On Thursday in Amsterdam thousands came to protest against Dutch support of Israel and police violence. In Utrecht hundreds of people came together with the same message.

Amsterdam protest organisers have decided to de-escalate due to increased violence by police and lack of medics in the organisation. They made a gofundme to cover legal help and (medical) supplies for future protests. Protests will continue but less disruptive. Utrecht has made no such statement (yet). A few Amsterdam protesters that were arrested will have hearings today that will be accompanied by a support protest.

An organisation of Dutch scholars for Palestine shared a petition to stop academic support for Israel by Dutch universities and a message to all students and staff at all universities to walk out on Monday at 11am. Huge protests are expected that day in remembrance of the Nakba.

Important instagram accounts for information: @amsterdam.encampment @encampent.uu @dutchscholarsforpalestine

LIVE: Pentagon press briefing - YouTube

The Pentagon spokesperson is already managing expectations about the pier: "You have to remember, this is a temporary pier. This is not the best way to get humanitarian aid into Gaza."

It's a Bluesky post. He must have transcribed what she said.

Good read here if you want to be cheered up a bit. Tweet thread from a zionist blob ghoul who does Middle East policy and analysis for Breaking Defense, the Jerusalem Post, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

https://twitter.com/sfrantzman/status/1788623358097068147

TLDR - Zionists blob member admits Hamas is not weakened in any meaningful way and is basically holding all of the cards. They have shown back up in areas previously cleared by Israel because Israel is not willing to commit to an extended military occupation of Gaza. Or rather, as probably all of us could have imagined, Israel is actually being held back by Joe Biden and not being allowed to "take the gloves off" in Gaza. It's so funny that they are going to try and deal with the internal contradictions of this war by doing the "stabbed in the back" routine to Biden, after all he did for them. Serves you right, Genocide Joe.

Select quote:

Hamas is not weakened. There is no evidence that it is. It hasn't lost control of parts of Gaza and seen other polities rise in its place. It's true that it doesn't have the "infrastructure" it had before. But it can rebuild this. Labor costs are cheap in Gaza, that is how Hamas built the tunnels before.

In today's edition of wtf are the DA (white liberal political party in South Africa, the official opposition to the ANC) doing in South African elections, the DA had an advertisement which depicted the burning of the South African flag 🇿🇦. This is extremely inflammatory as the flag 🇿🇦 is a symbol of national unity and healing post apartheid. It's a symbol of freedom from oppression and racism. Given senior DA officials recent racist statements, such as Hellen Zille saying that colonialism had positives, burning the flag of post apartheid South Africa did not go down well. As a result, the public broadcaster in the SABC has removed the advert from it's channels.

Continuation of student protests in The Netherlands:

Amsterdam: Hundreds of Amsterdam students, staff and concerned citizens occupied a university (UVA) building on Tuesday afternoon. Representatives had a conversation with the UVA board on Wednesday with no results. UVA has said that they would meet one of the demands by publishing a list of Israeli institutions they work with, they are legally required to do this and still haven’t. Demands of breaking all ties with Israel and allowing peaceful protest on campus were ignored. Instead the board decided to order the police to remove the protesters from the building. Around 5pm riot police violently infiltrated the building. Some protesters threw rocks at the police and there is a video of a protester spraying the police with fire extinguisher. A few protesters ended up with very serious injuries because of the police beatings.

In The Netherlands it’s common for public transport busses to be used at illegal protests to remove the protesters. While one group of protesters was still occupying the building, another group of protesters went elsewhere to the city for the support protest (support protests consists of those protesters who do not want to risk violent altercations with the police). The support protesters saw empty busses that were probably going to be used to arrest the occupant protesters. So they blocked these busses from getting to the occupied building. With no means to arrest hundreds of people, the riot police at the occupied building decided to only arrest a few protesters while letting the rest run away from their beatings.

The situation in the city was very chaotic that evening, with protest groups emerging and fleeing whenever the police would show up. During the night the protests stopped because the police destroyed all encampments.

Utrecht: Following Amsterdam’s example, Utrecht University students and staff organised a protest on Wednesday against the police violence from the previous day. In the evening they managed to occupy a university building and set up another encampment. The president of the university visited the encampment two times to tell the protesters to leave the building, but refused to talk about the demands of the demonstrators. At 1am the police was instructed to remove the protesters. Riot police entered the building and began violently rounding up the protesters. They used pepper spray on non-violent protesters and caused many injuries. There are reports that there were some undercover police at the encampment as well.

Utrecht University is closing all buildings for the rest of the week to prevent other buildings from getting occupied by protesters.

You can follow the Amsterdam and Utrecht encampments on instagram: @amsterdam.encampment @encampment.uu The Utrecht encampment also has twitter/X account: @UU_encampment

Zionist businessman with Mossad connections after getting owned by a new Egyptian resistance group:
https://twitter.com/revolutionaryem/status/1787965717188427901

Shalom from the children of Gaza

https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1clfyjk/ru_pov_ukrainian_unmanned_boat_is_destroyed/

In new wacky events in the Ukraine war, a very cute Russian Ka-29 helicopter destroys a Ukrainian naval drone... with an anti-air missile strapped to it?

