That watermelon seller is up to no good:
https://xcancel.com/MiddleEastIndex/status/1845474111817974038

Head of Turkish TRT media agency says TRT will soon start a Farsi propaganda channel soon.

He then says: “We must disturb Iran. We must absolutely disturb Iran.”

If you think about it, the US believes that they live in a Dark Forest universe. They truly believe that they have to annihilate their opponents before these emerging states/powers surpass their own technologically and escape their sphere of influence.

I am seriously starting to believe that this is the reason Obama likes the Three Body Problem series so much, while taking the wrong lessons from the books, which was a cautionary tale about how the most “rational” belief of destroying your opponents before they have the capacity to do it against you may let you overpower them in the short run, but ultimately lead to the mutually assured destruction of our world. It emphasized that a bit of irrationality, naivety and delusional about our opponents are sometimes needed to put a stop into this chain of madness.

We’ve been very lucky that Putin, who is in control of thousands of nukes enough to blow up the world several times, does not see the world in the same Dark Forest state as the US does. Putin is naive and even delusional about a rapprochement with an imperialist West for years, and yet it was exactly this attitude that kept the peace for as long as we have (even with the war in Ukraine, there is a lot of restraint from escalating further).

Israel is going full extermination in northern gaza, and I fear they will succeed, specially while the attention is on Lebanon and the possible attack against Iran.

Israel is exterminating northern Gaza right now.

There are 400,000 Palestinians there being deliberately starved, with nowhere to go, trapped inside a killing field. There’s no outrage or wall-to-wall media coverage because Israel is the one doing it and the victims are Arab.

https://nitter.poast.org/AssalRad/status/1845272101516869980

Israel deserves to have the most evil villains based off of them in every piece of fiction imaginable, but audiences will probably criticize it for being too "cartoonishly and unrealistically evil"

US deploys a THAAD battery to aid in the defense of Israel:

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3934493/statement-by-pentagon-press-secretary-maj-gen-pat-ryder-on-the-deployment-of-a/

At the direction of the President, Secretary Austin authorized the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery and associated crew of U.S. military personnel to Israel to help bolster Israel's air defenses following Iran's unprecedented attacks against Israel on April 13 and again on October 1. The THAAD Battery will augment Israel's integrated air defense system. This action underscores the United States' ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran. It is part of the broader adjustments the U.S. military has made in recent months, to support the defense of Israel and protect Americans from attacks by Iran and Iranian-aligned militias.

Hopefully, whatever new technology Iran has been teasing accounts for this - it isnt the first time US has deployed THAAD to Israel.

Fucking sovereign citizen vem miller, what is even us of a?

Local elections in Belgium and in its biggest Flemish city, Antwerp, it is a neck to neck mayoral race between the ruling Flemish nationalist Party and the openly ML workers party. Gonna be real here and assume we are not going to be the winners, but the fact that one of our biggest cities, with one of the major ports of Europe, came this close to a red mayor is noticable in and of itself.

The campain the nationalists set up was fucking dumb tho. Going all in on the European tradition of xenophobia, islamophobia more specifically. "They go and get their votes at mosques! They praise the Taliban!". Our sitting mayor also said that the workers' party's position that headscarfs and other religious symbols should be allowed in public positions is 'apartheid' (all while being a vocal supporter of the zionist entity)!

From UNIFIL on X, posted a few minutes ago after the IOF attacked them:

Despite putting on protective masks, fifteen peacekeepers suffered effects, including skin irritation and gastrointestinal reactions, after the smoke entered the camp. The peacekeepers are receiving treatment.

President of India is in Algeria now, staying here for 4 days, no idea why

Decided to make a return to #beanwatch:

Coffee returned to literally same place when i reported first time on it, no sudden excellence.

Cocoa still expensive though.

P.S. (also oil doesn't believe in iran's courage)

Palestinian Authority to attend BRICS summit, apply for membership (The Cradle, Aug 26, 2024)

Palestine’s ambassador in Moscow, Abdel Hafeez Nofal, said on 26 August that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas had received an invitation from President Vladimir Putin to attend the upcoming BRICS summit.

“We received an invitation from President Putin to President Abbas, and he was invited to participate in the BRICS summit prior to the invitation [to visit Russia] … but we will see if the prime minister will participate,” Nofal said. “The most important thing is that we [Palestinian representatives] will participate in this event,” he added.

The ambassador said Abbas and Putin have a good relationship with one another and can meet at any time.

“After our first participation in the BRICS summit, we will send a request to join this association,” Nofal revealed.

He also said that Putin promised Abbas that the upcoming BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan, scheduled for October 2024, will include a session dedicated primarily to Palestine.

Old article, but with the BRICS summit in Russia approaching (22–24 Oct), I need to hear what (if anything) my fellow newsmega heads expect will come from this.

The Icelandic government ~cooperation~ exploded!

I got my first dose of 3 HPV vaccines a couple weeks ago. Body tolerated it well. Little soreness at the injection site for a few days. Got the insurance statement for it. Holy shit! I mean they covered it, but absolutely ridiculous how much they gouge. $60 to poke me and $500 for the shot itself.

They say 95% of insurance carriers cover it. So I would recommend everyone not allergic to get it. Basically a broad cancer vaccine. Totally not every thing but like half a dozen common viruses that are known to cause cancer - yes please.

US will urgently deploy THAAD air defense batteries in Israel, @ynetalerts reports; deployment will reinforce defenses against Iranian ballistic missiles. This is another signal that Israeli action in Iran is expected to be very forceful & likely trigger Iranian response.

This tells us two things. Israel is likely to attack Iran soon, and the iron dome can do jack shit against Iran missiles (also they might be out of interceptors)

https://nitter.poast.org/IsraelRadar_com/status/1845154626884280656

Ah well, nevertheless

Interesting piece on Phenomenal World: Adaptation in the Sanctioned Economy: Domestic manufacturing, overcapacity, and the limits of Iran’s economic resilience , it shows how despite the belief that sanctions resilience is entirely a matter of state capacity and state policy Iran's private sector actually invested a TON to fill the space left by foreign manufactured products, like washing machines, to the point where they're even building too much of this stuff so the government can be faulted for not influencing these sectors to allocate capital appropriately.

Also interesting is how these big private firms believe that they can actually do well in the sanctions environment, so they lobby the government AGAINST lifting import bans even if economic sanctions are also lifted, so there's another point against the american sanctions regime as a useful behavior changing tool even by its own terms.

Dem-Rep relations really looks like a toxic relationship

Democrats to everyone else: I hate his fascist ass. I never want to see him again. Every since cell of me hates him with burning passion. I will kill him on sight

Democrats to Republicans: please baby let us be together. You want to kill black people, queer people and immigrants and enslave woman? We could do that together. I could even get a swastika tattoo on my forehead for you. I love you baby please don't leave me every second we spend apart feels like pure agony and torture