The Lemmy Club

Rescue operations have just concluded at the site of one of Russia’s April 24th missile strikes on Ukraine.

That day, 12 people were tragically killed in Kyiv, and nearly 90 others were injured.

Over 30 people remain hospitalized, many with severe injuries and amputations.

Investigations are ongoing, but it’s already clear the strike involved a ballistic missile from North Korea.

The lack of sufficient pressure on Russia enables it to import such missiles and other weapons—and use them here, in Europe. The lack of pressure on North Korea and its allies allows for the continued production of these ballistic weapons. The missile that killed civilians in Kyiv contained at least 116 components sourced from abroad, most of which, regrettably, were manufactured by American companies.

In today’s world, any war can quickly involve multiple actors, and any country facing aggression defends itself not from one opponent—but from a network of enablers. That’s why defense must also be based on collective effort.

Ukraine is grateful to all who help protect our people, who provide air defense systems and missiles. We thank those who maintain pressure on Russia and its allies for this war. We insist: Russia must immediately and unconditionally agree to a full ceasefire.

Ukraine agreed 45 days ago to President Trump’s proposal for a pause in hostilities—on land, in the air, and at sea. We also proposed extending this truce, especially during Easter, and directly called on Russia to at least stop attacking civilian targets. Russia rejected it all.

That’s why this cannot be resolved without pressure.

Pressure on Russia is essential. Stopping the killings is the top priority.

https://t.me/V_Zelenskiy_official/13972

cross-posted from: https://biglemmowski.win/post/6224801

Michael Gloss, 21, was the son of CIA Deputy Director for Digital Innovation Julianne Gallina Gloss, and Iraq war veteran Larry Gloss.

Before arriving in Russia on August 13, 2023, Gloss was travelling around Europe. On his Vkontakte page bio, he wrote: "I ran away from home (and) traveled the world. I hate fascism."

On April 4, 2024, he was killed, likely during a Russian offensive near Bakhmut, however, his burial in the U.S. did not take place until December 2024, Important Stories reports.

🌻

One of the officials added that Japan has conveyed to China on multiple occasions that it does not fully align with the US on chip-related exports and semiconductor restrictions.

In a sign of Japan Inc’s commitment to the China market, Toyota Motor Corp this week agreed to open a new factory in Shanghai in 2027, with the company reportedly planning to invest around US$2 billion (S$2.63 billion) in the plant.

A senior Russian military officer was killed when a car exploded on Friday in the town of Balashikha just east of Moscow, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

It named the officer as Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and said it had opened a criminal case into the incident.

An expert on the federal work force estimates that the speed and chaos of Musk’s cuts to the bureaucracy will cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year.

Trump and Elon Musk promised taxpayers big savings, maybe even a “DOGE dividend” check in their mailboxes, when DOGE was let loose on the federal government. Now, as he prepares to step back, Musk has said without providing details that DOGE is likely to save taxpayers only $150 billion.

That is about 15% of the $1 trillion he pledged to save, less than 8% of the $2 trillion in savings he had originally promised and a fraction of the nearly $7 trillion the federal government spent in the 2024 fiscal year.

The errors and obfuscations underlying DOGE’s claims of savings are well documented. Less known are the costs Musk incurred by taking what Trump called a “hatchet” to government and the resulting firings, agency lockouts and building seizures that mostly wound up in court.

Archived

Norway will provide NOK 53 million [EUR 4.6 million] in funding for assistance in the health sector in the period from December 2024 to December 2027. The funding is intended to support the health care system development strategy and priorities set out by the Ukrainian Government, and represents a new phase of the institutional health collaboration first initiated between Norway and Ukraine in 2019.

[...]

The institutional collaboration brings together the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Akershus University Hospital, the Resource Centre for Violence, Traumatic Stress and Suicide Prevention (eastern region) and Sunnaas Rehabilitation Hospital to share their expertise with partners in Ukraine.

[...]

Akershus University Hospital has worked together with Ukraine in the areas of grief support and suicide prevention since 2015.

The hospital has developed and implemented a training programme on suicide prevention. In addition to strengthening the practical skills needed to identify suicide risk situations and support people in need, the programme raises awareness about suicide prevention. To date, 3 765 Ukrainians have participated in the programme, which has been carried out in major cities and small communities across most of Ukraine’s regions.

In cooperation with an NGO in Ukraine, Akershus University Hospital has also provided both direct grief support and training. The hospital has developed guides that have been translated into Ukrainian. Since the project began, some 21 000 Ukrainians have taken part in the training.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/25995230

The GoG preservation program has done it once again by bringing back what seems to be a classic JRPG from the PS1 era back to the modern systems.

