Image is of the breach in the tailings dam near Kitwe.
On February 18th, 50 million liters of acidic waste from a copper mine was accidentally released into the Kafue River after a tailings dam collapsed. The Kafue River stretches for a thousand miles across Zambia and a majority of the country - millions of people - rely on it, for both the economy and drinking water.
The results have already been catastrophic. The water supply for the city of Kitwe, home to 700,000 people, was completely shut off. As the wave of contamination moved downstream, a wave of death accompanied it as dead fish dotted the river surface. The government is dropping lime into the river to try and counteract the acid with an alkali and neutralize the water, but the tailings also contain toxic heavy metals that will undoubtably seep into the nearby environment and affect the area for years to come.
A considerable portion of the media attention to the accident has been devoted to the fact that the mine was Chinese-owned, as well as China’s broader influence and investment in the region. Western anti-China propaganda aside, it has been clear to those in the know that these mines have been badly managed and needlessly dangerous for years now, and it is disappointing - to say the least - to see disasters of this magnitude occur from Chinese businesses. Hopefully this prompts a wave of investigations into China-owned mine managers all around the continent, who will then hopefully face real consequences for their actions.
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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.
The first footage has been released, Xcancel mirror of the US Air Force, Navy or Marine Corps using APKWS laser guided rockets to shoot down Ansarallah (known as the Houthis in western media) drones and cruise missiles. I was talking a few days ago about how this was already happening, but now it’s confirmed by video footage from CENTCOM themselves.
What is APKWS? To put it simply, APKWS is a conversion kit that turns unguided Hydra-70 rockets (of which 5 million exist) into laser guided short range missiles. Similar to how a Paveway kit turns an unguided bomb into a laser guided bomb, or a JDAM kit turns an unguided bomb into a GPS guided bomb, APKWS turns unguided rockets into guided missiles. APKWS was first designed only to be used against ground targets, but the Ukrainians, when firing them from their VAMPIRE ground and sea based launch systems, proved that it can be used successfully against cruise missiles and drones, and as a result the US military is doing the same, and even planning modifications to APKWS to make it even more effective against air targets, such as adding infrared terminal guidance.
Ukrainian VAMPIRE system taking out Russian cruise missiles and drones
Why is this significant? For two reasons: cost and magazine size. APKWS is very cheap, the guidance section only costs $15 000, and the warheads and rocket motors, of which millions are currently in US stockpiles, only cost a few thousand dollars each, for a total cost of between $20 000 - $25 000 per missile/guided rocket. In comparison, an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile launched from US fighter aircraft costs upwards of $400 000 each, and the ship launched SM series of interceptors cost anywhere from $2 -$9 million, depending on the model. So this is a very significant cost saving for the US, the APKWS guided rockets might even be cheaper than the drones and cruise missiles they shoot down.
The second is magazine size. While a fighter aircraft can only carry a handful of sidewinders and other air to air missiles at a time, it can carry dozens of APKWS rockets at a time, as these rockets can be fitted on seven shot rocket pods, which only take up one hardpoint each. This F/A-18 has 14 APKWS guided rockets on one wing (two 7 shot launchers), for a total of 28 guided rockets if the loadout is replicated symmetrically on the other wing. Note with the adaptor, that two seven shot rocket pods are only using a single hardpoint.
These two factors make defending against drone swarms a possibility, both in terms of being cost effective, and in terms of the amount of guided rockets available at a single given time for intercept missions. This could be why drone and cruise missile attacks on US Navy ships are not as effective as before. While in Ukraine the use of APKWS guided rockets is limited to their ground and sea based launching systems, such as technicals and fastboats, the United States does not have such limitations and can fit these to aircraft, enabling defence over a much wider area. The APKWS guided rockets themselves have a very short range, only a few kilometres/miles, meaning that they can only defend a very limited area from ground/sea based launch platforms. So mounting them to a fighter aircraft vastly increases the area that can be defended by them, and detection capabilities for drones out of range of the APKWS (fighter aircraft have their own radar).
