BREAKING REPORT - DRONES OVER NEW JERSEY ARE FROM IRAN: Congressman Jeff Van Drew claims Iran has stationed a "mothership" off the U.S. East Coast, reportedly launching drones now flying over New Jersey.

Can they go back to blaming aliens, cause this is beyond nonsense, beyond desperate

Nancy Pelosi tripped on the stairs (NYT)

Ms. Pelosi tripped going down marble stairs at the Grand Ducal Palace and took a hard fall, according to a person familiar with the incident who was not authorized to comment and spoke on condition of anonymity.

...

It was the second time this week that an octogenarian congressional leader sustained an injury while carrying out their official duties.

On Tuesday, Senator Mitch McConnell, 82, Republican of Kentucky, tripped and fell in the Capitol following the weekly G.O.P. luncheon, spraining his wrist and sustaining a small cut to his face.

Syria no longer has an Air Force or an Air Defense network, virtually all planes, helicopters and AD systems have been destroyed by over 300 Israeli strikes in the past 48 hours

New version of the Azov patches dropped. I haven’t seen this many black flags in a minute

But at least Syria is free!

Wow everyone’s a prison abolitionist in theory, but when some upstart rebels do the praxis and abolish every prison in Syria, everyone complains

China’s ‘explosive’ ironmaking breakthrough achieves 3,600-fold productivity boost

Known as flash ironmaking, the method “can complete the ironmaking process in just three to six seconds, compared to the five to six hours required by traditional blast furnaces.”
According to calculations by Zhang and his colleagues, the new technology could improve the energy use efficiency of China’s steel industry by more than one-third. As it eliminates the need for coal entirely, it would also enable the steel industry to achieve the coveted goal of “near-zero carbon dioxide emissions”, Zhang’s team added.

They're already done pilot testing and are rolling out commercial versions of the required machinery. Could be huge for countries with large reserves of low and medium quality steel.

Exclusive: Syria's new rulers back shift to free-market economy, business leader says - Reuters, 10 December 2024

Reuters link

Archive mirror link

Syria's new government has told business leaders it will adopt a free-market model and integrate the country into the global economy in a major shift from decades of corrupt state control, the head of the biggest Syrian business lobby said on Tuesday.

"It will be a free-market system based on competition," Bassel Hamwi, head of the Damascus Chambers of Commerce, told Reuters in an interview...

Yes, it's real, we're getting neoliberal free market jihadists now, 2024 just keeps on giving...

"People are still waiting to see if it will be an open society or an Islamic state," a Beirut-based Syrian businessman said, who asked not to be named to talk freely.

Why not both, an open market and Islamic state?

Hamwi said he had been informed by Adelaziz that the stifling customs system would be done away with, fulfilling a major demand of traders and industrialists.

"Everyone who registers at the chambers will be able to import the goods they want into the market, within a specific system," he said.

Reuters spoke to four prominent Syrian businessmen who said the message from the new authorities appeared encouraging and a far cry from a system that had been heavily controlled by a small cohort of loyalist businessmen close to the Assads.

related meme, because if you don't laugh, you'll cry.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi held a meeting with IDF Chief-of-Staff Herzi Halevi in Cairo. In the meeting, Israel reportedly guaranteed to offer assistance and protection to the Sisi regime in the event of an uprising in Egypt. Israel sees Egypt's current government as a 'friendly and stable' regime that poses no direct threat to Israel, according to officials. – Maariv

What Israel means, is that if Sisi falls, they will bomb Cairo and the Sinai killing both revolutionaries and pro-goverment people.

Not exactly news, but hearing discourse now that countries are planning to send back refugees that have fled with Assads rule as the reason for seeking asylum. Not even a week has passed and the immigration ghouls are already finding ways to use this as a way to turn people away.

My heart still breaks into a million pieces whenever I see a clip of Nasrallah on twitter or anywhere else. I can't believe he's really gone, I still can't fully accept it. I kept watching a beautiful clip of a Lebanese man in Iraq reading a little poem to mourn him on repeat today. The lyrics were this:

أين نصرالله أين - Where is Nasrallah, where

ليته في الحاضرين - I wish he was present

نحن اقسمنا يمينا - We took an oath

للشهادة سائرين - Towards martyrdom we march

It sounds better in Arabic I promise

Alright so recently milei announced that he wishes to carry out a "Nuclear Plan" for 2025. No, milei has not gone mad and decided to develop a nuke to throw it on Gaza (he's a massive piece of shit zionist, remember), he wants to build small reactors around the country. Seems good right? Expanding Argentina's nuclear capacity is not a bad thing. Currently Argentina operates three nuclear power plants, Atucha I, Atucha II and Embalse, the three combined produce around 7% of Argentina's electricity.

