thelastaxolotl

The increasing upwelling of fascist momentum has led to an influx of calls to launch such people into the sun. This is a particularly difficult and energy-intensive task not yet achieved by man, beast, nor machine, and in order to do so the new proletarian state will have to be quite clever.

The closest man has come to dropping something into the sun is the Parker Solar Probe which has passed as low as 9.86 solar radii (geostationary satellites orbit at roughly 5 terran radii). In order to achieve this, the mission required numerous gravity assists, launched on the most powerful rocket at the time, the Delta IV heavy*, and could only deliver around 50 kg (110 lbs) of payload, a weight of only the most scrawny fascists.

• Falcon Heavy did launch earlier that year but was not yet commercially available and has lower payload capacity to high C3 targets

It is likely that if you have commented “throw [someone] into the sun” before, people have quipped that it would be more efficient to cast them from the solar system entirely. Strictly speaking this is true, at least on standard orbits. Using the Vis-Viva equation with Terra at roughly 150 gigameters from Sol, the orbital velocity is roughly 29.7 km/s. Using a standard Hohmann Transfer with Terra at Aposol and Sol’s surface as Perisol in order to achieve contact requires a velocity at infinity relative to the Terran gravity well of roughly 25.5 km/s or a characteristic energy of 650 km²/s². For perspective, Mars transfers generally require 16 km²/s².

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Tweeto

This is anti-italian discrimination

Chinese foreign policy on Palestine has reflected the disjunction of two eras: revolutionary Maoist support for Palestinian liberation vs. the more recent “balanced approach” accommodating Israel. The Gaza genocide, however, could prompt a new path.

Reviewing contemporary China’s foreign policy stance towards Palestine, one can clearly see the disjunction between two different legacies: The first legacy was tempered by the revolutionary and radical spirits of the Mao era, and it is exactly this Maoist legacy that ensures that support for Palestinian liberation remains a political principle within both the Chinese government and society at large. The second legacy is the so-called “balanced approach” of the post-reform era which became institutionalized since the late 1980s, and this legacy basically prompts the Chinese government to regard its relationship with Israel as neither a threat for China-Palestine relations nor an obstacle to China’s support for the two-state solution.

Just like in any other aspects, the current administration of China does not wish to pick a side between its Maoist past and post-Mao legacies and attempts to simply ignore the disjunction between two approaches by putting the differences aside and emphasizing common ground. As the result, China’s responses to the ongoing genocide in Gaza tends to be mixed. On the one hand, the Chinese state has unequivocally spoken against Israel on all international platforms, and compared to the West, the Chinese state has made it crystal clear that it supports the Palestinian people to use all available means, including armed struggle, against Israeli occupation. When almost all major Western powers are busy in physically suppressing pro-Palestine voices by delegitimizing them as “anti-Semitic,” the Chinese state not only tolerates, but also largely encourages and interacts with the Chinese netizens’ genuine expression of their sense of justice for Palestine.

Nevertheless, one can still remain cautiously optimistic about the future of China’s role in the solidarity movement for Palestine. At the state-level, the Israeli government’s hysteria since October 2023 has already made the Chinese government unhappy. China refuses to condemn the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and quarrels with Israel in the UN have already destroyed the previous honeymoon between the two states. While economic ties between China and Israel may continue to deepen in the future, after the quibbles over the Haifa Bay Port, both states may be reluctant to cooperate with each other on similar large-sale projects in the future.

In terms of social culture, the war in Gaza prompted the ideologically increasingly anti-West Chinese youth to reconnect themselves with the revolutionary legacies of the Mao era. Through actively learning about Palestine from online sources and enthusiastically creating poems, songs, videos, paintings, and any other literary and artistic creations praising the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation, a generation of Chinese youth, whose impression of Palestine is largely shaped by the horror of current genocide in Gaza, is likely to become a generation that is the most sceptical of the Zionist narrative since the 1980s. With the young taking up more important positions in the Chinese government and society in the long-run, there is a strong hope that China will possibly (re)embrace its anti-colonial traditions in the 1960s-1970s and play a more active role in the global solidarity movement for Palestine.

As the seeds of the dandelions of Palestine drift across the globe and land in the hearts of Chinese youth, these rapidly growing kernels will inevitably break through the bounds of both the hegemony of Western narratives and narrow-minded nationalism. Eventually Chinese youth will be inspired to rethink the role of contemporary China and to re-embrace their fellow Arab brothers and sisters.

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By LeCanard

A French court found Marine Le Pen guilty Monday in an embezzlement case and followed up the verdict with a sentence barring her immediately from running for office for five years. Le Pen abruptly left the Paris courtroom before hearing how long she will be banned from running for public office.

