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 Kim Jong-un accompanied by China's Wang Huning, crossing the New Yalu River Bridge on a day's visit to China.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleThe situation in the Middle East remains very tense, with the two major points of speculation being 1) whether the war will resume at all, or if the US is bluffing to try and get Iran to concede on their demands, and 2) assuming the war will resume, whether the US will conduct strikes on Iran before or after the elections within the Zionist entity; the point being to try and further delay the elections by citing the war they started as an emergency and therefore keep Netanyahu in power. Quite frankly, if Netanyahu wants to risk destroying the whole Zionist project just to save his own skin, then I have no objections - aside from the part where he might do immense damage to the world economy in the process by prompting Iran's promise of regional retaliation, of course. Meanwhile, the Saudis keep getting pummelled, with Ansarallah landing missile after missile on pipeline pumping stations, airbases, military officials, and troop accumulations. Even the Western media is becoming dour about MBS's prospects. Attempts to isolate Iran economically are becoming rather spotty. Pakistan briefly halted their border exchange with Iran, but once Iran splashed cold water on their face by restricting their fossil fuel exports into Pakistan - which is already in a politically unstable situation - they wised up quickly and reopened them.

Next up, we have the surprising victory of Lula in the second round of the Brazilian elections. A loss in the first round into a victory in the second round hasn't happened in Brazilian history since 1989, and the president winning a fourth term via a democratic vote is unprecedented - and I fully confess that I went into this thinking Bolsonaro was gonna scrape by with a ~0.5% lead, so I will publicly and gladly admit to being wrong. The regular suite of electoral irregularities and not-quite-illegal tactics took place to try and prevent Lula from gaining the requisite votes, including a swathe of widespread interruptions to public transportation in cities that typically vote for Lula, as well as Meta putting a thumb on the scale by apparently reducing the visibility of Lula's online campaign. However, countering that was an upsurge of people who were otherwise unengaged who presumably went "oh shit" when they saw the first round results, as well as an emergency two hour extension to voting in order to counter the aforementioned public transportation interruptions. The next year or two will determine if Lula's victory is a curious aberration or instead a breakwater to the rising tide of conservatism in Latin America, fueled somewhat by explicit American intervention but mostly by the populace themselves finding little hope in lukewarm social democrats and instead finding community in, among other places, right-wing evangelical religious groups. I recommend RedSails 2023 piece, Reformists, Revolutionaries, and Social Liberals, which delves into the broad contours of the Latin American and particularly Brazilian political landscape, and how even reformism has been essentially abandoned in many countries in the region (and, therefore, why ground has been ceded to the right-wing lately).

It remains difficult to keep track of global events as the crisis worsens. The Hormuz oil glut prophesized by the US military and its quislings is still yet to show signs of being founded in reality, with Brent oil prices now reaching highs resembling those in the period of outright war in April, and emergency fuel supplies in the US being increasingly dipped into. While the biggest cause of this price increase is obviously the literal scarcity of oil, some of this trend is due to comically high tanker rates (which are that high due to a number of factors but which all still ultimately stem from Iranian strikes on tankers trying to slip through the strait), and some of it is due to China amping up their oil imports just in time for the US midterms, which puts further stress on world supplies. All of this pressure continues to feed protests and riots, of which those in Europe have received the most attention. The pressure on populations is coming at the exact same time that broader financial conditions reach points that usually prompt austerity measures, creating a pressure cooker of contradictions which governments will have to attempt to survive. Some have already failed to do so, such as Serbia's - however, as I said last week, the root cause of the dissatisfaction is typically another factor that the economic problems are merely fueling (i.e. in Serbia's case, a student movement).

As a more positive final note, Kim Jong-un visited the Chinese border city of Dandong to commemorate the 76th anniversary of Chinese troops marching to help northern Korea during the Korean War, with both countries reportedly seeking to deepen their industrial and trade cooperation. The New Yalu River Bridge between the two has finally formally opened after a 12 year delay, shortly after a bridge between the DPRK and Russia was completed last month.


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.


top 50 comments

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[–] 32 points 1 hour ago (7 children)
  • [–] 15 points 54 minutes ago (3 children)

    On the one hand the AI bubble burstingyes-hahaha-yes-l

    On the other no bailout coming from Democrats?doubt

    I'll believe it when I see it.

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  • [–] 10 points 39 minutes ago* (2 children)

    Either a bailout bill will pass Congress with juuust enough Dem votes for it to pass, or (more likely) the Fed will do a big bailout. I doubt that this bill (if it passes) will cover the Fed as well and the Fed has the most tools to do it, more than the Treasury.

