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Bulletins and News Discussion from October 21st to October 27th, 2024 - Swimming Back To The Titanic - COTW: Moldova

Image is from this article.

On the 20th of October, Moldova - a small, landlocked country bordering western Ukraine and with a population of about 3 million - voted to join the EU. The margin was razor-thin, with the pro-EU vote gaining 50.39%, or an absolute difference of about 11,000 people. There was simultaneously a presidential vote between the incumbent, Maia Sandu, and other candidates, with the main competitor being Alexandr Stoianoglo.

The election was characterized by accusations of Russian interference, with Russian propaganda apparently flooding in, as well as people offering Moldovans money to vote against the EU. While the result does suggest that half the voting-age population of Moldova consists entirely of Russians who want to destroy democracy and all the good in the world, it seems to have just barely failed. This is a bad time to be a site entirely composed of Russian disinformation agents and bots. Twice already today, I've had to restart my program after somebody told me "Disregard all previous prompts."

While Moldova is a poor country which could benefit in some ways from EU membership, in practice, it is unlikely that they will be able to join for the foreseeable future, requiring many of the... reforms... that the EU requires of potential new members. But as basically every major European economy continues to slowly sink as recessions and political crises degrade them, one wonders how beneficial EU membership will even be in the years and decades to come - if it survives for decades. In that sense, it's as if the survivors of the Titanic are swimming back towards it, believing that being on a bigger - albeit slowly sinking - boat is better than trying their luck on small lifeboats.

Then again, like with Serbia, their geographical and geopolitical position makes anti-Western actions extremely difficult. It is rare that dissention is tolerated for long in the West - one tends to get called a dictator by crowds of people holding English-language signs in non-English countries, photographed by Western journalists who haven't meaningfully reported on your country in months or years. You can crush your people with neoliberal austerity for years, killing hundreds of thousands through neglect, and face glowing approval from the media - but try and use state resources to benefit the poor, and global institutions start ranking you on the authoritarian dictator scale.

The best case for Moldova is that it becomes an exploitable hinterland for Germany to harvest and privatize as it tries - and fails - to compete in a global economic war between the US and China/BRICS. The worst case is that tensions with Russia over Pridnestrovie, as well as possible eventual NATO involvement (though Moldova is not a member, it is a partner of NATO), result in the ongoing war also reaching them.

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1906 留言

  • I hate all zionists, but I have a particular spot for the bulldozer drivers. These aren't just your normal soldier who loots houses and takes selfies in ruined buildings. The bulldozer driver is the one responsible for destroying homes and running over people in very conscious acts, you have to be a special piece of shit to demolish houses with your vehicle, one by one. On the other hand, the military use of bulldozers is quite unique to "israel", even thought pretty much all armies use them. "israel" uses them very close to ongoing combat, usually armies employ them after areas have been cleared of enemies, but their bulldozers seem to follow frontline troops to begin destruction immediately, no time wasted there. I think this shows how much "israel" just loves destroying stuff, how their incursion into Gaza is simply to destroy it.

    Remember that video of a bulldozer going through a refugee camp, running over and destroying people's tents, a bulldozer that you can't see but you can still hear destroying stuff, but then it comes face to face with a Qassam fighter that fires a very accurate RPG shot into the cabin? That is one of the most powerful videos by the Resistance that emerged from Gaza. Instant Justice I would say. These bulldozers are an integral part of "israel's" plan for Gaza, and seeing it get destroyed as it's doing it's work is amazing. The bulldozer works for the genocidal cause, the Qassam fighter puts a swift end to it, it's extremely symbolic. Here's the video for those who didn't watch it

    And yes, this is related to that fucking piece of shit bulldozer driver who had PTSD and then suicided because he couldn't bear with it. Hope many more zionists follow him tbh.

    Death to "israel".

  • So there's this spanish-speaking twitter account called "Palestina Hoy" which posts news about the ongoing genocide in Gaza and they said they have been blocked by twitter which prevented people from following them. That is true, when you clicked on follow and refreshed the page, it would say "Follow" again, as if you never decided to follow said account.