Le Pen and 24 other officials from her National Rally were accused of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. Le Pen and her co-defendants deny wrongdoing.

The biggest concern for Le Pen was that the court may declare her ineligible to run for office preventing her from running for president in 2027 -- a scenario she had described as a “political death.”

The Constitutional Council ruled Friday, in a separate case, that imposing the punishment immediately was constitutional.

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BYD, China's largest automaker, seemed poised last year to build its first factory in Mexico, but then Donald Trump returned to the White House.

A project that was expected to create 10,000 jobs and cost approximately $600 million has stalled amid Donald Trump's trade war, which escalated this week when he announced new tariffs on cars.

Now, the budding relationship between China and Mexico has cooled as the two sides distance themselves. Mexico, led by President Claudia Sheinbaum, has been appealing to Trump to avoid a conflict with its main trading partner.

"At the moment, we are not actively seeking Chinese investment," said Cindy Blanco, Secretary of Economic Development of Jalisco, the state where Guadalajara, the potential site of the BYD factory, is located. "We are very aware of the implications. Therefore, we are seeking an agenda aligned with that of the United States."

Meanwhile, China has shown its detachment from Mexico, as it moves closer to the United States and rejects Chinese imports. For example, China's Ministry of Commerce delayed approval of BYD's plant in Mexico over fears that the technology could leak to the United States, the Financial Times recently reported.

This is a major change from just a few years ago. During Trump's first term, the United States imposed tariffs on Chinese imports, prompting Chinese companies to invest in construction operations in Mexico to avoid the levies.

The COVID-19 pandemic subsequently disrupted global supply chains, making Mexico and its proximity to the United States, including a new free trade agreement with the country, even more attractive. Groundbreaking ceremonies for facilities built by Chinese companies became commonplace. This is no longer the case.

“This whole geopolitical chess game has affected Chinese companies’ willingness to invest in Mexico,” said Laura Acacio, manager of Jiangyin Hongmeng Rubber Plastic Product, in a January interview.

China Plans to Invest in Peru

The Chinese medical supply manufacturer is seeking to expand into nearby Peru due to the existence of a new port connected to Shanghai and the Peruvian government's greater receptiveness to Chinese companies than the Mexican government, he said.

Peru has the added attraction of having signed a free trade agreement with the United States that went into effect in 2009. "There is a perception on the part of the Chinese government that the Mexican market has changed a lot," Acacio said.

Direct investment by Chinese companies in Mexico exceeded $2 billion in each of the last three years, according to data from the Latin American and Caribbean Academic Network on China. This figure is almost double that of a decade ago.

Some of that money has gone to the Hofusan Industrial Park, a large farm about 190 kilometers from the U.S. border, partially backed by Chinese investment.

Up to 40 companies with ties to China operate there, according to César Santos, president and co-owner of Hofusan. These include furniture manufacturer Kuka Home, electronics company Hisense, and auto parts manufacturers.

But Trump has tried to prevent Chinese companies from avoiding tariffs through Mexico. The president announced that 25 percent tariffs on Mexico would take effect on March 4, but later postponed them until April 2 to allow for further negotiations. These tariff threats caused some companies to reconsider opening plants in Hofusan.

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Scattered across the United States, hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines scar the earth, posing a safety hazard to passing hikers and a health risk to nearby communities. But cached inside piles of refuse and ponds of toxic waste, there are also elements as critical for the 21st-century economy as coal was for the industrial revolution. Now, an obscure federal government program known as the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, or Earth MRI, is identifying the high-tech minerals concealed in these mines — as well as those hidden beneath the Earth’s surface.

Developed by the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, during the first Trump administration, Earth MRI aims to comprehensively map the nation’s underground deposits of “critical minerals” — an ever-growing list of elements and compounds considered vital for national security and the economy. In 2021, Earth MRI received a massive funding boost through the bipartisan infrastructure law, accelerating federal scientists’ efforts to figure out which parts of the country are rich in minerals used in clean energy technologies, semiconductors, and high-tech weaponry. While the Trump administration has moved aggressively to reverse most of former President Joe Biden’s climate policies, it appears to agree with the prior administration’s desire to locate — and, eventually, mine — more of these resources.

Many Biden-era climate and energy initiatives remain in limbo following the Trump administration’s freeze on the disbursement of grant funding and mass firing of federal employees — but Earth MRI got an early greenlight to resume operations.

“This is a program that has survived both the Trump and Biden administrations,” Peter Cook, a critical minerals policy expert at The Breakthrough Institute, an environmental solutions research organization, told Grist. “They’re both definitely interested in critical minerals.”

