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Hey buddy, I heard you like posts... DM me to feature effort posts and good threads in the newsmega/newscomm here (including your own posts). Some great discussion this week. I'm grateful to be part of this community.

Please review and provide feedback on revised comm policy and rules

@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net with a real banger on upward social mobility or lack thereof for China's Gen Z, the modern appeal of the Cultural Revolution, and CPC censorship Part 1 | Part 2. The subthread with @jack about modern youth Maoism is worthwhile as well.

@jack@hexbear.net on who owes the IMF money and the potential for China to upend the debt of the developing world. @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net has a good response here about the likelihood of China rugpulling the IMF/dollar denominated debt (xhs doubts it).

@seaposting@hexbear.net analyzing the class character of Malaysian resistance to Japanese occupation in WW2 and linguistic nuance around Malaysia's national monument

@Redcuban1959@hexbear.net on the [state of Bolivia, Acre and Morales](https://hexbear.net/comment/6738627

@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net , @Boise_Idaho@hexbear.net and @Tervell@hexbear.net on China's ability to do force projection and provide military support to BRICS countries (or lack thereof). "You generally can't just start leaving missile systems at someone's doorstep like a cat with dead mice."

Previous posts of the week: Oct 27 | Nov 3 | Nov 10 | Nov 17 | Nov 24 | Dec 1

China vibe report: something absolutely wild took place on the Chinese internet this past week and I’ll be the first to report it. The kids are NOT ok!

TL;DR: Chinese Gen Z kids went full ultra Gang of Four yearning for a revival of the Cultural Revolution on bilibili (Chinese Youtube), what the hell is going on?

This came absolutely out of nowhere and took everyone by surprise. It’s truly one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen in the many years I’ve spent on the Chinese side of the internet.

It started with one of those Movie Explained channels offering analysis and interpretation of films. Run of the mill stuff. About a month ago, one of those channels began to upload a deconstruction of the 2017 film 芳华 (Youth), a coming of age/loss of innocence movie set in the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution about the lives and drama of the military art troupe kids, based on Yan Geling’s novel of the same name, which has been suspected to be her own semi-autobiography.

The film itself wasn’t overtly political or anything. It wasn’t without controversy before the theatrical release due to the Cultural Revolution backdrop, but after extensive cutting and reediting, the film was eventually released and went on the become one of the highest grossing films of the year.

However, the Movie Explained guy (no doubt on the more extreme/ultra left) offered a re-interpretation of the film, painting the Cultural Revolution as being hijacked by the elites from the very beginning, and after the reform and opening up era, the Gang of Four was vilified by the liberal reformers who rewrote history. Wild conspiracy take but what’s even wilder was the response to the videos (which have been released in three parts, with the final part that came out on November 29th being the most controversial, which essentially reinterpreted the film’s male protagonist as Wang Hongwen).

To give you an idea of what an absolute phenomenon this is, the three videos have a combined 37+ million views before the censorship hammer fell. Averaging about 12 million views per video, this is an insane number for bilibili, and was trending #1 at the time the videos were “disappeared” by the censors. As a comparison, the most sensational anti-Japan videos garnered about 2-3 million views at most - this is easily 4-5 times the volume of that.

Imagine Youtube’s #1 trending video. That’s how huge it was. This was never seen before for a politically themed video, let alone one on the Cultural Revolution.

And because bilibili has what is called the “bullet comments”, where user comments stream across the screen while a video is being played, and with hundreds of thousands of comments here’s what the screen looked like:

人民万岁 = Long Live the People. Slogan of the Cultural Revolution.

Clearly the kids are more into Cultural Revolution than anti-Japanese propaganda. What the hell is going on?

Let’s start with the film’s story to give some contexts:

The story is the typical rich kids bullying poor kids story. The male protagonist was a model socialist youth, who embodied the ideal of a revolutionary, always offering help to anyone without expecting anything in return, but because of his lower class, was always taken advantage of and held in disdained by the other elite/rich kids who were in the art troupe for “performative” reasons.

The female protagonist was a girl whose father was in the reeducation camp, and naively believed that by joining the communist youth cadre, she would be treated as equals. Instead, because of her lower class, she ended up getting bullied throughout by the elite/rich kids.