On the other hand, Argentina has very good nuclear research facilities and professionals. There's a locally-produced small capacity nuclear reactor called CAREM which, if financed properly, could become a massive worldwide hit. You could also build a bunch of those reactors for each province and cities and achieve autonomous energy production in them, you know, in a true Federal way as it's supposed to be.

Yeah well, hold it right there because milei has cut financing for this project, all research and construction is halted and personnel have been fired, with many seeking work abroad. CAREM also competes with US-based nuclear firms and curiously enough, CAREM's installations and archives suffered a "major cyberattack" last month, probably industrial espionage. CAREM's reactor is praised for it's efficiency and safety.

So, why does he insists on revitalizing Argentina's nuclear capacity while cutting funds for Argentina's best nuclear reactor? Because he has no interest in developing nuclear reactors for civilian use. Of course he doesn't. He spoke with Zuckerberg a few months ago and he shared his idea of building small nuclear reactors to fully keep up with AI energy demands. Our stupid ass president is of course completely on board with this idea, so his shitty reactors (which he will buy from abroad OF COURSE) will be used for the purpose of AI generated images and shit, the ones he uses for political propaganda btw.

We are so fucking cooked.

Death to "israel" btw

Trump invites China's Xi Jinping to inauguration

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-invites-china-xi-jinping-inauguration/

The future of USA’s political assassinations are going to be done between bronze age perverts tech broes and slava zucchini liberal small business owners.

Luigi was a patsy, clearly hes just a distraction to protect the real shooter, Mario

Man this is not good. Assad sucks bad but he really did seem to me the least terrible option. Now any pretense of secularism is gone, openly Islamic fundamentalist groups are taking power; any facade of rights for women, religious minorities, other oppressed groups will fade into the background. I don't see HTS being anything of a bulwark to US or Israeli interests like Assad had been. Despite his lukewarm response to these things it seemed he at least was stopping Syria from becoming a base for that shit. Maybe I'm just stressed about nothing but it feels to me that an anti imperialist player has crumbled in this key region and I just can't imagine how this could be a positive development

This dude almost gave himself the wedgies to end all wedgies (CW: suicide):
https://xcancel.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1866699959187157170

South Korea's former defense minister attempted suicide, trying to hang himself with his underwear.

Pinned comment with info TBD describing what the news mega is to new folks

General overview: The News mega is a place where people talk about news from around the world.

Anyone can jump in and write something up. The really good stuff will get yoinked by me and edited into this pinned comment (with credit).

As a general notice to old heads, the newer crowd - as far as I've seen from applications - tend to lean a mix of apolitical progressive to some flavor of anarchism. So play nice if any of them accidentally wander in, especially those of you who love to engage in posting blood sports and call shitlibs compradors. (You know who you are. Kiddie gloves or just don't engage)

refer to this comment from combate doomerismo

really feeling the vibe of this 72t post recently https://hexbear.net/comment/5044804

whenever I get a bit too anxious about ongoing events, I like to imagine a hypothetical person during, say, the Mongol conquests. in the middle of massive battles that shaped civilizations, but just trying to get by on the day-to-day, trying not to get murdered, harvesting grain or weaving or something, and totally forgotten by history. did they ever think that centuries on, people would still be talking about and analyzing events back in their time? did they hope that we'd have overcome war by that distant decade? I sure hope that the people of the 2100s and 2200s are living in lovely communist cities and free from many of our blights.

The working draft of the Republican Party's HHS funding bill for next year includes a stipulation to withhold federal funding from any recipient that provides HRT.

For the last few years, the GOP has coalesced around an idea that would short-circuit essentially all trans health care in America: banning federal funds from going to businesses that provide health care specific to changing one’s sex or gender identity, including hormones and surgeries. It would essentially signal to the private sector that if it wants federal dollars, it needs to stay away from sex- or gender-affirming care, and bow down to right-wing pundits who aim to, in their own words, “eradicate” and “erase” this form of health care.