Make no mistake, the US military is learning their lessons when it comes to the Ukraine war, the confrontations with Ansarallah in the Red Sea, and defending against Iranian ballistic missiles.
This is a pretty important development. The cost of interceptors is less important than their availability. Good catch.
It’s quite a depressing development from a resistance perspective (which I guess almost all of us share) because it means now that the US Carrier Strike Group (CSG) only needs to remain out of range of Ansarallah’s anti ship ballistic missiles(ASBMs), (max range 500km for Tankeel/Raad-500, maybe 700km if Iran gives them Zolfogar Basir), and that the CSG can just absorb the long range drone and cruise missile attacks, the few that get through the air patrols can be dealt with by the ships themselves. While remaining outside of the range of ASBMs is blunting the CSG’s attacks and US airstrikes as the US fighter planes have to fly longer distances, airstrikes are still happening, and the CSG is not being driven to the extreme north of the Red Sea or anything like that anymore (aside from maybe day two of this lastest conflict).
Editing to say that satellite imagery from the 19th March 2025 has confirmed this, the USS Harry Truman is operating off of the coast of Jeddah, around 700-800km from Yemen. So outside of ASBM range (Zolfogar Basir has a 700km range), but within the range of cruise missiles and drones. This explains why Ansarallah did not launch any ASBMs over the past two nights, the CSG was out of range.
The solution is probably to give Ansarallah longer range ASBMs, but that’s an idea with its own big issues. The short range ASBMs Ansarallah currently use don’t have any midcourse guidance updates, they fire them at the general location the enemy ship is expected to be at, the Manoeuvrable Re-entry Vehicle (MaRV) of the missile does a pull up manoeuvre and performs a short glide phase, in which it’s terminal guidance systems (EO/IR sensors or radar) locate the target and dive down to it. This all happenes in a handful of minutes, the Tankeel/Raad 500 has a burnout velocity of Mach 8 (2.7 kilometres per second), and an impact velocity of probably around Mach 1.5-2. A ship can’t move that far in that time, which is why this approach works, from missile launch to glide phase, the ship can’t move out of the effective range of the terminal guidance systems on the MaRV. Once you start trying to hit ships over longer ranges, the ships can move further, and you need midcourse guidance updates to ensure that the MaRV arrives in a close enough proximity to the target for the terminal guidance systems to work. Who is going to provide that midcourse guidance? Iran with their own ships, or Iran giving Ansarallah long range radars that datalink to the ASBMs? I think the US would consider that an act of war. I also don’t think Ansarallah has this capability themselves. China’s ASBMs use AWACS aircraft to provide midcourse guidance updates for instance. That’s a capability not currently in the possession of Iran or Ansarallah.
Another solution would be really fast (Mach 3+) cruise missiles or really stealthy subsonic cruise missiles. But I don’t see Russia or China giving these weapons to Ansarallah.
how about underwater drones, like a submarine version of their drone boats?
The only recourse Ansarallah has that I can see given their current technological limitations would be to increase the quantity of missile deployments (any missiles or drones), screen attacks through decoy maneuvers to confuse and distract radar teams/aircraft and stagger attacks to disrupt sleep/rotation schedules on US naval ships…keeping all this up continuously day after day
And most importantly threaten critical infrastructure across the Peninsula to increase the scale of the zone of engagement, every time the beast turns its head or wanders over to a decoy it burns calories
And most importantly threaten critical infrastructure across the Peninsula to increase the scale of the zone of engagement
Abdul-Malik al-Houthi gave a speech yesterday specifically calling out all the Arab regimes for collaborating with Israel, so I guess striking them is an escalation option they are considering, and it makes sense given their capabilities. A lot easier to hit a static oil field or refinery than a moving ship.
On the topic of what China should be doing about Israel, this one has gone under the radar for obvious reasons: PowerChina Completes Israel’s Largest Pumped Storage Power Station
The Kokhav Hayarden Pumped Storage Power Station, constructed by Power Construction Corporation of China (PowerChina), has been officially commissioned for commercial operation. The project is the world’s lowest-altitude pumped storage power station and the largest of its kind in Israel.
