Just a small little goober?

A lil' blimgus?

An eebly deebly?

Hey can I borrow five dollars?

-Karl Marx

Former CIA Director David Petraeus said if the Trump administration decides to carry out strikes on Iran amid escalating tensions and threats between President Trump and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it “will not bring about regime change, sadly.”

The retired general said in an interview that aired Sunday on the “Cats Roundtable” radio show hosted by John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM that Khamenei is “such an ideologue, he’s so hard-lined, that it appears that he may not budge on the issues that really matter,” which could prompt Trump to take military action.

“Look, candidly, I’m all for taking the missile program down further or [bringing] damage to the security forces, but we should be very clear-eyed,” Petraeus said. “This will not bring about a regime change, sadly.”

School was canceled in several Mexican states and local and foreign governments alike warned their citizens to stay inside, as widespread violence erupted following the army’s killing of the powerful leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho” was the boss of one of the fastest-growing criminal networks in Mexico, notorious for trafficking fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine to the United States and staging brazen attacks against government officials who challenged it.

He was killed during a shoot-out in his home state of Jalisco as the Mexican military attempted to capture him. Cartel members responded with violence across the country, blocking roads and setting fire to vehicles.

You might expect the prospect of higher interest rates would make people rein in spending and avoid new loans. Instead, Australians are doing the opposite.

Fucking Queensland...

Only there would this even be considered, let alone celebrated

Sorry if this is the wrong community to post this but I would like to subscribe to more hexbear communities so that when I go to my subscribed communities it shows hexbear stuff. I'm on crazypeople.online which shows .world and hexbear and almost everything in between, but I want my feed to be heavier on the bear, and trying to find hexbear communities one by one is very slow and I'm sure I'm missing a lot of communities. If you can help me with lemmygrad too that would be cool, if not I can just go ask there. Thanks!

The explosions that killed one police officer and injured 25 other victims in western Ukraine's Lviv on Feb. 22 were part of a terrorist attack planned by Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address.

"It was indeed a terrorist attack, cynical and cruel," he said after being briefed by law enforcement and the Interior Affairs Ministry.

Two blasts rocked Lviv's historic Old Town in the early hours of Feb. 22, shattering windows in the area.

The explosions took place after officers arrived at the scene responding to a reported store intrusion, Ukraine’s National Police said in a statement. A second explosion took place after another police crew arrived at the scene, Lviv Oblast's Prosecutor's Office added.

MBFC
Archive

Hehe

:beanis:

Top Democratic officials who worked on the party's still-secret autopsy of the 2024 election concluded that Kamala Harris lost significant support because of the Biden administration's approach to the war in Gaza, Axios has learned.

The Democratic National Committee's research on what went wrong in 2024 has been under lock and key since party leaders decided last year to hide it from the public — a reflection of how explosively it could resonate within the party and beyond.

Axios independently verified that Democratic officials conducting the autopsy believed the issue harmed the party's standing with some voters.

The IMEU Policy Project is now accusing the DNC of withholding its report in part because of its findings on Israel.

This is so stupid. How would they even enforce it? Are they going to check everyone's chromosomes at each meeting?

Lots of trans women pass, and lots of cis lesbians can look a bit manly, so I can't imagine any practical way to enforce it. And a rule without enforcement is pointless.

Archived

Child soldiers linked to Sudan’s warring factions have gained viral fame on TikTok, with their videos attracting millions of views.

A Bellingcat investigation has found that the young boys – widely referred to as “lion cubs” – have become celebrated figures of the rival groups that have been fighting for control of the country since 2023.

Many of the videos we reviewed show the children in military uniforms posing with fighters and senior officials from both sides of the conflict – the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). They are seen celebrating battlefield victories, delivering motivational speeches, and making violent threats. In some footage the children are armed.

Child soldier experts told Bellingcat that the visibility and popularity of this content, which portrays fighting as normal, celebrated and aspirational, could lead to the recruitment of more young people in the conflict.

[...]

Bellingcat flagged 12 TikTok accounts that had each posted viral content of child soldiers through the platform’s internal reporting mechanism. After more than 48 hours without action, we emailed TikTok to request comment, providing links to the reported content. This was done to give TikTok a further opportunity to review and remove the accounts, in order to minimise the risk of amplification by reporting on it.

