news

A bunch of discussion of German domestic politics, the rise of the AfD via dissatisfaction on project ukraine vs neo-nazi sympathy, and efforts to stop the AfD. Smells like blowback to me

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/02/german-establishment-prepares-to-cross-the-rubicon.html

I am proposing a style guide update. I am now referring to the US before Civil rights as an apartide state. It still was after but that is less fun to bother liberals with

Attorney General Dave Yost @DaveYostOH 8h

Chicago this week became the largest city in America to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. In return, Gaza called for a cease-fire in Chicago. —Michael Che, on SNL’s weekend Update.

it keeps happening

everyone who's been on SNL should be at the Amerikkkan Nuremburg Trials

Do not fool yourself, the USA is now at war with Iran. 1776 WILL commence again.

Drove by the Palestine protest in my city today. 4 hours in and it was till packed. Also the pigs were probably extremely mad. Also a ton of horse shit on the ground from the mounted pigs.

After the US resumes sanctions on Venezuela, Brazil makes new contacts to ease the climate between the countries

The Brazilian government has begun contacts with the US and Venezuela, with the aim of easing the situation after the return of US sanctions on Caracas.

The US decision came after the Venezuelan Supreme Court blocked the presidential candidacy of the main opposition leader to Nicolás Maduro, Maria Corina Machado.

According to diplomats and Planalto sources, talks are taking place with Washington and Caracas, but still at an "exploratory" level. "It's a negotiation process and it takes time," said one source.

The maps and figures in today's MoA are good for this tower 22 attack.

also, simplicius linked this video of a 60 minutes segment on the 2021 missile attack by iran on the american al-asad airbase in iraq, mentioning it because it shows the paucity of air defence to modern iranian armaments.

last but not least, I've got some invites on iptorrents, a general private torrent tracker. if any of you newsheads want an invite dm me. you need to be able to seed to stay in good standing, so if you didn't get your semen in time then no invite.

Iran is about to learn why the usa doesn't have free healthcare OOH RAH SEMPER FI MARINES

pathetic.jpg

THE TOWER-22 STRIKE IN JORDAN TRIGGERS US, ISRAEL INTO ALL-FRONT WAR – THE ARABS AND IRAN ARE READY, THE RUSSIANS TOO

John Helmer

28 Jan 2024

[character limit hit continuing in reply]

Looming disaster.

Argentina court rules Milei’s labour reform unconstitutional

Court rules that the labour reform President Javier Milei tried to implement through decree is unconstitutional.

An Argentine court ruled that the labour reform President Javier Milei tried to implement through decree is unconstitutional, the latest blow to his plans to overhaul the nation’s economy. The ruling was posted on the court’s website on Tuesday.

The court had already suspended the labour reform Milei announced on January 3, following an appeal from the powerful labour union CGT. Union leaders held a nationwide strike against Milei’s reforms last Wednesday. The government could have proposed the reform via Congress, as opposed to trying to implement it through an urgent executive order, the judges wrote in the ruling.

Milei’s only recourse now is to appeal to the supreme court or push the reform through Congress. Argentina’s lower house Chamber of Deputies will hold a session to debate Milei’s so-called omnibus bill Wednesday. Milei’s labour measures centred around simplifying employers severance pay obligations and “trial periods” before a company must hire a worker to a full-time contract, among other reforms. Argentina has higher labour costs relative to worker productivity.

Article

Kinda wild how he can just push an unconstitutional reform, lose and then not suffer the consequences. At minimum this should call for some sort of impeachment.

Another defeat:

Another judicial setback for Milei as Court suspends repeal of 'Ley de Tierras'

Ruling signed by judge Ernesto Kreplak, responding to a La Plata war veterans centre, preventively suspends repeal of Ley de Tierras, temporarily blocking limitless purchase of land by foreigners.

More bad news for President Javier Milei. Following on from the suspension of the labour chapter of his sweeping DNU 70/2023 emergency deregulation decree, a court has now accepted an injunction and preventively suspended the president’s proposed repeal of the “Ley de Tierras’ (“Land Law”).

Milei wants to repeal the law, which would open the door to the purchase of land by foreigners without any limit. The decision was delivered by Federal Judge Ernesto Kreplak on Monday as he accepted a lawsuit lodged against the government by the CECIM (Centro de Ex Combatientes Islas Malvinas) veterans centre in La Plata, requesting that the above article be quashed as unconstitutional for repealing Law 26,737 (“The Régime for the Protection of the National Domain”) regarding the ownership of rural property.

