the ability to actually form his own sentences anymore. Even about cornpop. They are all pre-scripted by his staffers and all he can do is robotically repeat a version of the script that has undergone some demented transformation in his swiss cheese brain regardless of the relevancy to the topic at hand, and if you try to ask him anything off-script or a follow-up question, or press him on anything he just short circuits like a “choose your own adventure” game that’s really just railroading you into only one possible ending
how do you not just completely fall into despair living as a vulnerable minority in the United States at this moment. what does a future even look like
PYM's response to recent attacks and demonization of the Palestinian liberation movement in the United States by opportunists and members of the so-called "American left":
For the last 9 months, people all across the United States have organized in opposition to Israel’s genocide, and for the last 9 months, the Biden administration has ignored our mass movement, continuing to arm and facilitate this genocide. Biden and all elected officials who have endorsed him have blood of over 40,000 Palestinians on their hands. Elected officials — self-proclaimed as progressive or otherwise — who have voted to send money to the Zionist entity, or who have vilified the movement for Palestine, have the blood of our people on their hands.
As we near the 2024 elections, we know that these same elected officials will try to garner support from our community and movement. They, alongside the so-called progressive organizations endorsing them, will use the rhetoric of “lesser of two evils,” “vote out fascism” and “vote blue no matter who” to try to pressure us to back the very politicians responsible for genocide. And when we refuse — which we will — they will blame Palestinian organizations and communities for Republican victories. Let us be clear: the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.
In the last few weeks, Democratic Socialists of America electeds Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman smeared the Palestine movement, targeting
@WOLPalestine
for organizing a protest outside an exhibit meant to manufacture further consent for the genocide of our people. Following these smears and in response to AOC, Bowman, and Sanders’ endorsement of genocider-in-chief Joe Biden, WOL called for a protest outside a rally organized by AOC. What followed was a smear campaign against WOL, with so called progressives aiming to fed-jacket WOL for holding DSA electeds accountable.
For the past few years, PYM and the broader Palestine movement has sought to hold DSA accountable for its relationship and support for elected candidates who directly and materially support Israel and the Zionist movement through their votes for military aid, repression of the Palestine movement, and repeated attacks and smears of our movement. As a result of these efforts, we have witnessed DSA members smear, vilify, and fed-jacket our organization and members, as well as DSA members who support a more principled and concrete position on Zionism.
The so-called “progressives” of the Democratic party, from AOC to Bowman to Sanders, are complicit in this genocide: from endorsing Biden, to voting to send money to the Zionist entity, to smearing Palestinian organizations and conflating anti-Zionism with anti-semitism. Let us be clear: no amount of “lesser of two evils” rhetoric will bully the Palestine movement into supporting those complicit in the genocide of our people. We affirm that we have not only a right, but an obligation, to disrupt the activities of all electeds complicit in this genocide.
We condemn attempts to scapegoat the Palestinian movement for the results of any upcoming elections, and reject attempts by self-proclaimed progressive organizations to paint Palestinian organizations as unstrategic for refusing to buy into the push to “vote blue no matter who” while US bombs continue to rain down on our people in Gaza.
The lack of accountability we are being asked to accept is in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy whose promise is oppression and mass death. Our movement has the right to hold accountable those who deviate from these principles, especially when others will not.
Does Biden withdrawing even matter at this point? It'll just make the Dems look even more pathetic for waiting so long to acknowledge reality, so it won't matter who they replace him with. Trump wins. It's joever.
translated Al Jazeera’s exclusive report on footage showing Palestinians being used as human shields
The footage reveals instances such as forcing men to search for explosives, tying them with ropes & throwing them into tunnels, and using injured to search for fighters
September Debate would be fire when Biden's Dementia gets worse. Hope he just dies while shouting at Trump about why Chocolate Chocolate Chip is the best ice cream flavour.
Israeli forces in Gaza City ‘executing’ Palestinians on the spot:
Rights group The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor says it has received reports that Israeli forces are committing “widespread massacres” in the Shujayea and Jdaida neighbourhoods in Gaza City.
“Our field team is receiving reports of dozens, possibly hundreds, of victims being executed on the spot or having their shelters bombed,” wrote Ramy Abdul, the chairman of the Geneva-based group, in a post on X.
Earlier, we reported the UN reporting that at least 60,000 people had been displaced from Shujayea as the Israeli military announced intensifying operations there.
Let’s tell Ruto we are aware that the President is legally unable to withdraw a bill that has already matured for assent. His options are limited to returning it to Parliament with a memorandum for the inclusion of his proposed amendments, which, if rejected by a two-thirds majority, would become law.
Why dupe Kenyans into imagining he can withdraw it in totality? This is a legal conundrum, a deceitful ploy to buy time and distract Kenyans from their urgent demands.
General Juan José Zúñiga, former commander of the Bolivian Army, is arrested for attempting a coup d'état.
General Juan José Zúñiga, former commander of the Bolivian Army, accuses President Luis Arce of planning a coup attempt to boost his own popularity.
Every single time these coups fail in South America, they say this shit. That it was a falseflag operation or whatever. They said the same thing about Lula da Silva lol.
The saddest part of this election is that I can't vote for both candidates, given what an excellent performance they both gave in the debate. Profoundly illustrating the biggest issues in America and describing expertly how they'd solve them.
Who’s in charge of site taglines? I would like to submit this (or parts of it)
I want to fight for Ukraine. I have no military background and some live firearm experience. I do have over 100 hours of airsoft milsim experience though. It’s the closest thing to actual war. I’m familiar with military lingo and protocols (not sure if applicable cause I’m fighting for a foreign country). Knowledge on how to operate a variety of weaponry. I use high-end airsoft guns which are 1:1 or almost identical to the real thing. I did many roles in the milsim from combat medic to Forward observers and operated in a two-man sniper team.
The decision aligns with the two-state solution principle, President Abbas said.
On Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas thanked Armenia for recognizing Palestine as a state and urged more countries to do the same based on pre-1967 war borders, including Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as the capital.
Article
“Armenia’s wise decision aligns with the principles of the two-state solution, a strategic choice that defends international will and legitimacy,” he said in a statement.
“On various international platforms, we have always advocated a peaceful and comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian question and support the two-state principle of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We are convinced that this is the only way to ensure that Palestinians and Israelis can realize their legitimate aspirations,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry stated.
“Based on the above and reaffirming its commitment to international law and the principles of equality, sovereignty and peaceful coexistence of peoples, the Republic of Armenia recognizes the State of Palestine,” it added.
For his part, Hussein al Sheikh, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), also expressed his “satisfaction” with the recognition.
“It is a victory for law, justice, legitimacy and the struggle of our Palestinian people for liberation and independence. Thank you our friend Armenia,” Sheikh wrote on the X social network.
Norway, Ireland and Spain made a coordinated announcement on May 22, declaring their recognition of Palestine as a state effective as of May 28. But their decision was condemned by Israel.
On June 3, over 20 UN experts and special rapporteurs called on all countries to recognize a Palestinian state. So far, over 140 countries have already recognized a Palestinian state, representing more than two-thirds of the United Nations’ membership.
Argentina's GDP falls 5.1% in the 1st quarter and the country enters technical recession
Among the sectors that fell, according to Indec, were construction (-19.7%), manufacturing (-13.7%) and financial intermediation (-13.0%).
It's worth pointing out that until last year Argentina was expected to grow by almost 2% in 2024, now the forecast has changed to a 3.5% recession, but after these quarterly figures it's clear that it will be much bigger.
Meanwhile the mainstream media celebrating inflation of 8% a month, after reaching 24% in January, lol.
Bolivia nationalize basically all of their lithium recently, they were going to join Mercosur (Brazil's South American Economic Bloc) and Lucho purged the army. Really interesting how the US didn't condemn this coup.
I can’t fucking believe we went down during the next Bolivian coup attempt. Fuck those gusano bastards, they deserve far worse than evo or Arce will give them
China is establishing a 'Global South' research centre, slated to grant 1000 scholarships, and train 100k individuals over five years and establish a Global South youth cooperation plan
Holy shit I wished I watched the debate now after reading all this. I never bought the idea that Biden was this geopolitical genius who single-handedly accomplished what he did in his foreign policy through his own cunning schemes.
That Biden has been gone since the 2010’s. Any foreign policy success he’s had goes to Blinken and Nuland.
And of course Reddit representing the 1% of diehard liberals isn’t swayed at all. Just remember that whenever Reddit is sure of something, be sure to bet against them.
Absolutely hilarious and pathetic that this is the man that beat Bernie.
Watching a YouTube doc about the yazidi struggle in sinjar. I felt a part of my soul die when a kid asked “will I kill in school” as his dad is explaining that one day he’ll be able to go to school again after ISIS is defeated. The Kurdish has often been co-opted by American interests (and inevitably betrayed every time), but damn did they do a good thing opening up that escape corridor.
Easily a top 10 sigma moment of all time. Arce's aura was so powerful today that Hexbear devs had to preemptively shut down the site for our own protection.
Everyone talking about the elections in the U.S. and Iran. Algeria will have elections in September 7th
Possible candidates so far
Zoubida Assoul: Union for Change and Progress [1956 woman]
I've heard she's with too many western NGOs and she has tiktok and reddit bot accounts defending her online,
Louisa Hanoune: Algerian Worker's party (Trotskyists) [1954 woman]
Although she's a Trotskyist she has good takes, extremely anti-america and pro-global south.
Youcef Aouchiche: Socialist Forces Front [1983 man]
the name is a prank, they're actually succdems or demsuccs or something.
