news

https://search.app?link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com%2Fpost%2Fliteracy-statistics-2022-2023&utm_campaign=aga&utm_source=agsadl1%2Csh%2Fx%2Fgs%2Fm2%2F4

Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 130 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children

21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022

54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level

45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level

44% of the American adults do not read a book in a year

The Top 3 states for highest child literacy rates were Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Hampshire, in that order (highest to lowest).

The Bottom 3 states for child literacy rates were Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Mexico, (highest to lowest).

Any American here that could tell me if it's legit. It's shockingly low.

There was a big UFO hearing in Congress today? Some wildly fun stuff came out of it like Lauren Boebert questioning witnesses on her belief in basically Atlantis and hybrid human-alien super people lmao incredible. Also fun quote from Luis Elizondo, a former intelligence officer and DoD official apparently (lol) in this NPR article on the hearing:

"Let me be clear: UAP are real," he wrote. "Advanced technologies not made by our Government — or any other government — are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries."

I honestly think our timeline is dumb enough not to exclude the future of the US going to war with China over accusations of it harboring extraterrestrial technology lmao the savages can’t possibly have better tech than us without help from the underwater aliens!!

Edit: Immaculate Constellation - the forbidden report itself folks, courtesy of South Carolina Rep Nancy Mace

Iranian bank cards now operational in Russian ATMs

Iranian citizens are now able to withdraw cash using their Shetab payment system cards in Russia, marking the first phase of integration between Iran's Shetab and Russia's Mir payment networks, Iran's embassy in Moscow announced on November 11.

why are they doing this? 🧠

Do they truly want to pre align to trump out of civility? What kinda brainworms are here?

Here is the press statement from The Onion about purchasing Infowars. It says that the Onion plans to completely transition Infowars into a new website by January 2025. I think this is a screenshot of an email maybe. The twitter account Maxwell Tani is a journalist from semafor.com .

The Onion's goal with the acquisition is to end Infowars' relentless barrage of disinformation for the sake of selling supplements and replace it with The Onion's relentless barrage of humor for good. "The Onion is proud to acquire Infowars, and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site's users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash," said The Onion's CEO Ben Collins. "Or Bitcoin. We will also accept Bitcoin."

https://xcancel.com/maxwelltani/status/1857063171900514527

Here is a video clip of Alex Jones announcing the acquisition by The Onion.

https://xcancel.com/JordanUhl/status/1857075969544040582

Social media post by Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion. "We're planning on making a very stupid website."

https://xcancel.com/oneunderscore__/status/1857068633127530939

https://xcancel.com/CallaWalsh

^a comrade going to jail for 60 days for the elbit thingy in new hampshire. Seamus has an interview but its paywalled.

Anyways to brave comrade

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/15/sri-lankas-leftist-ruling-coalition-headed-for-landslide-election-win

Left coalition won 2/3rd majority in the Sri Lankan Parliament, they can now change the constitution if they want.

'Tortured and left to die': New details emerge about "Israel's" murder of prominent Gaza surgeon | The Cradle

A new report from Britain's Sky News provides details of Adnan al-Bursh's death by torture in "Israel's" Ofer Prison

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-questions-icc-judges-impartiality-netanyahu-arrest-case-2024-11-13/

ICC warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant likely delayed yet again

The FBI has raided the home of Shayne Coplan, CEO of Polymarket, a politics betting platform - NY Post (archive.ph)

It’s “grand political theater at its worst,” the source told The Post. “They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things. Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons.” Coplan was not provided any reason for the incident, but the source said they expect it is political retribution since Polymarket accurately predicted Trump’s win – not traditional polls.

The government is likely trying to accuse Polymarket of market manipulation and rigging its polls in favor of Trump, the source said.

This "source" is an idiot lmao. I'm sure the raid has nothing to do with the fact that they flagrantly accept bets in cryptocurrency to bypass financial regulations.

Lathing Trump appointing senators he doesn't like to cabinet positions before unceremoniously firing them after their senator vacancy has been filled by people Trump likes.