In their initial writ, CECIM representatives had argued that "the repeal, by liberating the land market, would clear the way for its foreign and more concentrated ownership, thus bringing into crisis the principles of territorial integrity and national sovereignty while conditioning the availability of not only Argentine soil but also fresh water."

The judge also criticised the government by claiming that the impugned DNU "had not complied with the essential and substantial procedures nor has made use of the permanent services of legal counselling."

The norm in question regulated land ownership in foreign hands. Law 26,737, sanctioned during the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Presidency in December 2011, established a ceiling of 15 percent of rural land in foreign hands at national, provincial or municipal level.

Based Cristina, as always.

To date, there has been compliance with this law at national level, with foreign ownership currently 6.09 percent or 16.2 million of the country’s total rural land surface of 266,707,361 hectares in foreign hands.

The potential repeal of the law had aroused a growing enthusiasm on the part of the representatives of foreign firms to invest in this country. Indeed, the head of the local branch of a well-known multinational with hundreds of thousands of hectares in the south told Perfil that Milei’s decision as enshrined in the DNU was "very positive."

Article

There has also been talk of the massive wave of privatizations that milei will carry out. Some state-owned companies, like YPF, will not be privatized as it is deemed illegal or impossible. However, state-owned companies such as Fabricaciones Militares (Arms manufacturer), Tandanor (Ship Building) and FADEA (Aircraft Manufacturer) are all up in the air and ready to be sold to foreign interests. This man is willing not only to sell argentinian land to whatever rich fuck, he's also willing to sell Argentina's entire defense industry, leaving us completely dependant on foreign military "aid". He's a threat to the very elements that make up this country.

He also continued to insist with dollarization, claiming that "we're very close to fully dollarizing" (As he claimed on a Wall Street Journal interview here). He's completely going for this goal, in the next couple of months we will see more peso devaluations to fully destroy this currency and make it completely uncompetitive with the dollar, forcing people to ditch the peso and buy dollars instead. This is the thing we must avoid at all costs, we simply cannot leave our entire monetary policies and economy up to the US and it's Federal Reserve. This is just pure insanity. If we dollarize, we're fucked. You can't really leave a dollarized economy, not now at least. Ecuador, for example, can't leave dollarization, if they go back to their old currency (or create a new one), their foreign debt skyrockets and destroys the economy, same will happen to us. On the other hand, salaries will be crushed. Yes, we will get paid in dollars but how much will be the minimum, 4USD per hour?

Still, I firmly believe this has the strong potential to be the shortest-lived Argentinian government in history. Things will get very heated after March, that's when the people as a whole will begin to feel the effects of economic slowdown, devaluation, almost 30% monthly inflation rates and so on. This government will not survive, not with this lunatic in charge.

My support for JDPON grows every day

Senate Unveils $118 Billion Bill With Money for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and New Yemen War

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Sunday unveiled a massive $118 billion spending bill that includes military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, as well as spending for President Biden’s new war with Yemen’s Houthis.

The bill is the result of months of negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans on border policies and includes $20 billion in border spending. But some Republicans are unhappy with the agreement and seek more stringent border policies.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) rejected the deal and said he would bring a stand-alone bill for Israel to the House floor for a vote this week. The House bill would provide $17.6 billion to support the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, while the Senate bill includes $14.1 billion for Israel.

The Senate bill would authorize $60 billion to spend on the proxy war in Ukraine and $4.8 billion to “support key regional partners in the Indo-Pacific,” a portion of which will go toward replenishing arms sent to Taiwan.

The US has always sold weapons to Taiwan since severing diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979 but never financed the purchases or provided the weapons free of charge through military aid until last year.

The bill also provides $2.44 billion to US Central Command and to “address combat expenditures related to the conflict in the Red Sea,” where US naval forces have been bombing Yemen and downing Houthi drones and missiles. Since January 12, the US has bombed Yemen at least 16 times, and the situation in the region continues to escalate as the Houthis are not backing down.

Especially rich the strawman critique that leftists who ever mention imperialism just have an "america bad" stance. what sort of greatly nuanced perspective do these people show for their adversary countries? "Russia bad, but it's beyond the pale to support Chechen Islamism as a counter"? Hardly, these people are way too comfortable calling Kadyrovites race traitors for fighting for the autonomous government rather than ISIS. "Russia bad, but their national weather service's climate change archives shouldn't be nuked." - a deranged take that would get you banned from SlavaNeoliberalDefence.

