this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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Image is of Azerbaijan's President, Aliyev (left) and Armenia's President, Pashinyan (right) in a meeting a month or two after Azerbaijan took Nagorno-Karabakh.


  1. Never go to a second location.
  2. Always get the interior ministry post.
  3. Never get in a helicopter or any small aircraft.
  4. If someone with a gun enters your car, they’re gonna kill you.
  5. If someone tells you they’re not going to kill you, they’re calming you down to kill you later.
  6. Never give up your nukes.
  7. Never release the opposition's political prisoners.
  8. Never let the opposition delay elections.
  9. If someone starts to get into German runes, drop them.
  10. Never trust a South American with a German name.
  11. Never move anywhere for a religion.
  12. Never go into the sewers unless you’re a sewer guy.
  13. If someone’s trying to get you to commit a crime, they're FBI (sometimes CIA or military intelligence).
  14. Never become an FBI informant.
  15. If you do become an FBI informant, record everything.
  16. Never relinquish your arms.
  17. Always get it in writing.
  18. If you keep gambling, you’ll eventually win.
  19. Never talk to cops without a lawyer.
  20. Always pay your mercenaries.
  21. Don’t let anyone take your passport.

To add an addendum to rule 3, never put your President and Foreign Minister in the same helicopter or small aircraft. Especially if doing so in bad weather conditions. Especially if you're already under threat from a hostile nuclear power in the region with a proclivity for terrorism (though this probably isn't Israel's doing, in this particular case).


Anyway, Azerbaijan. Not a great country, I think. Did some genocides. They're a petrostate that is hosting Cop29, which I suppose is a way for the bourgeoisie to implicitly convey their contempt for the green movement. They got weapons from Israel, too.

Just for the record, there's an Iranian province called East Azerbaijan, which is not the same as Azerbaijan.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is Azerbaijan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful. Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


top 50 comments
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[–] [email protected] 115 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Biden calls ICC decision 'outrageous'

Critical support to Isnreal for destroying decades of Western "rules-based order" propaganda in a matter of weeks

[–] [email protected] 71 points 6 months ago (2 children)

ICC is the "arrest the black guy" of rules based order, it was always shit. (Well they are continuation of yugoslavia tribunal, and now also search for putin). ICJ is the more impartial, but useless institution.

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 6 months ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 100 points 6 months ago (13 children)

Didn’t know someone could deserve worse than hell

For context: “ Israeli occupation soldiers filmed themselves setting fire to the library at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza City, which housed a valuable scholarly collection built up over many years.”

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 6 months ago (12 children)
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[–] [email protected] 100 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Looks like Ireland, Slovenia, Norway and Spain will all officially recognise the State of Palestine tomorrow. Not often we get positive news from Nazi Europe, so I'm happy about this.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I have some bad news. Every one of those countries are Hamas now.

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

We are self-deprecating and irony poisoned enough, time for a bit of an antidote.

This news mega, and Hexbear writ large, is such a great resource for understanding what’s going on in the world. Proof that the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism really is the most powerful lens for understanding the reality around us.

I sat down and ate breakfast for a long time at a hotel over the weekend. The breakfast room had Fox News blaring the whole time. Obviously you’re getting a heavy reactionary slant on things with them. But beyond that, it’s just the quality of information was so low, it was actively harmful to watch. You’d better informed not watching anything and absorbing information about the world around you from the ether. Saw some MSNBC last month and it’s not much better. Not so much inventing reality from whole cloth like Fox News, but still leaving out plenty of critical information, without which you still really can’t understand the world around you.

It’s never been more clear to me how deeply propagandized mainstream news is. It’s not even always a conscious act (though it definitely is a lot of the time), just your normal base/superstructure stuff.

And this news mega, this site, and Marxism broadly is such an oasis. Helps you not only stay properly informed, but keeps your sanity as well.

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (27 children)
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[–] [email protected] 94 points 6 months ago (7 children)
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[–] [email protected] 92 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (15 children)

Ok, I think we have officially reached a new peak of absurdity in domestic American politics regarding Israel. You might not even believe what I am about to tell you:

Representatives Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) and Max Miller (R-OH) have introduced a bill to Congress which grants Americans serving in the IDF the same benefits as those serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 6 months ago (9 children)

this is the level of expertise being an ivy league graduate brings you 😅

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 6 months ago (10 children)

Biden denounces ICC for ‘outrageous’ implication of equivalence between Israel and Hamas

Agreed, Israel is obviously worse.

