Did YOU want to watch CCTV's AI Martial Arts cartoon about the Straits of Hormuz crisis? Complete with fighting Persian Cats? Well I subtitled it for you so you can enjoy it in all its trope-laden glory! Remember kids, the mountains will stay standing while the green water flows, and the true art of war is not figuring out how to fight, but how to stop!🥷😼🦅

The world's two rogue states, Israel and the USA, have started a war not against Iran but against the whole world. We stand with Iranians, with Humanity, against the notion that Israel and the US can bomb anyone their fancy takes them to bomb. aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/…

Western media is cooked

It is always funny to me when Americans say "China is a surveillance state" as if Silicon Valley does not exist. As if American tech does not track every click, every movement, every purchase. As if Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Palantir, and the NSA are just doing charity work. You talk about China like it invented the panopticon. Meanwhile your own phone is a corporate ankle monitor with a payment app. China uses data to decide where to build subways, hospitals, and high-speed rail. America uses data to decide which ad to push when you are depressed at 3am. One wants to manage society. The other wants to monetize despair. You say "surveillance country" as if the United States did not build the architecture for global spying, then hand half of it to private companies and call it "innovation." Who invented PRISM? Who put listening posts in undersea cables? Who runs the app stores and payment rails that can delete your livelihood with one policy update? It was not Beijing. And this "mark of the beast" line is even more ironic. If anything on this planet looks like a prototype for "no one can buy or sell unless they obey," it is the Western sanctions and banking system. Who can freeze entire countries out of SWIFT? Who can seize reserves, block medicine, block food, block spare parts with a line in a Treasury document? Who tells 8 billion people, "If you trade with this nation we dislike, we will cut off your access to our financial altar"? That is a lot closer to the "beast" than a Chinese worker scanning a QR code to pay for noodles. China uses QR codes so people can function in daily life with a phone, even at the edges of the banking system. America uses credit scores so a working family can be punished for being poor. China builds social housing at scale. America builds private prisons at scale. But in the Western story, the danger is always somewhere else. China "might" oppress you one day. The system you live in is already doing it and calling it freedom. You look at a state that uses data and planning to keep 1.4 billion people fed, housed, and moving and say "authoritarian." You look at a system that uses data and debt to keep 350 million people anxious, medicated, and overworked and say "free market." You worry that China is "likely in favor of the mark of the beast." Meanwhile your own churches bless the same empire that bombs, sanctions, and starves, then swipe their tithes through the same banks that enforce the siege. The question is simple: Who is using technology to lift hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty, and who is using technology to sell fentanyl-level dopamine, election psyops, and targeted ads to people who cannot afford a dentist? Who is using control to keep trains running on time, and who is using control to keep bombs and financial chains on the rest of the world? China has cameras. America has cameras, data brokers, intelligence agencies, and a global kill list. So if you are going to invoke the "beast," at least have the courage to look at the one you are already feeding.

I’ve noticed a backlash against people who are said to be “glorifying” China. To be frank, I don’t see many people glorifying China. What I see is people pushing back — rightly — against Western imperial privilege. I’ll share a bit of my own journey to give some perspective. Over the last few years, as I've been researching, writing, and increasingly engaging in debates about China’s role in the global economy, I've noticed a striking pattern: demonising China is entirely acceptable. Accusations of technology theft, industrial overcapacity, and oppressive authoritarianism are hurled at China with little nuance or context. It is commonplace — almost taken for granted — to hold the view that China’s rise is dangerous. Having spent much of my career working on development issues in the Global South, the tone of these critiques feels familiar. They echo imperial privilege, neocolonial anxiety, and a deep unwillingness in the West to concede political or economic power to developing countries. China’s ascent is the first real test of whether the West can accept that a major developing nation is successfully pursuing sovereign development on its own terms. So far, the West is failing that test. So no — people like myself aren’t glorifying China. In the face of the West’s unapologetic demonisation of China, we’re simply trying to remind others that it isn’t a bad thing when a developing country actually develops.

RT @StarboySAR: Against all odds - 🇨🇳China's Space Exploration program 1994 - 2024🚀🛰️ 1994 - China applied to join the International Space…

The Muricans strike again.