So is Macron actually starting World War 3?

Destroying the energy sector, your research and losing energetic sovereignty to own the commies

Argentina’s pioneering nuclear research threatened by huge budget cuts

President Javier Milei is making moves to partially privatize the sector, but in the meantime, projects have paused.

Owing to massive budget cuts and lay-offs of government employees, Argentina’s nuclear sector — which includes power plants and research facilities — is at risk, scientists say. The country was the first in Latin America to adopt nuclear energy, has three operating plants that provide about 5–10% of the nation’s electrical energy and runs numerous reactors used for research.

But because Argentina’s current administration, led by far-right president Javier Milei, has held the federal budget flat compared with that in 2023, the sector is facing a financial crisis. Inflation reached more than 200% last year — meaning that, in real terms, a stagnant budget is equivalent to a funding drop of at least 50%. Milei, who took office in December after pledging to diminish the role of government in Argentina and bring the country’s debts under control, has also laid off 15,000 federal employees in the past five months.

With its current budget, the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) will be able to carry out its activities only “until May or June”, according to a statement published in March and signed by the agency’s leaders. The CNEA has been operating since 1950; it sets the country’s nuclear policy and carries out research to improve “the quality of life for society”, among other responsibilities.

“All these [activities] could be in danger,” Adriana Serquis, former head of the CNEA, tells Nature. On Friday, the Milei administration at last accepted Serquis’s resignation, which she had submitted before the president took office in December.

“We cannot operate with this budget,” she says. The agency has taken out loans with private firms in the past few months to keep working, she adds. CNEA authorities stressed to the Milei administration that the agency would need a 2024 budget of US$270 million to operate at a minimal level. The government guaranteed the CNEA only $100 million.

Milei has made moves towards at least partially privatizing Argentina’s nuclear sector. Yesterday, he appointed Germán Guido Lavalle, founder of candoit, an engineering and technology consulting firm based in Buenos Aires, to lead the CNEA — a move that aligns with that push.

The agency has had to pause construction on two projects that could have brought even more renown to Argentina’s nuclear sector: one is a ‘small modular reactor’ prototype that is among the first in the world to be built for electricity generation, and the other is a research reactor that might have produced enough of the radioisotope molybdenum-99, commonly used in medical diagnostic imaging, to meet 20% of global demand.

If this continues, Serquis says, “Argentina will lose its place in the ‘nuclear club’” — referring to the country’s prowess in nuclear research, a global status it has maintained among wealthy nations.

Projects stagnate

One of the stalled nuclear projects is the small modular reactor CAREM, intended to supply low-carbon electricity to rural areas where large power plants can’t be built. Nuclear scientists have been working for decades to create this type of reactor, and countries, including Argentina, have been in a race to get theirs fired up quickly. CAREM, a prototype, would use uranium fission to supply around 30 megawatts of electrical power. If successful, it could be scaled up to larger, commercial versions supplying 300 megawatts of electric power. More than $600 million has been invested into CAREM since construction began in 2014, but another $200 million to $300 million is needed to finish it.

“It has less electrical production capacity than a nuclear power plant, but it’s also cheaper and safer,” says Tomás Avallone, a chemist and nuclear-reactors operator at the CNEA. It could be installed anywhere, be used for high-energy-consumption activities such as water desalinization and bring power to 300,000 people, he says.

Another stagnating project is RA-10, a 30-megawatt reactor that would use neutron beams to produce medical radioisotopes. Scientists could also use RA-10 to conduct materials research. “It is a multipurpose reactor,” says Rodolfo Kempf, nuclear-waste manager at the CNEA. The main construction on RA-10 has been completed, Kempf says, but its instruments haven’t been installed.

Argentina has so far invested more than $400 million in building the reactor, and another $80 million is needed. The commercial sale of the reactor design should provide a significant return on investment, say researchers who spoke to Nature.

Privatization push

The Milei administration has been advocating for the privatization of science and education in Argentina. In April, it sent a bill to Congress that includes a list of state companies to be fully or partially privatized. Nucleoeléctrica Argentina, a state-run firm based in Buenos Aires that oversees the country’s three nuclear plants, is on the list to be partially privatized. If this comes to pass, the government would maintain the majority of Nucleoeléctrica shares, and its vote would be needed for actions including expanding the capacity of a power plant, building a new one or adding shareholders to the company.

Alfredo Caro, a nuclear physicist and former director of the CNEA’s Bariloche Atomic Centre, estimates that a 30% stake in Nucleoeléctrica would be worth between $700 million and $1 billion. If that stake were sold, it might allow the government to finalize the construction of CAREM and RA-10, as well as to complete a planned upgrade of the Atucha I power plant, located about 120 kilometres northwest of Buenos Aires, to extend its lifetime, he says. “A partial privatization could help the sector carry on,” Caro says, “but only if the funds that are raised remain in the sector and are not spent on other areas of the state” — a big ‘if’, given the financial crisis in Argentina. The country’s gross domestic product is expected to drop 3.3% this year, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Officials at Argentina’s Secretariat of Energy and Nucleoeléctrica didn’t respond to questions from Nature about their plans for the nuclear sector. Meanwhile, the bill to privatize state companies has been approved by the lower chamber of Argentina’s Congress, and will now be considered by the Senate.

