Alsephina

joined 1 year ago
[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 19 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Well yeah, the capitalist class that exploits workers do get to live well under a system where they rule.

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 36 points 3 months ago (13 children)

...You're describing capitalism.

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 35 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Lmfao libs are gonna shill for them anyway aren't they

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

the government will pay Endeavour $60 million and a 3% royalty on up to 400,000 ounces of gold produced at the Wahgnion mine

Shame they couldn't just seize it from the corporations, but that might lead to a coup I suppose.

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 months ago

Down below. Learn to read maybe?

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Wow. Abbas isn't great but this is certainly a good step.

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 months ago

CCCP dominated

The USSR is gone bud. It's a capitalist hellhole now.

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 83 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)
[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Game's great. Only complaints are the too many invisible walls (made worse by the lack of a map, though there's a mod for that now apparently), and the fact that there's no boss gauntlet. The latter ig they can add in an update or DLC like Sekiro did; would really help the replayability.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the difficulty; was afraid it wouldn't reach Fromsoft levels, but alot of the bosses in the later chapters proved otherwise. Any Soulsborne fan will very much enjoy this.

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 14 points 4 months ago

Accept your fate. VIM is love. VIM is life.

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 months ago

Not enough data for that part for some reason ig; only one data point

 

Iranian state media confirmed an attack by Israel in the early hours of Friday and said the “sabotage” operation involving drones had failed.

Israel launched a retaliatory strike on Iran following last week’s missile and drone barrage from Tehran, according to two US officials, though media from both countries appeared to downplay the severity of the incident.

An explosion was heard early Friday in Isfahan, Iran’s third-biggest city, Fars news agency reported. Nuclear facilities located there are safe, state television and the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said.

The Israeli government, which rarely comments on specific military actions linked to Iran, hasn’t confirmed the strike.

Flights were suspended in Isfahan and the Iranian cities of Tehran and Shiraz as well as airports across the country’s western borders, but those restrictions were soon eased.

The incident follows days of frantic diplomacy from the US and European nations in which they tried to convince Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to respond too aggressively, if at all, to Saturday night’s Iranian attack. ⠀

Isfahan is home to around 2 million people and several military bases and facilities. It’s believed to have been one of several launch sites for Iran’s attack on Israel on Saturday night.

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The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favour and two abstentions – the UK and Switzerland.

The United States vetoed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council (UNSC) which recommended granting the State of Palestine full membership in the United Nations. ⠀

The office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the US veto was “blatant aggression … which pushes the region ever further to the edge of the abyss”. ⠀

The Palestinian armed group [Hamas] accused the US of standing “in the face of international will” by exercising its veto power and denying Palestinians full membership in the world body. ⠀

[Egypt's] Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed “deep regret” over the inability of the UNSC to pass the resolution and said approving Palestine’s bid to become a full UN member was a vital step and “an inherent right of the Palestinian people”. ⠀

Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said that by exercising its veto, the US has demonstrated “what they really think of the Palestinians”.

Washington thinks “they do not deserve to have their own state”, and it only realises “the interest of Israel”, he added. ⠀

Saudi Arabia expressed regret over the failure of the UNSC to adopt the resolution, it said in a statement. ⠀

[Norway's] Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide expressed his country’s “regret” that the UNSC “did not agree on admitting Palestine as a full member of the UN”. ⠀

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz commended the US for vetoing the resolution, which he labelled a “shameful proposal”, in a post on X.

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  • Vast tracts of western Iran airspace are empty after strikes
  • Soaring tensions risk further upending global air traffic ⠀

Iran shut airspace over the west of the country and its capital after Israel launched a missile strike, forcing commercial flights to reroute for the second time in less than a week as regional tensions escalate.

Air traffic between Iran and Iraq has been effectively halted, according to notices posted on a Federal Aviation Administration website, while airspace over Tehran was also closed. A raft of airports have suspended flights, including in Isfahan — where explosions were reported to have been heard Friday — and the city of Shiraz, the Mehr news agency reported. ⠀

FlyDubai said in a statement it had canceled all flights to Iran on Friday and flight FZ1929, which was heading to Tehran, had returned to Dubai due to airspace closures. Emirates did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg News.