Language in House Republicans’ most recent funding bill for the Health and Human Services Department would do just that — ban money from any federal program to entities that do “social transitioning” or drugs and surgery for “gender dysphoria.” Gender dysphoria is the specific diagnosis doctors use to justify those medical interventions. This legislation has not gotten a vote yet and would need to be reintroduced next Congress to be considered. But it has been a top priority for Republican lawmakers in the House, and Trump himself has promised he’d ask Congress “to permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these [trans] procedures.” (You can hear all his promises on trans health care in this short campaign video.)

Bans like these can lead to the private sector discontinuing behaviors altogether — and once they are in place, they are hard to get rid of: The Hyde Amendment, enacted in the 1970s, led to most abortions no longer being performed in hospitals, and is continually renewed each year.

Medical groups and civil rights advocates in D.C. tell Rolling Stone they believe that if a Hyde-level ban on federal funding were enacted, many hospitals will simply prioritize federal dollars over continuing this highly specialized form of medical care. So much medicine is performed through hospital systems and universities that this could mean ending access for many.

Given the Democratic Party leapt at the chance to scapegoat transgender people for all their own failures in the election, I think it would take a miracle to prevent this from going into law. It will immediately put large health institutions in certain states between a rock and hard place, as local legislation requires them to offer these services, which will likely lead to appeals, but as it stands I doubt they will make even a token effort to get this language out of the bill, and it will make HRT completely legally inaccessible for anyone who can't afford private practice virtually overnight. This article's author, Jael Holzman, is the guest on this week's Chapo, you can hear the story in her own words there.

Jimmy Carter Has Outlived United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson - r/JimmyCarterAliveCheck

Saw on CNN that the guy is saying that the cash wasn't his and it may have been planted when speaking at his first court hearing. 👀

Anti-~~Soviet~~ Assad warrior puts his army on the road to peace:
https://xcancel.com/USEmbassySyria/status/864144602584035328

We remain committed to bringing leading AQS figures in HTS to justice. #Syria

Is it fair to say that, if Luigi truly is the guy, and he truly is still a libertarian weirdo (and didn't change his mind in the two years since he stopped tweeting), that the future of organizing in the United States should be based on the health insurance industry, since that is THE great unifier of the American people, it seems?

hey with assad gone and the "who must go" meme sent to the dust bin of history, why don't we use a picture of from his personal life, they are pretty meme like

Mr jolani DO SOMETHING about israel or you gonna end up falling to cuck status!!!!!!!!

Long standing ovation and cheer for "Palestine will win!" at the congress of the portuguese communist party this week

So now that the Assad government is gone do we all become Rojava guys? Is it time to send anarkiddies some flowers to let the tankies into the Abdullah Ocalan stan community?

On a serious note I've been peering though some portuguese language Rojava twitter accounts and they seem very scared of HTS, they're not buying into the reformed jihadist idea at all and seem to be expecting the rebel government to strike the kurds at the behest of turkey, also they've been reporting abuses of minorities in rebel territory.

Nothing ever happens gang

Under the cover of heavy artillery and airstrikes, the Israeli Army is continues to make advances into Syria, allegedly their goal is Daraa.

Me generally

Elizabeth Warren introduces Senate bill to hold capitalism ‘accountable’

FINALLY! Why don’t someone do this before?!

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/11/us/unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson-shooter-wednesday/index.html

Mangione knew UnitedHealthcare was holding an investors’ conference around the time Thompson was shot and killed — and the suspect mentioned in writings he would be going to the conference site, the NYPD’s Kenny told Fox News on Tuesday.

In the notebook passage, Mangione concludes using a bomb against his intended victim “could kill innocents” and shooting would be more targeted, musing what could be better than “to kill the CEO at his own bean counting conference,” a law enforcement official briefed on the matter told CNN.

Saw this on twitter and I think it's an interesting point: "Arab states should carefully consider that the area is now defined by three main power brokers: Israel, Turkey, and what remains of the Iranian power, and none of them are Arab.

Feels like "the arab world" has been mostly successfully israelized, Egypt is totally dormant due to state repression and the most the saudi's have done to assert themselves was normalizing with Iran through China.

Also, good short article on NLR about Syria

Does the apartheid regime just get their buffer zones on Google maps now?

meta comment but I think with such a huge influx of new users from bluesky it might be a good idea to have a pinned comment talking about what the news mega is for a little while

Former officers and soldiers of the SAA 25th Special Mission Forces Division (Tiger Forces) have gathered themselves in mountainous areas near the Lebanese border, vowing to keep fighting

They say they have fought against terrorists for years, and will continue to do so, despite the 'betrayal' of the SAA high command. They will start fighting as resistance groups to the incoming HTS / SNA government.

