Geopolitics

Cross posted from https://news.abolish.capital/post/76599

The University of Michigan’s proposed computing facility in Ypsilanti Township is the next step in high-powered computing and nuclear weapons research for Los Alamos National Laboratory. Nonproliferation experts say the research could also contribute to the development of new weapons. The $1.2 billion research center would be almost 300,000 square feet, with the lion’s share going to Los…

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Cross posted from https://news.abolish.capital/post/76663

The Cradle posted the following article on Aug. 29, 2026.  The Colonization & Wall Resistance Commission reveals that Israeli settlers and occupation forces were responsible for nearly 89% of all property fires targeting Palestinian homes, buildings and vehicles in the occupied West Bank since January 2023. Credit: Colonization & Wall . . .

Continue reading Since 2023, Israelis were responsible for nearly all fires in occupied West Bank  at Workers.org

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Hakeem Jeffries throws his second in command under the bus after backlash for letting his caucus members vote to help the Republicans… again. So let’s talk about the agenda for the House Democrats: how there really isn’t one, and why nothing is likely to get better. A lot of you aren’t gonna wanna hear this, but too many of you are too comfortable making excuses for the party’s fecklessness. The fact is, they have no incentive to change because they know you won’t hold them accountable.

So the rotating villain is when the democratic party doesn’t want to pass a bill, but they also don’t want their base to be mad at them. So they find a way to pretend they want to pass it, knowing someone else will block it. Then that person takes all the blame and they can con their voters into thinking the democratic party really wanted to pass it.

Recently this came up with the government shutdown. In the senate, the democrats got a lot of senators who aren’t up for reelection or who won’t run until 2028 or later to vote to end the shutdown, knowing that voters will have forgotten by 2028. It lets all the other democratic politicians avoid accountability despite them actually supporting ending the shutdown.

Sinema and Manchin under Biden did this too. I think the build back better act was an example of this. Manchin and Sinema were opposed to it, and all the heat got directed at them and not at all the other democrats who pretended to support it, but secretly knew it wouldn’t pass so they didn’t have to face the wrath of their voters at home.

Or the ACA with Joe Lieberman. Lieberman blocked the public option. The public option can be passed at any time with reconciliation and 50 votes in the senate, but Lieberman took the blame because the democrats had no interest in a public option.

But sometimes the ‘rotating villian’ isn’t a democrat, its a republican who they know will block it.

Like in 2007 when democrats controlled congress and George W Bush was president. The democrats had no problem passing the employee free choice act through congress since they knew Bush would veto it. THe EFCA made it easier to join a union. However in 2009/2010 when democrats expanded their congressional majorities and Obama had the presidency, the democrats couldn’t pass the EFCA anymore. In fact several democratic senators who voted for the EFCA when they knew Bush would veto it said they wouldn’t vote to pass it again when Obama was president.

Or single payer healthcare in California. When democrats controlled congress and Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, the democratic congress could pass single payer on the state level since they knew the republican governor would veto it. But now that the democrats have a much larger majority in the CA state legislature and a democratic governor, they can’t pass single payer health care anymore.

https://boards.straightdope.com/t/examples-of-the-rotating-villain-tactic-that-the-democratic-party-uses-to-avoid-passing-bills/1027061

Cross posted from https://lemmy.ca/post/70157679

There was more and less going on, than meets the eye. https://billhulet.substack.com/p/trump-is-flooding-the-zone

Heightened security measures as US sailors and Marines arrive in Pattaya

Pattaya police are stepping up prostitution patrols as around 5,000 US sailors and Marines prepare to visit the Thai resort city after a long deployment at sea. The USS Abraham Lincoln and two other US Navy vessels are due to dock at Laem Chabang Port, near Pattaya, from 2 to 6 September. The stop will give crews time to rest after spending more than 200 days without a full port visit.

Cross posted from https://lemmy.zip/post/70766030

A US Postal Service whistleblower has warned that a new ballot-processing system ordered by President Donald Trump and due to launch Tuesday could prevent millions of Americans from receiving mail ballots ahead of November's midterm elections.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260902-us-postal-service-whistleblower-warns-new-system-could-disrupt-midterm-election-voting

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Of course, the United States did not start the Vietnam War to break the gold standard. The causal connection was this: the war worsened deficits, increased inflationary pressures, and made Bretton Woods unsustainable. Washington understood the connection but allowed the war to continue. When the system broke down, it used the crisis to build a more flexible dollar-based monetary regime under its own control.

