Final moments of Israeli capitives shot by .

It's mostly audio. No bodies shown. Gunfire heard. Shots were controlled, deliberate.

Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades: 

— Al-Qassam fighters successfully sniped a zionist soldier with a Al-Qassam Ghoul rifle south of the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City.

Pakistan's democracy hanging by a thread

More on the Pakistani elections.

Shehbaz Sharif was sworn in as Pakistan's new prime minister Sunday amid a swirl of accusations that his party, in concert with the Pakistani military, rigged the elections.

Earlier this month, voters in Pakistan woke up to what initially appeared to be an overwhelming victory to former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and a strong rebuke to the powerful military-backed government in the country’s parliamentary elections. Instead, the election was ultimately called for the military's preferred candidate, Sharif, of the conservative Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) party.

Early results, broadcast widely by the Pakistani media, had shown a landslide victory for PTI. After the election was called for Sharif's party, nonpartisan observers like the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) found that there were election law violations at over two-thirds of polling sites, which almost certainly helped change the outcomes.

This was in addition to unprecedented efforts by the Pakistani military to discourage voter turnout and intimidate candidates running with the populist PTI, including forcing PTI-aligned candidates to run as independents, banning the PTI’s iconic cricket bat symbol from the ballot in a country where a significant number of illiterate voters rely on those symbols to identify candidates, and widespread mobile outages.

Late in the evening of the election, after an unusual gap in media coverage, constituencies where televised results and hard documentation (known as “Form 45s”) had shown PTI-backed candidates with commanding leads were suddenly showing “official” results in which PML-N candidates had surged to improbable leads, in some cases with PTI-backed candidates losing votes.

A high-ranking elections official in Rawalpindi, a city housing the military headquarters abutting the capital Islamabad, later confessed to flipping 13 constituencies against PTI-aligned candidates and accused the Election Commission of Pakistan and military leadership of orchestrating electoral theft.

In spite of these efforts to ostensibly skew the results in the PMLN’s favor, official results still showed the PTI with 93-seat plurality, eclipsing the PMLN’s 75 seats. But reducing the potentially-enormous PTI mandate into a bare plurality left the party incapable of overcoming a coalition of the PMLN and the PPP — Pakistan’s other dynastic political party — and forming a government.

I honestly find it pretty funny that US elected officials are trying to be like "Oh no, we should encourage democracy in Pakistan and oppose this tampering!" as if the US weren't the ones who created this situation and locked up Imran Khan in the first place. I assume these people are gonna get a knock on their door by the deep state and they'll fall silent pretty quickly.

Your Monday Briefing:

Syphilis treatment drugs are in short supply, and it’s a disease which can spread from pregnant mother to the baby in the womb and often results in death, and if not, in severe deformities. Cases of syphilis are on a dramatic rise even before the shortage of shots. 20 years ago, there were three manufacturers of syphilis shots, and then Pfizer acquired the other two companies, became the sole US supplier, and there are now frequent manufacturing issues.^PP^

Slovakia’s foreign minister met with Lavrov in early March and has faced a lot of criticism from the opposition and the country’s liberal President, Caputova, because diplomacy with your enemies is for pussies and real, heroic men sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives and destroy a country in order to inconvenience a nuclear superpower as much as possible and then actually fail at doing even that, strengthening that nuclear superpower.^BNE^

Armenia is freezing its participation in the CTSO and a permanent exit appears imminent as Armenia blames Russia (not entirely without merit) for their recent defeats. While the US tries to stir up trouble in the Caucasuses to try and weaken Russia and Iran, what’s actually happening is that everybody is banding together against Armenia.^NC^

Putin has proposed a raft of new projects to update the 12 National Projects, which were launched in 2019, in order to improve the conditions of the public. For example, Putin has proposed a six-year long-term financial plan of Russia’s development, as well as progressive tax rates, doubling public and private investment in research and development, new housing construction, support for families with children due to the demographic crisis, extending life expectancy, and so on.^BNE^

A study has found that China will need 6 terawatts of renewables (2 TW of wind and 4 TW of solar) by 2060 to become carbon neutral on time. This is double China’s current energy generation and over five times the generation of the United States. This would also require a large amount of land dedicated to those energy sources.^SCMP^

According to a government official, China’s middle-income population has passed the 500 million mark, or a rise of 100 million over five years.^SCMP^

The Turkish government is keeping a close eye on credit card spending, which has increased 126% year-on-year in January and inflation is at 65%, leading to panic-buys by people ahead of possible measures that would curb that credit spending.^BNE^