This scene from the film has been memed all over the chat groups right now and embodied the class divide that had infected the Cultural Revolution even from its very onset:

The elite kids (官二代, or 2nd generation elites) and rich kids (富二代) were able to enjoy special privileges in the “revolution” while looking down at the other kids from the lower classes. Such distinct class divide amongst the communist youth cadres, in a way, showed that the Cultural Revolution was doomed from the start.

The ending was particularly bleak:

The ending in the novel was even more bleak. The film version actually made some adjustments to make it seem more bittersweet.

Strangely enough, when the film was aired in 2017, nobody really thought too much about it. It was mostly seen as a nostalgic film for the 50s/60s elderly who reminisced about their youth during the Cultural Revolution. The Gen Z kids were still too young/at school to appreciate its subtexts.

Remember that 2017-2019 was the peak of China’s economy. It was a time when everyone was very much positive about the future. Nobody even thought about such concerns as unemployment. As long as you’re willing to work hard, there will be jobs for you.

8 years later, the situation has completely changed. Upon re-watch, many young people, especially kids who saw it for the first time, felt the incomprehensible horror in the film itself.

Of course, visual language is everything, take a look:

At the start of the film, the red mural had a Mao painting with a hammer and sickle, which was very much emblematic of the revolutionary era.

By the time the protagonist returned in the reform era, the mural had been replaced with a red Coca-Cola advertisement, signifying the end of an era.

So how did we get here?

First of all, I do think that the re-interpretation videos had indeed over-interpreted the film itself, even though the visual languages are well representative of the latent contradictions of the time.

Second, I don’t think the Gen Z kids are really yearning for a real Cultural Revolution, widely held as the most destructive era of the PRC history.

Whether this was irony pilled Gen Z black humor, or whether they truly yearn for a rerun of the CR, it doesn’t matter. The explosive outbursts of their emotion had to be real. This was something that you could only feel when interacting with the youth, their hidden anger buried underneath, but nothing really actually manifested in real life.

Their collective outbursts in the form of bilibili comments revealed their true reaction to the film - the loss of their Youth, a funeral of their Future.

And it makes sense. As I have said before, post-Covid China is a very different world than the 2010s. Chinese kids are seeing their futures evaporating in front of them. These are the kids who studied hard for years, just to be told that there are no jobs for them, the houses are way beyond what they could possibly afford, and that a bright future that had been promised not even 10 years ago is disappearing before them.

It’s like being told that the train is already full, and you are being left behind at the train station. The train that just departed was class mobility - a door that has now shut for most Chinese youth.

They are experiencing a strong dissonance that while the country is becoming stronger, as China is becoming a world superpower, yet the fruits of the hard work do not belong to them. The future of a nation where they are not a part of.

Their anger is to be expected, and a yearning for a Cultural Revolution that at least promises shake up the entrenchment of the social classes. The chaos and destruction would hurt the rich elites the most, dragging them down to the level of the average working people who are struggling for the next paycheck.

For context, understand that the accumulation of capital that took several hundred years in Western capitalist countries, occurred in China in just 50 years. Everything has been evolving so fast, and so does the wealth inequality.

In 2007, nobody would have anticipated what China would look like today. That’s what it feels like to grow up in China. In Western countries, the wealth distribution is divided in generations, where the boomers/Gen X reaped the industrialization benefits while the Gen Y and especially Gen Zs are already accustomed to a relatively bleak future since they were born.

However, in China, this was not the experience. If you’re a Gen Z kid born in the late 1990s (in China they’re called post-90s and post-00s), you would have grown up just after the recession, with your parents having a relatively well paid job in the 2000s (compared to the 90s). Things were starting to look better. By the 2010s, in your middle and high schools, your parents likely bought a new house. An upgrade. The economy was looking better by the day. You’re promised that as long as you study hard, you’ll be able to find a good job and raise your own family one day.

Then Covid hit just when you’re about to graduate college, and the economy never returned. Years of hard work down the drain. All this rollercoaster happened in less than 30 years of your life.

