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

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

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]

BIG POST about Portugal's elections on sunday. I wrote about the exit polls here but full results were even worse.

So the incumbent center-right PSD which called elections on itself to avoid further questions into the PM's private business ventures (which I wrote about here and here) won the election with 32% (+3% than last time), key takeaways are that people REALLY didn't want to have elections 3 years in a row and also that no one cares that the PM's family business gets money from companies that also deal with the state.

Shockingly the center-left PS which had been in power for 9 years prior to 2024 basically tied for second place with the far-right CH, they both got 58 MPs and there are still 4 MPs to hand out, those belonging to the Europe and Out-of-Europe electoral districts, last years CH elected 1 MP from each of those districts while the PS only elected 1 from the Europe district, so it's not inconceivable that the PS will be knocked down to 3rd place.

This is unprecedented and the effects are still reverberating, the PS party leader, who's strategy was rhetorically moving to the center while being perceived by most people as being from the left-wing of the party, already resigned and the main question surrounding the party now is if the new leader will give full support to the PSD government to avoid it having to seel support from the far right or if it will be in full opposition.

Looking at the electoral map it's easy to see what happened, while the PSD dominated the north of the country (which has always voted right wing), the PS was eaten apart in the center, south and interior by the CH. The CH also solidified itself into regions were the communist party used to be electorally strong. Key takeaway, it doesn't matter if CH is riddled with criminals and scandals (here and here), anti-immigration and anti-migrant discourse has become VERY powerful in this country, so much that even the PSD and PS took it up in this election, with southeast asian and romani people being the key targets.

On the left the results are also sobering, the europhile pro-war greens were the only party to grow, they increased by 1%, now becoming the largest to the left of the PS, the less said about these people the better, they are a plague on the european left, I wrote about the link above about the exit polls. Really it's surprising that portugal lasted this long without, or rather that the PS could contain inside itself for this long, a europhile-green party in a country with such huge pro-eu sentiment.

The communists did not manage to increase their vote share like people expected, in fact we lost 0.3% and around 20k votes (a lot of them due to people passing away most likely), which is less than what we lost last time, and this was despite running what was seen by pretty much everyone to be a better campaign than usual (what that really means is that the party leader did well in the interview/debate circuit). Nevertheless it wasn't going to be easy to grow anyways and these are still tough times to be a communist publicly in the political sense, let's hope that next time the factors that make it hard for people to vote for us aren't as relevant, that is the ukraine war, overwhelmingly pro-eu sentiment among the population, racism (which shuts off people's brains to proposals which materially benefit them) and the fact that it's just not popular nowadays to identify yourself as a communist (this probably won't change). But the results of the post-trot demsoc BE show it could've gone way worse for the communists.

A big upset , and usually I would be celebrating this but not this time, is that the BE, which came into the scene in 2000 to dislodge the communist's dominance over left politics and in 2019 was the 3rd most voted party, only got 2% and only elected the party leader as an MP....wow. And it's very easy to see why, it's not that young left-wing (sorta), socially liberal, eco-minded people aren't voting anymore, the problem is that...those people REALLY fucking love the EU and probably felt trapped voting for a party that, unlike the pro-war greens, doesn't wave around the EU flag in meetings, that has always been an anti-capitalist eurosceptic party and that says it only supports arming ukraine if it doesn't "become a war business" (wat? the communists just outright oppose arms shipments btw).

I don't know what they're gonna do now, there are a loft of big names and activists affiliated with the party, and in the hard left of the party the animosity towards the communist party over stuff that you'd expect from trotskyites means that they likely won't want to enter the communist party's coalition, but also the soft left of the party now knows that the greens are more viable electorally, it's a fucked situation but a funny reversal that after years of discourse around the death of the communist party it's the BE that's on life support.

Nauseatingly, the leader of the far-right congratulated himself by saying that he "surpassed the party of Mario Soares (founder of the PS), killed the party of Alvaro Cunhal (historic leader of the communist party) and swept the BE off the map", that second claim isn't true but the other two....damn.

If I had to blame 1 single thing though is that the private news channels, where most people get their politics from, are completely dominated by right wing pundits, and much like Trump is beloved by media networks for drawing eyes to them, the mainstream media here ADORES Andre Ventura the leader of far-right, during the drama around his apparent health scare in the campaign trail (here the networks had fucking camera people stationed outside the hospital for hours waiting for the guy to get out, and everytime a CH guy farts they bring in pundits FROM THE PARTY to commentate on themselves. On one occasion one pundit was explaining how the rise of the far-right could be explained by the amount of media attention they're given only to be interrupted by the anchor who had to cut to the hospital cameras because there were supposed to be updates only for it to turn out that there were no updates and cut back to the pundit to keep making his point

The right now has a 2/3 majority to alter the constitution and if they can sort themselves out will probably remove the "towards a socialist society" from the preamble of the constitution which means portugal will no longer be an AES country 😦 (sorry Richard Wolff). That's the very least, and the preamble is only simbolic anyway, further constitutional reforms about the welfare state are far more dangerous.

Next are the local elections in september-october, these results don't bode well for the communists who are usually the 3rd largest force in local elections, in 2021 we got 8%, especially in the south and interior where CH, who got 4%, just got a huge boost, but it's not clear what that entails since plenty of people vote for the communists in local elections but not in the legislative elections.

And in 2026 are presidential elections where the country is likely to elect a navy guy to be president (which I talked about here)

Among leftists online I'm seeing plenty of hotheaded takes and a lot of hyperbole that could be premature (or could be presciently on point) so it's probably going to take some time for people to settle down and have a clear view of what these results actually mean. Nevertheless that's not a reason to stop fighting and it's not good to feel down for too long, the struggle continues.

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

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

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)

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.

(lmao intraday)

hi japan, i'm watching you

(1 year)

might as well add this here:

and crypto started growing

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)

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

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

Palestinian workers are being replaced

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

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.

@Z_Poster365@hexbear.net

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