Following our inquiry, TikTok removed seven of the reported accounts. The remaining active accounts continue to host more than a dozen videos featuring child soldier content, which, according to TikTok’s own guidelines, breaches its content policies.

[...]

Bellingcat geolocated multiple TikTok videos showing an RSF “lion cub” – who appears to be a young teenager – celebrating the capture of the 22nd infantry division SAF base in Babanusa, a city in West Kordofan, in early December 2025.

The videos, posted by pro-RSF TikTok accounts and viewed millions of times, show the child’s movements on the ground in the aftermath of the takeover. In the weeks that followed, the child’s TikTok account gained tens of thousands of followers and recent posts amassed hundreds of thousands of views.

In a TikTok video posted to the child’s account on Jan. 1, 2026, in response to social media comments, the child says: “I see people on the [social] media saying that I will die. The person who dies is as if he has paid his debt” This video received more than 1,6 million views.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51295702

Archived

The alleged plot has echoes of a Cold War-era spy novel. A hesitant young woman is directed by her security agency handler to “infiltrate the enemy’s inner circle”, using a false identity to burrow deep for secrets she can dispatch back to senior officers.

But the scene is not set in the atmospheric mists of Prague’s Charles Bridge or the hectic bustle of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. Instead, it takes place in the sleepy suburbs of Australia’s Bush Capital, where a 37-year-old Chinese woman and her two co-defendants have been charged with “reckless foreign interference” for allegedly spying on an unassuming Buddhist association.

Documents released this week by Canberra’s Magistrates Court reveal how the unusual alleged surveillance mission unfolded over three years before it was abruptly interrupted by the Australian Federal Police, but may also offer an alluring insight into the techniques of suspected Chinese state influence and interference operations now expanding not only in Australia but globally.

The AFP statement of facts from Operation Autumn Shield, led by the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce, details alleged WeChat messages between “Foreign Official 1” – a member of China’s Public Security Bureau – a woman operating under the pseudonym Thomas Tyler and her co-accused Zheng Siru, 31, and Joseph Vance, 25, also using a pseudonym.

[...]

The court materials show police alleged the defendants gathered information on the Buddhist group and its associated media company from many open sources, including SBS Chinese programs and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

In the messages released by the court, Foreign Official 1 allegedly urges Tyler to “slip in, climb as high as you can” within the ranks of Guan Yin Citta’s Canberra branch, despite her protestation that this “seems to be developing rather quickly … Then you’ll have me arrested.”

The task has a “bit of spy thriller feel to it”, responds the official, encouraging his charge that, “if you climb high enough, you’ll be commended directly to the leaders in Beijing”.

The three accused have been bailed and are expected to plead not guilty when the court resumes the case later this year.

While the targeting of a fringe Buddhist organisation – whose founder once claimed that former prime minister Kevin Rudd was a Chinese man in a past life – may seem strange, close observers of the ruling Chinese Communist Party point to the regime’s deep-seated paranoia about overseas religious and political groups it fears could internally destabilise China.

[...]

A joint February 11 media release from the AFP and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, announcing the charging of the two younger Chinese nationals in the Canberra case, referred to past statements by ASIO chief Mike Burgess, that foreign interference remains one of Australia’s principal security concerns.

“A complex, challenging and changing security environment is becoming more dynamic, diverse and degraded,” Burgess said in his annual threat assessment in 2025.

“Multiple foreign regimes are monitoring, harassing and intimidating members of our diaspora communities. This sort of behaviour is utterly unacceptable and cannot be tolerated,” he said.

[...]

China’s United Front

Under President Xi Jinping, the expansion of Chinese state influence and interference operations globally, and the increased surveillance of diaspora groups and individuals, has been well documented.

It has been carried out in part by the loosely defined and secretive Communist Party agency known as the United Front Work Department.

The UFWD – described by Xi as a “magic weapon” – and the Chinese security agencies operating within its strategy, conducts an opaque mix of intelligence gathering, surveillance of the Chinese diaspora and a campaign to shape the global political environment and narratives in Beijing’s favour.

The agency focuses on the management of potential opposition groups inside China but is also used by the Communist regime to engage in transnational repression and the silencing of critics living abroad.

While declining to comment on the Canberra case, Chris Taylor, the head of the statecraft and intelligence policy centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the overseas actions of authoritarian regimes like China, Iran and Cambodia were driven by a sense of vulnerability about their political structures and social systems.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/43371009