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Bulletins and News Discussion from May 19th to May 25th, 2025 - The Beginning of the End of the Monroe Doctrine

Or perhaps the end of the beginning, if you're a little more pessimistic.

Image is from this Bloomberg article, from which I also gathered some of the information used in the preamble.

While Trump was off in the Middle East in an incompetent attempt to solve a geopolitical and humanitarian crisis, China has been doing something much more productive.

Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping, had a summit with CELAC (a community of 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries). There, he promised investment, various declarations of friendship, and visa-free entry for 30 days for citizens of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay. Lula signed over 30 agreements with China. Colombia is joining the New Development Bank and hopes to gain the money for a 120-kilometer railway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as an alternative route to the Panama Canal. Even Argentina, ruled by arch-libertarian and arch-dipshit (but I repeat myself) Milei, was uncharacteristically polite with China as he secured a currency swap renewal to shore up their international reserves.

It wouldn't really be correct to say that Latin America is "siding with China over the US" - leaders in the region will continue to make many deals with America for the foreseeable future, and even Trump's bizarre economic strongman routine won't make them break off economic and diplomatic relations. What's significant here is that despite increasing American pressure for those leaders to break off all ties with China, few appear to be listening - and given that China is perhaps the most important economy on the planet right now, that is a very predictable outcome.

As the current American empire takes actions to try and avoid their doom, those very actions only guarantee it. As Latin America grows ever more interconnected with China and continues to develop, America will grow ever more panicked and demanding, and this feedback loop will - eventually - result in the death of the Monroe Doctrine.

Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

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382 comments

  • Ok I need to know, why does pretty much every country go out their way to kiss zionist ass? From the gulf states to Vietnam and China, why is international politics so weak to try to do anything to barely slap "Israel"s hand? Serious, not shitposts.

    Its mind baffling, it goes outside any logic or reason and I would even consider it against materialism. It's like giving reason to all right wing talks about zionist control over the world lmfao.

    • I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Israel, is in fact, USA/Israel, or as I've recently taken to calling it, USA plus Israel. Israel is not a country unto itself, but rather another illegal occupaton of a fully functioning USA empire made useful by the US Armed Forces, the Central Intelligence Agency and vital imperial components comprising a full empire as defined by any competent dictionary.

      Many Palestinians get murdered by the USA empire every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the illegal occupation which is widely used for murdering Palestinians today is often called Israel, and many of its victims are not aware that it is basically the USA empire, developed by the colonizers who genocided almost all of the Native Americans a few centuries ago.

      There really is an Israel, and these people are getting murdered by it, but it is just a part of the empire they are victims of. Israel is the illegal occupation: a part of the empire which resides on land that belongs to someone else who did not consent to getting murdered or having their land taken away. The illegal occupation is an essential part of the empire, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete empire. Israel is normally used in combination with the USA empire: the whole empire is basically USA with Israel added, or USA/Israel. All the so-called Israel distributions are really distributions of USA/Israel!

      copypasta bit aside, it would be a blunder to openly state your hostility to Israel because it will only make you the next target of the US sanctions regime (a sanctions war is already being doled out to the entire world). The US would most likely use any Chinese sanction of Israel as the excuse for all out war which neither side would be able to control not to mention what the stage would be like for smaller AES/Global South nations like Vietnam.

      The WPK in the DPRK having the most consistent position on Israel (does not exist has never existed) stems from them already being made into a global pariah for decades by the US (which has led to millions of deaths). Many capitalist Global South countries with centrist or socdem governments have so much more to lose.

      • At least eleven countries, including Jordan, Bahrain, Turkey, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Chile, Belize, Brazil, South Africa and Chad, have recalled their ambassadors to Israel or severed ties altogether.

        Venezuela already broke relations with Israel during the 2000's. In Bolivia, Honduras, Colombia and Brazil's case, they cut ties with Israel because it's well known that Israel hates Lula, Petro, Arce/Evo, Xiomara. And Israel had openly financed and met with people like Bolsonaro and Uribe. Chile's case is a bit more complex, and it probably comes from the fact Chile has the largest Palestinian diaspora in Latin America.

        It seems like the military contracts that were cancelled between these countries and Isreal, were replaced with military contracts with China and the EU (idk if the EU is still refusing to sell South America ammo and guns bc they refused to give Ukraine free stuff).

