news

It’s a cliche quote but it really feels appropriate now:

Hell is empty and all the devils are here

Country Assumes They Are the World’s Morality Arbiter As They Routinely Have Terror Attacks

US carried out strikes in Syria following attacks on American personnel

The US conducted two strikes on Thursday against facilities in Syria allegedly used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran-backed groups, the US Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, said in a statement.

The strikes were ordered by President Biden in response to attacks on American personnel in Syria this week.

One US contractor died during one of the attacks after having a cardiac incident while he was sheltering, and 21 US personnel were injured.

“The United States does not seek conflict and has no intention nor desire to engage in further hostilities, but these Iranian-backed attacks against US forces are unacceptable and must stop,” the statement said.

“These narrowly-tailored strikes in self-defense were intended solely to protect and defend US personnel in Iraq and Syria. They are separate and distinct from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and do not constitute a shift in our approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict,” the statement added.

The final sentence: "WhatsApp and iMessage are not delivering, and when using the internet to call, it just rings endlessly."

"I don’t know if they are safe or not": Family members left in dark after communications go down in Gaza

People who have family in Gaza tell CNN they have not been able to contact them after communications went down in the enclave following heavy airstrikes.

Jawwal, the Palestinian telecom company that provides mobile service to the Gaza Strip released a statement Friday night saying "the intense bombardment in the past hour has resulted in the destruction of all remaining international routes connecting Gaza with the outside world" leading to a "complete interruption of telecommunications services".

Said Alhayek, 42, from Las Vegas, said he has not been able to reach his family in Gaza.

“It’s like sitting in the dark not knowing what is going to hit you, I can’t reach them on any medium of communication at this point, I can’t even know if they are okay or not, I don’t know if they are safe or not," Alhayek said. "Also, the fact that they cut off communication, makes us feel as though they are about to do something terrible.” Adli Anwar, 57, who is living in Ottowa, Canada, also said he has no way of communicating with his family.

“I can’t get anything — about three hours ago, we lost all communications, no phones, no internet, nothing. Before it would connect, about 80% of the time, and now it’s zero percent. It doesn’t get to the international line," Anwar said.

CNN tried calling several contacts with Gaza numbers over the last hour, both over international calling and over WhatsApp. On the international calls, they either go straight to voicemail or an automated message says “the number you are calling is currently unreachable. Please try again later.”

WhatsApp and iMessage are not delivering, and when using the internet to call, it just rings endlessly.

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-10-27-23/h_dbbf852de6de3b8753a6a9f31a31e335

Blinken told American Jewish leaders on Monday that when he was in Doha on Oct. 13 he asked the Qatari government to change its public posture towards Hamas, three people who attended the meeting said.

According to the three attendees, Blinken said he gave toning down Al Jazeera coverage of the war in Gaza as an example of steps the Qatari government can take to do this. Blinken said he asked the Qataris to "turn down the volume on Al Jazeera's coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement," according to one source.

Blinken didn't give any examples of the heightened rhetoric he asked to be dialed back.

Axios

The amount of water for all uses in Gaza has plunged to 3 liters per person/day. Like three liters. Two bottles of pop. For an entire day. By comparison, a single apartment tower uses 100K-200K liters per day.

At what point are people going to respond to pro-Israeli rallies with actual

In her address to the UN General Assembly, US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said that it is “outrageous” the word “Hamas” is not mentioned.

“The Arab ambassadors say that they do not want to make this document political. That is why they say there’s not a need to include the word Hamas in there,” Elizondo said.

The amount of pure hatred I feel towards the U.S. ugh.

Update For Both The Week Beginning October 9th and October 16th, Kinda

We're (mostly) back on track after the Israel war derailed me. To keep this manageable, for you and me (this takes me more cumulative hours every week than I would like to admit), I've had to substantially limit my criteria of what to include, and also keep things to headlines for this week. This actually wasn't that hard - I'm not sure if all the journalists covering Israel were usually the really productive ones covering exciting events elsewhere or what, but honestly not a ton has happened in the last two weeks. A few elections here and there, the BRI summit, a broken pipeline, and other such things, but not many flashy events outside of Israel.

