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Сообщение Совинформбюро!

Hi!

I'm here to publish the list of proposals, made both by the mod team in internal discussions and from proposals made by users last week, to be voted on by the news heads.

The process will be quite simple. Below this comment will be a series of comments from me.

They will follow the format of...

<Proposal Comment>

• YES VOTE

• NO VOTE

If you agree with the proposal, upvote the comment with YES VOTE. If you disagree with the proposal, upvote the comment with NO VOTE.

The voting margin to pass a proposal as approved shall be with a minimum floor of 36 upvotes, based on the rounded rough average of megathread upvotes of popular comments divided in half. Should a proposal be passed but prove to be controversial by also receiving a no vote of at least 26 votes, the proposal shall be tabled and reworked for presentation at a future megathread should the need arise.

Additionally, the floor will still be open to new proposals with a caveat that the minimum floor for acceptance for deliberation by the council of news mods shall be 31 upvotes. This is just in case someone is struck by the lightning of inspiration and wants to bring up an idea to shape the comm in a better direction.

The polls are now open.

Semper post, news hogs.

Edit: P.S, I know some of the proposals are kinda scuffed looking, if they pass I'll format them so they look like the others on the rule sidebar. chalk it up to my laziness lol

Edit 2: P.P.S Pig poop balls.

The voting period shall last until the megathread is locked.

I don't have anything interesting to post right now so here's a picture of a PLA soldier on the disputed border with India. Nobody in the disputed territory is allowed guns so the PLA have polearms instead.

mfw the first tenured professor fired for anti-Zionist speech is Jewish:
https://xcancel.com/natashalennard/status/1839285771892633911

The University of Chicago just received $100 million from an anonymous donor. I wonder where this anonymous donor stands on the issue of Palestinian liberation:
https://xcancel.com/emanabdelhadi/status/1839309088397639860

Terrorist getting arrested in Morocco:
https://xcancel.com/RyanRozbiani/status/1839102434498822423

Israeli soldier Moshe Avichzer was reportedly detained in July while vacationing in Marrakesh.

He is accused of committing war crimes in Gaza after completing a three-month tour of duty there.

Avichzer had shared photos from his vacation in Morocco shortly after posting images of himself amid destroyed Palestinian homes and rubble in Gaza.

Following protests by hundreds of Moroccans demanding his prosecution as a war criminal, a Moroccan court is now reportedly preparing to hear his case.

Yesterday I was reading some borderline crank post on substack, about a slideshow leaked from the british counter disinformation unit

I think i found it here but now i cant find it to finish it, does anyone know what I was reading lol, i cant find it in my history and I didnt save it :/

ps death to israel, obviously

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq threatens the UAE:
https://xcancel.com/Seamus_Malek/status/1839410871325630859

The leader of the Sayyid ash-Shuhada Brigades, part of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, directly threatens the UAE, saying it is the "first line of fire" if a larger war erupts, and that the militia's drones, which have reached Israel, can easily reach "alternative locations".

Brazil will present a Chinese-Brazilian peace plan for Ukraine to the countries of the Global South by the end of the week, Reuters reports.

The meeting, which will take place on September 27 in New York, is expected to include Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the UAE and other countries from the Global South. Representatives of European countries were not invited to the meeting.

The meeting will be chaired by Brazil's top foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, who will try to persuade those present to support the six-point Brazil-China plan. In particular, this concerns an immediate ceasefire, de-escalation and the beginning of peace negotiations between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

Trump said he will meet with Zelensky on Friday in New York - BBC

Trump and Zelensky to meet amid Republican anger

Article

Donald Trump has said he will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in New York on Friday. The Republican presidential nominee told a news conference that the pair will meet around 09:45 ET (14:45 BST) at his Trump Tower property.

The meeting is set to go ahead despite earlier reports it had been cancelled amid growing anger from senior Republicans after Zelensky earlier visited the key swing US state of Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, Zelensky met US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss his "victory plan", which he hopes will pressure Russia into agreeing a diplomatic end to the war.

"President Zelensky has asked to meet with me, and I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning," Trump told reporters in New York. "And it's a shame what's happening in Ukraine. So many deaths, so much destruction. It's a horrible thing."

Trump said he believed he would be able to "make a deal" between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky "quite quickly". When pushed to provide details of such a deal, he replied: "I don't want to tell you what that looks like".

The former US president was speaking after Zelensky had earlier met Biden and Harris. Hours before, Biden had announced a further $7.9bn (£5.9bn) package of military assistance to Ukraine.

Speaking alongside the Ukrainian president after their meeting, Harris said there are "some in my country" that would "force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory".

"These proposals are the same of those of Putin," she said, calling them "proposals for surrender". Asked at the news conference by a reporter whether Ukraine should cede land to Russia to end the war, Trump did not answer directly.

"Let's get some peace," he said. "We need peace. We need to stop the death and destruction." Friday's meeting comes amid tension between Zelensky and the Republican party ahead of November's US presidential election.

Some Republicans were angered by Zelensky's visit to an arms factory in Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, with top Democrats this week, including its governor Josh Shapiro.

Zelensky's visit to the key swing state was labelled by leading Republicans as a partisan campaign event. In a public letter, speaker of the US House Mike Johnson said the visit was "designed to help Democrats" and claimed it amounted to "election interference".

Trump and Zelensky have a complicated relationship. In 2019, Trump was impeached by the US House over accusations that he pressured Ukraine's leader to dig up damaging information on a political rival. A rough transcript of the call revealed Trump had urged Zelensky to investigate Biden, as well as Biden's son.

Trump has also grown increasingly critical of continued US funding for Ukraine, and in recent days has sharpened his attacks against Zelensky, calling him the “greatest salesman on Earth”.

Zelensky recently told the New Yorker magazine that he believe Trump "doesn't really know how to stop the war". When asked about Zelensky's comments on Thursday, Trump replied: "I do believe I disagree with him. He doesn't know me."

A record large container ship has made the Arctic transit between Russia and China, saving a lot of time compared to the Suez route during the open water season.

https://gcaptain.com/first-panamax-containership-sprints-across-arctic-reaching-china-in-just-three-weeks/

Good news for eurasian integration, bad news for climate change

New Slammer

Context: video of Iron dome missile falling to catch a yemeni hypersonic missile

BURKINABÉ CREATES FIRST 100% AFRICAN TYRE BRAND:
https://xcancel.com/african_stream/status/1839271402647457995

A young man from Burkina Faso named Yannick Laurent Bado has created the first fully African-owned tyre brand, JEPEB. The company is set to produce 40,000 tyres per year that can handle rough African roads and off-road terrain for the African market which, up until now, has been dominated by imports.

Wakulla County (FL) is under mandatory evacuation orders ahead of the storm, except they left all the prisoners locked up to drown in the imminent flooding.

fucking bleak

Wow! Another “unprecedented” weather event

So glad this is just temporary and not a consequence of something

Edmundo Gonzelez is still hiding in Spain, we will see if the US will pull a Guaido 2.0 or just forget this ever happened lol. Also it seems like Marisabel de Chavez (Hugo Chavez second ex-wife) is still a member of PSUV and supporter of Maduro, despite her critics towards the goverment.

Some combat footage from the Kursk, Donbass, and Gaza fronts.

Russian drone strikes near the southern Donetsk People’s Republic city of Ugledar (18+): https://odysee.com/@Support4Z:b/📽️-A-🇬🇧-🇫🇷,--Drone-strikes-on-detected-enemy-infantry-in-the-Ugledar-area!:2

More destroyed Kiev regime military equipment on the Kursk/Donbass fronts: https://odysee.com/@Support4Z:b/📽️-A-🇬🇧-🇫🇷,--DBL,-equipment-of-AFU-burned-near-the-settlement-of-Olgovka!:8

Palestinian resistance forces recently conducted RPG strikes on a Merkava tank and two armored bulldozers near the southern Gaza city of Rafah: https://s5.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/twitsave.com_VV_Fm79DqdBtfyia.mp4

SF Chronicle: Police are deliberately ramming suspects’ cars. Dozens have died — including bystanders

Since 2017, at least 87 people across the country have been killed after police officers rammed vehicles they were pursuing, often at extremely high speeds, a Chronicle investigation found.

Nearly half of those who died — 37 people, including seven children — were not the fleeing drivers. Instead, they were passengers or bystanders. In Tifton, Ga., a grandmother was killed when a fleeing car deliberately struck by police careened into her front yard.

Astounding cruelty

The wreck that killed Lakita Davis started with 5-hour Energy drinks and paper towels.

A clerk at a Dollar Store in Jonesboro, Ark., told police she saw Davis leave without paying one evening in October 2020. Davis, 35, drove away with her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend and her stepson in a silver Honda Civic.

...

Moments later, Middlecoff sped toward Davis at more than 120 mph and deliberately rammed her car. The Civic veered off the road and flipped, landing on its hood.

“Crawl out, or you’re gonna get dog bit!” ordered Chris Shull, an officer with the Jonesboro Police Department, a K9 by his side, according to dash-camera and body-camera footage and documents from Jonesboro and Arkansas State Police.

“Driver, can you crawl out?” another officer asked. Davis didn’t answer.

Standing nearby, Shull said, “I gotta say, that was my first pursuit that was legit and justified, like, fit policy. That was awesome.”

Minutes later, Shull announced Davis was dead — and blamed her family.

“Congratulations, y’all just committed homicide, y’all just committed murder,” he told the passengers: Davis’ 18-year-old daughter, Octavia Jackson, who lay on a stretcher with bone fractures; her stepson, Octavius Moore, 15; and her daughter’s boyfriend, Taccorion Golden, 20, who broke his leg.

Eric Adams got over half of his 2021 election funding illegally. Without the illegal money, he only got about the same as Kathy Garcia, who he barely beat.

Ken Klippenstein has been banned from Twitter for publishing the J.D. Vance dossier.

(it's >200 pages, but from a glance it mostly seems to be a paper trail of his "liberal ties" and being a "never-trumper." Very much opposition research targeted at right wingers)

The country's former president gave the government, led by Luis Arce, a 24-hour deadline to resolve the country's fuel supply problem. He also said that if Arce wants to continue governing, he must “sack the narco ministers”.

The Bolivian government said that the deadline given was “impossible to meet”, and that Evo Morales was threatening the democratic order in the country, denouncing an attempted “coup d'état” to the world. Nationwide blockades are scheduled for September 30 if no agreement is reached.

Waffle House closes Tallahassee-area locations as Hurricane Helene approaches Florida

Waffle House Index

The Waffle House Index is a metric named after the ubiquitous Southern US restaurant chain Waffle House known for its 24-hour, 365-day service. Since this restaurant always remains open, it has given rise to an informal but useful metric to determine the severity of a storm and the likely scale of assistance required for disaster recovery. It was coined by former administrator Craig Fugate of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The metric is unofficially used by FEMA to inform disaster response.

....

In 2022, because of the expected severity of Hurricane Ian, 35 Waffle Houses closed in Florida prior to the storm's arrival, an extremely rare event. Hurricane Ian eventually made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 150 miles per hour (240 km/h), peaking out over the Atlantic Ocean as a Category 5 hurricane.

Yemen has struck Tel Aviv with missile(s) again. Millions of settlers forced into shelters in the middle of the night.

edit: conflicted information about whether it was intercepted or not (you can imagine which side is saying it was intercepted) but it definitely at least reached the skies over Tel Aviv and was not detected/shot down before that point. I'm leaning on the side of "not intercepted" based on what I've seen but it's not clear yet. Apparently Ansarallah will make a statement in the coming hours.

edit2: looks like no hit, though maybe some injuries caused by accidents getting into shelters? it was unclear to me what actually caused the injuries (if real) so I was confused about whether it was a hit or not. anyway, still unclear what has happened and what the target(s) were, still waiting on the Ansarallah statement

Helene is now a cat 4 hurricane.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinon_Plan

Here's more info on some of Israel's theoretical desires to encourage the destruction of neighboring nation states. It at first seems like a think piece but it is earily similar to neoconservative plans to attack the middle east right before 9-11. Of course whenever Salafis randomly decide to renew offensives at the worst possible times for Palestinians, we know why.

The Biden admin will end up being worse than bush

Stolen from @ThomasMuentzner@hexbear.net

Some Sudanese soldiers are using the red triangle as a patch

مثلثنا الأحمر، الذي أينما حل انتصر
Wherever our red triangle goes, we win

How long before Amerikkka engineers a shoot down of a passenger plane bound for “Tel Aviv” to blame on Hezbollah and justify troop deployment?