    • Honestly, it probably came down to economics.

      Everyone seems to have forgotten that there is still a 10% global tariffs on every country other than China, and Trump has made it clear that support for Israel is non-negotiable, not only for their foreign “partners”, but also for domestic US citizens.

      This is one place where I think the US ruling imperialist class really leaned in on Trump’s pompous performance to psychologically manipulate the world’s reception towards US policies.

      If Trump had just announced a 10% global tariffs, there would have been huge public outcry across the world.

      Instead, what we get was at first, an insane Trump tariff plan where everyone laughed at how stupid it is “haha he’s imposing 150% tariffs on the penguins!!” and then Trump would “walk back” to “only 10%” and the world suddenly breathed a sigh of relief and quietly accepted the rate - for the fear that any noise could irritate a vindictive Trump to raise tariffs against their particular countries again.

      A tariff is a tax on US consumers, it would raise the price, but on the flip side, it also means that the exporting countries have to deal with surplus export capacity. Every country now hopes for a deal with Trump because the first countries that manage to bring their tariffs down to 0% would be the winners against their exporting competitors.

      Trump’s global tariff is actually threatening to unleash a mercantilistic fight among the exporting countries, and this is very dangerous because you can’t just keep adjusting the prices - at some point, overproduction leads to price collapse, and economic recession.

      And while this is all playing out, the US is reshaping the global supply chain to its own interest.

      This is happening because the world (many Global South countries) have bought into the “export led growth” model (lie) proposed (imposed) by the IMF. The idea that you have to earn export revenues before you can invest domestically can only work as long as there is a country willing to run a huge trade deficit at all times so you, the exporting country, can accumulate the trade surplus.

      This was how Taiwan and South Korea “won” the race back in the 1970s-90s (the Four Asian Dragons), before the rise of China, and every other country has since flocked to emulate that strategy, believing that one day they will also become like Taiwan and South Korea.

      Trump is now saying “I’m bored of the old winners, they no longer benefit me, I’m now reshuffling the board to pick a new set of winners. Here is your chance to rise to the top if you stroke my ego enough.” Pure mercantilism.

      This is also why you see so many pro-BRICS, pro-China “alt media” people are now going through their cognitive dissonance. “US import only comprises 2% of China’s exports lol! Who cares??” But somehow many countries found themselves unable to just stop exporting to the US and replace their demand somewhere else. Strange.

      I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but for the 25th time this week (lol), if there is no country willing to take on the net importer role to replace the US as a net deficit spender, then the US will always have a say on global trade.

      That’s simply how the world has been shaped over the past several decades with the US and China enjoying running huge trade imbalances at the expense of the rest of the world. One of these two countries have to decide they no longer want to be part of this cursed marriage, and the shocking revelation is that the US seems to be the one who wants to break off from this marriage, and China doing everything it can to save it.

      Also, bonus: there used to be another economic bloc that could challenge US’s dominance, and that is the EU. The euro is a far more acceptable saving currency for the rest of the world compared to yuan - and the real threat to the dollar hegemony in recent years. (If you somehow think I’m a “chauvinist” for China, you’ll see here that this is not the case).

      However, very conveniently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine just had to happen, and with the EU losing their cheap gas supply from Russia, it’s all but over for Europe:

      The Russia-Ukraine war killed the euro and subjugated the entire European subcontinent to the US. This is what allowed Trump to advance to the next stages of US imperial strategy.

      • Whenever I'm like half a page down reading a single comment I always think to myself "God damn this must be xiaohongshu" and I am right 100% of the time.

        Appreciate you

      • If you somehow think I’m a “chauvinist” for China, you’ll see here that this is not the case

        This is quite probably a reference to me calling you a national chauvinist over you supporting the destruction of the USSR and the establishment of the 'cursed marriage' between the PRC and the US, as you were evidently concerned solely with the well-being of people in the PRC, and were fine with colonial exploitation of the rest of the world.

        Supporting the EU becoming this net importer so that the PRC gets to continue to enjoy the status quo would, in fact, be chauvinist of you.