I have also substantially cut down on the reporting on Israel in the update. Thankfully the list of sources I've curated is now of sufficient quality that I wasn't wading through endless takes like "Israel might be bad, but Hamas is even worse!" and "Over 1000 Israelis brutally murdered by terrorists, also there's a few thousand deceased Palestinians, but that's not important here and they deserve it actually." While an update consisting of a thousand dipshittery articles would be pretty funny in any other circumstance, I don't want their rotten sewage in my updates in this case. And, honestly, I didn't fancy having like 50 headlines slowly showing the number of dead Palestinian children and destroyed buildings increasing as the days went by. Nonetheless there's still a pretty decent number of pieces there, from October 7th all the way to decades in the future to today.

Al Jazeera:

Gaza right now

Israeli air raids have destroyed hundreds of buildings in the Gaza Strip overnight, the civil defence service in Gaza has said.
“Hundreds of buildings and houses were completely destroyed and thousands of other homes were damaged,” Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman for the Gaza Civil Defence told AFP, adding that the intense bombardments had “changed the landscape” of northern Gaza.

I've been noticing an increasing number of people boycotting American media altogether for all the wrong reasons. They mostly claim it's "American woke culture" trying to brainwash their kids into being lgbt. This has lead to more emphasis on Mexican, Korean, and occasionally Chinese media.

Oh, you support sending tanks into Gaza or to Ukraine? Goddamn tankie.

Trump Jr posted a super racist disgusting anti-Palestine tweet.

🍷 🍷

If Palestine didn't want to be genocided, maybe they shouldn't harbor Hamas terrorists, sweetie.

Israeli media: An Israeli interceptor missile almost brought down a passenger plane

i'm more than a lil tipsy and all i want to post everywhere is how much i wish for the end of israel

Iranian President to Al Jazeera: We support, along with all Arab and Islamic countries and other countries of the world, an immediate ceasefire

The Iranian President told Al Jazeera: The United States and some European countries are obstructing the ceasefire in Gaza, and this is a crime

Iranian President told Al Jazeera: The United States’ calculations in the region are completely wrong and it will not achieve its goals in a new Middle East

Iranian President to Al Jazeera: We are making broad and various efforts and our support for the Palestinians and the resistance is not subject to compromise

Iranian President told Al Jazeera: The resistance in Palestine and the region is independent, the decision is in its hands, and it does not receive orders from Tehran

Iranian President told Al Jazeera: The Zionist entity and American support have no ability to eradicate the Palestinian resistance

The Iranian President to Al Jazeera: The United States knows well our current capabilities and realizes that exceeding them is out of the question

All from a string of AJABreaking tweets: https://fxtwitter.com/AJABreaking/status/1718332793346724013

Genuinely insane that Jackson Hinkle is the most viewed twitter account right now

How does the US justify voting against Russia’s resolution calling for a ceasefire?

This is what Robert Wood, the US’s alternate ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council after the United States voted against Russia’s resolution:

“I’ll keep this short because frankly, it’s not worth wasting any more time discussing Russia’s bad-faith resolution.

“Colleagues, the United States could not support yet another Russian resolution that was put forward with no consultation, that failed to reflect the realities on the ground.

“It is disappointing that Russia would rather try and score political points and further divide this council than address the current, urgent needs of Israelis and Palestinians.

“We all see that Russia is doing nothing to engage with any of the relevant parties who support diplomatic efforts, including by the United Nations, to get more aid into Gaza.

“I’ll say this again: The United States stands ready to work with all member-states that are genuinely committed to advancing peace and security. We must put the interests of the region and the world above all else.”

- Al Jazeera

"we voted against the ceasefire because peepee poopoo"

Ron DeSantis hasn't been in the news (that I've seen) since the second GOP debate, the last week of September. washed

Been reading William Gibson's The peripheral, and came across this topical scene:

"Indeed," said Lowbeer. "The use of explosives is unusual, and we prefer to keep it so. Too much like asymmetric warfare."