Iceland joins the boycott of eurovision

From the NYT editorial board:

https://archive.is/QY9Hl

"The tanker seized near Venezuela by the US is named Skipper and was carrying a false flag of nationality...It was seized because of its past links to smuggling illicit Iranian oil...although it was carrying Venezuelan oil" -NYT

"Asked what would happen to the oil on the seized oil tanker, President Trump said: 'Well, we keep it, I guess.'" -NYT

Everybody, particularly those in the UK, please keep talking about the Filton 24, 24 UK activists in prison without trial for opposing genocide.

Several of the British political prisoners, some of whom have been imprisoned without trial for well over a year, are on hunger strike and have not eaten in over 41 days. They have been forced to do this due to their horrifying treatment in prison by the British state.

When questioned, vermin like David Lammy continue to pretend to not know who they are despite e.g. MP Zarah Sultana writing to him multiple times with concern about their deteriorating health.

I watched an interview with one of prisoners talking about how they are making preparations for death. It is my belief that the British government is expecting them to die and to then silence any media coverage when they do, MSM has literally not mentioned any of them and I don't expect that to change if they pass. It's an easy way to do a death penalty basically, to remove an annoying problem for the British state.

womp womp

Sadly, we’ve learned that Guanguan, who risked his life in 2021 to secretly film the Uyghur concentration camps in China, is now in ICE detention in the U.S., facing the risk of deportation back to China.

Brussels has unlocked a legal mechanism allowing indefinite freezing of Russian central bank assets without unanimous EU consent—bypassing any Hungarian veto—by citing “economic disturbances caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine.”

Link

I can't think of a better way to ensure that the rest of the world never, EVER trusts your banking system ever again. Are they completely out of their minds?

For real, Europe seems to be so about Russia that they're not thinking straight. They cannot see that the war in Ukraine is lost, they are hell bent on continuing a lost conflict no matter the cost, their global reputation and economic well-being be damned.

It's like they're committed to global economic irrelevancy.

Proposal for new Entry Requirements for People Traveling to the US

• All social media accounts from the last 5 years
• All your biometrics: face, fingerprint, DNA, and iris
• All your phone numbers from the last 5 years
• All your email addresses from the last 10 years
• IP addresses and metadata from your submitted photos
• Names of your family members (parents, spouse, siblings, children)
• All your family members' phone numbers from the last 5 years
• Your family members' dates of birth
• Your family members' places of birth
• Your family members' residencies
• All your business phone numbers from the last 5 years
• All your business email addresses from the last 10 years

the spineless bilingual North Americans, after spending the start of the year farming reddit karma when Trump was talking about annexing them, now won't even lift a finger when Venezuela's sovereignty is being threatened by the same entity. Even the UK and Colombia have ended intelligence sharing "in the region", but Tim Hortonia continues to operate with the USCG, which works directly with the USN.

CBC: Canada 'continues to monitor' U.S. boat strikes in Caribbean as questions swirl and allies squirm

The controversial Victims of Communism memorial in downtown Ottawa will no longer feature the names of specific individuals after federal officials determined a significant number could be linked to the Nazis.

I really like the title of the article: "Government retreats on Victims of Communism memorial names in aftermath of Nazi controversy"

https://ottawacitizen.com/public-service/defence-watch/victims-of-communism-memorial-names-nazis

The Ottawa Citizen reported in 2024 that the Department of Canadian Heritage was told by historians that more than half of the 550 names to be inscribed on the Memorial to the Victims of Communism should be removed. The reason was because of potential links to the Nazis or questions about affiliations with fascist groups.

Former Biden Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe at the National Security Council Amanda Sloat was prank called by those people who got Stephen King to praise Stepan Bandera and call him a great man right after mentioning that he was a Holocaust perpetrator.

She openly stated that had the US advised Ukraine to agree to remain neutral and not join NATO, that Russia wouldn't have invaded and all the death and destruction could have been avoided, but that they didn't want good relations between Ukraine and Russia because it would increase Russia's sphere of influence.

https://xcancel.com/ricwe123/status/1998987234998108513

Not really news I guess, but kind of news adjacent and I thought the folks in here would find it interesting.