Djamel Abasse: Independent [1967 man]
Just a dude
Belkacem Sahli: National Republican Alliance [1974 man]
Algerian nationalism anti-islamism
Abdelaali Hassani: Movement for Society of Peace (HMS) [1961 man]
Party is pronounced "Hamas" and is somewhat related to the Hamas in Palestine, saw them call it a "sister party" or something.
Abdel-Madjid Tebboune: current president. [1945 man]
associated with the FLN, but was independent last time he got elected, this was his first term he might possibly win idk.
El presidente Luis Arce engañó y mintió al pueblo boliviano y al mundo. Es lamentable que se use un tema tan sensible como la denuncia de un golpe.
Frente a esa realidad, debo pedir disculpas a la comunidad internacional por la alarma generada y agradecer por su solidaridad con nuestro país. Es importante que una investigación completa e independiente demuestre la verdad de este hecho.
Per Google Translate:
President Luis Arce deceived and lied to the Bolivian people and the world. It is unfortunate that a topic as sensitive as reporting a coup is used.
Faced with this reality, I must apologize to the international community for the alarm generated and thank you for your solidarity with our country. It is important that a complete and independent investigation demonstrates the truth of this fact.
Peru: The government is under fire as LGBTQ+ groups have called for a protest against a new decree that classifies transsexualism as a "mental disorder".
Brazil's President, Lula da Silva, has the same age as Trump. Lula had Covid-19, Cancer and went to jail two times, yet he looks much better than Trump and Biden (and even Bolsonaro). He is always giving interviews, going in public events, etc...
From what I researched, he does a bunch of exercises and has a good diet to live a healthy life. Hell, even Fidel Castro, who smoked cigars his entire life, lived until his 90's lucid. He was still receiving visits from heads of state and speaking with them literal days before his death.
Had a glance at the debate thread on r/politics ...
It's wall to wall denial and imagined new Trump-Russia hysteria:
The top 29 comment chains are all about Trump with no mention of Biden's performance at all.
More than a third of those comments are trying to spin a theory that Trump and Putin planned going into Ukraine together in secret.
The 30th most popular comment chain is thr first negative comment about Biden and it's scathing criticism is that "someone should have gotten Biden some water or something in the ad breaks".
Remember when Obama appointed Eric Holder to "supposedly" prosecute Wall Street for their role for causing the global economic crash that accelerated the slide towards overt fascism in the west? And the dude was just a Wall Street plant?
In July 2015, Holder rejoined Covington & Burling, the law firm at which he worked before becoming attorney general. The law firm's clients have included many of the large banks Holder declined to prosecute for their alleged role in the financial crisis.
It's relatively small shit compared to actual war crimes but there are thousands of examples like this only form the last 10 years... but liberals forget about them by the next week. I just remembered it randomly.
I’m split between deciding whether Pissrael is on the brink of initiating its complete self-destruction or if it’s just more of the same rabid genocidal screeching about how they’re going to conquer the whole Arab world they’ve always done.
Any newsheads care to weigh in?
I’m going to bed. Wake me up if Israel fucking dies though
Extincion Rebellion in Finland has withdrawn from a demostration due to police violence. The libs are calling this a smart move as it draws more attention to their cause. Mainstream media however rarely reports the demos or if it does, it typically frames these as the disrubtion of traffic. Today the liberal bourge paper Helsingin Sanomat has called out for the protesters right to protest safely.
Their next demo will start as planned tomorrow with a press release about the police violence. In the Finnish text based press release they report the police hitting people in the head, dragging them on the asfalt and other acts of physical violence. The police started forcefully removing protesters as soon as the demo started with no prewarning or commands to leave.
Argentina's economy contracted by 5.1% in first quarter, says INDEC; Unemployment hit 7.7% as Milei government’s austerity measures began to kick in.
Argentina's austerity-wracked economy contracted by 5.1 percent in the first quarter, the INDEC national statistics bureau said Monday, driven by a slowdown in the construction and manufacturing industries. Unemployment also surged in the first three months of 2024, with joblessness now at 7.7 percent.
President Javier Milei, who took office in December, stopped all new public works projects as part of his drive to slash spending. The construction sector was down 19 percent year-on-year, data showed. The manufacturing industry contracted by 13.7 percent and the only sector growing was exports – up 26.1 percent year-on-year and 11 percent higher than in the preceding quarter.
Milei, a self-declared "anarcho-capitalist," vowed to take a chainsaw to decades of overspending and rein in runaway inflation. Consumer prices have slowed, reaching 4.2 percent in May, the lowest monthly rate in two-and-a-half years, but hikes in the first five months of the year totalled 71.9 percent. Annual inflation is running at almost 280 percent year-on-year.
Analysts warned that the gains were a result of a massive economic slump as shoppers tighten purse strings and the poor and working classes struggle to make ends meet.
INDEC said that GDP overall fell 2.6 percent in the first full quarter from the last quarter of 2023. Most categories showed losses, though agriculture, livestock, hunting and forestry recorded year-on-year growth of 10.2 percent as they bounced back from the impact of last year’s drought.
Financial intermediation services declined by 13 percent year-on-year in the first quarter. Wholesale, retail and repairs slumped 8.7 percent.
When he took office, Milei cut Cabinet ministries in half, stopped funding to provincial governments, slashed tens of thousands of public jobs, ripped away fuel and transport subsidies, and sharply devalued the peso. Workers have suffered huge wage drops in real terms. Milei, who is visiting the Czech Republic, on Monday hailed "the largest fiscal adjustment not only in Argentine history but also in humanity."
He said the situation facing his government had been “titanic” and claimed his administration is returning “15 points of GDP to the private sector.”
Unemployment surge
INDEC revealed that 7.7 percent of the working population was unemployed, up 0.8 percentage points compared to the same period last year and a rise of two points from the last quarter of 2023. According to the institute's report, there are 400,000 fewer workers employed in the 31 urban areas it surveys.
Extrapolating from the 31 urban centre measurement, an estimated 1.7 million people are currently unemployed, which would mean some 525,000 new jobless in three months. Experts estimate that 40 percent of workers in Argentina are informally employed.
According to the bureau, the total number of employed persons represented 44.3 percent of the economically active population (14.2 million people) – i.e. 13.1 million citizens are employed, while the unemployment rate of 7.7 percent is equivalent to 1.1 million people who are unemployed but actively looking for work.
Within the employed population (that 44.3 percent), 74 percent are salary workers, while 21.9 percent are self-employed. Looking at specific sectors for the population aged 14 and over, considered to be of working age, the unemployment rate was 8.4 percent for women and seven percent for men.
Notably, 7.6 percent of all employed persons work from home.
The International Monetary Fund expects Argentina's economy to contract by 2.8 percent this year, after a 1.6-percent decline in 2023. In its latest report, the World Bank projected that Argentina’s economy would contract 3.5 percent this year.
More than half the population lives in poverty, according to data from an observatory at the Universidad Católica de Argentina (UCA).
Gun nerds are ecstatic about Chevron being overturned. The reason being the ATF was making arbitrary rules regarding guns and accessories, much of the time their own agents giving conflicting declarations of the same policy because it’s ever only announced with some letter no one reads.
On one hand, fuck the ATF, but I don’t think it’s worth taking a step further in ancap hell just to own an SBR without a tax stamp.
[...] the data shows that the attacks have had a limited effect on Russia’s fuel production and export volumes and that their impacts did not last long.
...
And because the Russian government pays domestic companies a subsidy of $10 per barrel on all the refined oil products they export, the state may even be benefiting financially from a shift toward crude oil exports, which reduces the subsidies it must pay.
...
Of the 12 major refineries Ukraine has damaged between January and May, half were returned to full operation within three weeks and the rest within three months.
...
[...] they have had little effect on the global economy precisely because they have had little effect on Russia.
It would be so hilarious if shit popped off in northern Israel during the 8 hour downtime in a few hours. I don't see why it would, but maybe Nasrallah is a Hexbear lurker.
I have no mouth but I must celebrate Zionist death
The 72% of the registered voters in the United States say that the current President Joe Biden should not run for re-election, according to a poll by CBS News and YouGov after his bad break on Thursday’s debate with Donald Trump.
Voters say Biden is not in “mental and cognitive health necessary to serve as president,” at his 81 years old. Although he was physically awkward and at times hesitant, incoherent and without finishing a sentence, the current tenant of the White House said the next day that he did not plan to leave the race to get a second term.
86% of those questioned in the survey consider Biden’s age to be a key reason he should not run, and 72% say Biden does not have the mental and cognitive health to be president, seven points more than in early June.
When asked more directly whether Biden should step aside as a Democratic candidate to give another Democrat a chance to run, 64% of voters said he should.
The poll, which was conducted on Friday and Saturday among 1,134 registered voters and has a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points, also shows concern for Trump, 78, by voters.
On ther other hand, Democracy Corps survey of Democratic-leaning voters, who used words such as “confused”, “frail”, and “dementia” to describe the president’s debate performance, Politico reported.
The Guardian reports that for this poll, made before and after the debate, 65% said they would vote for Biden before the debate, only 54% said he won the debate once it ended, according to the survey.
A poll by CNN, the network in charge of the first debate among the November presidential candidates, indicated on Thursday that registered voters who saw the meeting “think largely that Trump surpassed Biden”,
“Most say they have no real confidence in Biden’s ability to lead the country. At the same time, most of those who tuned in to the program say it had little or no effect on their election for president,” the channel said.
Russia has reportedly shot down a NATO intelligence drone over the Black Sea in response to the recent attack on Crimea.
