news

South Korea's ruling party urges President Yoon to swiftly lift martial law following parliamentary vote. - Yonhap

Yonhap: President Yoon Seok-yeol held a cabinet meeting right before declaring martial law. Martial Law Force Vehicles Withdrew from National Assembly Parking Lot.

US State Department: "Hopefully Compliance Will Be Made" With South Korea's National Assembly's Resolution Requesting the Lifting of Martial Law. White House says it is 'seriously concerned' following South Korea's Presidential declaration of martial law.

Wtf? Is Elon musk running the White House account now?

Remember that one episode of Drake and Josh where Josh played a criminal in a reenactment in a show based on America's Most Wanted, and then everyone thought he was the criminal and tried to citizens' arrest him? If that guy with the nice chin isn't actually the guy who killed the CEO, I'm imagining his life is like that right now, except everyone loves him.

Some Syria news for today.

A joint Russian-Syrian military operation rescued a group of Syrian army cadets and officers that Washington’s al-Queda proxies had surrounded at the Assad Military Engineering Academy near Aleppo: https://www.rt.com/news/608712-officers-rescued-jihadists-syria-russia/

The Syrian army repelled more Western-backed terrorist attacks on Hama and cleared the nearby town of Tuba: https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/12/04/738464/Syria-army-purges-terrorists-Hama-countryside

Allied forces eliminated another 300 terrorists and shot down another 25 drones today alone (around 2,000 total terrorists have been eliminated over the past week of fighting): https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/12/05/738505/Syria-2000-terrorists-killed-Russia-Takfiris

Surprise, surprise, surprise – the Western-backed terrorists have started killing each other yet again: https://thecradle.co/articles/old-feuds-reignite-between-turkish-backed-extremists-attacking-syrias-aleppo

Canada is banning a bunch of firearms, and they're shipping them to Ukraine.

Defence Minister Bill Blair said some of the guns the government plans to collect will be sent to Ukraine as part of Canada's ongoing donations of military aid to that country.

"The Department of National Defence will begin working with the Canadian companies that have weapons that Ukraine needs … in order to get these weapons out of Canada and into the hands of the Ukrainians," he said.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-gun-control-announcement-1.7402187

unless I'm missing something there were three casings and three live rounds recovered. so either the police are only telling us some of the words, words were repeated, or some of them had no words.

South Korea's main labour union has called a general strike until the President resigns - AFP

Yoon's senior aides offer to resign en masse over martial law declaration - Yonhap

South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol's impeachment bill may be voted on December 6th or 7th. South Korean protesters are currently marching towards the Presidential Palace - Yonhap

I truly believe we could be witnessing the first genuine disintegration of a nation-state in the 21st century, I'm talking something we haven't seen since the Partition of Polish–Lithuania or the various African states during the 1880s, Yugoslavia and the Soviet collapse probably come closest to what's happening from our lived experience, except worse on a per capita basis

It's no different then if ISIS gained full control of Syria in 2015-2016, the inertia and assumptions of the global "anti-terror" machine built up over the last quarter-century guarantees there will be no normalization, no lifting of sanctions, no Taliban style grudging acceptance from the global community

Too many states all over the world bought into the US led war on Terror and al-Qaeda was the face of the enemy for too long and too profoundly for there to be anything other than near universal rejection to an HTS ruled Syria

This is a neocons wet dream, an oil rich advertisement for intervention and annexation by Turkey, the US and Israel

The coming "betrayal" and "scapegoatfication" by NATO will most likely drive the salafists militants into a psychotic religious mania, most likely directed at Iraq as they escape whatever aerial campaigns and Israeli incursions the US has planned

Daniel Zamora: "Coups in the era of hyperpolitics: improvised, chaotic and with no future. The yellow vests movement but for elites."

I have no love for Assad, but recognized his role in fighting Israel. It really sucks seeing that Israel is increasingly likely to pull this off alongside everything else they have done.

I don't want to say this will be the end to the resistance. It will move to a new stage.

Al Rastan bridge has been hit by Russian bombs. Presumably to slow HTS advance.

Looks like they want to hold Homs to me.

We are entering in another darker period in middle-east, only now without any soviet presence or pretenses of equality

Hope i'm the idiot and jubiliant people on twitter are the wise ones

For what it's worth, Greg Stoker doesn't think that the terrorist rebellion in Syria will succeed. I've never seem him be wrong before, but who knows.

Amid the ROK and Syria news, I haven’t seen much about Georgia. Seems like an attempt at Euromaidan 2.0 but does anyone have a clearer picture of the protests?

Satellite imagery has been made public showing that the Russian Air Force ~~and Navy~~ are evacuating their military bases in Syria, in ~~Tartus and~~ Latakia . It's completely over, we're in full Afghanistan territory now.

Wonder who or what is lucky enough to get lifted out on the Antonov AN-124 (the biggest plane in the second image).

They could also be reinforcing the airbase, but I find such a scenario highly unlikely.

The United States was not given a heads up about the declaration of martial law in South Korea, per NSC. Lee Jae-myung, Han Dong-hoon, and Woo Won-sik have been arrested. - Yonhap

It's Yoonback???!

Maduro stays winning? Opposition is weak and in exile, the military is purged, social media is under control, oil industry is doing ok, Colombia, Mexio and Brazil basically de facto recognized Maduro's victory, probably going to join BRICS+ next year.