With Nigeria in its worst economic crisis in years, with inflation at 30% and the naira at an all-time low against the dollar, citizens are taking food from storage facilities after calls from one of the most powerful trade unions demanded measures to quell hunger. The government is reacting by boosting security rather than distributing food.^AN^

Ghana is planning to establish a $450 million manganese refinery and is banning the export of raw bauxite, and thus refine minerals inside the country and foster economic growth. Ghana is also Africa’s leading gold producer.^BNE^

Haiti has declared a state of emergency and curfew to try and regain control after an explosion of violence over the weekend, with armed gangs storming prisons and releasing those inside. Additionally, there was gunfire towards police stations and the international airport, notably as the Prime Minister Henry was out in Kenya to try and hurry along the deployment of police to Haiti which the US and Canada wants so desperately.^AN^

Airdrop of Humanitarian Aid Leaves Five Dead in Gaza

While the genocide continues in Gaza, the U.S., France, and Germany sell weapons to Israel.

On Friday, Gaza Civil Defense Spokesperson Mahmud Basal confirmed that five people died as a result of errors in the airdrop of humanitarian aid packages.

The drop operation proceeded incorrectly in the northwest of Gaza City, where many packages fell on people's heads and on top of homes.

The sending of humanitarian aid by air was initially applied by Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and France. Last week, the United States joined the initiative and carried out three launches, each with 38,000 food rations.

During his "State of the Union" speech on Thursday, US President Joe Biden pledged to construct a floating platform off the coast of Gaza for the unloading of aid through a Cyprus-based maritime corridor that will be operational from Sunday.

As expected, the Zionist State has expressed its disagreement with this proposal, alleging concerns about the potential entry of military equipment into Palestinian territory.

Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom will also participate in the provision of humanitarian aid through this maritime corridor, according to the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

So far Israeli occupation forces have killed over 30,878 Palestinians, 72 percent of whom are women and children. While the massacres continue daily, countries such as the United States, France, and Germany are selling weapons to Israel.

"Since the beginning of Israel's genocide on Gaza on Oct. 7, U.S. President Joe Biden has covertly approved more than 100 weapons sales to Israel," MintPress recalled.

"Only two U.S. military sales to Israel have been publicly disclosed during this period: US$106 million worth of tank ammunition and US$147.5 million of components essential for manufacturing 155 mm shells," it added.

This spring was meant to bring a flowering of climate action by President Joe Biden’s administration. But the heat of the 2024 political season has scorched some of its most ambitious plans.

Facing pushback from political allies and vulnerable Senate Democrats, as well as the growing risk of reversal by a future Republican Congress, the Biden administration has abandoned some of the most controversial elements of its climate agenda. Instead, over the coming weeks, federal agencies are set to finalize some long-awaited climate regulations in much weakened form:

U.S. companies will be forced for the first time to disclose climate-related risks to investors, under rules that Wall Street’s top regulator is expected to approve Wednesday. But the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to drop its original plan to make businesses include climate-related perils up and down their supply chains.

The U.S. power industry will be required to rein in emissions from coal plants, as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revives an effort begun nearly a decade ago. But the EPA said it will delay action on the more than 2,000 existing natural gas plants that are now responsible for 43 percent of the sector’s greenhouse gas pollution.

Automakers will face new tailpipe emissions standards designed to drive an industry transition to electric vehicles. But reports indicate that the EPA will slow the implementation of the new rules, delaying a sharp ramp-up in EVs until after 2030.

Deeply unserious. Further down the article:

...The Biden team faces a more immediate deadline, thanks to the legacy of Newt Gingrich and his stint as House Speaker. The Congressional Review Act, passed as part of Gingrich’s 1996 Contract With America legislative package, provides Congress with a relatively easy path for overturning any regulation finalized within the last 60 working days of the previous Congress. All that is required is a simple majority, as long as the president agrees with the decision.

In practice, the law is only salient when an opposing party gains control of both Congress and the White House after an election. And for its first 20 years, the Congressional Review Act was only used once—in 2001, when the Republican Congress that swept in with President George W. Bush voted to kill the workplace ergonomic rules that were finalized late in President Bill Clinton’s administration.

Then came Trump. He signed off on Congressional kills of 16 regulations finalized in Obama’s final year in office.

A sole Republican in Congress—the late Sen. John McCain—saved Obama’s methane rules from the Congressional Review Act hammer. (He did the same with Obamacare.) That would have been a devastating blow to climate action efforts, since the Congressional Review Act essentially prohibits any future administration from resurrecting any rule the CRA kills.