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 6 months ago (10 children)

I don't particularly like anti-cortes posting, but incredible comment:

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 6 months ago (11 children)

Biden administration signals it will support push to hit ICC with sanctions

Okay this is getting ridiculous lol. I understand the geopolitical reason the US supports Isreal is that it needs a vassal state to exert military influence on the Middle East / North Africa and prevent any attempts of decolonisation. But at this point maintain the state of Israel is costing them the entirety of their soft power in every other region in the world.

Let's not forget that a massive chunk of America's power(especially in Europe and East Asia) comes from people liking them. Otherwise no one will agree to hosting tens of thousands of their troops in their own country. This is also why the US invests such a large amount on cultural exports like Hollywood movies.

So I missing something in my analysis? Surely the Middle East can't be more important than Europe and Asia? Or is the American political class so demented they can no longer make rational decisions even in the interests of the bourgeoise?

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

Damn. Communist guest absolutely fucking destroys a Tory MP's narratives about Palestine and student protests on some British TV show: Revolutionary Communist vs. Tory MP Suella Braverman on GB news (18m video)

This is an excellent example of going on the attack, refusing to be diverted, and keeping reactionaries from controlling the narrative even in a hostile environment. Holy shit.

elmofire

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (11 children)

ICJ orders Israel to halt Rafah offensive

In his reading of the ruling, Judge Salam says the court orders Israel to halt its Rafah offensive.

https://aje.io/hg54p3?update=2922734

Of course, Israel isn't going to comply but still a L.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 6 months ago

Never go into the tunnels unless you're a tunnel guy.

[–] [email protected] 82 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Kabosu, the dog who inspired memes and cryptocurrency logos, passed away today.

swole-doge

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 6 months ago (23 children)

There’s a not unreasonable chance that the presidential election is a tie, based on current polls.

Trump has a few points lead in Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. That puts him at 268. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are much closer. If Biden wins those he’d be at 269. Finally Trump is a couple points up in Nebraska’s second, which would put him also at 269.

https://www.270towin.com/maps/yPJ8v

I hope that happens, it would probably be the funniest outcome.

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Two more activists were just declared not guilty of criminal damage for occupying, shutting down, and exposing another Israeli owned Elbit drone factory here in the UK.

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (21 children)

In case you missed it Zelenskyy pushes allies for direct involvement in Ukraine’s war with Russia.

Some rather legitimately impossible demands from Zelenskyy in there:

“Russians are using 300 planes on the territory of Ukraine. We [Ukraine] need at least 120-130 planes to resist in the sky,” Zelenskyy said, again calling on Western allies to supply with additional air defence systems. Ukraine is waiting for the delivery of US-designed F-16 fighter jets.

He just asked for 130 fighter jets from NATO? What the actual hell! Ukraine only had 170 jets in 2014 before the war started. Does any NATO country except for the USA even have that many spare jets? Zelenskyy is asking for an entirely new air force to fight Russia, direct from NATO. He really sees NATO as Amazon Prime for arms shipments or something.

He [Zelenskyy] said if countries could not supply the planes straight away, they could still fly them from neighbouring NATO states and shoot down Russian missiles.

Ukraine was also negotiating with international partners to use their weapons to strike Russian military hardware at the border and further inside Russian territory, Zelenskyy said.

“So far, there is nothing positive,” he said.

Did he just ask for European airforces to directly participate in the war? Is he out of his mind?! Of course NATO said you you clueless fool!

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 6 months ago (11 children)

China re-establishes direct flights with Cuba to strengthen relationship with the Caribbean

Cuba bets on Chinese tourism to help improve economic situation amid embargo

article

Last Friday (17), Air China resumed flights between Beijing and Havana, with the first aircraft arriving in the Cuban capital with 116 passengers. The flights resumed after several years of interruption following the Covid-19 crisis.

With a stopover in Madrid and two flights a week, the Cuban authorities and the Asian giant hope to increase this frequency in the short term in order to increase exchanges and communication between China and Latin America and the Caribbean.

At the beginning of May, Cuban Tourism Minister Juan Carlos García announced that Cuba would not require a visa for Chinese citizens with ordinary passports wishing to visit the Caribbean island.

Since then, according to the official Chinese newspaper Global Times, Internet searches about travel from China to Cuba have “skyrocketed”, becoming one of the main trends on the Chinese social network Sina Weibo.

Cuba's Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, showed up at Havana's international airport to welcome the first flight. After landing, the minister assured that the re-establishment of this air connection was “a dream come true” and that “it's here to stay”.

