news

These computer outages come a week after gay furry hacker group SiegedSec split up. Coincidence? You be the judge

The only sliver of hope I'm holding on to for actual COVID vs melty-brained president delay, is that the 90 min could be a delay from a rapid antigen + tabletop PCR. Because since COVID is over they really wouldn't want to announce presinaldal COVID unless they were quite sure.

At the same time though, there's been enough "COVID is over" "it's just a cold" propaganda that the average American probably really won't give a shit if it was COVID or if they just are faking to keep the sundowning from showing more.

After the selection of J.D. Vance as VP, the influential Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen-Horowitz (a.k.a. a16z) is all aboard the Trump Train.

Best scenario for working class people in the US is what the Europeans call a hung parliament with neither party able to effectively rule. People saying a landslide would be funny are just hoping for workers to be fucked. Let's hope nobody wins.

Kamala just finished a speech in North Carolina. She focused heavily on trump bad, project 2025 bad, me and Joe good. Lots of "remember to vote and fight in November" but not a lot of "vote for Joe".

There's this documentary by Al Jazeera about Stevan Labudovic, a Yugoslav partisan who was employed by Tito to be the camera man of Algerian guerillas during the independence war, important documentary especially right now because it touches propaganda of the colonizer.

Excited to see Althusser become a household name once the right wing press digs into Kamalas dad

Honestly, sort of impressive if Biden just martyred himself over the last three weeks, allowing the pressure to build such that his replacement would energize the party, denying the GOP the ability to pivot and attack Harris at their convention, eating all the ire of the Left on Gaza, leaving Bernie and AOC looking like fools and out in the cold. A doddering lib hero, who humiliated himself in service of his country and party, assuming he does step down, and Harris can pull it off.

I’m listening to one of the Trump kids talk. It’s as awful and toxic as you can imagine. Playing to every right wing cliche and stereotype. Anti everything, except Israel, which is “under siege.”

Also it’s weird that he says “sorry” like he’s Canadian.

So do the Dems wait until convention to decide on a new monarch?

Former Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou supports peaceful reunification, Lai Ching-teh's "Taiwan independence" idea is naive.

https://www.singtaousa.com/2024-07-13/%E9%A6%AC%E8%8B%B1%E4%B9%9D%E6%8C%87%E5%85%A9%E5%B2%B8%E5%8B%95%E6%AD%A6%E6%A6%82%E7%8E%87%E4%BD%8E-%E5%BD%A2%E5%AE%B9%E8%B3%B4%E6%B8%85%E5%BE%B7%E3%80%8C%E5%8F%B0%E7%8D%A8%E3%80%8D%E6%83%B3%E6%B3%95/4924479

Bernie and AOC convinced Biden to adopt progressive policy goals because they knew the DNC bigwigs wouldn't tolerate it and increase their pressure on Biden to step down.

a second senator has hit the Brandon

i hate how much genuine enthusiasm i've seen for kamala from a lot of gen zers today. everyone's coconut pilled and just happy the old white man's out. any criticisms are being ratio'd

my friends and mutuals who've criticized biden or even called him 'genocide joe' seem to already have some or a lot of false hope around her. are the days where young people could agree both candidates are unequivocally ass gone?

Like with trumps assassination attempt, I’m surprised at how many of my American friends didn’t even know Biden dropped out until I asked them about it.

Their responses were mostly an underwhelming, “did he really? Damn. Guess it’s his VP, right? What was her name again?”

One of them didn’t even know Kamala had been his VP for four years. These are all mostly working class people in various fields with only one who works as an accountant being the most knowledgeable about what was going on.

Interesting article in Canadian Dimension analyzing the UK Labour victory.

The argument presented is that the Labour win is the penultimate stage of British political collapse. After over a decade of Conservative dysfunction, Starmer has rode into power supported by most mainstream media. However, the party might be doomed:

Starmer’s “responsible” manifesto promised very little to working people, while showering generous subsidies, low taxes, lucrative contacts and permissive deregulation on big corporations and the rich, both British and foreign. Promises of increased social spending are predicated on growth that is unlikely if neoliberalism prevails, and such social spending as is undertaken will involve contracting services out to big corporations, as Wes Streeting, the new Health Secretary, has already indicated. The falsehood of both claims has been noted. What is less discussed is that together these falsehoods will prevent Starmer’s Labour from fulfilling its assigned mission and might even end the party.

... as the governments of major neoliberal financialized countries around the world—the US, France, Germany—are finding out, keeping control over state and society while implementing the neoliberal policies corporate capital, domestic and foreign, requires, is difficult, if not impossible. In Britain, with decades of neoliberalism topped with austerity, the disasters of Brexit and COVID, creaking public services administered by extortionate corporations, and the Rwanda deportation farce, the process is much further advanced.