      • This is also why you see so many pro-BRICS, pro-China “alt media” people are now going through their cognitive dissonance. “US import only comprises 2% of China’s exports lol! Who cares??” But somehow many countries found themselves unable to just stop exporting to the US and replace their demand somewhere else. Strange

        It's also because that 2% figure is a percentage of GDP. In terms of actual goods manufactured, Chinese exports to the USA make up 15-20% of total exports. And here is some more cognitive dissonance from the alt media. They've been going on for years about how GDP is "fake" and not a useful metric (there is a bit of truth here, but not as much as they say), and then the first statistic they use to say that China can just cut off the USA is a % of GDP statistic lmao. I guess GDP is no longer fake. Same thing with Trump and the stock markets. Alt media were going on for years under Biden how the rising stock market meant little and was an unreliable indicator for economic growth, and that the US economy was actually doing terribly (again, some truth here, but exaggerated), and yet the first indicator the alt media uses to say that the US economy is crashing under Trump, is the stock market falling. I guess the stock market is a reliable indicator now lol.

        Ultimately these alt media people don't view things objectively or have a coherent ideology, they just want to push out a narrative. We saw the same thing with the fall of Syria. Alt media denying how bad the situation was until Assad was literally chased out of the country.

      • Hey I don't disagree and your analysis are very good. I do have a question though, do you see a source of optimism in the current context? Cause I usually sense a kind of continuous pessimism in your analysis, which funnily enough is not that common even in alternative media.

    • Regime Radio did a book review on The World For Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources.

      One of the host said that in the cold war a lot of the commodities traders are Israelis who played a role in funneling resources and money to regimes that are not West friendly during the cold war.

      My guess is that Israel was an important strategy partner that is useful to curb Arab nationalism in the region as petroleum is a vital resource in the region. As Petrol played a less and less important role in the future, the West-Israel relation will decrease, but there might be some probability that Israel will hedge their bets with BRICs countries for its survival.

    • Almost every nation on earth has an entrenched oligarchy/compradore/capitalist class that massively benefits from continued US Dollar hegemony and therefore the Zionist occupation and extermination campaigns. Whether those oligarchs run the country (the West, India, Gulf countries, etc) or simply hold varying degrees of internal power within the country( Russia, China, Colombia, Brazil, even to a lesser extent Iran & Venezuela) or are running parallel governments (Yemen, South Korea, takfiri proxies in North/West Africa) the issue is pervasive.

      We must understand that the fight against Zionism is truly a class-struggle on a global scale (the Palestinian Resistance and Yemeni Government of Change and Construction are the global vanguard.) It is for this reason that the defeat of the zionist colony will transform the world geopolitical and economic landscape in favor of socialism insha'allah. This is, to my understanding, the position held by the Masar Badil organization.

    • Because Israel is the 51st state. Going against Israel means going againt the United States.

    • I mean they sure arent helping. But Israel is allowed to do what they do, because its advantageous for the west to allow them to do so. China & Vietnam can be easily justified with the sentiment that no country should intervene in another countries internal politics, otherwise that line of thinking could lead to people using the fake "Uyghur genocide" or like the conflict of the lowland peoples with the người Thượng/degar inside vietnam to justify intervention/sanctions.

      The anti-west states arent really looking to be the next world police, more so a multipolar world where states are left alone or so goes the thinking.

    • they libs

      surveillance tech

    • I don't think they are kissing ass, they are treating them pretty similarly to every other nation they deal with. One thing is for sure, if Israel collapsed today and became a fully independent Palestine, China and Vietnam would continue their relationship all the same and probably even offer way more investment and support if I had to guess

  • Short Finland news:

    First up, some warmongering:

    Finland is using frozen Russian assets to provide Ukraine with heavy ammunition, the government announced on Monday.

    The Defence Ministry said Finland will deliver heavy ammunition to Ukraine, financed through profits generated by frozen Russian assets.

    The initiative is part of a broader EU effort to support Ukraine with military supplies funded by the interest accrued from Moscow's frozen assets. Finland is one of the member states implementing this programme.

    Second, some more warmongering:

    Russia building up base along Finnish border, New York Times reports.

    Satellite imagery reveals large tents, shelters for fighter jets and warehouses for military vehicles — but Nato officials say the activity is nothing like the buildup along the Ukrainian border before Russia’s 2022 invasion.

    Third, some TikTok shenanigans. Background to this is that a local PM from the far right Basic Finns party has come out with strong opposition to this data centre:

    Social media giant TikTok told Yle that the company remains fully committed to the Kouvola project, despite political concerns over the company’s links to China.

