Snow - Stylized Character Shading Live #7


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In this series, Julien Kaspar will guide you through the creation of "Snow", the next character in the lineup of creative commons rigs on the Blender Cloud.
This time it's all about fine tuning and finalising the shaders, especially by comparing light setups and the proper posing.

Links:
- More info on the character Snow:
cloud.blender.org/blog/announc…
- Support and check out our Blender Open Movies and Training:
https://cloud.blender.org/​
- Character sculpting timelapses, files, tutorials and more:
cloud.blender.org/training/sty…
- Download the first character "Rain" for free:
cloud.blender.org/p/characters…
- Juliens Blender theme from the videos:
drive.google.com/file/d/1KZMwc…

Specs:
- Operating System: Linux Pop!_OS
- Memory: 32 GiB RAM
- GPU: GeForce GTX 980
- Processor: Intel Core i7-6800K CPU

With music from Stevia Sphere:
steviasphere.bandcamp.com/

Album Playlist:
- Soap by Delete the Cube
- Beats to procrastinate to by Paternoster Poetry
- Cell division by pine voc
- Snow Cover by pine voc
- Paper Boats by Tovatronica
- The Big Crunch by glaciære & pine voc
- bath by glaciære
- hammock by glaciære
- light ripples by glaciære
- pool water blue by glaciære
- water slide by glaciære

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

Post age-attestation distro migration | Artix vs Void vs endeavorOS vs ???


I want to start feeling out future distros for me once the age attestation makes its way into systemd. I am currently using Fedora on two computers, one I use for gaming (all AMD) and one I use for getting work done (thinkpad x13). I am pretty bummed about this because I feel quite settled in with Fedora, but with all the talk of age attestation happening I will be withdrawing my consent from using distros that intend to comply with these laws.

I have targeted three distros, Artix, Void Linux, and endeavorOS. The first two do not use systemd at all and the third has stated they will not implement age attestation methods.

I am thinking endeavorOS might be a good move, I appreciate an out of the box solution. I can and have installed Arch manually several times, but I prefer to spend my time using my computer, not necessarily going into the "rice" rabbit hole. I will probably use a desktop environment like KDE, GNOME, or XFCE.

I guess the point of this post is: anyone who has experience with systemd-free distros like Void or Artix, what are your thoughts using as a general purpose operating system? how is the learning curve coming from systemd? Can someone who is technologically competent but not particularly interested in deep customization (I am a sysadmin, but I just like my shit to work) thrive in this type of environment? I use Fedora because it's a good mix of being generally unassuming but having sensible defaults and being extraordinarily well supported.

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated. Feel free to give me any thoughts you may have on the subject of age attestation or even suggest distros I might not be aware of.

V2Ray tunneling on Bazzite?


I'm currently trying out Bazzite, and everything is smooth, except one thing: I can't get V2Ray-based apps (V2RayN, Nekoray etc.) to tunnel the VPN traffic. As I couldn't find much online, asking here - did anyone successfully run V2Ray on immutable distros generally and Bazzite specifically? What should be done to make it work?

(An obvious solution - installation via rpm-ostree - does not help, and I need V2Ray specifically)

Bulletins and News Discussion from April 15th to April 21st, 2024 - Between The Darkness And The Dawn, There Rises A Red Star


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The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Iranian missiles flying over the Knesset, the Israeli parliament building in Jerusalem.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Your Wednesday update is here!
Your Friday update is here!
Your Saturday update is here!

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from April 22nd to April 28th, 2024 - The Scramble For Africa: Green Edition - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo


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The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is from this Washington Post article, which shows the Shabara artisanal mine, where cobalt and copper are dug out by hand.


This preamble got much of its information from this article in ROAPE, and this article in People's World.

Countries in the imperial core have increasingly advocated for Green New Deals, whose primary goal is to re-attract manufacturing capability to somewhat counter deindustrialization, and then export some of this renewable energy generation to other countries to gain profit. Just as the initial wave of industrialization was built on massive resource exploitation of coal and iron and then oil, this wave is being built on exploiting metals like lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. The DRC is one of the best case studies on the planet for understanding the new dynamic.

