news

The frigate Iver Huitfeldt has departed for the Red Sea to be Denmark's contribution to Operation Prosperity Guardian, the US-backed attempt to violently evade sanctions against the illegal zionist entity's genocide in Palestine. For the first time since the 19th century the Royal Danish Navy are facing a real risk of getting shot at instead of just being a glorified coast guard. And already now, the armaments of the frigate are being criticised for being insufficient.

The surface-to-air missiles of the frigate has a range of just 18 kilometres but back in 2018 the Danish regime decided to acquire so-called SM2 surface-to-air missiles with a range of 80 kilometres. The missiles were ordered in 2021 but they have not yet been delivered.

A frigate of the Iver Huitfeldt class has fired a SM2 missile exactly once. That missile was a loaner from the Dutch.

The current armaments as well as the back-ordered SM2-missiles are only effective against cruise missiles and drones, making the frigate virtually defenseless against ballistic missiles and it will have to rely on the air defenses of nearby American ships for protection.

In addition to the frigate, the American puppet state has sent a single staff officer to take part in the illegal aggression against Yemen.

USA putting pressure on Hungary to approve Sweden's NATO membership next week. (Reddit)

Reuters Link

Some nice war booty that the PFLP got:

https://nitter.cz/BigTimeCommie/status/1753903556829106473

https://twitter.com/BigTimeCommie/status/1753903556829106473

Lmao white nationalists advertising on “”news”” telegrams

@Evilphd666@hexbear.net

I'm replying to your comment here because I can't see your original comment from my instance.

I feel that the state of queer rights is actually getting worse and that Singapore as a whole is getting more reactionary. The stuff below are what got me to this conclusion.

According to the US, it struck 85 targets in Syria and Iraq with the use of at least 125 precision bombs. Long range strategic strike bomber aircraft, such as the B-1 Lancer, were also used. Air defenses over Syria were likely suppressed to allow for the bombers to carry out their strikes unopposed as these are not stealth bombers, but there will be no comments from the US on that.

"US military forces struck more than 85 targets, with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from United States.

"The airstrikes employed more than 125 precision munitions."

The strikes targeted "command and control operations, intelligence centers, rockets, and missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicle storages, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities".

And as predicted, the strikes were done with advanced warning and communication to the government(s) of the countries in which some of the airstrikes took place.

The White House said it had informed Iraqi officials ahead of the military strikes.

Source for the quotes, Sky News

This is of course only going to be the first of many US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, unfortunately. What happens here is anyone's guess. I expect more strikes against Yemen as well. If Iran responds, it will probably be similar in nature to the response after the assassination of Soleimani. Most resistance groups against the US occupation will likely continue attacking US bases, though I think some will stop out of fear of retaliation. I don't think the US will leave Syria and Iraq and have never thought that, since the US announced the death of those three soldiers, I actually think the opposite, that the US wants to remain entrenched in Syria and Iraq.

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UK politics continues to talk about anything else including the issues that the parties usually both agree not to discuss (because they've both fucked). This morning in the media it's been social housing. And how we should make it way more racist.

Neither party has built any (remotely meaningful) social housing in the last 30 years. In fact, they've spent that time mostly selling it off at below market value to private landlords, who then massively jack up the rents / prices. Despite the massive housing and housing cost crisis in this country, it's an absolute lockstep political bloc beacause a) ever growing house prices are often the only 'wealth' the older generations have and those are the only voter groups politics caters to, and b) at least 15% of MPs are declared property speculators as a side job and far, far more have second properties, are smaller landlords etc.

But they're finally talking about how we have to improve it... by taking the line the nazi National Front used to. The Tories have been touting the line "British homes for British workers", which we obviously know who they're thinking of when they say 'British'.

Meanwhile Labour sent a shadow minister on TV this morning to lay out their policy, in which he said:

It is right that people who are in areas where there is a real acute challenge with housing, know that housing does go to people who are born & raised in certain communities, because if (they believe) people are coming in, it can damage the fabric of that community.

