Republic of Sumsung chuds holding "Stop the Steal" signs to defend DC's Loony Yoon.

Messi misses Presidential Medal ceremony with Biden

Lionel Messi was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, by President Joe Biden on Saturday but did not attend the ceremony at the White House. The Argentine World Cup winner and eight times Ballon d'Or winner, now plays in the United States for Major League Soccer's Inter Miami.

Messi is the first Argentine to receive the honor and the first male soccer player. But while other recipients of the award, including U2 singer and activist Bono, former basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, attended the ceremony at the White House, Messi was absent.

Messi's representatives said in a statement distributed by Inter Miami that Messi had a prior commitment. "The White House informed FIFA, who informed the club at the end of December that Leo was going to be awarded with this recognition," the statement read.

"Leo, through the club, sent a letter to the White House saying that he is deeply honored and that it is a profound privilege to receive this recognition but that due to scheduling conflicts and prior commitments he was going to be unable to attend. "He appreciated the gesture and noted that he hopes to have the opportunity to meet in the near future," the statement added.

Some news from occupied Palestine.

Palestinian al-Qassam Brigades forces conducted IED strikes on five Zionist tanks in and near northern Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp. The resistance also fired a SAM at a Zionist Apache helicopter east of the al-Bureij refugee camp (in central Gaza): https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/01/04/740270/Qassam-Brigades-targets,-destroys-5-Israeli-battle-tanks-in-northern-Gaza

US imperialist leader Joe Biden wants to provide the fascist and genocidal Tel Aviv regime with another $8 billion of US weapons: https://tass.com/world/1896219

Zionist genocidal attacks on Gaza have now killed over 45,700 civilians (note, this is the more conservative count, coming from Gaza’s Health Ministry), 59 of which were massacred over the past 24 hours: https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/01/04/740294/Israel-massacre-Palestinians-children-Gaza-City-Khan-Yunis-

The Yemeni Armed Forces conducted a ballistic missile strike on a target near Jaffa (which is near Tel Aviv): https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/01/05/740323/Yemen-attacks-Israel-missile

Theory: Assad jokingly said “Assad must go” and accidentally activated the curse.

Venezuela's Attorney General's Office has offered a $100k reward for info leading to the arrest of US-backed former presidential candidate Edmundo González. Of course, his whereabouts are known to everyone as he prances around Europe lobbying for regime change.

Me waiting outside the Casa Rosada with a giant comical net to capture Edmundo and claim my $100k.

This a succinct post on the TrueAnon sub about the social base for fascism in the current times:

The current chud awakening helps me understand National Socialism

Right wing nationalist reactionary chuds suddenly get confronted with the contradictions of capitalism when the interests of capital come into direct conflict with the interests of the ideology of reaction, i.e. ideologized racism. In this case as in many others, capitalists wanting to import labor because it's easier to exploit immigrants than homegrown workers who you actually have to pay well. This leads them very naturally to heavily anti-corporate political positions, but not out of solidarity, or theory, or some kind of post-capitalist vision for society, but just because the big bourgeois machine gets added to the list of globalist conspirators and elite subverters of 'western civilization'.

It's a false consciousness that's easy to mistake for a real one, because they're not coming to jesus, they're just finding more insulated ways to dig themselves deeper into reaction by adding a new enemy to the list.

This is another reason why the small bourgeoisie becomes the class nucleus for fascism, because the foil for big capital, rather than working class consciousness, becomes small business consciousness. The paranoid, aggrieved small holding kulaks who are terrified and angry at both the big capitalists above them, threatening to push them out of their own business, and the workers below them threatening to proletarianize them with all their minimum wage agitation, union efforts, and refusal to take shit from employers. They're in a really bad spot where they can't survive the same economic shocks the big capitalists can, they lose out no matter who wins, so they become the foundation for national socialist fascism because the dumb chuds who are so close yet so far still think small business is good even if big business is bad, and these small holding yeoman types are exactly the people who go do January 6th and put trump flags on their boats. They become the face of chud anti-corporatism, it's most active and agitated participants, it's financiers, it's electoral backbone, and make sure the movement never actually turns into a working class project because their interests become so entwined with it, and the unprincipled anti-communist chuds in the rank and file don't have the awareness to challenge that.

I always felt like reactionary socialism was a fundamental contradiction in terms, but now I really see how it happens. It wouldn't take the term socialism now because we live in the post red-scare, post cold-war west, but it did in the old times because socialism was still the hot new thing that everybody was really excited about so it benefitted the Nazis to put it on the tin. Nonetheless, it's the exact same process, boneheaded reactionaries stumbling upon the contradictions of capitalism and being forced into opposing big corporate interests but not having the language or understanding to take that to it's logical conclusion. Instead they just graft it clumsily in a pretty blatantly contradictory way they're too dumb to realize onto their pre-existing chuddish worldview

On the eve of the inauguration, the Venezuelan opposition shows weakness on the streets with empty rallies in Caracas. Opponents had hoped for a change of government before January 10 and are betting on US support to overthrow Maduro.