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  • [–] 5 points 14 minutes ago (1 child)

    What does that look like? The fed buying up shares of these companies to shore up their stock price, or giving them free money / zero-interest loans?

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  • [–] 13 points 1 hour ago

    MicroStrategy/Strategy CFO just resigned, their thing is buying crypto and leveraging that crypto to buy more crypto. A crash in the crypto market would be a hilarious sideshow before the main event, especially because only the biggest weirdos are still personally invested in crypto as an asset.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

    US Embassy contradicts Trump and calls Lula's victory "definitive" - DCM

    Article

    The United States Embassy in Brasilia described President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's (Workers' Party) victory in the second round of Sunday's (25) elections as "definitive" and "surprising." The diplomatic report, sent to the State Department on Monday (26), contrasts with President Donald Trump's criticism of the Brazilian electoral process. With information from Folha de S. Paulo .

    The document states that international observers expressed no doubt about the outcome and notes that Lula surpassed Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) by approximately 4.4 million votes. The American representation described the voting as largely peaceful, despite transportation and access problems to polling stations in regions of the Northeast and South.

    The embassy also addressed the extension of voting hours by two hours, authorized by Minister Cristiano Zanin of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), following difficulties reported on election day. This measure became Flávio's main argument to contest the defeat.

    Data from the Superior Electoral Court indicated that only 34,000 votes were counted after 5 PM, including voters who were already waiting in line. This total represents approximately 0.03% of the votes and, according to the report, would not have been able to alter the result.

    The president of the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), Kassio Nunes Marques, stated that the extension of voting hours did not significantly influence Lula's victory. The report adds that both campaigns had asked the court for a solution to the obstacles faced by voters.

    International missions considered the communication regarding the change of schedule to be poorly managed, because some polling stations did not receive the notification in time. Even so, observers from the Organization of American States said they had “no doubt about the results” and assessed that the election took place in an organized manner.

    After the vote count, Lula gave a speech in São Paulo, promising to govern for all Brazilians and thanking the mobilization of the elderly and young people. The document records that conservative leaders publicly acknowledged the Workers' Party candidate's victory, while members of the Liberal Party privately expressed concern about a possible political crisis caused by Flávio's challenge.

    Trump again attacked the election this Thursday (29), although he said he intends to talk to Lula. “I will talk to him, but I think the election in Brazil was a disgrace,” he said. Until then, the American government had not sent a formal message of congratulations, and the State Department confirmed the granting of visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family, after the senator arrived in Miami on Wednesday (28).

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  • [–] 33 points 3 hours ago* (2 children)
  • [–] 22 points 3 hours ago*

    Gas update (using spongebob-i-fucking-love AAA US national average)

    Regular Current - 4.22

    Regular Highest Recorded (6/15/22) - 5.02

    Diesel Current - 6.33

    Diesel Highest Recorded (9/22/26) - 6.52

    https://gasprices.aaa.com/

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  • [–] 72 points 6 hours ago (11 children)

    Patrick Stewart, ‘Star Trek’ Captain and ‘X-Men’ Superhero, Dies at 86 - Hollywood Reporter

    He’s forever known for playing Jean-Luc Picard and Charles Xavier, whom he “admired for their morality, for their kindness, for their sensitivity, for their compassion.”

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  • [–] 38 points 4 hours ago

    The really sad thing about this generation of British thespians dying out is that they were largely from working class backgrounds but they'll all be replaced by the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch. Short of a literal revolution, we're just not going to see the quality of Stewart, McKellen, Gambon et al again

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  • [–] 35 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

    Damn, rarely get too sad about a celebrity death but he was a big part of my childhood and beyond, RIP.

    In tribute, here's a video where Picard owns a Capitalist with facts and logic.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 hours ago (1 child)

    Patrick Stewart stated regularly that he was a socialist.

    He also was brilliant as Lenin in the BBC’s Fall of Eagles that aired in the 70s.

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  • [–] 31 points 5 hours ago

    Dammit, so sad to see him go! I literally grew up on TNG. I was just old enough to start following longer TV stories when the series started, I saw it all on the first run. The ethical core of the series is hardwired into my brain. "What would Captain Picard do?" has been a lifelong moral compass.

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  • [–] 56 points 5 hours ago (1 child)

    Israel’s elections: all roads lead to genocide

    Colonizers love colonizing - all time high voter turnout in Israel this year, but the two Arab lists will maybe get to make a big difference in which block of genociders goes on top. I didn't really know anything about the two 'Lists'. There's the left wing Joint List that has Israeli and Palestinian communists and Palestinian nationalists, including fully anti-zionist Israel abolishers. And there's the United Arab List who are a bunch of conservative, Islamist, integrationist libs who will support zionist parties in exchange for head pats and condescension, even running zionist Jews way up high on their ticket. Gross!