Westoid media is embarrassing itself greatly right now. The big, "reputable" outlets (AP, Reuters, etc) just regurgitated an old, already debunked story about a Chinese nuclear sub sinking.

Part three of my effortpost, these parts keep getting longer and longer. No proof reading as usual

Part One

Part Two, it gets continued in the first comment

The Rise of the Collective Shia Identity: Part Three

We move 25 years into the future with part three, we’re now in the period after the defeat in ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the Houthi revolution in Yemen, Hezbollah’s victory against Israel in 2006, and the failure of the Bahraini Uprising in 2011.

We start in Yemen, which was reunited into one state after the end of the Cold War. The first president of the new reunited Yemeni state is no one other than Ali Abdullah Saleh, former president of North Yemen and one of our favourite adventurers like we said earlier. The first real event in the history of Yemen is the start of the 1994 civil war, which ended in a decisive victory for Ali Abdullah Saleh’s Republican forces over the remnants of the South Yemen Communist Party. The republican victory could not be achieved without the strong support by Sunni Jihadist forces who received massive concessions by Saleh in order to secure their support in the war. The growing voice of the hardline Sunni Islamists in Saleh’s government angered the Houthi family, who returned to Yemen from Iran somewhere around reunification, with the aim of reviving the Zaydi traditions that were slowly fading away as Yemen took a more “Sunni” character. It is clear that the Houthis’ stay in Iran led to them being greatly influenced by Khomeini’s pan-Shia ideology, as they founded a youth group called the Believing Youth when they returned to Yemen. The Believing Youth was a loose collection of after-school workshops and summer camps for kids in the mountains of North Yemen, where they would read works by Khomeini, Nasrallah and Al Sadr. The Believing Youth would grow in size, and by the early 00s, their presence would be felt even in Friday prayers in the Grand Mosque of the capital Sanaa. Like a true paranoid Arab government, the Yemeni government would ultimately decide to arrest Hussein Al Houthi, the founder of the BY and brother of the Abdul Malik Al Houthi that we all know and love. The government failed in their attempt to arrest Hussein Al Houthi, who retreated to the mountains of Saada and started a large insurgency again the Yemeni government. He would be killed in late 2004, but a low-level insurgency continued until the Arab Spring hit in 2011.

Yemen had some of the largest protests in the whole region, which turned violent very quickly. The escalation of the protests wasn’t surprising at all, Yemen was the poorest and the least developed Arab nation out of all the relevant ones, and Saleh had been ruling the country in some form for 33 years while achieving literally nothing of note. The Houthis and their supporters would become one of the largest factions against the government in peaceful protest, and later in armed struggle against a government long past its expiry date. After around a year of clashes everywhere in Yemen, Saleh would resign and sign a power transfer agreement in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a place where no real peace has ever been established. An election was held in 2012, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, Saleh’s best friend and former vice president would win the election with 100% of the votes in a real democracy moment. Saleh was there again in Yemen for Hadi’s inauguration. The Houthis, the southern secession movement and the Islamists all rightfully boycotted this sham election. Two years later, the Houthis would launch an offensive from the mountains towards the capital Sanaa and capture the capital very quickly after the collapse of the government forces. The Houthis then absorbed the bulk of the Yemeni Army and essentially became the new government itself, they’re not an armed group anymore, but the Yemeni state itself. When did the Houthis become a real “Shia” force and a part of the Axis of Resistance? Good question. The founding principles of the Believing Youth were explicitly Khomeinist, in response to the gradual Sunnification of the Zaydi Shia Yemenis after the final collapse of the Zaydi Imamate in the 1960s. There’s no proof of direct Iranian involvement in the founding of the group, nor any proof of direct support until the explosion of the conflict after the Arab Spring. Shiaism itself evolved with the absorption of the Houthis into the wider Shia umbrella, as it followed a similar previous step with the absorption of Assad’s Alawite faith into a wider Twelver-adjacent umbrella. The Houthis aren’t Hezbollah, where the founding itself was influenced directly by Iran, but they became closer and closer to Iran as their war with Saudi Arabia started in 2015. Just like the Iraq-Iran War became the origin story of all of the heroes of the new pan-Shia ideology, the Houthi victory in the war against Saudi Arabia and the Arab Alliance became the mythological origin of the first “pan-Shia” generation of Yemen. One such hero is Saleh Al Sammad, the first president of Yemen under Houthi rule, who was killed in a Saudi drone strike back in 2018. He received the Khomeinist martyr treatment, which was a first in Yemen. Shia-style mourning ceremonies have entered the Yemeni mainstream, and celebration of the Prophet’s birthday is now a big day in Yemen, in a clear departure from the hardline Sunni position that forbids that. The Houthis, or Ansarallah as they should be called, are now a fully integrated member of the pan-Shia movement despite not having a direct line back to Khomeini or the Al Sadr family.

We travel to Iraq again now. In 2003, something called the Iraq War, and the American Occupation happens. The Americans basically allow anyone that hates Saddam on their team, so the team that takes over the Iraqi state post-Saddam is a very dysfunctional one where Communists, Khomeinists, Kurdish nationalists, Sunni Muslim Brotherhood members, Liberal CIA assets, and random minority representants were supposed to pretend to play politics while the Americans were robbing the country. There was one crucial group that the Americans missed while building the political playhouse. That group was the Sadrists under the leadership of Muqtada Al Sadr, son of Muhammed Sadiq Al Sadr. The Sadrists split in two sometime in the late 90s, but no one had noticed that under the media suppression in Saddam’s Iraq and the general American disinterest in Iraqi attitudes while they were planning to invade Iraq. One group of Sadrists stayed in the Dawa Party and adopted more Khomeinist and pan-Shia ideas, while poorer Sadrists under Muqtada’s leadership from the slums were more into nationalist and isolationist policies within Iraq’s border. Muqtada’s group would later be called the Sadrist Movement and its military wing, the Mahdi Army, would become the main player in the Iraqi Insurgency against the American occupation and later in the sectarian civil war phase of the occupation. Muqtada’s eccentric behaviour continues to this day and the Sadrists still get themselves into wacky situations, as the group slowly morphs into a cult that finds itself on the fringes of Shiaism itself, but that’s an effortpost for another day. The Iraqi state found itself under pan-Shia Dawa Party rule from 2005 to 2018, but nothing formative happened on a state level, mostly due to the failure of the American occupation and the grave incompetence of the new cast in Iraq. The most notable change during that period was that Iran was slowly becoming the main foreign player in Iraq, after several missteps by the US and their Arab allies. The war against ISIS is when large sections of Iraqi Shia society were absorbed into the Iranian pan-Shia network with the creation of the Hashd Al Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units, or PMU for short). The PMU was essentially Iraq’s own Hezbollah, an explicitly pan-Shia organization that was created with a clear religious background. The creation of the PMU itself came after a ruling from Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, who is the current Grand Marja of the faith. He issued a ruling that called for global Shia jihad against ISIS after the collapse of the Iraqi Army and the fall of large cities such as Mosul, Fallujah and Tikrit into ISIS hands. Iranian government support through the IRGC was open and direct, with PMU head Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis and IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani being on the frontlines together and forming a shared war room. The pan-Shia framework of open commemoration of martyrs with clear religious messaging was fully imported to Iraq and became the dominant ideological marker in the Shia south of Iraq. I remember visiting Baghdad with my wife sometime before Covid and literally every single street in the capital had some pictures of martyrs.

cont.

Krauts itching to have another Kristallnacht:
https://xcancel.com/derJamesJackson/status/1839296960941142368

https://www.middleeasteye.net/explainers/israel-war-lebanon-what-arms-hezbollah-have

A detail-light breakdown of the main equipment being used right now (drones, rockets, short and medium range missiles, and ballistic missiles). When thinking about the ranges, keep in mind the current depth Hezbollah seems to be attacking is roughly up to 80 km from the border, and “israeli” censorship begins at Haifa, roughly 80 km from the border. This depth is Hezbollah’s escalation ladder. Incredibly, they also seem to have found a Western military professor with eyes, who comments “…the Hezbollah threat [is] one that Israel cannot destroy militarily.”

https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/three-carriers-simultaneously-china

A description of PLAN deployments in its own waters. The ocean surface isn’t the only thing getting hotter in the East Pacific. For those who don’t like ship details, it’s worth noting that Kuznetsov class carriers are really missile cruisers with a flight deck. The titular Russian vessel has anti-air, anti-missile, and anti-submarine defenses as well as 12 anti-ship cruise missiles and 24 8-missile Kinzhal batteries. The USamerican Nimitz class super carrier (which admittedly has a larger flight deck) has anti-air and anti-missile batteries, and no offensive armaments. Presumably, the Chinese have their own missile systems. There is one US carrier group asea in the Pacific, and i think it’s leaving through the Straits of Malacca. Always a good time to drill and train your ships when the enemy isn’t there.

https://www.labornotes.org/2024/09/strike-threat-wins-boarding-and-retro-pay-american-airlines

A little positive news about successful labor action. Every time i’ve been to LAX since 2021 or so, there has been a billboard about labor action on Howard Hughes (the main drag that we must sit in traffic before entering the airport where we sit in traffic). Covid kind of ravaged them, but there seems to be more and more airline related labor action. While the pilots, flight attendants, and transit workers are not necessarily radical unions, every win for labor lets the snowball roll forward. The reputation shift of unions is not because of messaging, it’s because of results. Good to get in the last hits before Trump or Harris guts the NLRB (which is doing pretty good under this admin, exceptionally critical support with an eye to past betrayals).

Our beloved mayor has been indicted for taking bribes from Turkish officials. 2024 is such a wild timeline. Adams is a piece of shit, basically his entire staff has already resigned because the FBI kept raiding their homes, and he's still pledging not to resign. Pretty hilarious stuff.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted Thursday on charges that he took illegal campaign contributions and bribes from foreign nationals, including lavish overseas trips, in exchange for favors that included helping Turkish officials bypass a fire inspection for a new diplomatic tower in the city.

Adams, a Democrat and former police captain, faces conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery charges in a five-count indictment outlining a decade-long trail of corruption that began when he served as an elected official in Brooklyn and continued through his mayoral administration.

From: https://apnews.com/article/nyc-mayor-eric-adams-indictment-fbi-5aad135d1808cb9d049fccd74604e5d4

The Danish military has lost the ability to learn from Ukraine

The Danish military currently lacks the capacity to systematically follow and learn from the war in Ukraine. This is according to a major from the military's development and planning staff, as stated in a September 26th article by DR (Danish state media). The piece, which also seems to serve as a promotional platform for drones, highlights a gap in the military’s ability to adapt lessons from the conflict.

No specific personnel have been assigned to gather insights from the war and apply them to the Danish armed forces. The major expresses the concern bluntly: "If we aren’t evolving, we’ll fall behind when the day comes that we’re the ones who have to stop Russia somewhere."

An analyst from the Danish Defense Academy adds that while many in the military are following the war closely, they do so in their free time without any coordinated institutional effort.

The major attributes this failure to manpower shortages, with other tasks taking priority. He also points out that the military’s development wing was gutted by politicians in the 2018-2023 defense agreement, and rebuilding that capability will take years.

An example is given, courtesy of Danish drone manufacturers. They have amassed substantial practical experience and made lots of money by supplying drone equipment to Ukraine. Despite this, the Danish army has yet to buy any of these drones for itself, causing the Danish military to be behind on modern warfare as well as Danish drone manufacturers to be unhappy.

When a brutal fascist regime is waging a war of terror against civilians, you think of where your sympathies lie.

So has Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Denmark's controversial foreign minister, who gave this statement to government broadcaster DR on September 26th 2024:

"I can certainly tell the difference between these countries. I know where my sympathy intuitively lies. I know which countries are democracies and which are not. But that doesn’t change the fact that, in the end, everyone has a responsibility to ensure this doesn’t spiral completely out of control."

The statement is an example of democracy washing where the alleged democratic nature of the illegal zionist entity is used to justify their atrocities and shift blame to the victims.