    "We have high expectations for this investment," said Christian Hannibal, TikTok’s head of public policy in Finland.

    He said the facility under construction in Kouvola's Koria district will play a major role in TikTok’s European operations. It is part of the company’s 12-billion-euro 'Project Clover,' aimed at ensuring that European users’ data is stored and processed within Europe. Of this total, one billion euros is allocated to the Finnish data centre.

    The other Project Clover data centres are located in Norway and Ireland and serve the same purpose — storing TikTok users' data.

    This links to concerns raised by Finland’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Wille Rydman (Finns), who warned that China could potentially bypass US chip restrictions via the data centre in Finland.

    The Rydman guy is fully revealing who's pocket he really is in with these "concerns".

    • Oh jesus, Rydman is one of the slimiest ghouls currently in the government, if not the entire country. A truly, thoroughly disgusting man. I mean, just have a look at the "controversies" section of his wikipedia article (CW: unfathomably racist). It's incredibly unsurprising that he's a lackey of the great Satan. Fuck that guy so much.

      Also thanks for doing these posts. Good to know there's at least one other certified Based Individual in this bullshit country.

  • Your average Twitter Deus vult tradcath will shit themselves to death when they learn about Pope Leo's maternal ancestry:
    https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/genealogists-trace-pope-leos-african-ancestry-to-new-orleans-and-haiti/3744882/

    "I looked into some of the birth certificates, death certificates, census records," Chicago-based genealogist Tony Burroughs said. “And sure enough, his ancestors were Black—listed as Black at some period.”

    Burroughs, who has spent decades researching African American genealogies, said the findings are both fascinating and not uncommon. "I was able to go back to the 1850s, and they were listed as mulattos in 1850, 1860, 1870. Then when you get to 1880, they were listed as white. When you get to 1900, they were listed as Black, and then after that, they were listed as white," he said.

    “While the Pope’s mother was born in 1911 up in Chicago, her six older sisters and her parents were all very much from New Orleans,” Honora said. “Them and their ancestors were fairly consistently listed as colored or mulatto or Black in census documents and in vital records.”

  • As Trump had a press conference about the "Golden Dome", the US Military received it's first radar for the Golden Dome project a few days ago: an upgraded AN/TPY-2 radar with a Gallium Nitride (GaN) front-end. Radars, unlike logical processors in consumer electronics, are one of the areas where GaN is actually highly useful

    US takes delivery of first upgraded AN/TPY-2 radar

    The new version of AN/TPY-2 has a longer range and can provide targeting coordinates to other missile defense interceptors beyond just the Army’s THAAD batteries, Jon Norman, Raytheon’s vice president for Air and Space Defense Systems Requirements and Capabilities, told Breaking Defense.

    “What the TPY-2 does now, with the Gallium Nitride front-end in it, is it can see things twice as far, so we can make that command and control decision a lot earlier on which effector to use, whether it’s an SM series or it’s a Patriot, or it’s a THAAD,” he said.

    The radar can be deployed as a standalone, mobile unit rather than being directly wired into a THAAD battery, Norman explained, which positions it as a potential contribution to President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome plan to create a comprehensive missile shield for the US homeland.

    Double the range means a 6000km range, and given the inverse square law, much more power and target tracking capabilities at closer ranges, differentiating the target from decoys much sooner.

    “If they have anything else falling off, you can discriminate very accurately and say, ‘This is the warhead. This is what we need to shoot. All the other stuff is just junk. It’s like litter on the road, so don’t waste the missile on the junk. Hit the thing that we want to hit,” he said.

    The upgraded AN/TPY-2 can now “detect these very, very small targets, and you can detect them at the separation when the booster separates from the warhead,” he said, adding that with the longer range “we can shoot sooner, and we can hit it before it starts maneuvering.”

    That last paragraph is what the US Navy was doing to ballistic missiles launched from Yemen towards Israel when they had the opportunity and SM-3s to spare. Early midcourse phase or late boost phase intercepts. A recent Senate meeting revealed that the US had fired "dozens" of SM-3s at missiles from Yemen. I came to this conclusion very early on in the US bombing campaign against Yemen. Now imagine the US doing the same thing, but to hypothetical Chinese or Russian ICBMs that would fly over the Pacific towards the USA... Place a GaN front-end AN/TPY-2 radar in East Asia, and some US Navy missile destroyers armed with SM-3s in the West Pacific, or an AEGIS Ashore facility in Guam, and this is possible with the massive increase in range and power of the upgraded AN/TPY-2.

