Image (source here) is of a section of the Yarlung Zangbo river, which forms the deepest canyon on the planet.
The idea of doing any sort of general preamble for China is a little absurd given how ubiquitous they are in economics and politics, so I’m just going to hop right in to a recent news item of interest: China is working on the construction of an enormous new hydropower project in Tibet (@Metabola@hexbear.net had brought this up just before the last news mega ended).
This project (consisting of, I believe, five dams) will be overall three times larger than the Three Gorges Dam, will cost $167 billion, and will supply 70 GW (by itself more power than several significant countries generate). There are, of course, meaningful concerns regarding concerning environmental damage, but helping to avert catastrophic climate change seems worth it. The news coming out of the clean energy sector of China has getting only more encouraging over the last few years, even as the fully neoliberalized Europe and America descend into climate skepticism and refuse to adequately fund projects that could avert the worst of climate change.
Geopolitically, given recent India-China tensions (for example, sending Pakistan the equipment to shoot down Indian jets, as well as run-of-the-mill border tensions) one expects India to not receive the news very well, as the river upon which the dam is being constructed proceeds to flow into Arunachal Pradesh. But from what I understand of the Indian hydrological situation (which is, admittedly, not much), I don’t think enough of the water in India comes from the river for China to hypothetically cause any kind of water shortages in India - the monsoons seem to supply plenty of freshwater all by themselves. Nonetheless, as with all Chinese news, wild fearmongering abounds.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
This isn’t exactly breaking news, but in the manufacturing world, European machine tool manufacturers are continuing to consolidate. We have two Charmilles sinker EDMs at work. At some point (maybe 20 years ago) Charmilles got bought out by Agie, which at some point got bought out by GF Machining Solutions, which got bought out last month (announced July 4th) by United Grinding to become United Machining Solutions.
Anecdotally, the only European machine tools which are left on this US shop floor which don’t fall under this umbrella are Citizens.
The last 4 US Air Force F-15Es have returned to the UK from Jordan, after being forward deployed there since October 2024. Photographs have emerged of them with similar nose art and kill markings as the previous aircraft.
An update to the count, previous post here. According to the markings, the squadron of 12x F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft:
- Shot down 153 one way attack drones using APKWS laser guided rockets (9 aircraft feature kill marks).
- Executed 74 electronic attacks, lightning bolt symbol (I’m guessing jamming the guidance systems of one way attack drones, same red colour as APKWS markings. )
- Launched 42 JASSM stealth high altitude subsonic cruise missiles. (11 aircraft feature kill marks).
- conducted 5 high value electronic attacks, possibly against incoming surface to air missiles or targeting radars tracking the aircraft, black lighting bolts. (2 aircraft) Given the presence of bombs in the nose art of both aircraft, and names not from horror movie characters, my best guess is “home in on jam” JDAM type bombs, homing in on the electromagnetic radiation from radars or other sources. Unique art on the landing gear cover is also present on one of the aircraft, I can read the phrase “shock’em” on one, suggesting some form of electronic warfare. I went through the original source (photographer’s social media) and found no other aircraft with artwork on the landing gear covers, only the air brakes for other planes.
- Dropped over 100 JDAM guided bombs. (Haven’t done an exact count)
While there are lots of possibilities about what the red and black lighting bolts represent, from jamming to MALD decoy missiles to CHAMP microwave warhead cruise missiles, it’s clear that these planes where heavily involved in shooting down one way attack drones, and launched dozens of JASSMs at targets, likely in Iran, Yemen, or both. And likely dropped hundreds of bombs on Yemen, or Somalia and Syria as part of “anti ISIS/ISIL” operations. The US has been constantly bombing Somalia this year.
About 10 hours ago Handala started streaming live CCTV footage from the ship so thousands have been literally keeping an eye on them.
you can follow along here, they are less than 2 hours from the location the madleen was abducted from https://www.youtube.com/live/A4hF5rA-v-Q
Edit: for those who dont know who Handala is, why the name is significant. he is representing a palestinian refugee, usually drawn with a key in his hand for return. but also with his back turned and tattered clothes symbolizing the palestinian struggle and how we’ve been forgotten by the world. Artist Naji Al Ali drew handala and it has become a symbll of resistance, my dad gave me a handala necklace when i was really young like 8 years old.