Journalists from a free and independent news outlet might have asked him follow-up questions such as:

• Can an apartheid state be democratic?
• Can a state be democratic when a majority of the people it governs is denied the vote?
• How can war crimes be justified by the perpetrator's system of government?
• Are the lives of civilians living under an allegedly "undemocratic" form of government worth less than those of people living under presumably "democratic" regimes?

News alert from NRK (Norwegian state media), published a few minutes ago:

Norwegian in [pager explosion] case is wanted internationally

The Norwegian [Rinson Jose] who is connected to the sale of exploding pagers in Lebanon was yesterday officially reported missing. On Thursday, Kripos [The National Criminal Investigation Service] issued an international wanted notice for the person, the police said.

On Monday, NRK could report that the Norwegian was still not back at work. The employer said they were going to have a meeting with the police to report him missing.

Apparently no one, including his friends and family, has heard from him since the first terror attack in Lebanon. Rinson got on a plane for a business trip to Boston the day of the attack, but never checked into his hotel or showed up at the conference he was there to attend. All traces of him ends in the U.S.

Friends and family claim they had no knowledge of the firm (Norta Global) he was running in Bulgaria. Rinson's social media profiles only shows him running a company called NortaLink, which is based in Norway. His profile also shows up on Founders Nation, a website that aims to connect Israeli entrepreneurs and co-founders.

China publicly test launches ICBM for the first time in decades

spoiler

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gl843l90zo

China's long-range missile test sparks concerns

China says it carried out a rare test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) into international waters, sparking protests from neighbouring countries.

The launch on Wednesday – its first in more than 40 years - was “routine” and not aimed at any country or target, according to Beijing. Chinese media reported the government also gave “relevant countries” notice.

But Japan said it had not received a warning and expressed concerns, along with Australia and New Zealand.

The launch contributes to tensions across the Indo-Pacific region, with analysts saying it highlights China's increased long-range nuclear capabilities.

The US warned last year that China has built up its nuclear arsenal as part of a defence upgrade. An intercontinental ballistic missile can travel more 5,500km - putting China within striking range of the US mainland and Hawaii.

But Beijing’s arsenal is still estimated at less than a fifth of the size of the US's and Russia’s, and China has long maintained that its nuclear maintainance is only about deterrence.

On Wednesday, Beijing announced that the long-range missile was fired at 08:44 local time (04:44 GMT). It carried a dummy warhead and landed in the designated area - believed to be in the South Pacific.

Beijing's defence ministry added the test launch was "routine" and part of its "annual training".

But analysts said China was last known to have test-fired an ICBM internationally in the 1980s. Typically, it tests internally - having previously fired ICBMs west into the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang region.

“This sort of testing is not unusual for other countries, including the United States, but is for China,” nuclear missile analyst Ankit Panda told the BBC.

China’s “ongoing nuclear modernisation” already has resulted in substantial changes, he said. This launch now appears to also show a change in its approach.

It has sparked immediate reaction from other countries. Japan said it had received “no notice” and expressed “serious concern” about Beijing’s military build-up.

Meanwhile, Australia said the action was "destabilising and raises the risk of miscalculation in the region” and that it had sought “an explanation” from Beijing. New Zealand called it “an unwelcome and concerning development”.

Mr Panda said he doesn't believe China’s actions were primarily designed to send a political message - “but no doubt this will be a stark reminder to the region and to the US that nuclear dynamics in Asia are quickly changing”.

Other analysts went further, saying it was another wake-up call for the US and its allies in the region.

“To Washington, the message is that direct intervention in a conflict across the Taiwan Strait would involve the American homeland being vulnerable to attack,” said Leif-Eric Easley, an international relations professor at Ewha Women's University in South Korea.

For US allies in Asia, the “provocative test… demonstrates China’s capabilities to fight on multiple fronts simultaneously," he added.

"Timing is everything," Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, wrote on X.

"[China's] statement claims the launch does not target any country, but there are high-levels of tension between China and Japan, Philippines, and of course perpetual tension with Taiwan."

While the relationship between Beijing and Washington has improved in the past year, China's increasing assertiveness in the region remains a sticking point. Tensions have ramped up between China and the Philippines as their ships have repeatedly collided in disputed waters.

Last month, Japan scrambled fighter jets after it accused a Chinese spy plane of breaching its air space, a move that it called "utterly unacceptable".

Beijing's relationship with self-governed Taiwan is another source of strain.

Taiwan's defence ministry said earlier on Wednesday that China had been carrying out "intensive" missile firing and other drills recently. The same statement noted that it detected 23 Chinese military aircraft operating around Taiwan on "long-range missions".

Beijing routinely sends ships and aircraft into Taiwanese waters and airspace, called a "greyzone warfare" tactic meant to normalise the incursions.

In July, China suspended its nuclear arms control talks with Washington, in retaliation for the US's continued arms sales to Taiwan.

The US last year warned of China's nuclear modernisation although its numbers still far short of Washington's. The Pentagon estimated that China has more than 500 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal, of which approximately 350 are ICBMs.

The report projected that China will reach over 1,000 warheads by 2030; the US and Russia each say they possess more than 5,000 warheads.

There also have been conflicts around the Chinese military’s Rocket Force, the elite unit managing its nuclear arsenal. An aggressive anti-corruption campaign led to the firing of two of its leaders last year.

Some Safed impacts (a lot if you listen to sound)

https://tankie.tube/w/6yweqvBHp1n658rPPLXoQZ

Republicans are mad at Ukraine supporting dems and writing angry letters to zelensky

Haven't had time to check in on the video front much today but a cursory glance suggests very little has changed compared to yesterday. Regular sirens everywhere in the country, some videos of missiles but not as much as day one, etc etc.

This is the new normal.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/09/indian-foreign-minister-throws-cold-water-on-the-idea-of-a-brics-currency.html

Article on Indian reluctance and challenge associated with a BRICS currency, citing comments by the Indian foreign affairs minister Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar

“People have raised the issue that should there be a Brics currency. But, for countries to have a common currency, you need enormous alignment of their very fundamental fiscal policies, monetary policies, economic policies… And when you look at Brics’s standards, I think we’ve to be realistic about the extent of alignment among members.”

Biden found another $8 billion between the couch cushions to toss into the burn pit that is

Eilat Port attacked last night by drone, allegedly iraqi

Impact:

https://tankie.tube/w/dvDEK2c9TA4LQntD4FCcKA

Smoke aftermath:

https://tankie.tube/w/e2a1nYtf5qHS4sAaf2PkMV

Algeria Moroccan news

Algeria: Visa Requirement for All Foreign Nationals with Moroccan Passports
The Algerian government has announced the immediate reinstatement of entry visa requirements for all foreign nationals holding Moroccan passports, as indicated in a communiqué from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Community Abroad on Thursday.

The statement noted that Algeria, “guided by the values of solidarity inherent in the human and familial ties that unite the two brotherly peoples of Algeria and Morocco, had refrained from questioning the freedom of movement between individuals when it decided to sever diplomatic relations with Morocco in August 2021.”

“Regrettably, the Kingdom of Morocco has taken advantage of the visa exemption regime to engage in various actions that threaten Algeria’s stability and national security. These include the large-scale organization of networks involved in organized crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking, smuggling, illegal immigration, and espionage activities. Furthermore, agents of Zionist intelligence holding Moroccan passports have been deployed to gain unrestricted access to our national territory. Such actions present a direct threat to our country’s national security and necessitate stringent control over all entry and residence points within the nation,” the communiqué asserted.

“The Kingdom of Morocco is solely responsible for the current deterioration of bilateral relations due to its hostile actions toward Algeria,” concluded the statement.

source: https://al24news.com/en/algeria-visa-requirement-for-all-foreign-nationals-with-moroccan-passports/

Hamas ambush column of Merkava tanks and bulldozers

https://tankie.tube/w/mT7jpZt5z4RkS183XbbYTZ

Video of DPRK trash balloon landing in occupied Korea

https://tankie.tube/w/s4aZMeyr8rnPZVQ5XYBorA

Interesting video, Ukraine, not sure which side. Looks like a thermite grenade being flown around by a drone above enemy positions to rain down thermite on the position.

https://tankie.tube/w/iyhAeBTngvMTxqeEMnuFXa

Iranian Press TV releases a video detailing Hezbollah’s long-range precision missiles

https://tankie.tube/w/cjKSdDEbWVyz161YWCqifU

Mexico BFTO Spain's king from Claudia's inaguration for not acknowledging their colonial oppressive past.

a banger of an article in the paper of the smaller finnish communist party (ML), concerning genocide and how finland liked to partake and still does tbh translation below

The policies of the Finnish occupation regime in Karelia during the Second World War are again being discussed in the public eye in the context of a trial in the Republic of Karelia in Petrozavodsk. Finland is accused of war crimes and genocide against the Karelian population.

The events in Karelia are a complex and long story that cannot be honoured in a single article. I recommend to everyone Tomi Mäkinen's series of articles published in Työkansan Sanomat on Itä-Karjalan miehitys ja suomalaisten perustamat keskitysleirit 1941–44 (the occupation of East Karelia and the concentration camps set up by the Finns), and Marja-Leena Mikkola's book Menetetty lapsuus (Lost Childhood), on which the series of articles is based.

Mäkinen's series of articles and Mikkola's book describe Finnish actions from the perspective of Karelian and Karelian Russian survivors. In addition, several skilled writers have published articles on fascism and Finnish fascism in Työkansan Sanomat and on the Ktp website.

In short, the Finns who invaded Soviet Karelia in the Continuation War, inspired by the Greater Finland ideology, finnic tribalism and the practices of their allies in Nazi Germany, set up concentration camps where ethnic cleansing was carried out.

The Finns distinguished between the 'non-ethnic', i.e. Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Tatars and Latvians, and what they considered 'Finns', i.e. ethnic Karelians, Vepsians, Ingrians, Estonians and Mordvians, and sought to turn the ''Finnic'' into Finns.

All those in the camps experienced extreme physical, mental and cultural oppression. Thousands of men, women and children died from forced labour, starvation and punishments.

There is no doubt that Russia could or would use this trial for anti-Finnish propaganda today. The regime in capitalist Russia does not itself have a particular devotion to the rights of minorities. However, this fact should not justify the way in which genocide accusations are handled in Finland. Karelians have the right at any time to bring past events to light and demand accountability from Finland.

The Finnish media's response to the accusations has been to play down the events of the Continuation War, to accuse those involved of being Russian propagandists and to complain about unfair and dishonest historical research which 'claims that Finland was a fascist country that committed genocide'.

Unfortunately, in the light of Finnish historiography, this is not surprising. Finland has always responded to criticism of the state's actions from independence until the end of the Second World War with a strong defensive stance.

The Finnish government has been "forced" to ban political parties, imprison, torture and kill political opponents. The state "accidentally" had links with criminal fascist groups. Finland "had a difficult choice" between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Finland " was forced " to choose the Nazis. And even when they set up concentration camps, the Finns did it for a reason more noble than the other genocidaires. And all the deaths were accidents.

Such whining is all over the history books of our country. All the Finnish rulers from the beginning to the end are just blue-eyed, silly little children who do nothing wrong, but at the same time all the evil is done in self-defence. Refusing to accept responsibility is an extremely dangerous act, both for our past and for our future.

In the current situation, in which the state is again preparing itself for war, such a view of history and cognitive dissonance tends to be forgotten as if by magic. However, this is a time when fascism, war crimes and genocide should be better known and understood.

No matter what the imperialists want, this current war will end one day, and then we will be left wondering how thousands more have died, how the war feels so absurd again.

Genocidal nationalism in our culture is not just about ourselves and our own actions. The tradition of keeping quiet and following the bigger picture was seen again when Finland abstained in October 2023 in the UN vote on the Gaza ceasefire. This vote in Finland was preceded by a barrage of news reports calling Palestinians and pro-Palestinians terrorists and talking about Israeli self-defence.

Here are all the articles that are referenced in the article. i will not translate these but https://www.deepl.com/en/translator is decent with finnish, just work around the words a bit if they seems wonky

Israel rejects french USA ceasefire deal. Israel is off the rails. Imperialists cant control it anymore.

By the guardian:

"Benjamin Netanyahu rules out US-French ceasefire proposal

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has ruled out a ceasefire proposal between Israel and Hezbollah, saying “The news about a ceasefire – not true. This is an American-French proposal, to which the prime minister did not even respond.”

It said, instead, that “the prime minister instructed the IDF to continue the fighting with full force”. Over 600 people have been killed and thousands wounded in Lebanon since Israel began an intense bombing campaign on Monday.

Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz joined the prime minister in ruling out Israel accepting a US-French proposed 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

In a message posted to social media, Katz said: “There will be no ceasefire in the north. We will continue to fight against the terrorist organization Hezbollah with all our might until victory and the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes.”

About 60,000 Israelis have fled their homes in northern Israel due to continual fighting between Israel, Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli forces based in Lebanon. On the Lebanese side of the UN-drawn blue line that separates the two countries, tens of thousands of Lebanese have also been internally displaced.

Earlier Israel’s hardline far-right finance minister, who has previously described it as his life’s mission to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state, also rejected the idea of a ceasefire. Bezalel Smotrich said “The campaign in the north should end in one scenario – crushing Hezbollah.”

Israel’s military claimed that overnight it struck “approximately 75 terror targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation” in Beqaa and in southern Lebanon. Authorities in Lebanon reported at least four more people killed this morning, and that 23 Syrians, mostly women and children, were killed by an Israeli strike on Younine in Lebanon during the night.

The US and France had called for a temporary ceasefire to make way for broader negotiations. The joint statement issued by US president Joe Biden and French counterpart Emmanuel Macron said: “It is time for a settlement on the Israel-Lebanon border that ensures safety and security to enable civilians to return to their homes. The exchange of fire since October 7th, and in particular over the past two weeks, threatens a much broader conflict, and harm to civilians.”

The Jerusalem Post earlier reported that community leaders of northern Israel are unhappy with the prospect of a ceasefire, with one regional council’s chairman saying “There is a time for negotiations, this is not the time. This is a time for war.” "

Zionists are complaining that they can no longer be Nazis in South African universities, namely in Cape Town - Haaretz (paywalled btw, )

In related matters, South Africa has also apparently more-or-less resolved its loadshedding woes by achieving nuclear fusion from Zionist tears.

Me:

In completely unremarkable news in finland, the pillars of the parliament house where painted red by climate activists this is incredibly funny and the boomers are breaking down in tears shidding farting and cuming all over everywhere.

on an absolutely unrelated note this is a statement by our smaller ML communist party concerning the next years state budget

translated

The bourgeois government's budget continues to flounder

The bourgeois government led by the Coalition Party and the True Finns has approved next year's state budget. In it, the government continues its policy of cutting and diminishing the economy, with all working people paying the price.

In September, the government will submit its budget proposal to Parliament, which will approve it at the end of December. Parliament would have a chance to reject the worst of the whiplashes, but that will not happen under right-wing rule.

The draft budget is worth around €88 billion, with a deficit of more than €12 billion. It will be covered by taking on more government debt.

Taxation, direct and indirect, will be increased across the board. The biggest tax increases will come from municipal taxes, with half of the municipalities already raising their taxes.

More money will go to the army, NATO, the police and the shooting ranges - the whole machinery of violence. The rising costs of militarism in recent years will continue next year.

The army will spend €6.5 billion next year, an increase of half a billion on this year. Just two elections ago, the corresponding expenditure was less than 3 billion

The new cost of NATO is almost €100 million. That's an increase of 67 million on this year.

Youth org of Green Party Germany: The complete leadership council (10 people) quit job and party.

Link to the resignation letter (CW: reddit)

They say they have been in opposition to the party leadership/majority on various issues, like the 100 bn "special fund" for the Bundeswehr, that new brown coal mine, and when they took away the rights of asylum seekers.

Seems like they're planning on creating a new radlib organization.

Institute for the Study of War, an imperialist think thank wrote:

Iran, Hezbollah, and the rest of the Axis of Resistance appear to be preparing for an Israeli ground operation into Lebanon. The IDF has observed around 40,000 Iranian-backed Iraqi, Syrian, and Houthi militants concentrate around the Syrian border with the Golan Heights, according to Israeli media. It is unclear why and when the Axis of Resistance deployed these militants or whether they were already in the area.

I remember reading an article from an Iranian outlet that Iran's response to Haniyeh assassination isn't necessarily aerial and it could be on the ground like opening a new front in Syria. Now I see what happened.

I’m moving and I found the copy of Max Blumenthal's Management of Savagery which I never got around to reading.

Do I toss it because he’s gone full crank or kept it to eventually read it because the content is still okay?

Since people have been talking about nukes lately, if the IOF dropped a tactical nuke in southern Lebanon, how would people conclusively proof that a tactical nuke was actually dropped assuming that:

1. The Zionist entity lies about dropping the tactical nuke with a shit-eating grin

2. The US covers up the tactical nuke by falsifying radiation readings from their satellites

3. The US accuses the radiation readings picked up by Russian/Chinese/Iranian satellites of Russian/Chinese/Iranian disinformation

I guess my question is how obvious would it be that a tactical nuke was dropped instead of just a really large conventional bomb assuming you couldn't rely on detecting radiation from the crater?

In 2018, scientists confirmed the Gulf of Oman contains one of the world's largest marine dead zones, where the ocean contains little or no oxygen and marine wildlife cannot exist. The dead zone encompasses nearly the entire 165,000-square-kilometre (63,700 sq mi) Gulf of Oman and equivalent to the size of Florida, United States of America. The cause is a combination of increased ocean warming and increased runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on corruption charges: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/25/nyregion/eric-adams-indicted-corruption#eric-adams-indicted

#Tradle #935 5/6

🟩🟩🟨⬜⬜

🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://oec.world/en/games/tradle

spoiler

Not a real country alert. Also I fucked up by forgetting that Tradle counts these things as independent, and also by forgetting that strictly speaking you don't need to have a ressource within your own borders in order to export it.

1000 deaths upon any US soldier setting foot in Israel to take part in the massacre. A bullet from a ghoul to your dome is too merciful for you, but I'll settle for it.

UN Speech Highlights:

Gustavo Petro, Colombia President

"In this room, a president's ability to communicate depends on the number of dollars in his budget, the number of warplanes he has (..) That’s why we're not heard when we vote to stop the genocide in Gaza..”

“When Gaza dies, all of humanity will die.” “It turns out that God's people were not the people of Israel.”

Lula da Silva, Brazil President

“It’s unjustified to keep Cuba on a unilateral list of states that supposedly promote terrorism and impose unilateral coercive measures that unduly penalize the most vulnerable populations."

Xiomara Castro, Honduras President

“Today I'm threatened by the same forces of capital that 15 years ago carried out a coup against President Manuel Zelaya (Her Husband). They threaten me because I have promoted structural changes in the economic model."

She called for a ceasefire in Lebanon before the United Nations. And also demands an end to the unjust blockades against Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela and demands that the United States remove Cuba from the list of ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism’.

Israeli fighter jets forced to flee Lebanon airspace: Hezbollah

Hezbollah says its air defence units engaged and successfully forced two Israeli aircraft to leave Lebanese airspace “using appropriate weapons” near the Lebanese towns of Hula and Meiss el-Jabal.

Fighters also targeted the Kiryat Motzkin settlement with a barrage of rockets and carried out a second round of strikes with Fadi-1 missiles.

Israel has launched waves of deadly air strikes on Lebanon since Monday, killing nearly 700 people. The international community has warned against Israeli attacks on Lebanon as they raise the spectre of spreading the Gaza war regionally.

Biden calls for end to Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan conflicts in farewell speech to UN General Assembly

THEN STOP FUELING THE WARS JACKASS

Rapid Fuckification - Hurricane HELLene expected to DOMINATE the fascist state of Florida as a cat 3-4 storm.

Humiliate Der Santis.

Some more footage from the Donbass/Kursk fronts.

Russian marines used drone-distributed leaflets to help Ukrainian soldiers surrender: https://odysee.com/@Support4Z:b/📽️-A-🇬🇧-🇫🇷,--Three-AFU-servicemen-surrender-to-Russian-marines!:5

Russian thermobaric ODAB-1500 bomb destroyed Kiev regime military base near Kupyansk, in Kharkov oblast: https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/Bombing_2509:1

Russian drone strike destroyed another Kiev regime armored vehicle in Kursk oblast: https://s5.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/st1.mp4

https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/british-intels-counter-disinfo-war

A article about how parts of the British intelligence community are seen as experts in mis- and dis-information, and how they are now exporting their experience. There is some detail about intelligence interacting with social media. The discussion is rooted in a leaked slideshow from an intelligence meeting in 2021. The exact way the author talks about the Biden admin’s Covid “censorship push” sets off my personal crank alarm, but the analysis of the leaked slideshow is not affected by this. Saying ‘counter-disinformation’ instead of propaganda might be a rehash of changing the ‘department of war’ to ‘defense’. Sir Kid Starver and many of his Red Tory compatriots are actual, factual MI6 assets. Czechoslovakian Internal Ministry documents from the Cold War had a whole file on the then-Mr. Starver. It’s also known that the British are more gung-ho about Ukraine than the US, and also that the Ukraine project was CIA before it was NATO. You can almost see the shades of our future where a need for internal security and countering Russian influence can only be entrusted to apolitical, non-partisan intelligence experts. See also the USAF intelligence general sending out an email requiring all federal and state candidates to agree to uphold election integrity as decided by the intelligence community.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/japan-says-it-received-no-advance-notice-of-chinas-intercontinental-ballistic-missile-launch/3340804

A short article about Japan rattling sabers over the PLA testing an ICBM. The article is from the Anadolu Agency, a news site from Türkiye with a logo that looks exactly like American Airlines. It’s Turkish bourgeois media, but Türkiye is trying to join BRICS+, so we might see reporting contrary to Western spin. Even if China informed every possible party and followed international law, the more important fact is that Japan is rapidly rearming under US encouragement (and, i believe, some popular discontent with militarizing). Every statement made now is building up a raft of ‘provocations’ and ‘lines crossed’ and ‘aggression’ for whenever the USA decides it wants a war in East Asia. See also the Philippines ‘accidentally’ having Typhoon missiles left in their country after exercises with the USA.

Hey, please read the first two parts of my effortpost on the evolution of the modern pan-shia ideology if you haven't done that already. Part three coming probably tomorrow, but I'm on 5k words in total already and I haven't even mentioned Syria and Bahrain in the last part, so this became a bit larger than expected lmao.

Part One

Part Two, it gets continued in the first comment

you're getting the third and probably final part tomorrow, be patient

Macron: “there cannot and must not be a war in Lebanon”. - Telesur Spanish

Article (Translated)

“We have to build a fairer and more effective international order,” said French President Emmanuel Macron in his address to the United Nations General Assembly.

He called for a cessation of hostilities, while equating the Israeli aggressions that left hundreds dead, including children and women, with the attacks against military targets by the Lebanese resistance.

French President Emmanuel Macron used his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday to urge Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah to stop hostilities on the border between the two countries.

The president made no mention of the multiple indiscriminate killings from air strikes, although he did “firmly” call on Israel to stop the escalation in Lebanon.

At the same time, he stressed the importance of respecting the “blue line”, the border line drawn by the UN between Israel and Lebanon, at a time when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) chiefs told the local press that they are prepared to carry out a land invasion in southern Lebanon.

In this regard, Macron warned that an extension of military operations on Lebanese territory would have serious consequences. “There cannot and must not be a war in Lebanon,” the president affirmed, stressing that the situation in Gaza has already generated too many civilian casualties.

“The war in Gaza has gone on too long, and there is no justification for the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties,” he stressed.

The president also called for a new phase in Gaza, focused on the cessation of hostilities, the return of humanitarian aid and the protection of the civilian population. However, France's condemnation of the Israeli regime has, for the time being, been no more than declarative.

Nevertheless, Macron noted that his country is ready to participate in any initiative that can save lives and ensure the safety of those involved.

On the other hand, Macron advocated a reform in the UN Security Council, seeking to limit the use of the veto in cases of mass crimes.

Parasocial hour: it seems that Chappell roam has considered democrats part of the “left” instead of calling them out as the conservatives they are. Hate to see it

Iraqi resistance drone attack hits Israel’s Eilat port

Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro accuse Israel's prime minister of genocide. They also say that the UN urgently needs to be reformed.

Both said how can the UN have the strength to create a country like Israel, but not have the same strength to create a Palestinian state. Lula da Silva added that Benjamin Netanyahu does not respect the UN, or any law. That he is a criminal and a genocider.