As a key national infrastructure project in Israel, the power station is located in the Gilboa mountain range in northeastern Israel. It is also the first pumped storage project undertaken by a Chinese company overseas.
Designed with a total installed capacity of 344 megawatts, the station features upper and lower reservoirs, each with a storage capacity of 3.1 million cubic meters. Operating with a rated head of 410 meters, the facility is equipped with two reversible pump-turbine units, each with a capacity of 172 MW. Once operational, it will play a crucial role in ensuring the safety and stability of Israel’s power grid.
The project was executed under an engineering, procurement and construction contract, which was awarded to a consortium comprising PowerChina and General Electric Company.
China is exporting its state-of-the-art technology to help build Israel’s infrastructure. Maybe they should invite Israel to join Belt and Road as well.
Maybe they should invite Israel to join Belt and Road as well.
A trip though the good old times of… 2018. Contradictory and sometimes problematic an outlet as they can be, it summarizes a lot of what is discussed these days.
None of this is new and most observers knew where it was going years ago.
Illan Pappé: ‘‘Chinese interests are mostly commercial, they want to do business. Israel is a hi-tech hub, nowadays Palestine is not an economic bonanza. So no, I don’t think they will play a role in the liberation’’
A lot of talk involved around the legacy of the CPC anti-imperialist past, but let’s face it, the legacy is mostly for the myth building and the maintenance of legitimacy for the party any value is thrown out of the window when the reality of the nation-state is involved. As for the people, I doubt a majority really care about Palestine, most of the time it is bought up when the motive is to be anti-American. the average people don`t have a say in the foreign politics of the country as the system is less and less democratic as you go up the ranks of the party (I guess that explains why the youth are more extreme in their support for Palestine, there are no real future prospect in mainstream politics)
Maybe they should invite Israel to join Belt and Road as well.
I made that proposition some while ago, if Israel decides to not put all their eggs in one basket.
It’s not like there are any principles, cohesion, discipline, etc. in this cute and fancy trade show called the BRICs+ or by extension BRI
The project was executed under an engineering, procurement and construction contract, which was awarded to a consortium comprising PowerChina and General Electric Company.
Bidding, EPCs, and procurement in general always seemed funny to me, but when I started work and had a hand in them it revealed to me that it’s even more of a farce. Playing capitalism will catch up to China sooner or later.
this sucks. all I can hope is that someday not so far away Palestine benefits from this project after the collapse of the zionist entity
EDIT: more about the project, coverage from 2021
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/kokhav-hayarden-pumped-storage-hydropower-project/
Hutchison Water, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings, in partnership with Noy Fund, a privately-held energy and infrastructure investment company based in Israel, is developing the project through a special purpose company (SPC) named Star Pumped Storage.
The £422m ($600m) project is being developed on a design-build-own-operate (DBOO) basis. The construction works on the project were started in December 2016, with the start of commercial operations expected by 2021.
Haha CK Hutchison… it’s been in deep trouble on Chinese and Hong Kong media after Li Ka-shing announced the selling of the Panama Ports. It’ll be interesting to see whether the Chinese government will stop the sale, but that will further raise tension with the US.
Lazy Bastards: Danish Cops Admits Closing Cases Without Investigating And Lying to The Public To Fudge Crime Statistics
The Danish police are embroiled in yet another scandal, this time over the systematic “washing” of criminal cases—deliberately closing investigations without proper inquiry while lying to the public about it. Thirty current and former police officers have come forward, revealing that police leadership routinely pressures investigators to abandon cases under false pretenses. This practice, known as “washing cases,” has resulted in violent crimes and large-scale financial fraud being ignored, all to make case backlogs disappear on paper.
Read more...
According to whistleblower cops, the police manipulate cases in several ways: pressuring victims not to file reports, misclassifying serious crimes as minor offenses, delaying evidence collection until surveillance footage expires, and conducting superficial or non-existent witness interviews. These tactics allow police departments to appear more efficient while quietly discarding cases that require real investigative work.
