Image is of the Cuban flag and the Pride flag on the Havana Health Ministry building.

Inspired by a highly upvoted recommendation by @[email protected]:

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:

  1. Loving trans people on this site and elsewhere is strictly mandatory.

  2. 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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • Kolibri [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    62·
    2 months ago

    From the Resistance News Network telegram https://t.me/PalestineResist/56729

    Commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Major General Hossein Salami:

    The zionist entity is besieged by Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. The nightmare of our response keeps the enemy on alert day and night, and we have begun to see signs of its end.

    The zionist enemy will taste the flavor of Iranian revenge and will realize that it cannot toy with our red lines.

    “Israel” cannot strike and run away easily; rather, it will receive a decisive response.

    Certainly, they will receive a response. How and when? This time, the response will be different, and everyone will realize that.

    Presstv and Al Mayadeen also cover this and some highlights from Al Mayadeen below

    https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/09/08/732923/IRGC-chief--‘Israel-will-receive-revenge-for-its-vicious-acts’

    https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/irgc-chief-says--nightmare--of-retaliation-terrifying--israe

    General Salami emphasized that the Israeli regime is experiencing confusion and internal unrest, with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets in the occupied territories. According to him, the Israeli occupation is trapped in a crisis with no escape.

    He concluded his remarks with a stern warning to the Israeli occupation, saying: “The Israeli regime is now confined within the occupied lands, and its leaders are losing their mental stability, awaiting death at any moment. Rest assured, the response will come. When and how? This time, it will be different, and everyone will know that Israel can no longer strike and escape unscathed.”

    Former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei said in an interview with CNN released on in late August that his country’s retaliation to the Israeli assassination of Hamas’ politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran will be well measured so that Prime Minister Benjamin can not “save himself” from the crises he’s in.

    • Isopod_Activities [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      13·
      2 months ago

      What could the nature of the response be that would require them to have such a long preparation time?

      My current ideas are probably that the Iranians are quietly trying to supply large amounts of munitions to regional allies for a larger coordinated strike that will happen from all sides of the entity and hit the zionists with more saturation fire than their air defense can handle.

      Alternatively, they are going to unveil a nuclear weapon that will act as a strategic deterrent. Substantially less likely, but not unthinkable in my opinion.

      • carpoftruth [any, any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
        8·
        2 months ago

        Mkb speculates that sanctions relief is a top priority for their government based on recent statements by khamenei

        The salience is that the Axis of Resistance is not topping Iran’s foreign-policy priorities. That vector plausibly continues in the matrix but somewhere lower down, for sure. Make no mistake, what we are hearing from Tehran is about direct negotiations with the US as the number one priority as the means to get relief from western sanctions, which is an imperative for accelerating the economy and is the lodestar for Iran’s national policy. Iran’s neighbours are keenly watching. To be sure, the Middle East is on the cusp of change.

        https://www.indianpunchline.com/iran-nuclear-talks-will-be-in-new-format/

        https://apnews.com/article/iran-nuclear-deal-khamenei-us-tensions-bc11763f45041ac84171ebc3866f1273

        • Isopod_Activities [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          7·
          2 months ago

          So that makes the nuclear deterrent option unlikely right? If so, it’s reassuring since that would be an escalation like we haven’t seen before and is uncharted territory as far as I can tell.

          Whatever their military is planning, it will likely be a very substantial response even without that and could be something that rapidly accelerates the decomposition of Israeli societal cohesion.

          Whatever they do, I think that they may be planning to hit deep into the entity’s borders with more force than they used the last time they sent drones into the airspace. Israel still took hits from that even after Iran telegraphed when and how they would do it. If Iran does it without warning, Israel’s chances are far worse. Especially if Israel’s Iron Dome system has been exhausted by the previous few months.