I am absolutely overjoyed at the fact that the GoG preservation program constantly keeps on giving and providing us with these various classic titles that can be played on modern systems.

This game in particular seems absolutely perfect to being played on the Steam Deck due to it being a turn-based JRPG.

I personally don't have any experience with this particular title, or the overall series for that matter, but you can bet I am jumping into this game as soon as I finish setting it up on the Deck.

https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xw/fyrbt/lxjzh/202504/t20250425_11604503.html

Global Times: It’s reported that talks continue between the U.S. and China on tackling the fentanyl issue, but the Chinese are failing to negotiate in good faith. The U.S. might consider additional punitive measures to compel China to take meaningful action. This is according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. What’s your comment?

Guo Jiakun: Fentanyl is the U.S.’s problem, not China’s. The U.S. and the U.S. alone has the responsibility to solve it. Despite the goodwill China has shown, the U.S. slapped tariffs on Chinese imports and blames it on fentanyl. This is bullying through and through, and highly damaging to dialogue and cooperation on counternarcotics. The U.S. should know that vilifying others will not hide its failed responsibility, to punish those who try to help will not solve any problem, and intimidation or threats are certainly not the right way to engage with China.

Reuters: I have two questions. The U.S. side said that trade talks between the U.S. and China are ongoing and a White House official said lower-level in-person talks as well as a phone call between U.S. and Chinese staff have taken place this week. Has the U.S. tried to reach out to the Chinese side? If so, is China willing to engage in trade talks? Second question, China is considering exempting some U.S. imports from its 125 percent tariffs and is asking businesses to identify goods that could be eligible. Can China confirm this?

Guo Jiakun: On your first question, yesterday, both my colleague at the Ministry of Commerce and I gave a clear answer to this question. China and the U.S. are not having any consultation or negotiation on tariffs. The U.S. should stop creating confusion.

On your second question, I am not aware of the specifics. I’d refer you to competent authorities.

CCTV: Recently the Permanent Mission of China to the UN held an Arria-formula meeting at the UN Security Council on “the Impact of Unilateralism and Bullying Practices on International Relations” in New York. Can you share more information about that?

Guo Jiakun: On April 23, Ambassador Fu Cong of the Permanent Mission of China to the UN chaired the UN Security Council Arria-Formula Meeting on “the Impact of Unilateralism and Bullying Practices on International Relations.” Representatives from over 80 countries, including UNSC members, attended the meeting. China stressed at the meeting that the U.S.’s tariff levies severely infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of all countries, severely violate the WTO rules, and severely disrupt the global economic order. It is essentially about subverting the existing international economic and trade order by means of tariffs, putting the U.S. interests above the common good of the international community, and serving US hegemony at the cost of other countries’ legitimate interests. The world needs openness and inclusiveness, not closure and isolation, sovereign equality, not the strong bullying the weak, fairness and justice, not putting one’s own country first, and solidarity and cooperation, not division and confrontation. The international community must make the right choice, make its unified voice heard, and take joint actions.

Many countries at the meeting called for upholding multilateralism, strengthening dialogue and cooperation, safeguarding the WTO-centered multilateral trade regime, abiding by the UN Charter and basic norms governing international relations, safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries and promoting the stability and development of all countries.

We hope the U.S. will face up to the widespread concerns and strong call from the international community at the meeting, stop unilateral measures and bullying practices targeting other countries, and stop serving its own hegemony at the cost of other countries’ legitimate interests. The world should not return to the law of the jungle where the strong bully the weak. The U.S. should not go further down the wrong path.

"If you raise the fucking hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out."

In quotes and attributed, in a conversation about the Costco hot dog. But apparently I'm threatening violence. Lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Morita#Early_life

Here is yet another example of stunningly craven journalism from the Guardian, entirely illustrative of what is going on across the British establishment media in its coverage of Israeli war crimes in Gaza for the past 18 months.

We are now a month on from Israel executing 15 paramedics and hiding their bodies in a mass grave. Since then, video footage has surfaced of that atrocity, showing Israeli soldiers firing on a convoy of emergency vehicles that were clearly marked and with their warning lights on. We have had postmortems of the victims showing they were shot from close-range in the head and torso. And we've had eye-witness accounts of the killings.