However, Washington was not content merely protecting its gold reserves. In a 1974 meeting with Henry Kissinger, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders declared that a stronger role for gold would benefit Europe, which held a larger share of the world’s gold reserves. The United States instead wanted to shift the system to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Special Drawing Rights, an international reserve asset created by the fund. The discussion reveals a struggle over geopolitical power, not simply a technical currency reform.

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Anthropologist David Graeber has shown how pointless bureaucracy disrupts operations, while neuroscience journalist David Rock has explained how constant pressure and hierarchies impair focus, judgment, cooperation, and problem solving. More intense work can therefore reduce real efficiency and at the same time discipline employees. The cult of ever-harder work served an economic function even as it failed to produce more.

Critics of Keynesianism turned stagflation into an ideological weapon. The combination of war, oil scarcity, and currency turbulence became evidence that the welfare state had failed. Instead of adapting Keynesian policies pragmatically to changed circumstances, low inflation became the overriding objective, rendering full employment and rising wages “impossible.”

Cross posted from https://thelemmy.club/post/55185641

In this segment Reportage author James Corbett argues that the U.S. military’s difficulties in the Iran conflict could embolden China and Russia to pursue their own strategic objectives, potentially creating simultaneous crises involving Taiwan and Ukraine. He emphasizes that the U.S. remains dependent on China for manufacturing and rare-earth minerals, arguing that decades of offshoring have weakened America’s ability to sustain a major war against China.

He invokes the “Thucydides Trap” and suggests that America’s perceived military dominance may increasingly be exposed as “bluster” if it cannot effectively project power against major rivals. He and Jimmy conclude the segment by discussing the U.S. “One China” policy and the strategic ambiguity surrounding Taiwan, portraying the diplomatic situation as a decades-long geopolitical balancing act.

Portugal formally recognised the Palestinian State today. The announcement was made by the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs Paulo Rangel in a statement at Portugal’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York.

"Today, the 21st off September 2025, the Portuguese State officially recognises the Palestinian State", claimed the Head of Diplomacy, asking for an immediate cease-fire, the release of hostages, and the re-instatement of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Paulo Rangel stressed that this decision does not erase the ongoing humanitarian crisis, rather intends to contribute to the two-state solution. He also reiterated Israel’s right to existence and their security needs, as well as the condemnation of the terrorist attacks of 7 October and Hamas.

The Minister noted that the choice of venue to make the announcement symbolises the UN’s central role as the single path to achieve a just and long-lasting peace. He also recalled that the decision was taken following institutional consultations, confirming the convergence between the President of the Republic and the vast majority of the parties in Parliament.

Portugal thereby joins other Western nations, among which are the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, and becomes the 13th European Union Member State to formally recognise Palestine.

Last week, Israel carried out a raid targeting the runway of Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase, a largely inactive facility with no flights taking place. The strikes did not appear to achieve any significant military objective, beyond causing minor damage.

The significance of the Israeli attack at this particular time and place, however, stems from several intertwined factors.

The base is located in Idlib, around 70 kilometres from the Turkish border, and Israeli officials explicitly framed the attack as a message to Turkey. Ankara could easily have assumed the Israeli jets were targeting its territory, and activated defensive measures.

Cross posted from https://mander.xyz/post/57244002

On the night of August 17, Nadia Shirley Beller Delgado, 33-year-old lawyer and activist, was waiting alone outside a hotel in the Canal Isuto neighbourhood of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Two men approached her disguised as delivery drivers and shot her three times from point-blank range.

Beller, who is four weeks pregnant, threw herself to the floor, pretended to be dead, and miraculously survived. She was rushed to hospital where she underwent major surgery. Days later, from her hospital bed, she accused her Argentine ex-boyfriend of ordering the hit to silence her.

Beller’s ex-boyfriend is Fernando Cerimedo, the co-owner of La Derecha Diario (“The Right-Wing Daily”), one of the main digital disseminators of far-right ideas in Latin America and Spain. He is also former advisor to Argentine President Javier Milei and current advisor to various political leaders in the region, including Bolivia’s President Rodrigo Paz. The Economist has called him “MAGA’s man in LatAm” for helping to forge “close ties” to the Trump’s right-wing movement

Across a stretch of Africa running from northern Mali to the Red Sea, informal gold trading networks have become one of the most durable sources of financing for armed conflict on the continent. The traders, brokers and cross-border trading networks that actually move the metal rarely appear in headlines about any single war, yet they are often the reason a war can keep paying for itself. Artisanal gold requires no factory, no fixed infrastructure and no single point of control. It can be dug by hand, carried in a pocket, and sold to whichever buyer is closest, qualities that have let a loosely organized, largely informal trade route grow from the Sahel through Chad and Sudan toward the Red Sea coast.