    China and Russia have said as much in a joint statement, that this aspect of the "Golden Dome" undermines deterrence and makes arms control and treaties like the previous INF treaty impossible:

    Deeply destabilizing in nature is also the recently announced “Golden (Iron) Dome for America”, a large-scale program designed to establish unconstrained, global, deeply layered and multi-domain missile defense system to protect against any missile threats, including all types of missiles from “peer and near-peer adversaries”. First of all, this means a complete and ultimate rejection to recognize the existence of the inseparable interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, which is one of the central and fundamental principles of maintaining global strategic stability. The project also provides additional impetus to the further development of kinetic and non-kinetic means providing for the left-of-launch defeat of missile weapons and the infrastructure that supports their employment.

    • Seems like an unimaginative SDI copypasta. The space element is just extrapolating the US' recent bout of LEO satellite spamming through Starlink as some success that lends a permanent perceived advantage in space that they just flatly assume China could not reciprocate. The plain thinking is that space is the new paradigm shift that elevates the US military above its adversaries—like gunboats shelling junks or drones bombing foot soldiers. To maintain this desperation for asymmetry, the Trump admin in particular, since his first term with the branding of the "Space Force," has been diving headfirst into the pandora's box of near space weaponization. The idea that space can be maintained as an exclusively US domain is not sustainable in reality and the US will inevitably regret giving its designated adversaries the permission, in international eyes, to match its near space ambitions.

      From a technical perspective, it's the latest cope against Russian and Chinese hypersonic glide vehicle technologies. The US strategic doctrine is fettered, just like Israel, to the psychological chains that adversaries "aren't allowed" to touch the sacred land of CONUS. Everything else seems to be crafted to work backwards from that teleological endpoint.

      During the 80s, the success of the ultimately non-existent SDI was the demoralizing psychological effect it had on the Soviet nuclear doctrine. The 70s saw the USSR's nuclear stockpile surpass the US and this had been a major source of pride for the Soviets. Reagan coming along and insinuating "Nuh-uh-uh, actually your payload advantage is useless because we swerved in a new direction that makes that arsenal obsolete" provoked the Soviets into the panic of an exhaustive arms race which they could not industrially and economically sustain vis-a-vis the US from a budgetary standpoint. This budgetary black hole caused by the Soviet SDI psychological panic was what allowed Gorbachev the political room to militarily capitulate to the US through signing the USSR onto unequal nuclear arms agreements.

      The issue for the US in trying to reuse this psychological bluff, because that's what it's really about, is that that it is now in a inverse position to its adversaries industrially and economically. The more important thing that this might effect is that any move by the US in this domain legitimates the PLARF to finally green light an expansion of the paltry Chinese nuclear arsenal to a level actually commensurate of comprehensive second strike potential. Additionally, it allows China the justification to continue to reject any of the recent "trilateral" US-Russia-China nuclear arms agreements that the US has been trying to bind it to, which would place it at a distinct disadvantage as the newcomer party still catching up.

    • I remember Trump talking about building an Iron Dome for the US, for a long time. The earliest mention I see for it is, January 2023.

      https://archive.is/5HkVC

    • that's about decoys which are different from the warhead though (like thermal/radar, which are used in cruise missiles), isn't it. which largely is not the case, they usually use exact same decoys as active warheads since like 80s if not before, i believe. b) dunno about russia/china work to that effect, but feasibly ground based laser systems can knock down satellites (at least i've seen articles to that effect about orbital trash removal, on the scale of roughly half a year-2 years, via ablation*), and that's the problematic intercept location, the midocean ones can be dealt with with earlier separation and stuff.

      *the evaporation of the surface of the satellite under high power pulsed laser can slow it down a little bit, the theory was you do it enough time each hour it passes, and over months it will start to destabilize in orbit. The laser power and optics required were in the oof territory, but feasible for states.

      but obviously that all requires investment, and destroys mutual destruction for a time, so not great.

