There is going to be a protest levied against the Egyptian government at their embassy in Pretoria (28 April, 13:30 SAST), organized by various activists, media outlets and humanitarian groups in South Africa. Bus services have also been provided to take protesters from throughout Soweto and Johannesburg to Pretoria. The nature of the protests is to demand the Egyptian military to forcibly reopen the Rafah Crossing to reallow the delivery of aid which has been left to rot for the past 2 months and allow medical refugees to escape the Strip, alongside others who so may decide to.

Some of Egypt’s crimes that were highlighted include the crackdown and arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters following the Western-backed coup that overthrew the democratic election of Mohamed Morsi, with the Sisi regime as the incumbent successor, trafficking by often demanding refugees from Gaza pay as much as R100k ZAR (or R50k ZAR for children) for each to be allowed entry to Egypt (There is an instance of even a Palestinian-South African citizen having their passport seized and being imprisoned without charge for over 1.5 years - Egypt won’t allow them to return to South Africa because of the lack of passport that they disposed of and don’t consider a South African ID valid enough to fly back into Johannesburg), Egypt and ISISrael have also destroyed many of the cross-border tunnels used to smuggle in good, most importantly food. This also at a time when WFP and other aid groups have alarmed that there is literally no food left in their stocks and aid workers continue to be targeted in bombings. Organizations such as Africa Muslims Agency and Gift of the Givers may even have to face a bitter reality that none of their workers will be able to return to South Africa.

Rafah as a city also no longer exists. The former city has been annihilated in totality, all of it’s former 700,000 residents have been ethnically cleansed and all 70km2 of it is under a kill-on-sight order. The entire Gaza Strip has been squeezed down to 100km2, with plans for squeeze down the area further to convert al-Mawasi into an actual concentration camp.

Infinite death to ameriKKKa and death to piSSrael

Total blackout in Portugal, Spain and some parts of France!!!

Guees who’s not working 2day

Huge power outage in at least western Europe. A while ago.

Edit: No cell data. Using my dad’s Internet hot-spot which has satellite Internet

Edit 2: My father says some airplane crashed into a very high voltage line

Edit 3: Some cell data, but very slow, probably under a lot of pressure

Edit 4: airplane story might be fake, but it’s confirmed a very high voltage cable got cut somehow

Also radio is so back lol

The two other votes were Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley.

Next megathread is here!

US airstrikes on Yemen continue for the 44th night in a row.

The following governorates have been hit by airstrikes so far:

Sana’a

• 3 houses hit in Bani Al-Harith District.

Amran

• 3 airstrikes on al-Jabal al-Aswad (Monte Negro/Black Mountain). This mountain has been hit a lot over the past six weeks.
• Two airstrikes on Sufyan district.

Warning for potential graphic imagery during ongoing airstrikes:

Al Masirah TV twitter

Xcancel mirror

Opposition sources also report multiple rounds of airstrikes in Saada and Ta’izz Governorates, but this cannot be verified.

okay so it turns out that after all …

🇰🇵 🤝 🇷🇺 DPRK officially announces sending troops to Russia in accordance with strategic partnership agreement — KCNA

On the occasion of the liberation of Kursk, Comrade Kim Jong Un specially stressed the following:

"They who fought for justice are all heroes and representatives of the honour of the motherland.

In praise of the heroism and bravery of the proud sons of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a monument to the battle feats will be soon erected in our capital city and flowers of praying for immortality given by the motherland and the people will be placed before the tombstones of the fallen soldiers.

The fighting spirit and heroism of the soldiers who demonstrated the great name of the strong and the glory of the victors will shine long in the high platform of respect and honor generation after generation.

The motherland should hand down forever the soul of them who fought to defend the great honor and take important state measures to specially and preferentially treat and take care of the families of the brave soldiers who participated in the war."

Big news in the announcement of the latest US Military budget plans. It seems that after being on the receiving end of Iranian designed ballistic missiles, and with the rise of ballistic missile proliferation in Russia, China, India, North Korea, Israel, and even Pakistan, and with the death of the INF treaty that previously banned the development of these weapons for the USA and Russia, the US wants advanced Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle (MaRV) equipped ballistic missiles, including Anti Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) and their area denial capabilities, for themselves. This is a historic moment, and admission that these weapons are valuable battlefield assets (which I have been saying for years now), despite the distorted information from the cruise missile lobby. This cruise missile lobby in the US is being reigned in for the first time in over three decades (Pershing-II MaRV equipped ballistic missile was retired in 1991). ASBMs have acted as a very effective area denial weapon for Ansarallah/the Houthis in Yemen against US Navy warships and aircraft carriers, even without landing a single hit. The carriers don’t dare get within ASBM range.