Welcome to libertarianism, where all your achievements are destroyed in the name of market fundamentalism and foreign interests. I was told by someone who knows much more about this that the request to defund and privatize (in other words, destroy) this program comes exclusively from abroad. It is a request "several US-based nuclear firms" made because the Argentinian reactors and research are "way too competitive", so it must be pushed aside. I cannot prove this, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Ayyyyy lmaooo get

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProIran/s/TFgsXY4ANz

Call me crazy but a pointless purely performative "red line" is ridiculous. Biden might as well call it the pointless purely performative pline. The "p" is silent. Or not.

The White House thinks the Israeli operation to capture the Rafah crossing doesn't cross President Biden's "red line" that could lead to a shift in U.S. policy towards the Gaza war.

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/07/us-israel-rafah-red-line

🟢 Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades: — Watch: We continue to pick off the heads of your criminal officers.

Al-Aqsa Flood — Note: 0:05 - Piercing eyes. 0:11 - Calm breaths. 0:16 - One bullet. 0:20 - A confirmed end. 0:37 - “They’re pulling them while they’re dead.” 0:40 - “Allah is the Greatest and praise be to Him.” 0:47 - We continue to pick off the heads of your criminal officers.

Cw death, obviously https://streamable.com/60r9z1

https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1cpk8uz/ru_pov_russian_forces_have_entered_sumy_region/

Russian forces are reportedly now pushing into Sumy region as well.

Sun is having a fart because it can, a G4 solar storm, nothing to be too concerned about but if you work retail good luck, last time we had one of those in big flare ups back in April some banks had issues running credit, and a few customers lost their last braincell over it.

No real source on this but there's some posts going around the telegrams claiming that foreign british mercs are training anti-government forces in Myanmar along with these pics. My guess is that it's true and they're easily deniable special forces sent to train whoever the west thinks will end up being a problem for China if they win.

Aurora Borealis will be visible in the high north of the planet during night for the next day or so

Biden Admits That U.S. Bombs Were Used by Israel Against Gaza

"I made it clear that if they enter Rafah, I will not supply the weapons that have historically been used to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities".

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden said that Israel uses US bombs to commit genocide in Gaza and reported that if Tel Aviv invades Rafah, it will stop sending weapons to the Zionist state.

Although Israel has only sent troops, Biden said Israel is warned of the consequences if it openly invades the southern city of Rafah.

"I made it clear that if they enter Rafah, I will not supply the weapons that have historically been used to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities," the US president told CNN.

The current White House resident warned that the first shipments to stop would be those of the famous 900kg bombs.

On these shells, Biden said, "civilians have been killed in Gaza as a result of these bombs and other attacks on population centers".

The president also specified that the Israeli presence in the surrounding areas of Rafah has triggered conflicts with countries such as Egypt, a state with which the US maintains diplomatic relations.

Joe Biden claimed to have warned of Washington’s refusal to support with weapons of any kind against population centers.

"I have made it clear to Bibi and the war cabinet: They will not have our support if, in fact, they attack these population centers," Biden also underlined.

A dark day in the neolib hell that is Finland. There isn't much outrage, the midlle class is still way too cozy and neoliberal hegemony is very well internalized here at this point. The Reds of old probably rolling in their graves today.

Labor unions tried to opposite this in weakest of ways, being aligned with capitalism. I suppose everyone saw this coming and the opposition was just more of the same performative crap.

Austerity will only intensify now.

https://yle.fi/a/74-20087808

Russia Has Always Stood by the Cuban People: Putin

He also emphasized that Russo-Cuban relations are based on mutual friendship and respect.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel held a meeting at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow

The Russian leader thanked Diaz-Canel for attending the Victory Day Parade and emphasized that Cuba-Russian relations are based on mutual friendship and respect.

"The Soviet Union and modern Russia have always stood by the Cuban people in their struggle for their interests and their homeland," Putin said, recalling that Cuban citizens also fought alongside the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War.

"We remember this and will always treat with great respect those who stood alongside our parents and grandparents, shoulder to shoulder, fighting together against Nazism," he stressed.

"We will always support the Cuban people and oppose U.S. attempts to restrict Cuba's development through sanctions and restrictions. However, for decades, the Cuban people have fought against them and feel strong," he said.

For his part, the Cuban president handed Putin a letter of congratulations sent by the revolutionary leader Raul Castro on the occasion of his inauguration as president of Russia.

"Our visit to Russia concluded with a very pleasant meeting with Vladimir Putin, the president of this great country. It was a warm exchange between friends who are well aware of the challenges their nations face and are committed to mutual support," Diaz-Canel said, adding that Moscow can always count on Havana's support.

"Cuba constantly condemns the geopolitical manipulation carried out by the U.S. government," he said, reaffirming rejection of the threat posed by NATO's approach to Russian borders.