news

for our resident doomer/realistic heads about trade, describing sub-imperialism and constant pitfalls of reading headlines, while not doing investigations (from the author of hinterland)

https://spectrejournal.com/a-tale-of-two-ports/

(the in the first part is great as well)

Bolsonaro was giving an interview to the press after the Supreme Court made him a defendant for attempting a coup d'état when he was interrupted by a trumpeter playing a funeral march.

• CNN

"A huge oil spill in Ecuador turned rivers black, leaving 80,000+ families and 400,000+ people without water. Extracting oil in tropical forests ensures more disasters—no 'net zero' policy can offset this."

https://x.com/PGDynes/status/1904650079450886532

Apparently the Dems had a fake interrogation of Elmo, asking them red scare- infused questions republicans usually do

Who is this shit for? Jfc

Grok's woke

https://x.com/AssLatam/status/1905054127173836848

https://www.yahoo.com/news/poland-withstand-invasion-2-weeks-123604109.html Poland can withstand invasion for 2 weeks before NATO steps in, security chief says

Been saying people really underestimate the logistics of a total war.

It really tells you how things are going when Ukraine/Reddit is bringing back classics like "Putin fell down the stairs, pooped himself, and will die soon".

Meanwhile Putin is bringing back his own greatest hits: "all goals of the SMO will be achieved"

Let's talk Qatar.

I have been always fascinated by Qatar. Their weird contradictory political position, together with their ruthless ambition makes them a genuinely interesting country to observe. I spent a few weeks touring the Middle East before covid and getting married and settling down. Of all the Gulf states, Qatar was the country that gave me the biggest feeling of "living here wouldn't be bad you know". The UAE is of course the posterchild of Gulf states, but everything about it felt artificial, but Qatar is authentic in a way that I can't describe. The Friday sermon in the Doha mosque that I went to talked in detail about a Muslim's duty to defend other Muslims, while the UAE mosque talked about a Muslim's duty to honor his leaders. Qatar is in some way committed to what I can only describe as Islamic populism, which doesn't put the country as a natural enemy to Iran's Islamic republicanism.

Their projects are also more successful than expected. They were the only committed Arab nation to toppling Assad by 2024, and succeeded in that. They managed to stabilise Tripoli in Libya and their areas are way more successful and stable than the UAE-backed warlord government in Benghazi. They weathered the storm from Western media and hosted a successful FIFA World Cup. They built a good metro system that doesn't just serve the Disney Land style straight line developments like the Dubai Metro. They integrated the sons of immigrants to Qatar in a way that the UAE completely failed in doing, which is why the Qatari football team is now filled with Yemenis, Egyptians and Iraqis fighting for the team and winning cups while the UAE plays Brazilian boomers and gets embarrassed. They overcame the dumbass siege that the UAE and Saudi Arabia put on them in 2017 with an incredible resilience that strengthened their national identity. Their media investments has made Al Jazeera the undisputed number one news channel in the Arab World, BeIN Sports the number one sports network in the world, and almost every good Arab journalist has spent some time in Qatar. Their only big L is perhaps losing the battle with the UAE in Egypt when they failed to protect the MB against the military coup in 2013.

I have some strange admiration for them that is completely illogical and contradictory compared to my political beliefs. They're in tune with the Arab public in a way that the UAE and Saudi could never achieve. They've leveraged their relations with Hamas, Israel, the Taliban, Iran and Hezbollah into something that generated some kind of material benefit unlike the UAE's disgusting endless cucking for American Republican and Israeli interests. In the end, yeah, they're an American client state with a massive military base in Al Udaid, but their million sins can perhaps be slightly washed away by the fact that a random Sudanese civilian can wear a Sinwar hoodie on their way to a Friday sermon about the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, while watching Al Jazeera's coverage of Israel's bombing of South Lebanon.

I'm just rambling here, so I hope it's at least semi-coherent.

I think the most infuriating thing to me about the liberal reactions to foreign students being disappeared by Israel Criticism Enforcement officers is that it's seemingly almost entirely focused on that they were in plain clothes or wearing masks, or literally a litany of other bullshit instead of the fact we are eroding probably the most unique constitutional liberty America has for the benefit of a foreign nation. If you go look at shitlib subreddits, you basically have to scroll down the bottom before you see anyone even mention Israel. Lots of talk about Nazis or gestapo or brown shirts, but absolutely no acknowledgment of the country this is being done in behalf of.

HHS will cut 10,000 jobs as part of a major restructuring plan

Every Western outlet stumbling over itself to report on “anti-Hamas” protests in Gaza is some heinous shit.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/03/26/middleeast/why-gazans-are-protesting-hamas-now-intl-latam

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g71lk09npo.amp

A photo of it was also near the top of Reddit, and there’s dozens of top comments about “it looks like they’re all children!” and of course blaming the genocide on Hamas from their enlightened perch inside the empire that is responsible for the genocide.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1jkekcz/antihamas_protesters_in_gaza_call_for_an_end_to/

… it says a lot about Western “civilization” that witnessing a few hundred children allegedly protesting the Resistance evokes more empathy than the slaughter of tens of thousands by the empire. Complete dehumanization, until they can be straw-manned into a pro-empire position