Trump eventually did rescind Obama’s methane rules, along with about 100 other environmental regulations. But within months of Biden’s election, the Democratic-controlled Congress rescinded Trump’s rescission of the methane rules; it was one of three Trump actions lawmakers killed using the CRA. Since then, Biden has sought to strengthen the methane rules and others he has revived from Obama’s original climate plan, including rules on power plants and passenger vehicle tailpipe emissions.

Climate change really does reveal to what degree "liberal democracy" and things like term limits are unworkable in crises that cannot be solved without impacting capitalist profit-making. The Chinese democratic system is infinitely superior as you don't have to put so much effort into this back-and-forth bullshit between parties.

Ships Hit The Fan: Denmark's Arctic Command Crippled By Suspicious Technical Issues

WESTERN MILITARY EXCELLENCE – Danish government broadcaster DR reports that two patrol vessels of the Knud Rasmussen class has been grounded due to mysterious technical issues. The ships that were intended to be the backbone of NATO pact power projection in the region now lay dormant in the harbour of Nuuk, the capital city of Greenland, part of the Danish colonial empire.

One of the ships has been incapacitated since February 1st due to a malfunction in the auxiliary engines. Danish naval authorities claims that their engineers has been unable to explain the malfunctions or to repair the engines, laying bare the inherent inefficiency of the capitalist system and hinting at deep-seated systemic decay in the American satellite state's military. The persistent and seemingly inexplicable technical problems has prompted naval authorities to ground all ships of the class until the issue has been resolved.

To compound matters, a run-down 40-year-old vessel dispatched from Denmark as a temporary stopgap measure frequently succumbs to technical issues of its own, further exposing the NATO pact's technological shortcomings. With only small boats unfit for rough seas and helicopters with limited range at their disposal, the Arctic Command now finds traditional Inuit dog sleds to be their only reliable transportation.

The crippling of the Arctic Command has turned Danish military planners paranoid that their inability to patrol the Arctic will enable infiltration by their Russian counterparts to go unnoticed.

The Knud Rasmussen ships gained notoriety earlier this year when it was exposed that they had been operating for years without having the fire control system necessary to aim their guns installed, owing to mismanagement by the Liberal Party-controlled ministry of defense. News reports have also indicated that staffing issues often makes the Danish navy incapable of manning the guns of their vessels or operating patrol vessels at night.

True to their form, Danish government media has seized the opportunity to use the reports on naval incompetence and mismanagement as a means to drum up support for the social democratic-led right-wing regime's grandiose plans of rapid military buildup at the expense of regional stability and essential social services for the Danish people. The dilapidated state of the navy is presented as compelling evidence for the urgency and necessity of increased naval spending.

interesting twitter thread about Russian ships and Ukrainian drone attacks in the Black Sea

How do you destroy an attack network?

Notice that I didn't say military unit. A military unit has assigned equipment, a defined area of operations, and clear lines of communication. Attack networks - generally but not always terroristic in nature - are far more amorphous, relying largely on a web of key people (leaders, technicians, financiers, "fixers," smugglers, system operators and expendable dupes) to create custom weaponry and deploy them in an asymmetric manner for maximum effects. During the war against ISIS we saw terrorist attack networks coalesce into military units that fought - and had to be fought - conventionally. In Ukraine we've seen the reverse: the devolution of military operations into terrorist-style attack networks difficult to destroy through conventional targeting of critical nodes simply because those nodes don't exist.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services says a child has died after contracting influenza.

It’s the first influenza-linked pediatric death in the state this flu season, the department said Friday in a release. Nationwide, there have been at least 103 as of March 2, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

By March 4 of last year, two children in Michigan had died after contracting influenza, data from MDHHS shows.

100% probability that the US aid drop airplane will start getting followed by Israeli aircraft dropping bombs

Danish Regime Refuses To Help Refugees Stuck In Bureaucratic Limbo

Unmoved by human suffering Denmark's social democratic-led right-wing regime is rejecting all talks of processing the asylum cases of asylum seekers who are stuck in the refugee detention camps of the American satellite state, unable to have their cases heard due to rigid and bureaucratic EU asylum rules.

THE WEST'S DESCENT INTO FASCISM — Under the Dublin convention that governs EU asylum law refugees can only have their cases processed in the first country they were registered in. The system was set up to deter what mouthpieces of the regime denounce as "asylum shopping". These rules means that Mediterranean countries bears most of the responsibility for processing asylum claims. As a result the mismanaged and underfunded Italian asylum system has refused to accept refugees from other EU countries since December 2022, leaving asylum seekers unable to have their cases processed anywhere. Human rights organisations estimates that between 70 and 100 refugees are trapped in Danish detention camps because of this.

Regime Rejects Humanitarian Pleas

The human rights NGO Danish Refugee Aid, supported by the pro-democracy Red-Green opposition party, has urged for processing their cases following a report on Ketily, a 34-year-old refugee from Eritrea who has been stranded in Denmark for almost 1.5 years. However their pleas for mercy falls on deaf ears.

With the callous disregard for human suffering that is so typical of the capitalist world, Christel Schaldemose, a member of the EU's rubberstamp legislature for Denmark's ruling social democratic party rejects the idea of allowing the refugees to have their cases processed in Denmark, instead she calls for strict adherence to existing rules. Evading responsibility she states that it would be best if the Italian system could handle the refugees and and goes on to say: "We need migrants and asylum seekers to have their cases resolved more quickly in the countries already handling them. We cannot allow migrants to come to the EU and live without a legal basis for residence. If there is no need for protection or residence, the European states must improve their efforts to send people back to their home countries".

Far Right: The Refugees Are Rule-breakers

Her refusal to help the refugees is shared by her fellow EU legislator Anders Vistisen who represents the far right Danish People's Party. "I certainly don't believe they should be given special treatment just because they've prolonged their case by staying in Denmark." the islamophobic hardliner says. He accuses the stranded refugees of "breaking the rules" by "travelling through several safe countries to seek asylum" and claims that allowing the refugees to have their cases processed would be "preferential treatment" as it would mean the stranded refugees would be treated better than "all those who follow the rules and have their cases processed where they first entered the EU".

Unlike his social democratic comrade, Vistisen is not content with making impotent wishes for the problem to simply not exist in the first place. Vistisen claims that the fact that Denmark received 541 refugees through the Dublin system in 2022 while only deporting 472 to other EU countries is evidence that the system has no effect. Instead he proposes a more radical solution, calling for Denmark to leave the Dublin and Schengen conventions to enable a ramping up of border controls.

Elections in portugal tomorrow, lots of my comrades are optimistic but personally I'm bracing for impact, the communist party has been hammered for 2 years for its anti-nato position on russia-ukraine and for opposing arms shipments, even now the media doesn't shut up about that even though the general secretary has been campaigning hard on wage increases and the cost of inflation all over the country. Plus the socialist party has been in power for 9 years so there's a lot of tiredness with the left, also there's a new eurocuck green party that certainly is going to take a chunk from the anti-EU left (BE and PCP). The far right will surely get 3th place with at least 10-12%, and the center right social democratic party made a coalition with the very right wing christian democrats which is not even in parliament anymore and also with, incredibly funnily, the monarchist party in a coalition called "Democratic Aliance" which is a rehash of an 80s coalition with the same name and parties, so far they say that they won't make a deal with the far right to govern but it's hard to see how there can be a right wing majority without the far right. The market radical liberals are probably going to maintain their 5%

The socialist party's leader has the reputation of being in the left wing of the party (and he was caught on hot mic during the debt crisis saying "I don't give a fuck about our creditors we can drop the atomic bomb and say let's not pay") but he's made the whole party support him by talking to the right and center while also saying he wants a left majority and make a deal with the left parties like in 2015-2019 with the "geringonça". If that happens so be it, it would be better than a right wing government, but I'm skeptical that the left parties can get the major parts of their program done though a socialist party government, like housing, wages and especially important for the communist party union laws.

Polls have the right and left very close but polling has failed bigly in the last elections not predicting the socialist party absolute majority.

"we're cracking down on big landlords, who use anti-trust law - are using anti-trust law - are abusing anti-trust law..."

With a lot of talk making me think we're coming towards either negotiations or escalation... Let's assume it's over soon... What happens with Russia when the war is over? Does it all go back to normal or does Russia face serious post-war turmoil?

Serious question. I've been thinking about what happened to Russia as a result of ww1, and then Afghanistan's contribution to the USSR collapsing can't be minimised..

How stable do we really think it is? Does a political reckoning happen later?

"I say to America, when Kamala sits down, she stands back up" (over and over again)

Lloyd Austin has taken time out of his busy schedule of pissing all over himself to be here today.

Samoans coming through big time 😏

What's a good, simple, "unpolitical" resource to correct someone who thinks "if your workload is too high the boss will just hire more people".

Have folks seen the "tactical jet suit?" Because it is very funny