Another simulated Oreshnik or IRBM strike was carried out today according to air raid monitoring channels. 2nd one in two days, so two days in a row now we’ve had stimulated strikes. I wonder if we’ll get an actual real strike before the end of the year, or if Russia is just wheeling out the missile launchers to keep Ukraine on it’s toes. If there’s another strike, will it be an Oreshnik, or another intermediate range system?

Also with regards to Oreshnik, it turns out that satellite imagery from Airbus showing the supposed damage, only showed old damages to the factory complex from previous strikes. Another older satellite image from Airbus was ordered to confirm that. Also Maxar, the supplier of satellite imagery for Google Maps, has been covering up all the damages to the factory complex in their satellite imagery, including from all previous attacks. There is even suspicions that Airbus is doing similar with regards to Oreshnik and selling old imagery, only showing old damages from previous strikes, and not Oreshnik. Either that, or the Oreshnik damage is not visible on satellite imagery, or Oreshnik missed completely. Here’s the article on that.

The only reliable source that seems to have seen imagery of the damage caused by the Oreshnik strike has not released it publicly, and states that the only damage visible on satellite imagery is “small holes punched in roofs”, given the kinetic nature of the projectiles. If that’s true, most of the damage would be underground and thus not visible on any satellite imagery, similar to a tank being hit by an APFSDS (sabot) round, where the only damage visible on the outside is a small entry hole, while the inside of the tank is destroyed.

Twitter source with regards to that

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In this whole article, the discussion is only around wild birds spreading disease. No mention of feeding the doodoo to cows 🤦‍♂️

Scientific American How the U.S. Lost Control of Bird Flu, Setting the Stage for Another Pandemic

Edited to fix an autocorrect typo

I used to be naive and think that even though my country’s only left-ish party, the Red-Greens, are absolutely dogshit when it comes to antiimperialism, militancy and the like, at least they were good on social issues. That is supposed to be the deal with the western left, they get to go all in on the “woke” stuff in return for being useless on everything to do with economy and geopolitics.

I am smarter now. Recently, 70 percent of the delegates at an extraordinary party congress voted to expel the Red Left faction for being too radical and too supportive of Palestinian resistance. That is bad enough as it is. But the purge prompted some Red-Green guy who sits in a municipal council to write a really depressing piece in Arbejderen. I thought we could at least be spared from the culture war bullshit, but alas no. He started out by saying how good it was that everyone in the party was now agreeing to support “democracy”.

Then he went on to say that now the baddies had been purged it was important to have freeze peach inside the party. He had been silenced, you see. What was he silenced for? You guessed it, transphobia. Apparently admins in party group chats had removed his posts about “defining gender biologically”. He then went on to complain about trans women footballers and how unfair it was to cis women footballers that they were playing, consistently misgendering the trans players throughout the piece. And the guy calls himself a leftist and holds elected office for a presumably “revolutionary socialist” party.

Judging from his complaints he is at least being “silenced” by other party members but it is deeply fucked that he can even think that transphobia is a legitimate belief inside a leftist party.

Has anyone here written on the recent Romanian elections “scandal”?

My suspicions is that it’s a less severe version of the Georgian case: someone who doesn’t automatically bow to NATO & EU won an election, and liberals cry about Russian coup (without ample evidence)

Or maybe there is actual evidence, unlike in Georgia?

Even if there is evidence, the rundown is usually: Russians giving money to a right wing candidate is BAD, end of democracy, while NED giving money to a different right wing candidate is just the power of Freeeedom
It’s highly unlikely that TikTok alone would be enough to win an election, anyway

In 2019, the net profit of the banking sector amounted to 1.7 trillion rubles; in 2020 - 1.6 trillion; in 2021 - 2.4 trillion; in 2023 - 3.3 trillion. The forecast for the current year is 3.5-3.8 trillion, that is, twice as much as in the pre-COVID, calm 2019. The main beneficiary of what is happening in Russia is the banking sector (financial capital), and not the defense industry or exporters. No industry received more than banks.

It’s over. Finance capital has won. Specifically, American finance capital has won. There is no other way to read this data without cope.