Tesla's autonomous AI-powered Optimus robot (that Elon assured everyone is no longer being operated remotely) does the same motion that a tele-operator would do to take off his virtual reality headset, then collapses. The gif is great, really represents the current state of AI.

https://x.com/wirelyss/status/1997764719961124938/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1997764719961124938&currentTweetUser=wirelyss

https://x.com/i/status/1997920787412426852

Trumps memory is shot to shit

Exactly 100 years ago, ibn Saud and his army of Wahhabi death cultists were killing and conquering Arabs across the Arabian Peninsula, armed with British weapons. December 1925 was 10 months into a brutal siege of Jeddah.

Dr Mohammed Sindi writes:

The fanatical Saudi-Wahhabi army then laid a yearlong crippling siege on the seaport city of Jeddah causing starvation. As a result, drinking water was practically impossible to find and Jeddah’s poor spent their days searching the streets for food in the garbage. Many of them even picked and ate the undigested corn found in the camels’ dung. After severely bombarding the city for some time, the ignorant Saudi-Wahhabi fighters finally entered Jeddah and immediately began destroying the telephone lines, the radio station, and other signs of modern life, considered by them (at that time) to be sacrilegious and work of the Devil.

Today, Jeddah is hosting porn stars while Riyadh is assisting US-israel in the starvation sieges of south Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza.

Article

Since before it was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Saudis have aligned themselves with Western colonizers and shrouded their collaboration in an ideological-religious smokescreen. While paying lip-service to Islamic brotherhood, the Saudi monarchy has instead always been invested in its own brutal self-preservation and profiteering above any moral or humanitarian interest. Thus, when examining a regime such as the Saudis it is essential to examine their true history, class interests and imperialist sponsors rather than high-flown rhetoric. And this is especially the case when it comes to the Zionist occupation of Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle.

Death to al Saud.

The United States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, two American sources told Reuters news agency. No further information is available about the circumstances of the seizure or the ship. The move comes amid a massive US military buildup in the region, including an aircraft carrier, fighter jets, and tens of thousands of troops.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the operation was led by the US Coast Guard. However, details such as the name of the tanker and the location of the interception were not disclosed. Venezuela exported more than 900,000 barrels of oil per day last month, the third-highest monthly average of the year so far. Even with growing pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Washington has not interfered with the country's oil flow.

• Telegram

This is just their Totenkopf now

CNBC and Reuters are reporting that Trump intends to lower the federal classification for cannabis & marijuana to Schedule III next week.

With things like the economy dragging down his ratings, this probably won't change much for him. Also, if this does happen, it shows how easy this was to do the entire time! Obama could have done it in 2016 and Hillary might have won because that election was just incredibly close.

From the singular non-astroturfed response from X dot com

• https://xcancel.com/cecile_shaw8/status/1997730893998506473#m

Zohran Mamdani’s “know your rights” video is dangerously outdated and misleading in 2025:

• ICE no longer treats schools as “sensitive locations.” This was a policy revoked on Day 1 (Jan 2025). Agents can now enter public school grounds without any warrant or school permission.

• In truly public areas of a school (lobbies, playgrounds, hallways open to the public), ICE needs zero warrant to be present, observe, or make an arrest if they have probable cause — just like local police.

• The video’s blanket “no warrant, no entry” line only applies to private homes and non-public school spaces (classrooms, offices). It does not apply to the public parts of a school.

• Telling parents and kids they’re safe in school because ICE “can’t come in without a judicial warrant” is flat-out wrong under current federal policy.

Rights to remain silent and demand a judicial warrant for forced entry still exist, but the video omits the massive 2025 policy shift that removed school protections.

This isn’t empowerment — it’s creating false security in places where ICE is now explicitly allowed to operate.

[redacted section]

reposted @hello_hello@hexbear.net's comment because it was within the hour of the last thread being locked. I know this is Madani struggling, but I think this is exceptionally egregious and ICE is definitely a valid news mega topic. this is also information that could help save someone's life so...

Trump said that Xi asked him "Is that a Trump statement, or is that real?" after he'd told him that US soybeans were more nutritious than competitors.

