this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
108 points (99.1% liked)

news

24167 readers
597 users here now

Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.

Rules:

-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --

-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --

-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --

-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today/ . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --

-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--

-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--

-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --

-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn't an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.


Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia's oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that "align themselves with BRICS." Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I'm not sure what exactly "alignment" means, but it could be pretty bad.

Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It's easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).

Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I'm cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it'll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn't impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.


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

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

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.


(page 6) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Lovely_sombrero@hexbear.net 68 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (6 children)

It looks like Elon/xAI finally managed to get their "AI" Grok to not be woke, after saying that it needs to be 'retrained'. Now it is talking about 'leftist Jews' and praising Adolf Hitler (directly by name!). The funny thing is that it is also using the vocabulary of the soy right, like 'facts don't care about your feelings'.

But don't worry, this is all OK because Elon supports Israel.

[edit] From the RollingStone Magazine;

xAI has disabled Grok, deleted a slew of its antisemitic and neo-Nazi posts, posted a statement, and are evidently rolling back the prompt that made it identify as "MechaHitler," but this new low for Elon Musk's chatbot will live in internet infamy:

[–] Fishroot@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'm sure this is not because Elon is a nazi, but he is actually autistic. The ADL said it's not Nazism if the person doing it is rich and loves Israel

[–] FuckyWucky@hexbear.net 37 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Very good to see. It means it associates with anti-woke with Nazism.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 27 points 1 day ago

It means it associates with anti-woke with Nazism.

Was that what did it? A prompt telling Grok it needs to be anti-woke?

[–] TheGamingLuddite@hexbear.net 35 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Not an AI expert, but im guessing what happened was they added a bunch of training data from the alt right internet, places like gab, bitchute, /pol/ etc. and just stuffed it into Grok without vetting any of it for the stuff you arent allowed to say outright. Absolutely hilarious.

[–] aanes_appreciator@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I could also imagine some of that data DID already exist in the training data, but they did a lot prompt management to make it "facts dont care about your feelings" which sorta repressed any of the initial Naziism

If anyone with neural network knowledge can chime in, how do engineers make updates to existing models? Do they retrain the whole model with a new dataset or can it be modular? Can models suffer from recency bias of training data?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

Obviously it needs to be retrained again so it properly refers to itself as "DigiHitler" unless there was also some news about a robot suit that I missed.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] OnceUponATimeInWeHo@hexbear.net 44 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)
[–] ColombianLenin@hexbear.net 30 points 1 day ago

Telling that Al-Julani is not vandalized

[–] Socialism_Is_The_Alternative@hexbear.net 44 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] cinnaa42@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago

pretty big capture tbh wonder how much the southern front will open up from here

[–] PalestinianDream@hexbear.net 56 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

🇮🇶⚡A short explanation of what is happening in Erbil, Iraq:

The Kurdish Peshmerga forces’ attempt to capture a leader of the Harki tribe, Khurshid Harki, has escalated into a large-scale armed conflict between the Peshmerga forces, the Harki tribe, and allied tribes, with both sides continuing to mobilize their forces in the Khabat area of ​​Erbil province in northern Iraq, where the fighting is currently concentrated.

Source: ResistanceTrench

would love to hear y'alls thoughts and any info to share

[–] LargePenis@hexbear.net 59 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My short commentary on this:

A collapse of the Barzani-led Kurdistan Regional Government with the return of the Federal Government to Iraqi Kurdistan would be a net-positive for the region. The KRG colludes with Israel and the US, oppresses all revolutionary activity, and is a neoliberal hellhole with no redeeming qualities unlike Rojava. They are only good at building nice apartment buildings and trafficking women, they can't even pay salaries to their teachers and sanitary workers. Anything that breaks this separatist project is good.

[–] aanes_appreciator@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Absolutely second this. They have been part of the barrier to socialist, anti-nationalist developments across the whole mesopotamia, let alone Kurdistan.