Note that this has not yet been confirmed by either nato or the Russian MoD
Biden’s family is urging him to stay in the race despite last week’s disastrous debate performance, even as some privately express exasperation at how he was prepared for the event. The strongest voice for staying in has been Hunter.
Biden looks pretty similar to von Hindenburg at this moment
Brüning recalled that once the president came to meet him at the railway station, but failed to recognize him. On the other hand, Franz von Papen, a later chancellor, found that despite minor lapses the president remained competent until his last days. Hindenburg was persuaded to run by the Kamarilla, and supported by the Centre Party, the Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which regarded him as the only hope of defeating Hitler.
Hindenburg was 82 at that point.
We all know how it ended after Hindenburg was elected he let the Brownshirts back on the streets then he and von Papen did a bunch of hemming and hawing until they made Hitler chancellor and did pretty much everything Hitler asked for like dissolving the Reichsttag. Two years later the guy would croak and Hitler would take everything over.
One major Democratic donor and Biden supporter said it was time for the president to end his campaign. This person described Biden’s night as “the worst performance in history” and said Biden was so “bad that no one will pay attention to Trump’s lies.”
“Biden needs to drop out. No question about it,” the donor said in a text message, proposing an alternate ticket led by the governors of Maryland and Michigan.
It depends on how major we're talking, but if important donors are pushing for this there's no way it doesn't happen
I support NATOs war against Medicare. Medicare shouldn't have invaded the Free and Sovereign Private Healthcare Sector and their illegal invasion should be condemned worldwide.
good thing about the debate is that even with "leftsist are small enough to never have their policies implemented but big enough to blamed for election loss" attitude, they would not dare to blame leftsists after this lmao
Yesterday I was thinking it'd be funny to say it was a conspiracy theory that all the late night talk shows were off this week so none of them had to try to defend bidens likely terrible debate performance, either alienating their lib audience or anybody who didn't think it was funny to get explicitly lied to in real time.
I think Biden slipped in the debate that Iran's retaliation towards the assassination of Soleimani actually resulted in dead US troops instead of just "brain damage."
Apparently WARNO has its "army general" mode (map painter campaign) now. One of the assumptions about a lot of war nerdery of the Cold War era was that the Soviets were primed for attack and would come rushing through the Falder gap. This justifies NATO, Western Doctrine, tank design etc etc. For instance, the chunky western tanks against the light long-ranged Soviet tanks clearly indicated the aggressive intent of the Soviets.
One thing that was never really questioned in all these fictional narratives (be they video games, Tom Clancy novels, or honest NATO wargames) was that it would be the Soviets attacking. Was this really the case though?
During Stalin's era, where this narrative begun even before post-war (and a pre-end-of-WW2 version shows up in the video game RUSE), we know that Stalin honoured the end of war peace agreements to the chagrin of, say, communist partisans in Greece. That, and Soviet society was exhausted. The Soviets had to be dragged into Korea.
(I fell asleep writing this and offer no new information)
: The coup failed, quick say something to show that we were not owned!
Argentina's Foreign Minister, Dina Mondino, condemned the attempted coup d'état that took place in Bolivia today. In the post, she says that governments, whether good or bad, only change at the polls, and not with violent coups d'état. "Democracy cannot be negotiated."
I’d like to see NYC-DSA actually try to test their influence in NYC right now by running Bowman as a write in candidate for the general. Obviously electoralism isn’t everything, but NYC-DSA has a reasonably strong ground game and mobilization in NYC and this is a real show-up or shut-up moment. As an organization that calls itself socialist, it can’t keep running candidates as democrats forever when the stakes have been raised to this point. The democrats have already proven they want to crush DSA and will throw as much money as necessary at the problem to do so.
NYC is a great place to try it if democrats really want such a dirty break with their left flank. Bowman’s district is the Bronx and Westchester, and a split vote could mean enough to at least make the Dems lose, which would be funny but also embolden left wing candidates/voters in one of the few places in the country that they command enough of the vote to change election outcomes.
Some exit polls from France from this round of voting
Things to note:
Macron and centrist in general have a huge demographic problem only getting 13% with the 18-34 year olds. It doesn't really get any better until they start hitting the 64+ year olds
Fascists doing well from 35+ onwards.
No idea what they mean with employee and worker so if someone wants to inform me on those categories but yeah.
"Yesterday at about 11:00 a.m. the body of an attaché of the U.S. Embassy was found in a hotel room. No signs of violence were found on the body. The man arrived in Ukraine on June 15," one source said, Strana UA reported.
"According to medical data provided by the U.S. Embassy, the man suffered from high cholesterol," a source added, according to the report.
Honestly, glad this coup attempt folded but why does coup attempts all around fail? Did boomer Generals refuse to teach how to do successful coup to younger generations or something?
So on another forum, some of the most consistently wrong and delusional neoliberals are STILL saying they shouldn't replace Biden.
Some choice quotes:
I think the argument that Biden needs to step aside is short-sighted. The Democrats have nobody with a strong public image that would garner the same voter turnout - replacing Biden this late in the game would basically be throwing in the towel and handing the election to Trump.
Yeah, it's simply too late. We're locked into this. If Biden stepped aside they would just nominate Harris since the DNC would have full control over who gets nominated (and she would also be president if Biden for whatever reason stepped down from the role before the election) and historically taking it out of the hands of the people like that has resulted in very lopsided elections. It's political suicide trying to avoid an impending political stroke. I can't imagine anyone being selected charismatic enough to get over the "political unknown" factor that will sway independents to hesitate or go third-party like how polls show that if Haley suddenly got the position Trump is in a large amount of people would switch to RFK due to unfamiliarity. Whoever was selected would have needed a primary's season to get their name out there enough for people to be on board and also need to be liked enough for that to matter.
Who could they possibly choose? It's too late to enter the primary, the DNC would certainly nominate Harris or Newsom, who both will not win against the GOP in a presidential election, no one in the House is notable enough to fill his shoes and the Democratic party would genuinely take their chances with a mob like on Jan 6th again than nominate a Jewish progressive who is against Israel's extermination campaign and has the heritage background to actually have a meaningful impact on public discourse and governmental action for that.
It's insane to expect Biden to be replaced, short of him dying he isn't going to be, it would be an insanely bad idea and would be the easiest way to ensure the Republican party wins the election.
If the DNC thinks like they do, Trump 2024 is locked in.
Bit idea: Respond to neolibs saying that if you don't support replacing Biden, you are voting for Trump.
While the punditryNew York Times Editorial Board calls for Biden to be taken behind the shed and put out of his misery, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have both made statements today laying down the party line in defense of Biden's candidacy.
Biden could shoot someone on fourth ave and not lose my parents' vote and even they were able to admit that that was horrible. My mom told me "he is so. fucking. old!"
elections are happening today. Does anyone have some knowledge how things are looking?
As far as I see the far-right are winning the election, but not with enough votes to gain a majority so they will need to form a coalition with someone else.
The leftist big tent party are polling as solid second. Mélenchon is cool and based, but I'm wondering how many positions did he have to concede to form the party?
Macron's party is eating shit lol Why would you call snap elections at your party's weakest point in history??? Probably the biggest unforced error in politics since Biden agreeing to a live debate (so since yesterday I guess? God liberals are dumb)
I can't wait for Buttigieg to be dropshipped in by the dnc high priests - doing the high high hopes dance v2.0 into a phalanx of christian nationalist militia will be the perfect tombstone for the libs
‘Landmark’ case is first to deal with use of sexual violence in state’s conflict with Shining Path rebels four decades ago
Article
Ten soldiers have been found guilty at a court in Lima of crimes against humanity for rapes committed four decades ago during Peru’s civil war.
In what is being hailed as a landmark verdict, a panel of three judges on Wednesday said the systematic use of rape by soldiers in the Manta y Vilca case – named after the communities where the abuses took place – qualified as a crime against humanity.
“It is not legitimate that strategies of sexual violence be used as an intimidation method,” the court said.
The case is the first collective proceeding in Peru over the mass use of sexual violence during the state’s conflict with the Mao-inspired Shining Path rebels, which caused 69,000 deaths and disappearances between 1980 and 2000.
Six of the nine women who took legal action were in court to hear the verdicts. One, known as Marilia, died in March without seeing justice served. Her friend and fellow survivor, María, was in tears after the verdicts.
“Marilia told me, she would have liked [to see] these wretches behind bars for what they did to us,” said María. “They caused us so much harm. And we haven’t been able to move forward until now because of these soldiers. But I am glad that those guilty will pay for this.”
The convicted men were given prison sentences ranging from six to 12 years and ordered to pay 100,000 soles (£20,500) to each of their victims, who were all Quechua-speaking women from a rural Andean community.
The verdict comes at a crucial moment for human rights in Peru. Earlier this month, its congress voted to pass a bill to make crimes against humanity committed before 2002 subject to the statute of limitations. The bill, which awaits a second vote in congress, has been criticised by human rights organisations for undermining accountability for past human rights violations.
So I have a question coming from ignorance of Iranian politics. I see from searching that we are already having some shouting matches about Iran today lol so Im not excited but I need to ask.
I cant find any information about this so like, are the Reformists secretly pro-west or would they be less supportive of Israel or anything bad?
The announcement comes after the World Health Organization (WHO) together with the European Union said that nine thousand Palestinians need urgent medical evacuation by the end of 2024, amid a brutal Israeli offensive in Gaza.
On Thursday, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store confirmed that the Nordic country will accept and treat Palestinians injured as a result of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Norway will participate in the international effort to help Palestinians in urgent need of hospital treatment, VG media reported.