Oh, and mossad assassinated Naji Al-Ali because of the power of his pen
Been watching a The Mist show on netflix(produced by the Weinstein brothers, including good ol Harv) and I think it’s trying to do an anti-woke culture war thing:
spoilers for The Mist on netflix
Miss Carmordy the fundamentaist christian is killed off in the first episode and her evil cult leader in the book role is taken up by Mrs Raven: a new age hippy boomer who believes that the mist is mother nature and is in explicit conflict with a Christian priest
SA
A major plot point is that before the mist the (essentially) main characters daughter isremovedd at a party, you’re lead to believe it was the stereotypical football jock who did it, but it turns out out it’s her goth queer/Nbie friend is actually responsible
:::
Anyone else seen this? am I reading in too much?
Wrong mega
no
Katie Halper interviews John Mearshimer on “Israel”
I think the most important takeaway I see is the reminder of how from 1933 to 1941, the Nazis were basically roaming free in Europe. They had managed to annex Austria and Czechoslovakia, destroy Poland and Luxemburg, set up puppet regimes in France, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and start the labor camps.
It was only until they made the fatal mistake of invading the Soviet Union, that they ended up stopped and Hitler offed himself, after 27 million Soviet deaths, of course.
It’s a grim reminder that we are in it for the long haul. We are talking of 8 years of almost complete Nazi hegemony in the region and passiveness from the Western powers, as well as the strategic retreat of the USSR.
It’s also a reminder that expansionist fascist powers will never be satisfied. The Zionists might very well end up annexing Gaza and the West Bank, it will not satiate them. They will go for Lebanon and Syria next. When they are done, Jordan and Egypt are on the chopping block. Then Saudi Arabia. They might build the NaZionist empire from the Nile to the Euphrates and still might be hungry for more.
But it’s also a reminder that they WILL be stopped. All imperial expansionist projects eventually die. Greece, Rome, Spain, France, England, they all had imperial might, and later died. The US is in its death rattle. The idology of the cancer cell will kill its host eventually.
It’s painful to live in a time where we see in plain sight how colonization works. Especially from the colonized south. But it’s important to remember that history is written in years, if not decades. And we need to have a political project that thinks in that time frame, instead of the now and immediate.
Death to Israel, Death to America.
On that dam, interesting that the power generated is mostly for export:
It said the project would primarily deliver power for external consumption while also addressing local demand in Tibet.
I struggle with this idea a bit. Triple the capacity of three gorges is a huge amount of power. Is that all supposed to be sold to India? What kind of transmission capacity is there in the area? It seems way more likely that most of the power would be sent to china’s west.
Also, as for environmental impacts, I bet with 5 sequential dams that the water will get heated up as it goes through all the turbines. Would that actually matter? Idk but that’s a lot of electricity generated so also a lot of heat.
The below article has a bit more info about the style and structure of this system - its run of river and doesn’t involve big dams, so there would be pretty minimal impact on water flows. The article also notes that the vast majority of the water in downstream rivers in India comes from catchment in India, so water weaponization is not very possible
https://indianewengland.com/india-maintains-water-advantage-despite-chinas-brahmaputra-dam-push/
I bet with 5 sequential dams that the water will get heated up as it goes through all the turbines
The calculation for potential energy is m•g•h, mass times gravitational force times height. At a height of 1000m, 1kg of water has a potential energy of roughly 10kJ (1•9.8•1000). 1 kcal is the amount of energy to heat up 1kg of water 1°C, and it’s about 4000J. So, at best, dropping water 1km of height assuming 100% energy conversion to temperature, could heat it up by no more than 2.5°C (10.000/4000), so not that significant.
Regardless, the water in rivers flows downwards whether there’s a dam or not, so that potential energy is converted into some other form of energy (sound, heat, soil erosion…). Changing from a natural fall to a dam would actually reduce the amount of energy going to those things since a big chunk of the potential energy is converted into electrical energy instead of heat, sound or erosion of soil. That’s not a good thing per se, it’s just a thing.
