UN says school and staff building 'directly hit' by strikes | The Guardian

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has said that one of its schools in northern Gaza and a building designated as a residence for UN international staff in the Rafah area were directly hit by strikes.

In its daily update on Monday, the agency said UN international staff present in Rafah had left the building 90 minutes before the strike, and that no casualties were reported. The strike "is yet another indication that nowhere is safe in Gaza", it said. It did not say who was responsible for the strikes.

The UN agency said the coordinates of the building were shared twice, including just days ago, adding:

UNRWA shares coordinates of all its facilities across the Gaza Strip with parties to the conflict.

UNRWA also said it had received "extremely concerning" reports that Israeli Security Forces (ISF) had entered one UNRWA school and two UNRWA health centres in the Gaza Strip with tanks and used them for military operations.

It cited reports that the ISF "conducted interrogations and arrests" of internally displaced people in the installations, adding:

According to the reports, IDPs were subsequently forced to leave the UNRWA installations and move south towards Wadi Gaza. Witnesses reported that Israeli Forces then struck the two health centres with artillery fire. UNRWA is further verifying these reports. If confirmed, the military use of UNRWA facilities raises serious concerns, as such use puts civilians at serious risk of harm.

From Bloomberg

Pentagon moving ahead on Israeli requests:

2,000 Hellfire missiles for Apaches

30mm chain gun ammo

57,000 155mm shells

400 120mm mortars

PVS-14 NODs

M141 shoulder-fired bunker-busters

75 JLTVs

300+ Tamir interceptors

I edited a Dr.Seuss propaganda poster to be of the current situation lol

Yooo lets goo 3000 comments!! Huh whats going on in Argentina, surely nothing important...

🚨🟢 Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades: — Since this morning, Al-Qassam fighters were able to kill and wound a zionist force holed up inside a building in Juhr Al-Dik after targeting it with two anti-fortification and anti-personnel TBG shells, clashing with them with machine guns, and completely or partially destroying 29 zionist vehicles in all areas of the incursion into the Gaza Strip.
Al-Aqsa Flood.

from https://t.me/PalestineResist/20083

al-qassam has been very busy, 29 vehicles in one morning!

If Milei wins, Argentina will be govern by a dead dog, and something worse than that... Mauricio Macri.

SCMP: Number of Americans studying in mainland China falls sharply, but Chinese students still flock to US

Only 211 Americans studied in mainland China during the 2021-22 school year, according to the 2023 version of an annual US government-funded study by the Institute of International Education (IIE). In contrast, from 2018 to 2019, there were more than 11,000 American students in the mainland.

The same study showed that Chinese students continue to vastly outnumber any other foreign group in the US. During the 2022 to 2023 school year, 289,526 Chinese studied in the US, a slight decrease from the 290,086 during the previous school year.

...

But while there has been some evidence that mainland Chinese, particularly those from non-elite backgrounds, are looking elsewhere for their studies, the US still hosts nearly double the number of Chinese students compared with the next largest host, Britain, according to the State Department.

Worth noting that Indian students in the US will likely exceed Chinese students in the next year or two.

Michael Roberts: From a Sahm recession to global downturn

You best start believing in global recessions - you're in one.

Even if the US avoids an outright contraction in real GDP in the next few quarters, it is likely that the US will suffer a significant slowdown to almost stagnation next year, with inflation still well above the pre-pandemic average and the Fed’s own target of 2% a year.

And as for the rest of the major economies, outright recession appears much more likely. Worldwide business activity stalled in October as global PMI hit 50.0. The global PMI is a reliable measure of economic activity in economies – and the 50 mark is the threshold between expansion and contraction. The global PMI has not fallen below 50 since the global financial crisis.

And as shown in my previous post on the US economy, the major developed capitalist economies continued to have a reading below 50 – indicating contraction. Indeed, many advanced capitalist economies are already in recession. The Eurozone economy contracted in Q3. Real GDP fell -0.1%, marking the first contraction since 2020 when the covid-19 pandemic weighed. A ‘technical’ recession looks likely – two consecutive quarterly declines, as Q4 could also show a contraction. Sweden is contracting, Canada is contracting and the latest figure for the UK showed the economy heading into recession. Real GDP was flat in Q3 and Q4 has started very weak. The Bank of England is now forecasting five quarters of zero growth at best. And real GDP growth is still well below pre-GFC growth trends.

...

