news

Damn, this is pretty big. Evo Morales is running for president but he's running against the current president Luis Arce. There's internal divisions within MAS.

Here's another article in Spanish. Apparently, Morales and Arce went to Cuba where they tried but failed to patch things up.

Just to keep beating the dead horse cause it's still driving me crazy, The Guardian out here doing the lords work keeping the Canadian Nazi in the news

The rains in NYC look pretty insane

‘Vulture capitalists’: Maui’s indigenous community fights land grabs after wildfires

The fires were still raging when families in Lahaina started receiving messages from developers asking if they were interested in selling their land. Several residents in the town told news outlets that they began to receive messages on Facebook and other platforms from people inquiring about whether they were open to parting with their land.

While the incidents made major headlines in the coming weeks and even led to a temporary moratorium on property sales, many within Hawaii's indigenous community, Kanaka Maoli, fear that with the fires in Maui faded and soon with it the media coverage, developers will get back on the hunt, targeting the victims of these fires for their land.

"These vulture capitalists, vulture developers are preying upon our people and our connection to the land during a time when none of us have been given time to properly grieve," said Kahala Johnson, a PhD student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and an indigenous activist with ancestral ties to Maui.

Despite all of the outrage around these recent land grabs, the dispossession of Hawaii's land has been a part of the island's history since the arrival of American settlers in the 19th century.

UK’s cost of living crisis will cause thousands of premature deaths, study says

The cost of living crisis will probably cause thousands of premature deaths in the UK and significantly widen the wealth and health gap between the richest and poorest, a study has suggested.

Millions of Britons have been hit hard with levels of inflation not seen since the 1970s as a result of the war in Ukraine, Covid, Brexit and economic policy. Poorer households have borne the brunt as they spend a larger proportion of their income on energy, the cost of which has soared.

A new modelling study suggests premature deaths – people dying before they reach 75 – will rise 6.5% this year due to the cost of living crisis, with 30 extra deaths per 100,000 people. The findings were published in the journal BMJ Public Health.

The study focused on Scotland. But the researchers, from Public Health Scotland and the University of Glasgow, said “similar effects are likely across the UK as we have modelled the impact of UK government measures”.

The predicted increase in premature deaths – from a baseline 463 per 100,000 people to 493 per 100,000 – equates to thousands of extra deaths a year in the UK.

To mitigate the impact of the cost of living crisis, the UK government introduced a universal energy price guarantee (EPG) and targeted cost of living support payments for the poorest households.

Evidence shows low income is associated with poorer health and that falls in income adversely affect health. The researchers wanted to assess the potential impact of inflation on death rates this year – with and without mitigating measures.

They used scenario modelling to estimate how recent high inflation would affect household incomes, how mitigation measures would modify these effects, and how death rates, life expectancy and inequalities would change as a result.

They modelled three scenarios: without any mitigating measures; with the inclusion of the EPG; and with the inclusion of the EPG and cost of living support payments. These were compared against “business as usual” – average inflation from previous years – to estimate the health effects of each one.

In every scenario modelled, households in the most deprived areas were the hardest hit in relative terms, even with government support, and will be £1,400 worse off in 2022/23, the study found.

Without any mitigation, inflation will increase premature deaths by 5% in the least deprived areas and by 23% in the most deprived, the study suggests. The EPG scenario would lower these to between 3% and 16%, and the addition of the cost of living support would cut these to between 2% and 8%.

That means that even in the best-case scenario, premature deaths in the poorest households are predicted to rise at a rate four times faster than in the wealthiest.

Overall life expectancy also falls in each of the three scenarios modelled. But in each case, larger reductions in life expectancy were predicted in the most deprived areas.

The researchers acknowledged limitations to their modelling. For example, their price inflation estimates didn’t include the costs associated with owning, maintaining and living in one’s own home or other factors affecting household expenditure.

They concluded: “The mortality impacts of inflation and real-terms income reduction are likely to be large and negative, with marked inequalities in how these are experienced. Implemented public policy responses are not sufficient to protect health and prevent widening inequalities.”

Clearly the solution is to escalate the war in ukraine

Why do people sometimes purge their comment histories on here and vanish? Are they getting doxxed online or found out by disapproving people in their lives? Is it some kind of opsec thing? It just seems drastic to me

What is with Germany and the heavy America worship? I know the military bases play a role in their foreign policy but their citizens and politicians are so heavily Americanized compared to France and Italy with the latter also hosting US military. Every other political post I see from a non-American defending the US and everything it does is from a German.

Update to what I posted earlier: Medvedev said that any British soldiers would be "ruthlessly destroyed", and the Daily Telegraph changed the headline

Kosovo update:

More than 48 hours have passed since the end of the fighting between Serbian paramilitary forces and Albanian police in North Kosovo. I guess we can say that the dust has settled down a bit, although we still don't know the full picture. It seems like the Kosovo government has more information, but they are choosing to make only a small amount of it public, likely as a political play against the Serbian government. Regardless, the assault left one Kosovo Police officer dead and another two wounded. On the Serbian side, four men were killed, with two people being arrested for direct involvement in the fighting, and another eight for aiding them (four have since been released for lack of evidence). All of the Serb men involved in the fight seem to be from communities in North Kosovo.