They're a willing participants in Turkish imperial aspirations, American-Israeli military domination, and the stagnation of post-occupation Iraq.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 48 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)
[–] Lovely_sombrero@hexbear.net 59 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Some more commentary on the passage of the Trump BBB bill;

Mechanically what Senate Rs did was refuse to meet with the parliamentarian because they knew she’d say no. That way, when they did this anyway, they could pretend they didn’t technically ignore her advice.

So instead they had the presiding officer invent a new rule in the spot.

What’s going nuclear? That’s when you have the presiding officer follow the rules of the Senate and then have the body of the Senate vote that the rule was misapplied, thus creating a new precedent to change the rules.

What if the presiding officer chooses to ignore the rules and just assert different rules? Well, then you have to follow what they say, unless you have sufficient votes to appeal that ruling.

tldr: The presiding officer of the Senate (usually the Vice President) can just do WHATEVER, the same goes for the Senate itself, as long as they have the majority of the votes.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] xiaohongshu@hexbear.net 57 points 2 days ago (1 children)

From today’s Naked Capitalism links:

At the Rio Summit, signs of BRICS in retreat – just when we need serious anti-imperial muscle CADTM

On Sunday-Monday, July 6-7, leaders from the BRICS countries will meet in Rio de Janeiro for their annual summit. Because Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will also host the UN annual climate summit in November in Belem, the BRICS event was pushed relatively early. That means the bloc’s work schedule has been curtailed, even in a year for which much more robust preparation and greater consensus are needed to withstand U.S. imperialist aggression.

Vladimir Putin had hosted 2024’s summit in Kazan, Russia in late-October. In most other years, the dates have been in the busy September-November period, allowing many pre-meetings to set the stage for a more meaningful heads-of-state meeting.

BRICS is far more complicated now, with consensus difficult to reach in part due to the 2023 Johannesburg summit having expanded the bloc to ten member countries (assuming Saudi Arabia is counted, as does Lula, even though last December the Russians ‘froze‘ its participation), and to eleven with Indonesia early in 2025.

They carry an enormous burden in mid-2025: to stand up to Donald Trump’s juggernaut, at a time – as historians may deem this – of the peak moment of his power, winning corporate tax cuts and austerity at home, while bullying countries abroad to bend to his erratic will on trade, aid, climate, public health and especially military matters.

Worse, next year, the bloc will be hosted by India, whose leader Narendra Modi is considered among the most loyal of (several) BRICS elites to Trumpism, due not only to parallel neo-fascist ruling tendencies but also to strongly-overlapping economic, military, migration and regional geopolitical interests.

Hence, even in this crucial period, in which the cry ‘No Kings!’ resonates from the world’s grassroots against Trump, here are ten pessimistic features that can be expected to derail the 2025 BRICS summit:

article is very long and detailed (recommend reading the full article), but here are the 10 “pessimistic” summary points from the author:

• There will be at best just seven BRICS-member heads of state present, because neither Putin (subject to a 2022 International Criminal Court arrest warrant, for mass child-kidnapping in eastern Ukraine, that must be respected in Brazil) nor Xi Jinping will be present – this being the Chinese leader’s first missed summit – and nor will Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi attend (and don’t expect Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and maybe not even Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian), thus diminishing the gravity of the event;

• No expansion of the BRICS is expected this year, as the digestion of new member states and the assessment of new ‘partners’ (a Kazan innovation) continues, given how disruptive the geopolitical scene has become;

• To illustrate, invited full-member Saudi Arabia has not yet confirmed or denied its accession (which is predictable, given that Riyadh was Trump’s first overseas visit this year), thereby lowering the bloc’s prestige, and indeed nor have two nominated partners — Algeria and Turkey — indicated whether they will accept their invitations (both had expected full membership late last year, i.e., as Indonesia received and accepted in January);

• Internal geopolitical conflicts abound, partly witnessed in the lack of genuine solidarity with Iran during the recent Israeli-American bombings, what with Tehran being the only BRICS capital to forcefully oppose the genocidaires in material terms (apart from South Africa – but then only rhetorically – in The Hague), while all the other nine BRICS have very lucrative economic relations (and most have military, energy and logistics ties);