All of that, of course, is on top of compelling circumstantial evidence. Israel sought to destroy the evidence of its war crime by crushing the emergency vehicles and then burying them, along with the bodies of the 15 crew members, presumably in the hope that they would decompose and make it hard to forensically determine exactly what had happened.

The latest evidence to emerge, reported by Israel's Haaretz newspaper this week, shows that Israeli soldiers fired continuously for three and a half minutes on the convoy, despite the emergency vehicles being clearly marked.

According to details from an internal investigation by the Israeli military leaked to the paper, the soldiers fired from near-point-blank range and even while the emergency workers were trying to identify themselves. (Not surprisingly, the other parts of the investigation, those made public, have been a whitewash, suggesting only “professional failures” and “operational misunderstandings”.)

In other words, this new evidence confirms that Israeli soldiers intentionally murdered most of the occupants of the emergency vehicles with a prolonged hail of bullets. Those who survived, the postmortems suggest, were executed with shots to the head or torso. Then the evidence was hurriedly buried.

None of this is surprising. We have known for some time, as repeatedly reported by the Israeli media, that the Israeli military has created undeclared “kill zones”, where anything that moves is shot – even children, aid workers and emergency crews.

As has also been evident for most of the past 18 months, Israel is implementing a policy to destroy Gaza's health sector, including its hospitals and ambulances, and killing or kidnapping medical staff – on top of wrecking the rest of the enclave's infrastructure. The goal is to force the Palestinian population out of Gaza, driving them into the neighbouring Egyptian territory of Sinai.

Israel is carrying out a genocide to facilitate its ethnic cleansing plan.

The murder of the 15 paramedics entirely fits with this picture.

The video evidence has already proven that Israel's original claim that the ambulances and fire engines were “advancing suspiciously” – whatever that is supposed to mean – was utterly untrue.

Israel's other implausible claim, that several of the emergency crew were really Hamas fighters in disguise, has been thoroughly debunked too. The biographies of those murdered by Israel show they have long been emergency workers. Israel has been relying on this kneejerk excuse every time it gets caught lying about its latest atrocity.

So how on earth is the Guardian still writing a headline like this:

New details on killing of paramedics in Gaza appear to contradict IDF’s account

Or writing a first paragraph like this one:

New developments have come to light in the killing of 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip last month, with evidence reportedly contradicting the Israel Defense Forces’ claim that soldiers did not fire indiscriminately at the medical workers.

The “evidence” cited by the Guardian is a reference to the Haaretz report of Israeli soldiers firing for three and a half minutes on the convoy.

The Guardian’s wording falsely suggests two things. First, that the Israeli military's account of the killings still has enough credibility that it needs contradicting. And second, that Haaretz’s latest evidence only “appears to contradict” an account that has already been so repeatedly contradicted that it cannot be entertained as true on any level whatsoever.

The Guardian’s phrasing is also utterly subservient to Israel. The Israeli military framed its internal investigation as if its aim was to determine whether soldiers fired “indiscriminately” or not – so that it can then claim to have concluded that they did not fire indiscriminately.

That presumably means the Israeli military wants us to believe its soldiers shot at the emergency vehicles with precision and intention – in this case, to kill those “Hamas fighters” invented retroactively by the Israeli military to justify its atrocity.

The Guardian buys into this framing, suggesting that the unpublished part of the investigation found that the three and a half minutes of live fire at the vehicles was actually “indiscriminate” rather than intentional.

The reality is far worse: it was both. Israeli soldiers fired indiscriminately at the vehicles with the intention of killing all of the emergency workers inside. The issue of “discrimination” is meant only to serve as a red herring.

Before Haaretz’s new disclosure it was already clear that the Israeli military’s account was a pack of lies. So why is the Guardian not doing its job? Why is it still pretending a month on that the Israeli military’s version has not already been thoroughly discredited?

Even a highly cautious headline from the Guardian ought to read like this:

New details on killing of paramedics in Gaza further discredit IDF’s account

And the text should read:

New developments have come to light in the killing of 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip last month, with an internal Israel Defense Forces’ investigation reportedly finding its soldiers fired a prolonged hail of bullets from close range at a clearly marked convoy of emergency vehicles.

Any rookie journalist knows the Guardian is reporting this all wrong. It keeps giving Israel the benefit of the doubt, even after the case against Israel has been proven. It keeps fudging the story. It keeps suggesting that Israel’s guilt is not already an incontrovertible, established fact.

If this isn’t clear to you, just imagine how this story would have been reported were the executed paramedics Ukrainian and the soldiers responsible Russian. Not like this, you can be sure.