BreakThrough News interview with PLFP leader Haam Abdo (sp?).

🔥🔪🇧🇪🗡️🔥

Belgium's silent heart of darkness — Olenka Frenkiel

5 May 2002

cw: general cw

Something is rotten in the state of Belgium. Six years after the arrest of Marc Dutroux, the country's notorious paedophile, no date has been set for his trial and the case remains painfully unresolved. In 1995, when two eight-year-old girls were kidnapped, Dutroux, a convicted sex offender, was a prime suspect from the start, yet he wasn't arrested for 14 months. By that time, four of his captives - including the two girls - were dead. Since his arrest, 20 potential witnesses connected with the case have died in mysterious circumstances, fuelling suspicions of a cover-up reaching the highest levels.

Libs explain how Zionists trying to keep the Democratic Party from counting write-in votes for "Ceasefire" on their primary ballots helps Trump. Challenge: impossible.

(nope, still impossible)

'There are mistakes, it is war': Israeli commander indicates IDF were behind white flag shooting. — ITV

30 Jan 2024

The IDF initially dismissed the video, which was broadcast on January 23, claiming the footage "is clearly edited and we have no way to comment".

Why do they bother denying this stuff again? Pleasing the necromantic spirit of Goebbels? Sort stuff into different media streams? Everyone gets bites with different toppings? You could probably find people who still believe the Gaddafi's Viagra story.

@[email protected] commented about a video Simplicius posted on how shitty US air defense actually is, which I encourage you to have a look at. I thought I'd post the rest of his piece as it pertains to Israel/Palestine; the Russian bits are also somewhat interesting but given the slow territorial progress it's not really as important right now.

SITREP 1/28/24: US Troops Suffer Fatalities in Strikes as Escalation Grows

From Simplicius' substack. I am generally not going to post the photos there and won't be quoting the full article.

I get tired of saying “things are heating up” but…things continue to really heat up. The first direct troop deaths have finally begun rolling in as warhawk voices in the US cry out for total war...

There seems to be some major disagreement or deliberate obfuscation on US’ part as to where the troops were hit, exactly. The above resistance statement says multiple bases were hit. Most are assuming the fatalities were in al-Tanf base in Syria—the illegal base the US uses to facilitate ISIS and train terrorists to agitate against Assad, as well as to block the all important Syria-Jordan border-route to keep Syria isolated and economically stifled. But in fact the US claims the hit was not at al-Tanf, but just over the border at a base called ‘Tower 22’ on the Jordanian side.

It’s understandable how things could get so confusing, what with so many illegal American bases strewn about like candy wrappers, and all. But in reality, this is likely an attempt to downplay and conceal US’ al-Tanf activity and give the appearance of legality by misdirecting everyone to the Jordanian base which US actually has legal permission to be in—unlike al-Tanf. But before we go on, I’d like to remind everyone of this report. I may have posted it long ago—it’s from an Iranian attack in 2021. But it is an absolute must watch. I strongly, strongly urge everyone to watch this below and see if you don’t come away with a different opinion of the ‘invincible’ US military as portrayed by Hollywood.

Not only are there no working air defenses to speak of, but the troops and generals themselves leave much to be desired. Can you even imagine these people on the frontline against Russia in Ukraine? The majors and generals in the video are brought nearly to tears by a few Iranian bottle rockets, with the base commander desperately urging his troops to abandon the base and spread out in the desert. A lot of people clinging to the old Hollywood stereotypes of American supremacy are really out of date and have no idea what the American military is currently like—nor have ever had any idea of what some of America’s most vaunted weapons truly performed like in real combat settings: [Headline from 1992: New Study Cuts Patriot Missile Success Rate To 9 Percent]

And for those who think “How could this be? The US was invincible during the Iraq War in 2003”—well, I have some news for you. There was no war, it was a total sham pysop operation, which I covered in depth here... If that wasn’t bad enough, US troops are even taking casualties on the Texas front...