The DRC is, to your average Western country, a resource bonanza. It is the 11th largest country by land area, and contains lithium, copper, and cobalt in massive quantities, famously containing two thirds of the world's known cobalt supplies. The Western world and their institutions swarmed the DRC like piranhas, dismantling the Congo's sovereignty over its natural resources. China was not terribly involved in the privatisation process, but has stepped in to benefit from the West's work - Chinese corporations account for 40% of the production of major Congo cobalt projects (and 15 out of 19 cobalt mines), with Switzerland at 30% via Glencore, and Kazakhstan at 22%. The US, for whatever reason, withdrew from majority ownership of some projects in the mid-2010s, but is now anxious about China's position in the cobalt markets. Western countries in general have spent their time lately drawing up critical minerals strategies both to keep capitalism chugging along in their own countries, and attempt to weaken China, which invariably involves the Congo.

The Congo has attempted to resist imperialist encroachment. In 2018, the Kaliba administration asserted a new Mining Code which raised tax and royalty rates and increased state ownership in mining firms from 5% to 10%, and these changes were bitterly resisted by the West right to the end. Since 2019, under the Tshisekedi administration, the government established the state-owned EGC, which sought to take control over the processing and export of artisanal and small-scale cobalt production, which comprises 5-15% of cobalt production in the Congo. More recently, Tshisekedi is planning to move up the manufacturing chain - instead of merely mining cobalt, they want to refine it there and then make electric vehicle batteries and other such products with it, which would be an industry worth trillions of dollars. But so far, there hasn't been much movement away from having mining exports as the backbone of the economy, and it's doubtful that plans to just keep doing this until they get rich enough to build refineries and factories will work. The profits mostly go to Western countries and have failed to produce significant benefits for Congolese workers, nor resulted in the emergence of domestic industries so far. Reforms will help a little, but only a little, and they remain fundamentally constrained by the markets and the whims of the West.

Meanwhile, war and mass displacements have put immense stress on the country. There are 7.1 million displaced people in the DRC due to various conflicts and mass displacements - most recently, the war between the Congolese army and M23. Hundreds of thousands of people continue to be displaced every few months, and across the whole country, over 26 million require humanitarian aid. 6 million people have died in the eastern DRC in the last three decades, with hundreds of armed groups, both domestic and foreign, battling for resources and territory.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is the Democratic Republic of the Congo!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to the Congo.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

  • What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
  • What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
  • Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
  • Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
  • What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
  • Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
  • How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
  • Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
  • If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?

For books on the Congo from our reading list:

These books focus on general DRC history:

  • The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja (2002).

These books focus on the colonial period:

  • Colonialism in the Congo Basin, 1880–1940 by Samuel H. Nelson (1994).
  • King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild (1998).

These books focus on the post-independence period:

  • Lumumba Speaks: Speeches and Writings, 1958-61 (1974).
  • The African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo by Ernesto Che Guevara (1997).
  • The Assassination of Lumumba by Ludo De Witte (1999).
  • Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason Stearns (2011).
  • Disrupted Development in the Congo: The Fragile Foundations of the African Mining Consensus by Ben Radley (2023).

Bulletins and News Discussion from April 29th to May 5th, 2024 - Césaire's Boomerang - COTW: United States


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Also known as "Foucault's boomerang" or the "imperial boomerang".

Image is of a sniper on the roof of the Indiana Memorial Union at Indiana State University, overlooking a student protest.


The Imperial Boomerang is the observation that the tactics of mass oppression and totalitarianism used by Western countries in their colonies and neocolonies will, sooner or later, return home to be used against the citizens of those Western countries. While the people living at the time of WW2 were, rightfully, in deep shock of the concentration camps used by Nazi Germany, those paying attention to what was occurring in Africa would not have been terribly surprised. Concentration camps were used in several countries in order to separate out ethnic groups and place them in more easily controlled environments which aimed to prevent them from rising up and fighting back against the Western governments which exploited them. There is the additional factor of governments taking notes from each other - Hitler was inspired by America's racial segregation and genocide of indigenous groups, which author Carroll Kakel among others have written books on.

