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.

  • FunkyStuff [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    4 day old news
    Muslim voters evenly split between Jill Stein and Kamala Harris, new poll finds
    Link to the actual survey and CAIR report

    A new poll conducted this week shows that the majority of Muslim voters in the United States are evenly split on who they plan to vote for as president in the upcoming November election, with roughly 60 percent planning to choose either third-party candidate Jill Stein or Vice President Kamala Harris.

    The new survey, part of a report published on Thursday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), shows that the majority of Muslim-American voters have decided against voting for either Republican candidate Donald Trump or the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.

    Twenty-nine percent of those Muslim voters polled said they were planning to cast their votes for Stein, leader of the Green Party who has made ending Israel's war on Gaza and its occupation of the West Bank a key policy priority.

    "We're grateful for the strong support of Muslim voters who share with us an ironclad determination to end genocide in Gaza, as well as the endless wars in the Middle East, and the discrimination and injustice faced by our Muslim neighbours, immigrants and refugees," Stein said in a statement provided to Middle East Eye.

    "We urge all people of conscience to resist the propaganda telling you to hold your nose and vote for genocide. If you vote for genocide, you are actively consenting to it and enabling it. Don’t let them talk you out of your humanity. Stopping genocide is the moral imperative of our time."

    Another 29 percent said they are planning to vote for Harris, who some Muslims and pro-Palestinians have claimed has been more sympathetic to Palestinians but has so far said she would maintain support for Israel and has rebuffed demands for an arms embargo on Israel.

    The poll also showed that around 11 percent of Muslim voters surveyed are planning to vote for Donald Trump, while four percent are choosing third-party candidate Cornel West and 16 percent are still undecided.

    The survey consisted of responses from more than 1,000 registered Muslim voters and was conducted after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week. The survey is part of a larger Cair report chronicling the political attitudes of Muslim voters. This report included an additional survey that polled 2,850 Muslim voters between May and July, prior to Biden dropping out of the race.

    "Our latest survey reveals that American Muslim voters are highly engaged in the upcoming presidential election, open to supporting a diverse range of candidates and political parties, and deeply dissatisfied with the current state of the nation, particularly US support for the war on Gaza," Cair national director Nihad Awad said in a statement.

    Side note: Quote from the CAIR survey report

    HIGHLIGHTS & IMPLICATIONS
    ...

    Strong Stance of Human Rights: Respondents showed strong support for global human rights issues, such as the situation of Rohingya and Uyghur Muslims and the genocide occurring in Gaza. This strong support indicates a high level of awareness and concern for international human rights among the Muslim community in the U.S.

    OPPORTUNITY: Advocacy groups should leverage this support to push for more robust U.S. foreign policies that address human rights abuses globally [emphasis mine]

    Is this a spin to get Muslim outrage over Gaza to feed into more support for Imperialist policy? Does this work out, or is it too transparently cynical?

    • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      An even split in the muslim community could lose Harris the election, couldn't it? Aren't there a lot of young muslims in battleground states?

      • FunkyStuff [he/him]
        ·
        4 months ago

        The whole reason the Uncommitted movement took off was because there are many Muslims in the midwest swing states. It makes the hardline Zionism from the Harris campaign very hard to explain given how it wouldn't take much for her to turn a good chunk of those Stein voters, just lip service. I seriously think they don't want to win.

        • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]
          ·
          4 months ago

          I mean, it's easy to explain. Harris, like Biden, is another principled zionist in euro-american politics.

    • thelastaxolotl [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      oh yea i saw a green voter mentioning that in the tweet about AOC attacking Jill stein, this explains why aoc join the attacking the green party when previously she would ignore them i think all dems are going to incresea attacks on 3rd party voters like that judge in georgia that tried to banned the GP and the PSL from running but not the libertarians

    • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Prepare to see that picture of Jill Stein sitting with Putin being passed around everywhere. Calling her a “Russian asset” is all they have.

    • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      It worked with the George Floyd protests, Democrats somehow got to spin that into “defunding police is a republican idea. We need to increase funding for training”