Which is almost impressive in its cowardly couching of the language while also simulataneously being almost the exact same language actual openly racist groups and parties still use. At least the Tories know they can hide behind the flag and say 'if you think British means white, that's your problem' even though that is what they're implying.

Labour continue to try and out-racist the Tories, while also being worse at the optics.

Israeli warplanes bombed a kindergarten where displaced people were sheltering east of Rafah at dawn on Sunday, the Wafa news agency is reporting. Several people, including two girls, were killed in the attack, and dozens of others were injured, Wafa reports, citing medical sources. As Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported earlier, Israeli attacks on the Al-Salam neighbourhood, east of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, have been intensifying as concern grows Israel will expand its ground invasion to Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering in overcrowded conditions. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/2/4/israels-war-on-gaza-live-us-says-yemen-strikes-send-message-to-houthis?update=2676854

I think there is a need for a new term to describe war-genocide. When war is waged with not only the intent to destroy the military completely, but destroy all people of the enemy. Like the amerikkkans in native lands they stole, japan, korea, and vietnam, or the germans in eastern europe, or the japanese in china, and now the zionists in gaza.

Liberals: “Anything to the left of us is tankie red fascism”

Also Liberals: “Why aren’t any liberals protesting wars anymore?”

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/progressives-biden-middle-east/

Do the french farmers block food to paris as well? Or what are they blocking exactly, commuters?

🦾🤖🦿👩‍🏭🧑‍🏭👨‍🏭🦾🤖🦿👩‍🏭🧑‍🏭👨‍🏭🦾🤖🦿

China is now the ‘world’s sole manufacturing superpower’, EU think tank says — Ben Norton

31 Jan 2024

It’s funny because they always accused Iranian communication to be bad, but tonight, it showed how disorganised US media communication is. Pentagon official denying here, US official confirming there, this shows a decline in US professionalism which means they are not confident. https://twitter.com/AryJeay/status/1753532451287183565

Andrew Borene was a typical nat sec guy on MNSBC. The only reason I'm commenting is that his company is named Flashpoint. It's memorable so I guess it's a good name but it's yet another cog in the machine that makes me feel like I'm living in a simulation because it's just too on the nose.

"Flashpoint" belongs in the title of fifth-rate action b-movie franchise: Flashpoint - Rogue State and Flashpoint - Loose Nukes and Flashpoint - BioTerror and...

Biden says he has decided US response to Jordan attack

Nice summary of the French media L's courtesy of the AES:

https://twitter.com/african_stream/status/1753459151831720354

https://nitter.cz/african_stream/status/1753459151831720354

In a particularly controversial case involving France 24 in Burkina Faso, the channel aired an interview in March 2023 with the head of al-Qaeda’s North African wing. It’s that interview that prompted Ouagadougou to pull the plug on the station.

Totally there to fight against Al-Qaeda btw

Brazil Ended 2023 With the Lowest Unemployment Rate in 9 Years

Brazilian President Lula da Silva generated 1.6 million new jobs during his first year in office.

On Wednesday, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) released a report showing that Brazil concluded 2023 with an unemployment rate of 7.4 percent with respect to the economically active population.

In Q4 2023, the unemployment rate decreased by 0.3 percentage points compared to Q3 (7.7 percent) and by 0.5 percentage points compared to Q4 2022 (7.9 percent). This marks the lowest rate for the fourth quarter since 2014 when the unemployment rate was 6.6 percent.

As for the annual average unemployment rate, the index stood at 7.8 percent in 2023, down from 9.6 percent measured in 2022 and 14,0 percent in 2021.

The results reflect the trend of declining unemployment in Brazil since the record registered in Q3 2020 (14.9 percent), when unemployment surged due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

After concluding 2020 with an unemployment rate of 14.2 percent, the rate dropped to 11.1 percent in Q4 2021, 7.9 percent in Q4 2022, and 7.4 percent in Q4 2023.

