darkcalling

https://www.rt.com/news/605764-us-media-trust-drops/

Only 31% of Americans say they have confidence that the press reports news fairly and accurately

For the third consecutive year, the number of Americans who claim to completely distrust the media remained higher than those who trust it. The new poll, however, demonstrated a slight drop, with 36% of respondents expressing complete distrust versus 39% in 2023.

A large gap remains between Republicans and Democrats, with only 12% of the former expressing trust in media reporting against 54% of the latter. However, the partisan gap has actually been narrowing in the last couple of years. According to data aggregated by Gallup, in 2022, for instance, some 70% of Democrats expressed confidence in the media.

We must continue our efforts to educate the masses, increasing numbers of Democrats are becoming aware of the propaganda because of the water carrying for the zionist genocide of the Palestinian people.

The billionaire distributed the money to “fascists” through opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan leader has claimed

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused tech tycoon Elon Musk of “investing” at least $1 billion in inciting violence in the South American country after the presidential election earlier this year.

Maduro was declared the winner of the July 28 poll by the national election authorities, though the US claimed that victory had been stolen from opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez.

During his weekly television program on Monday, Maduro alleged to have direct knowledge that Musk – with whom he has been engaged in a long-running public feud – had spent “no less than $1 billion” on “the coup d’etat, the fascist outbreak, the violence against the electoral process in Venezuela.”

The Venezuelan leader named his political opponent, businesswoman Maria Corina Machado, as the distributor of the alleged funding to “fascist” groups, claiming that the US government was ultimately behind attempts to oust him from power.

Following the vote in July, Musk accused Maduro of “major election fraud,” while the Venezuelan president declared the South African-born billionaire his “arch enemy” who “controls the virtual reality” created by social media. The two agreed to settle their differences in a fistfight, which never happened.

Musk has previously expressed support for removing foreign governments in pursuit of his corporate interests. In July 2020, he was challenged online with a claim that Washington had orchestrated a coup against Bolivian President Evo Morales so that his electric car company, Tesla, could secure access to the country’s rich lithium reserves. Musk responded with a post: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

Nicaragua has formally severed diplomatic relations with Israel, accusing it of “genocide” and military aggression in the Palestinian territories.

According to a resolution passed by the National Assembly on Friday, the break in relations is a response to the “brutal genocide that the fascist and war criminal government of Israel continues to commit against the Palestinian people.”

President Daniel Ortega has instructed the Foreign Ministry to “abide” by parliament’s request and cut diplomatic relations with Israel, according to Vice President Rosario Murillo.

“We respect the Israeli people who demand the cessation of this massacre, barbarism, and crimes committed by the nefarious Zionist government and army,” the Nicaraguan parliamentary resolution said, calling the Israeli government “an enemy of humanity, which intends to spread its barbarism throughout the Middle East, endangering world peace and security.”

(archive link)

The WHO has recently declared Smartphones a public health problem.

It's interesting that the real problem here seems to be addictive and abusive algorithms deployed by social media and gaming companies but that's not mentioned because those are where the capitalists make their money and it's forbidden to interfere with their profit generation or point that out.

Instead they paint it as this vague addiction of which social media is depicted as merely a small part but the real problem is the hardware, the Smartphones and too much use and access to them. And the real issue is people are distracted at work (and school) and productivity is suffering.

And the solution is bans on use of smartphones at schools and crackdowns on use at work because we can't have the proles enjoying the addictive treats we've made to distract them from their horrible lives while they're supposed to be earning us money, those are for while they're taking 2 hours in their commute to get to work or for while they're at home too exhausted to cook or get up off the couch.

Just an interesting observation I had. I will be the opposite of shocked when they try and make smartphone lockers at work a thing or implement AI in cameras that detects smartphone usage outside of breaks and applies penalties.

Filed under: Decoupling is real and happening AND India is not really a friend to the global south but happy to join with the US to backstab China for some very limited gain of its own

New Delhi and Washington are seeking to reduce their dependence on China, which dominates the lithium supply chain

India and the US have signed an agreement to “expand and diversify” critical supply chains for lithium, cobalt and other critical minerals, New Delhi announced on Friday.

Both countries are seeking to overcome their reliance on China, which dominates the global supply of lithium, a mineral essential for electric vehicle manufacture and the clean energy economy.

The pact, signed on Thursday by Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, who is visiting Washington this week, and his US counterpart Gina Raimondo, will “leverage complementary strengths to ensure greater resilience in the critical minerals sector.”

The two countries are focusing on “identifying equipment, services, policies, and best practices” to explore, extract, process, and refine critical minerals.”

According to Reuters, Goyal described the partnership as multi-dimensional, encompassing open supply chains for materials, technology development, and investment flows to promote green energy. He noted that the US and India will need to engage with third countries, including mineral-rich nations in Africa and South America.

