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.
Alright news mega I need a crash course on Democratic Republic of congo because there's a push in some UK circles going on regarding this:
I have absolutely no idea what to make of it, I know nothing about the place. I read something about a failed coup attempt recently but don't know enough really.
My main concern is whether it's a place to support, what's going on there, and whether these efforts are legitimate concerns or whether there's a psyop brewing.
Yes you can see why my alarm bells are going off with this. All my instincts are say this has fed influence, maybe NED backed or France or something.
I don't think it's a secret that cobalt mining, or any mining really is exploitative of labour beyond normal wage relations. Plus the environmental cost is substantial as well. That is true enough, although like most real injustices this critique is ,for political reasons, aimed at former colonies rather than the more powerful governments that have the (stolen) wealth to actually create some kind of real solution.
As for the coup attempt by Christian Malanga, to me it's hard to tell how serious of an attempt at regime change that was by the US/UK simply because of how bad the attempt was. The impression I got was that the alphabet boys did not send their best, if they even bothered to get involved. Malanga and his group were quickly suppressed, Malanga himself was killed and his son imprisoned. As far as I know the only support he had was either among diaspora or western NGOs. So a total failure there. Malanga had ties to all sorts of western entities so it seems plausible he had at least a green light from some western backer to go ahead with the coup attempt with an implicit promise to be recognised upon success.
My guess is that this was an incompetent or just plain lazy attempt at regime change symptomatic of a decline in state power compared to the 50s/60s. As for the online boycott campaign, without knowing more I would venture that's maybe a 60/40 split between being created by naive libs vs from a suit filled board room somewhere.
Here's a primer from the deprogram team:
What's Causing The Crisis In The DRC?
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Do not support the DRC just to be a contrarian. Rwanda has valid reasons for wanting to destroy rebels on its borders.
Yeah, like being able to continue stealing the DRC's natural resources to sell to electronics manufacturers.
Such as?
There is a entity in the middle east that uses that same justification to do war crimes and happens to be the one of rwanda's most important allies
...The DRC should never be applied to the plight of Palestinians, it betrayed its revolution
Betraying your revolution is when the US and Belgian backed forces assassinate your leader and fought a civil war over who gets to rule over Zaire. And last time I checked, the Palestinians didn't even properly decolonize like the Congolese briefly did, but they deserve our support just the same.
How did it betray its revolution?
By killing Lumumba
that does not mean Rwanda is allowed to do ethnic cleansing
Who said they were doing ethnic cleansing?
There is a damn genocide happening
Which side is committing the genocide?
Not the drc
The rebels they support literally committed the Rwandan genocide.
Okay thanks for clearing that up for me. All I know about Congo is that there is a genocide going on
the rebels rwanda supports are also committing ethnic cleansing, and the rwandan government is a reason to also blame for the rwandan genocide
May you expand on what reasons would validate taking weapons from the US and Israel and arming militias to attack a neighbouring nation where 7 million people are displaced and twenty years of war and have famine have resulted in millions of deaths?
And do these valid reasons take into consideration that China became the largest stakeholder in the DRC's mineral mines about a decade ago, which coincides with the rise of said militias using US and Israeli supplied weaponry to murder people there? Or is it somehow coincidence that at a time when China is dominating the EV and green energy market (which relies heavily on imports from the DRC) and the US is openly asserting that they will crush Chinese EV and green energy markets, that US and Israeli supplied militias are just so happening to target the mining operations in the DRC?
...You do know China invests in Rwanda too, right? (China also supported the Khmer Rouge lol, they don't always pick the right team but I digress) Sorry, but I am of the opinion that the DRC should die. The rest of this conversation depends on whether you actually think the Tutsi are kulaks and therefore deserved it, which is.....yikes.
My comment was not in defense of China (though bringing up the Khmer Rouge as if that has any bearing on current Chinese foreign policy is wild), my comment is on the material benefit to the US for M23 to be attacking the DRC, which seems a rather important piece of information for understanding how a militia that is armed by the US and Israel and is attacking people to the US's benefit might be worth criticizing.
But then you made it immediately clear that you believe in collective punishment, as if the millions of people of the DRC should continue to be ravaged by US imperialism because of some nebulous connection that they have as an entire people to the Rwandan genocide, which, frankly, is a troubling viewpoint to take.
I just think the DRC's military should be broken and the country should probably have a internal revolution or fall apart. The DRC is already under American hegemony, it is already a tool of capital. (Also China chose wild sides durimg the cold war, I am pretty sure they supported UNITA and Mobutu)
Supporting American-instigated forever wars because an exploited people aren't revolutionary is certainly an interesting stance.
...Cuba was right to support rebellion in the DRC. If Che was still alive, he would still be fighting in the DRC probably lol. (Proceeds to start struggle session over the sino Soviet split in Africa)
Supporting rebellion in the DRC and wanting the people of the DRC to achieve a revolutionary success is not even remotely in the same category as supporting US-backed militias from Rwanda doing mass murder and the displacement and death of the millions of people whose emancipation Cuba believed in. People aren't chess pieces in some grand strategy game. Revolution comes from the masses and is to free the masses. Revolution doesn't come from imperial militias doing murder and everyone starving and dying because the whole place is being ravaged for its mines. And there's nothing revolutionary about dismissing the deaths of the very people you supposedly believe should have a revolution as inconsequential because Rwanda has "valid reasons" for fucking killing them all.
...I said they should kill the rebels who did the Rwandan genocide. Not a controversial stance unless you think tutsi are all kulaks. (I don't obviously but it's one of those awkward conversations people avoid for obvious reasons) As for the rest, I think Cuba was right about Africa and I think that extends to what Rwanda does now. (Anyone who thinks Rwanda is America's best friend doesn't remember a few years ago when Washington was on the verge of comparing them to Eritrea. Sorry I just think the DRC is a zombie state that should end.