Soaring tensions in the Middle East risk further upending flights in one of the most highly trafficked regions of the world. Over the weekend, Iran’s direct attack on Israel saw several countries temporarily close their airspace, forcing major carriers including Qantas Airways Ltd. and Singapore Airlines Ltd. to draw up alternative plans.

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Israel conducted a strike in Iran early Friday morning local time, a senior U.S. official told Axios.

Israel, which has not confirmed it launched an attack, has vowed to retaliate against Iran for a missile and drone attack on Israel. The U.S. is concerned that continued counterattacks could trigger wider regional escalation.

  • An aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to comment.
  • The U.S. official said Israel notified the U.S. in advance. "We were not surprised," the official said.
  • The Biden administration has warned Israel that escalation with Iran wouldn't serve U.S. or Israeli interests and urged Israel to "be careful" with any retaliation, U.S. officials said.

Fars news agency, which is affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported explosions were heard in the city of Isfahan in central Iran near an Iranian air force base.

  • Iranian state TV reported several drones were shot down by air defenses in Isfahan.
  • Iran issued a notification early Friday morning local time closing the air space over western parts of the country.
  • Iranian state news agency IRNA reports Iranian air defense systems were activated tonight in several places in the country.

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The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two abstentions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. U.S. allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution.

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The administration pays lip service to a two-state solution while blocking every possible avenue toward that goal.

Recent initiatives by the Palestinian government to revive their application for UN membership are putting to the test the U.S. claim that it supports a “two-state solution” — a Palestinian state on at least some portion of the West Bank and Gaza Strip alongside a secure Israel. In practice, however, the Biden administration and Congress have been working hard to ensure that that does not come about.

The State of Palestine was declared in 1988 and has since been recognized by 140 countries. The Palestinian Authority (PA), the recognized Palestinian government, controls most of the urban areas in the West Bank with some limited administrative control of larger areas, though Israel controls security for most of the territory it initially seized in 1967, and its armed forces routinely enter even the nominally PA-run urban areas with impunity. Unlike most governments that support a two-state solution, the United States only recognizes Israel.

A State Department official under President Barack Obama informed Truthout that they were instructed to refuse to open any correspondence with Palestinian officials which includes their national emblem or anything else referencing the “State of Palestine” and believes that remains the policy to this day.

And, while the Biden administration and the Democratic Party recognize Jerusalem as the undivided “capital of Israel,” they deny such an acknowledgement for Palestine, despite Jerusalem for many centuries serving as the center of Palestinian cultural, academic, political and religious life. President Joe Biden has even refused to reopen the U.S. Consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, which had served Palestinian interests since the 1930s until Donald Trump ordered it closed in 2019.

According to U.S. law, all assistance to the Palestinian Authority will be eliminated unless “all its ministers publicly accept Israel’s right to exist and all prior agreements and understandings with the United States and Israel.” However, despite the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s entire cabinet refuses to accept Palestine’s right to exist and does not accept many of the prior agreements and understandings with the United States and the PA, U.S. aid to Israel is at an all-time high.

Bipartisan legislation passed by Congress and signed by Biden in 2022 requires the State Department to develop “a strategy on expanding and strengthening” efforts to convince countries which have not done so already to unilaterally recognize Israel and to “leverage diplomatic lines of effort and resources to encourage normalization.” By contrast, the United States has actively discouraged countries from recognizing Palestine, even using the Foreign Assistance Act and other measures to pressure them not to. ⠀

Though Biden, in his 2024 State of the Union address, reiterated that “the only real solution to the situation is a two-state solution over time,” he has given no indication that he is willing to take any steps to make that possible. As Matthew Duss of the Center for International Policy noted in a recent article in The New Republic on the Palestinian quest for statehood, the Democrats’ view is that, “Violent resistance is unacceptable. Nonviolent resistance is also unacceptable. The only acceptable path to liberation is to negotiate with an Israeli government that is fundamentally opposed to granting it and is continually protected by the U.S. Congress from any consequences for that opposition.”