This is a very simplistic analysis, akin to assuming that the river water is a perfect sphere in a vacuum. Energy dissipation rate in the bypassed reach vs the hydroelectric generator system, changes in the natural flow regime of the bypassed reach which in turn affects sunlight penetration, speed of flow, and depth and position of any pondage associated with the electric generation (which most run of river projects still have even if they’re smaller than reservoir dam hydroelectric) are important effects that are not considered in your envelope math.
Further, it’s easy to say “oh its just a couple degrees at most” but one, it usually isn’t because of the above factors, and two, fish and other aquatic life often take their lifecycle cues from temperature, among other things. I don’t know what exactly lives in the watershed in question, but the lifecycle of cold water fish like salmon and salmonoids can be affected by even a half degree C change or so.
I see, your original comment specifically said heating up because of a lot of electricity generation, so I ignored the other factors like sunlight absorption.
My intent wasn’t to say hydro doesn’t have an environmental impact, which it does as do all energy sources, just to say that heating due to the fall of water itself can safely be neglected in calculations because it’s falling either way, whether through hydro dam or river path.
Fair, I didn’t write my first comment very well. I was thinking of not just the act of generating electricity, but that generating a lot of electricity requires moving a lot of water, which increases the relative importance of all those other factors.
I wonder what environmental assessment and international engagement/consultation looks like on a project like this in China. I’m familiar with Canadian and American processes but not Chinese or Indian.
China has done some cool stuff with UHV power distribution, they will probably pipe it to major cities
Modern turbines are quite efficient if they have access to a stator. Even if there was no dam, quite a lot of the energy would have been converted to heat along the river path
Not news but thanks for the threads 72T!
As for the news, Ukraine and Russia continue to engage in long range strikes against each other, Russia with one way attack drones, accompanied by cruise missiles and ballistic missiles every few days, Ukraine with their one way attack drones. The target set for Russia remains unchanged over the past few weeks: airbases and their supporting infrastructure such as manufacturing/repair plants, to disrupt the operations of the Ukrainian Air Force. The Ukrainian one way attack drone attacks on Russia have intensified over the past few days, and the target set has changed: current targets are Russian railway infrastructure and supporting infrastructure, along with disrupting air traffic at airports in Moscow oblast, to disrupt Russian logistics. There have been multiple successful strikes at train stations and electrical substations that support the railway network in Russia, and a strike on a coal conveyor.
In the latest Russian attack, Ukraine has resorted to refusing to acknowledge the existence of missiles that successfully hit their targets, to claim a 100% missile intercept rate, with no mention of the Kh-69 missiles which hit targets. These stealthy terrain following cruise missiles continue to be a challenge to intercept. In the Ukrainian attack on Russia, Russia says that all damage to railway stations was done by debris.
Ukraine has introduced a new one way attack drone type in recent days, a canard equipped drone that looks like a combination of a Shaded 131 and IAI Harop. Production numbers of this new type will likely increase with foreign funding and support.
Russian production of the Geran 2/Shahed 136 drones is also increasing, and they are even being used to strike static targets on the frontlines now, in place of FPV drones. Russian TV channels did a documentary on the Geran factories, large sprawling complexes, with local production of all components, including engines, being visually confirmed.
How long before Ukraine just redefines “missile” as “something we shot down”. This way they can say they shoot down 100% of Russia’s missiles and by their own definition they would be correct
The Kh-69 situation is particularly embarrassing for Ukraine, because Ukrainian sappers were photographed, by the Ukrainian government who then posted the images to their public social media accounts, defusing the warheads of the Kh-69s that they did shoot down or malfunctioned. Reports by independent monitoring channels are 6 fired, 3 impacted (with a video of three large explosions in Kyiv), 3 intercepted or malfunctioned. Yet the Ukrainian Air Force hasn’t acknowledged that any Kh-69s were fired by Russia, yet alone intercepted or hit, while the Ukrainian civil government is posting pictures of the missile itself.
