I hope this isn't true. Signal is in the ways that matter compromised by US national intelligence. They demand phone numbers to sign-up and though it's possible they can't read the messages they know who is talking to whom and that's far more interesting to intelligence and drone targeting.

Because with that you find someone using it who is a known member of Ansar Allah, you then find who they're talking to, those are also probable members or supporters of the movement and you find who those people are talking to and suddenly you have a network of people to drone strike along with their phone numbers which can be used with hacking of cell networks to reliably pin-point their location.

This is bad opsec and I almost think this whole press person added accidentally thing may be an op to get more people aware of Signal and on it as opposed to other platforms.

(Archive link)

They're building a luxury building which might as well be a victory monument on the site of an army compound NATO bombed in 1999.

Jared Kushner plans to build a luxury hotel on the site of a military headquarters in Belgrade bombed by NATO in 1999

The location for the new hotel in central Belgrade is the General Staff building, a former Yugoslav army headquarters heavily damaged during NATO’s 78-day bombing of Serbia and Montenegro over the Kosovo conflict. Over 500 cilviians were killed by the US-led military bloc throughout the months-long raids, which had no backing from the UN.

The Serbian government last year approved a multimillion-dollar deal with Affinity Global Development, to redevelop the location. The agreement includes a 99-year lease for a three-block area and plans to build a Trump-branded hotel, luxury apartments, offices, shops, and a memorial for bombing victims.

Opposition parties have criticized the deal, while President Aleksandar Vucic and his government have defended it as a move to modernize the capital.

Monday’s protest coincided with Serbia’s Remembrance Day, marking the anniversary of the start of NATO’s bombing campaign on March 24, 1999. Demonstrators gathered around the ruins of the former military complex, demanding the site be restored as a heritage landmark and that redevelopment plans be scrapped. Protesters described the complex as “a monument to NATO aggression” and objected to “gifting it” to American developers.

Videos shared online showed crowds chanting anti-NATO slogans and holding signs that read “f--k NATO and Trump Tower” and “we will never forget,” alongside the dates of the 1999 airstrikes. Protesters waved Serbian flags, as well as banners opposing NATO and the EU. Some demonstrators waved flags from Russia, China, North Korea, and Palestine.

If these are the same protestors who've been trying to protest or oust the current government there it seems they're pretty cool.

The Trump administration’s focus with shipping lanes and maritime infrastructure has been most visible in the Western media on the Panama Canal and Greenland but is occurring elsewhere as well. Most indications are that the goal is to push back Chinese influence while cementing US naval dominance so as to be capable of enacting a global maritime blockade of China.

As is often the case with Trump, he is only saying more loudly what has been US policy for some time. The US has for years worked to sabotage China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The US Marines shifted their focus to sea control capabilities as part of an effort to maintain naval dominance over China. [1]

It's a fairly short read and well worth it, it has some great charts showing US bases and the relevant shipping lanes and how they've positioned themselves. Great counter-evidence to anyone trying to sob to you about China trying to control the seas given how extensive this is.

And once again the Republicans may claim not to believe in climate change but their interest in Greenland clearly shows they know otherwise and are actively maneuvering to position US hegemony for the post-climate-change world.

(archive link)

Curious for input from comrades more versed in economics than myself. Thoughts on this 'plan'? Is Yanis Varoufakis forgetting anything?

Faced with President Trump’s economic moves, his centrist critics oscillate between desperation and a touching faith that his tariff frenzy will fizzle out. They assume that Trump will huff and puff until reality exposes the emptiness of his economic rationale. They have not been paying attention: Trump’s tariff fixation is part of a global economic plan that is solid — albeit inherently risky.

Their thinking is hard-wired onto a misconception of how capital, trade and money move around the globe. Like the brewer who gets drunk on his own ale, centrists ended up believing their own propaganda: that we live in a world of competitive markets where money is neutral and prices adjust to balance the demand and the supply of everything. The unsophisticated Trump is, in fact, far more sophisticated than them in that he understands how raw economic power, not marginal productivity, decides who does what to whom — both domestically and internationally.

