seeing Israel get one hundredth of the agony they have inflicted upon everybody else is pure carthasis, may the debt be fulfilled in full before too long
I agree with this take the most IMO. We obviously shouldn't delve into full-on "this is great, actually" copium or anything, these things should have been checked and thousands are injured (thankfully not dead), but it is objectively better that this happened now rather than in the first hour of an invasion. Every tool that is removed from the Israeli toolbox in the least harmful context (even if that "least harmful context" still involves many people harmed) is one less tool that can be used when it would otherwise do maximum damage. One wonders if a lot of the Israeli self-backpatting has a bittersweet tinge to it.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi discussed Red Sea tensions with Yemeni Foreign Minister Shayea Mohsen Al-Zindani in Beijing on Tuesday, saying they're a spillover effect of the ongoing Gaza conflict and China is willing to play a constructive role in solving the crisis.
Al-Zindani is in Beijing to attend the 10th Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum which will be held on Thursday. Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said the current priority is to stop the conflict in Gaza as soon as possible to avoid a greater humanitarian disaster.
He urged the international community to make greater efforts to implement the "two-state solution," and called on the relevant parties to stop harassing civilian ships and maintain the safety of waterways in the Red Sea. Wang added that China is willing to continue playing a constructive role in this regard. He also stated China hopes that all parties concerned can stick to the political settlement and actively respond to the mediation efforts of the United Nations and regional countries.
Al-Zindani expressed appreciation for China's support for Yemen's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and China's long-term assistance to Yemen's economic and social development without attaching any political conditions. He added that Yemen looks forward to China playing a greater role in promoting the de-escalation of the situation in the Red Sea as well as the reconciliation and reconstruction of Yemen. Yemen believes that the 10th meeting will push China-Arab cooperation to a new level, said Al-Zindani.
In this context, it just sounds like they're doing the standard Chinese thing of "uh well I mean we want international rules to be obeyed, missiles firing at ships isn't ideal, so if eventually everybody could come to an agreement once the Gaza issue has been settled, that would be cool and nice" which makes a lot of sense if their entire multipolar vision is a genuine application of the UN Charter. it's hard to be in support of that and then turn around and say "oh yeah, and firing at cargo ships going through straits is cool and based" especially given China's geographical position.
it's not "YEMEN, WE ARE TIRED OF THIS. STOP THE BLOCKADE NOW OR ELSE." The Yemeni FM sounds pretty okay with it based on what they said in the article.
TLDR of Simplicius's article yesterday:
- Ukraine is, all of a sudden, finding significant success in hitting Russian air defence with ATACMS for some reason. Generally, how it's gone is that Russia shoots most of them down, but one or two missiles in the salvo gets through and wipes out the S-400/300 anyway. The good news is that the Russian doomers now have something to complain about again; it was deeply harmful of Russia to deprive Rybar's habitat of bad news as it's a critical part of their diets. It won't really change the course of the war necessarily, but...
- Ukraine is also taking shots at Russian early warning nuclear ICBM sites, which is, to say the least, concerning. There's been some news about Russia doing tactical nuke exercises, but Simplicius points out that in this kind of war where vehicles and troops are generally fairly distributed and not in massive parking lots all concentrated together, a tactical nuke wouldn't achieve much that a bunch of conventional explosives couldn't, outside of cities at least. And we both doubt that Russia is close to nuking Ukrainian cities. But there's an implicit threat there nonetheless, which NATO may listen to, or may not.
- Putin's been talking recently about how Zelensky is now an illegitimate ruler given the lack of elections in Ukraine, which is interesting when combined with the information that Yanukovich was recently spotted landing in Belarus. To be fair, there are alternative explanations (many high-up figures were brought there and perhaps Yanukovich was just asked to tag along due to the whole "brotherly nations" thing) but even so.
- There have been rumors/claims recently in the media that Putin wants to freeze the conflict along the current front lines and sue for peace; this has been denied by Peskov.
- There's been a fair amount of activity in rooting out corruption in the Russian army. As I understand it, none of it is incredibly major - some bribes here, a little unauthorized action there, and some punishments for underperforming commanders. But it is still a lot, all at once.
- As always, rumors of new fronts opening up. Obviously with the whole thing in Kharkov now, I find it much harder to ignore these rumors, but an invasion from Belarus still seems a little unlikely.
- Speaking of Kharkov, the Russians are now issuing Russian license plates for the region and some officials are beginning to talk about letting Kharkov decide its future and all that jazz. Significant to be sure, but it doesn't herald any imminent attempt to seize all of Kharkov IMO, especially with Putin saying that they wouldn't try to capture it for the forseeable future and the fact that there's like a single Russian division there also indicates that the intent wasn't immediate, massive territorial expansion like with the beginning of the war. Ukraine is stripping men from both Donbass and also Kherson to face Russia up there. It looks like the Kherson front has been basically terminated, with whatever tiny gains Ukraine scraped together being abandoned and the water levels raised via upstream Ukrainian dams to prevent Russia from trying anything clever.
- Generally the tempo of escalation and mutual threats between Russia and NATO continue, but this has been a theme for literal years now (I remember at least one Putin speech in like summer 2022 warning NATO), so, unlike the new front rumors, I mostly ignore these as just saber-rattling and behind-the-scenes activity that's being aired for effect until I'm given a big reason to believe them.