India has been exploring ways to boost lithium production, both domestically and in third countries. New Delhi is particularly looking to Africa to meet its mineral demands, especially Zambia, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, and Mozambique. Several African nations have approached the Indian government, offering access to their resources in exchange for repayment of part of their development loans.

[...]

China currently controls nearly 70% of the global lithium supply, and larger shares of cobalt, graphite, and manganese – other minerals vital for green technology. India recently discovered lithium reserves in Jharkhand, Rajasthan, and Jammu and Kashmir, but does not yet produce lithium domestically, relying entirely on imports.

This comes off the back of the EU signaling it has the votes and has agreed to implement tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in the bloc. China's electric vehicle makers are doomed to be excluded from the core west (population 750 million - 1 billion depending on if all countries eventually are pulled in or just EU+US) and confined to China and limited sales in various developed and semi-developed regions in the global.

(Archive link)

Not surprising from the company that had a rampant culture of sexual abuse and harassment, drunken "cube crawls", a "cosby suite" at their annual convention, protected sexual abusers for years and hired a former Bush administration torture apologist lawyer to defend them in a PR and legal campaign that ultimately led to them beating any legal consequences on technicalities.

Waze is owned by Google but was founded by people linked to the infamous isn'treali intelligence unit 8200 and is still developed in occupied Palestine by settlers.

Google as has been previously reported is on its own deeply in bed with the zionist intelligence and repression apparatus and its occupation military.

In this case they're licensed one of their key characters from their World of Warcraft franchise as a voice assistant in the navigation app as we near the 1-year-anniversary of the completely legal action by the resistance on Oct 7th to use violence to resist. As well as the 1 year anniversary of the start of a genocide against the Palestinian people and outsized aggression against sovereign states in violation of international law and acts against civilians outside of Palestine which violate international law.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/new-waze-world-of-warcraft-voice-pack-let-thrall-guide-your-path-to-work-347160

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20775855

Israel conducted an unprecedented airstrike on Beirut’s southern Dahiya district on Friday evening in what Israeli media described as an attempt to assassinate Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hasan Nasrallah.

The strike targeted and leveled six residential buildings. The Israeli army’s spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, released a video statement shortly after the strike claiming that the buildings contained Hezbollah’s “Central Headquarters.” Lebanese media reported that over 10 Israeli missiles were dropped in less than three minutes on the complex, situated in the Haret Hreik area in Dahiya. The Israeli army’s radio said that Israeli F-35 fighter jets dropped 2000-pound bunker-buster bombs on the residential buildings.

Lebanese first responders continue rescue efforts to pull out survivors from under the rubble. As of the time of writing, the number of civilians killed has not been specified.

The Israeli army’s radio quoted a military source saying that any person who was present in the targeted buildings “will not come out alive.” The Lebanese Health Minister, Firas al-Abyad, said that some of the buildings targeted were “full of civilian residents.”

The video-sharing platform TikTok has deleted three Arabic-language accounts of RT, without explanation. The measure comes as the Israel-Hezbollah conflict has spurred fears of a regional escalation.

RT Arabic, RT Online and RT Newsroom accounts vanished on Tuesday evening. The Spanish-language Actualidad RT account has also been blocked without explanation.

They had survived last Saturday’s purge of accounts belonging to RT International, Sputnik Afrique, Sputnik Africa, Sputnik International, Sputnik Brasil, Sputnik Mundo, Sputnik Indonesia and Sputnik Serbia. TikTok has not yet commented on the latest development.

[...]

TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, which has come under intense pressure from US authorities in recent months. Under a law enacted in April, the social network could be banned if ByteDance does not sell it to a US owner within a year.

I don't get this. Why give in to pressure from the US when they've already passed a law to kick you out?

It's not like currying favor with a ban coming from an executive branch organization that can be reversed with the stroke of one person's pen, this is not something that will be reversed because it can be trivially blocked in congress.

This is not good.

I know Bytedance /=/ China or the CPC but this is exactly why the US wants control of Tiktok in the first place, to control global narratives, to ban who they want, to alter algorithms to push US state dept propaganda, this is just a few steps short of that.

And they're functionally giving it to them by going through with these bans which would seem to impact users outside the US. So at this rate they might as well sell to the US. At this rate I hope they do get forcibly shut down and removed from the US so they have no reason at all to do this kind of censorship. (I mean ideally I'd prefer they win at the SCOTUS and get to continue operating and give the US the finger on censoring global operations).

At the very least they should split operations off and make the US/NATO operations one distinct legal entity, then another entity that operates outside those regions that the west have no plausible control over which wouldn't have any reason to ban these non-western counter-narrative sources.

Italian and Czech customers of Indian ammunition makers were diverting their shipments to the government Kiev, and Moscow has protested this to New Delhi at least twice.

The article is strangely written, it's a non-denial-denial on the part of India, they're acting offended but saying they've broken no agreements with Russia and didn't do anything wrong but they're not denying that they're shipping the Ukrainians shells.