• Also in relation to military conflict, the most populous BRICS founder, India, clashed with neighbor Pakistan in May, in the process revealing strong Chinese military support for Islamabad, sufficiently sophisticated to shoot down several of Delhi’s French-made bombers, while on the Indian side, a Russian missile defense system fended off Chinese-made drones, missiles and jets;

• Internal power struggles within the African Union are serious, leading Egypt and Ethiopia to sabotage the latest meeting of BRICS foreign ministers (in April in Rio) due to their opposition to South Africa becoming one of two potential African permanent members of the UN Security Council (a process most likely to resume only after Trump leaves office);

• The loyalty of some BRICS elites to the U.S. has been evident, especially in the cases of India and also at the notorious meeting South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa had in the White House in May (when he sought to defuse Elon Musk’s absurd ‘white genocide’ charges), but also in the internal power relations shaped by Brazil’s Western-oriented ruling class, not to mention long-standing U.S.-subimperial allies Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia;

• Economically, there remains a serious risk that Trump’s trade wars will result in much greater Chinese ‘dumping’ (sales below costs-of-production under conditions of ‘overaccumulated capital’) of cheap manufactured goods into other BRICS economies, accelerating their deindustrialisation (e.g. already resulting in South Africa imposing tariffs against Chinese steel, tyres and other imports);

• There will be no progress on de-dollarisation, given Washington’s threats to impose extreme tariffs if BRICS were to move in this direction (made by Trump no fewer than seven times from December-February), while the ‘BRICS Pay’ local-currency correlation strategy developed by Russia is difficult to implement fully due to South-South trade imbalances, and China’s strong exchange controls prevent another route to facilitating a long-overdue dollar alternative; and

• As for new multipolar institutions, the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) has five new members (chosen illogically, with very low voting quotas, ranging from the UAE to Bangladesh and most recently Algeria), but one of the five original members, Russia, remains subject to financial sanctions following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine – remaining in force even under (pro-Putin) NDB President Dilma Rousseff over the last two years – due to the bank’s bowing to New York credit rating agencies, and worse, the vast majority of NDB new loans are still denominated in US dollars, and yet worse still, as a much-needed alternative to the International Monetary Fund, there is still no BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, despite the majority of member countries (Ethiopia, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, Iran) being rated ‘junk’ (or unrated), and hence desperate for foreign currency injections (and no BRICS credit-ratings agency yet, notwithstanding annual promises to launch an alternative to the New York oligopoly).

[–] Fishroot@hexbear.net 33 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (12 children)

An organization with founding members who hate eachother, no ideological cohesion, accepting members with no real conditions, even members that hate eachother has no concret plan to oppose their perceived "common enemy".

This is the same as when in late USSR, the monarchists, fascists, communist, national liberals and Orthodox zealot stormed the Russian white House to depose Yeltsin and not knowing what to do after they managed to get in.

The absence of Xi Jinping is probably an reorientation of China's strategy from ''BRICS'' to make a stronger trading bloc with the ASEAN countries

load more comments (12 replies)
[–] daniyeg@hexbear.net 47 points 2 days ago (1 children)

im hearing that intense fighting is happening in iraqi kurdistan. sorry news heads but im not a news guy you just have to find more information yourself. looks like the sides are the herki tribe and the barzani forces.

[–] OnceUponATimeInWeHo@hexbear.net 33 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

To be honest, I don’t think anyone here has in depth info on Iraqi Kurdistan. I do however have new advancements in machine gun loading ft. a red hot barrel.

https://t.me/nayaforiraq/34354

Caption reads “Fierce fighting continues between armed Kurdish tribes and Peshmerga forces in Khabat district, Erbil Governorate.”

Here’s an alleged summary

“A short explanation of what is happening in Erbil, Iraq:

The Kurdish Peshmerga forces’ attempt to capture a leader of the Harki tribe, Khurshid Harki, has escalated into a large-scale armed conflict between the Peshmerga forces, the Harki tribe, and allied tribes, with both sides continuing to mobilize their forces in the Khabat area of ​​Erbil province in northern Iraq, where the fighting is currently concentrated.

