World Politics

[Mal]

Also, the end of an empire isn't so much a hard stop but a slow decline. Yes, the USSR is long dead but its ghost is still with Russia and the other former Soviet republics. Russia and their elites leverage their influence hard. Probably why they control the fossil fuel industry (this is more or less what prop them up) and they manage to get it intergraded with Europe. That was probably done in good faith since, hey, the Cold War ended and Russia and others should be reintegrated back into the world. Then of course people (the US) didn't want the Cold War to end end (old habits die hard). Seriously, why the hell is NATO still a thing? It seriously siloed Russia wanting to act like the USSR. With that said, Just to make it really clear, IT DOESN'T JUSTIFY ANY OF RUSSIA'S ACTIONS. From Chechnya, Georgia, now Ukraine, and other conflicts.

 

But yeah, it's the nukes that allow them to continue on this path. None helps the situation.

 

The much alive Cold War mindset is a curse on the world. Russia is doing their bullshit while we, the US, do our bullshit trying to fill that void.

[TheMightyEthan]

If you look at the history though NATO didn't silo Russia after the end of the cold war, they did it to themselves. There was lots of goodwill and let's all be friends and everything through the 90s, but Russia didn't want to become just one of the nations in the club, they still wanted to play the superpower and control Eastern Europe, so they rejected integration with the West, and here we are. (Obviously that's a massive oversimplification, since you can't accurately sum up something like that in one sentence, but that's the gist of it.)

[MetalCaveman]

President: *Cancels new airport, meant to help with air traffic and provide a much needed update and upgrade that could work alongside the current one, arguing corruption issues without any proof and just generally accusing it of being a monument of neoliberalism"

 

Also President: *Orders construction of HIS "new" airport built on top of an old military base, with no studies, no analysis, no research, no nothing, experts, national and international warn of issues with air traffic, and the possibility of serious accidents*

 

Airlines: "Well, guess we won't be flying there then"

 

President: "Well, guess I'll just make it so you HAVE to fly there by law"

 

International airlines can just laugh this off, national ones have started offering way more flights to other cities in order to avoid Mexico City altogether, but we'll see how long they can hold.

 

This thing is going to be another Linea 12 isn't it?

 

Speaking of, DNV had their third report on the incident, which left 26 dead and almost a hundred wounded, ready to be presented, before they could do that however, Claudia Sheimbaum, head of government in Mexico City, and so far the most likely candidate for puppet president in 2024 for MORENA, launched a pre-emptive strike, accusing it of being "biased, fuelled by political motivations" etc. and so forth, the usual MORENA arsenal of "We hold the one and only truth, we are the light, we are righteousness personified, anyone who speaks against us is a liar, evil, ignorant, and wishes to harm the country", why this reaction?

 

Because, according to parts of the report that were "leaked" one of the reasons the subway line collapsed was due to a lack of maintenance, that's right, not poor or inadequate maintenance, just an outright lack of it, when did this lack of maintenance happened? During Sheimbaum's administration of course. Of note, many of the other people involved in the shoddy construction, the poor quality of materials, and many other issues Line 12 had are now part of MORENA as well, these are untouchable of course, so they've gone for everyone else that hasn't sworn fealty to our glorious leader, many of those people now await trial for manslaughter.

 

Linea 12 for reference:

 

 

 

We also recently had to deal with the electoral reform, meant to grant the president and his party complete control of elections, one of the key points was the dissolution of the National Electoral Institute, to be replaced with the National Institute for Elections and Referendums, which would be composed of 7 council members, chosen by "popular" vote (though they'd have to be approved beforehand by the president so...), this was thankfully shot down, though the response was swift.

 

The president and his cohorts then declared all those senators who voted against this reform "traitors" and even proposed that their pictures and names be exposed in public spaces with "TRAITOR" written under their name in the style of a most wanted poster.

 

In June we have elections, governor elections, and it's oh so fun to see the main opposition candidate in my state already fucking up everything, like her PR team went and said "how can we make sure no one sees the actual policies and changes you bring and instead see you as an airhead completely disconnected from reality while at the same time handing over victory to MORENA on a silver platter?" the result is that, while her policies include:

• Bi-monthly economic support for women.
• Support for women, helping them find employment and/or starting their own businesses.
• Free healthcare for everyone, including vaccines, medicines and doctor appointments.
• Repair and modernization of roads in all rural areas.
• Community kitchens in all regions of the state.
• Environmental rescue for Tula, the area currently responsible for a fair chunk of pollution in the Valley of Mexico, mainly due to a refinery that the president loves.
• Among others.

