this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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Image is of Assad and his family.


After less than two weeks of retreating with few shots fired and little resistance, the SAA has retreated into, well, a state of non-existence. This thereby ends a conflict that has been simmering for over a decade. With the end of this conflict, another begins: the carving up of what used to be Syria between Israel and Turkey, with perhaps the odd Syrian faction getting a rump state here and there. Both Israel and Turkey have begun military operations, with Israel working on expanding their territory in Syria and bombing military bases to ensure as little resistance as possible.

Israeli success in Syria is interesting to contrast against their failures in Gaza and Lebanon. A short time ago, Israel failed to make significant territorial progress in Lebanon due to Hezbollah's resistance despite the heavy hits they had recently taken, and was forced into a ceasefire with little to show for the manpower and equipment lost and the settlers displaced. The war with Lebanon was fast, but still slow enough to allow a degree of analysis and prediction. In contrast, the sheer speed of Syria's collapse has made analysis near-impossible beyond obvious statements like "this is bad" and "Assad is fucking up"; by the time a major Syrian city had fallen, you barely had time to digest the implications before the next one was under threat.

There is still too much that we don't know about the potential responses (and non-responses) of other countries in the region - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Russia, for example. I think that this week and the next will see a lot of statements made by various parties and an elucidation of how the conflict will progress. The only thing that seems clear is that we are in the next stage of the conflict, and perhaps have been, in retrospect, since Nasrallah's assassination. This stage has been and will be far more chaotic as the damage to Israel compounds and they are willing to take greater and greater risks to stay in power. It will also involve Israel causing destruction all throughout the region, rather than mostly localizing it in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Successful gambles like with Syria may or may not outweigh the unsuccessful ones like with Lebanon. This is a similar road to the one apartheid South Africa took, but there are also too many differences to say if the destination will be the same.

What is certain is that Assad's time in power can be summarized as a failure, both to be an effective leader and to create positive economic conditions. His policies were actively harmful to internal stability for no real payoff and by the end, all goodwill had been fully depleted. By the end, the SAA did not fight back; not because of some wunderwaffen on the side of HST, but because there was nothing to fight for, and internal cohesion rapidly disintegrated.


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Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


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[–] ClathrateG@hexbear.net 28 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1harojk/first_photo_of_ceo_murder_suspect_inside_holding/ I'm stoned so there was probably just some tinfoil in my last cone but does this pic look AI/photoshop to anyone else? look at the ears

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[–] SoyViking@hexbear.net 28 points 7 months ago

Danish Court: Secret Police's Sex Briefings On Top Spy To Be Included In Compensation Case

Today a judge ruled that briefings on former Danish spy chief Lars Findsen's sex life given to select political leaders should be part of a lawsuit brought by the former spymaster against the secret police.

The former head of the Nordic hermit kingdom's shadowy spy agency FE is suing secret police agency PET, seeking compensation for general damages for the indignity caused by briefings given by secret police chief Finn Borch Andersen to select political party leaders. The briefings included explicit details on Findsen's sexual preferences.

At the time of these briefings, Findsen was behind bars awaiting trial for allegedly leaking classified information. He has argued that the intimate revelations were entirely irrelevant to the charges against him. Those charges were later dropped after the supreme court rejected PET's demands for a secret trial.

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In addition to disclosing intimate details about his sex life the secret police also extracted several sexuality explicit images from Findsen's phone. Findsen claims that the images were completely irrelevant to the charges brought against him.

The Kinky Bike Thief

Details from the briefings later surfaced in the press, painting a salacious picture of the former spy chief. Beyond suggesting Findsen’s involvement in bike theft, the leaks revealed that he had a penchant for BDSM. This revelation infuriated Liberal Party hardliner Søren Pind, otherwise best known for demanding the erection of a Ronald Reagan statue in Copenhagen, who took to Twitter to brand Findsen's behavior as "depraved" and question how such a person could have passed a security clearance.

Pind claimed that you couldn't have a spy chief who "engages in sadomasochism" as it makes him vulnerable to blackmail. When asked by a Twitter user whether he was himself similarly susceptible, his own sex life also being kept secret from the public, Pind asserted that his own bedroom activities were "not outside the common norms", making him immune to being compromised. Pind did not answer requests from the press to elaborate on which types of sexual behavior, in his opinion, should disqualify someone from accessing classified information.

Findsen, however, has countered that there is nothing about his personal life he cannot defend publicly. On a side-note of intra-agency drama, secret police chief Finn Borch Andersen was reported to the police by Hans Jørgen Bonnichsen, a former operational head of the secret police, for his disclosure of Findsen's private information.

