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:
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Loving trans people on this site and elsewhere is strictly mandatory.
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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.
All Harris supporters are now Russian bots
Expecting Harris to not sanction Russia is clearly a bad move though, as funny as this is
Lol, the implication is that the US will impose more sanctions because it's not doing well. This comment is pointed at Global South and unaffiliated countries, not American liberals.
Oh for sure
I think Putin is being honest. He’s playing chess, the 2D kind, and so he prefers his opponents to be predictable. There are rules to this game even now.
Trump doesn’t actually have the power to force this war to stop, and even if Trump could insist on Zelenskyy agreeing to a cease fire is that a cease fire Russia wants given all it means is NATO has another 4 years to rearm Kyiv and increase munitions production?
And the deep state will exist and profoundly shape US foreign policy even under Trump since he doesn’t have the attention span or institutional support to actually change the course of the blob.
Putin is probably calculating some pretty straightforward calculus here. He’s already won this war, pending one year to conclude it maybe but nonetheless he’s won, and so better to deal with predictable neoliberal imperialists who will be forced to cut a deal than to risk Trump playing 5D chess (upending the chess board and shitting on the table) by nuking Iran or whatever.
What he wants is for spheres of influence to be clearly delineated between NATO and Russia. He’s more likely to get that from the “adults in the room” deep state than from Trump.
Fair analysis! It could make sense for Putin to simply prefer predictability at this point, rather than previously wanting chaos.
Putin is brat
got it ✍
Meanwhie they let Bibi come and openly threaten congress to their face while they nonstop give stand ovations as he commits genocide with our stolen tax dollars, and have his surrogates actively bribe and directly meddle in US relations.
Which members of Congress have dual citizenship?
Edit - I see that Ted Cruz used to have Canadian citizenship, and former Rep. Michelle Bachman had Swiss citizenship, but I can't find anyone who currently has Israeli citizenship.
Brian Mast was a volunteer for the IDF but don't think he has citizenship. Possible that they were implying pseudo-citizenship with the quotations but
You are right.
There is no comprehensive list of dual citizens in Congress, as members are not required to disclose their dual citizenship status.
There is a bill attempting to force disclosure H.R. 7484 Dual Citizenship Disclosure Act but hasn't gotten anywhere yet.
Only "official" list I could find were foriegn born Senators
There is an unofficial list of all members at Wikipedia of foriegn born us politicians
I can't find a good record of dual citizenships that would happen after birth.
The Constitution and federal laws do not prohibit dual citizenship for members of Congress, as long as they meet the eligibility requirements for office (e.g., being a U.S. citizen for at least 9 years for Senators and 7 years for Representatives).
Therefore since we are not entitled to that information under law it is speculative at best and I'll remove it.
Thanks for the update. From the other direction, it's also weird that we don't have documentation that Netanyahu is no longer an American citizen.
Why did batshit bachman have a swiss passport?
Her husband: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/11/michele-bachman-swiss-citizenship