News of the World

[kyonides]

China Wins as BRICS Accepts Both Iran and Saudi Arabia as Members

The BRICS economic and security coalition announced on Thursday that it would accept six new countries as members – notably including both Iran and Saudi Arabia, bitter rivals who set aside their differences in March as a result of talks brokered by China.

China is one of the six countries that gave the BRICS its name – alongside Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa – and by far the most influential within the group. South Africa is the newest current member (the coalition used to be named BRIC) and the host of the ongoing summit expected to end on Thursday. The group primarily serves as an economic and diplomatic organization; its members support one another’s misdeeds at the United Nations and other international venues and have greatly expanded trade to bolster their individual markets.
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“We decided to invite the Republic of Argentina, the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to become full-fledged members of BRICS,” Ramaphosa announced.

These countries reportedly beat out sixteen others who had formally applied to join the group. The Russian news agency Tass listed the 22 applicants as “Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Honduras, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Kuwait, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Thailand and Ethiopia.”

The six new members are set to receive their membership privileges on January 1, 2024.

On Thursday, Xi, as the member most enthusiastically pushing for expansion, celebrated the new members and the growth of the group as serving “the common interests of emerging markets.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul Announces Jobs Program for Illegal Aliens
as 380K New Yorkers are Unemployed

As more than 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York, mostly in New York City, since the spring of last year, Hochul has pleaded with President Joe Biden not to stem the flow of illegal immigration but to more easily provide new arrivals with work permits.

In addition, Hochul rolled out a jobs program for border crossers and illegal aliens whereby the New York State Department of Labor (DOL) will be authorized to connect migrants with employers so they can nab jobs.

“All asylum seekers with work authorization in New York can now register for assistance here,” a press release from Hochul’s office states of the jobs program:

DOL career experts will work with individuals to assess skills, work history, education, career interests and more, and connect them with employers across the State. Additionally, the New York State Department of Labor launched a portal enabling businesses to inform the State that they would welcome newly-authorized individuals into their workforce. [Emphasis added]

Hochul’s jobs program comes as more than 380,000 New Yorkers are counted as unemployed and likely hundreds of thousands more remain out of the labor market entirely.

Biden Approves Migrant Camp at NYC Airfield
Despite Residents’ Opposition

President Joe Biden is ignoring concerns from Brooklyn, New York, residents and has greenlit a plan that will see at least 2,000 single adult male border crossers and illegal aliens housed in a former naval airfield facility — paid for by New Yorkers.

On Tuesday, residents in southeast Brooklyn protested New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D) plan to turn Floyd Bennett Field, owned by the federal government, into a massive migrant camp.

The former naval airfield sits along Jamaica Bay and near multiple neighborhoods including Gerritsen Beach, Roxbury, and Breezy Point.
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During the protest, former GOP candidate for New York City mayor Curtis Sliwa blamed Biden’s lax enforcement of federal immigration law for the more than 100,000 migrants that have arrived in the city since the spring of last year.

“The people here feel that they have been betrayed,” Sliwa said at the protest. “No transparency whatsoever. It’s like ‘Pay your taxes, shut up, raise your kids, and we’ll tell you what you’re going to do.’ Well, we’ve had enough, no more of the illegal aliens. Enough is enough, this is Joe Biden’s problem.”

China Accuses U.S. of ‘Cognitive Warfare’
for ‘Pointing Fingers’ at Putin over Prigozhin Plane Crash

The Chinese state propaganda outlet Global Times condemned President Joe Biden and other Western leaders for implying that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin orchestrated a plane crash believed to have killed Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) leader Yevgeny Prigozhin this week.

The Times, citing Chinese Communist Party-approved “experts,” claimed in an article on Thursday that suggesting Putin ordered the demise of the plane, which also reportedly carried other senior members of the paramilitary organization, was part of a “wave of public opinion and cognitive warfare” intended to confuse Russian nationals out of supporting their autocratic leader.

“While the results of the investigation are still not clear, the US and its allies pointed the finger at Putin, which is aimed at discrediting him at home and disrupting Russia’s internal unity and stability,” one such “expert” told the outlet.