      • I think the satellite and space based intercept stuff (Golden pebbles or Star Wars version 2) is more of a typical Trump distraction from the real issue of the US trying to make it's existing interception technology, in SM-3 interceptors as part of AEGIS Ashore and AEGIS missile destroyer warships, more viable, just how "rare earths" was a Trump distraction from the US taking all of Ukraine's natural resources. So I'm not focused much on it. It doesn't even exist yet and it might never exist. Meanwhile, AEGIS and SM-3 does exist, and so does this new upgraded radar.

        As for decoys, there are those that aim to replicate the behaviour of warheads. But there is also chaff and smaller decoys, the idea being that you surround the warheads in a cloud of radar reflective material, so the radar can't track the warhead accurately. Such a strategy will be less effective against more powerful radars like this upgraded AN/TPY-2.

    • https://www.404media.co/scientists-explain-why-trumps-175-billion-golden-dome-is-a-fantasy/

      The interception, would be in the mid flight phase I guess. With the GaN radar?

      • That article is focused on space based interception using satellites, a different part of the "golden dome" system, that's only in the conceptual stage as of now. It doesn't exist yet. The upgraded GaN front-end AN/TPY-2 radar has been delivered and can be deployed anywhere in the world right now (with more being built) along with missile destroyers US Navy warships armed with SM-3 interceptors, that's why I chose to post about it. You'd have to get the missile destroyers pretty close, but it could work to blunt an opponent's attack. The article you posted states:

        For a land-, sea-, or air-based interceptor to intercept an ICBM during its boost phase, the interceptor must typically be based within about 500 km of the expected intercept point, have a speed of 5 km/s or more, and be fired less than a minute after the launch of a potentially threatening missile has been detected.

        However if you're prepared to perform some sort of midcourse interception (early in the midcourse phase of flight, also called the assent phase or post boost phase), those numbers become more realistic, you don't need to be as close. An SM-3 block II has an altitude ceiling of 1000km, a range of 2400km, and a top speed of 4.5km/s. What a radar like the upgraded GaN front-end AN/TPY-2 does is make this kind of early midcourse interception plan more realistic, as you can accurately track the missile much sooner after launch than before. The launch gets detected by satellites, an SM-3 can be fired before the radar starts tracking, and as soon as the radar starts tracking, it can relay the information back. With the upgraded AN/TPY-2, the time between satellite detects launch to radar starts tracking missile is reduced significantly.

      • Trump giving me golden dome is my fantasy

  • President Javier Milei has dissolved the Argentine government unit investigating the $LIBRA crypto scam, which he promoted in February.

    • Telegram

  • Update on the United States Air Force Strategic Bomber Task Force deployments:

    2 B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers have been deployed to Guam in the West Pacific, and a further 2 B-52Hs have been deployed to the European/Mediterranean theatre, currently in Spain. They should be doing flyovers in Eastern Europe soon, Latvia was the previous destination before that got cancelled. While these flyovers appear ceremonial, the bomber crews do use them for training, during the last flyover a B-52 crew carried out a simulated Paveway stand-in laser guided bombing run. A further 2 F-15-E Strike Eagle aircraft have been deployed to Diego Garcia. Although they are not strategic bombers, 1 F-15E can carry 5 JASSM stealth cruise missiles, allowing for a squadron of 4 F-15Es to replicate the role of 1 B-52 (20 JASSMs total). F-15Es can also act as combat air patrol aircraft to protect the island from any surface or aerial threats (boats and UAVs).

    F-15s deploy to Diego Garcia

    B-52s to Guam, xcancel link

    B-52s to Europe, xcancel link

    There are now a total of 12 United States Air Force Strategic Bombers forward deployed, along with at least 6 F-15Es:

    Stationed at Diego Garcia:

    • 4x B-52H Stratofortress bombers.
    • 6x F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft, equipped with 5 JASSMs in this picture (1 on each wing, 1 on each aft station, and one barely visible on the centerline of the aircraft).

    Stationed in the West Pacific:

    • 4x B-1B Lancer supersonic swing wing bombers in Japan
    • 2x B52-H Stratofortress bombers in Guam

    Stationed in Europe:

    • 2x B-52H Stratofortress bombers in Spain.

    This means that the maximum JASSM conventional cruise missile salvo per sortie from bombers and strike fighters deployed at Diego Garcia is now 110 JASSMs, and the maximum AGM-86 nuclear cruise missile salvo remains at 80 missiles.