Article
The reasons Trump might have wanted to derail the negotiations — and what other surprises he might have in store
Trade talks are reportedly continuing between Canada and the U.S., with formal meetings having taken place since U.S. President Donald Trump revealed more threats and demands last week, a source close to the White House said.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday that he expected U.S. tariffs would likely be part of any future deal. “There is not much evidence at the moment — from the deals, agreements and negotiations with the Americans, for any country or any jurisdiction — to get a deal without tariffs,” Carney said. He also said he expected trade talks to “intensify” in the next few weeks.
Washington and Ottawa have been engaged in tempestuous trade talks for months. Carney’s team is desperate to end tariffs imposed by Trump on Canadian steel and aluminum exports and keep tariff exemptions for goods covered by the U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade deal (USMCA).
After Carney’s election in April, things appeared to be going well for awhile: Carney visited the White House, he seemingly got Trump to drop his talk of making Canada a “51st state,” and the prime minister quickly gave in when the president threatened to end talks if Canada didn’t scrap its digital services tax (DST) on U.S. tech firms. Carney also pledged last month to increase defence expenditures dramatically to meet a higher NATO spending target by 2035, a priority of Trump’s. It looked like negotiations could lead to a new U.S.-Canada deal before the July 21 deadline the two of them had set for themselves.
Then came the letter. Trump wrote an open letter to the prime minister last week, threatening to impose 35 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods starting Aug. 1, vaguely citing as reasons Ottawa’s trade deficit, counter tariffs, dairy trade restrictions, and failure to halt fentanyl from crossing the border. What Trump didn’t do — as he had done with the DST — was outline exactly what Carney needed to do to get things back on track.
National Post looks at the reasons Trump might have wanted to derail the negotiations — and what other surprises the White House might have in store.
Trump is under pressure
Trump “likes to keep us in suspense,” says Andrew Hale, a senior policy analyst at Heritage Foundation. But there is a timing issue at play here that goes beyond the negotiations. “Basically, they have a window of time to use these ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs,” he says, referring to Trump’s sweeping new international tariff regime unveiled in April. Hale said there is significant legal pushback facing the administration’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) that ostensibly gives the president power to circumvent Congress to impose tariffs in urgent situations.
So far, there have been a few court rulings against Trump’s use of IEEPA tariffs. Oral arguments in the U.S. Court of Appeals are scheduled to begin for one of those rulings on July 31, with another court set to hear two other tariff-related cases in September.
To use IEEPA, a genuine emergency needs to be declared. What Trump did was declare emergencies based on trade deficits, drug trafficking, and immigration. Well, “we’ve been running trade deficits for decades,” says Hale. U.S. judges have ruled that there is no direct connection between the national emergency declared over fentanyl and illegal migration.
The court rulings could still go either way. “(Trump’s team is) concerned that they will no longer be able to weaponize these (tariffs) in trade negotiations,” Hale adds.
“By simply heaping on the pressure and saying, ‘Bam, you get these tariffs, you’re getting increased tariffs and the rest of it,’ they’re trying to get as many concessions as possible whilst they can still use them.”
If Trump’s emergency tariffs lose in court, he’d be left with the less-powerful weapon to restrict imports deemed a national security threat, under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.
“I do know that Plan B is to use the 232 tariffs as an alternative more aggressively,” Hale said. But he notes that they are product-specific and do not allow for across-the-board tariffs.
Tori Smith, a senior vice president at Forbes Tate Partners, a government-relations consultancy in Washington, points out that Trump’s Aug. 1 deadline doesn’t seem random given the appeal hearing against emergency tariffs set to start on July 31.
She also notes that the review scheduled of the USMCA, as part of its original terms, begins in October. Trump’s letter, Smith said, was probably meant to “create leverage for the United States in advance of the USMCA review.”
Smith said the “long-game strategy” for the White House is to put it in the “strongest position for (the USMCA) negotiations.”