Gustavo Petro and Lula da Silva believe that the UN Security Council should be tougher on Israel and force an immediate ceasefire. They also accused European countries and the United States of spending money on wars in Ukraine and Israel, but not sending any aid to Latin American, African and Asian countries suffering from climate change. This was agreed decades ago but has never been fulfilled.

“If Zelenski were smart, he would advocate diplomacy, not a military solution,” Says President Lula da Silva.

The statement came after the Ukrainian accused Brazil and China of helping Putin achieve his goals in the conflict.

He was referring to a plan to end the war announced by Brasilia and Beijing in May, after a meeting between Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, and Celso Amorim, Lula's adviser on international affairs. “What he [Zelenski] is failing to do is make peace. We're not proposing to make peace for them, we're pointing out to them that only peace will ensure that Ukraine survives as a sovereign country, and that Russia survives,” said Lula during a press conference at the UN in New York.

“They don't have to accept China and Brazil's proposal because there is no proposal. There's a thesis that it's important to start talking.” “If he were smart, he [Zelenski] would say that the solution is diplomatic, not military. This depends on the ability to sit down and talk, to listen to the other side. And trying to reach an agreement so that the Ukrainian people can have peace in their lives. That's it.”

Defeated in Gaza, Israel can't repair myth of invincibility with barbarism in Lebanon: Pezeshkian

There have been some updates on the Elon Musk vs. Brazil dispute. Elon basically took a massive L but he refused to admit it. Basically he agreed to make all the stuff the Brazilian Supreme Court asked, and agreed to shut the fuck up (Elon is such a coward loser, that he would behind the scenes say he is sorry, but publicly would be like "I am cool and fuck eveyone else!". Because he has a huge ego, he probably is afraid of losing "credit" with the Bazinga chuds that like him).

But he also plans on posting on twitter that he agreeing to ban a bunch of Brazilian neo-nazis and paying his debt with Brazil is actually a W and totally not a big L, because that way people in Brazil will have free speech again (which just means being able to access Twitter).

Ancap Update:

Milei sees polls showing Argentine support beginning to fall. A poll showed that support for the government fell by almost 15% in September, the biggest drop during his nine months in office.

Argentine President Javier Milei, who has managed to maintain his popularity despite painful spending cuts since taking office at the end of last year, is seeing his support begin to wane, according to the latest polls.

This represents a major challenge for economic reforms.. A Torcuato Di Tella University poll last Monday (23) showed that support for Milei's once positive government fell by almost 15% in September, the biggest drop during his nine months in office.

Data from polling company Poliarquía showed a 7% drop in the month. According to a survey by the Proyeccion consultancy, positive opinions of Milei's government fell to 44.8% and negative opinions rose to 50.7%. Another survey by CB Consultora showed a drop in support.

The data highlights a major challenge for Milei. A fiery economist and former journalist, he has so far managed to impose tough austerity measures while keeping voters on his side, avoiding major street protests despite the recession and rising poverty.

In September, Milei blocked planned increases to pension payments initially approved by Congress and presented an austere budget for 2025. Meanwhile, gas, water and electricity costs have risen for many citizens after state subsidies were withdrawn.

Milei's deep cuts won support from investors and the markets, seen by many as necessary after years of fiscal deficits, rising inflation and economic instability. But they have hit economic activity, jobs and increased poverty.

Pakistan be cucked.

IMF approves $7bn funding agreement for Pakistan

Lebanon strikes are preparation for ground incursion, Israel army chief tells troops

In case you didn't know already, it's war, folks. Israel must lose.

Xi calls for accelerating progress in China's space endeavors

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/25/asia/china-icbm-test-pacific-ocean-intl-hnk/index.html

China is testing intercontinental missiles for the first time in a long time, nothing to see here, folks.

Wildfires in Ecuador’s Capital Force Dozens of Families to Evacuate - Telesur English

Article

The fire started in a rural area and quickly spread across different fronts, reaching the urban core of Quito.

At least two firefighters have been injured, and more than one hundred families have been evacuated from their homes due to the fires that broke out on Tuesday afternoon in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. Authorities do not believe they will be able to extinguish the fires before Wednesday.

In a joint press conference with provincial and national authorities, Quito Mayor Pabel Muñoz explained that the shelter system of the San José Patronage has been activated to assist the evacuated families.

The evacuation was carried out as a precaution since, so far, there have been few impacts on homes and infrastructure. No fatalities have been reported.

The fire started in a rural area and quickly spread across different fronts, reaching the urban core of the Ecuadorian capital and extending to the Metropolitan Park. Around 215 members of the Quito Fire Department are battling the flames, Muñoz said, adding that 440 people have been mobilized in various emergency zones.

The National Police have deployed over 1,600 officers, and the Armed Forces have sent around 180 soldiers, while the Ecuadorian Air Force (FAE) has ordered two helicopters to join the fire-fighting efforts, although they will not be operational until Wednesday morning.

Between five and seven helicopters will be involved in water-dumping operations over the flames, Muñoz said, urging citizens to avoid driving their vehicles as much as possible to facilitate the movement of emergency services.

Paola Pabon, prefect of the Pichincha province, whose capital is Quito, assured that the local government’s machinery, as well as health, veterinary, and social assistance brigades and units, will be at the service of the Municipality during this emergency. A series of similar fires in Quito in recent days, apparently set deliberately, led to the arrest of two people who were placed in preventive detention.

On Tuesday, the national government suspended the electricity cuts that had been scheduled in Quito as part of the rationing measures introduced last week, due to the severe drought that has hindered the normal operation of the country’s main hydroelectric plants.

Ecuadorian goverment collapsing. But you won't see the western media reporting on this because Noboa is a US puppet. Meanwhile they torture former VP Jorge Glas and continue their lawfare against former president Rafael Correa, while kicking out the Chinese investors from their country. Colombia stopped their export of energy to Ecuador, and I believe they still hate Peru, so no energy from Peru.

https://resistancenews.org/2024/09/24/the-exhilaration-of-first-strikes-in-lebanon-israel-repeats-the-mistakes-of-2006/

An article looking back at the last few days by the editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar, translated by Resistance News. According to wikipedia, Al-Akhbar is a left wing, anti-zionist, leaning pro-syrian Lebanese daily newspaper. They also call it a semi-tabloid without a source, which makes me think that it reports facts that some wikipedia editor doesn’t like. So not to replace analysis with contrarianism, but i don’t feel compelled to verify further. Resistance News is a good source. The mention of Western and comprador nations trying to stir up Syrian and Lebanese groups “in an uprising to demand a ceasefire from the Resistance” is interesting, since I haven’t personally seen anything about that before now on my side of the language barrier. The latter paragraphs underscore one of the lessons of post-Vietnam military thought: the USA (and friends) have developed a theory rich and deeply analytical conception of how best to apply massive terror bombing and mechanized shock and awe against opponents without air defense. They have now taken the existence of complex theory as evidence that this must work, which is a blindness that can be exploited. Unfortunately, this blindness does not change the mass death and destruction the “Western way of war” will bring.

i have an early shift today, so i will be posting the other articles later.

Daniel Noboa, president of Ecuador, cancels his UN agenda and returns to the country to accompany the operations to fight the forest fires.

The Ecuadorian government is classifying the forest fires affecting the country as “terrorist acts” and has announced that it will give rewards to citizens who denounce the perpetrators or accomplices of the fires.

Meanwhile, Noboa was in Miami taking pictures on a yacht with his wife, while his country burned and had no electricity.

Reactionaries: "The problem is that there's too many people overpopulating!"

Also reactionaries: "No one's having kids anymore, society is going to decay!"

Zelensky says he doubts Brazil and China's 'real interest' in mediating peace deal: 'They will no longer have power at our expense'

The Ukrainian president questioned Brazil and China's role in the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia during his speech at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. He also said that Moscow was planning a coordinated invasion of Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

“You will not increase your powers at the expense of Ukraine,” he said during his speech.

Since last year, President Lula has been saying that he wants to mediate a dialog between Russia and Ukraine to end the war, including a specific peace plan.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has also expressed his willingness to mediate a peace negotiation between the two sides. At the end of April, he spoke to Zelensky by telephone for the first time since the start of the war and said that he had put forward a proposal.

The Ukrainian, however, says that he will not negotiate with Moscow as long as Vladimir Putin is Russian president, and demands an immediate ceasefire. In May this year, at a meeting with the President's special adviser for international affairs, former Brazilian Chancellor Celso Amorim, in Kiev, Zelensky said that the only possible peace plan to end the war in his country is the Ukrainian one.

Zelensky had already accused Brazil of prioritizing alliances with Russia (in reference to BRICS). Lula denied “defending Putin” and said that “I have no side, my side is peace”.

In his speech to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, the Ukrainian leader said he would not accept an “imposed peace”.

“We Ukrainians will never accept that. We will never accept that. Why would anyone in the world believe that such a brutal colonial past, which has no continuity today, could be imposed on Ukraine now?”

In his speech, Zelensky also accused Russia of planning a coordinated attack on Ukraine's nuclear power plants.

Milei accuses UN of imposing ‘socialist’ and ‘collectivist’ agenda

In his first speech at the UN’s general assembly, the president said Argentina would abandon its long-standing neutrality regarding world conflicts

In his first speech at the United Nations headquarters, Argentine President Javier Milei accused the international organization of promoting a “socialist” and “collectivist” agenda, and said the country would abandon its long tradition of neutrality regarding world conflicts.

“The woke agenda’s collectivism and moral posturing have collided with reality and no longer have credible solutions to offer to the world’s real problems,” the president said during the UN’s 79th General Assembly.

In a speech replete with religious references, Milei said that the UN had “became a multi-tentacled leviathan, which seeks to decide not only what each nation-state should do, but also how all the world’s citizens should live.”

Milei also said the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a 17-point goal declaration adopted by all member countries that includes goals such as tackling climate change and achieving zero hunger, is “a socialist supranational government program.”

The president also criticized the UN’s Pact for the Future, which Argentina distanced itself from on Monday, and aims for member countries to commit to action on issues including peace, poverty, climate change, and gender equality.

“We invite all nations of the free world to join us, not only in dissenting from this pact but in creating a new agenda for this noble institution: the agenda of freedom,” he said.

Milei listed alleged “mistakes and contradictions” the UN had committed, such as voting against Israel, which he called “the only country in the Middle East that upholds liberal democracy.” He also said the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns worldwide were a “crime against humanity” and said that the UN “allowed the Human Rights Council to support bloody dictatorships such as Cuba and Venezuela without the slightest reproach.”

Since taking office, Milei has aligned himself with Israel and the United States, as well as international far-right political organizations such as the Spanish Foro Madrid and the U.S.’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

("Israel" and the "United States" are also far right political organizations)

Milei also accused the UN of promoting a “toxic relationship between global governance policies and international lending agencies” and of “requiring the most impoverished countries to commit resources they do not have to programs they do not need.”

Argentina took a US$44 billion loan from the IMF in 2018, during Mauricio Macri’s government, and currently has an economic program agreed with the international lender to pay back the debt. Argentine media had previously reported that Milei was planning to meet with IMF authorities during his trip to the U.S., but the meeting did not come to fruition.

“From this day on, you should know that the Argentine Republic will abandon the historical position of neutrality that characterized us and will be at the forefront of the struggle in defense of freedom,” he said. Argentina has maintained a long tradition of neutrality regarding world conflicts, dating back to before World War II.

Okay then, I support Russian and Chinese surgical strikes to decapitate and demilitarize the anarcho capitalist entity that is "Argentina". 100% this motherfucker will announce he'll be sending troops to Lebanon to fight for "Israel". What is he even going to do, send all of our three tanks and one serviceable destroyer from the 80s?

“May God bless the Argentines and all the citizens of the world, and may the forces of heaven be with us,” he said, before ending his speech with his usual guttural roar of “long live freedom, dammit!”

cringe

Milei arrived in the U.S. on Saturday night. During his trip, he rang the Wall Street opening bell and spoke with investors. He also met with X owner Elon Musk for the third time. After the meeting, Musk posted on X that his “companies are actively looking for ways to invest in and support Argentina.”

Later on Tuesday, Milei will meet with Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa and the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The president is expected to return to Argentina on Wednesday morning.

hope a ballistic missile falls where they meet.