The announcement comes after the World Health Organization (WHO) together with the European Union said that nine thousand Palestinians need urgent medical evacuation by the end of 2024, amid a brutal Israeli offensive in Gaza.
In addition, Norway will contribute to airlifting Palestinian patients to other countries.
In this way, we can contribute to helping many more people than we have the capacity to bring to Norway for treatment, Store told VG.
The government has decided that up to 20 patients with family members from Gaza can be flown to Norway for treatment in Norwegian hospitals, he said.
According to the Norwegian prime minister, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is catastrophic and its health system has collapsed. Last month, Norway officially recognized Palestine as a state.
As early as December last year, health organizations and the UN warned that the health system in Gaza was in a state of serious disrepair.
Today, only 12 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially operational, according to the latest reports. Since then, more than 37,700 Palestinians have died in Gaza, most of them women and children, and more than 86,400 have been injured, according to local health authorities.
Nearly nine months after the Israeli war, vast areas of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel is accused of genocide before the International Court of Justice, which in its latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it broke out.
Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Receives Message of Thanks from Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
Pyongyang, June 25 (KCNA) -- Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, received a message of thanks from Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of the Russian Federation.
The president of the Russian Federation in his message expressed his sincerest thanks to Kim Jong Un for warmly welcoming him and the Russian delegation and according them heartfelt hospitality during their stay in the DPRK.
He said that his recent state visit to the DPRK was of special significance as it raised the relations between Moscow and Pyongyang to an unprecedentedly high level of comprehensive strategic partnership.
Noting that a new prospect has been opened for the two countries to achieve beneficial cooperation in various fields, he said in the message that he is pleased with the continued bilateral constructive dialogue and joint undertaking based on close cooperation.
The message hoped Kim Jong Un would not forget that he is an honoured guest Russia always waits for.
Sincerely wishing Kim Jong Un good health and success in his state activities, it hoped that everything would go well for him. -0- www.kcna.kp (Juche113.6.25.)
In a press conference, Bolivian authorities announce the arrest of former army commander Juan José Zúñiga, who they say led an attempted coup d'état today, and former commander of the Bolivian Navy, Juan Arnéz Salvador.
DPRK says US-Japan-ROK alliance is the Asian version of NATO. US, Japan, and ROK conducted joint military exercise called Freedom Edge in waters near DPRK from June 27 to June 29.
"As NATO stages annual joint military drills in all spheres including land, sea, air and cyberspace, the U.S., Japan and the ROK decided to regularly stage tripartite multi-domain joint military drills. This means that the U.S.-Japan-ROK relations have taken on the full-fledged appearance of Asian-version NATO."
Full article text
External Policy Office of DPRK Foreign Ministry Issues Press Statement
Pyongyang, June 30 (KCNA) -- The external policy office of the DPRK Foreign Ministry released the following press statement under the title "We will continue to make important efforts to deter the acts of disturbing peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and the rest of the world" on Sunday:
The U.S., Japan and ROK staged Freedom Edge, the first tripartite multi-domain joint military exercises in the waters near the DPRK from June 27 to 29.
In the past they staged many large and small joint military drills under various pretexts, but there had been no such a large-scale joint military drill dubbed with a special name.
We strongly denounce the U.S., Japan and ROK for their repeated reckless and provocative military muscle-flexing against the DPRK and other independent states in the region and once again seriously warn of the fatal consequences to be entailed by them.
Now the international community unanimously comments that lurking behind the recent drill is the strategic design of the U.S. to escalate regional military tensions, exert pressure upon the Far East of Russia and lay siege to China.
The regular U.S.-Japan-ROK tripartite joint military exercises clearly show that the U.S. strategy for world domination to encircle and contain independent and sovereign states and secure its military hegemony has already crossed the red-line and is bringing about a very negative change in the world security environment and geopolitical mechanical structure.
Freedom Edge, typical expression of the U.S.-Japan-ROK tripartite military bloc
The danger of the first tripartite multi-domain joint military exercises between the U.S., Japan and the ROK lies not only in the fact that the armed forces of the three countries conducted drills in various operational spheres including the sea and air.
The gravity and danger of the situation lie in the fact that Freedom Edge is a product of the organization, systematization and actualization of the U.S.-Japan-ROK tripartite military bloc.
The U.S. is now claiming that the U.S.-Japan-ROK relations are just cooperative ones for strengthening regional stability and security and do not mean NATO of Asian version, but it is nothing but rhetoric to evade international criticism of the formation of an aggressive bloc.
The document, cooked up at the U.S.-Japan-ROK tripartite summit in August last year, specifies the immediate tripartite cooperation to cope with any threat faced by one of the three countries.
This is, in essence, reminiscent of NATO's principle of collective defense that it mobilizes its defense capabilities if a member country is attacked, regarding it as an attack on all.
Since the Camp David confab, the U.S., Japan and the ROK have operated a real-time missile warning data sharing system under the pretext of coping with "missile threat" from someone to realize the integration in the field of military intelligence. They are also stepping up the integration of the military forces of the three countries by frequently staging joint military drills involving U.S. strategic assets.
As NATO stages annual joint military drills in all spheres including land, sea, air and cyberspace, the U.S., Japan and the ROK decided to regularly stage tripartite multi-domain joint military drills. This means that the U.S.-Japan-ROK relations have taken on the full-fledged appearance of Asian-version NATO.
In the final analysis, Freedom Edge served as an occasion for proving that the U.S.-Japan-ROK tripartite military bloc, the U.S. had been seeking to establish for decades, has become a present perfect form, not a continuous or future one.
True intention in revitalization of exclusive military bloc
An official concerned of the U.S. Department of State recently asserted that Japan and the ROK are very good partners in coping with the threat from Russia.
Lurking behind this is the U.S. strategic scenario to use the U.S.-Japan-ROK tripartite military bloc as a three-horse carriage for carrying out its strategy for hegemony in not only Northeast Asia but also the rest of the world.
As already known, the ROK is a "military colony" which left OPECON (wartime operation control) in the hands of the U.S. and Japan is the largest overseas military base of the U.S, where more than 54 000 U.S. troops are deployed.
This hints that the U.S.-Japan-ROK tripartite military bloc is a war and aggression mechanism capable of standing in military confrontation against other countries at any time under the instruction and command of the U.S., unlike AUKUS, the security technology alliance of the U.S., Britain and Australia or the tripartite security cooperation between the U.S., Japan and the Philippines.
It is by no means fortuitous that the U.S. persistently tried to make the relations between NATO, the war machinery in Europe, and Japan and the ROK closely linked with each other.
The U.S., which had already pushed forward with the entry of Japan and the ROK into NATO 18 years ago, has got more frantic in realizing the organic bond between NATO and Japan and the ROK since it turned its strategic focus to the Asia-Pacific region.
Japan and the ROK, which established partnerships with NATO and built channels of regular dialogue at the instigation of the U.S., are now taking part in the annual NATO summit and even in the NATO-led military exercises, further expanding their cooperation with NATO.
After the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis, Japan has been hell-bent on the moves to put pressure on Russia and the ROK has openly sought to provide the Nazi regime of Zelenskiy with lethal equipment. Such facts show that the close ties between NATO and the U.S.-Japan-ROK tripartite military bloc have reached a dangerous level.
The reality goes to prove that the "inseparable relations" between the security of Europe and the one of the Asia-Pacific region, touted by the U.S. and its vassal forces, are nothing but an excuse for realizing the political collusion and military integration between the NATO member states and pro-U.S. states in the Asia-Pacific region and encircling independent sovereign states.
To foil the alliance strategy of the U.S. is urgently needed to ensure international peace and stability
The Biden administration, in its "Indo-Pacific Strategy Report" and the "National Security Strategy Report", called on its allies in Asia and Europe to unite with each other to counter their strategic rivals.
Recently, it has asserted that its alliance strategy is making the switch from a "hub-and-spoke one" of forming various bilateral alliances to a "lattice-like one" of forming several multi-lateral alliances cooperating with each other. It also claimed that the era of "alliance protection" is over and the era of "alliance action" has arrived.
This proves that the primary goal of the U.S. strategy for world domination is to form a global siege network to contain independent sovereign states which are opposed to its high-handed and arbitrary practices.
Such confrontational attempt of the U.S. is the root cause of fomenting political instability and military confrontation and triggering off bloody wars and touch-and-go security crises in different parts of the world.
The prevailing situation requires the independent sovereign states to steadily bolster up their self-defensive power to defend the security of the state and, at the same time, further strengthen mutual cooperation and concerted action so as to establish a structure of forces capable of effectively deterring the hostile forces' collective military intervention.
The U.S. and its vassal forces' expansion of the aggressive bloc and escalating military confrontation that wreck peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and the region will be surely deterred by the powerful and coordinated counteraction of independent sovereign states.
The DPRK will never overlook the moves of the U.S. and its followers to strengthen the military bloc, which openly destroys the security environment on the Korean peninsula and gravely threatens global peace and stability, but firmly defend the sovereignty, security and interests of the state and peace in the region through offensive and overwhelming countermeasures. -0- www.kcna.kp (Juche113.6.30.)
Tucker Carlson was in civilian gear at the Palestine rally today in Naarm / Melbourne today, taking photos and shaking hands with people who i dont think knew who he was
he scurried off once people actually recognised him though
Prediction: Biden is going to refuse to step down, he’ll be desperate to make an impact in the second debate, they’ll overdose him on amphetamines and we’ll see even crazier shit than the first one
BBC reports showed the gate to the presidential palace being rammed with an armored vehicle, with soldiers storming the interior of the building. El Deber newspaper reported that Zúñiga told reporters that "We are going to recover this homeland" and "There will be a new cabinet, surely things will change, but our country cannot continue like this any longer." Morales claimed that a group of the Méndez Arcos Challapata Special Regiment took over Plaza Murillo with the assistance of snipers.