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On this day in 1976, Palestinians initiated a campaign of resistance, including a general strike, occupations, and violent confrontation with police, in opposition to Israeli settlement plans. The uprising is commemorated annually as Land Day.

Land Day was not a spontaneous uprising, but the result of months of planning. On May 21st, 1975, activists and Arab intellectuals held a meeting in Haifa to discuss a strategic response to Israel stepping up its campaign to appropriate Palestinian-owned land. This began a series of meetings over which the campaign was conceptualized, including a general congress that was the largest public gathering of Palestinians in Israel since 1948.

On February 14th, 1976, more than 5,000 residents rallied in the village of Sakhnin, calling for a general strike in response to Israeli repression. To prepare for the strike, local land defense committees and branches of the Communist Party distributed leaflets, organized demonstrations, and held meetings in several Arab towns and villages.

The first confrontations began on the eve of Land Day, March 29th as demonstrators in Arraba demanded the release of a local activist, closing the streets and setting fire to tires. Israeli soldiers fired on demonstrators with live ammunition, injuring many of them.

The following day, the general strike was initiated in Arab towns and villages, including the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and refugee camps in Lebanon. Israeli troops and border guards in military trucks and tanks raided Arab communities to arrest activist politicians and disperse demonstrators.

In total, six people were killed, approximately fifty were injured, and three hundred were arrested. When some of the injured applied for compensation, the Israeli Ministry of Defense categorized the Land Day confrontations as "combat activity".

The Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question describes Land Day's legacy this way: "Land Day was a turning point in the orientations and tools adopted for Palestinian struggle inside Israel. After Land Day the Palestinians in Israel gradually structured their presence as a national group inside Israel in a way that went beyond their local struggles."

During Land Day protests in 2018, seventeen Palestinians were killed, including five Hamas members, and more than 1,400 were injured in shootings by the Israeli Army during a march calling for the Palestinian right of return at the borders with Gaza.

• Land Day, 30 March 1976: A Turning Point in the Defense of Palestinian Lands in Israel

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from bskkky

Behold, The Lands of the Great Powers who hold back the Foetid Dark.

This highly requested map of the world of Trench Crusade was illustrated by the incomparable Jared Blando!

My beatiful Al-Andalus didnt survive the demon invasions

pretty cool novgorod won the russian unification

Vent, who is Koyukon Athabascan and Iñupiaq, was raised by her great-grandmother and her aunties in Huslia, a village of 300 in the vast, wild country south of the Brooks Range in northern Alaska. No roads traversed the spruce forest and boggy tundra. Rivers scrawled in great loops from the base of the mountains, writing their history across the flats in oxbow lakes and sloughs that gleamed with light. Huslia lay along one of the largest waterways, the Koyukuk. For generations, it and the region’s other major rivers had served as highways connecting the Alaska Native communities scattered in this trackless landscape to one another and to the fish camps and hunting places and berry-picking grounds where residents like Vent harvested much of their food.

Over a decade ago, Vent joined an auntie at a public meeting in Huslia’s community hall, where villagers had gathered to discuss a state proposal for a new road. Maps detailed a route that, if built, would begin northeast of Huslia from the Dalton Highway, the only major road in northern Alaska, and run more than 200 miles west, nearly to the Inupiat village of Kobuk, one of several on the Kobuk River. The so-called Ambler Access Project—led mostly by the state’s economic development arm, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA—would allow foreign companies to develop copper mines near Kobuk. Trucks would travel the new road up to 168 times per day, carrying ore concentrate. Once they reached the Dalton Highway, they would transport the ore south to Fairbanks, where trains would carry it to a port in south-central Alaska—a total journey of about 800 miles.

The stakes were high. The road would slice across the Koyukuk, the Kobuk, and nine other major rivers as well as thousands of streams, threatening the peoples’ supply of salmon, sheefish, and whitefish with toxic spills and sediment runoff. It would also interrupt the migratory path of the Western Arctic caribou herd—until recently, Alaska’s largest—threatening another key source of sustenance for more than 40 communities.

Vent was impressed by the elders she heard speak at the meeting. “They knew that showing up was going to help prevent this happening to our land and our animals and our water and our people,” Vent, now 24, told me.

But Vent and other opponents came to believe that the road was about more than the mines at its terminus. It would open one of the largest expanses of unbroken land left on Earth to industrial development. The new artery could be the starting point for yet more roads and mines, and perhaps ultimately allow public access to places long protected by their remoteness. “It’s about the Western world wanting to come in and take from Indigenous people,” Vent said. “Once this road opens, there’s no going back.”

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