    The maximum JASSM conventional cruise missile salvo per sortie from bombers deployed in the Western Pacific is 136 missiles. The maximum LRASM (anti ship version of JASSM) remains at 96 missiles, only the B-1 is certified to carry the LRASM. The maximum AGM-86 nuclear cruise missile salvo is 40 missiles, only the B-52 can carry those.

    The maximum conventional JASSM, or nuclear AGM-86 salvo, from bombers deployed to Europe is 40 missiles.

    I'll add sources soon, unfortunately I have been banned from twitter again, so it's difficult.

  • In Finland news: A stabbing in a school. The 16 year old who did it apparently used chatgpt to plan his violence.

    There have been widespread reports that the suspect, who Yle understands is a 16-year-old boy, published a manifesto saying he planned to use a knife in the attack and that his intended targets would be female pupils.

    According to the manifesto, he wanted to do something "significant" and "exciting", with the stated aim of going to prison for two to four years.

    The manifesto also claims he had no friends and did not want any. He reportedly planned the act for about six months, allegedly using ChatGPT as an aid.

    • Social Security Minister Sanni Grahn-Laasonen (NCP), also posting on X, drew attention to the importance of children now having adults they can talk to.

      "I'm depressed"

      "Try to get better"

      Interior Minsiter Mari Rantanen (Finns) meanwhile described the incident as "extremely worrying," adding that the authorities will investigate when can be done to prevent young people from carrying knives.

      "I think it is also the responsibility of parents to ensure that their children do not carry knives with them," Rantanen said.

      Truly this was the issue, the knife itself.

      • Yes and the solution is obviously to build more surveillance and control around young people, the group ever up to be the base of a moral panic. The comment reads like foreshadowing for Amerikkkan style school surveillance, they'll be suggesting more cops and security checks next I'm sure.

  • Some more Finland news, small stuff edition. Posting this because I did not expect to see anything about this on the English side of national news that is always mindful of "country branding".

    What makes this interesting is that this is one of the only few politicians who was against NATO and had been demonized ever since. He is in the natoleft party still, but talks very much like a communist. The region he is from is notoriously bourgeois and a White stronghold, the arsehole of the country.

    Yrttiaho was a staunch opponent of Finland's accession to Nato and has criticised sanctions on Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    • Huh, neat. They didn't even let him run in the municipal elections. I always respected the guy for his anti-NATO stance, even more so after he and another PM got into hot water after "behaving inappropriately towards the mayor" during some kind of city council meeting. They never officially commented on it, afaik they'd gotten into a rather heated argument about something with the ghoul mayor. Standing up for something and sticking to your beliefs is strictly not tolerated in the Left Alliance, so I'm actually kind of surprised they didn't expel him.

      • If I understand their party structure correctly, they can't expel him as the local chapter refused to expel him. But they can instead expel the entire local chapter next which would likely further radicalize the people who stood up for him. I could be wrong about this, this is my understanding from the coverage I've read about this.

        I love how vague they always are about what makes this guy "rogue". Definitely rooting for him, the Left alliance has spent a lot of time and energy in purging actual left voices from the party.

  • Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) donated 22 tons of black bean grains to Cuba as part of joint efforts to increase food production through agroecology.

    • Telesur

  • It seems like Eduardo del Castillo, Bolivia’s interior minister, is going to be Arce's candidate for the presidential election. Menawhile Evo Morales and Andronico Rodriguez are banned from running. I guess Rodriguez basically became his own third left-wing force within the Arce-Evo struggle, since both Evo and Arce rejected him. I guess the current VP faction inside MAS could support him but idk if David Choquehuanca will have his own candidate in this election.

    @Z_Poster365@hexbear.net

    • What bullshit reasoning was used to ban Rodriguez?

      • By determination of the full chamber of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Andronico Rodriguez is suspended until Wednesday, May 21. The TSE considered the two constitutional rulings against Movimiento Tercer Sistema (MTS) which is part of Alianza Popular, political acronym with which Rodriguez was running for president.

        “The candidates of the Alianza Popular have been registered, the registration of these candidacies has proceeded, but it is suspended until this hearing on Wednesday, May 21”, said the member Tahuichi Tahuichi Quispe of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), before the media. In other words, the member stated that “the registration and the definitive inscription is suspended until this Wednesday's hearing”.