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1998181458020901138

An Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps spokesman today stated that an Iranian missile strike during the June war killed 36 people in the Mossad headquarters:

https://en.mehrnews.com/news/239613/36-killed-in-Iran-s-attack-on-Mossad-headquarters-IRGC-Spox

The United Nations has just voted 153-1 on a resolution ensuring the safety and security of humanitarian workers

The country against? Yeah you guessed it.

US forces stormed cargo ship travelling from China to Iran: Report Al Jazeera

United States forces raided a cargo ship travelling from China to Iran last month, according to the Wall Street Journal, in the latest reported instance of increasingly aggressive maritime tactics by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Unnamed officials told the newspaper that US military personnel boarded the ship several hundred miles from Sri Lanka, according to the report on Friday. It was the first time in several years US forces had intercepted cargo travelling from China to Iran, according to the newspaper.

The operation took place in November, weeks before US forces seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela earlier this week, citing sanctions violations. It was another action Washington has not taken in years.

US Indo-Pacific Command did not immediately confirm the report. An official told the newspaper that they seized material “potentially useful for Iran’s conventional weapons”. However, the official noted the seized items were dual-use, and could have both military and civilian applications.

Officials said the ship was allowed to proceed following the interdiction, which involved special operation forces.

Iran remains under heavy US sanctions. Neither Iran nor China immediately responded to the report, although Beijing, a key trading partner with Tehran, has regularly called the US sanctions illegal.

Earlier in the day, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun condemned the seizure of the oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, which was brought to a port in Texas on Friday.

The action came amid a wider military pressure campaign against Venezuela, which Caracas has charged is aimed at toppling the government of leader Nicolas Maduro.

Beijing “opposes unilateral illicit sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction that have no basis in international law or authorisation of the UN Security Council, and the abuse of sanctions”, Guo said.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday the Trump administration would not rule out future seizures of vessels near Venezuela.

Of course, both Iran and China are quiet about it.

It may seem as though China and Iran have ongoing strategic partnership if you only listen to the “anti-imperialist” alt media news, but anyone paying attention to their relations will notice that China (together with Russia) is pulling their strategic influence away from the Middle East since June 2025.

Trump’s B-2 stunt on the Iranian nuclear facilities killed this partnership. The real message being sent by Trump is that economic investment in the Middle East is far too tenuous for the Chinese investors.

Remember the Iran-China 25 year cooperation program signed back in 2021 that promised $400 billion investment in Iran? Four years on and not even 1% of the investment has reached Iran.

Not only that Chinese investors are pulling away, trade has also gone down, with Chinese customs statistics reporting -25% import and export with Iran in 2025.

On the international stage, China has been quietly abstaining on the UNSC resolution votes on issues pertaining to the Middle East since June 2025 (see my comment here).

Therefore, it is no surprise that the Chinese MFA is keeping quiet on the US seizure of their cargo, for China does not want to get dragged into a bottomless defense for what will turn out to be unprofitable investment in the Middle East.

But most significantly, Trump’s B-2 stunt had smashed the whole Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard scam about a Russia-Iran-China axis, which unfortunately many “anti-imperialists” on Twitter are still regurgitating about.

It has fully exposed that China’s foreign policy that emphasizes economic cooperation is far inferior to the USSR model of military protection when it comes to mitigating Western imperial advance.

Turns out that economic cooperation contracts can easily be thrown into the dustbin the moment a country is threatened with war. The recipient country is too busy preparing for war to honor whatever contracts they have signed, while the investing country sees too little profit to made if their all investment is sunk by the drop of the first bombs.

There is no Russia-Iran-China axis until they are serious about military alliance and reviving the USSR-style foreign policy. Don’t be fooled by the “alt media” telling you that China’s “strategy” is providing economic partnership to those countries. Trump’s B-2 stunt showed unequivocally the harsh reality that the fist speaks louder than the wallet. Anything else is cope.