Now there’s “rumors” that Israel is gathering on the Lebanese border and is getting ready to launch a huge invasion up to the Litani River, of which we wrote about here long ago. If there’s any truth to that, then we can surmise any such escalations with Iran as this new strike could potentially even be a falseflag—whether of the USS Liberty variety, or of the Pearl Harbor variety where something is “let through” on purpose. Or it could simply be Iran drawing Israel and the US into a war it wants because it knows it can win it through its vast proxies. There are many possibilities as yet. Hard to imagine, though, that Israel really wants a piece of Hezbollah given their inability to even put a dent in Hamas:

The only thing that’s certain is election year has just begun and things are already melting down faster than anyone could imagine. To be quite honest, it’s difficult to imagine how this situation could resolve without either a total US withdrawal from the Middle East or a new major war. The problem in both scenarios:

1. If the US withdraws, it will be viewed as the mother of all failures and weaknesses for the Biden administration, akin to the Afghan withdrawal x 100. I have no idea why it should be viewed that way, when in reality it’s a giant win for Americans to disentangle their country from globalist and MIC pursuits, but that’s how it will be spun by the totally compromised media which is the enemy of humanity. Most Republican warhawks will of course agree and stoke this interpretation as well, as they’re on the MIC payroll.

2. If Biden escalates and orders major strikes on Iran itself as Lindsey Graham and others are now cheerleading for, it could lead to an escalatory cascade that would shut down the entire region by engulfing it in flames, crashing the world economy to new levels, which would be a massive shock to any establishment re-election chances this year.

Don’t even bother thinking about boots on the ground, if such a thing was possible it would take a year or more of preparation. Remember the Iraq invasion required 6 months just of transporting materiel and assets to the region, staging them, etc. But Iran wouldn’t let you stage them because it has far more sophisticated modern ballistic systems than anything Iraq had, which means large troop concentrations and armor/materiel staging areas could be hit and wiped out long before zero hour. Don’t believe me? Just watch the video at the beginning, the US army general says it himself toward the end: he states the accuracy of Iran’s ballistic missiles was shocking and they hit “pretty much everything they wanted to hit.”

So ground invasion is out—that’s not happening. The only thing they could possibly attempt is a long-spanning aerial campaign. But to even remotely scratch Iran’s capabilities would require a vast campaign lasting minimum 6-12 months and probably much longer. Remember, all of NATO mustered for 3 months against little Serbia with 6 million people and barely managed to destroy anything of worth. Iran has a 90 million population and a country probably a hundred times the size of Serbia, not to mention a far larger military. How long do you think it would take NATO to even put a dent in that from only an aerial campaign?

In short: it would take years, and during those years, Iran would shut down every major maritime and economic chokepoint in the region, crashing the global economy. If you thought a few ships being hit now was bad, wait til you see the nominal Iranian forces rather than Houthis hitting everything in sight—it won’t be pretty. And I’ve beaten the point before about how difficult it would be to even find targets in the decentralized vastness of Iran, just like in Yemen.

Here’s a photo of a secret Yemeni launch site as an example. These can be strewn by the hundreds or thousands throughout the deserts, and no amount of advanced “ISTAR” will locate them.

And as of this writing, rumor has it there are some assets en route:

At least 6 U.S. Air Force KC-135 Aerial-Refueling Tankers, most from March Air Reserve Base in Southern California, are heading Northeast across the United States and preparing to Transit the Atlantic towards the U.K. and Europe. I wonder what kind of Aircraft they are Refueling?

So there is potential for some escalations, though it could merely be precaution as always. I think US will continue looking for a diplomatic solution, as it knows how indigestible both of the options above really are. It will continue looking for ways to de-escalate, perhaps even advancing the talks of withdrawal from the region so as to signal to Iran that it’s backing out, though perhaps dragging their feet in the process to make the ‘pull out’ as drawn out as possible and more symbolic in nature.

The US looks weaker than ever so of course a token strike of a kind is possible, to signal some impotent brawn to its now demoralized partners. But this won’t accomplish anything and will only put US troops in the region in increasing danger. The truth is, the entire current framework looks highly orchestrated between the resistance axis, particularly of Russia, Iran, and perhaps China. The reason is that just as Russia tied up the Empire in Ukraine, Iran began its strangulation maneuver in the Mid East, and look how ‘elegantly’ it’s all working out: Europe is being entirely cut off from cheap energy while Russia and BRICS gain not only some of the most powerful energy producers but also the countries responsible for the most important maritime chokepoints; i.e. Egypt and the Suez/Red Sea; Ethiopia and the Red Sea; Iran and Saudi Arabia for the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, etc.

Domestic rather than international news, but another spicy summer is on the way

“They Should Fear Us”: Teamsters & IATSE Link Arms For March Contract Talks With Studios”