[...]

His chief complaint is that dollar supremacy may confer huge powers on America’s government and ruling class, but, ultimately, foreigners are using it in ways that guarantee US decline. So what most consider to be America’s exorbitant privilege, he sees as its exorbitant burden.

Trump has been lamenting the decline of US manufacturing for decades: “if you don’t have steel, you don’t have a country.” But why blame this on the dollar’s global role?

[..] foreign central banks do not let the dollar adjust downwards to the “right” level — at which US exports recover and imports are restrained.

[...] It is just that the dollar is the only safe international reserve [foreign central banks] can get their hands on. It is only natural for European and Asian central banks to hoard the dollars that flow to Europe and Asia when Americans import things. By not swapping their stash of dollars for their own currencies, the [various foreign central banks] suppress the demand for (and thus the value of) their currencies. This helps their own exporters boost their sales to America and earn even more dollars. In a never-ending circle, these fresh dollars accumulate in the coffers of the foreign central bankers who, to gain interest safely, use them to buy US government debt.

In short, [in Trump's view] US manufacturing has been in decline because America is a good Samaritan: its workers and middle class suffer so that the rest of the world can grow at its expense.

But the dollar’s hegemonic status also [...] enable the US government to run deficits and pay for an oversized military that would bankrupt any other country. And by being the linchpin of international payments, the hegemonic dollar enables the President to exercise the modern-day equivalent of gunboat diplomacy: to sanction at will any person or government.

This is not enough, in Trump’s eyes, to offset the suffering of American producers who are undercut by foreigners whose central bankers exploit a service (dollar reserves) America provides them for free to keep the dollar overvalued. For Trump, America is undermining itself for the glory of geopolitical power and the opportunity to accumulate other people’s profits. These imported riches benefit Wall Street and realtors but only at the expense of the people who elected him twice: Americans in the heartlands who produce the “manly” goods such as steel and automobiles that a nation needs to remain viable.

And that’s not the worst of Trump’s concerns. His nightmare is that this hegemony will be fleeting.

[...]

For when US deficits exceed some threshold, foreigners will panic. They will sell their dollar-denominated assets and find some other currency to hoard. Americans will be left amid international chaos with a wrecked manufacturing sector, derelict financial markets and an insolvent government. This nightmare scenario has convinced Trump that he is on a mission to save America: that he has a duty to usher in a new international order.

And that’s the gist of his plan: to effect in 2025 a decisive anti-Nixon Shock — a global shock that cancels out the work of his predecessor by terminating the Bretton Woods system in 1971 which spearheaded the era of financialisation.

Central to this new global order would be a cheaper dollar that remains the world’s reserve currency — this would lower US long-term borrowing rates even more. Can Trump have his cake (a hegemonic dollar and low-yielding US Treasuries) and eat it (a depreciated dollar)?

He knows that the markets will never deliver this of their own accord. Only foreign central banks can do this for him. But to agree to do this, they need to be shocked into action first. And that’s where his tariffs come in.

This is what his critics do not understand. They mistakenly think that he thinks that his tariffs will reduce America’s trade deficit on their own. He knows they will not. Their utility comes from their capacity to shock foreign central bankers into reducing domestic interest rates. Consequently, the euro, the yen and the renminbi will soften relative to the dollar. This will cancel out the price hikes of goods imported into the US, and leave the prices American consumers pay unaffected. The tariffed countries will be in effect paying for Trump’s tariffs.

But tariffs are only the first phase of his masterplan. With high tariffs as the new default, and with foreign money accumulating in the Treasury [...] That’s when the second phase of Trump’s plan kicks in: the grand negotiation.

[...]

Trump's ideal world is a hub and spokes model. [Trump feels with the threat of tariffs and the threat of withholding US military support or using it against he can get most countries to acquiesce]

To [what? To] appreciating their currency substantially without liquidating their long-term dollar holding. He will not only expect each spoke to cut domestic interest rates, but will demand different things. From Asian countries that currently hoard the most dollars, he will demand they sell a portion of their short-term dollar assets in exchange for their own (thus appreciating) currency. From a relatively dollar-poor eurozone riddled with internal divisions that increase his negotiating power, Trump may demand three things: that they agree to swap their long-term bonds for ultra-long-term or possibly even perpetual ones; that they allow German manufacturing to migrate to America; and, naturally, that they buy a lot more US-made weapons.