On september 23rd Danish government broadcaster DR reported the results of a poll showing that less than half of the population have confidence that politicians are able to make sound decisions before sending Danish soldiers to war. A majority agreed that the Danish military should be tasked with defending the territory of Denmark as well as that of fellow NATO protectorates. This is a much less bellicose stance than what the media and politicians would normally have you believe.

The poll comes together with two retired generals making criticisms of the way Denmark has taken part in foreign imperialist adventures over the past few decades. Former chief of staff Jesper Helsøe is predicting that the people and the politicians will "think it very well through" another time before going to war again and brigadier general Ole Kværnø has made this comment:

We have been at war for 30 years, we have had 30,000 soldiers deployed. We have used military force and done violence to people we wanted to convince that our values were superior to any other set of values

While the public and military leaders are unable to see the benefits of imperialist adventures, Troels Lund Poulsen, head of the Liberal Party-controlled ministry of defense, dismisses the war fatigue. He points to how the Ukraine war made a majority of Danish voters support the abolition of Denmark's national abstention from EU's common war policy, stating that it shows how events "can luckily influence the individual Dane about what is sensible to do".

He goes on to admit that "errors " were made regarding the practical execution of the war but makes no mention of how imperial projects like the unprovoked full-scale invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were fundamentally criminal endeavours.

ANOTHER WIN

Lokomotiv defeated Avangard 3-2! Avangard opened strong scoring the first goal of the game, but the railwaymen rallied, tying the game 1-1 by the end of the first and scoring twice more in the second! Omsk did their best and scored another goal but they weren't able to tie it up before the game ended.

Lokomotiv next plays HC Sochi on Saturday, September 28 at 5pm Moscow Standard Time!

УРА ЛОКОМОТИВ

FFS the futurama suicide pods are literally real now

Several arrested after woman dies in 'suicide pod'

spoiler

Police in Switzerland made multiple arrests after a woman reportedly ended her life using a so-called suicide pod, in apparently the first case of its kind.

Police in the Schaffhausen region said they arrested "several persons" on suspicion of inciting, and aiding and abetting suicide after she died reportedly by using a pod made by the company Sarco on Monday.

While assisted dying is legally protected in some circumstances in Switzerland, it is strictly regulated and the Sarco pod has encountered opposition.

Officers recovered the device and body at the scene.

Warning: Contains distressing content

The company behind the controversial pod says it can be solely operated by the person seeking to end their own life, without medical supervision.

Police said it was used on Monday at a forest hut in the Merishausen area, a sparsely populated part of Switzerland on the German border.

Police said they were tipped off by a law firm about a suicide involving the device. The number of people arrested and their identities were not disclosed. The deceased also was not named.

In July, a pro-assisted dying group, which promotes the Sarco device, said it anticipated that it would be used for the first time this year.

Advocates say it provides an option not reliant on drugs or doctors, and that it expands access to euthanasia as the portable device can be 3D-printed and assembled at home.

However, there also has been opposition in Switzerland, despite the country having some of the world's most protective laws surrounding assisted dying.

Critics fear the device's modern design glamorises suicide and the fact that it can be operated without medical oversight is concerning.

Assisted dying is illegal in the UK and in most other European countries, but thousands have travelled to Switzerland over the years to end their own lives.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8144v9pveo

Conversation I just had -

Me: "You support Israel invading Lebanon?"

Lib: "Yes because Hezbollah have been firing rockets at settlements for months"

Me: "And you support Ukraine?"

Lib: "Yes Ukraine should defend itself because Russia invaded."

Me: "What was Ukraine doing to Donbass before Russia invaded?"

Lib: "Nothing"

Reupload because the first upload was only 48 seconds for some reason. Anyway it's a pretty hype video, more interesting than the 15th rocket trail in the sky video anyway.

Worth watching: Hezbollah publishes a 4 minute video of its underground missile base 'Emad 4'

https://tankie.tube/w/iLZBao4CJG39pcGntC1Sgf

Can somebody point me to any good resources about the relationship between Russia and Syria? It looks like another proxy front is going to open up there, and if NATO is starting to pressure Zelensky to reach a settlement I assume Russia can just flood it with weapons. Basically a reverse Operation Cyclone. The wartime economy has also been pretty good to Russia

Wasn't there supposed to have been a speech by the Supreme leader of Iran?

was the kishida resignation the first stage in japanese decolonization? play for time and wait out the empire's next move in westpac before taking a side materially

https://xcancel.com/maphumanintent/status/1720933055307600231

Fun theoretical exercise I'm currently working on for the @fortisanalysis side of things:

US refineries (total) only store about 40 million gallons of military-grade jet fuel at any given time, or about 36,400 flight hours for an F/A-18E/F Super Hornet launched from an aircraft carrier. For 40 x -18's per carrier, this is about 910 flight hours. A carrier holds roughly 3 million gallons of fuel for its wing, about 68 flight hours per bird. Now consider that a notional mixed complement of 20 x F-35's and 20 X F-15EX's operating out of Kadena AFB would consume about 62,400 gallons per hour combined. Thus, just a single carrier wing and a single AFB wing's complement of fighters (80 combined) theoretically all operating at once would drink 106,400 gal/hr.

So...

The net stores of military jet fuel immediately available from US refiners above the global contingency supplies managed by the Defense Logistics Agency at any time represents about 375 net flight hours for one carrier and one air wing...less than 16 days of high intensity air operations by far fewer assets than the US would throw into an all-out theater conflict in the Pacific Rim. DLA Energy ended FY2022 with 1.68 billion gallons of on hand inventory of jet fuel to serve the entire DOD combined inventory of 14,000+ aviation assets - cargo, fighter, rotary wing, bombers, drones, tankers, and recon. Which begs the question: How fast would two theaters of conflict burn through all contingency supplies of fuel? And what does DOD do when the well runs dry?

Reminder that for the Gulf War's air campaign, the US had nearly 6 months to prepare, move assets into place, build up whole new infrastructure, etc., right next to Iraq without the Iraqis being able to do much to respond. Westerners love to call back on that campaign to justify their belief that the US/NATO could totally destroy any opponent in just a few weeks with their superior air forces, but completely ignore the logistical realities of actually doing so. And today, with the proliferation of long-range precision munitions, actually managing to build up the concentrations of forces and supplies necessary for large campaigns like this is substantially more difficult - we see this already in Ukraine, with Russian deep strikes doing significant damage, taking out ammunition depots and arms shipments, and wiping out various gatherings of Ukrainian troops and mercenaries.

If Iraq had the ballistic missiles that Yemen wields today, things could have gone very differently back then.

Haifa rockets: https://tankie.tube/w/mekpKNG9My1EqYpeFBsDns

Safed: https://tankie.tube/w/uaBZGDusFhECcjUSgeNCcf

Tamra interceptions: https://tankie.tube/w/x7UfQ3Zyb59n5UoyT5tpQf

Bombing near Tebnim Hospital Lebanon: https://tankie.tube/w/vyDth8Gp32MiKP3VfgT6hS

Less videos are happening today. I suspect the population is now listening to the media and military requests not to publish video. The number of sirens going off seems to be about the same so I don't think Hezbollah have reduced their operation.

Colombia President Petro at the UN: "The control of humanity on the basis of barbarism is under construction, and its demonstration is Gaza and Lebanon. When Gaza dies, all of humanity will die."

Been feeling somewhat similarly lately. Like you know the world is gonna keep on spinning regardless, but if such open evil isn't extinguished, what hope is there for humanity?

Algerian state has filed a complaint with the Paris judiciary against the European MP Sarah Knafo of the “Reconquête” party.

MEP Sarah Knafo is the partner of Eric Zemmour, who has been convicted several times on racial hatred charges and is known for his anti-immigration and anti-Algerian stances in particular.

looked it up, she said Fr*nce sent 800million to Algeria and 120million to China each year article is in fr&nch just translate it.
https://www.20minutes.fr/economie/4111460-20240923-france-donne-800-millions-algerie-tous-ans-pourquoi-affirmations-doivent-etre-nuancees

Otherwise mid article that tells us nothing new, interesting, or important except for the last paragraph:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202409/1320119.shtml

Multiple aerial bombs exploded around the camp of China's 22nd batch of peacekeeping troops in Lebanon on Thursday. The shockwaves and debris from the explosions damaged some facilities in the camp, but fortunately no one was injured, China Central Television reported on Saturday. The troops were in the midst of their daily peak physical training at the time of the explosions, and the bombing took place just 730 meters away from the camp, the report said.

[CW:Gore/DEATH] Alleged aftermath of battle between the KDNF and Junta in Myanmar. Junta deaths.

https://tankie.tube/w/3RL6iiScBRuVeYVJcFXCNM

These dudes are listed as allies to some of the communist factions. I know nothing about them at all, nor anything about the communist factions tbh fog of war and reliable information is a fucking mess.

imagine you're fighting ia war and mid battle you check your hone to see AI generated pics of it, crazy

Rockets in sky, upper galillee

https://tankie.tube/w/j49LErUar7p16tVbc1kj2H

Gabriel Rockhill: Western Marxism, Imperialism, Slavoj Zizek, Stalin, USSR, China, Deng Xiaoping

This is such an important addition to the doomerism/bloomerism discourse that has been going on in the news mega that failed to capture how Marxism works.

Marxism is about embracing contradictions. Trying to pretend as though History has ended and that historical changes no longer occur, or thinking that Socialism will fall out of the sky and Imperialism will wither away by itself without exacting its revenge through counter-revolutions - neither of which is a solution towards perceiving and understanding History as an objective process.

News are just data points. Marxism is the tool that enables us to “see” the contradictions and the interactions of historical forces, and through which material analysis could be made.

Marxism is seeing the world in contradictions rather than just black and white, good and evil.

In June I wrote: "I suspect thay sometime between July and September the US-israeli zionist forces in occupied Palestine will begin a massive operation in Lebanon against Hezbollah. ... If I'm wrong about this I'll eat my shoe."

Well, yesterday Hezbollah launched the most rockets in a single day since 2006 and on Monday the zionosts killed the most Lebanese in a single day since 2006. No shoe eating.

Khalil Nasrallah clarifies the change:

America officially announces sending more SS stormtroopers to the region.

I don't think most English speakers realize how absolutely screwed the zionist entity is at the moment. Hezbollah has expanded the circle of fire to include Haifa which means that between 25-35% of the entire industrial capacity of the entity is now under threat. Even if they don't strike the factories it is enough to stop them from receiving raw materials and having workers run the machines. Haifa also houses their oil refineries 😈🚀💥🔥

The occupiers have no choice now. They must invade with a ground operation in the next 6 months and they will subsequently be eviscerated by the Soldiers of God Insha'Allah.

Iraq is also about to become a major player in the support front in the coming weeks and months. The new fatwa from His Eminence Sayyed Ali Sistani is a game changer. For those who don't understand why, as a Grand Marja, it was his fatwa in 2014 that enabled the creation of the Hashd al Shabi to defeat Daesh. A hundred million Shia Muslims are now religiously obligated to engage in "every possible effort to stop this barbaric aggression and defend the people of Lebanon". It is difficult to understate the importance of this.

Prepare for a barrage of horrific nazi war crimes from the atlanto-zionists and an equal magnitude of bravery, resilience, and strategic/tactical ingenuity from the resistance. The war for the Liberation of Palestine and all of West Asia is now happening. It will be a long and brutal one.

Pray for peace for the martyrs, a quick recovery to the wounded, and a triumphant victory for the Resistance.

this is not exactly headline news to most, but the US Forest Service will not be hiring any seasonal employees at all next year, except for firefighters, due to budget constraints. the forest service employs thousands of seasonal workers across the country in trails, maintenance, archaeology, natural resource management and science positions, etc. without seasonals it'll be a hell of a lot harder to keep the millions of acres of forest service land well maintained - especially considering that many non-fire seasonals are called in to help fight the fires in one way or another when they begin, and since so much FS land can hardly be called "well maintained" already. i have to imagine this will also put a strain on the national park service and other land management agencies who'll have to deal with thousands of applicants to a far fewer number of jobs - not to mention the seasonals at those agencies who'll be looking at this and seeing that their departments could be making the same decisions a few years down the road.

as always, congress can spend billions at the drop of a hat for bombing children across the planet, but breaks out the fucking abacus when it comes to hiring people who actually do useful and decent work. wonder how long before they just decide to straight up sell entire forest service ranger districts to timber companies or ranchers. can't be too long, at this rate!