Indeed, the Biden administration and Congress have long taken the position that Palestinian statehood is only acceptable on terms voluntarily agreed to by Israel in bilateral negotiations. This comes despite the fact that there have been no such negotiations since 2015 and the Israeli government categorically rules out allowing any kind of Palestinian state. ⠀

It was the United Nations that established the state of Israel through United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 in 1947, a decision which has long been celebrated by Biden and other Democratic leaders. However, these same leaders categorically reject any role for the United Nations in establishing a state of Palestine.

Earlier this month, the United States was one of only two countries in the 47-member UN Human Rights Council to vote against a resolution which “reaffirmed its support for the solution of two States, Palestine and Israel, living side by side in peace and security.”

The United States is quite vehement about making sure the United Nations does not support Palestinian self-determination; it has been U.S. policy since 1990 to withdraw funding from any United Nations agency which grants Palestine full member status. When Palestine was admitted to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2011, the Obama administration suspended funding. This 22 percent reduction greatly harmed UNESCO’s important work to improve literacy, protect women’s rights, provide technical training and education, preserve regional and cultural history, encourage scientific research, protect independent media and press freedom, promote cultural diversity, and set international standards for artificial intelligence and technology education. The U.S. position was that opposing Palestinian membership in that body was more important than supporting UNESCO’s work.

In 2018, President Trump withdrew from the organization altogether, making the United States the only UN member to not be part of UNESCO.

In 2023, Biden announced that the United States would be rejoining UNESCO and begin paying its dues, enacting a waiver to the congressional ban but including a proviso that the United States would cut all funding to the United Nations if Palestine was admitted as a full member state. ⠀

In light of all this, why do Biden and Democratic congressional leaders still claim to support a two-state solution when they are going to such great lengths to prevent one? They recognize that the vast majority of their constituents believe that Palestinian Arabs, like Israeli Jews, have a right to statehood. Constituent pressure is likely the major reason that Biden, who strongly opposed Palestinian statehood for most of his long Senate career, at least claims to support it now.

While Republicans’ strident opposition to Palestinian statehood is clearly rooted in bigotry, the Democratic leadership’s role is more like that of the “white moderate” described in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” who professes to support the goals but not the methods, who insists on endless negotiations with oppressors who refuse to compromise, and who “believes he can set the timetable for [someone else]’s freedom.”

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Proponents say full recognition of Palestine by European countries would help to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.

In his latest stop on a tour of several European countries aimed at gathering support for recognizing a Palestinian state, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez joined his Slovenian counterpart on Tuesday in calling to make the diplomatic move to help secure an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestine is already recognized as a state by the vast majority of United Nations members — 139 out of 193 countries — and by a handful of European nations, but the European Union as a whole, the United States, and the United Kingdom are among those that have long refused to recognize statehood.

At a joint press conference with Sánchez, Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said the question is “when, not if, but when is the best moment to recognize Palestine.”

Al Jazeera reported Wednesday that Sánchez aims to formally recognize Palestinian statehood by July, even if he does not secure enough support from other E.U. countries.

“The time has come for the international community to once and for all recognize the state of Palestine,” Sánchez said in November. “It is something that many E.U. countries believe we have to do jointly, but if this is not the case, Spain will adopt its own decision.” ⠀

Sánchez has also met with leaders in Ireland, Malta, and Norway in recent weeks.

Jonas Gahr Støre, prime minister of Norway — which is not an E.U. member — said last week that his government “stands ready” to join “like-minded countries” in recognizing Palestinian statehood.

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said after meeting with Sánchez last Friday that formal recognition “is coming much closer and we would like to move together in doing so.” ⠀

Al Jazeera reported Wednesday that Belgium — which has called for economic sanctions on Israel over its bombardment of Gaza — is likely to join Spain’s push after June, when the country no longer holds the E.U. presidency.

The push from Spain comes as the U.N. Security Council is scheduled to vote on whether to admit Palestine as a full member of the U.N., which the Spanish prime minister said would be supported by the governments he’s met with.

Palestinian representatives announced earlier this month that they would revive their application for membership, which the U.S. has vetoed in previous votes. ⠀

The Arab League urged U.N. members “not to obstruct this critical initiative.”

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As regional tensions run high, Iran has paraded drones, missiles and soldiers to show it is ready for a response from Israel after launching an unprecedented attack on its archenemy.