White House revenge
There may also be something more personal going on, according to a source close to the administration, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The NAFTA negotiations in Trump’s first term that led to the USMCA were headed by United States Trade Representative (USTR) Ambassador Robert Lighthizer, who had a cordial relationship with Canada’s then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland. In the process, Lighthizer reportedly neutralized Peter Navarro, then director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, a fierce protectionist and Trump loyalist, who is now a senior adviser to the president on trade.
“He’s never really forgiven Lighthizer for that,” the source said. (Lighthizer has since returned to private life.)
While the USMCA was once touted by U.S. officials as the “gold standard” of trade deals, possibly the reason the administration has talked of ripping it up “was because Navarro sees that as Lighthizer’s golden legacy, and he has reasons … personal bitterness, to rip it up.”
David Boling, a former deputy assistant USTR for Japan, said he never witnessed the two men in meetings together and couldn’t comment on their working relationship. But they had very different styles, he recalled.
“Lighthizer skillfully renegotiated NAFTA by building up trust with Capitol Hill Democrats. Coalition-building, however, is not Navarro’s strong suit,” said Boling, who now works at the political-risk consultancy Eurasia Group.
Navarro recently said he didn’t like negotiating with Canada, while Mexico’s negotiators were a “pure joy to deal with.”
“You know, they (Mexicans) were tough negotiators, but they were reasonable, fair negotiators. The Canadians were very, very difficult, and they’ve always been very difficult,” he said in a television interview last week.
Little downside for Trump
It seems that the more Trump has pushed for concessions from Canada — on defence, on digital taxes, on fentanyl crackdowns — the more he’s been able to get.
Sources say his senior economic team feels they have to sell the president on deal structures, but that Trump often feels he can press for more.
“I think that this can be demonstrated pretty obviously by the Vietnam announcement,” says Smith, noting how Vietnam’s team thought they would be getting a lower tariff rate than 20 per cent, but then Trump “put out a different rate than had been negotiated or talked about by his team.”
Trump mentioned Canada’s highly restricted market for dairy in his open letter to Carney. But he might also start pushing for Canada to commit to more things beyond trade, as he has with fentanyl and defence.
“The Trump administration has also leveraged tariffs in matters that go well beyond trade policy with a number of countries,” said Hale. In March, the president warned countries buying Venezuelan oil they would be punished with tariffs on all U.S. exports; in the last two weeks, he’s threatened “severe tariffs” on Russia if it didn’t make peace with Ukraine, and tariffs on BRICS-aligned countries (meaning Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa as well as Iran and Indonesia) because he said they wanted to undermine the U.S. dollar.
So he may want to wield economic pressure to try getting Carney to commit to helping restart a new Canada-U.S. oil pipeline after Keystone XL was killed by the last American president, the source close to the White House said. “They want the Keystone XL pipeline big time,” the source said.
Trump has never stopped wanting that pipeline since he approved it in his first term, and has raised it repeatedly since his re-election, noted Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation.
“Everybody knows that Prime Minister Carney has a focus on the environment, rather than fossil fuel production, so I imagine that it might be a sticking point,” she added. So would the fact that, right now, there is no company proposing that project, since the former proponent, TC Energy, abandoned it.
Apparently, the White House also wants Carney to loosen up on Liberal social objectives, like ESG (environment, social and governance) and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), that have in recent years complicated regulation in Canada, including for American companies that do business here. Trump has been aggressive about deregulating away from social and climate rules in the U.S. since he took office.
But Carney is “religious” about ESG, said the Washington source, which could be a “real barrier to these things getting forward.” Yet, if Carney got rid of net-zero targets and environmental impediments, “I think there’d be a massive love-in,” the source added.
How many of these new lines of negotiation — dairy, defence, oil, DEI,
Thailand is using old ass M48A5 “Patton” during the clashes with Cambodia
Meanwhile, Cambodia has a healthy amount of T-55s in their inventory. It’s two old foes from the “Cold War” facing each other once again lmfao.
Tom Lehrer died today
The US State Department said in a statement on Sunday that President Nicolás Maduro is not the president of Venezuela and that his regime is not the legitimate government. The text was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The statement marks the one-year anniversary since Maduro was declared the winner of the presidential elections on July 28, 2024. The opposition claims to have won the election.