Random telegram find, DPRK hype video titled "Message to the south, do not worry, your liberation is not a matter of if, but when"

https://tankie.tube/w/cmnLwhtM3qVHkgY9qWv1Yk

the latest episode of Oats for Breakfast was an interview with Norman Finkelstein, most of which was about his personal history in the occupied West Bank during the first intifada, but also touching on trump v harris/biden and the war since october 7. Finkelstein is such a pleasure to listen to, truly the ultimate in earnest no-fun scolding. the interviewer on the podcast is a bit milquetoast at times, but that makes the interview even better because of finkelstein's strident moralism and rigor.

one thoughtful point raised by finkelstein was about the risk of fascism with trump's election - he makes the point that fascist states have emerged in history as a response to strong left wing movements. there is no strong left wing mass movement in the US, so there is less incentive for the state to be openly fascist.

Trump’s expected deputy director of policy, Stephen Miller, has called to deputize the National Guard to carry out deportations.

https://www.masslive.com/politics/2024/11/trump-prepares-immigration-crackdown-with-miller-homan-posts.html

America is so cooked

Trump expected to select Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/14/robert-f-kennedy-jr-trump-hhs-secretary-pick-00188617

Edit: Also rumors that Gorka will be tapped lmao

From a Vox article titled "Why Ukraine thinks it can still win over Donald Trump":

But Trump has also expressed some grudging admiration for Zelenskyy, a fellow TV star-turned-politician who has demonstrated he knows how to close a deal. “I think Zelenskyy is the greatest salesman in history — every time he comes into the country, he walks away with $60 billion,” Trump said at a rally in September.

That's not admiration Vox, that's a criticism him suckering the US out of billions of dollars.

[LONG EFFORTPOST]

Hello liberals, I will give my balance on 's Argentina and how things are as of right now, November 2024. But my talk will not be about the cringe ass ancap, I will talk about Peronism and their role as opposition.

As some of you might recall, milei's violent rethoric against "public" education (and I put public on quotes because I have another definition of what is public and what isn't) triggered a nation-wide response from universities as many of them were occupied by the students. Mine was among the first to do so, not unlikely considering it is an historic hotbed for left wing militacy, even though today it's not as good as it used to be.

Anyways, the movement gained traction but, as with many things, the lack of coordination and some... sabotage from within slowly but surely eroded it. It was to be expected, some universities are not really politicized because of course people who study complex mathematics don't have time to read Marx or something, and others have either shit soccdem or peronist leadership and fighting is not for them. My university ended up abandoning the occupation after like 20 days or so, we fought heavily to keep it running but at the end of the day we had to leave it. During the last assemblies, our struggle was directly against peronists and their party structure, who began to attempt to dissolve the movement to "take the fight elsewhere", in accordance with their general policies.

But nothing is really a failure, no matter how bad it looks. There's always experiences to draw upon and lessons to learn. Our lesson is that you just can't trust peronist-aligned groups, no matter how "radical" they may seem, because they have non-revolutionary agendas and are NOT anti-capitalist, they're just reformists who want to play nice and with some rules. The student's leadership in our university is ideologically aliged with the authorities, all are peronists. Then, a professor in one assembly said "There is fear among the authorities that this kind of assemblies might go out of control and become truly democratic and truly horizontal, some people are indeed fighting not for the common good but for their comfort positions". And he, in just a few sentences, described peronism and how they view the struggle against milei.

There has been a very alarming lack of action from the main confederation of unions, the CGT. They are the ones who say "Okay, general strike" and there will be a general strike, their level of reach and organization is unmatched. Unfortunately, the leadership of the CGT and of the many unions that form it are either all peronists or something else, few if any are leftist. The fact they haven't called for strikes in nearly one year of suicidal policies by milei is indeed alarming, it's especially bad considering the CGT has been active and calling for strikes EVEN against former peronist governments. They're nothing but a rotten group of decadent old white men who weaponized class struggle and left it at the mercy of a grotesque bureaucracy.

So if you don't see much action it's because peronism has an interest to cut a deal and keep people away from doing dangerous commie things. They don't want spontaneous organisation by workers where they take matters into their own hands. After all, peronism is anti-communist despite what some confused folks of the Communist Party think, "United Front" my fucking dick and balls lmfao, losers. I believe that peronism understand milei as a temporary anomaly, that things will "go back to normal" once he expires, they're old fashioned politicians who think the new kind of "outsiders" are short lived. Well, the normalcy we once knew is dead, even more when the latest capitalist crisis cycles are getting worse and worse.

They do want to go out to the streets, but only on their terms. Meanwhile they're trying to craft Cristina Fernández de Kirchner back to a presentable leader, as she just assumed control of the Justicialist Party (main peronist electoral party), but she is responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place. Then, once society reaches a point of near collapse, that's when they'll mobilize and cut a deal with the milei government for some sort of "peaceful transition", maybe in the midst of heavy repression like it happened during the December 2001 Riots. Peronism after all is Capital's safe bet when it comes to "social peace".

Therefore, to me it becomes evident that there must be a concentrated effort to organize the working class OUTSIDE the influence of peronism. It's a job that will take years, or maybe not, who knows. The Trots have been doing that fairly well, if anything since the 2000's they've been consistently growing and taking more spaces than before. And while Trots have a shitton of problems, their general stance is a million times better than peronist "we'll give you a better salary XD" policies that reproduce capitalism. Still, agitation becomes necessary and desirable.

Things will continue to decay, milei might "accelerate" the economy for the midterms but that'll make it crash later down the line. I think our goal as leftists is to convince those who felt betrayed by peronism and who hate neoliberalism to join the ranks of Socialism, and I can tell you slowly but surely more people are feeling just like that.

Marco Rubio being Secretary of State is not going to be good. Nightmare level policy towards LatAm. Not feeling optimistic.

Edit: Only way I see out is if Trump spreads the military too much. Admin is going to back Israel against Iran, will escalate with China, is sending mixed signals about Ukraine.

Biden got cured of Dementia after Trump won?

President Joe Biden welcomes President-elect Donald Trump to the White House. “Welcome back,” Biden told Trump.

Death sentence proposed to be upheld for property tycoon in bank swindle:
https://en.vietnamplus.vn/death-sentence-proposed-to-be-upheld-for-property-tycoon-in-bank-swindle-post304089.vnp

Acknowledging Lan's expression of remorse and pledge to compensate all the loss she had caused to the bank along with her contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the High-Level People's Procuracy in HCM City held that these mitigating factors could be used to ease part of the penalty for the charge of "violating lending regulations in the activities of credit organisations". It proposed the sentence be reduced from 20 years to 16 -18 years.

However, it said the mitigating factors were insufficient to warrant leniency on the charges of "fraudulent appropriation of property” and “giving bribes” as Lan had concurrently committed many particularly serious and organised wrongdoings.

The procurators said the death sentence for "fraudulent appropriation of property” should be upheld for Lan, who should aslo face a 20-year jail sentence for “giving bribes”. The combined sentence amounts to death penalty.

Seems like the US is trying to create a new israel - Zalengam- it will include parts of Bangaldesh, India and the Kachin region of Myanmar and will be an evangelical bastion to attack China. I was suspecting when Myanmar would receive more direct attention from the US.

COP29 is going on and I've barely seen any coverage on it. I guess everyone realizes the COPs are so useless they're not even paying attention anymore.

Breaking: Trump chooses a pedophile as attorney General, matt Gaetz

Not even pretending; https://x.com/Zheega123/status/1857487076645810514

Ceasefire deal inching toward a conclusion. Key sticking point was a clause giving Israel freedom of action in Lebanon, appears to have been removed but Israel is getting written guarantee from Biden (which Trump is certain to uphold) of support for such action in the future.

US is at the same time the mediator of US-Lebanon talks, while also giving Israel written guarantees that they can ignore the deal reached in these US/Israel-Lebanon talks and just attack Lebanon at any point with full US support.

Bird Flu update from Canada by theguardian

A teenager is in critical condition in a British Columbia children’s hospital, in what is believed to be Canada’s first human case of bird flu.

“This was a healthy teenager prior to this, so no underlying conditions,” said the provincial health officer Bonnie Henry in a news conference on Tuesday.

“It just reminds us that in young people this is a virus that can progress and cause quite severe illness and the deterioration that I mentioned was quite rapid.”

British Columbia health officials said on Saturday the province had detected Canada’s first human case of H5 bird flu in a teenager.

Henry said the province was still identifying the exact strain, but assumes the case is H5N1.