Today, the totalitarian strategies used by the Zionist entity in occupied Palestine are being brought home to Western countries as the American Reich and its global influence accelerate in their decline. Gaza was and is a cyber-concentration camp, with digital surveillance taking place alongside old-fashioned techniques of paying informants. Aside from being an unsinkable aircraft carrier and disrupting the entire Middle East, Israel's primary role appears to be to generate new ways to monitor entire populations. Propaganda about China being an authoritarian police state with social credit scores and AI which knows where everybody is at all times was probably created, at least in part, to deflect attention from Israel doing those exact things. The paranoid and flimsy American regime with its gerontocratic upper circles now use these tactics at home: cracking down on any and all protestors with political views left of Mussolini; placing snipers on roofs ready to fire at the slightest provocation; and arresting organization leaders. Pegasus has wormed its way around the world, with a notable recent example in Poland, in which the previous conservative government used the spyware to monitor the current liberal ruling party. The Israeli military, experts only in killing children and not actual warfare, have trained the police of other nations.

It would be easy to end the preamble there, on a gloomy note about the brick wall - or, indeed, iron curtain - that upstart left-wing groups are up against. What history has shown is that these regimes are, in fact, beatable. Liberation movements around the world have found ways to counter imperialism, even if they required wars in which millions of their countrymen were murdered. The legacy of Israeli propaganda psyops and digital tracking is not victory, as Hamas demonstrated on October 7th and continues to show with every ambush executed and every Merkava destroyed. The legacy of Western military defence equipment is not success, demonstrated by every missile fired by Hezbollah and Iran which hits Israel. The legacy of the American Navy is not competence, with a naval blockade of the Red Sea still maintained after months by one of the poorest countries on the planet.

The protests of at least the last couple decades have been marked by failure to produce material results: from those against the Iraq War, to Occupy Wall Street, to the BLM protests of 2020. Of course, it would be silly to tell American protestors to start digging tunnels. But sooner or later, the failure of Western protest movements will be overcome, and a more effective strategy will be devised, in order to deflect the boomerang.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is the United States! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is the United States!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to America.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler questions
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::


For people who want some books that deal with the concept Foucault's Boomerang, one of the OG texts is Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire, written in 1950, obviously written before it became associated with Foucault. For a deeper dive on the relationship between Nazi Germany and America, here's a few books:

  • Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich by Guido Giacomo Preparata (2005).
  • The American West and the Nazi East: A Comparative and Interpretive Perspective by Carroll Kakel (2011).
  • The Holocaust as Colonial Genocide: Hitler's 'Indian Wars' in the 'Wild East' by Carroll Kakel (2013).
  • Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Whitman (2017).

For those who want more information on Israel's role in global surveillance, here's a few books:

  • Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory, and Power by Elia Zureik, David Lyon, and Yasmeen Abu-Laban (2010).
  • Security Theology, Surveillance, and the Politics of Fear by Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2015).
  • War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification by Jeff Halper (2015).
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from May 6th to May 12th, 2024 - The Nagorno-Karabakh Nosedive - COTW: Armenia


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Stepanakert, essentially the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is now a ghost city, and Azerbaijan has recently torn down the parliament building and various other important places. Sourced from this article.


Despite the predictions and assertions of various NATO-aligned commentators that Russia's influence is waning, the opposite generally appears to be occurring. ASEAN has become more strongly aligned with Russia despite claims to the contrary. In Central Asia, there has been a propaganda push to declare that countries there are "emerging from Russia's shadow", while in reality, as Bhadrakumar analyzes, Russia's significant economic growth and ongoing march towards victory in Ukraine is creating opportunities for further integration, not separation, and there are no major political shifts there in terms of Russian ties. And in Niger, Russian soldiers have now entered an airbase which once hosted American soldiers, now kicked out, and generally Russia's diplomacy and economic deals (nuclear power plant construction, military equipment, grain shipments, etc) have accelerated in Africa.

Where Russia's influence has actually seemed to decrease (outside of the West, of course) is in Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh's remarkably rapid collapse in late 2023 demonstrated that Russia was not willing to escalate things in defense of Armenia to fend off Azerbaijan. One hundred thousand Armenians - most but not all of them in the region - fled in advance to avoid mass persecution, which received remarkably little attention by a West which calls itself overwhelmingly concerned with borders changing due to military action as in Ukraine. Since then, Armenia seems to be on some kind of self-annihilating bender, allured by the potential of Western military and economic deals. Armenia froze its membership in the CSTO due to its failure to protect them, and the head of NATO, Stoltenberg, visited the region in March. The West has offered up hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to Armenia and is helping them "modernize their military"; given the poor track record of Western military equipment in Ukraine, one wonders why they're even bothering. RAND has advocated for a balancing act; America should, in their eyes, realize that they can't entirely remove Russia's influence but nonetheless should make inroads to protect Armenia from Azerbaijan (which is an interesting position given that Israel provided arms to Azerbaijan to help them take Nagorno-Karabakh).