In the aftermath of the battle, Kosovo's PM published photos of all the confiscated weaponry that the Serbian side was using, blaming Serbia for arming them. Yet, the most worrying thing among the stash weren't weapons, but (according to Kosovo Police) documents belonging to a member of the Kosovo Serb political party. Along with this, they also published a video of the incident in which they claim that the politician was featured in. This only raises fears over here that the Serb population will be put under greater repression in the future, especially because they have no representatives in any positions of power within the government of Kosovo, thanks to exodus of all Serb officials from almost a year ago and the election boycott from a few months ago. Hopefully this won't also lead to a massive escalation, but knowing the people currently in charge of Kosovo managed to make a license plate issue into an international scandal, it's highly unlikely.

New sanctions bill targets US allies normalising Assad government

A pair of US lawmakers aim to counter normalisation with Bashar al-Assad's government with sweeping new legislation, as Syria continues to be welcomed back to the world stage.

Republican Senators Marco Rubio and James Risch introduced the Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act of 2023 on Wednesday. The bill's rollout comes less than one week after Assad made his first visit to China since his country erupted into civil war 12 years ago.

The bill, a senate version of one introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this year, would extend the current sanctions on Syria, known as the Caesar sanctions, to 2032 and prohibit the US government from normalising relations with Assad.

The thaw in ties has put some of Washington's closest Arab partners on opposite sides of bipartisan consensus in Congress, where lawmakers want to keep Assad isolated over his role in a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and for his closeness to Russia and Iran.

"Despite a growing mountain of evidence against Assad for war crimes, there has been a troubling wave of efforts to rehabilitate and whitewash the regime and its crimes," Republican Senator Jim Risch said. "This legislation enforces a policy of diplomatic and economic isolation against the Assad regime."

The bill calls for a "description of steps the US is taking to actively deter recognition" of Assad by other governments including "specific diplomatic engagement and economic sanctions". Unable so far to prevent the steady drumbeat of normalisation, lawmakers want more visibility into what their regional partners are doing.

It contains a provision that calls for the Secretary of State to provide Congress with a list of all meetings - at the ambassador level and above - between Syria and its neighbors, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Turkey. It also requires a review of all transactions, including donations over $50,000 in areas of Syria held by Assad's government made by anyone in those countries.

what the fuck lmfao

#Brandonomics

Neat little report with some maps if you're American, MSM article Homes "unaffordable" in 99% of nation for average American

Actual report below Home Affordability Gets Even Tougher Across U.S. During Third Quarter As Home Prices And Mortgage Rates Rise Further

TL;DR

Meanwhile, major home-ownership expenses on typical homes are considered unaffordable to average local wage earners during the third quarter of 2023 in 457, or more than three-quarters, of the 578 counties in the report, based on the 28 percent guideline.

457/578 is ~80%, in other words unless you live in that priviledged 20% of the country it is literaly impossible for the average worker to own a home.

But anyway something something China collapse in 30 days because obviously something something real state bubble.

Burkina Faso's transitional government claims foiled 'attempted coup'

In a statement broadcast on national television, the government "informs public opinion that a proven coup attempt was foiled on September 26, 2023 by Burkina Faso's intelligence and security services".

"At present, officers and other alleged actors involved in this destabilization attempt have been arrested and others are being actively sought", continues the government, which deplores the fact that the perpetrators of this attempted putsch "had the dark intention of attacking the institutions of the Republic and plunging (the) country into chaos".

On Tuesday evening, thousands of people took to the streets of the capital Ouagadougou in response to a call from supporters of Captain Traoré to "defend" him in the face of rumors of a putsch that were circulating on social networks.

It is surreal watching the Armenian Genocide happen again

Germany: Copper theft hits crucial infrastructure, business

German railway operator Deutsche Bahn has been struggling for quite a while now. Decades of neglect have left the state-owned company's infrastructure and rolling stock in tatters and its finances in disarray.

Deutsche Bahn's precarious funding is now being additionally burdened by a rising number of copper thefts that in 2022 alone cost the company about €6.6 million ($7 million), according to German business daily Handelsblatt. This year, the newspaper found, copper thefts have already led to 2,644 train delays, totaling well over 700 hours.

As criminals destroy cable ducts to get hold of the valuable base metal, supply chains are disrupted and hundreds of thousands of passengers are getting increasingly frustrated about Deutsche Bahn's unpunctuality.

Literally stripping the copper out of the walls of Europe.

BRATISLAVA, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Slovakia's leftist former Prime Minister Robert Fico beat his progressive rival in a parliamentary election after campaigning to end military aid to Ukraine, but he will need to win over allies to form the next government, nearly complete results showed on Sunday.

With 98% of voting districts reporting in the Saturday election, Fico's SMER-SSD party led with 23.37% of the vote. The liberal Progressive Slovakia (PS) followed with 16.86% and the HLAS (Voice) party, which could become the kingmaker for forming the next government, was third with 15.03%.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230930092650/https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/slovaks-choose-between-pro-russian-ex-pm-fico-pro-western-liberals-2023-09-29/

No sleep until I’ve turned the world towards a thousand years of depravity, filth, and moral decay. I wanna make a world so downright pornographic it makes every single rightoid shit squeal. Open, conscious defiance of their philosophical traditions and social mores around every corner. That shit needs to chafe them as much as their ideal world would chafe me. Shit, as much as the world they’ve built does chafe me.

Can anybody post the un-paywalled latest article of ol' Seymour on Ukraine?

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/zelenskys-bad-moment Looks promising, I'd like to read it