The Broad Front (Ruling Party) of Uruguay stands in solidarity with the Sumud Global Flotilla and denounces the Israeli government as responsible for genocide.

At this moment, a civilian flotilla composed of activists from around the world is heading towards the Gaza Strip to break the blockade on the entry of medicines and food into Palestinian territory imposed by the Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli government, responsible for the genocide against the Palestinian people, obstructed the advance of the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid for the civilian population of Gaza, which is experiencing “mass starvation,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

In light of these events, which concern and preoccupy us, the Frente Amplio expresses its solidarity with the Global Sumud Flotilla.

It once again calls for an immediate ceasefire, an end to the genocide, and the immediate establishment of a humanitarian corridor.

It reiterates its demand for the safe return of the hostages kidnapped by the terrorist organization Hamas.

As a peaceful and peacemaking political force, we once again call for peace and respect for international law.

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The US Senate has failed to approve an extension of the federal government budget, and the country will go into shutdown on Wednesday. Public services will be paralyzed, including health and education.

Only security services will be maintained, but 742,000 Pentagon employees will be affected. Visits by heads of state will be suspended. Flights are expected to be delayed across the country and abroad, with air traffic controllers being sent home.

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The Colombian government denounces the arrest of two Colombian citizens who were aboard one of the Sumud Global Flotilla vessels in international waters, engaged in humanitarian activities with Palestine.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, on behalf of the Government and the People of Colombia, rejects, in the most drastic terms, the kidnapping in international waters, by the Israeli armed force and in full violation of international law and the Geneva Agreements, of the Colombian citizens Luna Barreto and Manuela Bedoya, Members of the

Global Flotilla "Sumud", on board the boat HIO.

The Government of Colombia demands the immediate release of its citizens, as well as the release of all other members of the Flotilla, and asks the governments of Spain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Slovenia, Indonesia, Ireland, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Tallandia, Turkey, and

South Africa shall act promptly and on time to protect the lives and integrity of its respective compatriots.

Colombia recalls that the Global Fleet "Sumud" sailed the Mediterranean with three objectives: to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, raise awareness about the urgent humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people, and warn about the need to stop the war in Gaza. No state policy can justify the massacre and illegal detention of citizens who want to contribute to peace and undertake humanitarian actions aimed at alleviating the famine deliberately caused by the illegal acts of the State of Israel in the occupied territory of Palestine.

Colombia reiterates its solidarity with the Palestinian people and reaffirms its commitment to multilateralism, respect for international law, and global justice.

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So how's that government shutdown going?

The Wall Street Journal reports that the United States will provide Ukraine with intelligence information for precision strikes inside Russia. They are also considering sending missiles with a range of up to 800 km.

Someone was asking a few days ago about the UK supreme court ruling and how it's affecting trans/gnc people.

In Scotland, anti-trans legal groups have successfully harangued the government into issuing new guidance that (government) workers should use bathrooms associated with their "biological sex". The union for civil servants is still formulating a response, but the most mild response is to insist that trans/gnc workers be given an unconditional full remote work adjustment to their contract to avoid the bathroom issue all together. This is considered the worst immediate response because it still removes trans/gnc people from public life. Other branches of the union are telling their members to simply ignore the new government guidance and use whatever bathroom they want since there are no legal repercussions, and any individual employment repercussions will be handled by collective response.

FBI cuts ties with Anti-Defamation League amid conservative backlash

FBI Director Kash Patel announces break with anti-Semitism watchdog amid outrage over description of Charlie Kirk.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/2/fbi-cuts-ties-with-anti-defamation-league-amid-conservative-backlash

LMAO

While Patel did not mention Kirk in his statement, his announcement came just a day after the ADL removed more than 1,000 entries about alleged extremism from its website amid right-wing outrage over references to the late activist.

The ADL said it made the decision as many of the terms were outdated and a number of entries had been “intentionally misrepresented and misused”.

In a since-deleted entry on Kirk and his youth organisation Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the ADL said Kirk promoted “Christian nationalism” and “numerous conspiracy theories about election fraud and Covid-19 and has demonised the transgender community”.

Fascist freaks at the ADL continue to expose their true nature.

Four people injured in car and stabbing attack at Manchester synagogue - suspect shot by police

Kier Sturmmer trying to think how he can blame this on PA

Argentine Trotkyist and Feminist militant, Cele Fierro, member of the Worker's Socialist Movement (Part of the broader Worker's Left Front), is among those in the Flotilla bound for Gaza and has been apparently detained by members of the genocidal state of "israel".

These people are a million times more valuable and more brave than every zionist that has ever existed. Godspeed to them!