Iran carried out its first-ever direct attack on Israel at the weekend in response to an April 1 air strike on the consular building of Iran’s embassy in Syria. ⠀

Wednesday’s parade saw the Iranian armed forces showcase a range of military equipment, including drones and long-range ballistic missiles.

A mong them were multiple versions of the Ababil, Arash and Mohajer drones as well as the Dezful medium-range ballistic missile and S-300 air defence missile system.

Raisi reiterated warnings against “the slightest act of aggression” by Israel, saying it would lead to “a fierce and severe response”.

Israel has said it will respond to the weekend attack with military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari saying Iran will not get off “scot-free”.

The Israeli army said most of the projectiles fired by Iran were shot down with the help of the United States and other allies and the attack caused only minimal damage.

Iran hailed the attack as “successful” and said it “achieved all its objectives”, including inflicting damage to an airbase and intelligence centre that it said was used by Israel to carry out the strike in Damascus. ⠀

In his speech, Raisi also hit out at countries that had “sought to normalise relations” with Israel.

“These countries are now humiliated in front of their own people, which constitutes a strategic failure for the regime” of Israel, he said.

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Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party is the most prolific user of social media platforms, particularly after the country’s traditional media began censoring news about the former cricket star and his party in the run-up to the polls. Khan has 20.6 million followers on X. ⠀

Pakistan blocked access to social media platform X around the time of elections in February, the interior ministry said, citing national security concerns.

Users had reported problems using the platform, formerly known as Twitter, since mid-February, when jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party called for protests against a government official’s admission of vote manipulation.

At the time, both the government and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the state regulatory body, refused to comment on the outages that were also widely reported by internet watchdog groups. On Wednesday, the Ministry of Interior mentioned the shutdown in a written court submission.

“It is very pertinent to mention here that the failure of Twitter/X to adhere to the lawful directives of the government of Pakistan and address concerns regarding the misuse of its platform necessitated the imposition of a ban,” said the report, seen by the Reuters news agency, which confirmed the long-suspected shutdown. ⠀

Activists challenging the ban said it was designed to quash dissent after the February 8 general elections that were marred by widespread opposition claims of vote rigging and protests. ⠀

The decision to temporarily block X was taken after considering confidential reports from Pakistan’s intelligence and security agencies, the report said.

It claimed that “hostile elements operating on Twitter/X have nefarious intentions to create an environment of chaos and instability, with the ultimate goal of destabilising the country and plunging it into some form of anarchy”. ⠀

Access to X has been sporadic, occasionally available for short cycles based on the internet service provider, forcing users to use virtual private networks, said Alp Toker of NetBlocks.

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  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said ‘we will make our own decisions, and the State of Israel will do everything necessary to defend itself’
  • Germany’s foreign minister said ‘escalation ‘would serve no one, not Israel’s security, not the many dozens of hostages still in the hands of Hamas’ ⠀

Netanyahu met the German and British foreign ministers, who both travelled to Israel as part of a coordinated push to keep the confrontation between Israel and Iran from escalating into a regional conflict fuelled by the Gaza war.

Netanyahu’s office said he thanked David Cameron and Annalena Baerbock for their support, while telling them: “I want to make it clear – we will make our own decisions, and the State of Israel will do everything necessary to defend itself.” ⠀

The Iranian missiles and drones launched on Saturday were mostly shot down by Israel and its allies and caused no deaths. But Israel says it must retaliate to preserve the credibility of its deterrents. Iran says it considers the matter closed, but will retaliate again if Israel does. Washington says it is planning to impose new sanctions targeting Iran’s missile and drone programme in coming days, and expects its allies will follow suit. EU leaders are due to discuss sanctions at a summit in Brussels, and sanctions are also on the agenda at G7 talks in Italy. ⠀

Inside Gaza, Israel has launched a massive air and ground assault, with nearly 34,000 people confirmed killed, according to Palestinian doctors, and thousands of others feared dead, still lost among the ruins. ⠀

Israel says it will discuss a pause to free hostages but will not stop fighting until Hamas is wiped out; Hamas says it will not release hostages without a truce leading to an end to the war. The prime minister of Qatar, which has served as mediator, said negotiations were at a delicate phase. The Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, three of whose sons were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza this month, is set to visit Turkey in coming days for talks with President Tayyip Erdogan.

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