 

Her actual campaign is based on:

• Free phones and tablets for everyone!

Which of course MORENA has used to present her as an evil neoliberal elite who hates poor people and doesn't understand them. So that's going to be fun... NOT lol

 

Meant to post this last night, apparently forgot to click submit lol, anyway, another update, the director of Mexico City's metro system when Line 12 collapsed has now been given an honorary position in... Wait for it.... the External Committee of Evaluation, Center of Engineering and Industrial Development. lol

[MetalCaveman]

This Sunday (June 5th), we have elections, governor elections to be precise, if the fact that polls seem to put MORENA's candidate ahead by a fair margin wasn't enough, dude went and did what MORENA does best, put some boogeyman in people's minds to cause trouble, once again citing their favourites, the elite-neoliberal-educated-conservative-aspirationists, he called all MORENA followers to

 

Quote

"Watch over the ballot boxes and voting booths, to ensure the  elite-neoliberal-educated-conservative-aspirationists can't STEAL the victory that belongs to MORENA..."

 

 

So yeah, as if the whole voting process wasn't already a dangerous affair in this little slice of hell we call Mexico, I now also have to worry about what shenanigans these cultists will get up to. It's going to be a fun day... NOT!

[MetalCaveman]

The good news, I was able to vote without any major incidents.

 

The bad news... Not even in my most pessimistic predictions could I have come up with this: MORENA now controls 22 states, the remaining 10 are split between PAN, PRI and MC.

 

So, across the country, people looked at the way things were going and decided they wanted more, and more and more.

 

Of course, the other parties have their share of responsibility, PAN shot themselves on the... Not foot, but the head, with the VOX thing, PRI should get rid of Alito, in fact, they should learn from AMLO, start a new party with the current members, sans a few that drag them down hard, name themselves something flashy that makes them sound cool and friendly and just keep going, worked for the old PRI that's now MORENA, so maybe it'll work for the new PRI?

 

PRD is toast now, and the rest of the parties are mostly irrelevant since they act as proxies for the big 4 (now big 3 with PRD disappearing from the landscape for now lol), this does however paint a bleak picture for 2024 and forwards.

 

I'd like to think that I'm lucky, in that my state is not a tourist magnet, nor a big industrial hub, makes us a smaller target for Sinaloenses del Bienestar lol, but that doesn't mean we don't have to worry about that.

 

So yeah, that's going to be a thing.

[TheMightyEthan]

[Mal]

Well that's unexpected. I would "Well, anyways..." this since Abe is an ultranationalist fuck but politics in Japan probably will go crazy for the foreseeable future and the (far) right-wing government will get an even firmer grip on power as in they'll never leave.

 

[MetalCaveman]

NHK Reporting that he has no vital signs?

[Mal]

Need a doctor to make the call but yeah, pretty sure he's dead.

 

But yeah, getting offed with a homemade gun wasn't on my radar. 

[TheMightyEthan]

If you had told me a world leader was going to be assassinated that is not the one I would have predicted.

[Mister Jack]

Apparently the assassin bears a weird resemblance to Hideo Kojima so the poor guy is never going to hear the end of it.

[Mal]

Abe got banished to the Shadow Realm.

 

1 hour ago, Mister Jack said:

Apparently the assassin bears a weird resemblance to Hideo Kojima so the poor guy is never going to hear the end of it.

Fun times all around.

 

 

 

 

[MetalCaveman]

Couple of days after a meeting between Biden and AMLO, Caro Quintero former leader of Guadalajara cartel and who supposedly was fighting for control of Sinaloa against the Sinaloa cartel, has been arrested by the Mexican Navy, given how long he's been on the run I'd imagine this was part of some deal or request made during the meeting. Specially since US officers claim he'll be extradited ASAP.

 

https://elpais.com/mexico/2022-07-15/rafael-caro-quintero-capturado-el-jefe-historico-del-cartel-de-sinaloa.html

 

Maybe related but a navy helicopter crashed, resulting in 14 marines dead, no one has confirmed whether it was in response to the arrest but I wouldn't rule that out.

[Mister Jack]

Crimean Bridge just got blown the FUCK up

 

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1578633576253657089

[MetalCaveman]

Secretary of National Security and Defense of Ukraine:

 

 

 

In national news, it's leak season!