"Terrorism," said the rental.

"We prefer not to use that term," said Lowbeer, studying her candle flame with something that looked to Netherton to be regret, "if only because terror should remain the sole prerogative of the state."

Comparing how China handles their real estate issues with how Canada handles their real estate issues is really enlightening.

“We are going to be left with so many units,” she said in an interview. “And people have these terribly high variable rate mortgages where long-term income won’t be able to cover the mortgages on these properties. Owners will be cash flow negative.

“We will see that – or we will see a ton of [these units] hitting the real estate market, depreciating the values of them. And I don’t think people are going to cash out equal to the mortgage they owe on the property, so investors will be walking away with empty pockets. It’s terrible.”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/article-bcs-airbnb-crackdown-will-devastate-some-real-estate-investors/

Imagine complaining that your speculative investment got fucked

Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, dropped his bid for speaker on Tuesday hours after securing his divided party’s nomination, after a swift backlash from the right, including former President Donald J. Trump, left his candidacy in shambles.

lmao this is amazing. They nominated Scalise but realized he wasn't viable so no vote, nominated Jordan and held three failed votes, nominated Emmer but realized he wasn't viable either. I think they literally have no viable options.

Next I'm thinking they might nominate another Freedom Caucus member, probably Hern or Donalds, who won't be able to get enough of the moderate vote like Jordan. Then another moderate who won't get the Freedom Caucus vote, and the circus goes on.

Absolute funniest outcome is either Trump or them just putting McCarthy back. Second funniest is no speaker until 2025, especially if they don't empower McHenry to do actual speaker duties.

Unfortunately, Democrats really wanna get that genocide funding passed, so at some point they'll probably cave and vote present or something. But that was speculated for Emmer and they didn't do it.

And some numbers (will include in further comments to keep track of the circus):
Floor votes: 3
R nomination ballots: 8, plus a vote to remove Jordan and two failed post-nomination loyalty votes.

The IDF is using a film festival model for their release of all the evidence they claim to have against Hamas.

feels like we're at or nearing an inflection point wrt this whole imperial con game, with ukraine and europe basically tapped out and israel coming into play. wondering how much centcom getting btfo'd would help the dedollarization process but honestly more curious as to how they plan on cannibalizing japan and sk and what their plans are afterwards.

like, the BRI loans are all in dollars, but they're owed to china; not as if the US can just push a button nd suddenly own all the infra, but i cant imagine china just writing off all the loans or having everyone buy rmb when the US decides its time for more interest rate shenanigans. real head scratcher this

Sabereen News:

— Leader of the Hamas movement, Musa Abu Marzouk: There are members of the Palestinian Authority and some Arab countries who are secretly calling on the West to eliminate Hamas.

A spokesman for the Gaza health ministry said in a televised statement that Israeli strikes had killed nearly 400 Palestinians in the past several hours, raising its death toll in the Strip to over 7,700, including nearly 3,200 children.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/28/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-news/5212de6e-f785-590d-bf50-447a27bd9cf5?smid=url-share

Netanyahu: 'We are the people of light, they are the people of darkness; light will triumph over darkness, and we will fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah'

many Long Island IDF volunteers will meet their ends tonight

NSW Premier Chris Minns admits 'mistake' not acting on Sydney Opera House pro-Palestinian protest warnings

The 'mistake' wasn't to light up the opera house, it was in not shutting down the ensuing protest hard enough. We sure do hate us some a-rabs huh

Jesus.. I make one upvoted comment on and there are 50 replies from zionists and open fascists... Legitimately, how will there ever be communism if this 1/4 need years of reeducation and unshitting their brains??

Does anyone have a breakdown of military and civilian deaths from the Al-Aqsa Flood? I've been trying and every single article obfuscates the military impact of the operation and basically insinuates that it was a massacre of civilians.