The commander in the video says they are ready to sacrifice themselves, he even says they have suicide bombers among them and that his pistol's last bullet will be for his head (he won't let himself be captured).

They have also replaced their chant. Instead of saying: 'Our souls, our blood, we sacrifice for Bashar', they now say 'our souls, our blood, we sacrifice for Syria'.

I guess if the new goverment becomes hostile to Iran and Russia, these guys will become the rebels that Russia and Iran will suport?

One aspect of the Israeli invasion thats under estimated is the geography

Unlike with Hamas or Hezbollah there are no massive underground tunnel system in southern Syria, it's flat volcanic plains peppered with small to medium sized towns, no mountains, no built up urban sprawl from which to launch ambushes

It's a location where the US and Israeli air forces can leverage their full capability, the second a jihadist convoy or captured SAA tank gets within a 100km of an Israeli tank is the second an American bunker buster is dropped on top of them

Also at least 2 Syrian scientists have been assasinated in the last 48 hours and I can’t tell if it’s Israel or HTS

As some people are looking for a bigger picture I want to once again bring the real left wing struggle in Brazil right now. In general I suggest only mild/low expectations for BRICS in SA.

1- First as a reminder the analysis that Trump's election is a serious bad result for South America/Brazil still holds. Not only the USDBRL reached historic high $6,00 mark as a result of Haddad's plan. The market as expected wanted more and did not enjoy the smoke screen.

Yet on rather on another historical front the Mercosur-EU trade deal finaly happened after 25 years of negotiations. Yes almost before og BRICS was even a thing! Hilarious irony. Brazil seems to be hedging its bets, or at least accepting this geopolitical play from the EU side, I'd argue the BRICS Venezuela issue was the first sign of this hedge.

As Nakedcapitalism recently put it EU Nears Finish Line on Trade Deal With South American Bloc in an Effort to Deal Blow to China

On the South American side, there are strong reasons to believe that the deal will lead to the following:

More fires and deforestation in the Amazon. Escalation of invasion of indigenous territories, land-grabbing and violent attacks. A disruption of local food production. Increased use of dangerous pesticides.

Why Does the EU Ruling Class Want the Deal?

While agriculture products are the largest slice of the Mercosur exports to the EU (32.4 percent), mineral products are second at 29.6 percent. The South American countries have plenty of what the EU is looking for, including lithium, graphite, nickel, manganese, and rare earth elements. The EU is currently almost completely reliant on China for minerals needed for EV batteries, solar panels, wind energy, and green hydrogen — all part of the bloc’s flailing green transition.

Even if the EU is able to secure more critical minerals from Mercosur with this trade deal, who will do the processing? There’s still no clear answer. Von der Leyen likes to tout her tools like the bloc’s Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA), which aims for the EU to process 40 percent of the strategic raw materials it uses by 2030. The NZIA allows projects to bypass many environmental and social impact reviews, but there’s no budget, and the policies do nothing to change Europe’s disadvantages, which include a lack of subsidies compared to the US and China and much higher energy costs thanks to their “de-risking” away from Russian energy.

Yet the “de-risking” — code for the EU’s eager role as a US proxy in the fight against Russia and China — continues.

Thus far, it’s mostly been a disaster on every level — strategically, economically, and environmentally.

My wholesome BRICS leader can't possibly be signing a relic of the 2000's Free Trade Agreement that only causes environmental damage and favors the landowner class that violently opposes him and the left no way!

Though the other BRICS leader can just happily smile away as these dangerous initiatives fail anyway. Is this what a win-win/mutually beneficial deal looks like?

2- I need to remind people Lula's government went from a mostly mixed to good first half to a terrible neoliberal boot on the working class second half.

The Maduro spout was not a coincidence. Lula wants to pander to many sectors including the religious fundamentalist evengelicals that demonize the Cuban/Venezuelan revolutions.

The current Haddad(Finance Minister) despite the smoke screen(some tax exemption for poor) the focus remains, cut one of the biggest Brazilian welfare programs the BPC i.e retirement and social welfare money for people who can't retire due to illness etc.

Right now we have Federal Council of Social Services (CFESS)(1) making a public announcement against it I quote below.

Among the main points, the PL imposes technological barriers to access and permanence of the benefit - such as biometric registration and registration updating, without investment to make it viable. Furthermore, it limits the real increase in the minimum wage and, consequently, the value of the BPC, putting at risk the income of the beneficiary to meet their basic needs. Another point of setback is the reduction of elderly people and people with disabilities to the category of “infra-citizens”, by changing the concept of “family” without legal, social and scientific support.