 

First, after the Supreme Court ordered the cancellation of several arrest warrants against suspects in the Ayotzinapa case (kidnapping and murder of 43 students), classified documents were leaked. These confirmed the involvement of the army and local police in the kidnapping, the army offering to "clean up" some of the bodies, disposing of them in areas inside an army base and more.

 

Most disturbing, the leaks showed text conversations between cartel members during that day, it's hard to describe how disgusting and sickening those texts were, how casually they talk about mutilating the "packages" handing some of them over to other members to be dissolved in acid, etc. To say it's fucked up is a massive understatement. Anyone who is against calling these people monsters needs a reality check, no other term could apply here.

 

Then a hacker group calling themselves Guacamayas hacked the armies of Mexico, Chile, El Salvador, Peru and Colombia.

 

In the information revealed about Mexico... Boy there's a lot, including that the president's health is way worse than he claimed, he's since admitted, though downplayed a fair bit, that he did in fact have to go to the hospital, but claims it wasn't that bad, the leaks mention he's had to undergo emergency procedures a couple of times.

 

It was also revealed that, although the president claimed to be "different" and that his government didn't spy anyone, the government was using the Pegasus spy software to target journalists and human rights activists.

 

The amount of soldiers present in borders, bridges and ports is also there, and it turns out they are severely understaffed everywhere.

 

One of the biggest pet projects of our current president was the cancellation of the new airport and the construction of another, his own, inside a military base, was pushed because the army wants to create not only their own airline, but also a tourism based corporation that handles everything from flights to hotels, tours and more.

 

We've also learned that the army not only knows who the cartel members are, but also where they live, where they go, where they get their weapons (one of these places is right in front of a military base lol), but also knows who their targets are and when AND where they're going to be killed, and yet they do nothing.

 

Also apparently SEDENA (national defense) has

 

• Families of Children With Cancer
• Feminist groups
• Human Rights Groups

On the same threat level as Hezbollah, ISIS and Al Qaeda according to a leaked threat analysis report for the AIFA airport.

 

There's still more that keeps coming up, apparently there are 6TB of data, including documents, emails, texts and more.

 

Also, and this was not a leak, AMLO is not happy about the Nobel Peace Prize, he was hoping he'd win it thanks to his peace plan for Russia and Ukraine, plan which received the following response:

 

 

Of course, his plan was basically:

• Russia keeps the territories they've taken.
• Ukraine apologizes for being so hostile.
• ?????
• World Peace!

Not surprising that Ukraine wasn't on board lol.

[MetalCaveman]

The army announced they captured Antonio Oseguera, brother of El Mencho, leader of CJNG, apparently in response to the kidnapping of Colonel Jose Isidro Grimaldo by members of CJNG.

 

We're in for some interesting days, Merry Christmas everybody!

 

Last week, Ciro Gomez Leyva, journalist and critic of the AMLO administration was attacked outside his home, survived thanks to his bulletproof vehicle. In his morning conference, the president, doing what he does best, turned himself into the victim, saying that the attack was an attempt from the conservative neoliberal agents to destabilize his government, though first he claimed that the attack has been faked in an attempt to make his presidency look bad. This after he called out Ciro Gomez by name during one of his conferences, saying that listening to him talk "Could give you brain tumours".

 

In 2019 he threatened journalists during one of his conferences:

 

 

Quote

Don't cross the line, you know what'll happen to those who cross the line, we have people here watching you, making sure no one crosses the line.

 

[Mal]

So, in a span of a few weeks China went from Zero Covid to what is essentially let it rip, Great Barrington declaration. A lot of people's vaccinations are old, and lots of the elderly still remains unvaccinated. Underfunded and bizarre medical system (good luck 300 million plus migrant workers, residents of rural or lower tiered cities). It's going as well as you can expect.

 

This is maddening to watch it all go down. Not to say there isn't some normalcy 

[MetalCaveman]

 

Apparently they recaptured Ovidio Guzman, so, Culiacanazo 2.0 time.

 

 

Except that this time they immediately took him away from Culiacan and into CDMX, supposedly there were USAF aircraft around Culiacan as well, but I don't think that's been confirmed, although given the precision and speed with which the whole thing was done, I wouldn't be surprised it this was another Black Swan.

 

It's going to be interesting to hear what our president has to say, I'd imagine his next monthly meeting with Chapo's mom is going to be... heated lol.

[MetalCaveman]

Genaro Garcia Luna has been found guilty of receiving bribes from cartels and for drug trafficking.

 

This is a HUGE blow to both PAN administrations, Fox and Calderón, as he was their big guy in terms of security, he was founder of AFI, Federal Investigation Agency, founder of the Federal Police, Secretary of Security, one of the architects of PAN's war on drugs strategy, etc.