A quick look at Armenia's geographical position reveals the folly of trying to create some kind of Western outpost. With a hostile Azerbaijan to their east, a very unfriendly (albeit NATO member) Turkiye to their west, an ascendant Iran to their south, and Russia not far from the action, there is little hope of doing much more than causing a little chaos in the hopes it'll momentarily distract Russia while it makes inroads most everywhere else on the planet. The political situation appears miserable for Pashinyan, but there isn't really a popular alternative to take the reins. A truly cursed situation.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Armenia! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Armenia!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Armenia.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

  • What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
  • What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
  • Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
  • Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
  • What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
  • Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
  • How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
  • Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
  • If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?

Bulletins and News Discussion from May 13th to May 19th, 2024 - The Blazing Furnace - COTW: Vietnam


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

An image of a Central Committee meeting in Hanoi. Image taken from this article.


General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng implemented an anti-corruption campaign in 2016 called "blazing furnace" in shorthand. Since then, the fire has ripped through both politicians and businesses, up to even the Presidency. Nearly 200,000 party members, 36 Central Committee members, and 50 police/military generals have been disciplined since the initiative began. In 2018, Dinh La Thang, the former party chief of Ho Chi Minh City, became the first sitting Politburo member to be criminally charged, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In 2023, President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc was implicated in a corruption scandal and resigned. He was replaced by Võ Văn Thưởng, who was then also caught in a corruption scandal a year later in March 2024, making him the shortest serving President in Vietnamese history. The Presidency is current headed by Võ Thị Ánh Xuân while they find a new President; she also took that role in 2023.

The ousted leaders tend to also be part of the more West-friendly, technocratic faction inside Vietnam, either reflecting how these people also tend to be more easily corrupted, or how the Communist Party is slowly moving away from a foreign policy which allies itself with the West (as Vietnam has comprehensive strategic partnerships with several Western countries), or some combination. Of course, this shouldn't be overstated - Vietnam has maintained a close friendship with China for years, and both incumbent leaders are intimately familiar with anti-corruption campaigns and how and why they must be conducted in order to deliver maximum public benefit.

America clearly desires Vietnam to pick their side, because America strongly desires another vassal state in East Asia like the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan to further encircle and isolate China. And so the headlines and commentary of Western state propaganda like Radio Free Asia, the BBC, WaPo, Business Insider, etc reveal their increasing annoyance with Vietnam's government. They often couch this in the standard "objective" economics language); about how removing leaders who foreign investors were reassured by might mean economic pain for Vietnam ahead. As Bhadrakumar noted in 2023, perhaps the BBC revealed their intentions the best:

Reading Vietnamese politics is always difficult — the Communist Party makes its decisions behind closed doors. But hard-line General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who was given an unprecedented third term at last year’s party congress, appears to be consolidating his authority by ousting senior officials seen as more pro-Western and pro-business. Officially this is all happening in the name of fighting corruption,.. but it’s indicative of a power struggle at the top of the party… the likely rise now of more security-focused officials to the top of the party will be bad news.


Even a quick google search right now will show a bunch of articles by clearly nervous Westerners: Why Vietnam’s Escalating Anti-Corruption Campaign Might Backfire because, as we all know, only authoritarian regimes are vulnerable to things like public opinion and discontent, while Western "democracies" are insulated from such petty phenomena. Leaders here can have disapproval ratings of 60-70% and not even the slightest consequence will happen to them - a real sign of democratic freedom and justice over those primitive regimes in the East! Or, take: ‘Blazing Furnace’ Turns Vietnam Into Another Chinese Province; China turning both Russia and Vietnam into their provinces in just two years was a real diplomatic masterclass. Or, back in 2022: Vietnam's 'blazing furnace' crackdown burns $40 bln off stocks. Not the stocks! Anything but the stocks!

If your actions as a leader are pissing off Bloomberg, you are going in the right direction.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Vietnam! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Vietnam!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Vietnam.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

  • What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
  • What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
  • Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
  • Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
  • What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
  • Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
  • How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
  • Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
  • If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?

From our reading list:

These books focus on general history:

  • Viet Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present by Ben Kiernan (2017).

These books focus on the Vietnam War:

  • Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard