news

In case anyone was wondering how terrifying it would be for a terrain following stealth subsonic cruise missile to fly directly over your head, video has been captured of such an incident in Odessa, Ukraine. Reddit link, Mirror link on Tankie Tube Here we have what is likely a Kh-101 missile, which cruises at an altitude of between 30m - 70m (100ft - 230ft) above ground level to minimise detection. The Kh-69 flies even lower, at 20m or 65ft.

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.

North Korean M1989 self-propelled artillery guns spotted in Krasnoyarsk, Russia heading west.

lil'marco at the wheeeeeeel

Is he sicko about cuba like desantis or regular sicko?

I asked President Biden if he thinks that he can get a hostage deal done by the end of his term. He answered, commenting on the number of cameramen in the room: “do you think that you can get hit in the head by the camera behind you?”

i finally get how my mom feels about my ex's. it's exaclty how i feel about lula bc of how he's treated maduro and venezuela with respect to them joining BRICS. how dare that cretin harm my sweet boy

Death to America

Cope cages have spread to China

Internet Divided as ‘People’ Names John Krasinski ‘Sexiest Man Alive’

This is the second worst Tuesday night decision in the past week, according to some fans online

I'm in the camp dude is pretty mid.

@SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net - just came back from touching grass and saw your comment asking me to comment, still catching up with the US election news and still processing.

(also I have no idea what’s going on with the mod situation or whatever that happened over the past week but I hope you stay and run the news mega because this is probably my only attachment to the site)

I will give my hot takes now for the sake of driving a discussion: Harris lost, the Democrats won, Trump a sacrificial lamb, third party movements annihilated, Biden will have the last laugh though he (or his demented mind) probably won’t live long enough to see it

First of all, the US electoral system is designed to PUNISH. What you’re seeing now is the (non-)voters getting disciplined. Trump didn’t exactly win, Harris lost because millions of voters did not turn up to vote for various reasons that we’re all too familiar with. If you refuse to vote for Harris, you DESERVE Trump. That’s what the libs are snickering about now. Arab voters chose to punish Harris for committing genocide in Gaza? Well, how about you getting punished by Trump who will hopefully deport all of you? The libs are going to be enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing minorities and immigrants getting punished under Trump and continue to scold those who refused to support them.

The Democrats will not change their way just because they lost the election. The system is working exactly as intended, and the new Trump administration is being used as a fascist terror regime to scare the (non-)voters back into the fold of the Democrats by 2026 mid-term elections. And because of this, the genocide against Palestinians will almost certainly be ramped up under Trump just to spite on the people who wanted to punish them for the genocide.

The main question is: will the American voters who have decided to sit out this election be scared enough by Trump into voting the Democrats again in 2026 and 2028? If so, then the system is simply correcting itself, and all the Democrats have to do is to be patient and wait 2 years.

To repeat: the US electoral system is designed to PUNISH. American Democracy^TM^ meant to rule by FEAR.

Meanwhile, the DNC will fundraise like no tomorrow until 2026. Wealthy liberal donors so appalled by Trump’s victory will be dishing out their live savings to protect “American democracy”. What’s unique this time is that the Democrats have also secured enough of the traditional Republican establishment donors who have splintered off Trump’s MAGA party that the DNC will now receive double income from both the Democratic liberal and the Republican establishment. Because of how Citizens United works, the DNC will go into the mid-term with very strong financial backing and will certainly have no trouble running their campaigns (reminder that Harris out-spent Trump 4:1 in this election - they have the money for sure).

As such, the Democrats will continue to rebrand itself as the new Republican Party over the next 4 years, achieving what they have already dreamed of for decades. This is a huge win for the Democrats even when they have lost the election.

Third, Biden has already set off a ticking time bomb when the Fed started to reduce interest rates back in September. There is no indication that anyone will stop the rate cut from now on, with Trump himself wanting to cut the rate even faster.

This is a deliberately timed policy such that when the interest income dried up, it will be at least 6-12 months (depending on the rate at which the deficits are drained) after the election. This means recession - and if you think the last two years of inflation was bad, what’s coming is going to be far worse. Many people will lose their jobs. I don’t know if it will be 2009 GFC level recession, but whoever is in the government over the next 2-4 years will be in hot water trying to resuscitate the economy.

Combined this with Elon Musk pledging to cut 2 trillion deficit, if they really went through with this, we’re going to be looking at an epic proportion of the US economy meltdown (which will also send shockwaves across the world so for those of you living in the Global South, don’t get too excited over this). I doubt the establishment will let it happen but Trump and Musk are both wildcards so anything goes.

Incidentally, the Wall Street will survive this round of onslaught no matter what, as China has already committed to a financial opening up and lifted all foreign investment restrictions for their manufacturing sector. China is definitely going after the foreign investment route, and I will not pretend that this isn’t a Biden foreign policy win for bullying the Chinese libs into agreeing to this bullshit. What is almost certainly going to happen is that the Wall Street will jump all in for the Chinese stock market and buy up Chinese assets while Trump struggle to re-industrialize the American manufacturing sector. Trump thinks he can take on Wall Street, but in the end China will once again save the American bourgeois class from their domestic “threat” (I don’t think Trump is an actual threat, but rather an aberration that needs to be corrected). The working class will suffer, they will blame Trump and the GOP by the next election, and the affluent libs will be as insufferable as you can imagine.

Again it must be repeated just how incredibly well timed the Fed rate cut in September was. I don’t know what the Biden administration was on but they have played their cards and adapted to a very dynamic geopolitical situation extremely well, that’s for sure. (I already wrote about how the Fed rate cut + a global recession will allow the US imperialists to take a big bite on the globe a while back, so I will just skip the entire essay here).

Fourth, this election also sealed the fate of third party electoralism. People would rather sit out than to vote for a third party. The bourgeois establishment has achieved their goals of preventing third party voting (not that it was ever an actual threat to begin with, now that we look back in hindsight) and the ratchet effect of Democratic-Republican bipartisan machine will continue to spin. I don’t think the third parties are ever coming back from this - Bernie Sanders had one good opportunity to run as a third party candidate when getting screwed by the DNC last time, but that opportunity to reshape the American political landscape is now forever lost. It’s either voting for the Democrats or face an ever vicious Republican party - those are the only choices left now. The only way out of this nightmare is a revolution.

Finally, we’ll talk about some wildcard scenarios. While I still think that Trump will follow the neocon strategy as before (or rather, unable to stop the wheels already in motion), the fact that you have Trump and Musk as two crazy people running the show warrants further speculations into the wildcard scenario that may arise. Most worrying is Trump wanting to appoint Musk as the DOGE minister to cut 2 trillion spending. This is going to be a huge drain on the US deficits that are important to flood the Global South and get them hooked on the dollar.

Not understanding how the US monetary imperialism works, they might just fuck this up and screw up the dollar liquidity essential to maintaining the US hegemony, while at the same time landing the US into a huge economic crisis that could be beyond what the establishment had envisioned. I have mentioned about Wall Street flooding the Chinese capital markets, but the US economy is so massive that an epic meltdown of the economy might end up inflicting such a huge blow on the Chinese export economy that even the Wall Street financiers get drowned there. This is obviously not something that the bourgeois establishment would like to see happen, and this could actually trigger WW3 if we are unfortunate enough to end up in this scenario.

Pretty cool for Xi to namedrop Mariategui:
https://xcancel.com/upholdreality/status/1857205700381855934

Xi Jinping arrives in Peru to unveil the largest and most modern port in South America, built by China

"As early as more than 400 years ago, the people of China and Peru started friendly exchanges through the Maritime Silk Road and the Manila Galleons..."

"Through the wisdom of our civilizations, our minds find common ground and our hearts resonate... Peruvian thinker José Carlos Mariátegui once said, "Spiritually and materially, China is closer to us than Europe. The psychology of our people is more Asian than Western...""

"The world is undergoing faster transformation unseen in a century. Humanity has again come to a crossroads in history. To fully appreciate the grandeur of the Nazca Lines, we must view them from a height because at the ground level, their true splendor remains hidden from view.

To quote a Chinese poem to the same effect, 'Fear not the clouds that obscure your view, for you stand atop the highest summit.'

China is ready to join Peru in embracing a broader vision and grasping the underlying trends of our times from a long historical perspective to champion true multilateralism, promote an equal and orderly multipolar world and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, jointly implement the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative, and build together a community with a shared future for mankind."

btw roughly my feelings as well. if china manages to rapidly sink carbon inputs in next 10 years (as seen on energy mix, so to like ~20% coal), they would be something akin to that. Everyone in africa will need solar, they won't give a shit it's made in china, it could feasibly be giant outlet of exports even under whatever tariffs will be invented (cars and funkopops are luxury items after all). Desalination plants and grid infrastructure aren't

Danish municipalities caught using Google Translate in child protection cases

In Denmark, municipalities handling child protection cases have faced criticism for using Google Translate to communicate with non-Danish-speaking families in situations as serious as child removal cases. In one instance, officials warned an Ukrainian refugee mother that her children could be taken away if she didn’t comply with an action plan by pushing a smartphone through the mail slot in her front door and letting the Google Translate app play the message machine translated to Russian. Later that night all her children were forcibly removed.

She had become unable to take care of her children after suffering a mental breakdown when learning about her husband being severely wounded in the war. For six months leading up to the removal of the children, a for-profit company hired by the municipality had sent social workers to assist her and assess her parenting skills. The social workers did not speak Russian or Ukrainian, instead they communicated with the family in English, a language the mother doesn't speak, or through Google Translate. The mother did not understand what the purpose of the visit was or what was required of her.

According to Statistics Denmark, 44 Ukrainian children has been removed from their homes by authorites, either with or without the parents' consent. There are no statistics on the use of Google Translate in these cases but state media DR knows of at least three instances where authorities used machine translation.

Legal experts say this practice violates Danish law, which requires that authorities communicate in an understandable and accurate way with parties in child welfare cases, typically requiring qualified interpreters. Human rights advocates warn that relying on Google Translate risks misinterpretations that could isolate vulnerable families and lead to family separations without due understanding.

Municipalities claim that machine translations are mostly used in low-stakes interactions with citizens but defend the approach, citing a shortage of interpreters, but critics argue that automated translation is insufficient for such high-stakes interactions.

• Source: DR (state media), November 14th 2024

A large protest against budget cuts in higher education in The Netherlands that was planned for tomorrow in Utrecht has been cancelled due to (paraphrasing:) ‘threats of violence by pro Palestine protesters who planned to hijack the protest.’

This can not be seen without the context of the unrest in Amsterdam last week. Dutch media and politicians have been trying really hard this past week to paint anti genocide protesters in a very bad light, and this situation is no different. Several pro Palestine organisations have stated that they stand wholeheartedly behind the protests against the budget cuts and were joining to show their support. People are speculating that this support is being framed as hijacking now by the mayor of Utrecht and the police.

https://nos.nl/l/2544350

Seeing a lot of Is'ntrael flag people suddenly very concerned about genocides in Africa.

Wonder if redditors are like "all I hear about the Russia Ukraine war is all of these grand Ukrainian victories, yet it never seems to end"

Zionazis bombed aid workers with drone in Khan Yunis - at least 5 dead.

NSFW/L CW dead and dying Video telegram link

You all think the next front will be in East Asia or even Southeast Asia, but just you wait. It will be in Central America when Guatemala finally takes Belize and El Salvador for ourselves, turning the wheels to bring back the Federal Republic of Central America.

Su-57 maiden flight at China’s Zhuhai Airshow (rehearsal for next week’s main event)

This has got to be the clearest view I’ve ever seen of the Su-57 that is not from a professionally produced video.

Holy crap look at that take off length. Look at the maneuverability of the plane. It’s an insanely beautiful bird.

Trump taps Mike Huckabee to be his ambassador to Israel.

A few highlights:

• He has previously spoken out against efforts to negotiate a ceasefire deal
• Huckabee was a longtime evangelical minister before running for political office and regularly leads "The Israel Experience" trips that take tour groups to sites with Biblical and historical significance
• In Jan. 2017, Huckabee spoke in the West Bank in front of a banner vowing to "Build Israel Great Again" while touting the policy shift Trump's administration would bring.
• He refuses to call the settlements in the West Bank settlements, and prefers to call them "communities". He also refuses to use the word "occupation", or even call it the West Bank.

Our big sweaty Boi is killing gender affirming care, get your checkups by the end of the year I guess.

I couldn't find the article I saw today, but it was about how Xi Jinping and Lula da Silva will meet after the G20 in Rio de Janeiro. It seems that, due to Trump's victory, Lula now wants to join the Belt and Road Initiative (it seems that the neoliberals and liberals who support Lula but didn't like China are really afraid that Trump's government and protectionist policies will hurt them and are now pushing for Brazil to join China/BRI). With Brazil joining the BRI, I think China's plan to build the Bioceanic Railway and the Megaport in Peru will succeed. We'll see, but Trump's victory may have pushed Brazil more towards China. I think the fact that Biden didn't give Brazil the money he promised didn't help relations between these two countries.

The US and their dogs allowing Ukraine to strike Russian territory with long-range missiles doesn't change anything. Russia under Putin are committed to deescalation until the Ukraine war is wrapped up, and Ukraine's biggest issues are in Ukraine itself. Hitting an oil refinery in Rostov won't stop Russian advances in Donetsk. Those strikes might affect Russian supply lines a bit, but Russia has a lot of options with different paths to take to reach the front.

Thinking back on that anti-war rally that had Tulsi as it's keynote speaker, and feeling very justified at my criticism of the people who supported that (I'm trying to be nice here since I know there's at least a few people here who supported it at the time).

Paris prosecutors ask for 5 years in prison and ineligibility for Marine Le Pen. The French far-right leader is accused of misusing European Parliament funds to pay party members when she was an MEP.

https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/

Please don't step down as mod of /c/news.

US bans flights to Haiti for 30 days after Spirit, JetBlue planes are hit with gunfire

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/4989036-tulsi-gabbard-trump-intelligence/

Tulsi is head of national intelligence or some shit.

If he has any spare time from doing evil shit, I hope RFK legalises psychedelics