Worth watching: Hezbollah publishes a 4 minute video of its underground missile base 'Emad 4'

Just saw a Trump ad fear mongering over public funding of transgender sugeries in prisons.

really has no real policy beyond scapegoating minorities and

qe with chinese characteristics incoming, though it doesn't seem as big as the libs would have liked it

prebubble mortgage rates getting lowered to match current ones

will be interesting to see where the money goes this time

From EyesOnSouth:

"Hezbollah unveils Kader 1 ballistic missile. The Resistance said that “at 6:30 am” it struck the Mossad command center in the neighborhoods of Tel Aviv. This cmd center is responsible for the pagers-radios terrorist attack & the assassination of Resistance leaders, Hezbollah said"

western and zionist sources say it was intercepted though. Power to the Resistance

maga communists are on fucking CNN now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeWN8Sh-QBo&t=109

When Israel imposes censorship orders officially, how much does that cut off?

Confirming what we already knew: Israel was blocking humanitarian aid and the US did nothing but sell it more weapons violating its own laws

i got an extension from russian github that bypasses paywalls and it works. neat
https://github.com/bpc-clone/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean/blob/master/README.md#installation
i noticed i had bypass firewalls extension installed from a long time ago but it wasn't working so i looked for an something that worked and found that

Suggestions for how I can watch the Ayatollah’s 10:15 speech live with English subs?

We're about to witness a lynching perpetrated by the Judicial Branch of the United States. There isn't a follow up to that sentence I could write that wouldn't get me thrown in a van.

I'm out of words. Piece of "content" shared by milei on his social media lmfao, be aware of the insane levels of cringe

it reads:

"Damn"

"We are totally fucked"

"Relax, Elon"

"You're not alone. We'll fight together"

It's 95% AI generated lmao, the world is completely wrong. There's a HUGE CUBA, europe is no more (good ending) and there's commies everywhere plus massive Palestine.

Mexico is seizing a quarry and port owned by a US mining company , aiming to turn it into a wildlife refuge
One last middle finger from AMLO 🫡

101st Airborne in Cyprus

What weapon systems do Hezbollah need to shoot down an F35? Something Chinese I'm guessing?

China has expressed explicit support for Lebanon here: https://archive.is/FCjiB

Beijing will continue to stand on the "side of justice and on the side of Arab brothers, including Lebanon," said Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Hopefully that converts to actual materiel support because I really want them to shoot some of these raiding jets down. Surely this is a good opportunity for China to actually field test some of these weapons for efficacy.

The relations between the United States and Brazil worsens.

The Clinton Foundation had invited Brazilian President Lula da Silva to speak at the event. This had been agreed with the event's security team and the president's security guards.

However, during the speech, President Lula da Silva and his team were barred. The reason was that President Joe Biden had arrived for a “surprise” visit to the event. Apparently, the American security guards tried to stop the Brazilian security guards. Lula da Silva refused to go there under the protection of the American security guards, believing that he would be safer with the Brazilian security guards.

The organizers of the event apparently got angry, and Lula da Silva and his team withdrew from the event. The atmosphere at the event completes the list of annoyances caused by the US to Brazil in the diplomatic marathon. Although the US government had implied that Itamaraty would mediate in conflicts with Venezuela following Nicolás Maduro's election, the State Department called a meeting to discuss the situation in the neighboring country with Argentina, which had its ambassador expelled by Maduro.

The government was also unhappy that the White House had sent a second-ranking US government official to the pro-democracy meeting called by Brazil at the UN, which will be attended, among others, by Emmanuel Macron, President of France, Pedro Sanchez, Prime Minister of Spain, Gabriel Boric, President of Chile, and Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia. All political allies of Lula da Silva.

The US does this shit, and then are surprised when these countries ally with China and Russia. Also, Democrats treating Global South leaders worse than fucking George Bush.

Central & West Africa have received terrible amounts of rain this year.

UNICEF responding to severe flooding in West and Central Africa affecting 4 million people

quotes

Severe flooding across West and Central Africa has hit an estimated 4 million people so far this year, many of them children, displacing at least 500,000 people and destroying more than 300,000 homes.

The flooding ranges from Liberia to Nigeria and across Mali, Niger and Chad, with central Africa also affected. In Northeast Nigeria, a burst dam this week has added further to displacement with an estimated 40 per cent of the town of Maiduguri flooded, affecting up to 200,000 people. Other dams in the sub-region are also under pressure with the heavy rainfall, with fears that any similar dam breaks would lead to even greater displacement.

Floods in the region have already damaged at least 61 schools and 13 health centres. Last year’s flooding, which was also severe, had affected 692,000 people in the region by this point in the year, and eventually affected 4.5 million.

In Chad, one of the worst-hit countries, torrential rains have caused flooding throughout the country since late July, with nearly 1.5 million people affected already, 145 deaths and the destruction of 70,000 houses, according to the government. The flooding has also destroyed bridges and roads. Wadi river valleys are full and difficult to cross, adding to the complexity of delivering aid into Sudan’s Darfur region.

16 out of 24 countries in West and Central Africa are among the 30 countries with the biggest climate change risk for children, according to UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index.

Israeli Minister of "Diaspora Affairs & Combatting Antisemitism" calls for destroying the “hostile Shia population” in South Lebanon by establishing a “buffer zone free of enemy population.”

Bravest IOF goons:
https://xcancel.com/ME_Observer_/status/1838715632184869303

Watching Hasan just now, he had a clip on that I think is perfect example of how Israeli / US propaganda seeps into the national consciousness (don't know how to link Youtube without trackers, but you can see the clip for yourself by searching for the account "CBS Mornings" and the title is "Breaking down the Middle East conflict: Israel's strikes on Hezbollah, U.S. troop movements".

First off, CBS Mornings is the kind of generic news program that my boomer parents watch. Like most of the non-cable news networks, the public sees it as "impartial", if maybe a little boring.

OK, so in this clip, you have 3 news anchors. In other countries there may be news anchors who know what they are talking about... but that's definitely not the case in the US. They're just... dumbasses with communications degrees who got where they are at because they are conventionally attractive, articulate, and can speak with authority. They don't actually know about or understand these issues. They ask dumbass questions that dumbass Americans themselves might ask someone, all done without any pushback or probing follow-through of interviewees. Because they themselves have no actual understanding the world around them.

The person they are asking their questions to - Samantha Vinograd - is NOT a dumbass. She is, however, a CIA/State Dept asset and not even shy about it. She knows the company line very well. So you have three dumbasses asking a real pro what to think about Israel. And she knows exactly how to play that fiddle and how to frame it. She doesn't even need to prepare for challenging questions because they will never come.

So your typical American watches this, and all they need to know is placed right in front of them, without having to do any sort of critical thought. It's people who are seemingly asking "good" questions even though they're not and have no idea what's going on, getting those questions answered by just the right person that the CIA/State Dept wants there.

My biggest takeaway from Blowback season 5 so far is Norodom Sihanouk kinda rules, and I cannot believe I'm saying that about a monarch.

Just had my a talk with somebody who seemed distraught about what was going in Lebanon asking me about what was hezbollah doing and if all thoses loses that the zionits are claiming are true. She is a really smart woman but it made me realise that most people aren't like the people here on this site who are well versed in how the empire function and the situation on the ground. It Shows the effectiveness of the total information blackout of the entity as well. I just showed her video of hezbollah tunnels and talked quickly about the logistical network of the resistance.

Some more news and combat footage from the Donbass/Kursk fronts.

Russian forces are encircling the Kiev-occupied, southern Donetsk People’s Republic city of Ugledar (with videos, some 18+): https://southfront.press/battle-for-ugledar-ukrainian-elite-forces-try-to-escape/

A Russian Iskander missile strike destroyed another US-supplied “HIMARS” launcher in Sumy oblast, somewhere near the Kursk border: https://odysee.com/@Support4Z:b/📽️-A-🇬🇧-🇫🇷,--Russian-forces-destroyed-enemy-HIMARS!:f

Russian Kornet ATGM destroys US-supplied “Bradley” infantry fighting vehicle in the DPR: https://odysee.com/@Support4Z:b/📽️-A-🇬🇧-🇫🇷,--The-US-made-Bradley-IFV-of-the-AFU!:3

I saw a TikTok video the other day with Shir Hever, a political economist born in the illegal zionist entity. In his view the zionist project is effectively over as "any regime that commits genocide also commits suicide".

He claims that every sector of the entity's economy is collapsing due to the genocide: tourism has disappeared, academic exchange with the rest of the world is ending and investment in the high tech sector is drying up fast. The settlers themselves are moving their money out of the entity as well with zionist pension funds increasingly preferring investments abroad over domestic.

Settlers are also leaving the entity like never before. Up to half a million settlers has left since the Al-Aqsa Flood and it is especially the highly educated with resources and prospects abroad who are leaving. It has become very hard to get a doctor's appointment due to the number of doctors leaving. Even the regime itself has no clear idea of how many are leaving, as the people at the central bureau of statistics who were supposed to do the calculations has also left.

According to Hever the zionist project has come to an end and the current system of injustice is coming apart. To him, emulating South Africa's transition away from apartheid is the only way forward of "Israelis" are to have a future in Palestine.

I'm on a little writing spree, so you're getting part two already. Sorry for no proofreading ofc.

The Rise of the Collective Shia Identity: Part Two

We continue the story around 15 years later, we’re now in the early 90s. Three significant events have taken place in the modern Shia story. The first and the most significant is the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the second is the Iraq-Iran War, the third is the formation of Hezbollah in South Lebanon and the real start of the Shia Lebanese story. We have to start with the Islamic Revolution. I won’t go into the details of how the Revolution happened and why it happened, but I will talk about what it meant at the time and what the consequences were. I will sum the events of the Revolution in three sentences. Mass protests break out in Iran against the Shah’s repression and economic inequality, which slowly takes a more Islamist character in opposition to the Shah’s pro-Western secular regime. The Islamization of the protests meant that some sort of spiritual leadership had to rise, Ayatollah Khomeini who was exiled in Paris becomes the spiritual leader and he manages to unify all sectors of the protest movement under his leadership. He then returned to Iran as the unopposed leader of the movement in the ending stage of the revolution and then consolidated the revolution in his vision of the new Iran working under his system of Wilayat al Faqih.

The success of the revolution in Iran led to the formation of the first modern Islamic state which draws its legitimacy from Shia Islam. Sykes-Picot created only kingdoms as in the Gulf and Iraq, and semi-functional weak republics like Syria and Lebanon. The establishment of Islamic Republic was significant on several levels. It was the first popular revolution which established an Islamic Republic, unlike the revolutions in states such as Egypt and Iraq, where military dictatorships were founded instead of the old comprador kingdoms. It also marked the end of nearly 2500 years of hereditary rule in Iran and old Persia. The events of the Islamic Revolution were frightening for the Gulf monarchies and for Iraq, as they realised the threat of Shia Islamism within their borders. One of Khomeini’s first promises after the success of the revolution was exporting the experience to other nations where “disbelievers” were in power and where Shias were barred from participating in controlling their destiny. The first seeds of a “Shia International” were planted by Khomeini very quickly. Shias in Iraq were very emboldened by Khomeini’s success, and political activities by the banned Dawa Party accelerated in late 1979 and early 1980, which ended after the execution of Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr in Iraq in 1980. If you were a Shia Islamist in Iraq in 1975 for example, you had nowhere to go, but if you needed to flee in 1980, you suddenly have a massive Shia neighbour that not only allows you to come as a refugee, but also fully supports your political activities and gives you weapons.

Saddam decided to not wait for the inevitable confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran and started a massive war in late 1980. The Iraq-Iran war is the most important moment in the formation of the “Shia International” and the formation of the first fully ideological generation of young Shias that would later change the world. Literally every single influential Shia character of the last 30 years had some degree of interaction with Ayatollah Khomeini or Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr or fought in the Iraq-Iran War. Qassem Soleimani fought in the war. Hadi Al Ameri, leader of Badr Brigades in Iraq fought in the war. Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah was a 16-year-old student under Al Sadr. The Houthi family lived in Qom in Iran after the revolution. Ali Khamenei was President of Iran during the war. Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis fought in the war. Even current president of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian fought in the war. Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, son of former Shia Grand Marja Muhsin Al Hakim fought in the war and later become president of Iraq for one month under the American occupation. Musa Al Sadr’s niece was married to Khomeini’s son Ahmed and Musa’s son was married to Khomeini’s granddaughter. The war itself was not that eventful, with both sides mostly in deadlock for eight years. The relevant part of the whole war was basically four battles. Iraqi capture of Khorramshahr and then the Iranian liberation of the city. Then the Iranian capture of Al Faw and the Iraqi liberation of the area. The Gulf monarchies went crazy in their support of Saddam during the war and gave him lots of money, mainly because they really wanted the defeat of Iran without shooting a bullet, which reminds us of a certain Ukrainian comedian who is getting duped now in a similar way.