Referring to the difficult economic context the country is going through, Marrero said he was grateful for “all of China's cooperation at this time”. He added that the re-establishment of flights between Beijing and Havana “is not an isolated action”, but “will favor government and tourist exchanges”.

The Prime Minister, noting the strategic importance for Cuba of flights with China, said that the Cuban government is focused on ensuring that “this visa exemption action produces results and facilitates these exchanges”. He also announced that Cuba's next International Tourism Fair will be dedicated to China.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 6 months ago (7 children)

China's new drills are extensive.

I still don't think an invasion will come to pass but they're definitely ready to do one at this point.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Israel is recalling envoys from Norway and Ireland.

They keep owning themselves by doing shit like this.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 6 months ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 77 points 6 months ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 77 points 6 months ago (5 children)

In adventurism news, the shooter of Fico's testimony leaked and y'all probably won't hear about it in western media (as i predicted) as it turns out he indeed did it because Fico was anti-Ukraine (amongst others).

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 6 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 77 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I WAS THINKING ABOUT HOW OCTOBER 7TH IS GOING TO BE CELEBRATED ALL AROUND THE WORLD EVERY YEAR FROM HERE UNTIL THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ZIONIST ENTITY AND EVEN AFTERWARDS

THIS YEAR, OCTOBER 7TH 2024, I IMAGINE WESTERN GOVERNMENTS WILL CRACK DOWN HARD ON ANYONE CELEBRATING IT PUBLICLY.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Any liberal who still defends Israel at this point is completely irredeemable, and should forever be treated as the fascists that they truly are. They deserve no mercy in a post-revolution world.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 6 months ago (11 children)

Peak liberal investigative journalism

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 6 months ago (4 children)

::: spoiler the british government just invited a load of open neo nazis wearing nazi insignia into parliament and then gave them a round of applause




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[–] [email protected] 75 points 6 months ago (6 children)

@AryJeay reports:

Al-Qassam launched about 10-12 long-range rockets, from Rafah, travelling 100-110km to hit Tel Aviv, after a hiatus of 4 months. The Iron dome failed to intercept the rockets, more than 8 direct impacts were made, causing material damage and the ignition of fire.

2 settlers were also injured.

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 6 months ago (1 children)

University of Barcelona Breaks Ties With Israeli Institutions

Article

On Friday, Spanish students will set up a new camp in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

On Wednesday, the University of Barcelona (UB) and the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities of the University of Chile (UC) severed collaboration agreements with Israeli institutions.

This occurred as a form of protest against the killing of over 35,700 Palestinians during the offensive that Israeli occupation forces are carrying out in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian authorities have also recorded over 80,000 injured since October 2023.

The University of Barcelona committed to not establishing "agreements with Israeli institutions until the conditions in the Gaza area guarantee a situation of absolute peace and respect for human rights."

Besides terminating a collaboration agreement with Tel Aviv University, the Spanish university will implement the precautionary suspension of all its agreements and contracts with companies allegedly linked to the conflict. This will occur through a case-by-case analysis.

University authorities clarified that their institution does not have Israeli suppliers and will not hire any until the Zionist state publicly offers guarantees of peace and respect for human rights. The University of Barcelona Council will request the European Union to block "the participation of Israeli institutions in all projects funded with European funds."

On Friday, Spanish students will set up a camp in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Starting in June, they will also lead a general strike to protest the genocide in Gaza.

In Chile, the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities terminated a cooperation agreement with the International Center for University Teaching of Jewish Culture and the Institute of Jewish Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In justifying its decision, the Dean's Office highlighted its rejection of an Israeli response that is criminal and disproportionate, as well as the deliberate destruction of universities and hospitals by the Zionist army.

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Windows introduces Bonzi Buddy

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 6 months ago (30 children)

holy fuck is it exhausting to talk to redditbrained liberals IRL

I made the mistake to actually engage in a discussion about politics, and all the greatest hits came out -- and the worst, most frustating thing about this that I was treated like the weirdo, and I didn't even get into the "more controversial" topics

You think socialism is good? How do you explain Pol Pot then?!

They were literally propped up by the USA/CIA it's not even controversial at this point. [then they looked at me like I said grey aliens killed Princess Diana]

Well Israel's reaction is understandable, Khamas murdered and raped civilians you see

... Israel killed literally 100x as many civilians

If you are a moral person, you must condemn Putin's invasion of a sovereign country

Well, USA also invaded sovereign countries, and almost nobody gave a shit

That was a long time ago

The US war criminals are literally golfing as we speak

But Ukraine did nothing they were just minding their own business

wellll, except UKR did shell civilians in Donbass

Have you been brainwashed by Ruzzian propaganda?