 

His most important positions were during the Calderón administration.

 

During the trial Luna also mentioned that current president also received money from cartels, but by far, the biggest blow was against PAN.

 

As Jefe Diego said "Calderón either knew, or he was an idiot".

 

This is also a huge blow at all Mexican politics, yes, we know it's an open secret that all politicians are in the cartel pockets, but this was a public display of how rotten everything is.

 

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by MetalCaveman

[TheMightyEthan]

Is he a political enemy of the current government? Because otherwise I'm surprised he was actually convicted.

 

*Edit - Oh wait, I didn't realize the trial was in US court.

[MetalCaveman]

Yeah, the only reason dude faced trial was because it was a US court, remember Cienfuegos? General and former Secretary of Defense, faced similar charges, then the Mexican government went all:

 

"Dudes, could you send him over here? We like, totally, pinky promise he'll face justice in our courts."

 

The US government went all:

 

"Yeah, OK, we wanted him to face trial here, but sure, you guys handle this."

 

Then as soon as he arrived, they rolled out the red carpet, gave him a hero's welcome and proclaimed he was free of all sin, all of his charges had all been lies from the Yankee Empire.

 

Doubt the US is willing to send anyone else over here again lol.

[MetalCaveman]

 

Mexico Magico

[TheMightyEthan]

I wonder if that has anything to do with members of Congress proposing military action against the cartels... 

[MetalCaveman]

https://www.propublica.org/article/mexico-amlo-lopez-obrador-campaign-drug-cartels

 

 

TL;DR: During his 2006 campaign, current president AMLO received funds from drug cartels, DEA had evidence of his officials participating and had an operation ready, but canceled it after the Fast and Furious fiasco and after Peña Nieto went in with a different approach, walking back many agreements and collaborations established under the Calderón administration.

 

There's a bunch of interesting stuff there, including how, back in 2006, after Calderón won, cartels had a plan to kidnap the president of the electoral tribunal and force him to change the results. Also apparently a bunch of people in the DEA and other agencies are all "well, anything we do is pointless when the Mexican government itself protects the criminals we're trying to stop".

 

It also answers the question of how AMLO managed to remain active for years without any clear source of income, and confirms what we all know, most of the people who show up at his rallies are paid to be there.

 

One thing I'd like to point out though, Proceso isn't really an investigative magazine, they're a propaganda mouthpiece.

 

"This week on Proceso: Learn how TV Azteca illegally benefited from deals with neoliberal governments, their corruption, exposed!"

 

*Salinas (owner of TV Azteca) makes a deal with the president*

 

"This week on Proceso: See how the brave men and women of TV Azteca fight the good fight against the neoliberal conspirators, enemies of the state!"

 

 

Of course after this was published, AMLO went on the offensive, accusing ProPublica and Tim Golden of being at the service of his enemies and the enemies of the 4T, he even went as far as saying that Tim Golden is worse than Loret de Mola, who for years has been public enemy #1 in the eyes of AMLO, being one of the few big name journalists to call him out on his BS.

 

ProPublica responded:

 

https://www.propublica.org/article/mexican-president-lopez-obrador-called-our-story-slander-and-our-reporter-a-pawn-here-are-some-facts

 

 

[MetalCaveman]

So, after six years of violence, insecurity, economic collapse, unemployment, collapse of the healthcare system, poor management of the pandemic, corruption, and more, the country as a whole decided... We want six more years of this.

 

Not only that, but last I saw, MORENA got majority in senate and congress, which means that their Plan C might be happening.

 

Plan C involves disappearing the current Supreme Court, replacing it with judges that follow the will of the president, modifying the constitution to grant more power to the president, disappear things like INAI (freedom of information) and INE (Electoral Institute) so that future elections are all handled directly by the government, along with other changes and new laws meant to consolidate power on the president's office.

 

Like Loret said during their live broadcast:

 

"This means people, the country as a whole, saw what happened, what is happening and what will come, and agreed with it, the approved of it, they want more of it".

 

What can you do or say then? Fuck everything I guess.

 

Something funny out of all this, watching US media and social media sites reporting this as some great victory:

 

"A "leftist" jewish woman became president! Glory! Hallelujah! Mexico will now be a utopia! Start Trek future here they come!"

 

And the comments being filled with Mexicans pointing out how this is anything but a victory, with the occasional MORENA follower arguing that this is the bestest thing ever.