The reduction in unemployment was due to the fact that the number of employed persons reached a record of 101 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, with a growth of 1.6 percent compared to December 2022. This means that, during his first year in office, President Lula da Silva generated 1.6 million new jobs.

Between December 2022 and December 2023, the unemployed population decreased by 5.7 percent to 8.1 million, which indicates that about 490,000 people who were unemployed joined the workforce in the last year.

During the same period, however, the informal labor rate increased from 38.8 percent to 39.1 percent, meaning that 39.5 million Brazilians are informal workers.

The improvement in the Brazilian labor market reflected the macroeconomic improvement experienced in 2023 when the gross domestic product growth rate was 2.92 percent.

Commercial Property Losses Hammer Banks on Three Continents

Investors have wondered when the pain from the downturn in commercial property would hit banks. The past 24 hours showed it is happening right now, with lenders on three continents disclosing damage and two bank leaders resigning.

Tokyo-based Aozora Bank shares fell more than 20% on Thursday, the maximum allowed on a single day under stock market rules, after it said losses in its U.S. office-loan portfolio will likely lead to a net loss for the year ending in March. It would be its first annual loss in 15 years. Its president will step down on April 1, the bank said.

In Switzerland, the private bank Julius Baer said Chief Executive Philipp Rickenbacher resigned after the company took a roughly $700 million provision on loans it said it may not get back from the Austrian property landlord Signa Group. The group said it would shut down the unit that made the loans.

The setbacks overseas came after New York Community Bancorp, which took over assets of failed Signature Bank last year, reported surging loan losses, including from an office building. Its shares plunged 38% on Wednesday.

What ties them together: Banks are big lenders to real-estate owners and developers, putting them on the front line of the downturn in office building use and falling valuations.

The risks are particularly acute for small and regional lenders, which have far higher chunks of their loan portfolios in commercial real estate than big banks.

Pain has been slow to unfold. While changes in office habits that have hollowed out downtowns are nearly four years old and rates began rising over two years ago, landlords have been cushioned by rent from tenants on long-term leases that have been gradually burning off.

Also on Thursday, Deutsche Bank said it increased loss provisions in its U.S. commercial loan book nearly fivefold from 2022’s fourth quarter to 123 million euros, equivalent to $133 million.

In all, more than $2.2 trillion of U.S. commercial property loans are set to come due by 2027, according to the data tracker Trepp. Many banks have given short extensions to loans that were due to expire over the past two years, putting the day of reckoning off to the future.

"The commercial real-estate pain in the office sector is just starting,” Anne Walsh, the chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners Investment Management, said last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

She said small and midsize lenders especially face substantial numbers of loans to office landlords that refinance in the next 24 months, and likened the situation to a “rolling recession” for banks that could drag on for some time.

Some of the biggest risks come at the maturity of loans, which tend to run five-to-10 years in term. As cheap loans from an era of low rates and high prices come due, landlords are increasingly unable to find new loans to replace them.

The warnings revived fears that troubles in the banking sector could resume after last March’s banking crisis, though many investors remain sanguine that most banks have ample reserves to absorb losses. Falling interest rates could also help provide relief among stressed borrowers.

Regulators have been watching carefully, and worry about the prospects for further contagion into the financial sector, particularly if there were a significant recession.

The International Monetary Fund warned in an October global financial stability report of an outside chance that global commercial property prices could fall significantly further this year, “potentially creating a vicious cycle of tighter funding conditions, falling CRE prices, and bank losses, with broader implications for macrofinancial stability.”

The Aozora loss highlights the fear that the impact from elevated borrowing costs have yet to fully percolate through the system. It also shows how stress in one part of the globe can ripple broadly.

The bank, a medium-size lender, isn’t considered a systemic player in Japan. It has assets of around $55 billion, which by comparison is around the size of the 40th largest bank in the U.S. But it is not alone in having exposure to the U.S. market.