Televised video showed Arce confronting Zúñiga in the presidential palace hallway, telling him: "I am your captain, and I order you to withdraw your soldiers, and I will not allow this insubordination."
A group of protesters surrounded several streets leading to Plaza Murillo, chanting in favor of the Arce government. The military deployed riot control gas. The Bolivian Workers' Center, Bolivia's chief trade union federation condemned the coup attempt and announced an immediate and indefinite strike.
During the coup attempt, Arce announced new heads of the Bolivian Army, Navy, and Air Force while stating that the troops that rose up against him were "staining the uniform". He appointed José Wilson Sánchez as the new Army chief, who ordered all troops taking part in the coup to return to their barracks. Troops and armored vehicles left the presidential palace soon after.
A little over 25 years ago (May 1989) Seyyed Ali Khamenei traveled to Korea and met with Comrade Kim Il Sung. This meeting laid the foundations for a broad spectrum of bi-lateral relations between the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I just checked the mod logs and, would you look at that, @Zúñiga is literally a mod on Chapo.Chat. Right when it starts up, the site goes down. We need to purge our mods
Diehard Democrat supporters should accuse Biden's critics of being "gerontophobic" because mental and physical deterioration are a natural process that the president has no control over.
Recently Denmark's succdem-led right-wing regime advised the population to prep for major emergencies by stocking cash, food, water and medicine for at least three days. This led to a boom in sales for canned food and survival gear but the broad recommendations seems not to have been accompanied by more detailed planning.
Patient advocacy groups were not given notice of the release of the recommendations and was unprepared for the flood of questions they are now getting from sick and disabled people who worry about how to prepare for emergencies. The advocacy groups are worried that the recommendations will lead to panic buying of medicine resulting in shortages. They also criticise authorities for not having presented more specific plans and recommendations for people with special medical needs as well as for not including them in the preparation of the recommendations.
The main advocacy group for senior citizens' issues is pointing out that no national plan exists for preparing assisted living facilities and similar institutions for emergencies, resulting in each municipality having its own policy for stocking up on essentials.
The recommendations were given by the Liberal Party-controlled ministry of defense but they refuse to comment on the criticism and refer questions to the emergency services agency.
All in all the recommendations looks less like the result of well thought-out planning and more like a piece of security theatre primarily intended to pump up "crisis awareness" among the population and make them rally around the increasingly unpopular ruling coalition.
I keep seeing articles saying that Russia has told the US it will retaliate against the US. So like, are we all going to get irradiated or worse because Biden's worm-filled brain is stuck inside the end-of-history? Is Russia in a position to end the war in Ukraine? I remember reading a lot in the news mega about the lines finally moving appreciably... but did that stop happening or is Russia advancing still? I feel like that might be the only way to actually stop the escalation. Other nations are starting to call the US's bluff, but it seems like the US regime just pretends they weren't bluffing and it keeps doing the dumbest shit imaginable and choosing mass death over a wounded ego. I just don't want everyone to die because an Alzheimers patient wound up in the US presidency in a sick combination of elder abuse, class warfare, and neoliberal hubris.
I saw this claim that that the Bolivia coup was a self-coup by Arce to drum up support and apparently Evo Morales is saying this as well, is there anything behind this?
Military psychology is so weird. It’s like the oath to serve is a physical chain that prevents most soldiers from disobeying their superiors no matter how stupid. Like 5 guys can rotate as officer/general, and they all claim to be the true protector of the institutions, and their ranks and medals mesmerize the troops into obeying
The body of the unnamed embassy attaché was found Tuesday at Kyiv's Hilton Hotel, online newspaper Strana UA reported Wednesday, citing law enforcement sources
Ukrainian news outlet New Voice (NV), citing unnamed sources, also reported that the attaché's body was found at the city's Hilton Hotel on Tuesday.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller later confirmed the death, saying during a Wednesday press conference that the individual was a U.S. government employee "who was under chief of mission authority" at the embassy in Kyiv.
"I hate to even bring this up—but I know sometimes conspiracies theories spin out of control—that it is our understanding that he died of natural causes, and there's no sign of foul play," Miller said.
"Yesterday at about 11:00 a.m. the body of an attaché of the U.S. Embassy was found in a hotel room. No signs of violence were found on the body. The man arrived in Ukraine on June 15," one source said, Strana UA reported.
"According to medical data provided by the U.S. Embassy, the man suffered from high cholesterol," a source added, according to the report.
NV said that there were no signs of bodily injury and that the hotel room's door was closed from the inside.
"No autopsy was performed—the body was taken by the U.S. Embassy. It is known that the man had high cholesterol levels," NV reported.
The Danish navy is withdrawing the frigate Ivar Huitfeldt as well as her sister ship Niels Juel from NATO service. The decision is caused by several weapons system failing in active combat on Ivar Huitfeldt during a recent deployment against Yemen in the spring. The failed mission caused the Liberal Party-controlled ministry of defense to sack the chief of defence in a messy and public process.
The two ships were scheduled to be alternating NATO flagships in the latter half of 2024 but they will now have to stay in Danish waters until their armaments have been thoroughly tested and repaired. In the press release announcing the withdrawal, the acting chief of defence claims that part of the reason they will not send ships with potentially faulty weapons systems on NATO missions is that the threat level now is elevated compared to a few months ago when the deployment to Yemen happened.
Lucho is on the streets with the people. The gusano traitor General Zuniga was arrested by the Bolivian Police. Vice Ministry of Interior Regime and Police announces the arrest of General Juan José Zúñiga, who led today's attempted military coup in La Paz.
If genocide Joe resigns, will the democrat faction of the American state party be able to agree on an alternative ticket? Do they have anyone who is liked by donors and who is at least not reprehensible to voters?
Will American voters be dumb enough to think that a fresh face also means a fresh start instead of just more of the same late capitalist rot?
Shit, with all the coup news in Bolivia, I’ve completely forgotten about the Marxist president of Peru, Castillo. Is he still imprisoned by the fascists? How are the protests there?
Presidents Vladimir Putin and To Lam signed deals on education, science, technology, nuclear energy, and disease prevention.
On Thursday, Vietnam and Russia signed eleven cooperation agreements and issued a joint declaration committing to deepen their historical relationship.
At the Presidential Palace in Hanoi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Vietnamese President To Lam signed agreements on issues related to education, science, technology, nuclear energy, and disease prevention. They also signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation between the state-owned company Petrovietnam and Novatek, Russia’s largest independent natural gas producer.
According to an article published by Putin in the Vietnamese Communist Party newspaper regarding his visit, Novatek plans gas projects in the Asian country, while the state nuclear corporation Rosatom intends to create a center for nuclear energy and technologies.
The presidents signed another agreement between the asset manager Vietnam Partners Investment Management (BVIM) and the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a sovereign investment fund established by Moscow in 2011.
The text reads, “Putin arrives in Vietnam on a state visit. He is received with a red carpet and guard of honor. A joint declaration and the signing of several bilateral documents by both leaders are expected.”
President To Lam also announced the signing of a joint declaration to “deepen” the existing strategic cooperation relationship between the two countries, without providing further details at the moment.
“I firmly believe that with the success of President Putin’s visit to Vietnam and the determination of our leaders, relations between the two countries will continue to strengthen in the future,” he said.
After visiting North Korea, Putin arrived in Vietnam accompanied by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilyov, Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin, and the director of the federal agency for military-technical cooperation, Alexander Mikheev.
On Thursday, the Russian leader met with the secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong, the most powerful man in the country. Putin is also scheduled to attend a banquet in his honor before departing the Asian country at 8:30 PM local time.
On the evening of 26 June, Bolivian police arrested General Zúñiga. Vice Admiral Juan Arnez Salvador, former Commander General of the Armed Forces, was also detained. Zúñiga and Arnez face charges including armed uprising, assault against the president, destruction of public property, and other crimes. On 27 June, authorities presented 17 individuals accused of involvement in the coup attempt. One of the suspects, Aníbal Aguilar Gómez, denied the charges and went on a hunger strike.
Why did the coup fail?
From what I saw and was said. General Zuniga had planned on this coup for an entire month. But he decided to act before his allies could organize better. One day after he was purged from the Army, he decided to go with his unit to do the coup while he waited for his allies inside the army and airforce.
The problem is that he didn't expect for Luis Arce to resist and refuse to exit the palace. Not only that, Luis Arce began confronting him and calling on his supporters to help the goverment. Also, the entire left, even Evo Morales, who has become a rival of Luis Arce, decided to put their differences aside to stop the coup. The Police and Airfoce also remained loyal, which was going to make the success of the coup difficult.
And what really killed the coup, the reinforcements of General Zuniga were unprepared. They were reported en route to La Paz to help the Coup Leaders. But in the middle of the road they were stopped by the Police and Demonstrators. They saw that the coup was going bad and gave up, returning to the Military Bases.
Really suspecious reactions from the US and Argentina:
While every single country in Latin America, EU and Iran and China quickly condemn the coup. Argentina remained silent until the coup was over. The US in the other hand said they were "Observing the situation". This coup is happening after Bolivia nationalized most of their lithium production, and after they joined Mercosur and accepted the invitation to BRICS+.