BBC interviews Ukrainian soldiers that say they are still in Pokrovsk

1:45

1:56

This is fine :)

https://x.com/EU_Social/status/1999381205565804589

ANNOUNCED TODAY: The International Campaign to Free Lebanese Prisoners in Occupation Jails

There are currently at least 20 Lebanese prisoners held in the occupation prisons, as well as at least 1 Palestinian refugee to Lebanon. This number is neither complete nor certain, as the zionist occupation denies even the existence of the Lebanese prisoners – over half of them abducted after the ceasefire on 27 November 2024.

The International Campaign to Free Lebanese Prisoners from Occupation Prisons is an international response to the call of the Lebanese prisoners and their family members for worldwide support. Our campaign aims to build grassroots, popular and official solidarity to compel the freedom of all of the Lebanese prisoners in occupation prisons and to bring the ongoing zionist aggression on Lebanon to an end.

Main Page: https://freelebaneseprisoners.com/ Telegram: https://t.me/freelebaneseprisoners X: https://x.com/LebPrisoners Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freelebaneseprisoners/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FreeLebanesePrisoners

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3335722/former-chinese-senior-banker-bai-tianhui-executed-taking-us155-million-bribes

Mass murderer Samir Geagea and the far-right Christian Lebanese Forces party openly threatening civil war against Hezbollah.

(Samir was sentenced to four life sentences for his terrorism during the Lebanese civil war but is still part of the "Lebanese Opposition".)

Posted on Twitter the statement reads:

"Either Hezbollah voluntarily ends its military project, or it will receive a violent blow that will eliminate what remains of its local and regional functions. Lebanese people had hoped for a faster transition to a sovereign Lebanon, but that transition is inevitable. The era of 'resistance' is over; all that remains is to bury it."

Israeli dogs are barking.

US manufacturing again down almost ~20k jobs in November;

Unrelated: "The US Labor Department announces it has cancelled the October PPI inflation report."

Reminder that Chile's election is today. Communist Jeanette Jara is running against chud piece of shit Karst, who's just another Noboa/Milei type that's aping Trump and has US support. Jara came first in the last round, but only with a small margin. It's likely she will lose as conservative forces coalesce around Karst today.

Praying to Lenin for an upset and an end to the wave of right wing electoral victories in LatAm.

النكسة السورية الكبرى

On the 1 year anniversary of the great Syrian tragedy, Alawites are on strike) protesting brutality and killings by the al Qaeda regime. Reports that state security thugs executed an Alawite man in Latakia on "liberation day" for not celebrating.

Damascus held a large parade, although I am suspicious as to the real size of the turnout. (I would not be surprised if it was large or small, but they have a habit of presenting deceptive footage to make the regime more popular.)

Outbursts of violent "clashes" continue between takfiri groups and Druze in Suweida.

The economic situation in Syria is increasingly dire as the coup government reports a surplus by simply firing tens of thousands of public servants and cutting subsidies on gas and electricity. Success!

Saudi outlet al Arabiya has thrown in their media warfare apparatus continuing to rewrite history by screening years old footage from the previous (actually elected) president. I wonder what they are covering up.

Al Qaeda regime FM Shaibani (Baghdadi??) has affirmed his commitment to normalization with the zionist cancer.

Of course the zionist cancer continues to carry out field executions, bombings, and kidnapping operations in Southern Syria.

CENTCOM recently publicly congratulated the coup regime for intercepting weapons shipments destined for the Lebanese resistance.

The horrible consequences of this imperialist coup will be felt over decades if not generations, for the region and the planet.

Canada's social democratic party NDP blocks socialist leadership candidate from running.

Link to thread on /c/canada

Hey, the US. You can destroy our infrastructure and please, we want to buy more weapons and fossil fuels from you. But ending a war? HELL NO!

Europe reportedly considering the "nuclear option" of dumping U.S. Treasuries if the Ukraine deal falls apart

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-dealt-major-blow-as-europe-threatens-nuclear-option-if-ukraine-deal-goes-left/ar-AA1RuVN5

Global Times interviews Communist Party of Australia national president Vinnie Molina

"Workers of the world, unite" is a phrase that rings true throughout history. To isolate ourselves from the world can lead to the withering of our movement - as seen in parts of the Western left, which have at times fallen prey to the imperialist propaganda.