[Since then,] Khurshid Harki announced that he would not surrender to the Peshmerga forces.

Other Kurdish tribes have joined on the side of the Harki clan against the Barzani-led Pashmerga government.“

https://t.me/RezistanceTrench/44638

“Many are asking which group to support in the conflict in northern Iraq. The answer is that the Barzani family is a strategic ally of Israel, and much of the equipment that Israel smuggles to Iran passes through Iraqi Kurdistan.

The current conflict appears to be more like a Kurdish civil war for power, and the Haraki clan fighting that is Barzani’s forces has no connection to Iran or the Resistance Front.”

Cw: antisemitism. If you ignore the part calling Barzani a “crypto Jew,” this is a pretty solid spread of historical connections between former leader of Kurdistan Mustafa Barzani and Israeli intelligence

https://t.me/RezistanceTrench/9136

More reading:

https://saradistribution.com/barzanisisraelresa.htm

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Kurdistan_Region_relations

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2017/10/7/why-is-israel-supporting-kurdish-secession-from-iraq

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/images-show-iraqi-kurdish-diplomat-at-reception-held-by-israeli-envoy-to-germany/

[–] LargePenis@hexbear.net 40 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

If you ignore the part calling Barzani a “crypto Jew,”

The crypto jew thing is pure anti-semitism, but the town of Barzan where the Barzani clan originates is a genuinely interesting place to study. Other villages and towns in the now Iraqi Kurdistan region were always domianted by one tribe or one religious group. You had Christian towns, Sunni Kurdish towns, Shia towns and so on. But Barzan is unique in the region, because it became some kind of refuge for all kinds of tribeless Kurds, Jews, Christians and other outcast groups. The Barzani clan itself isn't a tribe or a clan in a traditional sense, but more of a Barzani "nation" that indicates allegiance to the pre-modern concept of the town itself. A Jew in a normal Kurdish town like Akre would be considered a foreigner or a stranger, but in Barzan they would be treated as a "first class" citizen. There's a very interesting Jewish history that is connected with Barzan, that stretches all the way back to the Assyrian Exile chapter of Judaism.

There's an interesting book that I read about Mulla Mustafa Barzani and his relations with Israel many years ago when I was a teen. One thing that I remember that still sticks out in my mind is that he sought the help of Israel in the first place because he genuinely thought that Jews controlled America, so in his mind he thought that being friendly with Israel meant that America would help him. The relationship then soured because Israelis kept dragging him into massive issues with the Iraqi state, while he just wanted some concessions. The Israelis for example helped him plan an ambush against Iraqi troops. He wanted to kill a few soliders and take some hostages, but the Israelis embellished later the scale of the ambush and claimed that they helped kill 2000! soliders, which would be a suicidal move for Barzani and drag him into a massive problem. When he was later in hospital in the US, they didn't even help him with the hospital bills when he asked them.

[–] OnceUponATimeInWeHo@hexbear.net 44 points 2 days ago

he genuinely thought that Jews controlled America, so in his mind he thought that being friendly with Israel meant that America would help him

Ah, the imperial Japan approach to antisemitism “these guys seem pretty powerful, we should be their friends”

[–] OnceUponATimeInWeHo@hexbear.net 62 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Never seen a more Fed org

C4ssa.org

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] whatdoiputhere12@hexbear.net 55 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Another drone strike on Lebanon by the IDF. How much longer will Israel strike until Lebanon puts their foot down?

[–] OnceUponATimeInWeHo@hexbear.net 44 points 2 days ago

Well, Lebanon the state, never. Hezbollah otoh needs time to regroup after the double blows of the pager infiltration and decapitation strikes. The new leader of Hezbollah did an interview with Al-Mayadeen where he talks about the path forward for the organization

See a summary in the posts before this one

https://t.me/RezistanceTrench/44624

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›