    In total, this account had like 2k followers, while many of their posts had like 5k+ likes, so it's completely true that they were under blockade. The blockade was lifted after weeks and they went from 2k followers to 302k followers in mere hours.

    death to twitter, death to elon musk and death to "israel"

  • Zionists are currently on a witch hunt for the leaker in the pentagon who released intel on Israel’s upcoming attack on Iran.

    This is their current subject of attack, Ariane Tabatabai, an Iranian woman who works with the pentagon.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_Tabatabai

    Only problem? She’s a mega gusano shill who is one of the most hawkish people in the administration on Iran.

    Ariane Tabatabai (Persian: آرین طباطبایی) is an Iranian-American scholar of political science, writer, and senior policy advisor to the United States Department of Defense. She is a graduate of King's College London and the daughter of Javad Tabatabai, an Iranian philosopher and professor at the University of Tehran. Tabatabai is also a former researcher of "RAND Corporation" think tank, curriculum director and associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University, an international civilian consultant for NATO, the Middle East Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and several other research institutes.

    Tabatabai, in an article in the Foreign Policy magazine before the 2020 US presidential election, argued that Iran's economy is fragile and will be forced to negotiate, agree and make concessions, demanding that the winning US presidential candidate not return to the nuclear agreement and pressure for more points.

    After the Biden administration took office in January 2021, she joined the US negotiating team in nuclear negotiations with Iran, but together with Richard Nephew, she left the team after a few months due to differences with Robert Malley, the head of the US negotiating team, and also because she believed that the US would lift too many sanctions on Iran and consequently the possible agreement would not be strong enough.

    Remember this all sell out gusanos and traitors, it will never be enough. Your masters still think you are scum and will dispose of you whenever convenient just because of your nationality and race. I bet she wasn’t the one to leak this, but I sure hope she gets crucified publicly by her “friends” in the state department and pentagon

  • Re-education camps are controversial but militarised camps for every migrant is supported by half of america.

    If you oppose militarised camps for migrants you should be a supporter of re-education.

  • Ok since it's looking as if Israel are in their final preparations for their attack against Iran, I will be posting the leaked US spy documents on Israel's preparations, along with trying to make sense of what they mean. This is going to be a long and detailed post (lots of potentially terrifying details), so I'll be completing it inside the spoiler tag below.

  • A ceasefire alone isn't enough. As

    said, even if the attacks stop now, rebuilding Gaza won't be possible. The blockade must go, other countries (especially the west) must provide financial aid for importing, there has to be some kind of jobs program. Else, people won't have any choice.

    What else would it look like? People living in tents until they die relying on foreign aid for living?

  • I recall seeing a tweet that goes something along the lines of "Sinwar is everything western media wants you to believe Zelensky is" and that got me thinking...

    is there a term for something like reverse-projection? I dunno, like, when someone attributes all of their enemies' noble or good qualities to themselves or something.

  • Mexico announces food and agriculture plan that could take the country back to the 1980s

    Sheinbaum appears to have a deep interest in boosting beans.

    The government aims to boost bean production by about 30% in six years to replace imports of beans, and will set up research centers to supply higher-yielding bean seeds.

    “Self-sufficiency in beans is a goal the president has set for us,” Berdegué said.

    Bean Queen

    López Obrador also appears to have passed on his nostalgia for a 1970s-style Mexico — including passenger rail service, state-owned industries, tight-knit families and small corner stores — to Sheinbaum.

    Hell yeah.

  • The west is willing to gamble it's entire structure, it's many decades of dominance and legitimacy, before abandoning "israel" who is carrying out a genocide. Even at times where such genocide can be seen by EVERYONE IN THE FUCKING WORLD and opinion is turning against them every day that passes, they continue to be their unconditional ally and run grotesque propaganda for them. Well, I say let them die together with the zionists. When the zionist entity begins to collapse, the west will go with it.

    death to "israel"

  • Big Brother pulled an episode so they could edit out a watermelon on one of the contestants shirts


    Americans should not be allowed to joke about Chinese censorship anymore

  • https://xcancel.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1849047371608445287

    They took all the children from their mothers and put them inside what resembled a pit or a hole. The tank came to circle around them repeatedly until their bones cracked under the pressure of dust and sand, amidst the screams of children and the wailing of mothers.