When a foreign government acquiesces to his demands, he will have chalked up another victory. And when some recalcitrant government holds out, the tariffs stay put, yielding his Treasury a steady stream of dollars which he can dispense with any way he deems fit (since Congress controls only tax revenues).

Once this second phase of his plan is complete, the world will have been divided into two camps: one camp shielded by American security at the cost of an appreciated currency, the loss of manufacturing plants, and forced purchases of US exports including weapons. The other camp will be strategically closer perhaps to China and Russia, but still connected to the US through reduced trade which still gives the US regular tariff income.

In my mind this certainly resonates with other US plans like Ukraine which have accelerated de-industrialization of Europe and made it noncompetitive.

He closes with some caveats:

The depreciation of the dollar may not be sufficient to cancel out the effect of tariffs on prices US consumers pay. Or the sale of dollars may be too great to keep long-term US debt yields low enough.

And he concludes with some threats which you can read.

(archive link)

Some in Washington see Moscow as a “junior partner” to be drawn away from Beijing’s orbit and into its own

It's just projection as usual from the west.

Western experts often speak about Russia becoming China’s ‘junior partner’ and even a ‘vassal state’. This narrative has dominated nearly all Western discussions about Russia-China relations for a long time.

[...]

Another popular argument in favor of this theory is the difference in the size of the population and economy of the two countries (China’s population is ten times larger than that of Russia, and the same goes for its economy). While this is true in terms of statistics, reducing the complexities of interstate relations to mere statistics is either foolish or a deliberate oversimplification. Firstly, Russia maintains a decisive advantage in other areas, such as military-strategic potential

[...]

US President Donald Trump’s recent attempts to normalize relations with Moscow are interpreted as an effort to replicate the ‘Nixon effect’, but in reverse. In the early 1970s, then-President Richard Nixon’s visit to China strengthened US-China relations amid their shared opposition to the Soviet Union. Now, it is believed that American diplomacy could lure Russia away from China, enabling the US to deliver a strategic blow to China.

However, this comparison does not stand up to scrutiny. Firstly, during the 1970s, China and the USSR were already in a state of confrontation; Nixon’s actions didn’t cause this confrontation, but he capitalized on the favorable circumstances to open up the Chinese market for America and gain leverage in the struggle against the USSR. Today, neither Russia nor China wants to distance themselves from the US. If anyone is to blame for their closer alliance, it’s America itself – which has labeled them ‘existential adversaries’ and, out of arrogance and miscalculation, initiated a policy of ‘dual containment’.

Within this framework of dual containment, the US sees China as a far more dangerous rival and Russia as merely an ‘appendage’ that will align with either the US or China in the struggle for global dominance. However, this isn’t true; this perspective exists solely in the minds of the American elite.

[...]

The Chinese perspective

China sees the escalating tensions in the world and does not want to get involved in a bipolar confrontation – at least, that is China’s official stance. China considers America’s increasing obsession with containing it the result of “a Cold War mentality” and wonders why a profitable economic partnership, which has benefited both nations, should be jeopardized.

Unlike American politicians who believe that China might replace the US as the global leader, the Chinese have a more modest assessment of their own capabilities. They see the struggle for supremacy that unfolded between the Soviet Union and the United States as a cautionary tale. The USSR poured vast resources into this rivalry which, as many Chinese experts note, ultimately exhausted the nation, leading to a deep crisis and the collapse of the USSR.

China is determined not to repeat the USSR’s mistakes. Socio-economic development remains its top priority; foreign policy is considered a tool for advancing this development, but not an end in itself. China believes that expanding economic ties and increasing the significance of former colonies and semi-colonies will inevitably diminish the influence of former colonial powers, particularly the US.

non-archive link

The US has demanded curbs to Beijing’s alleged influence over the country’s key waterway

Panama will not renew its participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, President Jose Raul Mulino said on Sunday.