People are tired of this Juan Guaido shit, even those who dislike Maduro are fucking tired of this shit. The opposition does literally nothing useful besides be racist, lie, and cry for Israel and USA to bomb their country. No wonder literally no Venezuelan General has defected to their side, even though the Military is known for being reactionary.

Biden plans to send $8bn arms shipment to Israel

The move comes just over a fortnight before President Joe Biden leaves office. Washington has rejected calls to suspend military backing for Israel because of the number of civilians killed during the war in Gaza.

In August, the US approved the sale of $20bn in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel.

The latest planned shipment contains air-to-air missiles, Hellfire missiles, artillery shells and bombs, the US official said

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer has resigned after successively failing to build a coalition government without the far right. For four months Nehammer had been trying to stitch together a government between the Conservatives (his party) and the Social Democrats.

No party wanted to form a government with the extremists of the “Freedom Party”, trying to form a government of the center. But it didn't work. The liberals left the negotiations and the Chancellor announced the official end of negotiations with the Social Democrats, his resignation from office and the leadership of his party.

The Austrian President has two options: Either he will ask the far-right leader Herbert Kickl (who once called himself the “people's chancellor”, just like Hitler did); Or he will dissolve parliament and call new elections in the country.

Herbert Kickl, leader of Austria's right-wing extremists, and his party with Nazi roots. About the FPÖ, Austria's far-right party with the most seats:

Founded in 1944 by Nazi leaders linked to the Hitler government, such as the former Austrian-Nazi Minister of Agriculture, Anton Reinthaller, the first leader of the FPÖ party. The current party leader, Herbert Kickl, has been calling himself “The People's Chancellor”, Volkskanzler, throughout his campaign and has now stepped up the propaganda even further;.

Brazil is sending an ambassador to Caracas for Maduro's inauguration in Venezuela. The hope is to put an end to the crisis that has lasted since the elections.

Huge Text

The Brazilian government is to send its ambassador to Caracas, Glivânia Maria de Oliveira, for the inauguration of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (United Socialist Party of Venezuela). On January 10, the Venezuelan will take the oath of office in the National Assembly for his third term, which runs from 2025 to 2031.

The government's view is that this would help to further reduce tension between the two countries, which has been escalating since Nicolás Maduro's election. The diplomatic crisis was slightly eased after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers' Party) said he respected Venezuelan institutions. According to Maduro, the speech was a “wise” reflection by the Workers' Party president and he added: “Point in favor of Lula”.

According to the report, Brazilian diplomacy is still waiting for a formal invitation from the Venezuelan government. The lack of such an invitation with a week to go before the inauguration, however, does not worry diplomats. Each president's inauguration around the world is carried out differently and invitations are generally made at short notice and tend to vary according to the political conditions of each government.

Brasilia's expectation is that two other partners in the region will also be represented by their ambassadors in Caracas. Colombia is represented in Venezuelan territory by Milton Rengifo Hernández, while Mexico has Ambassador Leopoldo de Gyvés de la Cruz in the Venezuelan capital.

The latest demonstrations by opponents of Maduro have had little support. The movement, however, is similar to the election period. On that occasion, María Corina and Edmundo toured several cities in the country without managing to organize massive mobilizations. Nevertheless, the day after the election was marked by violent demonstrations across the country. .

I think Lula da Silva still can't travel by airplane anyway due to his recent surgeries.

Washington Post cartoonist resigns over paper’s refusal to publish cartoon critical of Jeff Bezos Pulitzer prize winner Ann Telnaes drew a cartoon of the paper’s owner kneeling before Donald Trump Ramon Antonio Vargas Sat 4 Jan 2025 10.23 EST The Washington Post’s Pulitzer prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned from her position at the newspaper after its refusal to publish a satirical cartoon depicting the outlet’s owner Jeff Bezos – along with other media and technology barons – kneeling before Donald Trump as he gears up for his second US presidency. “I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations – and some differences – about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” Telnaes wrote on Friday in an online post on the Substack platform detailing her decision to quit. “Until now.” In a statement reported by the New York Times, the Post’s opinions editor, David Shipley, defended the newspaper’s decision against publishing Telnaes’s cartoon, saying he disagreed with her “interpretation of events” and that “the only bias was against repetition”. “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” said Shipley, whose statement added that he had spoken with Telnaes and asked her to reconsider leaving. “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication.” Telnaes’s Substack post from Friday contained a rough draft of her cartoon. Beside Bezos, who founded Amazon before buying the Post, the cartoon portrayed caricatures of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and Walt Disney Co mascot Mickey Mouse. “The cartoon … criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with … Trump,” Telnaes said. “While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. “To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a gamechanger … and dangerous for a free press.” Telnaes announced her resignation less than three months after the Post and Bezos faced withering backlash over the outlet’s decision to prevent its editorial team from publishing an endorsement of Kamala Harris in the presidential election of 5 November. Soon-Shiong had also similarly refused to allow the LA Times’ editorial board to publish an endorsement of Harris. Readers met both outlets with more than 200,000 subscription cancellations combined, the overwhelming majority of those affecting the Post’s larger readership, according to reports. And commentators accused the two newspapers of demonstrating what has been classified as “anticipatory obedience” to Trump after he had repeatedly accused the media of being enemies of the state and promised retribution against many in the industry if he defeated Harris. Trump then scored a decisive victory against Harris to wrest back the Oval Office, which he had lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. After his victory, Zuckerberg dined with Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort. His company Meta also donated $1m to a fund for Trump’s second inauguration. Observers interpreted those to be conciliatory gestures after Trump during his first presidency had criticized Zuckerberg and his Facebook platform of being “anti-Trump”.