Findsen has already received a compensation of DKK 200.000 for 71 days of unlawful imprisonment and for having his home bugged for more than a year. He is now suing the state for an additional DKK 50,000 over the unauthorized disclosure of intimate details about his sex life and extraction of the images. According to Findsen, the modest sum reflects that the lawsuit is primarily a matter of principle rather than financial gain.

From Spymaster To Inmate

Appointed head of the FE in 2015, Findsen was arrested in 2021 and charged with leaking highly classified information to journalists and other individuals. Speculation swirled that the national chief of police might have been among the recipients of the leaked material, though he has denied these allegations.

At the time of his arrest, Findsen had been suspended from active duty, under suspicion of withholding information from auditors—a charge that was later dropped amid political outcry over a secretive agency facing accountability. Findsen was one of four individuals connected to the FE and the secret police agency PET who were charged in the wider investigation of the alleged leaks, although charges against two of them were eventually dropped.

The case against Findsen has been connected to the case against former Liberal Party heavyweight and minister of Defence Claus Hjort Frederiksen who landed in hot water shortly after boasting on a TV show about the Danish state assisting American spy agency NSA. For a while he dodged the courtroom as parliament refused to lift his immunity as an MP unless the secret police would tell what he was charged with, which they completely refused to do. However, Frederiksen was charged after not running for reelection in 2022.

The charges against Frederiksen caused near-unanimous confusion and disapproval in Denmark's political elite, leading observers to speculate that the decision to charge him could have been made on orders from Washingtn DC.

In 2023, all charges against both Findsen and Frederiksen were dropped after the Supreme Court rejected PET's push for a secret trial. The case has been widely seen as an embarrassing debacle for Denmark’s secret police, further damaging their already tarnished reputation for inept prosecutions.

Having never been convicted of any wrongdoings, Findsen continues to receive a salary from the Danish state. He is currently running a consultancy company with his brother.

[–] Redcuban1959@hexbear.net 28 points 7 months ago

A year of Milei’s presidency: What’s new? - Telesur English

Article

On 10 December 2023, Javier Milei assumed the presidency of Argentina. 12 months later, the far-right outsider who campaigned by lifting a chainsaw over his head arrives at his first year in office with relative economic stability at the expense of millions of new poor and medically retired.

The “chainsaw” model involved cuts that led to tens of thousands of students taking up university studies; social organizations constantly denounced the implementation of hunger policies against vulnerable sectors; the staff of clinics and hospitals mobilized in demand for decent wages and the departure of hundreds of thousands of Argentines to the streets that was appeased through repression, Arbitrary arrests and physical and digital persecution of those who express criticism of the official discourse.

To date, according to the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), at least two people lost their sight during repressions when exercising the right to protest and in a single day 31 people were arrested, without any crime against them being bought at this time. However, the financial sectors are looking favourably on their management and certain economic indicators show a slight improvement, such as a sustained fall in the inflation rate and a matching of parallel dollars to the dollar sold by the State through the central bank.

Inflation: After a peak of 25.5% in December 2023, inflation managed to slow down to 2.7% in October 2024, the lowest figure in three years.

Economic activity: The Argentine economy suffered a strong recession and many sectors such as tourism, industry and commerce suffered significant declines in sales and production.

Wages: Workers’ incomes are below the November 2023 levels, with a 6.8% drop in real terms in the public sector.

Unemployment: The unemployment rate grew to 7.7% in the first quarter of 2024, marking an increase of almost 2% compared to the same period of 2023.

Poverty: Poverty increased to 52.9% in the first half of 2024, reaching almost 25 million people, with this number increasing by four million from 2023.

Retirees: Retirees with minimum assets experienced a 6.6% loss of purchasing power, while those with higher incomes received real increases.

Trade balance: The trade balance recorded a surplus of US$ 21 billion in the first 10 months of 2024, after more than ten years of negative accounts. Since 2008, under the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina has not closed the year with a positive trade balance.

Country risk: The country risk, which is used as a benchmark for borrowing and rating of a nation’s bonds, has declined to less than 1,000 basis points, indicating improved access to international debt markets.

Exchange gap: The gap between the official dollar and the parallel has narrowed to less than 5%, the lowest level since 2019.

Consumption: Private consumption fell by 8.2% year-on-year in the first half of 2024, with indicators such as sales in supermarkets and food consumption showing a sharp decline.

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