The announcement comes on the heels of Mulino’s meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who demanded “immediate changes” to management of the Panama Canal, a key waterway built by the US in the early 20th century and handed over to Panama in 1999. Washington believes that China has too much influence over the waterway.

“The 2017 memorandum of understanding on the Belt and Road Initiative will not be renewed by my government,” Mulino told reporters following the talks with Rubio, adding that his government will also study the possibility of terminating the deal earlier, as it is not due for renewal for a couple of years.

During the talks, Rubio warned Mulino that by allowing China’s involvement in the canal, Panama is violating the 1977 treaty with the US which guarantees the permanent neutrality of the waterway. Rubio said that unless the country reduces Chinese influence, which Washington views as “a threat to the canal,” it could face potential US retaliation.

Rubio’s warning followed threats made over the past few weeks by US President Donald Trump, who said Washington could retake control of the Panama Canal if China’s presence around the waterway is not reduced and Panama does not lower the “ridiculous fees” the US has to pay for using it.

[...]

Under the [Belt and Road], Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings in 2021 won a 25-year contract for control over two ports at the canal’s entrances, and a consortium of Chinese companies has launched the construction of a $1.3 billion bridge over the waterway.

We're seeing something happening.

All these wealthy and powerful people who snubbed Trump now flock to him to talk. Class is now on full display as even those who disdained him now flock to be courtiers in his court. Capitalist diversity initiatives designed to paper over the exploitation of the system with carefully tested language and a few hiring preferences are being tossed out. The long, decades-old corporate push in this direction has been discarded.

This is a sea-change and a departure from the collective shrug of the powerful to his first election years ago.

The question is are they visiting Trump to kiss his ring? Or are they visiting him to make him kiss theirs and telling him what the plan is now that they're onboard with the reactionary side of the culture war and are shifting messaging and strategies a bit?

The Democrat-led but empire supported push for cracking down on "disinformation" and "misinformation" which targeted domestic problematic elements outside the grip of mainstream media as well as enemies of empire is being rolled back and in its place I think we have increasingly naked jingoistic power politics. No longer do they hide behind and clutch the supposed liberal values which they've so long used to push the agenda.

Now it's no longer talk of combatting disinfo but I think of just directly fighting Russia and China. The supreme court ruling on Tiktok shows they're open to just admitting that they don't think the values they've long said others need to embrace apply such as free speech are something they need to hide and conceal their motives behind. It's not working much more, their hypocrisy is laid bare with Ukraine, with Gaza, etc. So now it becomes discarded in favor of the same national security excuses for censorship that they've long derided China and Russia and other nations for as being undemocratic for exercising.

It I think illustrates the great possibility we do see greater pushes of control, greater censorship, breaking of encryption, roll-backs of rights granted during the good times such as the first amendment and those of privacy. The boot in other words coming down.

It also gives me pause. Though I largely think liberals are histrionic when it comes to claiming Trump is going to suspend elections and seize power, I admit all these moves have me questioning whether there isn't a small chance that the bourgeoisie and empire would at this junction be fine with a suspension of the institutions and norms in order to carry out crack-downs and to solidify their grasp on power as an empire, to prepare for the well underway cold war with China/Russia. It would give them a certain plausible deniability to carry out unpopular work and then discard certain people should they need to fall back on liberal ideals in a few years after doing most of the dirty work. I'm not saying given his age he'll necessarily last beyond his 4-year mandate, I am saying he might be allowed to wield power in ways that most would assume is proscribed by the institutions of US liberal capitalist 'democracy'.

At the very least we can say that reaction seems ascendant and there is a growing danger for the working class, for minorities, for women as all pretenses of capitalism adopted after the fall of the USSR are being discarded and if you want to war with China, if you want to win a cold war you need to ramp up the reaction at home. This goes beyond Trump's last win or a bunch of petite boug shit-heads getting together with some tea because a black guy won. This I think represents a real, and possibly enduring shift in domestic politics and perhaps international strategy to match though on that we'll have to wait and see.