Rubio is also referring to the municipal elections taking place this Sunday." By scheduling the municipal elections on the eve of the anniversary of the stolen presidential election of July 28, the regime once again intends to mobilize the military and police to repress the will of the Venezuelan people," says the secretary.
As well as denouncing the results released by the electoral authorities, in last year’s presidential elections, the secretary also claims that Maduro is the leader of the Los Soles Cartel group, designated as terrorists by the United States this week.
“He is responsible for drug trafficking to the United States and Europe. Maduro, currently under indictment by our nation, has corrupted Venezuela’s institutions to aid the cartel’s criminal drug trafficking scheme to the United States,” says Rubio.
Finally, the statement reinforces that the United States will continue its efforts to hold the “corrupt, criminal and illegitimate Maduro regime accountable”.
- Telegram
A Ukrainian Air Force operated, French made Mirage 2000-5 fighter aircraft crashed all on its own in Volyn oblast, far northwest Ukraine. The pilot reported issues with the aircraft before ejecting.
Israeli soldiers arrested in Belgium after war crimes complaint by rights groups
Belgian federal police on Sunday arrested two Israeli soldiers facing accusations of war crimes in Gaza following a complaint by two rights groups.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office on Monday said it received two complaints on Friday and Saturday from the HRF and Glan, concerning “serious violations of international humanitarian law allegedly committed in the Gaza Strip by two members of the Israeli army” who were in Belgium to attend the Tomorrowland festival.
The prosecutor’s office said it has determined that it might have jurisdiction on the case based on the new Article 14/10 of the Preliminary Title of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which entered into force on 28 April 2024. The article grants Belgian courts jurisdiction over crimes committed outside Belgium based on the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Convention against Torture of 1984.
“In light of this possible jurisdiction, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office instructed the police to locate the two individuals mentioned in the complaint and to proceed with their questioning. After the interviews, they were released,” it said, adding that no further information will be provided at this stage of the investigation.
The arrests come a day after Belgium’s King Philippe described the situation in Gaza as “a disgrace to humanity”. He said in speech on Sunday that Belgium backs calls by the UN for “an immediate end to this unbearable crisis”.
Belgian judiciary stacking Ws for some reason
Yes bro, we gotta trap genocidaires going to raves and festivals. Tomorrowland could probably be the biggest Israeli honeypot in the world. Or perhaps infected mushroom if they still tour
What did goa ever do to deserve this
I like this idea.
After WW2 there were the nazi hunters who went around picking up high profile criminals who had scurried away in defeat.
The modern version would involve going to venues where the worst music on plant Earth is played. Special training will be required to endure this. Make sure the MDMA available is top quality. Send a good looking agent to make nice with them. Then suggest they go to a VIP “chillout room”. Door locks behind them and the arrest can be made fairly peacefully if the correct track is being played. The comedown in while in custody awaiting transfers to face charges of crimes against humanity will be brutal.
(BTW I have never heard any mention of how high the people at Nova festival were at the time of the action. At 0700 surely some people were still tripping/rolling. How did that change things?)
support the Hind Rajab Foundation
Belgium’s King
it is hard to imagine a position of authority I trust less on the issue of genocide whose title isn’t “Fuhrer” or “Israeli Prime Minister”
arrested two Israeli soldiers facing accusations of war crimes in Gaza … who were in Belgium to attend the Tomorrowland festival.
Oh fuck yeah!
After the interviews, they were released
goddamnit, so close
I like that they were “interviewed” and not interrogated like the fucking criminals they are.
This is the most non-news news story I’ll post in here, but every day The Economist posts a like news roundup thing in the morning that I usually read. They have a weekly crossword for the weekend edition, and you can “win” it by emailing them your answers and they’ll “randomly” post three of these winners next week. Today they posted the winners of last week’s crossword, and one of the three is Leo Varadkar, on and off right wing Taoiseach (basically the PM) of Ireland since 2017. So I guess that’s what he’s doing with his life now that he retired from politics?
https://xcancel.com/squatsons/status/1948237309289103559#m
Cambodia and Thailand seem to be exchanging artillery fire for some reason.