The culture around the war is the most important part in the formation of the modern Shia identity in my opinion. In Christianity, the defining moment for the religion is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which presents Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice of humanity and the image of him bleeding on the cross is etched into the mind of every Christian. For Shia Muslims, the martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Muhammed Imam Hussain and the wholesale murder of his entire family holds even more emotional value than the crucifixion of Jesus Christ does for Christians, because there’s no happy ending here and no Ascension to the sky. Hussain was slaughtered, his father Ali ibn Abu Talib had his skull shattered while leading morning prayers, and every single Imam was murdered in Shia beliefs. What the Iraq-Iran War did was a complete revival of the tradition of martyrdom in Shia Islam and the commemoration of martyrs became not only just an accepted practice, but also encouraged by the Iranian state. Iranian fighters that were deployed to the front wore headbands with Shia slogans such as “Ya Hussain”, “Ya Zahra” and “Ya Mahdi”, clerics held Qurans over the heads of the fighters when they were boarding trains and trucks to the front, and fighters didn’t only receive combat training at camps before reaching the front, but they also received religious lessons about the sacrifices of Hussain and his family and participated in the first sessions of state-sponsored “Matams” in modern history, where poems about martyrdom were recited while the religious Shia beat their chests. The official “music” of the Iranian state was no longer Googoosh in her skirt performing Persian Pop for the son of the Shah in his birthday party, but it was militarised and Islamised and became stuff like “Karbala Ma Darim” (“Karbala we’re coming”, a reference to the holy city of Karbala) and “Mamad Naboodi Babini” (“Mohammed you didn’t see it”, a reference to an Iranian solider that played a heroic role in the battle of Khorramshahr, but was martyred a few days before the liberation of the city). The names of the streets were changed, the names of metro stations were changed, the names of the city squares were changed. Pahlavi Street became Shahid Bahonar Street, the Tehran Metro now has over 15 stations named after some martyr, mostly from the Iraq-Iran War and the revolution. This complete transformation of Iranian society led to the creation of the concept of the Resistance itself in those years. What is the Iraq-Iran War called in Persian? Difaa e-Muqaddas, Holy Resistance.

From the Al-Jazeera live feed:

Biden says ‘time to finalise’ Gaza deal and ‘end this war’

US President Joe Biden has urged Israel and Hamas to finalise a months-old ceasefire proposal, telling the United Nations he was committed to ending the war on Gaza.

“Now is the time for the parties to finalise its terms,” he said of the deal brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

The deal will “bring the hostages home and secure security for Israel and Gaza free from Hamas’s grip, ease the suffering in Gaza and end this war,” Biden told the UN General Assembly.

I don’t recall Biden ever being more clear that what he wants isn’t a cease fire, it’s for Hamas to surrender. When he says “Gaza free from Hamas’ grip”, he’s saying he wants a Palestinian Authority situation - which is precisely what Israel wants. Literally everything he said there is just what Israel wants: return the hostages, keep Israel “secure”, and for Hamas to self-immolate and hand over Gaza to either to Zionist lapdogs or an international coalition of American lapdogs. The idea that this man is putting any pressure on Netanyahu is obviously ridiculous.

Syria/Lebanon - Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militants attacked Hezbollah positions in Saraqib Axis, east of Idlib

https://tankie.tube/w/w7SgDTVM6vk4G5PgJLRQnu

Some heavy artillery (130mm 'M-46). Makes me wonder how much of Hezbollah's forces are committed to Syria and can take part in Lebanon.

Amal Saad, scholar of Hezbollah:

We have to stop calling Israel’s current military-security-terrorist campaign against Lebanon an escalation and start calling it a war. Not total war without ceilings yet, but war, nonetheless. Israel’s “shock and awe” offensive pursues short term tactical gains to make up for its strategic losses, while Hizbullah is aiming for longer term strategic objectives despite some tactical losses it has endured over the past week.

Israel's "fleeing forward" strategy comes with several unrealistic objectives, none of which are likely to be achieved:

• pushing Hizbullah to retreat from the border and end its support front with Gaza
• expel and displace people from South Lebanon to potentially use as a bargaining chip to return settlers to the North
• demoralise and break the resolve of Resistance fighters and the Resistance community
• significantly degrade Hizbullah’s military capabilities

The farcical claim that Lebanese households are harbouring cruise missiles is such a transparently absurd, lazy and crudely constructed Israeli fabrication that it appears to serve no purpose beyond being a tactic of blackmail to pressure Hizbullah into capitulating to Israel’s demands. Thus, when Israel claimed today that it struck a record 1,600+ “Hizbullah sites, mostly weapons stored within homes,” yesterday, this was an admission that it had surgically killed and displaced over 1600 families.

Since Israel’s mass terrorist offensive last Tuesday, Hizbullah’s strategy has been to escalate both horizontally, by widening the scope of attacks across Israel, and vertically, through intensified strikes and the introduction of new weapons, while holding back its advanced missiles for now. In doing so, it has extended the de facto security zone it established in northern Israel, reaching as far as Haifa, and increasing the number of displaced Israelis from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

Hizbullah has limited its strikes to key strategic military targets, such as military installations and weapons factories, avoiding civilian targets and infrastructure, even as Israel persists in committing war crimes against Lebanese civilians. While Israel’s approach has been one of displacement and massacre, Hizbullah’s strategy has focused on displacement and paralysis. Its Resistance forces aim to weaken the IDF’s resolve and erode the resilience of Israel's home front through a strategy of combined military and economic attrition. Whether or not Hizbullah will escalate further by targeting civilian objects in Israel and risk unleashing Israel’s firepower against Beirut remains to be seen. This decision will likely depend on Hizbullah’s perception of a strategic need to retaliate rather than a desire for vengeance.

Hizbullah's ability to rebound from the pager attacks and the assassination of its senior commanders is a testament to its operational capability and its resilience in absorbing shocks to its command-and-control structure. Should Israel attempt a ground invasion of South Lebanon to create a buffer zone, Hizbullah will welcome it, as Nasrallah stated in his recent speech. This is where Hizbullah’s true strength lies: in close combat and preventing occupations. IDF troops would become sitting ducks for the Resistance’s advanced hybrid warfare tactics.

Part one effortpost here, I chose number two. Sorry for any grammatical fuckups in advance, it was too long to proof read.

The Rise of the Collective Shia Identity: Part One

The year is 1978. Ayatollah Khomeini, the main voice of Shia Islamism has just been expelled from Najaf by Saddam Hussein. Najaf, the capital of Shia Islam and where the biggest Hawzas (Shia Islamic schools) are located, is a hotspot of political repression, executions, and arrests. The main Marja (basically Shia pope), Sayyid Abu Al Qasim Al Khoei is reduced to a strictly religious role, giving rulings about useless things like marriages and inheritance. His predecessor, Sayyid Muhsin Al Hakim, pushed the political buttons too hard with a ruling that deemed communists and Baathists as disbelievers, which made the Iraqi state go crazy and start a huge campaign of repression of anything political from the Shia elite. Khomeini’s development of the concept of Wilayat Al Faqih was very worrying for Baathist Iraq, so he was expelled from Najaf.

Shias in Iraq never got a place post-Sykes-Picot, with the Kingdom of Iraq being dominated by the Sunni Baghdadi elite. The period between 1958-1968 after the revolution was too chaotic and disjointed to produce an elite, with daily conflicts and coup attempts by adventurers with different ideologies. The Baathist period produced a new elite strictly dominated by Sunnis from Salahaddin Province, so the Shias just never got a seat at the table. Two ideologies penetrated the Shia mind, Islamism and Communism. Islamists were concentrated in Karbala and Najaf, two holy cities for Shia Islam. Communists where concentrated in Nasiriyah, Amarah and Basra, cities where poverty was rampant. Islamists were finally organised in the form of the Dawa Party, led by Musa Al Sadr’s cousin Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr. Musa Al Sadr would later rise as the spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shia community. Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr’s works and political activities really annoyed the Iraqi state, so he and his sister were executed by the state in 1980. Most of their followers were executed or exiled. Many of the influential families in Najaf and Karbala had some Persian ancestry, nearly all those families suffered from mass deportations as Saddam’s anti-Persian paranoia grew. The communists suffered from the same fate, with most communists either executed or exiled by the state due to their political activities.

Now we’re done with Iraq, let’s go to Iran. Shia Islamism is dead here too, the Shah’s security services arrests anyone with any political activity. Khomeini was successfully chased out 20 years ago, and there’s no organised political force that can even talk loudly without getting executed. The Shah is at least Shia Muslim on paper, he prays in public once every 10 years, visits the shrines in Qom and Mashhad occasionally, but to everyone with a functioning brain, this man is a disbeliever. There’s something brewing, but let’s wait with that story.

Let’s go to Lebanon. Shias in Lebanon are around half of the Muslim population. It’s hard to get exact numbers, but Shias are around 25% of the total population of the country. The Shia community here also never got a real seat at the table. The president holds most of the power and is always a Maronite. The prime minister gets fired every few weeks, but he’s always a Sunni and does nothing while the Maronite elite is pretending to be French and robbing the country. The speaker of the parliament is Shia, but toilet paper is more useful than that position. Feudalism didn’t really end in the Shia parts of Lebanon, most Shias were farmers who were getting fucked so hard on a daily basis that they didn’t have time to even think about politics. Remember we’re in 1978, where are the Shias in the middle of civil war? The answer is nowhere. The main sides are Maronites vs Sunni Muslims, communists and Palestinians. Shias were not a major factor here. The only notable Shia organization is the Amal Movement, led by Musa Al Sadr. Musa was a charismatic leader who would set the foundations of the modern Shia Lebanese identity, he was respected by all sectors of the cursed Lebanese society and his connections to Iran and Iraq were slowly starting to be important in a regional context. But nothing good lasts, as he was inexplicably disappeared and presumably killed by Gaddafi during a routine visit to Libya in August 1978.

Let’s go to Yemen and the Gulf. In Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Shias were an afterthought, they are 0% of the ruling families and have zero political representation. They’re allowed to do some rituals at home when no one sees, but if you open your mouth in public and say anything Shia Islamist, you’re getting disappeared and your whole family will probably be deported to Iran or something. Shias in Bahrain are the absolute majority and they’re significant minorities in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In Yemen, the Shias are not the same kind of Shia as in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon. The main group of Shia Muslims are either called Jaafari after the theological works of the sixth Shia Imam Jaafar Al Sadiq, or Ithna Ashari (Twelvers) due to their belief in twelve Imams after the Prophet Muhammed, starting with Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib and ending with Imam Muhammed Al Mahdi, also known as the Hidden Imam who according to Shia beliefs will reappear one day and basically set in motion the end of the physical world. The Shia of Yemen are known as Zaydis, after Zayd ibn Jaafar Al Sadiq, who the Zaidis recognized as 7th Imam, while the Twelvers recognized Musa ibn Jaafar Al Sadiq. The Zaidi Imamate in Northern Yemen continued for nearly a thousand years, but it could not withstand the post-WW2 chaos in the region and ended in nearly comic fashion after a coup led by local rivals and involvement from an exiled Iraqi officer. The Zaydi community here in 1978 is in disarray, with many converting to Sunni Islam out of convenience in a new world. There’s no organized Zaydi force or political party, they just farm in the highlands of Northern Yemen and chill out there. It is a fading group, but wait, something just happened in Yemen. Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Zaydi military officer from Sanaa, and one of the great adventurers of the 1900s in the Middle East, just did a military coup and took power in the failing state of North Yemen in July 1978.

How did this defeated religious group go from edges of the region to the dominant group in five countries and a political force that annoys America and Israel? We’ll find out in the next episode as we cover the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the formative value of the Iraq-Iran War, the failed Shaaban Revolution in Iraq, the rise of Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon, and the rise of the Houthi (Ansarallah) movement in Yemen.