        He explained that “we have attended a precautionary measure that was granted by the First Constitutional Chamber of Beni, which provided for the suspension of registration of candidacy of the Third System Movement (MTS); this action has been analyzed in full court and complies with the mandate of that constitutional chamber, but at the same time we are sending a consultation of amendment and complementation to this precautionary measure. Because it is aimed at the MTS party and not at the candidacies of Alianza Popular, with this caveat this decision of the full court ended”.

        According to the version of the TSE member, “the destiny of this MTS party can be defined this Wednesday, May 21, when this hearing (in which the complementation and amendment will be resolved)”.

        Two constitutional rulings issued in less than 72 hours have put on hold the participation of the Third System Movement (MTS) in the general elections of August 17. The precautionary measures issued by constitutional chambers in Beni and La Paz suspend the registration of candidates of this political force, which directly compromises the presidential candidacy of Andronico Rodriguez.

        The first measure was issued by the First Constitutional Chamber of the Departmental Court of Justice of Beni, which admitted a compliance action filed by citizen Peter Erl Wein Beckhauser against the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Óscar Hassenteufel. The plaintiff accuses the MTS of not complying with its Organic Statute by not renewing its National Board nor complying with five resolutions of the electoral body.

        The vocal rapporteur Marco Antonio Justiniano ordered, as a preventive measure, the suspension of the registration of MTS candidacies until the hearing to resolve the merits of the case. This decision is based on Article 34 of the Constitutional Procedural Code, which allows judges to apply precautionary measures at any moment of the process to avoid irreparable damages.

        The second judicial lunge came from La Paz. The Fourth Constitutional Chamber of the Departmental Court of Justice decided to suspend the effects of the national congress of the MTS, held on March 30 and validated by Resolution TSE-RSP-ADM N° 175/2024. This decision arose after a constitutional appeal filed by María Maziel Terrazas Merino -wife of the party's leader, Félix Patzi- who denounced having been arbitrarily expelled by the Honor Tribunal of the MTS, which in her opinion violated her political rights.

        Terrazas also claims the “legitimate control” over the party, opening a front of internal struggle that impacts on the legality of the party congress that proclaimed Andrónico Rodríguez as presidential candidate. The Justice of La Paz considered that there are risks of irreparable affectation to his rights and ordered to paralyze the effects of that political meeting.

    • I knew a comprador social fascist was in the wings to be tapped by Arce, I just misunderstood a couple things. It was Castillo not Rodriguez.

      Really hope Evo and Rodriguez can put any differences aside and unite to crush the social chauvinist faction.

      • I think Evo is going to support Rodriguez, probably should've done that from the start, but I think he still had hope for his own candidacy (tbh, many left-wing latin american leaders are like this).

    • Is this guy a comprador

      • Camila/Kawsachuan (Pro-Morales): Eduardo del Castillo, Bolivia’s interior minister who has led the persecution of popular indigenous campesino movement and Evo Morales, has announced that he will be the presidential candidate of the ‘MAS’ in the August election. This follows the announcement made this week by President Luis Arce that he would not seek re-election.

        Del Castillo used the state to politically persecute the grassroots movement and its leaders and is trying to arrest the most popular political leader in the country. EDC has been an ally to the right-wing from the start. From early on, Evo publicly denounced EDC and his interior ministry, urging Arce to replace him. EDC was behind the attempt made on Evo's life on October 27. EDC led the criminalization of indigenous campesinos in Cochabamba.

        Specifically, Evo denounced Del Castillo as working with/on behalf of the US/DEA. I pity anyone who opted to both sides this situation. The left in Latin America doesn’t want to be seen as intervening in internal Bolivian matters. Seemingly prudent until one considers reality.

        Ollie Vargas (Left-Wing but more Neutral): Bolivia's courts are set to ban the candidacies of both Evo Morales and Andrónico Rodríguez. This would mean there are no indigenous or leftist candidates in this year's presidential elections - in the country with the largest indigenous population in the Americas. The MAS is still standing, but its candidate is Eduardo del Castillo - a middle-class white man from the Santa Cruz region who does not come from the unions or indigenous groups that originally created the party. One of his slogans is "The Bolivian people demand order."

        I suppose other left-wing goverments like Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and China doesn't intervene because they don't know if Eduardo del Castillo will suddenly become anti-China/anti-BRICS. For all his problems, Arce is still very Pro-China/Pro-Brazil (Evo also was but Arce seems more dependent on Chinese and Brazilian support).

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