From the guardian: https://archive.is/mtc85

U.S. authorities have found notes from Matthew Livelsberger, the U.S. Army soldier who committed suicide and detonated a Tesla 'Cybertruck' near the Trump International Hotel

Having been deployed to Afghanistan twice, he expressed in his writings a need to 'cleanse' his mind of lost comrades and the 'burden of lives he took.' He characterized his actions as a 'wake-up call' to a society that only pays attention to violence, warning that the U.S. was 'terminally ill and headed toward collapse.'

currency markets are so silly, markets in general but forex markets are supposed to be most markety market with highest liquidity, yet central bank interventions are needed to prevent it from going too wild. trump says he will implement broad tariffs and that is enough for Dollar to rise against everything else, nothing has happened yet!

really shows the world needs more controls on capital.

Israeli soldier leaves Brazil after Justice orders investigation by the Federal Police (Brazilian FBI).

A 21-year-old Israeli reservist has left Brazil, after the Federal Court ordered an investigation against him for alleged war crimes. The soldier was on vacation in Bahia, but had fought in Gaza. The case led the Israeli authorities to issue a warning to all soldiers that they could be prosecuted abroad for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry explained that it had in fact “accompanied” the soldier's removal from Brazil and had been in contact with him and his family throughout the process. The Palestinian Arab Federation in Brazil explained that soldier Yuval Vagdani “was on tourism in Bahia and his last known location is Morro de São Paulo, in that state.” According to the organization, the soldier is suspected of taking part in the demolition of a residential block in Gaza at the end of 2024, using explosives outside of combat situations. The homes served as shelters for internally displaced Palestinians after the start of the “genocidal” aggression on October 7, 2023.

Former president Jair Bolsonaro criticized the actions of the Brazilian justice system. He republished a post from another account on X (formerly Twitter) that reads: “In 2019, Israel was one of the only countries to send a team to help with the search in Brumadinho. Today, the Brazilian State is deploying the Federal Police to investigate members of the Israeli Armed Forces on vacation in Brazil.”

A column published on Sunday in Haaretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers, says that the case in Brazil has thrown Israel into “panic mode”. “We think Brazil should also investigate the escape route, because it may have been through Paraguay and Argentina, two countries that are once again harbors for war criminals. And we think that Brazil should take into account the list published by the HRF, so that it has the names and identities of these criminals in its archives. When they happen to set foot on Brazilian soil, they should be captured immediately,” said the president of Fepal.

The federation also considers the Federal Court's decision to investigate the Israeli soldier to be the right one, but has also suggested that an internal investigation should be carried out to find out if there was any action or omission by Brazilian public agents in the soldier's departure from the country.

Seems like ukkkraine started their first part of offensive in kursk, couple of columns for now hit with drones, probably in next 5-10 days we'll see how much can russia fumble/not fumble the bag.

Javier Milei received Edmundo González Urrutia and they greeted the Venezuelan community from the balcony of the Casa Rosada.

The President met with the former Venezuelan candidate who claims victory over Nicolás Maduro; Argentina recognized him as elected president, with a protocol accordingly; Milei told him that he will not be “an accomplice of silence in the face of the abuses” of the Chavista regime; the meeting took place while Nahuel Gallo, a gendarme, is still detained by the Chavista regime.

Juan Guaido 2.0 Arc continues

Seriously what’s going on between Brazil and China?

On Dec 23rd, 2024, Brazilian authorities halted the construction of BYD factory after Chinese construction workers were found living in “slavery-like” conditions. This would have been the first BYD factory outside Asia and a significant expansion into Latin America. On Dec 27th, Brazil had stopped issuing temporary work visa to BYD, with the factory merely three months away from completing its construction.

Very conveniently, on the same day, China launched an investigation into its beef import, citing that oversupply has caused a squeeze on its domestic price.

Any trade measures to try to reduce beef imports would hit China's largest suppliers, Brazil, Argentina and Australia.

China's total beef imports reached $14.2 billion in 2023, surging from $8.2 billion in 2019, customs data show. Brazil accounted for 42% of the total trade value, followed by Argentina at 15% and Australia at 12%.

This is clearly pointed towards Brazil. Is this China sending a warning shot to Brazil that they better not interfere with the BYD incident? Will Brazil fold to China’s pressure? Seriously, what’s going on? I hope they don’t start fighting or something.

China's CR450: A new era of high-speed rail at 400 km/h

Video