Opposition keeps hyping that 15 of January 2025, there will be the second coming of Juan Guaido 2 and he will 100% become Venezuela's next president.

Democratic Party chairman Lee Jae-myung: "We are not leaving the Assembly Hall until the president declares the end of the martial law. Seoul: The WaPo Tokyo bureau chief says ROK military leadership is stating that martial law will remain in effect until lifted by the President. Lee Jae-myung: "Following President Yoon's orders is illegal... Military and police must return quickly"

A few months ago I thought it was surprising how stable Syria is considering the shitty economic situation. Things turn around fast :|

Similar case with Bangladesh as well, when this year started, I thought how solid Bangladesh appeared.

What's next? Egypt? They've an extremely repressive 'dictator', who unlike Syria and to lesser extent Bangladesh is backed by the west. But their economy is not doing so great and the Government hasn't provided any solutions.

It will be the greatest day of my life if we see these scenes in Cairo and Amman one day

You know who is probably hating this? In Hillary's mind, this should be happening at the end of her second term. Toppling Assad would be the culmination of her admin and her time as Secretary. But Joe is asleep at the wheel at Trump will probably take credit.

SAA retreating from the entire south and the desert. It's officially joever. They'll do a last stand in Damascus, then flee to the coast and make their little Alawite Abkhazia.

in a move surprising absolutely no one

One of the most well-connected spaceflight journalists, Eric Berger, has bumped his earlier 50/50 coinflip prediction of the possible cancellation of SLS up to 75% likely. This is certainly due to Trump nominating Jared Isaacman to be his NASA Administrator. Isaacman is the rich guy who's flown twice on SpaceX's Crew Dragon on privately-contracted flights, not through the NASA astronaut corps. He was also the guy who did that suit-test spacewalk a few months ago on one of those private flights. Isaacman won't have the authority to cancel SLS on his own but it's definitely a capital-M Message to the US senate to fall in line. It's probably the most of moments, because fuck SLS.

There have been 14 Administrators and only 3 have ever flown to space. Richard Truly, Charles Bolden, and the current one Bill Nelson. Bolden was Obama's pick. He has expertise and flight experience, but his whole management style at NASA was "don't rock the boat even when the boat needs to be rocked". Nelson deserves an asterisk on his "spaceflight" record, he only did it once on the Space Shuttle, and it was basically a political publicity stunt as he did no actual work on the flight. In NASA's astronaut corps Nelson's nickname is "Ballast". Nelson has been merciless in helping Biden and the US senate cut NASA's science program budgets.

Isaacman is a very interesting pick. I was expecting someone much worse, like some flat-earther or a climate change denier or just some idiot Trump ally looking for a cushy job to coast in. Isaacman is none of those things. He's someone with a very high level of technical knowledge and personal spaceflight experience doing actual work in space (the aforementioned suit tests, which are neither safe nor easy). He's popular in NASA's Science Directorate because for years he's been penning letters to US politicians to increase funding for existing and planned science missions. One of the most notable was his letter directly to Biden to try to reverse cuts to the Chandra space telescope program. Chandra is a very special kind of orbiting telescope. It sees in X-rays which our atmosphere blocks. There's not many orbiting X-ray telescopes, and Chandra is one of the best of them. Chandra is vital for observing very high-energy events and objects. It's still fully functional and likely will be for another 10 years. The budget cuts were just plain bureaucratic cruelty.

For those unfamiliar with SLS, it's the US senate's ongoing project to keep sending billions in cash to the former Space Shuttle contractors. It's a dreadful rube-goldberg of a rocket with Boeing as the prime contractor. It's made from leftover Space Shuttle components and tooling, like the RS-25 main engines, the solid rocket boosters (the kind that killed the Challenger crew), the big orange hydrogen/oxygen propellant tank, etc. SLS is the 2nd attempt at this sort of rehash program. The earlier cancelled Ares rocket series was the first attempt. SLS has an expected per-launch cost of about $4 billion (on top of the $20 billion and counting development costs), with a construction rate of about one every 18 months. And it has less payload capacity than the original Saturn V. You can easily play spot-the-similiarities between the three launch systems. The US senate micromanages NASA's budget. "Space is expensive" because the US defence contractors paying US senators' bribes want it to be expensive.

DPP says it does not support martial law after furor over post

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) today said it does not support martial law, after its caucus’ social media post last night comparing the situation in Taiwan’s legislature to South Korea stirred controversy.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol late last night announced martial law, but rescinded the order after the National Assembly voted unanimously to reject his declaration.

After the order was made, the DPP caucus posted on Threads saying that the party supported Yoon’s fight against the North Korean threat. Democratic Progressive Party caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu, left, speaks at a news conference in Taipei today.

"The South Korean parliament has been manipulated by North Korean forces," said the post by "lydppcaucus," an account run by the party's caucus.

"South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol announced emergency martial law nationwide to protect the free constitutional system," the post said. "Have no doubt, we who are Team Taiwan are every second and every minute opposing global dark and evil forces encroaching on [Taiwan].”

The post also suggested that opposition parties had repeatedly obstructed national security proposals, "unconstitutionally expanded" their powers and cut the defense budget, among other claims.

This post was deleted after 20 minutes, after which the DPP said in another post that it was an attempt to “share international information.”

Lmao South Korea failed to do what Bukele did with popular support