A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image depicts the aftermath of a Yemeni missile impacting King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleIt's been a much slower week than last week, consisting mainly of consolidation and (so far, empty) threats.

In Yemen, Ansarallah continues to battle Saudi-backed mercenary groups. Gains have been relatively slower compared to the lightning offensive earlier that took the western coastline, which makes sense with all the new territory they have to administer and generally sort out, including fortifying towns and cities against potential Saudi assaults from the north. The biggest news so far has been Trump apparently being on the verge of striking Yemen over the weekend due to Saudi insistence, to the extent that embassies across the region issued alerts warning that they might soon be attacked, but then deciding not to when people in his administration told him not to. I haven't cared for Trump's theatrics for several months now, so I won't care to speculate whether this is a bluff or a double bluff and so on; all I will say is that a couple years ago, a significantly stronger US military tried and failed to dislodge Ansarallah's control of the Red Sea, and that this time, they even seem willing to hit Saudi oil facilities in response.

On that note, diesel continues to break new price records, and gasoline isn't too far behind it. Outright shortages haven't yet become systemic, as tempting as it is to look at a couple gas stations running out and drawing trend lines from there, but it's certainly going to be where we're headed if there isn't a diesel export ban eventually, which Russia and others have already implemented. A ban would somewhat alleviate US price hikes, but would cause major instability throughout the rest of the world due to the ubiquity of diesel in transportation infrastructure, and if you've created a favourable international order over the past century or so, you really don't want to blow it up.

Next up: Poland's been amping up their anti-Russian rhetoric to new heights lately, joining Germany and others in advocating for further aid to Ukraine and the creation of modern national armies in Europe to send into Ukraine to battle Russia directly. This type of thing would have been rather frightening to me back in 2023 and 2024, but at this point, all I can do is shake my head. We all saw how the US military, which is more powerful than yours, has faired against Iran, which is weaker than Russia - and you want to arm yourself with largely American weapon systems, or at least systems heavily inspired by the American MIC? Lol. Lmao, even.

Lastly for today, Trump seems to have taken a victory lap over their more-or-less annexation of Greenland after Denmark permitted it. As I and many others noted back when this was all over the media initially months ago, the US has had a military base there for decades already and has been investing in mining there too for a while, so this is more of a formalization of the de facto status quo. Denmark previously technically had a veto on US military activity there, but now seems to be gone; after all, there is little chance that Denmark would ever have the courage to actually use said veto anyway at this point. So, geopolitically, it's a fairly minor news item that serves mainly as yet another humiliation for Europe in a long chain that stretches far into the past and continues to stretch into the future. For the Greenlanders themselves, however, this does seem like pretty catastrophic news, with any and all non-US foreign investment (such as by China) likely to be cut.

(and as a postscript here just before I hit post: yes, the Iranian president physically travelling to the US is embarrassing for Iran and very embarrassing for him. at least Araghchi going makes sense given he's the foreign minister. the silver lining of this debacle might be a further discrediting of the non-hardliner side?)


Last week's thread is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on the Zionists' destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


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[–] 65 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Lula announces a ban on online betting in Brazil.

Machine-translated and summarized by Qwen because Western AIs refuse to translate copyrighted material, lmao

The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced on Friday (25) in São Paulo the total ban on fixed-odds betting ("bets") in the country. This prohibition also includes online games and virtual casinos, such as the "Tiger Game."

The ban, enacted nine days before the elections, was formalized through a Provisional Measure (MP) signed by President Lula and published in an extra edition of the Official Gazette. (Note: Provisional Measures must be voted on by Congress within 120 days to become permanent law.)

Lula also sent a bill to Congress establishing penalties for anyone who exploits, operates, or promotes these betting platforms.

"I made the decision to take the hard and drastic measure necessary. It’s like cancer: either you remove the tumor, or the tumor will kill us. [...] There was a lot of fighting and discussion about doing it halfway, but no. If it has to be done, we will do what must be done. End the bets," Lula stated.

Finance Minister Dario Durigan affirmed that as of Friday, "no more money can be deposited into the country's betting sites. The sites will remain available for bettors to withdraw their remaining balances until 11:59 PM on October 5."

Key Deadlines:

Until Oct 5, 11:59 PM: Bettors can voluntarily withdraw their balances.

From Oct 6: Betting sites and apps will go offline.

Oct 7–8: Betting companies must report account balances by CPF to operating banks.

Oct 9–14: Full refund of balances processed via banks.

From Oct 14: If issues arise, the state bank Caixa will mediate refunds to bettors.

The Provisional Measure also mandates the removal of all betting-related advertising, marketing, and sponsorship branding from both physical and digital media by October 5.

Additionally, the government announced a reinforced structure within the Ministry of Justice, including a new Federal Police division and a Digital Rights Secretariat (Sedigi) unit dedicated to asset recovery and combating money laundering linked to betting.

All pending or new requests for betting lottery concessions or authorizations are now void, and existing authorizations will be revoked within 30 days. Crimes and Penalties

Because the Brazilian Constitution does not allow Provisional Measures to dictate criminal law, the government sent a separate bill to Congress to criminalize these activities:

Operating/running betting platforms: 4 to 6 years in prison, plus a fine (applies even with foreign authorization). Penalties increase by one-third for virtual online casino games.

Advertising and marketing: 2 to 4 years in prison, plus a fine, for promoting betting or recruiting bettors (excludes journalistic, educational, scientific, or critical content).

Misuse of personal data: 2 to 4 years in prison for selling or using personal data to target betting ads, especially involving minors or individuals with diagnosed gambling disorders.

Financial facilitation: 2 to 4 years in prison for institutions or developers knowingly processing payments or building/distributing betting apps.

These measures are part of a broader economic package aimed at combating household debt, announced during an event in São Paulo, as President Lula continues to frame betting platforms as destructive to families ahead of the election.

This still needs congress approval before it becomes law, however, so I'm not too optimistic. Still, great news, although it seems they sure as hell could've done this earlier. Are you telling me you had the power to ban betting all along? Come on, man.

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  • [–] 31 points 3 days ago (5 children)

    god in Colombia it feels like there's one sports betting company per capita it might be the whole economy now

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  • [–] 21 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    In Greece some of the only buildings I saw that weren't dilapidated from the recession/austerity years were OΠΑΠ betting shops. In England most towns have at least one betting shop. it's like a leech.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 days ago

    I remember from Varoufakis' book about his time as the Greek Finance minister that he wanted to outlaw betting machines in bars because they caused so much misery during the Eurocrisis, but that the European Comission reacted very extreme to that and used arcane European laws to block that.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    OΠΑΠ

    Like Onan? As in onanism, like jacking off?

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