This along with pushes for re-arming, for increasing "defense" spending and cutting welfare and embracing wackos like RFK jr (whose deranged ideas for the mentally ill and neurodivergent are just a new age coat of paint on old protestant 'tough-it-out' slave mentality work ethics and an excuse to bring back workhouses for cheap domestic manufacturing off the backs of the incarcerated, the differently abled, etc) the truncheon is out, the steel-tipped boots are ready to step on necks. We enter interesting and dangerous times.

Basically NYT doing something catch and kill-ish, maybe limited hang-out better describes.

The New York Times’ recent “bombshell” presents facts that have been known for a long time – and does its best to sanitize them

The New York Times recently published a piece admitting that an unprecedented amount of “collateral damage” has been permitted by the Israeli military. However, in order to sanitize the revelations it claims to be uncovering, it omits key statistics that were previously revealed.

Presented as a bombshell piece, the December 26 article reveals that Israel had sent through an order that permitted killing up to 20 civilians for each low-level Hamas target. “The order, which has not previously been reported, had no precedent in Israeli military history,” the article reads.

However, in early April of 2024, an Israeli media outlet called +972 Magazine had not only published this fact, citing sources within Israel’s military, but uncovered much more damning figures detailing what was to be considered “acceptable” collateral damage.

The +972 article revealed that the Israeli airstrike that killed Hamas’ Shujaiya Battalion Commander, Wisam Farhat, was authorized to kill 100 civilians. Even more shocking was the infamous case of Ayman Nofal, the commander of Hamas’ Central Gaza Brigade, where, according to the sources, “the army authorized the killing of approximately 300 civilians.”

The +972 report was mentioned in passing by The New York Times, with the caveat that Israel’s military had denied it. However, +972 Mag’s investigative work on this topic did not begin in April. In fact, a piece published in November of 2023 cited a source who claimed the following:

“The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage.”

So, while a big deal is made of the fact that such high numbers of collateral damage have “no precedent in Israeli military history,” the IDF has been knowingly writing off civilians as collateral damage for years. One need only look at literally any UN report on Israel’s past military conduct to see it.

It isn’t only in Gaza that such horrendous “collateral damage” has been normalized, it has also been the case in Lebanon. When Israel carried out the assassination of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, it openly announced that it estimated the total death toll to be around 300, as a result of leveling a number of civilian buildings in southern Beirut.

There is literally nothing in the article published by The New York Times that is new; all it does is affirm what has already been reported, yet it is done in a way that works to water the killings down by omitting key facts and repeating old tropes.

For example, it repeats as proven fact the widespread allegation that Hamas purposely embeds itself amongst civilians to use them as human shields, a point that has been found at least questionable before.

What is undeniable however, is that Israel uses Palestinians as human shields, as has been copiously documented throughout the war and used to be an accepted part of Israel’s military doctrine.

[...]

If we go by Israel’s official figures for the number of alleged Hamas militants killed, they rise at such a rate that it doesn’t match the death toll figures accepted by the United Nations. While the official death toll in Gaza is nearly 46,000, with 10,000 missing and presumed dead, the only way Israeli “Hamas fighter” figures make sense is if the toll is much higher. However, accepting a higher death toll in order to give Israel’s claims about Hamas fighters more legitimacy would mean that The New York Times would face another issue: they would then have to wrestle with the fact that the killing only escalated in November of 2023.

[...]

Nowhere in the New York Times article is there any mention of the slaughter of civilians where no military target is located, there is no mention of the mass torture, sexual abuse, or demolition of homes for the pure vanity of soldiers. Everything is framed as a military that went a little overboard after the Hamas-led October 7 attack.

(archive link)

The US could join Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites, sources have told the newspaper

The transition team of US President-elect Donald Trump is considering options for targeting Iran, including a direct attack on its nuclear facilities, sources have told the Wall Street Journal on condition of anonymity.

[...]

Trump is understood to have told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a recent phone call that he does not want Iran to go nuclear on his watch. Tehran denies that it wants to achieve nuclear capability [...]

