Image is of the Te Pati Maori (Maori Party) cofounders, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. They have 6 of the 123 seats in the New Zealand parliament.
Officially confirming that the Republican primaries were a gigantic waste of time for everybody involved, Trump has massively beat everybody else in Iowa, and will very obviously be the Republican candidate for 2024. Given the abysmal state of the US economy (for everybody who isn't in the top 1-10%, which is mainly what national statistics reflect when they aren't telling blatant falsehoods), it's more plausible than ever that Trump may indeed once again become President - though I personally refuse to predict one way or another due to how volatile politics and geopolitics currently are. Project 2025 is coming, folks - either as the official Republican governance program, or as what the Democrats will do in 2026 after the midterms, stating that they have no other choice and have to reach across the aisle as they are the Adults In The Room™.
In other news...
Late last year, New Zealand voted in a new and very right-wing government, composed of the center-right National Party, the libertarian ACT Party (ACT stands for the "Association of Consumers and Taxpayers", good lord), and the fascist New Zealand First party. By what I can tell, this was the well-trodden path of "Vaguely center-left party does neoliberal austerity and causes a recession and workers fucking hated it and voted in a different party out of desperation," though the flooding and cyclones did add challenges to Chris Hipkins' short reign after Jacinda Ardern resigned.
It's worth noting that Hipkins was at least fairly China-friendly, meeting up with Xi Jinping on a five-day visit in the summer. They still do the whole "We have concerns about human rights" thing, but of all the countries of the imperial core, New Zealand is - or, perhaps, was - one of the most amicable. In 2021, China was New Zealand's single largest trading partner, with a third of exports going to China (more than Australia, the US, Japan, and South Korea combined), and they receive 22% of their imports from China too, more than any other single country.
Christopher Luxon, the new Prime Minister and sentient thumb, has said that he is exploring a closer relationship with AUKUS:
Luxon said New Zealand was interested in becoming involved in AUKUS Pillar 2: a commitment between the three partners to develop and share advanced military capabilities, including artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and hypersonics.
“We’ll work our way through that over the course of next year as we understand it more and think about what the opportunities may be for us,” Luxon said. “AUKUS is a very important element in ensuring we’ve got stability and peace in the region.”
This is not to say that Hipkins wanted nothing to do with AUKUS or Western organizations aimed generally against China - in fact, pre election, "he was open to conversations about joining Pillar II of AUKUS". But the current government is pushing down on the accelerator pedal.
The left-wing Maori party, Te Pati Maori, has stated that they want New Zealand to remain non-aligned, as joining AUKUS would erode the sovereignty of the country:
As Maori we cannot allow our sovereignty to be determined by others, whether they are in Canberra or Washington. Aotearoa should not act as Pacific spy base in the wars of imperial powers. Joining AUKUS will severely undermine our country’s sovereignty, constitution, and ability to remain nuclear free. There is too much at stake for our government to make a commitment of this magnitude without a democratic process.
In general, the party leaders of Te Pati Maori want New Zealand to be the "Switzerland of the Pacific", which is perhaps not the greatest analogy given all the problems Switzerland had and has, but we understand the intended meaning of desiring neutrality.
The Country of the Week is New Zealand! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
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.
So those two seals being declared dead without their bodies being recovered is a little weird right? Why wouldn't they be declared Missing In Action? Is it the military trying to cover up them being killed on a clandestine mission?
People disappear out at sea all the time. The ocean is vast and dark and hungry, if you drown in the waters, do not expect your body to wash up anywhere. If you know any sailors they'll almost all have stories.
It's not sus that the bodies haven't surfaced. It is sus that they've published the story however.
Oh I agree that it's not surprising that their bodies haven't surfaced, the ocean is huge, but I thought troops that are unaccounted for are declared MIA and not KIA. Them being declared KIA makes me think they either recovered the bodies, which the military hasn't admitted to, or that the military knows they were killed and the "falling overboard" is some sort of cover up. Or maybe I just misunderstand how the US military categorized MIA vs KIA
In the US at any rate MIAs only exist as an official designation since the 1950's, use to scare monger about Korean and Vietnamese communists / domino theory BS. It has always been about whether it is politically convenient to consider them dead or missing.
E) IIRC there is also fuckery that goes on with the actual counting. Like if a boat sinks where 23 crewmembers drown (dead) and 27 wash ashore and get picked up by Venezuelan fisherman (alive), all 50 are listed as "MIA" until the identities of the dead are confirmed. There are ostensibly still some 1,2000 "PoW/MIAs" in Vietnam according to ~~DoD~~ cranks, I misremembered that part. BUT even though its the official position of the government that our boys came home, they passed a law in 2019 (?) making it a requirement to fly the POW/MIA flag at like post offices and shit.
had a hand in that.
Listen here buddy, this is just a friendly piece of advice, but don't worry about it if you know what's good for you. We know they're dead, don't ask how, okay.
completely unrelated
Oh wow how did this picture get here? Anyway nice looking beach you have, shame if something were to happen to it
Also honest answer: I don't know about us naval doctrine, but most countries have some variant of "if you fall into the waters at sea, with no buoyancy device, then you're dead within hours and we'll declare you as such. If you've got a wetsuit on we'll give you 24 hours"
It could easily just be that. Knew someone who worked as a rescuer for oil rigs and one of his colleagues fell into the water a stormy night. Even though the guy wore all the stuff you could wear, they called it after 6 hours
They simply both slipped and fell off the ladder. I don't see what's suspicious about that.
It took a shamefully long time for it to hit me: if they both disappeared, how could anyone know they slipped off a ladder?
One of the SEALs must have been in radio contact with someone to pass on the fact that the first guy fell in - but if they had a radio, how were they not recovered?
They had to have traveled to the vessel they were boarding via boat, and there were certainly people on the boat who saw them fall into the water. IIRC, VBSS (Visit Board Search and Seziure, aka American piracy) operations use two boats as well, one as a backup/covering fire platform. The regular VBSS teams (not SEALs, just regular sailors with a hard on for pretending to be SEALs) use flotation vests which are NIJ level III soft armor with life vest foam outside. Idk what the death squads use, but I can imagine them using level IV plates, sinking and drowning before they could take them off.
Cause of death: trying to bhop to the target with
& falling out of the map
Forgot to spend the extra gold on quick-release straps smh
I love the idea that the special soldiers that exist to sneak onto land from the sea are incapable of swimming due to the amount of shit they're lugging around
seals are very slippery
No, it's just standard doctrine to dive into the water to save someone else. Might go against all standard boating doctrine, but that's because most sailors aren't tough American Navy Seals.
I'd venture to guess that they don't want to report that the seals were perforated. It's hard to maintain ones balance on a ladder while being hit with multiple 7.62mm rounds.
They got blasted by Ansarallah soldiers with AKs and don’t want to admit it
I’m seeing a lot of long answers, but if there is one thing I know about the African coast during their summer, it’s sharks, like Bull Sharks and the ones that bite at anything.