And of course: DEATH TO "ISRAEL"

Right on cue, Italian labour unions move to shut down the country in a general strike due to the flotilla being intercepted.

I don't see how the US can take Bagram, can helicopters get to there from any permanent US bases? No matter how much air support they might have, if US planes can't land (the IEA can mine/destroy the landing strips) its basically pointless

Germany thrived in the first China Shock. But the next one could prove catastrophic. NPR’s Planet Money

Very long and detailed article but here’s a short excerpt:

However, European Union tariffs will only protect German companies within Europe. A crucial problem for Germany is that its economy has been incredibly dependent on exports. According to data from the World Bank, in 2024, German exports accounted for more than 42 percent of its GDP. Compare that to the United States, where exports accounted for less than 11 percent of GDP. How will Germany compete with China in export markets outside the EU?

This gets to why the second China Shock in Germany could prove much more devastating than the first one proved to be in the United States. For one thing, the first China Shock centered on the imports of low-end manufacturing goods. Even then, it killed more than a million manufacturing jobs in the US and workers and communities struggled to adapt.

And the US has long been less reliant on manufacturing than Germany. When the China Shock was hitting the US economy in the early 2000s, manufacturing (value-added) accounted for about 13 percent of US GDP. Today it accounts for only about 10 percent of U.S. GDP. Manufacturing accounts for about 18 percent of Germany's GDP, according to the World Bank.

The export-led industrial model that Germany has pursued for decades is now at a crossroads. In addition to the China Shock, there's the retreat of the United States behind a tariff wall. That means Germany is struggling to sell products in what were long its two biggest export markets.

And, Tordoir says, high U.S. tariffs against Chinese goods are hurting Germany through another channel: "Chinese products are bouncing off the U.S. tariff wall and are being rerouted." So, Tordoir says, Chinese exporters are looking to sell more in Europe, where there are much lower tariffs.

Tordoir says one core issue in all of this is that Chinese consumers don't consume enough, and he hopes that one win-win solution for everyone will be convincing China to pursue policy reforms that increase their domestic consumption and stop their export onslaught.

Germany — which itself long pursued an export-led growth model and ran huge trade surpluses, sometimes to the chagrin of other nations — has recently begun working to increase domestic spending. The country, under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has passed constitutional reforms that allow the government to spend more, and the government has begun to do so on things like defense and infrastructure.

"The only way out that I can see is that we need to rely on internal demand, demand from the European Union really," Südekum says. He thinks that Germany's recent spending reforms, which he was involved in, are an important first step. As a next step, he and Tordoir both expressed support for the idea that the European Union should develop incentive schemes to encourage European consumers to "Buy European."

Nobody could survive China’s vast industrial capacity about to be unleashed on to the world. Five years ago, nobody would have thought of buying a Chinese EV. Now, it is top of the line, surpassing even the finest Western made car.

Unfortunately that means Europe is ripe for harvest by American finance capital unless something dramatically changes.

Come to think of it, American capitalism must have gotten unbelievably lucky with the Covid pandemic 5 years ago - which stalled China’s growing infrastructure and property sector, decimated its local finances and is now going through a phase of deep consumption slump.

This was followed by Biden’s Ukraine war and the cutting off of Europe’s cheap energy supply, that destroyed the EU industrial competitiveness and prevented the formation of a consumer market that could rival and even replace the role of the US market.

So we end up with Trump’s global tariffs, at a point where the US consumer market gets to completely dictate the fate of the global exporting economy. If China fails to transform into a domestic consumption economy in time (which will require abandoning the neoliberal model), then it will have no choice but to unleash its exports on to the rest of the world and kill off their domestic industries through mercantilism.

The real question is whether the US finance capital will end up as the winner by harvesting the failing export industries all over the world? Calculated plans don’t always pan out - reality will always surprise us in ways we could not imagine.

I have been reading up a lot of Japan’s economic history lately. The irony is that Japan extensively studied the potential effects of the 1985 Plaza Accord and calculated that they would be supplanting the US as the world’s dominant economy, being overconfident that yen appreciation as a consequence would be beneficial not just to their economy, but also their geopolitical influence on the international stage (a fierce ambition that Japan had sorely missed after their defeat in WWII).

Reality slapped both Japan and the US in the face, for the latter also failed to re-industrialize under the Plaza Accord and even marked the permanent decline of US industrial capital in the 1990s. Turns out, the US finance capital became the unexpected winner in the wake of the intense US-Japan economic rivalry that had been going since the 1960s, one that ended up killing off both the US and Japanese industrial capital.