And to add to that:

Putin began his meeting with big business with the words: “The economy does not live by the rate alone, but also by the supply of goods on the market first and foremost.” It is clear that the issue of the rate and the complaints of business generals about the Central Bank greatly irritate him. But, according to the law and rules, the Central Bank is completely independent in decision-making. Even the head of state cannot influence the decisions of the Central Bank’s board of directors. They tried to change the law in the early 2000s. It didn’t work. Everyone who needs to knows this. They have to fight off complaints with jokes.

There is no way to defeat American imperialism without defeating American finance capital. Even when you are winning on the military front, you still have to escape the ideological indoctrination from the IMF.

https://neurosciencenews.com/long-covid-spike-protein-brain-28156/

Key facts

• Spike protein persists in brain tissues and skull bone marrow for years post-infection.

• mRNA vaccines reduce spike protein accumulation in the brain by 50%.

• Chronic spike protein presence may accelerate brain aging and increase stroke risk.

https://xcancel.com/AryJeay/status/1870290401510264884#m

Yemeni missile dodges 2 Israeli interceptors before striking in Tel Aviv.

As time goes on, I continue to think Louisville is the most barbaric city in hell world https://www.lpm.org/news/2024-12-19/pregnant-kentucky-woman-cited-for-street-camping-while-in-labor

It looks like the twitter account of the suspect in the latest terrorist attack in Germany has been found. The suspect appears to be an ex Muslim atheist man who left Saudi Arabia for Germany in 2006, and believed that the German government was persecuting ex Muslim and women Saudi refugees, along with trying to spread radical Islamic ideology across Europe? Saudi Arabia apparently wanted to extradite him, and Germany refused, and that appears to be related to his work in helping apostates, mostly women, to escape Saudi Arabia for refugee status in Germany, which was interpreted as participation in human trafficking, again of mainly women. The details are unknown at this time, this is all speculation with regards to that. In some of his tweets, he says that Germans are complicit in the persecution he faces as an ex Muslim and that he wants to take violent action against German citizens. He also appears to be a Zionist. Also went on an unhinged rant about how women social media influencers and models leaving Islam would lead to the collapse of the religion. It appears that he has a fixation with regards to ex Muslim women.

Content warning for his twitter account: Islamophobia, condoning terrorist acts, sexism, Zionism, and everything in between.

Twitter link

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I remember hearing that some of the prisons in syria where people are being released from USED to back in the day be CIA blacksites, where america could hold people indefinitely and that lasted until syria-us relations deteriorated. Anyone know if that’s true?

Also the syrian had arrested abdullah occalan and then also released him?

Zambian soccer player Barbra Banda, 24, was the target of transphobic attacks from exclusionary trans groups after being named the BBC’s British Player of the Year. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, notorious for her attacks on trans rights, was one of the figures who endorsed the comments on social media.

Active at Orlando Pride in the United States since March of this year, Barbra Banda is Brazilian Superstar Football player Marta’s colleague. Barbra is a cisgender woman (in other words, she identifies with the gender she was assigned at birth). In other words: she is not a trans woman. That same year, Rowling was also one of the public people to use her X profile to attack Algerian boxer Imane Khelif during the Paris Olympics.

The player was announced as BBC Player of the Year on Tuesday (26). The result is based on a popular vote. She was part of a shortlist with other players, all of whom were defined, according to the British newspaper, by “a large panel of experts involved in soccer from around the world”. After Nigeria’s Asisat Oshoala in 2015, Banda is the second African player to win the newspaper’s title.

The player told the BBC that she was “shocked and surprised” by the nomination and thanked her family, the Pride team and the Zambian national team (she was also part of the squad at the Paris Olympics). “Growing up in Zambia was never easy, especially as a girl,” said the athlete, saying that it took a while for her mother to support her in pursuing athletics. “It wasn’t easy, but I think hard work and consistency really helped,” she added.

“Presumably the BBC decided that this [naming the Band Player of the Year] was more time-efficient than going door-to-door to spit directly in women’s faces,” tweeted J. K. Rowling when sharing a post by The Telegraph’s sports editor-in-chief. Another figure known for speaking out against the rights of trans people and their inclusion in sports is British swimmer Sharron Davies. She said on her X profile that the nomination is “trolling pure and simple”. “Of all the fabulous female footballers in the world, the BBC has deliberately chosen a man to be the best female footballer of the year,” she wrote in one of her posts.