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  • [–] 56 points 6 hours ago (10 children)

    🇮🇷🇺🇸| CENTCOM commander reportedly presented Trump with war plans against Iran.

    While according to war journalist for VOAnews, US official told them Trump admin plans to strike Iran following US elections next week, “aircraft are moving into position. MOAB use expected.”

    This is happening while currently the US keeps sending Iran useless and ridiculous requests for political resolutions, which is obviously to buy time to get their military into position.

    Iranian leadership knows this as well.

    @FotrosResistancee

    is there a reason we haven't already seen pre-emptive strikes by Iran? i thought they changed their doctrine recently to allow for them

    are they just waiting for more materiel to get deployed before they strike it or what

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  • [–] 18 points 5 hours ago*

    The use of the GBU-43 MOAB requires flying a C-130 into Iran at medium to high altitude. It doesn't fit inside the US Air Force's strategic bombers. While the US has flown C-130s into Iran as part of the CSAR mission to recover the shot down F-15E pilot and weapons systems officer/backseater, doing so at higher altitudes to drop a bomb is quite different. Also, while the GBU-43 may be useful against cave complexes and semi-open underground facilities, or for wide area blasts on soft targets, it's not a "bunker buster" munition. Those are the 2000lb BLU-109 for the GBU-31, the 5000lb GBU-72 and GBU-28, and the 30 000lb GBU-57 MOP. GBU-31 can be carried by all US tactical fighters and strategic bombers. 5000lb class weapons can be carried by fighters with a hardpoint capable of carrying such a munition and integrated with it, usually the F-15E, and US strategic bombers. The GBU-57 is exclusive to the B-2 stealth bomber.

    Given the degradation of Iranian air defences, it should be possible, high risk but possible, to fly a C-130 in to drop a GBU-43. But what would the target be? I have a lot of doubts on the use of GBU-43 happening. I'd say GBU-57 is significantly more likely.

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  • [–] 36 points 6 hours ago (1 child)

    For sure they wanted to wait until after the Israeli election at least because it's causing so much internal chaos in the satanic entity. Why keep waiting at this point? Not sure. Seems like it would be a great time to strike and it would make Trump perform even worse in the midterms, which I do think the Iranians would appreciate. But Iranian patience has been right many times when I've been wrong, so if they wait it's probably with pretty good reason.

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  • [–] 35 points 6 hours ago* (6 children)

    It looks like they still believe that the EU/GCC countries will somehow give Iran credit if Iran doesn't "strike first" and tell the US/Israel to back off, even tho the war has already been declared on Feb 28th, there is no way for Iran to "strike first", the war is ongoing. And EU/GCC all full participants in the war.

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  • [–] 19 points 5 hours ago

    Iran's liberal faction strikes again no doubt. Time and again the west breaks their word to Iran, backstabs, clearly telegraphs perfidy but this faction who hopes to integrate with Europe economically and aspire to be like European liberals keeps buying it because they MUST buy it. Because if they rejected it then they would not be liberals of the kind they are.

    They've so self-constrained themselves out of this belief they can pull the monarchies created and propped up by the west for a century to control the oil region and the crossroads of humanity into their corner somehow. Monarchies we must remember which regularly repress their people, do not act in the interests of the Arabs or Muslims they govern but in the interest of the US/UK/Zionist entity and with a sprinkling of self-interest to enrich themselves or enhance their 'national pride'.

    The only rational argument for waiting is a belief that striking first in this round would help the chances of the Republicans in the midterms. It's possible they're right but by that logic they should then immediately strike to deter and punish on November 3rd at 11pm on the west coast of the US when polls have closed everywhere but Hawaii before the US can get started itself. If they for some reason believe the liberal stuff about Trump trying to suspend or cancel or overrule the elections due to an emergency then they could wait until the next day at whatever time the last of the contested races are called. But I doubt they will do either.

    Their patience in the past has won over a lot of the global public who have noticed this but at a certain point you have to ask is continuing to turn the cheek and let the other party hit you first when they're intent on killing you and have already demonstrated repeatedly to on-lookers that they act in bad faith, that they strike first, that they murder children, etc a good move? The very fact the US president openly discusses plans to attack them, as do the zionists is causus belli enough.

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  • [–] 35 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

    UKMTO reports another tanker hit. I think that the other two ship hits today were a bit further west, so this would be at least the third ship hit today.

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