With the Conservatives headed into disintegration or irrelevance, the incoming Labour government may prove the penultimate stage in the collapse of the UK political establishment. The brightness of its success in fashioning Starmer’s Labour into its instrument is the gaseous brilliance of the supernova, the efflorescence that precedes a star’s death. Once Starmer’s government and party start malfunctioning, as they must soon, the UK political establishment will lose its last instrument of social and political control, falling into an unprecedented and unpredictable crisis.

The article then talks about how, despite the political majority that Labour won, their actual majority is extremely fraught. Starmer's majority is less than in 1997 under Blair when the Conservatives were a more powerful force. Corbyn won 40% of the vote in 2019 with 69% turnout. Starmer won 34% of the vote this year with 60% turnout, which is almost the lowest turnout in the UK post-war period. In total, a mere 20% of Britain's voting-age population actually voted for Starmer, and an overwhelming majority of Labour voters said they only wanted to get the Conservatives out. What this indicates is that Britain is still very politically agitated and not at all unified or mollified under a Labour banner, and:

As it inevitably reneges on its few promises, the public as well as the left of the Labour Party, having lived through 45 years of neoliberalism and Labour and Conservative attempts to tart it up as somehow realizing the public interest, will only ever be a hair trigger away from protest. So, a Starmer government crisis will come sooner rather than later and, with the Tories likely to have wandered off into the farthest wilds of anti-immigrant populism, the British political establishment will be left without an instrument to control the state while keeping alive the appearance of electoral democracy. The resulting chaos could easily spin out of control unless the left organizes a political force to take control of the apparatus of the state.

The UK left is far from dead, though it is still reeling from the purges and is still largely unorganized on a national level. Corbyn won his seat as an independent and four other pro-Palestine MPs unseated Labour MPs. Others, including Galloway, were defeated but not by massive margins.

The left, however, faces 1920s-scale challenges. Then as now, it can’t just “build another party.” Courageous new left forces outside the Labour Party and those inside it are both necessary to a renewed left. Only their collaborative work can turn the imminent chaos of Starmer’s failure in favour of working people.

Joevid 24

Somewhere Joever the Rainbow

BEAKING: Netanyahu/Gallant Arrest Warrants

Germany submits amicus curiae observations to ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I with regard to the Prosecutor's application for arrest warrants for Israeli officials

Ein Fluch dem falschen Vaterlande, Wo nur gedeihen Schmach und Schande, Wo jede Blume früh geknickt, Wo Fäulnis und Moder die Würmer erquickt -

HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHHAA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAH

IM LAUGHING TO THE BANK

HAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

Even Obama is saying that Biden ain't built for this.

Trump said he’d like to run against Whitmer.

My initial assumption is he said that to get Dems to stay with Biden because he knows he’d beat Biden. But I don’t know if I should give him that much credit.

Emerson poll in Virginia

Head-to-head: Trump +2
With third party: Trump +5

It keeps getting more and more joever.

I don’t even want him to drop out, I want to laugh at the landslide.

Democrats tried to be so civil in regards to prosecuting Trump that they opened up the road to making all special counsels illegal.

Fellow amerikkkans, our long national nightmare is....Joever

I genuinely do not want biden to drop out. I want to see this removed suffer

Its happening!!! As soon as this weekend it could be joever

https://x.com/JimVandeHei/status/1813944827484254469

edit: also https://x.com/JakeWilkns/status/1813943745676730691

My time has come

If it is totally joever, do you break the news before, during, or after cheeto speech at the RNC tonight?

I think right before, so he doesn't have time to react, and news gets flustered during their coverage.

During would be an EXCEPTIONAL move, but I think the DNC wouldn't consider that playing fair.

Op-ed from Rep. Seth Moulton:

I saw [Biden] in a small group at Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day.... [H]e didn’t seem to recognize me.

In fairness to Biden, Moulton is an extremely generic looking white dude.

More Perfect Union has put together a pretty good roundup of billionaires known to be contributing to Donald Trump's campaign. Of the 67 names listed, the industrial breakdown is roughly as follows:

Finance: 16
Tech: 11
Real Estate: 9
Energy: 7
Entertainment: 5
Industrial supply / services: 4
Retail: 4
Shipping: 1
Agriculture: 1

This is a rough analysis, as the information in this article is brief, and these fuckers have their fingers in a lot of pies. A number of them are married / endowed into wealth and I wasn't consistent about counting them (i.e. does Uline count as 2 for industrial supply because Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein both made the list?) Would be interested to see a similar profile of Democratic megadonors, for comparison.

It is also worth noting these distinctions are pourus / arbitrary in a lot of cases. Especially between finance, tech, and real estate. A lot of "tech" companies are either finance companies (e.g. PayPal) or real estate companies (e.g. AirBNB) which manage to pass themselves off as smol bean code monkies because you interact with them using an app instead driving your car to a brick-and-mortar location.

Here's a bit of news that have been circulating around the football world like wildfire lately. But first things first CW: Racism and Transphobia.