It's worth noting with the ATACMS thing that some of the big pro-Russian people on Twitter are stating that Ukrainian usage of ATACMS is through the roof and they've already fired an appreciable fraction of all the ATACMS ever produced (and, in typical American fashion, they make very few per year), and that Russian losses aren't so bad comparatively (I mean, they aren't, if I understand the number of destroyed systems versus the number the Russians have ever made/can make per year - which I may not understand as I'm not a military guy). Others can work out if this is accurate reporting or cope, just saying what I've saw. But Simplicius did sound fairly concerned about it in the article. Not very concerned, but fairly concerned.
shouldn't have blown our load that early, should have edged it out over time instead
French Communists want alternative to Mélenchon-driven left coalition
“The seriousness of the international situation, as in France, calls on the left to live up to its responsibilities. Unfortunately, it has not”, the French Communist Party (PCF), which is also part of the left-wing alliance NUPES, said in a statement issued on Sunday. The PCF, which met at its National Council, suggests ending NUPES, the alliance formed for the legislative elections in June 2022. It now brings together left-wing MPs in an “intergroup” in the National Assembly. Today, the NUPES, “formed […] under the hegemonic will of [Mélenchon’s party] LFI, has become a dead end”, the communists said in their statement.
“The recent refusal to describe the atrocities committed by Hamas as terrorist acts” and “the insults of LFI leaders, comparing the PCF leadership to Nazi collaborationists” were among the reasons listed in the statement.
This “weakens the rallies needed for peace in the Middle East and the fight against the Israeli army’s war crimes”, the PCF National Council added.
...
However, the Communists still want to “bring together the people, the world of work and the left” through “a rally that is useful and respects our differences”.
...
“I don’t even know what to say about Jean-Luc Mélenchon anymore. I have the impression that he and his camp are engaged in a strategy of permanent conflict”, explained Marine Tondelier, the head of the Green party, on France Culture on Saturday.
Western leftists have gotta be the most useless fucking people on the planet. Holy fucking shit.
the fact that Israel seems to be serious about this invasion is inconceivable. never interrupt your enemy when they're about to make a mistake I guess
bunch of tiktok-dancing IDF conscripts are gonna try and do the Harlem Shake in the bombed-out ruins of Gaza City and get shot at
over/under on Israel not actually doing a ground offensive in Gaza and just bombing it to smithereens for weeks on end, so as to not incite a regional war (at the request of the United States if nothing else)?
if all these proposed actions by various groups are conditional on a ground offensive then if I was Israel then I would just try and set a new world record for the number of bombs dropped per square inch for the next few months and not go in
4th most commented post of all time on Hexbear and we still have half a week to go
The Democrats? Biden? Right wing? Absurd.
That would imply that he had continued most of Trump's policies including for immigration, played a key role in provoking and then supplying to the tune of billions of dollars a proxy war in Ukraine that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands and resulted in millions of refugees (and Ukraine will end up a country infested by mines, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium for centuries to come), blown up the Nord Stream pipelines and thus condemned Europe to long-term industrial decline, continued to expand oil drilling, refused to come to any kind of reasonable negotiation on the Iran deal, which America broke and not Iran, stolen Iranian oil, steals the majority of Syria's oil and continued to occupy their country, bailed out banks yet again once they started failing partially in response to interest rates which were increased due to significant inflation (without giving a shit about regular people), presided over the loss of Roe vs Wade without doing much of anything, presided over a national wave of violent anti-transgender policies being enacted without doing much of anything, are likely to soon resume student loan payments, got hundreds of thousands of people killed due to coronavirus while saying that the pandemic is over and now every person and insitution even trying to keep a vague count of the death toll are finding it impossible to do so because the Democrats could not give less of a shit, crushed the railway union strike while pretending that they wanted their strike to be crushed and then cynically went to a picket line to talk about the fucking middle class, shown zero actual resolve against Israel which is conducting an actual genocide against Palestinians while railing against a Ughyur genocide in China, continued putting sanctions on everybody who vaguely disagrees with the US, including on China, to the extent that it's harming America's ability to do a green transition because solar panels are largely made in China, had an obvious role in overthrowing Castillo in Peru and has sent troops there, also overthrew Khan in Pakistan (and probably other places I've forgotten about), raised the military budget to comical levels while every other institution stagnates and declines, and played a key role in using the IMF and other organizations to increase global debt to a record high of $307 trillion in service of American empire.
Are you seriously implying that a kind old man like Joe Biden and a progressive party like the Democrats has done all those things?
(We still have a year left of his presidency, and potentially five years more, and already I think he's up there in the Worst Presidents of All Time rankings in term of pure negative impact on the United States, the world, and its population. The man has shambled around the world leaving death and destruction in his wake - though also critically weakened the empire in the process.)
As stated in my post in selfcrit, I'm staying on the site to host the news megathreads and will keep posting as normal.
I already completely made up my mind. My post there wasn't to try and get people to beg for me to return, it was just to be transparent about why I felt like I was a subpar moderator in light of recent events and therefore why I left. I'm the only mod on self_improvement so I can't just leave (literally, the site UI doesn't allow zero moderators AFAIK) so once we've sorted that out, I will no longer be a part of the mod team and I've already left the mod chat.