China Daily, another government newspaper, also accused the United States on Friday of trying to “intensify the volatility in Russia’s ‘internal affairs’ by suggesting that Putin would eliminate Prigozhin,” potentially inciting violence on the part of disaffected Wagner mercenaries.
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Russian officials announced that all individuals on board the plane were dead but did not identify Prigozhin, specifically, as having passed away. A Kremlin spokesman insisted on Friday that the Russian government would not declare him dead until DNA testing on the bodies proved that the people on board matched the list of names on the manifest.

Well, it's still possible that either US, UK or perhaps even Germany could be interested in killing Prigozhin. Even so, anybody would first suspect that only Putin had the strongest motivations to get rid of his former ally.
And why don't we keep talking about the Russian Dictator a little bit longer?

Vladimir Putin Makes Paramilitary Forces Swear Oath to Russian Flag

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a decree requiring paramilitary fighters in “volunteer formations” to swear an oath of allegiance to the Russian flag.

The move immediately followed the suspicious reported death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose mercenaries are commonly referred to as a “volunteer formation” in Russian state media because private military contractors are illegal.

Two days after Prigozhin allegedly died in a plane crash, Putin decreed that groups “contributing to the execution of tasks given to the armed forces” must swear an oath to Russia’s flag in order to strengthen “the spiritual and moral foundations for the defense of the Russian Federation.”

The decree said all paramilitary forces must “pledge their loyalty to the Russian Federation,” swear to “strictly follow their commanders and superiors’ orders,” and “conscientiously fulfill their obligations.”

Mercenary groups like Wagner are technically illegal under Russian law, but Putin uses them as deniable black ops forces for the dirtiest operations, such as the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Wagner Group mercenaries have been among the most brutally effective forces in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Wagner forces have also been instrumental in Russia’s growing influence over Africa, a project Prigozhin seemed to be enthusiastically working on — and profiting handsomely from — at the time of his reported death.

Labor Protests Rock Chinese Manufacturing Hub as Economy Tanks

The human rights organization Freedom House revealed in the latest update to its China Dissent Monitor on Wednesday that labor protests had more than doubled throughout China from the number documented in June 2022 to the same month in 2023.

Guangdong province, a factory hub in the nation’s south, documented a notable surge in acts of anti-regime dissent compared to the rest of the country.

Freedom House is a human rights research and advocacy group that documents political repression around the world. Its China Dissent Monitor, launched last year, documents incidents of dissent – protests, public expressions of opposition to the Communist Party, and other acts – in the country, revealing a constant drumbeat of anti-regime sentiment undermining the communist regime’s assurances that the Chinese people unanimously adore their totalitarian rulers.

For much of 2022, and certainly in late November of that year when protests erupted nationwide, Chinese citizens expressed outrage and disillusion with the poor handling of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, and in particular the use of city-wide lockdowns to place millions in a state of house arrest and the imprisonment of at least thousands in government-run quarantine camps.

Canada Probes Slavery Allegations in Walmart and Hugo Boss Supply Chains

The Canadian Ombudsman for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) announced on Thursday it is investigating the Canadian branches of Walmart, Hugo Boss, and Diesel for the alleged use of Uyghur slavery in their supply chains.
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In this case, CORE acted on allegations from human rights groups that Chinese suppliers for the three firms used slaves from the oppressed Uyghur Muslims of East Turkistan, which China calls Xinjiang.

Forced labor contamination is an especially pernicious problem in the garment industry since China provides a great deal of the world’s cotton, and Xinjiang produces almost 90 percent of China’s supply.

CORE’s ombudsman and chief spokeswoman, Sheri Meyerhoffer, said Friday that Walmart, Hugo Boss, and Diesel all refused to participate in a preliminary assessment of the slavery reports, so her agency had no choice but to launch an investigation:

The investigations will provide all three companies with an ongoing opportunity to provide further relevant information, and mediation of the allegations remains open. We are hopeful that the investigation findings will provide the companies with information to support their ability to strengthen their due diligence practices.

All three companies denied they purchased goods tainted by forced labor.