The bill also backslides in the defense of human rights and reveals its ableist nature by resuming the concept of “person with disabilities” as someone who is “incapable of independent living and working,” violating international treaties and disregarding the Brazilian Inclusion Law (LBI) itself.

The bill also jeopardizes the survival chances of families with multiple members living in poverty, as it revokes the rule that income from a BPC already granted and other social security benefits is not taken into account for the eligibility of another member for the BPC. The bill is racist, ableist, misogynistic, patriarchal, and ageist, and it undermines the Brazilian welfare state and could lead to hunger, putting the lives of the population at risk.

Therefore, we demand the withdrawal of Bill 4614/2024 from the Chamber of Deputies, we say no to fiscal adjustment, and we invite social workers to send emails and messages on the social networks of the deputies, showing that the Social Service repudiates this bill!

Among the left political opposition only mainly PSOL have managed to oppose this monstrous neoliberal attack. In his vote he says

Congressman Chico Alencar (PSOL-RJ) told Brasil de Fato that the PSOL bench will analyze the proposals sent by the government, but added that the party's parliamentarians will reject any type of favoritism towards the financial market, while workers foot the bill.
“Our overall position is against this package. We are not interested in calming the market; what we are interested in is starting to reduce social inequalities in Brazil and calming the tensions arising from these contradictions in society,” he said.

Yet this whole initiative has been the Lula's government own decision, the bill came from the government and not the opposition!

*Earlier this year Brazil already made a historical decision to increase tax on cheap(<USD$50) foreign imports, almost entirely from China e.g clothing, phone casings, every sort of cheap electronic etc. Basically Brazilians buy a lot of much cheaper clothing and stuff from China. Global south deindustrialization goes brrrrr!!!!

The local retail chain capitalists don't like this as they also only import from China and sell for a profit while Brazilians could just buy from Aliexpress for far cheaper. Yes another instance of inter-BRICS fighting where imperialist capitalists won.

3- The best for last, as a final warning don't listen to just Worker Party/PT Lula fans online.

Jones Manoel's Video because fuck twitter Here is Andre Esteves, Chairman of BTG Pactual, the biggest investment bank in Latin America, bragging about how the market managed to privatize several Brazilian utility companies and the left didn't do anything.

In the last three years, we privatized three of the six largest companies under state control. This year, Sabesp is the largest sanitation company in Brazil. Last year, Copel, which is the largest company, was the largest state-controlled energy company. The year before, it was privatized.

Privatizing Eletrobras, something that 10 years ago most of us here would have thought impossible to happen.* And to remember, Eletrobras was privatized 3 months before the election. We had the privilege of coordinating the three privatizations of Copel and Eletrobras. Because it is a huge privilege and a huge responsibility. For us at BTG, now three months before the election, we are privatizing the third largest state-owned company in Brazil.

And there was no text. No one showed up at the BTG headquarters with a cardboard sign saying I am against, right? Most of us here are from a generation that saw the privatizations there in the late 90s, right? That happened in Rio de Janeiro in Praça 15, which turned into a war zone, tear gas, investors, raising of blows, union confusion, you didn't know why it was happening, right? This time we privatized Eletrobras three months before the election and no one showed up with a cardboard sign to say I'm against it, so Brazilian society has changed.

Imagine having a banker tell it to you with a straight face lol.

I said before and I maintain the warning: Lula will not be re-elected unless there is a massive course correction. Be extremely careful with thinking state level business deals between countries, which IMO is realy the maximum extent of Chinese/dengist anti-imperialism so far, actualy reflects in our day to day struggles and the political situation at the ground level.

1:

Uyghur's in Syria found missiles and warn china that they're coming for them.

The sooner we find out what the new regime intends to with these guys the better, they gotta be crazy to let syria be a launching pad for terrorism into china. I don't even know if china would invade to stop it, this whole syria thing has probably further convinced china that foreign intervention is a grift. Probably would just try to get some UN resolutions passed to resolve the issue, it'd be interesting to see if the US would veto it.

Obviously these fellas can't launch these at china from syria but they could smuggle them out.

: Oi you, tell us the number of nukes you have, yeah.

: No

https://archive.is/20241208110113/https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/china-secret-nuclear-stockpile-what-uk-must-do-new-3418651