People keep making fun of how that photo of the cops surrounding Luigi, just one guy, makes him look more badass (as they should), but here’s the other thing: Why are they walking? Why not just put him in a van and drive him to the location like they normally do?

Apparently the attacker in Magdeburg was a Saudi doctor living in Germany since 2006. Things are about to get ugly in Germany, especially given they currently don’t have a government and there are elections in February. Fully expect the AfD to take advantage of the rampant Islamophobia latent in all Germans, and pair that with “it’s time for Syrian refugees to go home to a Safe Syria.” Grim.

Source: https://www.barrons.com/news/saudi-man-arrested-after-magdeburg-attack-state-premier-7df18630

Denmark Imposes Harsh Welfare Reforms Targeting ‘Non-Western’ Immigrants

Denmark’s rubber-stamp parliament, has approved welfare reforms imposing strict conditions on welfare recipients, disproportionately targeting racialized minorities. The new laws require some welfare recipients to work 37 hours per week for a paltry DKK 6,553 (USD 917) monthly before taxes—an amount woefully inadequate in one of the world’s priciest nations.

The reform, presented by the ruling Social Democrat-led right-wing regime, was passed with the support of regime-loyal far right parties. A spokesman from the fascist Danish People’s Party, gleefully embracing the prospect of forcing unpaid menial labor on non-white minorities, declared, “We don’t just see this as a political victory; we see it as a victory for Denmark, for Danes, and for fairness”.

The reforms, championed by the Nordic hermit kingdom’s minister of employment, the Social Democrat hardliner Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen, claim to link “rights and responsibilities” but explicitly target ‘non-Western’ immigrants, particularly immigrant women. White refugees from Ukraine are explicitly exempt from the new punitive measures. The legal framework carefully avoids overt racial language, relying instead on conditions such as residency and employment history—criteria that disproportionately disadvantage minorities—thus providing a thin veneer of legality for the regime’s actions.

People targeted by the new reforms will be required to work full-time doing activities that includes doing menial public sector work, unpaid internships with private employers, employment in subsidized-wage positions or attending language classes. Tasks proposed for the work obligation include cleaning public toilets and sweeping sidewalks. Failure to comply could lead to even lower payments.

Critics from the moderate pro-democracy opposition, like Victoria Velasquez from the Red-Green Alliance, argue that the reforms fail to address barriers like health, education, or language and could cause even more people to end up working as unpaid labor in jobs that should be filled by paid workers earning fair wages under collective agreements. The nation’s independent labor movement shares these concerns.

An estimated 10,000 individuals—90% of them non-Western immigrants—will also see their welfare payments slashed under tightened eligibility rules. These cuts will help finance modest subsidies for children’s activities and medications, presenting the reforms as a zero-sum game where the most marginalized are made to fund improvements for others.

• Source: Arbejderen, December 20th 2024

The latest from Justin Podur talked in depth about one aspect of the Syrian War that IMO has become a bit of an elephant in the room. This is one war where sanctions played an important role, albeit with massive caveats.

There was a civil war that ruined the country, and then a part of it was occupied. That part was permitted some rebuilding and was supplied by the occupying force. Either financially (Americans buying the SDF’s oil in the northeast) or directly (Turks sending their oligopolies to rebuild and supply the local economies in Idlib and Afrin). The portion of the country that remained under control of the central government more or less failed to rebuild - wether that’s an indictment of Assad’s government, Russia’s and Iran’s financial werewithal, the power of the sanctions themselves, or all of the above is up for discussion.

The truly bleak statement from Justin is that while the sanctions architecture might create a real demand for acquiescence, the moment the country bends the knee slightly it doesn’t get rewarded for it. Western policy seems all stick, no carrot. Assad is gone. Yet Syria went from being bombed 3 times a week by the Israelis to 300 times in 3 days. The entire security infrastructure of the country is just gone. And still the Europeans and Americans are dithering on wether they’ll even remove sanctions imposed on a new regime which, by and large, is giving them everything they ever asked for and then some.

So in my view this is a cautionary tale to the likes of Venezuela and Cuba. Juan Guaidó could have taken over the former and turned PDVSA into a Chevron subsidiary. Something tells me the Americans would still never forgive these countries for mildly inconveniencing them.