A quick remind how Argentina and Brazil were really important in the success of the 2019 coup. Argentina literally sent out guns and ammo to the Bolivian Police to guarantee the coup was successful.
Does this mean MAS, which was split between the Evoistas (Demsoc) and Arcistas (Socdem) are united now?
No, but it shows they are willing to work with each other if theres need for that. And that means theres hope.
‘Yesterday we experienced an episode of a chapter that has not yet concluded,’ the former Interior Minister pointed out.
In an interview with teleSUR journalist Marcela Heredia on Thursday, Bolivian economist Hugo Moldiz analyzed the failed coup d’état in his country. Below are the main aspects addressed by the former Bolivian Interior Minister.
In what sense could it be said that the defense of democracy in Bolivia was successful?
HUGO MOLDIZ: Various factors converged to prevent the Bolivian democracy and legally constituted government from suffering a coup by some military personnel. Firstly, President Luis Arce’s attitude was crucial. He did not leave; instead, he stayed to confront the coup-plotting general and ordered him to stand down. Although the general refused his request, Arce did not back down and remained firm in facing the situation.
Secondly, the rapid response of thousands of people who mobilized towards the government headquarters, the Big House. In Murillo Square, there were some confrontations between civilians and military, fortunately without any casualties on either side. However, there were no significant clashes.
Thirdly, the quick reaction of the international community, which included progressive governments, the Organization of American States (OAS), and even some right-wing presidents.
Fourthly, General Zuñiga’s inability to get other units and regiments to join the attempt. At 12:30, he ordered the troops to barracks, and they complied without knowing the reason. However, when Gen. Zuñiga took Murillo Square, the 8th Division stationed in Santa Cruz and the 7th Division stationed in Cochabamba decided not to join the coup adventure.
The same happened with the soldiers in Challapata, where there are heavy assault vehicles. Practically, Zuñiga was left alone. Additionally, even some opposition sectors rejected the coup, although this later changed.
What was the treatment of the mass media regarding the coup attempt? Did this treatment contribute to the Bolivian people coming out to defend their democracy?
HUGO MOLDIZ: Many media outlets maintained an apparent neutrality. Nevertheless, this operated as a mechanism in favor of President Luis Arce. However, there is still much to analyze and find out if this apparent neutrality was real or not. Initially, the government was somewhat imprecise in indicating that there was an “unusual movement of troops.” A few minutes later, the government quickly corrected itself and denounced the existence of a coup attempt.
There are a set of facts that debunk the hypothesis of a self-coup. And this deserves to be remembered especially in Venezuela because when the coup against President Hugo Chavez failed, when the attempt to overthrow the Bolivarian revolution failed, opposition sectors tried to install narratives claiming it was a self-coup.
Despite the spatial and temporal distances, we are in a similar scenario. The project to shorten President Arce’s mandate has not concluded. The ways to achieve it will be different. Yesterday we saw one of them, but that does not mean that other ways to achieve an early general election will not appear.
People in Murillo Square were shouting, “Lucho is not alone, damn it!” This expression is very important because, ultimately, the Bolivian people took charge of safeguarding the institutionality.
HUGO MOLDIZ: Yes, the people’s quick reaction was fundamental. I would say that even citizens who did not vote for Arce, although they were not in Murillo Square, showed signs of being against a coup due to its potential consequences. In 2019, the people already suffered the coup against President Evo Morales, which the elites disguised using the mechanism of resignation.
Yesterday, there was also a coup attempt against Luis Arce, which some supporters of the former president are unfortunately questioning. They are not making an objective reading because much remains to be investigated. I do not believe that General Zuñiga attempted a coup just because he was told he would be relieved of his post 24 hours before.
No, a coup is not organized overnight. The fortunately aborted coup attempt began to take shape about 48 hours earlier when Zuñiga threatened Bolivian democracy, saying he would arrest former President Morales, which the armed forces cannot do unless under exceptional regimes.
Vice President David Choquehuanca said, “Democracy has prevailed in Bolivia, but we must remain vigilant for the good of our country and future generations. We request that ordinary and military justice judge General Zuñiga and all responsible with the full rigor of the law to prevent any future coup attempts. We thank the entire population, social organizations, mayors, and the international community for defending the democracy that cost us so much to recover.” What can you tell us about his statements?
HUGO MOLDIZ: We must see the whole board and not just what happened yesterday. President Arce is facing a blockade from the legislative function and an incipient articulation of social forces that are closing in on him so that he has no other alternative but to call early elections.
Unfortunately, among those forces are some sectors related to farmers, heavy transporters, and businessmen. I fully agree with what the Vice President said. Yesterday we experienced an episode of a chapter that has not yet concluded.
Disrupting the danger that still threatens Bolivian democracy depends on how the Arce government reacts, what adjustments it quickly makes in its management, and how it consolidates broad political relations within the popular field.
Taken with a grain of salt. But in China, there's old laws on the books for breaking up the marriage of soldiers by having an affair. I believe it goes both ways but controversially it has been used relatively recently to send a guy to prison for 10mths. (https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1718)
But apparently (I heard this on twitter but I'm trying to find a better source), there's a case bouncing around their various courts where a wife of a PLA soldier had an affair with a woman. And the judges are trying to work out if they recognise lesbian relationships on the same level as heterosexual, which would be a landmark precedent (albeit one that might send the woman to prison) or if they accept that lesbians are exempt from the laws against cucking soldiers.
And like if true it's kind of a funny set of possible outcomes. (Though they might just strike the law down too)
Denmark news
The people of the hermit kingdom in the north share a strange proclivity with it's government: An intense drive to destroy all of the nations natural resources.
The danish regime has just voted to "marketize" the water sector. This means that the water sector will now be maintained by the Ministry of Work with the sole rules for usage being "economic factors". This means the environment is right out the window. Who cares about fucking up the ground water if it makes money? What this really means is that an issue that has been prevalent is only going to be ramped up: The poisoning of the danish ground water.
A faction within the Bolivian military attempted a coup. Police sided with the government & protesters immediately flooded the area. Coup leaders retreated in under 3 hours! Entire ordeal has come almost out of nowhere, no right-wing street protests preceded this, unlike 2019.
The Philippine military carried out a mission to reinforce the grounded warship at Ren’ai Jiao to extend its service life.
On Friday, Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian urged the Philippines to immediately stop infringement and provocations on the Ren’ai Jiao issue, and return to the right track of properly managing differences through dialogue and consultation as soon as possible.
He made the remarks at a regular news briefing when asked to comment on the recent moves by the Philippine military at Ren’ai Jiao, China’s Nansha Qundao. The Financial Times said the Philippine military carried out the mission to reinforce the grounded warship at Ren’ai Jiao to extend its service life.
“Reports once again confirm that the Philippine side’s claim of sending only living necessities for its grounded warship on Ren’ai Jiao is a complete lie,” Lin stressed.
In fact, as pointed out by the Chinese side on multiple occasions, the Philippine side has been trying to send construction materials and even weapons and ammunition to its illegally grounded warship in an attempt to carry out large-scale repair and reinforcement in order to achieve long-term occupation of Ren’ai Jiao, he added.
Such actions by the Philippine side seriously infringe upon China’s sovereignty, which China will never accept. China will respond resolutely in accordance with the law and regulations, Lin said, noting that the cause of the current situation on Ren’ai Jiao is very clear.
The root cause is that the Philippine side violated its promise, refused to tow away the warship that had been illegally grounded on Ren’ai Jiao for 25 years, and insisted on sending construction materials in an attempt to reinforce it, the Chinese diplomat pointed out.
This warship is irrefutable evidence of the Philippines’ long-standing infringement and provocation against China in the South China Sea, its treachery and violation of the spirit of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, and its destruction of the ecological environment in the South China Sea, Lin noted.
“We urge the Philippine side to immediately stop its infringement and provocative actions and return to the right track of properly managing differences through dialogue and consultation. China’s determination to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests remains unwavering,” Lin said.
On June 17 China coast guard rammed a Philippine coast guard ship. They boarded the boat, proceeded to beat them to a pulp, and now one of the Philippine sailors is missing a finger.
Denmark's succdem-led right-wing regime plans to re-introduce a ban on flying foreign flags. The previous ban was based on a pre-constitutional decree that was struck down by the supreme court last year for not living up to modern standards of legislation.
Peter Hummelgaard, head of the hermit kingdom's succdem-controlled ministry of justice gives the following statement as reason for the planned restriction on free speech:
The Dannebrog [the flag of Denmark] is the most important national symbol we have in Denmark. The government believes that the Dannebrog as a flag should enjoy a very special status in Denmark.
Now, someone might think the statement above is total nonsense that fails to address the proposed ban and tries to distract the listener with literal flag-shagging. But it's not. Why? Because he is a very important and serious man which means that whatever he says by definition is very important and serious.
France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party holds a clear lead in the first round of the country’s snap parliamentary elections, according to exit polls.
Pollsters IFOP, Ipsos, OpinionWay and Elabe projected Marine Le Pen’s RN winning around 34 percent of votes, while the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition was seen coming in second with around 29 percent, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble Alliance in third spot with around 20.3 percent.
Pollster Elabe said in an estimate for BFM TV that the RN and its allies could win 260-310 parliament seats in the second voting round on July 7, while Ipsos projected a range of 230-280 seats for RN and its allies in a poll for France Television.
A total 289 seats are needed for an absolute majority in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament.
Le Pen and Bardella welcomes results
Le Pen welcomed the results and told a celebratory crowd that the French people have placed the RN in front, and that they have practically wiped out Macron’s camp.