Putin wants to bring back the Sovyet Yunyon, and the whole point of the USSR was Russian world domination

What? THe USSR wasn't even a Russian ethnostate? what the fuck are you talking about? jesse-wtf

Where did the so called revolution start? St Petersburg! Where is St Petersburg? Russia! It was a Russian plot for world domination

what-the-hell

I guess you also think that the Holodomor was good

... Not even Western liberal historians (with a few neocon exceptions) believe that there was a genocide there

So you DENY the HOLODOMOR??!?!

As I said, not even Western liberal historians (with a few neocon exceptions) believe that there was a genocide there, unlike what Churchill did to starve Bangladesh, that is actually well documented

Well we also condemn THAT

Yet you curiously never bring it up, but if someone mentions anything remotely Russian you start harping about the "Holodomor", and "Soviet-Russian imperialism"....

So you actually DENY the Holodomor? Like people would just LIE?! And the GULAGS were good?!?!

You see the GULAG was not a unique phenomenon, at the same time Africa was full of concentration camps run by the Fr*nch and the Bri'ish

But they did NOT put THEIR OWN people in camps! Putting your own people in camps is the WORST

I give up, I'm afraid it's a terminal case of brainworms brainworms

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 6 months ago (4 children)

A map of the countries that recognize a Palestinian state from Al Jazeera. As always its the Same Map international-community-1international-community-2

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The most wholesome thing you can find on the internet right now are dead occupation soldiers.

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

"Israel" bombed tents in Rafah. last report over 50 dead. horrific videos and images

(cw: death, gore) https://twitter.com/TheCradleMedia/status/1794853360149172575

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The news coming out of Rafah is horrific. I've deliberately avoided looking at the images, but I can't stop crying.

I'm not a third worldist, but even with the widespread protests in the west, how can this kind of injustice be resolved without something at least a little like a JDPON?

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 6 months ago (10 children)

I don’t know what the right word is. My first thought was to call it “gaslighting” but I don’t think this is the right word here. Maybe there’s a better non-English word.

What I’m referring to is the fact that no one on planet Earth believes Israel isn’t intentionally murdering civilians by the thousands. There is no explanation for not letting food and water in if not for reasons of collective punishment. Like, I’ve even tried to come up with a BS line I would take if I was Israel, and I can’t think of one. To my knowledge Israel hasn’t even really addressed not letting food and water in, they just simply do it.

We all know what Israel is doing. But the imperialists and Zionists simply trot out lines about “Israel isn’t targeting civilians” and “Hamas is the enemy, not the Palestinian people”. No one believes it but we are sort of “expected” to believe it. What would you actually call this?

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (13 children)

This is old news and not of great importance but it's a silly little story about the uselessness of liberal western progressivism that I don't think has been posted here before:

On May 8th the chairperson of the Copenhagen Pride organisation resigned to appease angry corporate sponsors who were cutting funding for the parade.

What angered companies like Google and Mærsk so much was a statement put out back in February by the pride organisation in which they declared that the organisation "stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people" and stated that the organisation would "voice concern over business activities in 'Israel' and the occupied Palestinian territories" to their partners.

Sponsors and the liberal establishment were deeply offended by the statement that they saw as a demand for them to take a stand against the genocide. The pride organisation demonstrated a complete lack of backbone as soon as the sponsors they depend on fire funding started leaving and put our a new statement apologising for "poor communication" and promised that they were "not asking any questions or making any demands" to their partners regarding 'Israel' and Palestine.

Eventually the chairperson decided to resign as a way of appeasing sponsors.

Received mainstream wisdom as communicated through the mainstream media quickly settled on siding with the sponsors. Everybody seems to agree that it was foolish of the organisation to say "please don't be an accessory to genocide" to their corporate sponsors, "experts" in the media are talking about how the pride organisation needs to fire their top leadership and grovel at the feet of corporate sponsors and everybody who have opinions for a living are talking about how you shouldn't connect LGBT rights to "a complex conflict in the middle East".

