[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[Kaelik]

It is funny that they transparently wanted to settle Lebanon for Lebensraum and were basically writing about it in a hugely optimistic haze after successfully destroying and ethnically cleansing Northern Gaza, and then they encountered resistance and were like "what.... nooo! You can't fight back!"

Then because Assad died they got to just sweep a huge section of Syria uncontested for their new lebensraum and feel on top of the world again.

Who knows if they will be able to keep it or if the Syrians will be able to take it back, but Israel wants both to conquer huge chunks of every nearby country for greater Israel and also can't handle any armed opposition of any kind.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

There are many stupid things about American foreign policy period, and their middle east policy specifically.

The USA has long since adopted the former UK policy that no greater regional hegemon alliance/empire/nation should ever be able to rise again within the greater middle east... because they don't want to let neo-ottomans specifically into the old boys club? (They have real reasons stupider than that)

But if Greater Israel happens that IS a regional hegemon, a belligerent fascist regional hegemon that routinely defies the USA engages in endless wars of conquest and operates endless assassinations, terrorism, free holiday kompromat traps and worse internationally.

I struggle to imagine an alternate regional hegemon that could possibly have arisen if the USA had just not fucked shit up for half a century that could possibly be worse for the USA and everyone than Greater Israel.

Fortunately. Greater Israel is not a real sustainable project, just a typical fascist death drive.

[Stahlseele]

In german news:
A medical doctor from saudi arabia rammed a car into a crowd of people on a christmas market . .

[Kaelik]

Apparently because he's mad about how germany is letting in too many muslims, but also, he personally smuggles apostates from KSA.

Truly no one is more german then this man.

[Stahlseele]

A prime Example of cultural Assimilation and Integration.

[Kaelik]

Thank god based leftist Kier Starmer is finally solving all the problems in the UK by...... privatizing the NHS.

Anyway, remember it's always good to elect centrists to lead the left party and it's always bad to elect leftists to lead the left party because only centrists know how to get things done*







*bad right wing things.

[Stahlseele]

Could somebody please reign in your orange moron?
Wanting to annex the Panama Canal, Canadia and Greenland is not going to fly with the rest of the world.

[Thaluikhain]

Canada and Greenland, maybe not. But 35 years ago today, the US did set a precedent for invading Panama. Admittedly, there was something of a better justification than Trump saying he'll do so just because (terrible pun intended).

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

You forgot invading Mexico.

I say try it, bring the empire to an end with some real mask off comic book villain nonsense.

[Stahlseele]

Right, yes, i actually did forget about Mexico.

[Koumei]

So, Labor/Albanese have retained the World Heavyweight Title won a second term. It's surprising just how solid a victory it was for them, I really thought it would be several days of counting every single vote to get barely over the line, or alternatively another hung parliament, but no, it looks like the Trump effect was just that big, so hey, we get to kick the can down the road for another four years!

That said, Peter Dutton lost his own seat. With any luck, he's gone and is no longer in contention, so when Labor drop the ball next time, maybe it won't be "the actual worst possible person I can think of and the biggest fascist available". Maybe just second worse. Or they'll simply accept one of the dangerous lunatics from "even more insane right wing that the LNP, helping to shift the window in their direction" and run Pauline Hanson.

[Thaluikhain]

Fingers crossed, but breath not hold, that with a big landslide Labor decides it can show some spine in getting things done and being actually on the left.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

maybe it won't be "the actual worst possible person I can think of and the biggest fascist available". Maybe just second worse. Or they'll simply accept one of the dangerous lunatics from "even more insane right wing that the LNP, helping to shift the window in their direction" and run Pauline Hanson.

The two choices are either...

Angus Tailor. The man who stands out in a party of people somehow immune to the consequences of their own known criminal actions as unusually immune to the consequences of his own endless very public very significant corruption scams with fronts he keeps calling things like "Jamland".

Or... an as yet only theoretical clone hybrid of Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler disguised only by the largest most powerful and technologically advanced cowboy hat to hit parliament in Australian history.

They are leaning towards Poldolph Hatler. But Podolphl Hatler will likely sensibly defect to the hunter fishers party to guarantee his victory. Then Poldolph Hatler will drive all non-albino Australians out of the cities and into the countryside and force us all to do hoon burn outs in oversized american SUVs with those useless wanker engine snorkels on them. Millions will die.

This IS what core conservative voters in Australia want. But they would prefer it to be more openly racist.

EDIT: For those not familiar, this is Angus Taylor's shadow cabinet leadership pitch https://youtu.be/vAiT5MXlitA?si=FlXmQCQFszTTB3HG

[Stahlseele]

Welp, India shot Missles at Pakistan.
And they threatened Nuclear Weapons.
We are getting there!