Japanese financial firms have increased investments in U.S. commercial real estate in recent years to diversify their portfolios. Aozora said the office loans are mostly in large cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, and make up 6.6% of its total loans. It has a $1.89 billion U.S. office-loan portfolio.

The problems at Julius Baer, a specialist in managing money for the ultra rich, is another black mark on Switzerland’s reputation, less than a year after the demise of Credit Suisse. Julius Baer was meant to benefit from its rival’s stumbles, but instead found itself in hot water over loans to an Austrian real-estate developer with a troubled legal past.

The loans were tied to companies controlled by the mogul Rene Benko, who was convicted more than a decade ago on tax fraud charges before making a comeback. Signa, based in Innsbruck, Austria, owns a stake in Manhattan’s Chrysler Building in addition to landmark, city-center properties in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

A cluster of Signa-owned companies and projects entered insolvency proceedings beginning in October after the group couldn’t raise fresh financing. The move spread financial losses across more than a dozen banks and insurers who were its big lenders.

Despite the bad loans to Signa, Julius Baer still made a net profit for 2023. Its shares rose Thursday after fully provisioning for the Signa loans. The bank said it hoped to recover some of the loan amount. It had earlier flagged the loans as problematic.

NYCB said it set aside $552 million for future potential loan losses, largely from commercial property, up from $62 million in the third quarter. It posted a fourth-quarter loss and slashed its dividend.

One office loan being charged off went bad after an updated valuation in the third quarter, NYCB said. It said it is also grappling with the regulatory demands of having gotten larger when it bought Signature’s assets last year, putting it above a $100 billion threshold requiring stricter capital and liquidity standards.

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Oh boy, one minute closer

Here's an interview of Richard Wolff regarding Israel and Palestine I ran into while plumbing YouTube's depths for some inane reason. Richard Wolff: A Marxist’s Case For Palestine | Robinson's Podcast (1h40m)

It's...interesting. Some of it I find useful. Some of it...IDK I find Wolff verges a little on apologia at the beginning where he kind of claims that the current actions of Israel are inconsistent with its history (specifically to 1948). He also claims there are a number of left-wing parties (filling elected positions) in Israel who aren't okay with the genocide (funny, if that's the case they don't bother to express it, as genocide is basically an untouchable consensus in Israeli electoral politics, and you can and likely will literally be kicked out if you question it). And, to be clear, the interviewer also seems like he wants to go a little "both-sidesy" at times, both in this interview and others (another recent one with Finkelstein, but it's not as worth linking as the Fink basically just says exactly the same stuff he has over and over again about Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Oct 7, etc.). I'm not sure if that's because he's a little young and inexperienced and trying to be a highfalutin academic or interviewer or whatever, or if he really has some Zionist tendencies (if so, he at least doesn't push them hard).

But there's some good stuff about the geopolitics of U.S. empire and BRICS and the impact they have on Israel, at least. Reasonably strong ending, too.

Bonus: God, does he do some good dunks on the U.S.'s "Executive Deputy Assistant" (the U.K.).

Russia claims a US PATRIOT missle shot down the plane carrying 65 POWs for a prisoner exchange.

US Slave Sickos Bombed Syria .. claimed.. " its just One of Many Courses"

Source ,( vid

After the US resumes sanctions on Venezuela, Brazil makes new contacts to ease the climate between the countries

The Brazilian government has begun contacts with the US and Venezuela, with the aim of easing the situation after the return of US sanctions on Caracas.

The US decision came after the Venezuelan Supreme Court blocked the presidential candidacy of the main opposition leader to Nicolás Maduro, Maria Corina Machado.

According to diplomats and Planalto sources, talks are taking place with Washington and Caracas, but still at an "exploratory" level. "It's a negotiation process and it takes time," said one source.

New wunderwaffe just dropped

https://archive.li/qJZ5P

iraqi hezbollah going silent mode, saying they want ease of expulsion of us troops or did they get talking to?

