https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3088p85pero Kid Starver's houses were burnt by Ukrainians? is itcause he's 'negotiating peace' or were they just based and them being Ukrainian incidental

A Kingdom of Cages: Danish Regime Rolls Out Harsher Sentences to Avoid Becoming Too Swedish

In a carefully choreographed press conference steeped in racist dogwhistles and set against the grim theatrical backdrop of a Copenhagen prison, three senior officials from Denmark’s Social Democrat-led right-wing regime — Peter Hummelgaard, Troels Lund Poulsen, and Jakob Engel-Schmidt, the respective heads of the nation's Social Democrat-controlled Ministry of Justice,Liberal Party-controlled Ministry of Defense and Moderate Party-controlled Ministry of Culture — unveiled sweeping reforms to expand the Nordic kingdom’s prison system and sharply escalate penalties for violent crime.

Moody’s downgrade just caused 30-year treasury yield to spike? Already over. Didn’t even last 24 hours lol.

Once again the market panics over something so inconsequential.

Here’s the MMT lesson for the day:

Extremely funny news from Australia. In the wake of a historical loss the coalition that makes up the current conservative opposition has (temporarily) dissolved^[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/20/nationals-leaving-split-coalition-liberal-party-australian-election]. This has happened in the wake of the right wing liberal party being unwilling to commit to policies that fucked them, which play well with reactionary elements in the regions.

They will likely rejoin together once it is politically advantageous, having largely been together for the better part of a century, but currently this means the center right welfare state labor party has basically no resistance except the leftish greens party to passing its bills. Severely diminishing the electoral power of the far right for the forseeable future.

Whether the liberals will embrace the trumpism that cost them the election, hemorrhaging the rest of their moderates, or try and tac towards the bourgeois policies of the so called "teal" (blue + green, environmental policies) independents that have been eating their lunch in the wealthy liberal heartland remains to be seen. My money is on the former because the moderate faction lost most of their seats and they've but a numerology^[https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/05/08/sussan-ley-liberal-leadership-numerology-angus-taylor/] donothing clown in charge as a seat warmer while the factions rally.^[footnotes are the opium of the leftist]

On an update to Russia's large scale air attacks on Ukraine, yesterday's attack was the largest of the entire war so far, 367 munitions used according to Ukraine, including 9 Iskander-M/Iskander-1000/KN-23 ballistic missiles, 55 Kh-101 and Kalibr subsonic cruise missiles (Kh-101 from Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers, Kalibr from ships in the Black Sea), 1 Kh-32/22 supersonic cruise missile from a Tu-22M3 bomber, 4 Kh-69 stealth cruise missiles from Su-57 stealth aircraft, and 298 Shahed/German type one way attack drones. The ballistic missile number appears to be an undercount in my view, there were at least 16 launches reported by Ukrainian air raid channels.

Russia is continuing the attack for the third night in a row, there were over 100 Geran/Shahed one way attack drones simultaneously in Ukrainian airspace tonight at one point (currently 70), and 6 Tu-95M strategic bombers have carried out launch maneuvers for Kh-101 subsonic cruise missiles (unkown if simulated or real launches at this time). A lot of the Geran drones are heading towards the air base in Starokostyantyniv, which was suspected to be hit by an Iskander-1000 ballistic missile last night.

The Kh-101 launches were real, multiple groups of them detected in Ukrainian airspace.

The Kh-101s all targeted Starokostyantyniv air base, along with the majority of Geran drones. Now we'll see if any ballistic missiles are used to attack the same target. 5 impacts/explosions from the Kh-101s were reported. There were a total of 6 launched at the airbase, only one was shot down on it's way there.

Ukrainian air raid monitoring telegram channel

AMK mapping telegram channel, provides English translation of Ukrainian and Russian sources

Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an Iran-based armed group widely believed to be an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), on Monday said it will continue its armed struggle against Tehran despite PKK’s decision to dissolve itself and end its decades-long armed struggle against Ankara.

“We, as PJAK, will neither lay down arms nor dissolve ourselves,” Amir Karimi, PJAK co-chair, told Aryen TV, a Sweden-based channel affiliated with Iran-based Kurdish political parties.

(Source)

I find a bit funny this idea right-wingers have that if you boycott an election enough, that will mean the election will be invalid or something. But most South American Countries' Constitutions say that as long as someone voted, the election will be valid

https://rumble.com/v6t17f1-presstv-live.html

Leader of the Yemeni Revolution Sayed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi is speaking live now. Dubbed into English live at the above link.

(Edit: recording link here)

The US military spent $6 billion in the past 3 years to recruit and retain troops

(lmao intraday)

hi japan, i'm watching you

(1 year)

might as well add this here:

and crypto started growing

With Trump's meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his delegation set to start in less than 10 minutes, (15:30 UTC) let's see what US strategic think tanks are saying:

CSIS, May 19 2025 - Can South Africa’s President Fix His Bilateral Relationship with Washington?

That's not good..

Meeting hasn't started yet, running late as usual.

One of the flag bearers fainted, that's all that has happened so far.

Ramaphosa has arrived, and shook hands with Trump.

Meeting now started in the oval office. Trump is praising South African golfers.

Ramaphosa is sucking up to Trump hard. Very much offering tribute to the king vibes.

Trump is playing EFF Julius Malema clips... This is going to go to shit.