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (9 children)

TLDR of Simplicius's article yesterday:

  • Ukraine is, all of a sudden, finding significant success in hitting Russian air defence with ATACMS for some reason. Generally, how it's gone is that Russia shoots most of them down, but one or two missiles in the salvo gets through and wipes out the S-400/300 anyway. The good news is that the Russian doomers now have something to complain about again; it was deeply harmful of Russia to deprive Rybar's habitat of bad news as it's a critical part of their diets. It won't really change the course of the war necessarily, but...
  • Ukraine is also taking shots at Russian early warning nuclear ICBM sites, which is, to say the least, concerning. There's been some news about Russia doing tactical nuke exercises, but Simplicius points out that in this kind of war where vehicles and troops are generally fairly distributed and not in massive parking lots all concentrated together, a tactical nuke wouldn't achieve much that a bunch of conventional explosives couldn't, outside of cities at least. And we both doubt that Russia is close to nuking Ukrainian cities. But there's an implicit threat there nonetheless, which NATO may listen to, or may not.
  • Putin's been talking recently about how Zelensky is now an illegitimate ruler given the lack of elections in Ukraine, which is interesting when combined with the information that Yanukovich was recently spotted landing in Belarus. To be fair, there are alternative explanations (many high-up figures were brought there and perhaps Yanukovich was just asked to tag along due to the whole "brotherly nations" thing) but even so.
  • There have been rumors/claims recently in the media that Putin wants to freeze the conflict along the current front lines and sue for peace; this has been denied by Peskov.
  • There's been a fair amount of activity in rooting out corruption in the Russian army. As I understand it, none of it is incredibly major - some bribes here, a little unauthorized action there, and some punishments for underperforming commanders. But it is still a lot, all at once.
  • As always, rumors of new fronts opening up. Obviously with the whole thing in Kharkov now, I find it much harder to ignore these rumors, but an invasion from Belarus still seems a little unlikely.
  • Speaking of Kharkov, the Russians are now issuing Russian license plates for the region and some officials are beginning to talk about letting Kharkov decide its future and all that jazz. Significant to be sure, but it doesn't herald any imminent attempt to seize all of Kharkov IMO, especially with Putin saying that they wouldn't try to capture it for the forseeable future and the fact that there's like a single Russian division there also indicates that the intent wasn't immediate, massive territorial expansion like with the beginning of the war. Ukraine is stripping men from both Donbass and also Kherson to face Russia up there. It looks like the Kherson front has been basically terminated, with whatever tiny gains Ukraine scraped together being abandoned and the water levels raised via upstream Ukrainian dams to prevent Russia from trying anything clever.
  • Generally the tempo of escalation and mutual threats between Russia and NATO continue, but this has been a theme for literal years now (I remember at least one Putin speech in like summer 2022 warning NATO), so, unlike the new front rumors, I mostly ignore these as just saber-rattling and behind-the-scenes activity that's being aired for effect until I'm given a big reason to believe them.

It's worth noting with the ATACMS thing that some of the big pro-Russian people on Twitter are stating that Ukrainian usage of ATACMS is through the roof and they've already fired an appreciable fraction of all the ATACMS ever produced (and, in typical American fashion, they make very few per year), and that Russian losses aren't so bad comparatively (I mean, they aren't, if I understand the number of destroyed systems versus the number the Russians have ever made/can make per year - which I may not understand as I'm not a military guy). Others can work out if this is accurate reporting or cope, just saying what I've saw. But Simplicius did sound fairly concerned about it in the article. Not very concerned, but fairly concerned.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The White House has said it is looking into the incident wherein Israeli authorities seized equipment from The Associated Press, and called the incident “concerning”.

White House or Elon Musk?

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 6 months ago (7 children)

Colombian president orders opening of embassy in the West Bank.

This comes after the country broke diplomatic ties with Israel

Article

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has ordered the opening of an embassy in the city of Ramallah, in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo told journalists on Wednesday (22).

“President Petro has ordered us to open the Colombian embassy in Ramallah, the Colombian representation in Ramallah, that's the next step we're going to take,” Murillo said.

Earlier this month, Petro announced that he would cut diplomatic relations with Israel due to its actions in the Gaza Strip.

The president strongly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and asked to join South Africa's case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which accuses Israel of genocide.

Ramallah serves as the administrative capital of the Palestinian state (The Palestinian Authority Capital). Israel's response to the Hamas attack on October 7 generated a lot of criticism from the international community.

More recently, humanitarian aid access to southern Gaza has been disrupted, according to a UN agency, since Israel stepped up military operations in Rafah.

According to the UN, 900,000 people have been forced to flee due to the fighting in Rafah, which has also increased tensions with Egypt.

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