Argentina won it's second consecutive Copa America trophy a few days ago, and during the post-match celebrations, midfielder Enzo Fernandez turned on an Instagram live stream to show them. Players and staff were chanting football songs during the celebrations, but at one moment someone began to chant an extremely racist and transphobic song that calls out the French national football team for having "all blacks coming from Angola" and makes transphobic remarks about french star player Kylian Mbappé because he once had (or still has) a trans girlfriend. Fernandez immediately turned off stream moments after this chant began. This chant does not originate from the national team circles but from a group of insanely racist fans who travelled to Qatar in 2022 for the World Cup and began to sing it.

This of course sparked controversy as French players began to call out the Argentinian national team for being racist with their chants. The French Football Federation issued a formal complaint, Chelsea (where Enzo Fernandez plays and where some of the french football players attacked are his own teammates) began an internal investigation and FIFA also spoke about it. Enzo Fernandez issued an apology and everything seemed to go down the natural route of "nothing will be done regarding racism" until stepped in.

Milei removes Sport Undersec who said Messi should apologize for racist chants

The Argentine presidency announced it on X, claiming that ‘no government can tell the national team or any other citizen what to say, think or do’

Argentine President Javier Milei fired Sports Undersecretariat Julio Garro on Wednesday following his comments urging Argentine men’s national football team captain Lionel Messi to apologize for the team’s racism incident.

I'm not entirely sure Messi is directly involved in this incident, I can't see him during the live stream from Fernandez. But since he's the captain and main icon of the team, the Secretary thought he should come out and apologize publicly. Which I don't think it's a terrible idea even though it never fixes the underlying issue of racism.

“[We] inform that no government can tell the World Cup and two-time Copa América winning national team or any other citizen what to say, think or do. For this reason, Julio Garro is no longer the Sports Undersecretariat,” confirmed the announcement on the President’s Office X account.

I love when ancaps present themselves as the ultimate freedom champions. People are without food right now, that is the government telling them what to do: starve.

Earlier that day, Garro told radio station Urbana Play that Albiceleste captain Lionel Messi should “offer the appropriate apologies” as the incident “leaves Argentina looking bad as a country.” On Tuesday, a clip went viral of Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernández’s live stream of the team’s bus celebrations following their 2024 Copa América win. Fernández and other players can be heard singing a chant which mocks French players for their African heritage. Fernández later apologized via Instagram, admitting there’s “no excuse for these words” and that he stands “against discrimination in all forms.”

An Interior Ministry spokesperson told the Herald he understood Garro’s comments were personal, rather than institutional, in nature. Garro later rejected the idea he had asked Messi to apologize on his X account. Garro’s position was rejected by President Javier Milei, who retweeted a post on X which claimed that asking for Messi to apologize for the chant went against the president’s ideology.

Garro said this and immediately went on twitter to say he didn't say it lmao. Also milei communicates government decisions by liking tweets from pro-government trolls, which make up an official but irregular spokesperson corps.

Vice President Victoria Villaruel also weighed in on the matter, claiming Argentina “never had colonies or second-class citizens” and “never imposed its way of life on anyone”, and that the government wouldn’t tolerate that being done to Argentina, in reference to the French Football Federation’s announcement that it would sue its Argentine counterpart.

I love the ancap's and fascist's fake ass nationalism. First yes, Argentina had colonies -- the entire Patagonia region was colonized by the Argentine State in the late 1800s. Second, we totally had and still have second-class citizens, the colonized subjects (also known as indios) who still live in reservation-like regions are absolutely second-class citizens. The underclass of Argentinian society, the extremely poor, are also second-class citizens. But at the same time, the government allows for the US to build a military base in it's own soil, allows for foreign companies to pillage Argentina's national resources for the sake of "investments" and continues to ask the IMF for more and more loans.

She went on to add that “Argentina was built on the sweat and courage of the Indians [sic], the Europeans, the Creoles and the Blacks” and issued her support for the national team. Upon the announcement, Garro thanked Milei on his X account and apologized for his comments, claiming that he had put forward his resignation.

This article doesn't mention the other part where milei and his VP weighed in: They said this football chant was "telling the truth" about France. Look, Enzo already apologized and we know that doesn't do anything but the guy is trying to step away from this on his own, then comes the fucking president and says "Yo, don't back down, racism is super cool actually". Insanity.

The song itself is awful, it just attacks black french players for being black and of african descent, even though all but very few of them were born IN FRANCE.. it's just racism for the sake of being racist. And only one player was born in Angola, Eduardo Camavinga, so they picked Angola as the target country just because racism. All it does is reinforces the french right wing narrative that France is a white society, that black french people or french arabs are not truly french and thus not welcome. Trying to pin this on french colonialism while attacking the COLONIZED SUBJECTS THEMSELVES is not the own they think it is, it makes it 100% worse.

I hate it. I hate this fucking boys mentality. Look, it's never women making comments like these, it's always men. ALWAYS.

Milei is set to travel to France soon for the innauguration ceremony of the Olympics in Paris. I hope he gets killed by a mob as he arrives tbh.