RN President Jordan Bardella pointed out that next Sunday’s second round will be “the most important in the history of the French Fifth Republic”.
He also reiterated that Macron’s party has been wiped out and accused the far left of creating an “existential crisis” representing “a real danger to France and all the French people”.
Macron calls for a ‘broad democratic alliance’
President Macron has called for a “broad” democratic alliance against the far right after the exit poll projections for the second round.
“Faced with National Rally, the time has come for a broad, clearly democratic and republican alliance for the second round,” he said in a statement.
After the results, Jean-Luc Melenchon, who leads the left-wing New Popular Front, has said he will withdraw candidates who have placed in third in the first round of parliamentary elections, in order to defeat the highest number of far-right RN candidates in the second round.
We're watching the Trump v Biden debate live on hextube. It starts in 20 minutes. 9pm EST the debate is over. at peak we had 200 hexbears in chat. thank you everyone who came
Weeks ago, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned that Haiti is getting closer to famine every day. On Thursday, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reiterated its warning that Haiti remains threatened by famine today.
According to the FAO, the Caribbean country is among the nine nations in the world that could suffer from this scourge, and is one of the five nations where more than 10 percent of the population is in a state of food emergency.
The international agency announced a new phase of acute food insecurity deterioration between June and October 2024.
Weeks ago, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned that Haiti is getting closer to famine every day.
“Haitians are on the brink of collapse: one in two people are going hungry today. Rising hunger is exacerbating the country’s security crisis. We need urgent action now: waiting to respond to this situation in its full magnitude is not an option,” stressed WFP’s director here, Jean-Martin Bauer.
He noted that as violence, inflation and poor harvests worsen, levels of food insecurity worsen.
Between August 2023 and February 2024, the cost of the food basket increased by 22 per cent, making food unaffordable for millions of Haitians, he was quoted as saying by Le Nouvelliste.
They are now forced to resort to desperate coping strategies, such as buying on credit and going into debt, selling animals, seeds and other assets to survive.
The newspaper noted that 4.97 million people face higher levels of acute food insecurity, and 1.64 million citizens have already reached emergency status.
Violence hinders the delivery of food and other humanitarian assistance.
Can someone please translate this into English for me:
One thing he mentions, that is completely true and visible elsewhere, is how russia has completely, COMPLETELY mastered the craft of online propaganda.
They successfully have troll farms in St Petersburg and Moscow diligently timing mass replies and comments to steer algorithms to push their narrative.
And the narrative generally goes into baiting the western mass media into over-trusting the notion of escalation.
i've been looking with no luck is there any footage from the bolivian coup attempt of the protestors and cops together driving away the retreating soldiers?
This is a good overview of Taiwan's recent history as RoC vs PRC, as well as the American influence there. Start brushing up on history now to prep for war with China
This essay aims to unpack this pivot and how it relates to US ‘grand strategy’ ambitions, historically and in the present. To summarise the key points and arguments:
Taiwan island in and of itself has no sovereignty status as a nation state. The island is part of a single Chinese sovereign territory. This is the position embedded in the Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC), the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), resolutions of the United Nations, and positions of the United States Government as articulated in various communiques and official documents. It’s also a position accepted by the overwhelming majority of countries around the world.
This status matters, because attempts to alter this status is one of the root causes of current frictions. Taiwan island remains subject to administrative dispute between two competing Chinese administrations. This stems from a not fully resolved civil war, dating back to the 1930s and 1940s. The status of the island can only be understood in the context of this unfinished civil war.
The US has long harboured ambitions to occupy and control the island for its own strategic purposes. This has seen the island positioned as a potential launchpad to prosecute either a geopolitical or at times a “spiritual war” against mainland (Communist) China; and at other times, the island has been a bulwark protecting America’s Lake - namely the greater Pacific Ocean.
Today, the US is fanning regional instability in Asia through the application of strategies employed in recent times in Europe. Taiwan island is at the epicentre of this destabilisation. The ‘rinse and repeat’ approach increases the risk that the US is seeking to lead Asia down the same Primrose Path that has seen the progressive destruction of Ukraine.
Resolving the Chinese civil war is a necessary condition for regional stability. It’s a civil war demanding resolution from the warring parties. The question is, will it be resolved peacefully or not; and what are the conditions of such a resolution?
Zúñiga served as colonel of the REIM-23 Max Toledo regiment between 2012 and 2013. He was charged for the embezzlement of Bs2.7 million intended for Renta Dignidad and Juancito Pinto during his tenure, and was incarcerated for seven days.
Zúñiga was relieved of his post of commanding general on 25 June 2024, following a series of threats against Evo Morales. In these, he described the former president as a "traitor" and accused him of plotting a revolution against the current government, while stating that the Constitution of Bolivia would prevent Morales from returning to power.
Prior to this, Zúñiga was accused by Morales of being the commander of the military organization Pachajcho, allegedly plotting to eliminate the former president as part of a "black plan" against coca production leaders and political opponents.
Organization of American States Secretary General Luis Almagro showed solidarity with Arce’s government while condemning the Bolivian Army's actions. Bolivian Senator Virginia Velasco Condori, who served as minister of justice under Morales, spoke to reporters outside the Bolivian Legislative Assembly claiming that Morales was behind the coup attempt.[10]
Heads of states of Ibero-America such as Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela condemned the coup attempt, as did the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union Josep Borrell and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
President of Argentina Javier Milei was said to be "waiting for the situation to be clarified" before giving an official statement. The United States called for calm and restraint, with a White House spokesperson saying that the Biden administration was monitoring developments.
:sus:
Domestic:
Left: President Arce called for "democracy to be respected" in a public statement. Morales made a public statement denouncing military movement in the Murillo square outside the capital palace. He accused military general Juan José Zúñiga, of attempting a coup through intimidating citizens and violating democracy, and recommended that roadways be blocked while announcing a general strike.
The country's largest labor union condemned the coup and declared an indefinite strike in La Paz to defend the government.
Former President Evo Morales also supported the Goverment of Arce.
Right: Imprisoned former president Jeanine Anez also condemned the coup.
Imprisoned far-right politician, Luis Fernando Camacho, condemned the coup.
Former President, Carlos Mesa and his party condemned the coup. During his speech, General Zuniga denounced Evo Morales, Luis Arce and Carlos Mesa.
also i dunno where to post it, cause reporting is so scattered:
paris olympics decided to ditch ac and use like passive cooling via good design (unmitigated good idea). the decided to bring their own portable ac for perfomance of athletes.
Just incredible first world privilege, if paris will get hit by a heatwave
Bolivian President rejects narrative of self-coup promoted by fascist right-wingers
Article (Translated from Spanish)
He asked former president Evo Morales not to join those who deny the coup d'état, a matrix that serves disunity and imperialist interference.
The President of Bolivia, Luis Arce, stressed this Sunday that what happened in that country last June 26 was a failed coup d'état and asked former President Evo Morales not to replicate the narrative of fascism, which not only denies it but insists that it was a self-coup planned by the Government.
He asserted that "those responsible who sought to seize power by force are being prosecuted and will be tried, as was the case of the coup plotters of 2019", he said in relation to the coup of November of that year, when military and police commanders forced Morales to resign under a false matrix of electoral fraud mounted by the local oligarchy in complicity with the U.S. and the Organization of American States (OAS), some of those responsible were arrested and subjected to criminal proceedings.
This morning, during statements made to a local radio station, Evo Morales, who had vehemently condemned the failed coup d'état, admitted that he is confused about the coup d'état. In spite of this, he blamed Arce of having committed a self-coup.
He expressed that "initially until Wednesday (26th) night, even on Thursday (27th) morning, I thought it was a coup (of State), but now I am confused, it looks like a self-coup".
In that space he commented that he suspects that it was an action planned by the head of state. Through his networks, he pointed out that "Arce deceived and lied to the Bolivian people and the world".
After his criteria, the Minister of the Presidency, María Nela Prada, offered statements to the media and said that Evo Morales ended up joining the story of the coup general Juan José Zúñiga and the fascist right wing of denying the gorilazo.
"Do not be mistaken with history and the people by joining today the discourse and statements of a coup plotter and the fascist right that once again, as at the time he pointed out that there was fraud (and not coup in 2019), pretends to distort history. Do not join in being a puppet, marionette and an instrument of imperialism that intends to plunder in our country." Prada added that the political opposition is also part of that narrative.
He stressed that unlike the 2019 coup, on June 26 Bolivia faced a displacement of armed military that tried to seize power in a planned manner, even with the participation of elite groups.
Although investigations into the failed coup d'état began a few days ago, 21 military officers and civilians implicated have been arrested and have revealed that their organization began last May. One of the high ranking officers involved, former Air Force commander General Marcelo Zegarra, declared in a prosecutor's statement that Zúñiga assured that he had the support of the "American Embassy, the Libyan Embassy and the European Community".
The differences of opinion between Arce and Morales go back months. In an interview given after the coup d'état was neutralized thanks to the firmness of the people and his government, Arce said: "We believe that the political instrument, the MAS (Movement Towards Socialism), belongs to the social organizations; they are the owners, the ones who created the instrument. Therefore, they are the ones who have to decide who are their candidates for deputies, senators, mayors, president, vice-president. On the other hand, comrade Evo wants to be the owner of the political instrument. That is where we are divided".
He added: "They are afraid that we will reposition ourselves and that is why we have an economic boycott in the Legislative Assembly, which everybody knows (...) Economic laws, of credits that have to be approved by the Assembly. Absolutely nothing advances, there is a clear boycott by the opposition and when I speak of opposition I also refer to the pro-evolution wing".