What makes this network worth watching closely is not any single armed group’s ambition but the informality of the system itself. Militants, paramilitaries and militias tax, extort or occasionally seize gold-producing areas, but the trade that actually carries the metal across borders runs largely through artisanal miners, small traders and long-established cross-border trading networks that predate most of today’s conflicts and will likely outlast them. That structure is what lets the trade stretch into new territory almost as soon as conditions allow it a fresh conflict, a newly porous border, a shift in security presence.

Djibouti’s public communications regarding the security of the Bab el Mandeb strait is an inflection point in the Horn of Africa. Djibouti as the strait’s most exposed guardian and the explicit call for a standing security framework that includes global and maritime powers and the major users of the route is a rare and deliberate act of communication. This appeal is a formal acknowledgment of structural limitations in Djibouti’s capacity to secure the Bab el Mandeb unilaterally. The timing of this appeal with recent escalations in Red Sea tensions including attacks on commercial shipping, the resurgence of piracy threats, vulnerabilities in the undersea cable network and the parallel with Hormuz disruptions have collectively created an environment where the existing security is insufficient. The warning that a catastrophe at Bab el Mandeb could exceed the consequences of a Hormuz disruption reflects an assessment of present and escalating risk rather than diplomatic hyperbole.

The Djibouti and Ethiopia relationship operates within a framework of structural asymmetry. Ethiopia’s external trade flows almost entirely through Djibouti’s ports creating a dependency that is existential rather than just economic. A sustained disruption at Bab el Mandeb would trigger cascading failures across Ethiopia’s import dependent sectors leading to foreign exchange collapse and political instability. Djibouti’s economic model is fundamentally dependent on Ethiopian cargo volumes. This creates a condition of mutual hostage taking where neither party can afford the collapse of the existing arrangement however the distribution of vulnerability is not symmetrical. Ethiopia bears the existential risk while Djibouti bears the operational risk.

Keep your eye on this, both the Bab-El-Mandeb Strait and the growing use of drones not only to attempt to enforce or break a blockade... but to attempt to run the blockade as unmanned cargo vessels themselves.

There is an abundant amount of public information on long range cargo unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). In particular the US Orcas is of note.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_(AUV)

The basic Orca design shares a 51 feet (16 m) length with Echo Voyager, but the Orca will incorporate a more modular construction, primarily for the capability to be built with an additional payload module of up to 34 feet (10 m) long and a capacity of 8 tonnes (8,000 kg) for a total length of 85 feet (26 m).[3][6]

It is reasonable to expect that at least one major naval power in the world right now is demonstrating the ability to run blockades with logistics using UUVs and/or USVs. It likely isn't cost efficient yet, it likely will never be more cost efficient than a big old boat... but it is entirely possible right now and there is every incentive to do it. The only question is the specifics of capability build out among the major naval powers of large unmanned cargo UUVs and USVs, which isn't something that is public information beyond broad brush strokes so all we can do is speculate broadly.

My reasoning? What has happened to logistics in the land war in Ukraine? UGVs have proliferated in dangerous logistical situations, and for good reason, it is the perfect job for robots to tackle... so the next obvious question on everybody who is in positions of power to influence this kind of stuff has to be... what is the naval equivalent?

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2026/08/u-s-navy-looks-to-carrier-basing-submarine-replenishment-missions-for-uuvs/

https://www.bairdmaritime.com/security/naval/unmanned-naval-systems/vessel-review-hadalus-unmanned-submarine-optimised-for-low-cost-operation-and-scalable-manufacture

also see https://gcaptain.com/cargo-ship-destroyed-in-new-attack-off-yemen/

https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/security/unmanned-cargo-ship-destroyed-off-yemen

The U.S. continues its pivot AWAY from Asia, as the last U.S. aircraft carrier has left the Pacific, on its way to the Middle East, and as President Trump announced plans to “substantially reduce” U.S. involvement in joint military exercises with South Korea.

Carl Zha, a geopolitical analyst and Host of the Silk & Steel Podcast, noted that the U.S. war on Iran has exposed the myth that the U.S. would protect its vassal states around the world, and it has also reminded the world why China has reshaped its energy strategy with a focus on renewable, electric vehicles, building up its strategic petroleum reserves, etc.

China was prepared for this day to come, and it will survive this war. We can’t say the same for the U.S.