The Reuters article in question via archive

https://www.rt.com/russia/603929-ukraine-concentration-camps-kursk/

Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk Region have rounded up local civilians and placed them in “something like concentration camps,” RIA Novosti reported on Thursday, citing a Russian Foreign Ministry report.

When Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into Kursk Region last month, thousands of civilians were evacuated or themselves fled deeper into the Russian heartland. Some however, including elderly people and those with disabilities, were unable to leave, and their settlements fell under Ukrainian control.

According to a new report seen by RIA Novosti, those left behind were subjected to detention methods synonymous with World War II.

“In a number of territories controlled by militants, something like ‘concentration camps’ were created, which civilians who did not want or were unable to leave the territory captured by the enemy were forcibly driven into,” the report said, according to RIA Novosti. These claims were based on eyewitness accounts collected by the Russian Red Cross in Kursk.

Of those detained, between 70 and 100 were taken to a school in Sudzha, where some of the fiercest fighting took place. Once there, they were subjected to psychological abuse and presented to foreign journalists, RIA Novosti claimed.

https://www.rt.com/news/603943-taiwan-beijing-navy-seal/

The US Navy’s elite special operations unit, SEAL Team Six, has been training to “help Taiwan” in case of a “Chinese invasion,” according to the Financial Times. The unit is most famous for the 2011 mission that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.

SEAL Team Six “has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach about 250km south-east of Washington,” FT reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

So far, the only hints of US plans for a potential conflict around Taiwan have come from Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, in an interview in June.

“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities so I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything,” Paparo told the Washington Post.

https://www.rt.com/business/603925-china-western-investment-drop/

Western firms pulling back from China

Declining economic growth and the rise of other manufacturing centers in Asia are slowing investment, lobby groups claim

China is gradually losing its appeal as an investment destination for Western companies, according to reports released this week by the EU Chamber of Commerce in China and the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

The two lobby groups conducted surveys among investors and owners of businesses in China. According to their findings, many respondents have been consolidating their operations in the country and no longer see the Chinese market as a primary investment destination.

An annual poll by the American Chamber of Commerce shows that the number of businesses considering China as their top investment destination has dropped to 47%, the lowest in 25 years. A survey by the EU chamber shows that only 15% of respondents named China as their top investment destination, while previously the figure stood at 20%.

“Some European Chamber members have begun both siloing their China supply chains and operations, and shifting investments previously planned for China to other markets to increase supply chain resilience, take advantage of comparatively lower labor costs and hedge against future geopolitical shocks,” the EU lobby group stated in its report.

Experts from both lobbies suggest that one of the main drivers behind the trend is the slump in China’s economic growth. According to official figures, China’s growth slowed to the worst pace in five quarters in April-June this year, at 4.7%. Other factors are intensifying competition from local companies and the appearance of alternative manufacturing centers in Asia.

For instance, around 20% of the businesses surveyed by the US business lobby said they would be slashing investment in China this year, while 40% stated they would be redirecting it to countries such as India and Vietnam.

Many of those surveyed said China’s trade tensions with the US were also affecting investor confidence. Washington has been tightening economic restrictions and hiking tariffs on Chinese goods since 2018, when then-President Donald Trump launched a trade war with Beijing. Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, has taken a similarly hostile approach, despite Beijing’s repeated warnings that these measures violate the principles of fair trade. Around 70% of respondents in the survey by the American chamber called US measures targeting China the greatest challenge to the country’s economic growth.

Another westerner in China admits the west is full of lies on Xizang and that the people there and their culture, language, etc are flourishing.

Here are some bits I found personally a bit interesting:

They call me a liar because I was with the government and only saw what the government wanted me to see. But the government didn't stop me looking out the bus window, nor did they stop me going for long walks into downtown Lhasa, or downtown Linzhi. They didn't stop me interacting, and even dancing, with thousands of people in a village fair in Maizhokunggar.

Oppression exists in many places, I've seen it, and I even helped deliver it as a police officer in the UK, fighting miners who wanted a better life, fighting colored migrants who wanted equality, fighting white supremacists who want their country back. I was one of Margaret Thatcher's thin blue line, keeping "ordinary" people safe from those that in today's world would labeled extremists.

I know what oppression looks like and here's the thing, after extensive travel in China, I've never seen it anywhere. I didn't see it in Xinjiang and I certainly didn't see it in Xizang.

I saw kids who speak, read and write their local language. I saw adults dressed in their local styles. I saw ordinary people shopping, visiting temples and serving food in the streets and in restaurants.

I have some thoughts on this I'll post as a comment. But basically the predictions of their re-shoring being a total bust were nonsense. It doesn't matter at the end of the day if their efficiency is only 80% of that of their fabs on the island, if it's enough to be part of what supplies the entire west with all they need for laptops and smartphones and gaming consoles then it's enough to no longer need that occupied part of China or care what their actions taken against China result in as far as consequences.