Ramaphosa basically disowned Malema

Steenhuisen made a statement, denouncing Malema, and saying that the DA joined the ANC to keep the EFF and Malema out of power.

Trump has asked why South Africa don't arrest Malema and ban the EFF.

Goosen the golfer is now speaking, he says South Africa needs the United States as an ally for help, mentioning how the US helped the apartheid government in the war in Angola.

Johan Rupert, the South African billionaire, is now speaking. Clearly wants a deal for starlink, technological assistance, and shutting down the South African border with Zimbabwe, and complaining that Malema targets him. Fucking hell this is bad. He wants South Africa to do the same thing that the US did with its immigrants and gangs.

Trade union boss is saying Rupert is right, and saying that there is no expropriation without compensation. Capitalist realism.

Live video link on YouTube from South African state media (SABC)

AP News live YouTube link

Portugal's post election update.

With the votes from abroad not yet counted and with the likelyhood of the far-right CH obtaining 2 MPs more than the center-left PS and becoming the largest opposition party looming, the effects of the left's historic defeat and the far-right's rise last sunday are still being felt. Here's what all the main actors are up to.

The communists didn't rest on their laurels and immediately held a bunch of rallies right after the elections, its affiliated organizations are also still active, they've also already stated they'll propose a vote against the government's budget right away once parliament starts (which will clarify how he PS and CH will handle the center-right's minority government), the idea seems to be to give despairing leftists hope that there are people still fighting the right and inspire them to join. Hey, it worked with me, I did join after a moment like this but it was in 2022 when the PS got a historic absolute majority, I thought that was bad enough, and now they're basically in third place, funny how life works.

The post-trot demsoc BE, once having elected 19 MPs in 2019, is still reeling from having only electing its party leader, she basically blamed the "global right-wing shift" (which portugal has definetily joined) for the party's poor result. I maintain that their situation is very fucked, with a disloyal soft left of the party easily going to the europhile pro-war greens and a loyal hard left of the party too historically resentful of the "Stalinist" (according to them) communists to support their coalition, a shame because they still got 100k votes and a lot of activists that could be very useful.

The PS general secretary, who was from the left-wing of the party even though he ran a very centrist campaign, resigned and since only 1 guy ran for his job, he got it. A man named Carneiro will be leading the socialists, however in portuguese "Carneiro" means "sheep" and is also slang for "cuckold" or "someone who sheepishly follows orders", so following nominative determinism (WHICH IS REAL ) this man will never become prime minister. A Starmer-like figure (minus the transphobia hopefully) he's made it clear that the party wants to form an informal "central block" with the center-right AD minority government for stability and to allow with to govern without having to depend on the far-right for parliamentary votes.

About that though...the AD which for years maintained a "no means no" stance regarding collaborating with the far-right now has revised that to mean "no only means no...regarding the far-right joining government", they've opened the door to working with them in parliament, and even worse on possibly constitutional revisions. The right now has a 2/3 majority which means for the first time they don't need the PS to revise the constitution and the far-right could possibly have a say. The liberals are already building a proposal to remove the "ideological charge" of the constitution, which was written in the aftermath of the revolution in 75 and has already been revised a few times (like to remove the un-reversability of nationalizations and stuff)

Oh and the public prosecutor, which has publicly announced they were investigating several politicians in the past few years, even during campaign season, but so far haven't charged anyone, only NOW has said that they're asking for further documents from the PM's private business dealings and that ONLY NOW AFTER YEARS OF THIS SHIT they're FINALLY investigating the far-right's leader for "incitement of hatred" over 1 video he recently posted complaining about roma people, I doubt anything will come of it though.

It kinda feels like germany's situation a few years ago.

A dominant center-right in power.

A far-right being toe to toe with an increasingly centrist center-left, gaining ground on historically far-left regions on basically just anti-migrant discourse, shut out of government so it can always be in the opposition and with a lot of low education voters. With the key difference that unlike in germany the far-right here is a 1 man show and very personalistic.

A market-fundamentalist liberal party that pollutes discourse with easy solutions and can basically always be in the opposition (they've since lost their seats in germany but that won't happen here since there's no electoral treshold) and is very popular among well-to-do young people.

A socially liberal pro-war green party working as a stop-gap between the center-left and the far-left.

On the far-left is where I think there are the most differences, since Die Linke has definitely become a "normal"-ish party, pro-nato if a bit reluctantly, pro arms-shipments to ukraine and not very anti-israel.

Well portuguese people are always talking about how we suck and should be more like germany so there you go.

translation from unsere zeit, the communist party newspaper in germany:

Palestinian workers are being replaced

It seems like Eduardo del Castillo, Bolivia’s interior minister, is going to be Arce's candidate for the presidential election. Menawhile Evo Morales and Andronico Rodriguez are banned from running. I guess Rodriguez basically became his own third left-wing force within the Arce-Evo struggle, since both Evo and Arce rejected him. I guess the current VP faction inside MAS could support him but idk if David Choquehuanca will have his own candidate in this election.

@[email protected]

Scientists have lost their jobs or grants in US cuts. Foreign universities want to hire them

LOKOMOTIV BEATS TRAKTOR 2-1 IN OVERTIME AND WINS THE GAGARIN CUP!!! MY BOYS THE RAILWAYMEN LED THE LEAGUE ALL SEASON AND THEIR HARD WORK PAID OFF LETS GOOOOOOO

УРА ЛОКОМОТИВ