One officer, Martin Bjørnvig, has publicly admitted that he and his colleagues routinely deceive the public. “We violate citizens’ legal rights by failing to investigate reported cases. And we lie to citizens about the reasons,” he told Danish state media. He told how he was tasked with processing a large backlog of cases involving economic crime save was instructed to close cases, even if there were named suspects or fraud for large amounts. An anonymous ex-cop admitted to having “washed” assault andremoved cases.
Other officers, speaking anonymously, confirm that leadership not only tolerates but actively encourages this practice. One states: “You have no choice. Management decides. In the end, you’re just a number with an attractive detective job”
The motivations behind this fraud are clear. On an individual level, officers seek to meet internal performance metrics while avoiding complex, time-consuming cases. As an institution, the police force prioritizes bureaucratic efficiency over justice, preferring tidy statistics over meaningful law enforcement.
Despite overwhelming testimony from rank-and-file officers, senior police leadership denies everything. The National Police has flatly rejected the existence of “washing,” dismissing the accusations as mere “prioritization.” Yet officers describe an environment where questioning these methods leads to professional retaliation, confirming that the deception is systemic.
The Liberal Party, one of three parties making up the Nordic hermit kingdom’s Social Democrat-led right-wing regime, has reacted to the scandal not by demanding accountability but by pulling out an old reactionary hobby horse and demanding more money for the police. The party’s justice spokesperson, Preben Bang Henriksen, called the revelations “deeply troubling” but framed the issue as a lack of police resources rather than a structural failure of law enforcement itself.
The government, eager to maintain its pro-police “law and order” stance, has signaled no intention of holding the police accountable. Instead, it continues to lavish funding on both law enforcement and the military, while slashing education, healthcare, and social services. This demonstrates the regime’s true priorities: protecting the state’s coercive apparatus while neglecting the well-being of ordinary citizens.
The Danish “washing” scandal is yet another reminder that, under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the claim that police exist to “protect and serve” is a lie. The police exist to uphold the existing social order, ensuring that the state’s priorities—not justice—are enforced. Any protection the public receives is incidental; their real purpose is to maintain control.
- Source: DR (state media), March 23rd 2025
US airstrikes continue on Yemen for the fifth night in a row. First airstrikes reported at 16:47 UTC. Seperate, multiple strikes have taken place in Sadaa city, the capital city Sana’a, Al Bayda’ Governorate, Sana’a Governorate and Al Jawf Governorate.
Given that the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier is only 700-800km from Yemen today, I suspect an intense aerial bombardment is incoming, similar to the first night…
Renewed airstrikes reported in Hodeidah and Sadaa Governorates.
More strikes in Saada.
Reports that another MQ-9 Reaper drone was shot down over Yemen, and reports of a Yemeni ballistic missile being launched at Israel. The missile was likely intercepted, given there is no reports of an impact. No statement from the Yemeni Armed Forces on either incident yet.
Yemeni Armed Forces will provide a statement at 3:10 UTC.
Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions over Dakota Access Pipeline protests, rules jury
RIP protesting anything. Time for a new form of struggle?
I’m usually yapping about Lebanese government formations and Iraqi shia cults here, but this time I want other nerds to yap here. What’s going on in Zambia or Zimbabwe or Mozambique or Angola or Botswana or Malawi or any African nation that isn’t under French financial strangulation like the ones in West Africa? How are their economies doing? Native corruption or European shenanigans? Are the Chinese cooking anything there? Are they producing anything interesting? Any cultural output that is interesting? How does an average day look in Maputo or Lusaka or Luanda or anywhere? I only hear about these nations whenever their football team is playing in the AFCON, but I literally haven’t read anything interesting about these countries in a long time.
Ya Allah take every western leftist on Twitter and give us one Arab AMLO then one Arab Sheinbaum.