The World Health Organization says H5N1’s risk to humans is low because there is no evidence of human transmission, but the virus has been found in an increasing number of animals including cattle in the United States.

Henry would not disclose the teen’s gender or age but said they had first developed symptoms on 2 November and were tested on 8 November, when they were admitted to hospital. Symptoms included conjunctivitis, fever and coughing.

As of Tuesday they were hospitalized with acute respiratory distress syndrome, she said.

The teen had no farm exposure but had been exposed to dogs, cats and reptiles, Henry said. No infection source had been identified. “That is absolutely an ongoing investigation.”

More severe illness takes place when the virus binds to receptors deep in the lungs, she said.

Public health officials had identified and tested about three dozen contacts and had not found anyone infected with the virus.

There has been no evidence that the disease is easily spread between people. But if that were to happen, a pandemic could unfold, scientists have said.

Earlier in November, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked for farm workers exposed to animals with bird flu to be tested for the virus even if they do not have symptoms.

Bird flu has infected nearly 450 dairy farms in 15 US states since March, and the CDC has identified 46 human cases of bird flu since April.

In Canada, British Columbia has identified at least 26 affected premises across the province, Henry said on Tuesday, and numerous wild birds have tested positive. Canada has had no cases reported in dairy cattle and no evidence of bird flu in samples of milk.

The Besiktas vs Maccabi Tel Aviv game has moved to Hungary and will be played behind closed doors

cowards

Map of sites struck in Ukraine yesterday:

Seems like the air defenses of the AFU are almost completely non-existent at this point.

Kim has called for the mass production of suicide drones

These pretty plainly look like domestic production of Lancet Drones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZALA_Lancet

Trump has picked Elise Stefanik to be the UN Ambassador for the US.

While I maintain that functionally, Trump and Harris policies will be no different on the ground in Palestine, there is definitely worrying signs already that Trump will also be pretty horrible, in particular for the West Bank.

Stefanik is an uber-Zionist even by US Congress standards. She was the one grilling university presidents over not being tough enough on student protestors. There are rumors that Miriam Adelson donated $100 million to Trump’s campaign on the condition that he support Israel annexing the West Bank. And Israel has tapped a settlement expansion activist to be the next ambassador to the US, who is also very pro-annexation as well.

Is it Zelenskover? has his curse finally reached him?

https://thecradle.co/articles/short-on-troops-israel-turns-to-mercenaries

Another initiative by the Netanyahu administration involves cooperation with German intelligence and Zionist organizations in Germany to recruit asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Over the past seven months, the Values Initiative Association and the German–Israeli Association (DIG) have worked to enlist these refugees from war-torn Muslim-majority countries as mercenaries for Israel.

Offered monthly salaries ranging between €4,000 to €5,000 and fast-tracked German citizenship, many have joined the fight. Reports suggest that around 4,000 immigrants were naturalized between September and October alone.

After the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Germany imposed further restrictions on citizenship applicants from Arab and Muslim countries, requiring them to make pledges not to criticize Israel or show sympathy for Palestinians as a litmus test for naturalization.

In early November 2024, Germany introduced a law for compulsory conscription of these Arab and Muslim applicants, claiming an intent to fill manpower shortages. Yet, this conscription would not involve service in Germany – a stipulation that has left many of these refugees wary of who and where they could end up fighting.

First order of Austerity is gutting the Department of Education.

Any New Zealanders in here, or people that pay attention to international indigeneous issues?

I only know about whats happening because a video went viral on tiktok of Māori MPs disrupting introduction of a bill by performing the Haka:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTYeVT5L9/

I also saw a live video of a pretty big pro-Māori march on tiktok. I believe it matches this nationwide 9-day march that is scheduled to arrive in Wellington on Tuesday:

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/new-zealand-parliament-debates-controversial-bill-protesters-march-capital-2024-11-14/

The bill itself seeks to redefine how the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi which is apparently still the basis of the relationship between the crown and the Māori, although its interpretation is constantly evolving. The bill is being proposed by the right-wing ACT, which is a member of the current leading centre-right coalition. It would signficantly affect the rights and well-being of Māori communities according to activists.

Hopefully I am not missing anything huge or misrepresenting anything - this is just a hyperfixation i got onto after seeing the tiktok video. Hopeful that this bill will be defeated!