The IMF sums it up: “the medium-term outlook for global growth is at its lowest in decades. The IMF’s five-year ahead global growth projections have steadily declined from a peak of 4.9 percent in 2013 to just 3.1 percent in 2023, lowering the pace of convergence in living standards between emerging market and developing economies and advanced economies, while also posing challenges for debt sustainability and investment in the climate transition.”

The underlying cause of the slowdown in productivity and world trade, and the increased geopolitical rivalry is to be found in the slowing of productive investment growth in the major economies. What is has been keeping growth up so far has been unproductive investment in finance, real estate and now military spending. Investment in technology, education and manufacturing has dropped away. And the basic reason for that is the stagnating and even downward trend in the global profitability of productive capital in the 23 years of the 21st century.

People's Daily: Connecting Ethiopia and Djibouti: a railway built by the Chinese for the African people

Some Chinese communist propaganda for us to enjoy.

Located in Addis Ababa’s outskirts, the Indode cargo station is an important transportation center on the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway. The station wasn't officially opened until 2018, but in 2016, when Ethiopia was hit by a devastating drought and food shortage, it served as an important freight hub, moving a total of 888,00 tonnes of grains to help feed the starving population. There are around 200 people working at the station, only five of whom are Chinese. The majority of the top-tier positions have already been delegated to locals.

“Ethiopia is landlocked; hence its best means of import and export is through Djibouti's port. For Ethiopia's economy to grow, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway is essential,” said Fasil. Fasil says that it took three to seven days for cargo to go between Djibouti and Ethiopia before the railway was built. Costs were high and travel was unsafe. With the railroad, the journey now takes just 20 hours, which is not only faster but also safer. "Over 80% of Ethiopians are farmers, but our country does not produce fertilisers, so we must import them from Djibouti's port. It used to take at least 70 trucks to move 2,590 tons of fertiliser from Djibouti to Ethiopia over three days; today one cargo train can make the trip in just 20 hours,” said Fasil.

So far, the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway has created 55,000 jobs in Ethiopia and Djibouti and provided training opportunities for more than 3,000 professionals, laying a solid foundation for the development of the railway industry in the two countries, according to the Ethiopian government.

An editorial from September 6th by Thomas Friedman of all people, explaining how Bibi’s government will be to blame for the failure of peace. Crazy to think this guy actually thought about geopolitical consequences, but interesting to see how stupid it is that USA gave full support to a fascist faction that likely would’ve shattered without our support. Fucking Joe man

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/05/opinion/biden-middle-east-deal.html

https://archive.ph/i9RBm

how many houthis can fit on a cargo ship

At Al-Shifa the IDF is shooting at ambulances and snipers are shooting patients.

Gaza: A call from Al-Shifa | Doctors Without Borders - USA

Please note that the situation at Al-Shifa Hospital is unfolding rapidly and may change.

At 8:10 a.m. local time today, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was able to reach our staff in Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza after losing contact during relentless attacks by Israeli forces over the past few days. The situation continues to get worse. Here is what our colleague, an MSF surgeon, told us this morning while still inside the hospital.

"We don’t have electricity. There’s no water in the hospital. There’s no food. People will die in a few hours without functioning ventilators.

In front of the main gate, there are many bodies. There are also injured patients; we can’t bring them inside.

When we sent an ambulance to bring the patients—a few meters away—and they attacked the ambulance. There are injured people around the hospital looking for medical care. We can’t bring them inside.

There’s also a sniper who attacked patients, they have gunshot wounds. We operated on three of them.

The situation is very bad, it is inhuman. It’s a closed area, no one knows about us. We don’t have an internet connection—you managed to call me now, [but] maybe you’ll [have to] try 10 times before you can reach me again.

The medical team agreed to leave the hospital only if patients are evacuated first. We don’t want to leave our patients. There are 600 inpatients, 37 babies, someone who needs an ICU. We can’t leave them.

We need a guarantee that there is a safe corridor [to leave] because we saw some people trying to leave Al-Shifa and they killed them, they bombed them, the sniper killed them.

Inside Al-Shifa Hospital, there are injured patients and medical teams. If they give us guarantees and evacuate the patients first, we will evacuate."

Rybar November 16, 2023

Rybar seems to think the zionists themselves might now use the hospital as an operations centre.

Zionist stop projecting by stating genuinely bumfuzzle statements like "Arabs are the real colonizer" .

MSF says 'terrified' staff and families trapped for six days near al-Shifa hospital

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it has been trying to evacuate some of its staff and their families currently trapped inside the organisation’s facilities near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

Since last Saturday, MSF staff and families – 137 people, 65 of them children – have not been able to go outside because of ongoing fighting, it said in a statement on Friday.