A bunch of discussion of German domestic politics, the rise of the AfD via dissatisfaction on project ukraine vs neo-nazi sympathy, and efforts to stop the AfD. Smells like blowback to me

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/02/german-establishment-prepares-to-cross-the-rubicon.html

US Establishes New Stockpile in Australia to Prepare for War Over Taiwan

The US created a new stockpile of military equipment during drills in Australia last summer to prepare for a future war with China over Taiwan, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

The stockpile was left behind after the Talisman Sabre exercises, which ran from July 22 to August 4 and were billed as the largest-ever iteration of the drill, demonstrating US focus on preparing for a future conflict in the Asia Pacific.

The Reuters report said the equipment left behind includes 330 vehicles and trailers and 130 containers in a warehouse in Bandiana, a suburb of Wodonga, a city in southeastern Australia.

The supplies are enough to supply three logistics companies that would focus on getting equipment to US troops who are fighting a war elsewhere in the region. “We’re looking to do this more and more,” said Gen. Charles Flynn, the top Army commander in the Pacific. “There’s a number of other countries in the region where we already have agreements to do that.”

The US is working to establish stockpiles in the Philippines, Japan, and other countries in the region. Congress is also looking to establish a weapons stockpile in Taiwan itself, something that might not be publicized due to the risk of provoking China.

US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said last year that the Army’s role in a future war with China would be to establish “staging bases for the Navy, for the Marines, for the Air Force” and to “provide intra-theater sustainment” using the weapons stockpiles and watercraft.

Wormuth said the Army would also have a role to play in the homeland since a full-blown US-China war would likely spread around the globe. “If we got into a major war with China, the United States homeland would be at risk as well, with both kinetic attacks and non-kinetic attacks,” she said.

US military officials are preparing for a direct war with China despite the obvious risk of it quickly turning nuclear. They say they’re trying to “deter” a war, but the military buildup in the Asia Pacific and the new levels of US support for Taiwan make a conflict more likely.

The president of Colombia , Gustavo Petro, denounced this Friday the institutional rupture in that South American nation and called on his nation and the world to the maximum popular mobilization for decency

"I ask all human rights organizations, progressive parties and workers' organizations in Colombia and the world to pay attention to this denunciation:

I have heard prominent jurists talking about institutional rupture in the case of the chancellor of the republic, first in history to be suspended. I have only hoped that the international delegations coming from the United States and the United Nations Security Council will be properly attended and listen to us.

I have not heard, on the other hand, that there is a serious constitutional rupture when the prosecution investigates the president of the Republic.

Trade unions have been raided, torture has been used and pressure has been put on witnesses to accuse the president and they have not been successful; desperately drug trafficking sectors, perpetrators of crimes against humanity, corrupt politicians and corrupt sectors of the prosecution seek the removal of the president from office elected by the people.

Even facts repeated several times in campaigns of other political parties such as the one to which the Attorney General belongs, and which have been previously declared legal, in our case are criminalized with desperation.

It is not the same the contribution to political parties of a drug trafficker like alias "el ñeñe" than that of the teachers' union; the contribution of alias "el ñeñe" was qualified as legal, that of the teachers' union is qualified as illegal because we are progressive.

This institutional rupture has reached the maximum desperation, because the mafias do not want to lose control of entire sections of the prosecutor's office that I have put in danger for having presented a slate of decent women.

The desperate response will be not only to suspend the chancellor of the republic, but to criminally prosecute the president of Ecopetrol and the superintendent of public services for having been president of the Colombia Humana party. The.prosecutor's office will ask for my impeachment without hiding the fact that they have carried out an unconstitutional investigation against me seeking the triumph that the people did not grant them.

As they did physically with the UP, now they are thinking of using the institutions, to do the same to make it appear as the great farewell work of the attorney general.

They have decided the institutional rupture. As president of the republic I must warn the world of the mafia takeover of the attorney general's office and I must ask the people for the maximum popular mobilization for decency.

Here a progressive president, the first in a century, cannot be overthrown because legally a workers union contributed to a leftist party. The time has come for popular expression."