[deaddmwalking]

The strangest thing is how India expressly didn't target military sites. That doesn't sound as good as I think they thought it did.

[Koumei]

So I was mostly offline for a week due to a weird coincidence of internet outage where there were hardware problems that were partially the responsibility of the NBN to fix and partially the responsibility of the ISP to fix, so each one detected "Oh yeah, a problem with the other guy" and said "you need to talk to them". But during this time, Hollywood's biggest power couple apparently broke up.

No, not Trump and Musk, that'd be the other thread. I'm talking about the Liberal and Nationalist parties of Australia, the right-wing coalition!

The Liberals eventually settled on Sussan Ley for their new number one contender, and the fact that she probably is the best they have on offer is an indictment of them. Yes, Sussan, with an extra s. Not to appeal to Neo-Nazis by having "ss" there, sorry, not just for that reason, but because she believes in numerology and needed a six-letter name for luck. The best the party has on offer.

When I heard about the break-up, I assumed it was because the Nats said "Woah, a WOMAN? That's a bridge too far". Because seriously, the Nationals are just a collection of skin cancers given voting rights. But no, it's because they actually put some terrorist demands on front of the Liberals in order to maintain coalition status, because they think the right wing coalition has been *checks notes* "too woke", and not fighting enough of a culture war, and it made a great situation of "If you agree to these and stand by them, you'll never win seats in the cities again and never form government again. If you refuse and the coalition splits, neither one of you will ever have the numbers to form government again (and the Nats will absolutely shrink into a small rural cyst that loses the little relevance they had before)."

We ended up with former PM Malcolm Turnbull (old-school "some of my best friends own banks, actually" Liberal who only cares about the economics and making sure rich people stay rich, and any systematic inequalities that grind minorities down further are just an unfortunate side-effect) doing an interview. And when he was kicked out of his party, he really did hang his boots up and say "Fine, I don't have to worry about burning bridges", and has been highly entertaining in interviews because he just shits all over the LNP.
"Obviously it would be a mistake to cede to these demands, that's unprecedented in the coalition - the secret deal actually is only secret because of tradition, the real text of it is a completely boring document that just assigns positions and has no talk about policy. That isn't the place for any demands, especially when the next election is so far away and we don't know what the economy is like. If they agree to this, people will say - and you know it - people will say the tail is wagging the dog, that they surrendered and that they can't be trusted to stand up for anything."
"Would you say that?"
"No, I'm too polite."

So apparently they have more or less gotten back together with the Liberals stupidly deciding actually they will agree to the demands? That's the only thing funnier than Malcolm's interview, he should have left politics long ago (say, 20 years or so) to focus on comedy.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Also the Australian Football League caused the Tasmanian state government to collapse.

You might have missed that last week. What with the Tasmanian state government being such a small potato.

[Koumei]

...I completely missed that. Thank you, I need to read up on this.

[Dogbert]

Right, yes, i actually did forget about Mexico.

Fortunately, seemingly Cheeto Mussolini did too! Either that, or our puppet of a president made use of the skills that secured her position as our dictator's puppet so the anti-cartel operations have been (so far) actual anti-cartel operations as opposed to the continued blitzkrieg many of us feared. Either way, the country is back to yellow alert as opposed to the red alert we were at 2 weeks ago.

[tussock]

NZ govt just released its new draft "scientific" school curriculum. To replace the previous one written by teachers, this will be scientifically generated by politicians, you see.

They seem to have plugged some words into an LLM and it's generated a rather colossal number of "facts", which NZ schools are now to teach to children.

So, when you're five, you can learn how the medieval European biological sciences were held back by using an ancient Greek philosopher's take on it all for a thousand years, and regurgitate that idiot Greek bloke's name, and his book's name, and it's publishing year, as if it was a good thing. When you're nine you can learn about how important spear formations are in warfare, by examining various ancient Greek battles, being able to name and date all those battles is obviously very important to nine year olds on the far side of the planet in this day and age.

In case you're wondering, the order of teaching things to kids is often based on when it happened in time, rather than, like, the relevance to children that age it might hold, or having basic facts presented as a useful step on the path of learning. It really looks like a complete clusterfuck and not one of the politicians involved seems to have noticed at all.

Oh, right, I guess the LLM used Texas school books, because of course it did. Texas loves ancient Greece because they had slaves too.

--

Also, some of our major cities can no longer treat sewage, but hey, that was done so Māori wouldn't get a say in how we treat sewage. So racism trumps, like, you know, we are a colony of the British Empire, and we're acting like it, eating shit just to deny rights to the natives.