The charity said bullets were fired into its guesthouse on Tuesday, and the office building was hit by shrapnel and the guesthouse’s water tank was shelled on Thursday.

Staff have reported high-intensity fighting “getting very close to them”, it said, adding that thousands of civilians trapped in hospitals and other places in Gaza City “suffer the same fate” and are “at risk of dying in the coming days, if not hours”.

Ann Taylor, MSF’s head of mission in Palestine, said:

Our colleagues hear the constant sounds of gunfire, shelling, and drones. We can hear it when we speak with them on the phone. The evacuation route to southern Gaza remains unsafe. They are terrified, they ran out of food several days ago, and children have now started getting sick from drinking salty water. They must be evacuated now.

- The Guardian

I personally find Jacobin very...ah, hit-and-miss. But this ain't too bad: The Biden Administration Says It Can’t Do Anything to Stop the War on Gaza. That’s a Lie.

I've been watching some fascinating speed chess games at chess.com. I knew both players were both Iranian from their flags but when I googled them I got a surprise. They're both 15 years old.

Our posting spree has (kinda) ended, with us failing to breach the 3951 comment threshold for five consecutive megathreads. Nonetheless, last week's megathread was still the sixth largest ever, so not too bad!

Given that I've switched Country of the Week, it is now guaranteed that Hezbollah will start a massive war just to spite me.

The Country of the Week is Iceland!

As mentioned in the preamble, feel free to post or recommend any material related to Iceland, whether from a thousand years ago or yesterday. You can post it anywhere in the thread, but you can also reply to this comment if you wish.

If you're feeling particularly ambitious and want homework, you could take on any or all of these questions (no reward, but I'll be very proud of you):

• Who are the main political actors? Are they compradors, nationalists, international socialists, something else?
• What are the most salient domestic political issues; those issues that repeatedly shape elections over the last 10, 20 years. Every country has its quirks that complicate analysis - for example, Brexit in the UK.
• What is the country's history? You don't have to go back a thousand years if that's not relevant, and I'm counting "history" as basically anything that has happened over a year ago.
• What factions exist, historically and currently? If there is an electoral system, what are the major parties and their demographic bases? Are there any minor parties with large amounts of influence? Independence movements? Religious groups?
• How socially progressive or conservative are they? Is there equality for different ethnic groups, or are some persecuted? Do they have LGBTQIA+ rights? Have they improved over time, or gotten worse?
• What role do foreign powers play in the country’s politics and economy? Is there a particular country nearby or far away that is nearly inseparable from them, for good or bad reasons? Is their trade dominated by exports/imports to one place? Are they exploited, exploiters, or something in between?
• If applicable, what is the influence of former colonial relationships on the modern economy and politics?
• Is the country generally stable? Do you think there will be a coup at some point in the future, and if so, what faction might replace them?

The previous country was Lebanon. Don't miss @LargePenis@hexbear.net's two small AMAs on Lebanon here and here!

This is our Geopolitics Reading List so far! Please chime in with suggestions!

General Theory:

• Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson.
• Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis, by John Smith.
• Superexploitation and the Imperialist Drive of Capitalism: How Marini's 'Dialectics of Dependency' Goes beyond Marx's 'Capital', by Andy Higginbottom.
• Capital Volume 3 Lecture Series, 32 videos, 10-15 minutes each, by Andy Higginbottom.
• World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, by Immanuel Wallerstein.
• Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire, by Radhika Desai.
• Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy, by Radhika Desai.

Canada:

• Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination, by Tyler Shipley.

Chile:

• 1000 Days of Revolution: Chilean Communists on the Lessons of Popular Unity (I cannot personally find an online version).
• Santiago Boys Podcast, analyzing Allende's government and Cybersyn.

Lebanon:

• A History of Modern Lebanon, by Fawwaz Traboulsi.

United States:

• Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture, by Oswaldo Zavala.

Venezuela:

• Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions Among the People, a longform article by Steve Ellner.

If Trailer Park Boys was in the American SouthWest:

A Texas man was acting calm and collected as a game warden searched his vehicle for drugs, all while holding a cup full of methamphetamine, officials said.

At one point, the driver retrieved a burrito and 44-ounce drink from the truck, with permission from the deputy, officials said.

Some 50% of Biden supporters in the poll described their vote as being "against Donald Trump and his policies," compared to 38% who said they would be voting "to support Joe Biden and his policies."

Mali recaptures Kidal, Western-back jihadists BTFO: https://nitter.cz/african_stream/status/1724838694308151790

More context from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_War

Bruh