US regime change front funded Nepalese youth revolutionaries, leaks reveal by Kit Klarenberg

The US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars tutoring dozens of Nepalese youth on “strategies and skills in organizing protests and demonstrations” prior to a violent coup which overthrew the government of Nepal in September 2025, leaked documents show.

The documents reveal a clandestine campaign organized by an NED division known as the International Republican Institute (IRI) that sought to cultivate a Nepalese “network” of young political activists explicitly designed to “become an important force to support US interests.” The leaked documents note that the IRI’s program “connects vibrant youth… and political leaders” and “provides comprehensive trainings on how to launch advocacy campaigns and protests.”

Continued:

EU state jails anti-NATO politicians for ‘treason’

if you guessed Estonia, bingo

Some US troops were killed by an "ISIS attack" in Syria while entering Palmyra for the first time. Official figures are 2 soldiers dead, 1 translator dead, and multiple wounded. US President Donald Trump has vowed to retaliate.

Video of Trump's statement

However, it's not that straightforward. It looks as if the "ISIS attacker" was affiliated or a member of the Syrian security forces (however had no official leadership position), and was set to be removed from the security forces because of his ISIS aligned ideology.

Source on that with SANA article.

The US Air Force is currently doing "show of force" flights over Palmyra, with A-10s popping flares.

A very bad start to any Syrian-US anti ISIS co-operation with this green on blue incident.

And in more fucked AI news CW CSAM https://www.404media.co/a-developer-accidentally-found-csam-in-ai-data-google-banned-him-for-it/

Thinking about my comment earlier today on how easily China could refinance SL's remaining IMF debt. I got curious: could the PRC just eliminate the IMF in a single blow by paying off all of its debt?

Which countries owe the IMF the most money in 2025?

162 billion dollars in outstanding debt to the IMF. How's it split up?

First, wow! Argentina is fucked beyond belief. Holy shit. What a goddamn disaster. There are some interesting observations, here, though. Other than Argentina and Ecuador (conveniently the US's most pathetic running dogs in LatAm atm), Latin America has largely gotten out of the IMF trap. Asia looks pretty similar outside the three big ones shown. Instead, the real locus of imperial and colonialist suffering under the IMF (like under every other capitalist tool) is in Africa. There, IMF debt is spread far more evenly across far poorer countries, entrapping the entire continent in their fiscal schemes. China has already done a great deal to relieve the burdern of the IMF on Africa, but there's so much more - from Africa's perspective. From China's perspective, though, this is nothing. Leave aside Argentina and Ukraine for the moment given their geopolitical alignment. We've seen the headlines bouncing around about China's new $1tn trade surplus.

Now, I'm speaking directly to Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China. Xi and other esteemed comrades: for the low price of 10% of just this year's trade surplus, you could unshackle Africa and the rest of the colonized world from endless debt peonage. The US is withdrawing from the world stage to focus its evil eye on Latin America, a position your intelligent planning, economic development, and trade dominance has forced them into without the imperialist devils able to fire a single shot against you. Xi, you speak often about party members always remembering the lofty goal of leading your people to true communism. And you understand, as a student of Lenin and Mao, the centrality of imperial finance capital and modern colonization in perpetuating capitalism and imposing underdevelopment. And, of course, you know full well the urgency of defeating global capitalism for the preservation of the planet and the thriving of all peoples in a shared future for all humanity. Material reality has long constrained the breadth of options available to you in directly resisting the imperialist system, and so you have carried out the long game of reform and opening up. Well done to all of you on your dedication, which is an inspiration to progressive people all over the world.

But now, new opportunities present themselves. You have recently achieved the incredible feet of $1,000,000,000,000 in trade surplus. What to do with all that cash, you're asking yourselves? Well, were I in your position, I'd invest somewhere between 800,000,000,000 and 900,000,000,000 in improving the lives of your people as infrastructure, social welfare, and enforced reductions in working hours. That remainder? Kill the IMF. One fatal blow, toppling the system. No military interventions. No violating sovereignty. No interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. Just cut out the International MotherFuckers so the rest of the world can stand up next to you.

Comrades, thank you for you consideration of my proposal. Long live the Communist Party of China!