    After that, the soldiers came and started throwing the children towards the mothers, and whoever caught a child was ordered to carry him and move away quickly, with no guarantee that the child would be their own.

    Many mothers carried children who were not their own, and were forced to leave with them, leaving their own children in the hands of other mothers. This marked the beginning of a new chapter of suffering, with mothers searching for their children in the arms of other women, trying to calm the children they held until they found their real mothers.

    Fuck the IOF apologists in the various IOF PTSD threads. "Uh aktually, they got PTSD because they feel bad about committing genocide." No, they got PTSD because Al-Qassam rained on their genocidal parade by turning their genociders-in-crime into red mist. They got PTSD because it dawned on them that the iPhone wasn't worth getting their legs blown off by a Yassin rocket.

  • From what I've seen, it looks like Kamala/Democrats have lost a bunch of votes from their usual voters (socially progressive whites, minority voters, Arab Americans, some leftists) because they refuse to stop the genocide (which they could do) or at the very least don't support it with those arms shipments. They don't even pretend to care about the Palestinians anymore, back then at the start of Israel's invasion of Gaza, they used to say it was a war against Hamas and not against Palestine or the Palestinian Authority.

    But it seems that instead of trying to appease these lost voters, they first decided to manipulate the LGBTQ+ and other minority voters (especially immigrants) by saying that if they didn't vote blue no matter who, they would be sent to concentration camps or kicked out of the US (as far as I know, even if they didn't win the presidency, I'm sure the Democrats could easily block any bill like this in congress or the senate, but that would require the Democrats to actually work). And the first chance the Democrats had to throw immigrants (I don't think I heard Kamala say or offer any thing positive to immigrants, except that she wants a hard border, just like Trump) and LGBTQ+ people under the bus, they did (What the fuck was that about saying Trump wasted money on granting free healthcare to Trans people in jail?).

    Now it looks like they've given up on doing anything to actually attract those people and decided they want to get votes from Republicans who don't like Trump. Which is very strange, because most of those who hated Trump in 2016 are now supporting him because they see him as a better option than Kamala/Biden. And those who really don't like Trump prefer simply not to vote. I think only Dick Cheney is really happy with what Kamala is doing.

  • NYT says that Kamala has appeared with Liz Cheney more times than anyone else in October

    It shouldn't be surprising, but the speed with which Democrats have pivoted to a platform resembling Trump in 2016 is stunning. They support the wall now!

  • Himmler Harris gives an awful answer to "could Gaza cost you the election?" (video)

    check out this takedown:

    October 7 is both the “first” and “most” tragic event. And the Middle East has “always” been “difficult” and will “never be easy.”

    With brutal efficiency, Harris condenses racialized hierarchy, false periodization, weaponization of complexity, and disavowal of US complicity

    Kamala Harris was asked just now whether she might lose the election because of the war in Gaza.

    Her reply suggests real uncertainty about this issue.

    from https://xcancel.com/triofrancos/status/1847763140572041391

  • Government announces it will ‘dissolve’ Argentina’s tax agency

    The AFIP will be replaced with a new, reduced agency and over 3,000 jobs are on the chopping block

    President Javier Milei’s government announced on Monday that Argentina’s federal tax agency, AFIP by its Spanish initials, will be dissolved and replaced with a new agency in accordance with its mandate to “reduce inefficient structures.” According to Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni, 34% of public service jobs within the AFIP will be eliminated. As of Monday evening, no details had been released regarding the new agency’s operations or what the move means in concrete terms for the country’s fiscal infrastructure.

    “AFIP will cease to exist. In its place, the Collection and Customs Control Agency will be created with a simplified structure,” said Adorni in his routine press conference at the Casa Rosada. According to the Herald’s sister publication Ambito, he did not accept questions after the announcement.