Source, PDF file format

As for why the focus worldwide is on MaRV capable ballistic missile systems and not hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), with HGV programmes being cancelled or making up only a small amount of a missile force compared to MaRVs for say China, here’s some required reading: Hypersonic weapons are mediocre. It’s time to stop wasting money on them..

Main problem HGVs have is that their launch is the exact same of that as ballistic missile, a rocket booster straight up into the sky, easily detectable by early warning satellites. However, because HGVs spend a lot more time gliding in the atmosphere with large amounts of drag, they take longer to reach their targets than ballistic missiles, which spend the majority of their flight exoatmospheric. Another problem is that this drag effectively limits HGV maneuverability, even a perfectly performed turn can result in an HGV losing 10% of its energy, on a single turn! Here are some slides from a UK MoD analysis of HGVs, showing just how limited the turn capabilities are. And these calculations are based on an impact velocity of Mach 2, not even close to hypersonic (Mach 5). If the constraint was charged from Mach 2 to Mach 5, the turn/divert capability would be much less! Remember, HGVs have no propulsion system once seperated from the rocket booster, they’re gliders.

Expect future hypersonic weapons development to be focused hypersonic cruise missiles well above Mach 5 like the Russian Zircon (there’s no point in creating a hypersonic cruise missile that’s barely hypersonic, see the US Navy cancellation of the HALO missile), and hypersonic boost vehicles (attaching some sort of rocket motor to the HGV) like Iran’s Fattah-2 concept, to negate the energy loss from pure gliding. I also expect we’ll see some copies of Iran’s Fattah-1 MaRV equipped ballistic missile. The Fattah-1 MaRV was the first MaRV to put a thrust vector control sustainer rocket motor on the MaRV itself, allowing for trajectory changes or corrections while exoatmospheric, and for improved glide phase performance with an additional source of energy.

The fact of the matter is that MaRV equipped ballistic missiles can outperform HGVs in many scenarios (which is why I go on about MaRVs being “game changing” weapons all the time), and even if a MaRV equipped ballistic missile is expensive, HGVs are far more expensive still.

Hundreds of officers belonging to the UAE-backed ‘Yemeni National Resistance’ have defected to Ansarallah (the Houthis), and gathered in the capital Sanaa for briefing. These officers defected from the UAE-backed ‘Yemeni National Resistance’, their territory is on Yemen’s Western Coast

They are led by General Tareq Saleh, nephew of the late President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former Houthi ally that defected to the side of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2017. It seems almost all of their high command have defected.

• Telegram

Israel bombs Lebanon’s capital Beirut

Israeli forces have carried out an airstrike on Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, in the latest violation of a ceasefire agreement with the country’s resistance movement, Hezbollah.

Chief of General Staff Gerasimov through TASS has confirmed the presence of DPRK fighters in some capacity:

https://archive.ph/znkqi

Gerasimov also commended the role of North Korean fighters in the liberation of the Kursk Region.

“I want specially to note the participation of servicemen of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in liberating border areas of the Kursk Region who in accordance with the Treaty on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between our countries rendered considerable assistance in crushing the Ukrainian army’s combat group that had launched an incursion,” Gerasimov said.

As Russia’s military chief pointed out, “soldiers and officers of the Korean People’s Army were accomplishing combat objectives shoulder to shoulder with Russian servicemen and in the process of repelling the Ukrainian incursion showed high professionalism and displayed endurance, courage and heroism in combat.”

Julian Assange and His Family Attend Pope Francis’ Funeral - Telegram

Could you imagine Julian living with Pope Francis in the Vatican lol

Patrick Lancaster has his cw blurred dead

The Swiss under-23 fencing team turns its back on the Israeli team during the medal ceremony of the European Fencing Championship in protest against genocide.

• Telegram

Vancouver police say several people have been killed and multiple others injured after a vehicle drove into a crowd at a street festival Saturday evening.

The incident happened shortly after 8 p.m. near East 41st Avenue and Fraser Street, where the Lapu Lapu Day Block Party was taking place.

Police said the driver is in custody.

CBC News

Just happened hours ago, I’m not really plugged into socials so I’m not sure what’s known or fake