”Trump aides and confidants supporting military options for his second term said the main idea would be to support Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities like Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan, and even potentially have the US participate in a joint operation,” the newspaper reported.

The Times of Israel reported this week that the Netanyahu government is preparing strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. The sites are highly fortified, so it’s not clear whether the Israeli military could inflict sufficient damage with the conventional weapons in its arsenal. The US could provide heavy bombers and bunker-buster bombs for such an operation.

Days earlier, the Pentagon reported another major breakthrough with interception of an intermediate-range ballistic missile

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has reported a successful test of the hypersonic weapon system dubbed the Dark Eagle, which is being developed jointly by the Army and the Navy.

The two military services intend to use the same hypersonic glider warhead, the C-HGB, whose booster rocket could be launched from either land or a vessel, including a Zumwalt-class destroyer and a Virginia-class submarine.

The recent test launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and which the Pentagon announced on Thursday, involved the Army’s version, officially named the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW).

The weapon has a reported range of 1,725 miles (2,775km), with the warhead travelling at speeds of over 3,800 miles per hour (6,115km/h), which corresponds to Mach 5 and defines the weapon as a hypersonic projectile.

The joint program faced delays, with the Army telling Bloomberg in September 2023 that it was missing its goal to field the system by the end of FY2023.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon heralded a major defense achievement, reporting that the US Missile Defense Agency has for the first time conducted a successful interception of an air-launched medium-range ballistic missile in Guam.

(archive link)

The annual CES (formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show) is set to take place in Las Vegas, the US. It is reported that around 4,000 exhibitors from around the world have registered to attend, with more than 30 percent of them coming from China. However, latest media reports indicated that many employees from Chinese technology companies were denied US visas despite holding invitations to attend. Some commentators have called this visa rejection "unprecedented." So far, there has been no official response from the US government on this matter. We urge the US Department of State to verify relevant reports as soon as possible, reduce visa and entry policy obstacles, facilitate normal people-to-people business and industrial exchanges between the two countries, and implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state.

[...]

For this reason, the large-scale visa denials faced by Chinese companies have left even the American side, including the event organizers, stunned. Chris Pereira, the founder of iMpact, a New York-based consultancy, said exhibitions like CES were "wonderful opportunities for business exchanges between companies from China, the US, and the rest of the world, but now it is frustrating to see even events like this being impacted."

[...]

In the past, some Chinese companies were unable to attend CES mainly due to the impact of unilateral sanctions imposed by the US, but this is the first time that large-scale visa issues have been the obstacle. Even people in the US immediately suspected that this was politically motivated, rather than being due to any "technical reasons."

(https://archive.ph/xkEFP)

Plans are being made to freeze the conflict by sending 100,000 foreign troops to the country, according to the SVR

The West is secretly planning to occupy Ukraine and freeze the conflict with Russia by deploying tens of thousands of supposed peacekeepers to the country, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has said.

In a statement on Friday, the spy agency cited intelligence sources as saying that NATO is increasingly in favor of halting the hostilities along the current front line, as the US-led military bloc and Ukraine have come to realize that they are failing to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia.

Freezing the conflict would allow the West to rebuild the shattered Ukrainian military and “prepare it for an attempt at revenge,” the SVR stated. It further claimed that NATO is already setting up training centers to process at least one million Ukrainian conscripts.

“To solve these tasks, the West will need to essentially occupy Ukraine. Naturally, this will be done under the guise of deploying a ‘peacekeeping contingent’ in the country… According to the plan, a total of 100,000 so-called peacekeepers will be deployed in Ukraine.”

According to the SVR, the plan would also involve Ukraine being partitioned into four large occupation zones. Romania would take the Black Sea coast, Poland would control Western Ukraine, and the UK would occupy the north, including Kiev. The central and eastern parts of the country would be taken by Germany, the agency claimed.

The SVR also alleged that Germany plans to revive practices implemented by the Nazi regime during World War II to “police” Ukraine. In particular, Berlin wants to create special “death squads” made up of Ukrainian nationalists to maintain order in the occupied territory, the statement read.