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:

  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.

  • Redcuban1959 [any]
    ·
    3 months ago

    The Brazilian goverment wants to set up a “national WhatsApp” The project comes in the midst of a conflict between the Supreme Court and the social network X

    The Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI) is about to launch a tender to hire a new cell phone messaging service. The agency's aim is to develop its own model for internal communication. According to information in Veja magazine, this is a pilot project, but it could be expanded to other federal agencies in the future.

    The system will be similar to WhatsApp, but the president of ABDI, Ricardo Cappelli, has already made it clear that it is not a question of “banning” the messaging app or any other, as it will not extend to ordinary users. "What we will do is protect the information of our agency, corporate communication. Does anyone think that the German or French government communicates via WhatsApp? We don't want to ban anyone, just protect our sovereignty,” Cappelli said.

    According to Capelli, there is no “paranoia or conspiracy theory”, but rather a guarantee of the security of communications, since there have already been several cases of messages being breached. He mentioned that federal police officers and members of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) use foreign platforms to communicate, but that he considers it a risk. So far, at least ten Brazilian companies have shown interest in developing the new messaging platform.

    Ricardo Cappelli, former member of the Communist Party of Brazil and the secretary that led the police forces against the Coup Attempt in 2023, he currently is the president of the Brazilian Industrial Development Agency. He was appointed to the post by President Lula on February 2 for a four-year term, taking office on February 22.

      • Redcuban1959 [any]
        ·
        3 months ago

        Unfortunely (or fortunely in some cases) Brazil rarely shares their own tecnology with other countries. I remember that during the Iran Deal that Turkey and Brazil was making between Iran and the US. The US wanted to check if Brazil really didn't use their nuclear technology for weapons, but Brazil refused to show it to US inspectors.

        • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]
          ·
          3 months ago

          Well, we are making a nuclear powered submarine with France and I'm pretty sure the army boomers just added globalism to their fears of NATO/US invading the Amazon. The junta had a secret nuclear weapons programme in the past, so denying american inspection is tradition at this point. I wouldn't be that shocked if it turned out we could assemble a dozen bombs in a pinch.

          That said, if you're making a national whatsapp for public officials to use then you don't want to share that in any way. With anybody. The Americans are already gonna try and break into it, why give them an extra incentive and let them kill two rabbits with one swing?

          • Redcuban1959 [any]
            ·
            3 months ago

            The junta had a secret nuclear weapons programme in the past, so denying american inspection is tradition at this point. I wouldn't be that shocked if it turned out we could assemble a dozen bombs in a pinch.

            In Argentina they also had their own Nuclear Weapons program, pretty sure the neoliberal goverments during the 1990's threw all the stuff away. But it's believed that Brazil, Argentina and Mexico can all make nuclear weapons if they really wanted to.

            • bazingabrain
              ·
              3 months ago

              its not very hard to make nukes, really nuclear tech is fairly "easy" now. Whats really hard afaik is making it smaller, and more powerful at the same time, in order to pack more warheads per launch vehicle.

              • Redcuban1959 [any]
                ·
                3 months ago

                I think they started during Allende, but I think Pinochet never really made any progress in the nuclear weapons program besides some small plans.

    • footfaults
      ·
      4 hours ago

      deleted by creator