The short answer is: yes, the cycle can break. But not in the way Hollywood trained us to expect. It will not be one great clash. It will not be Russia or China riding in as saviors. It will be something slower, uglier, more boring, and more irreversible. Let me break it into pieces. 1. No one is coming to "save" us. First, we have to kill the savior fantasy. Russia, China, Iran, the BRICS, whoever, they are not charities. They are states with their own interests, traumas, and limits. China does not want a direct war with the U.S. over Palestine or Lebanon. Russia does not want a direct war with NATO over Gaza. Iran does not want full-scale war that could tear it apart internally. They push at the edges: Energy deals. Arms to resistance movements. Diplomatic cover. De-dollarization. Infrastructure. They are trying to weaken the empire without triggering Armageddon. So if we are waiting for a clean "counter-empire" to knock Washington and Tel Aviv off the board in one move, we will wait forever. There is no "good empire" coming. There is only the possibility of a world where no single empire can do what the U.S. and Israel are doing now with total impunity. That is the real horizon. 2. What actually keeps this cycle going? U.S.-Israeli impunity rests on three pillars: 1. Material power Dollar system, SWIFT, control over shipping lanes, tech, patents, credit, sanctions, supply chains. 2. Military architecture Bases everywhere, forward deployments, nuclear umbrellas, missile defense, and the training and arming of regional client regimes. 3. Narrative control Western media, platforms, Hollywood, think tanks, NGOs, "experts" who turn massacres into "security dilemmas" and colonization into "conflict." You do not break the cycle with vibes or Twitter outrage. You break it by eroding these three pillars until the cost of empire is higher than the benefits. That is already happening. Slowly. 3. Where Russia, China, and others actually matter. They cannot topple the U.S. and Israel in one gesture. But they can, and already do, make the machine less absolute. A few examples of how, in principle: Economic exits: Every oil contract not denominated in dollars, every payment system that bypasses SWIFT, every port, rail link, and fiber cable that does not run through U.S.-controlled chokepoints makes sanctions weaker as a weapon. Arms and deterrence: When countries under siege can access air defenses, rockets, drones, and cheap asymmetric tools, occupation becomes expensive. That does not liberate the world. But it makes extermination harder and "easy wars" rarer. Institutional alternatives: Regional banks, courts, and security arrangements outside U.S. control mean that if Washington calls you a "terrorist" or freezes your assets, you still have somewhere to breathe. Symbolic breaks: When big states refuse to join sanctions, refuse to parrot Western narratives, and publicly call Gaza a genocide, the U.S. loses its favorite weapon: the illusion that it is "the international community." None of this is glamorous. It is not a cinematic liberation. It is the slow process of turning an empire from a god into a large, dangerous country that other large, dangerous countries can say no to. 4. What will not break the cycle: A single election in America. A new "deal" with Israel. A UN resolution. A heroic speech from a Western politician. These things can reduce suffering at the margins. They do not change the underlying hardware. As long as the dollar, the bases, and the narrative machine stay as they are, any "restraint" is a tactical pause, not a transformation. 5. Where we actually come in? The answer is uncomfortable: part of the work is theirs (states), and part of the work is ours (societies). States outside the empire’s core have to: Build deep South-South economic links so sanctions hurt less. Invest in real industrial capacity, not just exporting raw materials. Create media, universities, and cultural circuits that don’t beg Western approval. Coordinate politically so that when one is attacked, others cannot be quietly picked off or bribed away. Societies, including inside the U.S. and Europe, have to: Refuse the story that their "security" requires someone else’s open-air prison. Turn public opinion into a threat to empire, not a lubricant. Make it politically expensive to arm genocide and call it "self-defense." Keep historical memory alive so every new atrocity cannot be sold as an exception. The cycle of imperialism breaks when: The empire cannot pay for it as easily, Its soldiers no longer want to fight for it, Its own population no longer believes the script, And the rest of the world has enough alternative networks that saying "no" is survivable. We are not there yet. But the direction of travel is not what Washington thinks it is. 6. So is there "any chance"? Yes. The chance is not a miracle event. It is a curve. U.S. and Israeli power are still enormous. But the fear they generate now comes with a visible counter-current: Refusals. Boycotts. Leaks. Alternative alliances. Economic workarounds. New media ecosystems. Empires do not fall the day they become evil. They fall the day the cost of staying in character becomes higher than they can bear. Financially. Militarily. Psychologically. Our job is not to predict the exact moment. Our job is to push that curve. To starve their narratives of legitimacy. To support every real alternative that loosens their grip. To understand that "multipolarity" is not about loving Russia or China or anyone else, but about making it impossible for any one axis to do what the U.S. and Israel are doing now and still call it order. So no, my friend, I don’t believe in a clean rescue by some rival empire. I believe in a long, uneven, already-begun process where the ability to bomb, starve, and colonize with zero consequence shrinks year by year. That is how the cycle breaks. Not with a trumpet. But with a thousand cracks that one day suddenly look like a broken wall.

Lmao. The UK investigation into Grenfell took ages. And heads did not roll.

Loophole found for only 140k. Bargain no?

Mismanagement = get robbed by government. OK...

My wife always had this clever thing when our kids were young and fights would happen. Sometimes a kid would run crying to us saying "He hit me!" like they'd been attacked for no reason. My wife would always ask, "Ok, but happened right BEFORE that? Did you do something first? Like did you try to choke off his entire semiconductor industry by imposing worldwide trade restrictions on equipment and materials in an attempt to crash their economy and hold back their economic development?"

Yes.

This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings. Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would extend my life so I could return with my family and loved ones to our original town of occupied Asqalan (Al-Majdal). But Allah’s will came first, and His decree is final. I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification—so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half. I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls. I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland. I entrust you to take care of my family. I entrust you with my beloved daughter Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed. I entrust you with my dear son Salah, whom I had wished to support and accompany through life until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission. I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress and whose light guided my path. I pray that Allah grants her strength and rewards her on my behalf with the best of rewards. I also entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm Salah (Bayan), from whom the war separated me for many long days and months. Yet she remained faithful to our bond, steadfast as the trunk of an olive tree that does not bend—patient, trusting in Allah, and carrying the responsibility in my absence with all her strength and faith. I urge you to stand by them, to be their support after Allah Almighty. If I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. I testify before Allah that I am content with His decree, certain of meeting Him, and assured that what is with Allah is better and everlasting. O Allah, accept me among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family. Forgive me if I have fallen short, and pray for me with mercy, for I kept my promise and never changed or betrayed it. Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance. Anas Jamal Al-Sharif 06.04.2025 This is what our beloved Anas requested to be published upon his martyrdom.

Wisconsin is shite for food?

Yes if ya all start calling Bangkok by its full name. 😁

The incredible BBC is at it again. They are coping so hard China's emissions may be falling - here's what you should know - BBC News share.google/PVLAALXd9EowsA3…

Flying bananas. Some people shouldn't be out on the streets.

The UK that can't do jack shit against *boats but have rules like this they will try to enforce. 😂😂😂😂💀💀💀 theguardian.com/uk-news/2025…