Image is of the Cuban flag and the Pride flag on the Havana Health Ministry building.
Inspired by a highly upvoted recommendation by @Commiejones@hexbear.net:
We need to kill the Mega Posting Wars meme. It wasn't very funny to start with and now I get the feeling some people are taking it way too seriously. Clogging up the news thread with bullshit just to try to out post the trans mega is just dumb and annoying.
The News Megathread is now under trans martial law:
-
Loving trans people on this site and elsewhere is strictly mandatory.
-
Posting about the "comment wars" between the trans and news megathreads is now strongly discouraged inside the news megathread. No shame in it - I also recently made jokes about it - but though they were almost always just jokes, it was unrelated to current events and was beginning to feel more like padding the comment count instead of trying to improve the quality of the thread. If you want to boost comments and engagement here, then post articles and analysis!
The COTW (Chemical of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific chemical every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied chemicals. If you've wanted to talk about the chemical or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Chemicals of the Week are Estrogen and Testosterone! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
After much campaigning, doing groundwork and burning bridges Kamala Harris has finally overcome her 'being better than Trump' status and is now polling behind the incredibly dry boy.
Something something snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
I don't think people realise how alienating Kamala Harris' rhetoric is to non-white/POC men. I've made a mention of it before, but it really is baffling, like a modern version of the Hillary Clinton "super predators" rhetoric. I want to a larger post on it but I'm not sure if I'm the right person to point it out. Maybe I'm chasing ghosts on this, but I can see it clearly.
I for one would love to read that
try your best and put something down.
I'd read it
Im sure it would be good
All she had to do was stop arming Israel.
Actually if she came out with an executive order that stopped universities from destroying encampments she would've been polling ahead comfortably.
Actually if she just came out and said she wouldn't put Republicans in her cabinet she'd be doing better.
She's going to lose come November
Had a
campaigner text me to join a watch party for the debates 40 minutes away. Told them I don't support those who arm fascists and support genocide. The Dem party has become too far right and now the party of Bush and Cheney and I'll be voting Green in Michigan.
Campaigner actually was considerate and said they'd send that up to the campaign. Just too many 'good Germans'....er well meaning people caught up in the D/R trap.
I don't think she's going to win Michigan. Maybe a lot of
FIRST WOMAN BLACK ASIAN PRESIDENT. I remember 
Obama fever. Thinking we somehow evolved as a society. Oh oh!
Speaking of watch party tho, are we gonna watch the debate on hextube?
Probably not anywhere near as funny as seeing Genocide Joe's brain melting but having comrades to watch it with is probably the only way I could stomach listening to either of them
She's not going to win, we had the same thing with Hillary as the first woman president.
If she couldn't win kamala definitely isnt
Can you imagine if Hillary lives to see another woman become the first female President of the United States of America? That might make it worth it right there lol.
That's my silver lining to this whole shitty election, either way the outcome is sure to make Hillary unhappy
If kamala wins, it will be the only silver lining
They’re different: Hillary lost because she didn’t try to win Michigan. Kamala is going to lose because she’s trying to lose Michigan.
this is definitely not true. americans absolutely do not give a shit about or vote based on foreign policy. at the level of the entire electorate, the american public is a bunch of goldfish brained nitwits. dem voters say that they want a ceasefire, but if kamala were to say 'no more weapons' there would be an enormous blacklash of aipac nazi propaganda. that would whip public sentiment sufficiently back that she would buckle and walk back any policy promise, appeasing nobody.
further, she is literally the vice president for another 5 months. if somehow she got a brain transplant and started fighting for a ceasefire now, there is no way there would be enough uptake from the bloodthirsty american electorate that it would be worth the votes she would gain. a campaign promise of not arming israel would mean she would be going up against both biden and the GOP. she would not net gain voters in that fight.
I'm not making a prediction about whether kamala wins or loses, but I am making a prediction that whatever happens will not be driven by electoral pushback about american war crimes. on the whole, americans do not give a shit about war crimes.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, thing is a few states have populations consisting of the people who are being murdered. Unfortunately for her, those states are swing states she needs to win.
If 100K out of the 200K+ population of Muslims in Michigan decides not to vote or not vote for her, she's screwed out of 16 EC votes.
She is almost certain to lose Florida and Ohio is a swing state that leans red.
That's 18 and 29 for Ohio and Florida respectively.
She absolutely can't afford to lose anymore swing states. She needs Pennsylvania and Georgia and even then it isn't a guarantee.
It's not about Americans in general, it's about some Americans in swing states. She needs to appeal to those people because they are the ones that actually decide if she's going to win or not.
Americans under 30 absolutely give a shit about war crimes.
americans under 30 also don't vote very much. what you're saying is true, but not meaningful for electoral politics. also, even americans under 30 don't rank foreign policy as their main issues - to the extent they vote, they vote on other issues.
i don't buy it. you only need to look at the precipitous drop in Biden's polling after the only unambiguously good foreign policy development in years (exiting afghanistan) to know that Americans are antagonistic to, or at best unmoved by, a humane approach to the world.