Why are a whole team of highly experienced Guardian journalists still getting this story so wrong? It is not because they are incompetent. They get it wrong because it is their job to do so: they work for a corporate media outlet, one that exists within a corporate news system that serves a corporate financial system that is protected by corporate political structures.

Or for shorthand, these journalists – whether they understand it or not – work for the British establishment, advancing British foreign policy goals that are subservient to Washington’s imperial demands for global full-spectrum dominance.

The role of corporate advertising is clear. It is there to make us want to consume, to encourage us to feel that we need more to be complete, to cultivate an aspiration in us to a materially “better” way of life. People in the advertising industry don’t think of themselves as monsters. Nonetheless, the profession’s goal is to create an endless demand for resources on a finite planet. Ultimately, it is to will the suicide of our species.

The role of the corporate media is no different. It is there to create the illusion that we are the masters of our own thoughts. It is there to make us think we have reached an independent understanding of the world, even though that understanding has been carefully crafted for us from birth. It is there to cultivate a worldview in us that aligns precisely with the privileging of a tiny corporate elite whose wealth depends on the relentless pillaging of the planet for their benefit.

Journalists don’t think of themselves as monsters either. Nonetheless, they are part of a media machine whose goal is to lull us into passivity as our leaders actively collude in the perpetration of a genocide, as our corporations, militaries and intelligence services press ahead with endless wars for resource control, and as the tripwires of nuclear confrontation grow ever more numerous and entangled.

No one wants to think of themself as a monster. But we keep doing monstrous things.

[OC]
Bought this tee last night because I loved Gundam as a kid. Then I read the tag and realized it is celebrating Gundam's 45th anniversary and I feel assaulted.

Beijing (AFP) – China's wind and solar energy capacity has surpassed that of mostly coal-powered thermal for the first time, the national energy body said Friday.

China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases that drive climate change, has pledged to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

While around 60 percent of China's energy comes from coal, the country is also a renewable energy powerhouse, building almost twice as much wind and solar capacity as every other country combined, according to research published last year.

"In the first quarter of 2025, China's newly installed wind and photovoltaic power capacity totalled 74.33 million kilowatts, bringing the cumulative installed capacity to 1.482 billion kilowatts," the national energy body said.

That surpassed the installed capacity of thermal power (1.451 billion kilowatts) for the first time.

President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday that "no matter how the international situation changes", the country's efforts to combat climate change "will not slow down".

Xi also said China would announce its 2035 greenhouse gas reduction commitments, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), before COP30 in November and that it would cover all greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide.

President Donald Trump meanwhile has pulled the United States, the world's second-largest polluter, out of the Paris climate accord while pledging a vast expansion in fossil fuel exploitation.

China's new milestone comes as the country experiences explosive growth in renewable energy.

Last year, China added a record 357 gigawatts of wind and solar, 10 times the US's additions.

It met a 2030 target to install 1,200 GW of solar and wind capacity almost six years early.

Friday's announcement said that wind and solar additions in the first quarter had "far exceeded" China's total increase in electricity consumption.

"This trend is very likely to continue in the following months and quarters in 2025," Yao Zhe, Global Policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia, told AFP.

That suggests China's power sector is undergoing "structural change and the sector's carbon emissions are one small step away from peaking".

However, coal continues to play a key role in China's energy mix.

"The intermittency of variable renewables like wind and solar... means it's generally inappropriate to compare them to firm, dispatchable power sources like coal," according to David Fishman, senior manager at the Lantau Group.

"There is indeed some combination of wind plus solar plus storage that equals one coal plant, but the determination is different everywhere in the world."

And China's energy consumption continues to grow –- by 4.3 percent last year.

Covering that growth with renewable power is a "tough proposition for a developing country with a huge heavy industrial segment and a residential population that frankly doesn't even use that much electricity on a per capita basis", Fishman said.

Despite the renewable energy boom, China also began construction on 94.5 gigawatts of coal power projects in 2024, 93 percent of the global total, according to a February report from the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM) in the United States.

China's coal production has risen steadily in recent years, from 3.9 billion tons in 2020 to 4.8 billion tons in 2024.

That is despite Xi pledging to "strictly control" coal power before "phasing it down" between 2026 and 2030.

a littl drawin i made... on my schools digital whiteboard... i saved it! <3

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250424013900/https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/23/democrats-need-to-make-republicans-fear-the-consequences-of-attempting-a-dictatorship/