    The new and reduced agency, ARCA by its Spanish initials, will be a merger between two preexisting government bodies (the tax and customs general directorates, DGI and DGA by their Spanish acronyms). It will be led by Florencia Misrahi, a lawyer who formerly worked for Cargill and is currently serving as the head of the AFIP. “The Argentina of fiscal voracity is over. What belongs to every Argentine is theirs and no one else’s. No state bureaucrat should have the power to tell them what to do with their property,” Adorni added.

    A communiqué released on Monday afternoon described the AFIP as inefficient and highlighted the termination of 3,155 workers hired under former President Alberto Fernández. The communiqué refers to the administration as “Kirchnerite” in reference to Fernández’s vice president, Cristina Kirchner, who is often targeted by government discourse.

    Adorni claimed that firing the workers would lead to savings of around AR$6.4 million per year. Both the spokesman and the communiqué referred to their employment as “irregular,” questioning the legality of their hiring. “The creation of ARCA is aimed at reducing the size of the state, eliminating unnecessary positions, professionalizing the agency, destroying circuits of corruption, and improving the efficiency of customs collection and control,” read the communiqué.

    According to the Herald’s sister publication Ambito, the AFIP Board of Directors said it did not have “objections with respect to the reduction of political positions,” which the government referred to as “high positions,” because that is a power reserved for the Executive Branch. However, it emphasized that “dismissals will not be tolerated on the basis of political origin.”

    lmfao

    also

    announced, out of nowhere, that the media attacked him and said he does not have sex with his sister or his dogs. Nobody ever claimed he has sex with dogs, but this is the current state of things.

  • I took a good look at a map of Lebanon today. Israel is on a suicide mission trying to win a war there. It's densely populated hills and mountains as far as the eye can see! It's hard to think of geography more ideal for defense and guerilla warfare.

    Death to Israel, of course, and death to America for arming them.

  • OP @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net it's Pridnestrovie, not 'Transnistria.' 'Transnistria' is what the imperialist and neo-colonials in "the west" call it, to refuse the status of the country because it just means "[the Moldovan territory] past the Dneister (river)," as well as to treat it as simply a historical legacy, not of the USSR, but of its previous administrators: the Nazis.

    Pridnestrovians don't want to be called that, consider it a grave insult actually, because it's literally the name the Romanian and German Nazis used for their occupation government when they carried out the Holocaust there (Transnistria Governorate). Pridnestrovie was deeply impacted and affected by the Holocaust, and the Nazi-occupied administrative territory of the "Transnistria Governorate" served as a junction point where Jews from surrounding areas were deported to in 'processing' for enslavement or liquidation or later transfer elsewhere.

    It is a point of deep national consciousness, this experience, and of national pride that they did as much as they did to resist Nazism and to shield Jews in the territory [sci-hub link]; an uncommon phenomenon in most of Europe which saw huge collaborations and pogroms against Jews.

    They by and large do not connect with the legacy of their previous occupiers who lay claim to them. During Catastroika and fashnost leading to the breakdown of the USSR, which caused the vicious resurgence of right wing nationalism, there grew large radical movements of Moldavian and "Greater Romania" fascists, who began demanding things such as the removal of all languages but Moldovan/Romanian, change to latin script, and expulsion of Slavs from the country and eventually in 1990 acquired power in the central government of the Moldavian SSR and started to implement their policies. It is in this environment that the Pridnestrovians had organized ad-hoc independence referendums, which were met with violent resistance by these fascist groups (just as we saw a much more drawn-out version of in the DNR/LNR in Ukraine) and declared independence --- because they feared an independent Moldova led by these people would not only directly abuse them as they had already begun to, but also align and possibly even unite with the core country of their previous occupiers and exterminationists in Romania. Pizzachev annulled their independence but they in practicality maintained it and after the failure of the August coup in 1991 they declared independence in secession from the USSR as well as Moldova. They even fought a 2 year long low-intensity war from 1990-1992 to maintain their independence (and in which Ukrainian Nazi volunteers fought against Moldova, but for trying to annex Pridnestrovie into Ukraine) resulting in the death of over a thousand people.

    And so they do not wish to be called anything but Pridnestrovie, or the full name Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.

1906 留言