Rare Evo L? Even some liberal newspaper say the Self-Coup narrative makes no sense because it doesn't benefit Arce. It makes him look even weaker and it's bad for Bolivia's image. Besides, Lula da Silva is going to visit Bolivia really soon to discuss this coup and Bolivia's membership inside Mercosur.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva meeting with Noam Chomsky and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) (Liberal).
Meeting with Chomsky
Lula tells Chomsky he wants to bring together world democratic leaders. The meeting, which lasted around 40 minutes, was marked by demonstrations of respect and admiration.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) met linguist Noam Chomsky on Monday (24) in São Paulo, in a meeting that lasted around 40 minutes. During the visit, the two held hands and treated each other with admiration. Lula even joked about rubbing 95-year-old Chomsky's forehead and head. "You're older than me, but you have a lot more hair," said the president, who is 78.
"I came here to see my friend and to repay the visit you and Valeria paid me when I was in prison," said the president. "I'm glad you're doing so well, because you have a lot to give to improve humanity. Not a week goes by that Celso Amorim and I don't talk about you."
Chomsky suffered a stroke in June 2023, in the United States, and was brought to São Paulo, where he was admitted to the Beneficência Portuguesa Hospital. He was discharged last Tuesday (18).
During the meeting, Lula told Chomsky that he is organizing an international meeting of democratic leaders to discuss ways of confronting the advance of the global far right.
Lula also said he was confident that, when he leaves office, the country will be closer to the ideal of justice for which Chomsky works. "I always say to [Fernando] Haddad [Finance Minister], who is also a friend of yours, that we need to be patient, but without moving away from our purpose.
Meeting with FHC
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers' Party) visited former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Social Democrat Party of Brazil - PSDB) this Monday (24) at the latter's residence in São Paulo. The meeting lasted approximately half an hour.
In the early afternoon, Lula arrived at FHC's building by car and left without talking to the press. Before the President's visit, the PSDBist (Neoliberal/Liberal) also received former Finance Minister Pedro Malan and economists Gustavo Franco and Pérsio Arida - all involved in the creation of the Real Plan (Brazil's current currency), which turns 30 in 2024.
FHC, who was Lula's opponent in the 1994 and 1998 elections, declared his support for the PT candidate in the 2022 presidential election. At the time, FHC said he would vote for Lula because of "a history of fighting for democracy and social inclusion".
In São Paulo, the Chief Executive also met the American philosopher Noam Chomsky, 95, and the Brazilian writer Raduan Nassar, 88. Last Tuesday (18), Chomsky was discharged after a period of hospitalization at the Beneficência Portuguesa hospital.
As the meetings are of a personal nature, they are not on the president's official agenda. Lula is due to return to Brasília on Monday afternoon.
It seems Lula da Silva also visited former Brazilian President Jose Sarney recently.
In an act of magnanimous humanitarian generosity Denmark's succdem-led right-wing regime has decided to accept a number of quota refugees in 2024, primarily women and children.
How many refugees will flood the tiny kingdom and will Danish society be able to bear such an inflow of non-aryansnon-whitesnon-westerners without succumbing to the burden? Kaare Dybvad Bek, head of Denmark's succdem-controlled ministry of integration and immigration gives the following answer:
We have always said that the number is very important. I believe that by keeping the number at 200 quota refugees, we ensure that integration can still keep up.
Since 2020, Denmark has accepted 200 quote refugees. Denmark has a population of six million.
Nukes are still lurking quietly in the background, of course, but the Resistance is perfectly aware of that and still seems confident to go ahead with operations, so I can't really do anything but shrug and say that I trust them to do what's right.
In my more conspiracy-minded moments I wonder if there's a secret agreement among the counter-zionist groups and countries that the only sustained attacks against Israel come from geographic areas that it would be radioactive-fallout-suicide for Israel to nuke.
Except for the areas of bridges and city entrances, the Ministry of Transport says that it has implemented a plan to rationalize electricity by reducing road lighting, directing drivers to rely on car lighting and using directional signs, illuminated ground reflectors, and surface planning while driving.
Doug Burgum appears to be leading the prediction markets for Trump's VP for ages now. what the fuck has he been doing to hold that position if we haven't heard of this guy since the debates?
According to local media reports, a single vote will be taken on the entire text of the Basic Law with the changes that were incorporated in the Senate, which include the privatization of a group of state enterprises.
With the presence of 131 legislators, the Chamber of Deputies of Argentina began at noon this Thursday a special session to validate the Bases Bill and the Fiscal Package, after the Senate generally approved that law last week.
According to local media reports, a single vote will be taken on the entire text of the Basic Law with the changes that were incorporated in the Senate, which include the privatization of a group of state enterprises.
Although for the moment Aerolíneas Argentinas, Correo Argentino and Radio-Televisión Argentina Sociedad del Estado were excluded, the ruling party has already made clear that it will later present specific laws to privatize them.
Ley Bases is considered a tool of the neoliberal president Javier Milei to dismantle the state, deregulate the economy and grant more privileges to the great fortunes.
As regards the tax package, its opinion will comprise four votes. It is estimated that the highest will be those corresponding to the replenishment of the income tax and personal property. In the case of this tax, broad popular sectors question that the party of President Javier Milei (La Libertad Avanza) and other political forces want to consider the wage as profit and with it they will attack the private property of the worker, which contradicts his usual defense of private property.
According to the Union for the Fatherland (UxP) deputy, Vanesa Siley, in less than a year the government of Miley already wants to put his hand in the pocket of the workers and take salary to 35 percent of them. He also warned that they will do so in violation of several articles of the Constitution and with the approval of a single chamber (Deputies) in a country that is bicameral.
Because of the importance of the issue, left-wing organizations-including the Left Front, the Workers’ Pole, the Class-Struggle Current, and the Workers’ Union of the Popular Economy (UTEP)- announced that they will stage marches in the vicinity of Congress in rejection of the Bases Law.
They will also require parliamentarians to reject changes introduced by the Senate and not to validate the bill.
For its part, UxP said it will file appeals in court if the Personal Gains and Property tax is approved this Thursday. The debate of these norms in the Senate provoked mobilizations in the vicinity of Congress, violently repressed, with several injured and dozens of detainees.
I don't watch a lot of NASCAR but seeing AKUS is blowing money being the lead sponsor on a car is wild. I guess since Australia isn't actually getting the submarines for a long time (or is it not at all?) they're free to do this.
Video of Iranian women chasing "reformist" presidential candidate (see: neoliberal) Pezeshkian out of the shrine of Hazrat Abd al-Azim al-Hasani.
They are chanting "marg bar munafiq!" which means "death to hypocrites." The woman at the beginning says something like "death to the possibility of a third Rouhani administration!"
Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Lebanon.
If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:
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What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
A History of Modern Lebanon by Fawwaz Traboulsi (2007).
Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image, and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine by Dina Matar and Zahera Harb (2013).
Amal Saad is a prominent scholar of Hezbollah and frequently posts on social media about her analysis of ongoing events. She has two books: Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion published in 2001, and The Iran Connection: Understanding the Alliance with Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas published in 2012.
There's also plenty of books on Palestine (and thus by extension, the Resistance helping them) in the Palestine section.
On the head to head polling posted yesterday buried deeper in that same poll it showed that most respondents really did not know any of the dem replacements. A lot of Biden being ahead of everyone was plain name recognition. https://x.com/umichvoter/status/1807449998256419136
So I've been watching the Copa America as well as the Euros this year. The Bolivia coup attempt got me thinking, how do we think the Bolivian National team will react in their game today against Uruguay? I know they have quite a few domestic players.
(wouldve been better if he didnt try to win downtown manhattan last cycle for no tactically sound reason though)
EDIT:
Following redistricting, the 17th district included the residence of Sean Patrick Maloney, the Democratic incumbent in the neighboring 18th district and chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Mondaire Jones was no longer in the court drawn 17th district. According to The Guardian, "Maloney decided to run in New York's 17th congressional district rather than his longtime, more urban, 18th district, even though that meant booting out the newer Mondaire Jones, his fellow Democrat and the incumbent congressman in the 17th district". According to The Hill, Maloney's decision "infuriated Jones and his allies, particularly those in the Congressional Black Caucus, who accused Maloney of putting his own political survival over the interests of the party".
I saw a headline: "The government has made a broad agreement on a price ceiling for district heating". Great news, our house is heated with district heating and the bastards just jacked the price 20 percent up. Price controls are awesome! Maybe this will help us out?
The article behind the headline didn't tell much but it linked to the official press release. I read the press release. Here's what a "price ceiling" looks like under neoliberalism:
The "ceiling" is based on the price of heating pumps
Each year a list of utilities with prices above the "ceiling" will be published, "enabling the consumer to make a price check for their heating bill"
Utility companies with prices above the "ceiling" are required to make a plan for bringing prices down
If the average price over a three year period is above the ceiling, consumers are no longer bound to the utility company and are able to "choose another heating solution"
And on top of it they now introduce an "arm's length principle" between municipal administrations and the operation of utility companies and require utilities to be "corporatised" and have "independent" board members.
#19,000 km Away from Palestine at All Times Restraining Order on Zionists #847 3/6
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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 https://oec.world/en/games/tradle
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usually looking at the map I thought that was just Papua New Guinea extending out into the pacific but no there's a country I've managed to never hear about there
For those wondering what kadyrov has been up to, it’s more civil and religious than military work these days.
Building housing for Gazan refugees https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/4877