Folks, did you hear about what the woke liberals did to my good friend Mr. Mistoffeless? It’s just terrible.Nixon’s vice president asked Saudis for money to fight US ‘Zionists’. Spiro Agnew, in letter to crown prince, said ‘Zionists orchestrated organized attack on me’ as ‘I’d never agree to continuance of unfair and disastrous favoring of Israel’ The late US Vice President Spiro Agnew requested money in 1980 from Saudi Arabia to “continue to fight” against American Zionists.
Agnew, who served for three years under Richard Nixon before resigning in 1973 in a corruption scandal from his time as the governor of Maryland in the 1960s, wrote to Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, then crown prince of Saudi Arabia, saying “I need desperately your financial support,” MSNBC reported Thursday.
“You highness is already familiar with the unrelenting Zionist efforts to destroy me,” Agnew wrote, adding that Elliot Richardson, who was attorney general when Agnew was vice president, “attacked” him because Agnew “could not be trusted to act properly in the Middle East.”
The reason, he also wrote, “was that the Zionists in the United States knew that I would never agree to the continuance of the unfair and disastrous favoring of Israel and they had to get me out of office there so that I would not succeed Nixon.” Since 1974, “The Zionists have orchestrated a well-organized attack on me” through lawsuits, Agnew said, “to bleed me of my resources to continue my effort to inform the American people of their control of the media and other influential sectors of American society.”
Agnew, who died in 1996, resigned amid revelations that he had engaged in corruption while governor and did not contest his conviction. But in his letter to the prince, he said the Zionists “framed” him. He spoke out frequently about what he called the “Zionist influences in the US.”
He stated that he would use the funds to “continue my effort to inform the American people of their (i.e., Zionists’) control of the media and other influential sectors of American society.” He also congratulated the crown prince on his call for jihad against Israel, whose declaration of Jerusalem as its capital he characterized as “the final provocation”. A month later he thanked the crown prince for giving him “the resources to continue the battle against the Zionist community here in the U.S.”. Agnew’s anti-Zionist views seemed to have developed after leaving office—as vice president, he expressed admiration for Israel and was friendly with his Jewish staff members.
With the resumption of US intelligence sharing to Ukraine, Ukrainian F-16s have resumed frontline operations. One was spotted in the Sumy region.
For more information on their mission, why US intelligence sharing is vital to carrying it out, loadout, etc, I made a comment on that here.
There are also rumours circulating on Russian telegram channels that a Ukrainian F-16 was shot down over Sumy, using an innovative method. I’ll comment further if there is any confirmation of this.
dunking on the Betar Executive Director irl.Trump revokes legal status for 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans - Reuters
Article
WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday, the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration.
The move, effective April 24, cuts short a two-year “parole” granted to the migrants under former President Joe Biden that allowed them to enter the country by air if they had U.S. sponsors. Trump, a Republican, took steps to ramp up immigration enforcement after taking office, including a push to deport record numbers of migrants in the U.S. illegally. He has argued that the legal entry parole programs launched under his Democratic predecessor overstepped the boundaries of federal law and called for their termination in a January 20 executive order.
Trump said on March 6 that he would decide “very soon” whether to strip the parole status from some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the U.S. during the conflict with Russia. Trump’s remarks came in response to a Reuters report that said his administration planned to revoke the status for Ukrainians as soon as April.
Biden launched a parole entry program for Venezuelans in 2022 and expanded it to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those nationalities. Diplomatic and political relations between the four countries and the United States have been strained.
The new legal pathways came as Biden tried to clamp down on illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Trump administration’s decision to strip the legal status from half a million migrants could make many vulnerable to deportation if they choose to remain in the
U.S. It remains unclear how many who entered the U.S. on parole now have another form of protection or legal status. In a notice set to formally publish in the Federal Register on Monday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said revoking the parole status would make it easier to place the migrants in a fast-track deportation process known as “expedited removal.” Under a Trump-era policy implemented in January, expedited removal can be applied to certain migrants in the U.S. for two years or less.
Wake up guys new shitty jet just dropped
“I am saddened by the resumption of the intense Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, with so many deaths and injuries.” Pope Francis has called on Israel to cease its attacks on Gaza and for a “definitive ceasefire”.
- AL Jazerra English