Harris is doing bad because Biden can't close on Ukraine or Israel -- flipping the messaging, withdrawing support, the issues in-and-of-themselves don't matter, no one votes on foreign policy -- but what matters and is detrimental is that withdrawing support, that flipping the messaging -- "Losing"-- looks weak and incompetent, which Harris can't afford as a female candidate, which she can't afford against the racist, "crisis of competency" framing of the GOP.
it might be one thing if Harris ran as an unambiguous anti-interventionist champion -- she would look strong and principled -- but as VP she can't run away from the current administration, which means she is tied to biden who is tied to Blinken's blinkered view of the world, which assumed that one could just let the Israelis could tire themselves out with a little, incredibly disproportionate amount of violence -- not understanding that 10/8 is Bibi's pretext for clinging onto power indefinitely, not understanding that the most evil and vile people on the planet will use it to excuse a final ethnic cleansing.
Oh shit our secretary of state is Zapp Brannigan, isn't it?
Not even that. Not saying anything or sticking to some vague non-committing platitudes would have been enough.
The Democrats really think people will choose them if they're "forced" to.
The biggest political party is undecided in the US. How are they this disconnected from reality?
You still have to try to get people to vote for you because people can just not show up period.
All she had to do was to wave and shut up until November and even that proved too difficult.
It was unfortunate that she existed in the context of all in which she lived and what came before her
Yeah that's never gonna poll well with Americans
Context? No thank you, regular text is just fine"
i mean, the counterfactual isn't the two-week honey moon where everyone loved her and projected their values onto her. she was always going to have to articulate something -- the issue is that she's a flipflopper, literally inarticulate, and she's tripping over herself to square or unsquare her positions with Biden's. and her inability to do so elegantly (and thereby being on the hook for Biden's foreign wars), makes her look weak and incompetent, and fits comfortably in the GOP's framing of her as a DEI charity case.
She literally is a DEI charity case, her entire reason for having her VP position was to kill and coopt the George Floyd protests. If she was not black she would not have been chosen, it’s that simple. Sorry but GOP are correct on this, but for the opposite reason that they think
i'm not sure that i would disagree, i was just clarifying her difficulties.
also white liberals think that they're MLK when they get to vote for a black person
I’m with you, but how is it opposite the reason they think? They couldn’t have chosen a worse VP candidate than her, and it’s baffling that they decided to crown her this year.
they think she's a DEI pick because the Marxist Communist Democrats are pushing black women on the population to make everyone more woke. That's stupid.
She is a Diversity Hire, but it was because she's a traitor and sell-out and she was used to co-opt and destroy leftist movements and make everyone less woke, not more. She's was hired/picked to sell "defunding the police is a republican idea, let's increase funding for training for cops" to the Democrats, and she could do it because she's a black woman.
Chuds think corporations push DEI to make everyone more woke, when in fact it's the opposite, corporations cynically use identity to shield themselves from criticism and push reactionary corporate ends.
"Abortions for some, miniature american flags for others!"
she could've doubled down on price-controls, such an easy W.
Sorry, best I can do is Hitlerian speeches
The unrealized capital gains tax and the fine print associated with it was peak Harris.
Free college*
*To anyone that opened up a business in a poor or developing neighborhood for 3 years.
I truly thought Trump was cooked after seeing him speak. He was pathetic. Boring. Juiceless. Dry.
But Harris may be the best in a generation at losing. Hillary thought she was the best at being the worst but Harris might loose to a far weaker Trump than Hillary ever did.
Imagine losing to "I lose the 2020 elections" era Trump.
Of course she's electable if you fucking VOTE for her
damn appropriate colors for once
Team oil vs. team piss
it's because she's now running as kamala, and not not-biden (rip)
Her two biggest positives were negatives: not Biden and not Trump. Given enough time to find out who she is, most people won’t be able to keep themselves from hating her.
yeah she's doubling down on gaza and trying to outflank trump from the right on immigration, so those two positives aren't holding up well
I wouldn't say I'm happy about it but experiencing trump winning in 2016 round 2 (but I'm a communist this time) is really gonna be an interesting social experience if things continue on the current trajectory.
labour (uk) tried this exact strategy, they won due to collapse of the tories but recieved less votes than when they LOST in 2019, more tory 2019 voters died than switched to labour and the reform party (far right populist) recieved massive gains
So most of the tories that they were trying to win over either didn't vote, voted reform, or DIED.
The people that they alienated (the left, muslims, black people and trans people) were lost to greens/independent.
Even when you luck out and it 'works' it puts you on the road to failure in the next election.
No red psl in the polls, true 1% of 1% time. Also, usa electorate is completely folded, fucking ross perot could pull 20 percent ~~with a box of scraps~~, weird pow propaganda and slides.