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Canadian province of New Brunswick minor electoralism win. The provincial Liberal party won an extremely strong majority over the incumbent Progressive Conservatives (and yes, that is legally what they call themselves, long story). I don't live in my NB homeland anymore but I do keep an eye on the news there. This is good news.

While normally an NB election has historically been meaningless as the two big parties have had basically identical platforms for decades, this particular election is a big win for trans people. The outgoing premier Blaine Higgs is a vicious transphobe who put other vicious transphobes in his cabinet. The incoming Liberal premier Susan Holt may be very liberal in economics but she's at least good on the social policy side, especially on LGBT+ issues. I'll take Holt over Higgs anyday. Higgs didn't even keep his seat in what is normally a PC stronghold. He pissed off so many people with his various bigotries that went on full display the last few years.

I noticed a while back that Instagram will show highly politicized reels every so often (every 50-150 reels? or maybe more), and unlike normal reels where you can click on the 3 dots and press "Not Interested", these reels only have the button to block/report and "Why am I seeing this?" (which doesn't betray any useful information). At first, I assumed it was typical election bullshit because the first few I got were Kamala/liberal bullshit reels, which I swiped or blocked, but sometime in the past week there was a reel of a similar format that was very explicitly Marxist (in an extremely on the nose way), which I also couldn't dismiss with a "Not Interested". I have no idea what purpose this serves beyond the obvious of gauging the reaction of a person to different political leanings. What do they do with this data? I hate the algorithm age.

There really ought to be a group of people who dissect these systematic/algorithmic methods of manipulation. I'd imagine this is already being done by analysts/governments, but I mean in an open way.

OP @[email protected] it's Pridnestrovie, not 'Transnistria.' 'Transnistria' is what the imperialist and neo-colonials in "the west" call it, to refuse the status of the country because it just means "[the Moldovan territory] past the Dneister (river)," as well as to treat it as simply a historical legacy, not of the USSR, but of its previous administrators: the Nazis.

Pridnestrovians don't want to be called that, consider it a grave insult actually, because it's literally the name the Romanian and German Nazis used for their occupation government when they carried out the Holocaust there (Transnistria Governorate). Pridnestrovie was deeply impacted and affected by the Holocaust, and the Nazi-occupied administrative territory of the "Transnistria Governorate" served as a junction point where Jews from surrounding areas were deported to in 'processing' for enslavement or liquidation or later transfer elsewhere.

It is a point of deep national consciousness, this experience, and of national pride that they did as much as they did to resist Nazism and to shield Jews in the territory ^[^^sci-hub^ ^link^^]^; an uncommon phenomenon in most of Europe which saw huge collaborations and pogroms against Jews.

They by and large do not connect with the legacy of their previous occupiers who lay claim to them. During Catastroika and fashnost leading to the breakdown of the USSR, which caused the vicious resurgence of right wing nationalism, there grew large radical movements of Moldavian and "Greater Romania" fascists, who began demanding things such as the removal of all languages but Moldovan/Romanian, change to latin script, and expulsion of Slavs from the country and eventually in 1990 acquired power in the central government of the Moldavian SSR and started to implement their policies. It is in this environment that the Pridnestrovians had organized ad-hoc independence referendums, which were met with violent resistance by these fascist groups (just as we saw a much more drawn-out version of in the DNR/LNR in Ukraine) and declared independence

because they feared an independent Moldova led by these people would not only directly abuse them as they had already begun to, but also align and possibly even unite with the core country of their previous occupiers and exterminationists in Romania. Pizzachev annulled their independence but they in practicality maintained it and after the failure of the August coup in 1991 they declared independence in secession from the USSR as well as Moldova. They even fought a 2 year long low-intensity war from 1990-1992 to maintain their independence (and in which Ukrainian Nazi volunteers fought against Moldova, but for trying to annex Pridnestrovie into Ukraine) resulting in the death of over a thousand people.

And so they do not wish to be called anything but Pridnestrovie, or the full name Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.

I read this recent think tank report on the German arms industry viz a viz Russia's

https://www.ifw-kiel.de/fileadmin/Dateiverwaltung/IfW-Publications/fis-import/1f9c7f5f-15d2-45c4-8b85-9bb550cd449d-Kiel_Report_no1.pdf

The exec summary and chapter 2 is worth reading, otherwise the main takeaways are that Clausewitz was right about industrial war and attrition, ukraine is getting rinsed, nato is not prepared for industrial war. A few other specifics:

• the authors estimate that the Russian military industrial complex can build the equipment of the current entire German army about 3 times a year

• on interception of missiles: Sample interception rates for commonly used Russian missiles in 2024: 50% for the older Kalibr subsonic cruise missiles, 22% for modern subsonic cruise missiles (e.g. Kh-69), 4% for modern ballistic missiles (e.g. Iskander-M), 0.6% for S-300/400 supersonic long-range SAM, and 0.55% for the Kh-22 supersonic anti-ship missile. Data on interception rates of hypersonic missiles is scarce: Ukraine claims a 25% interception rate for hypersonic Kinzhal and Zircon missiles, but Ukrainian sources also indicate such interceptions require salvo firing all 32 launchers in a US-style Patriot battery to have any chance to shoot down a single hypersonic missile. By comparison, German Patriot batteries have 16 launchers, and Germany has 72 launchers in total.

• the authors estimate that any slowdown of tank build out rate due to running out of older Soviet era chassis won't begin until 2026 earliest

Democratization of advanced strike abilities via proliferation of drone and missile technology is a big deal. It is so much more expensive to defend against these munitions than attack with them. The significance of current world wars are akin to Agincourt, with missiles and drones playing the role of the long bow

"This election doesn't fucking matter bro because we still run this joint lmao" - Larry Fink

Brazilian Liberal Media has made some claims that the Lula Government will be against the inclusion of Venezuela into BRICS. Considering that all joinings require a consensus on the part of member countries, this would be a spanner in the works. I don't know if this is true or not, but it doesn't actually strike me as surprising. The Brazilian Government has a difficult relationship with Venezuela since Cháves.

On the one hand, there's the electoral issue. We are marching towards the second round of the municipal elections and any support for Venezuela galvanizes the right and the far right which are the majority of the country.

But on the other we do have the leaked CIA cables from way back when that claimed Lula had a difficult personal relationship with Hugo Cháves. Behind closed doors, the Venezuelan Government was considered difficult to influence or pin down, and a difficult partner to be had. What some might claim is a sign of sovereignty, others in the Brazilian side would say is a difficulty in cooperating in a time of american hegemony. As such, Brazil's government feels a bit miffed with the way their brokered deals during the electoral crisis in Venezuela were more or less discarded.

I guess we'll see the truth of things when during the next couple of days.

"Training mission" lol sure

God Bless the Yemeni Armed Forces.

It turns out the IOF scum who offed himself was bragging about bulldozing Palestinian homes a few months ago:
https://xcancel.com/malsaafin/status/1848471577135853978

Jfc Kamala is really doubling down on having Liz Cheney as her hype woman. Apparently they were campaigning together in Michigan today. I swear I’ve seen Liz Cheney have a more prominent role in this campaign than Tim Walz over the last couple weeks.

I saw a poll the other day that showed both Dem voters and independents are really turned off by the idea of having a Republican in Kamala’s cabinet

Kamala has worse political instincts Hilldawg, and that’s saying something.

Aparently the One Direction guy was drugged out of his mind.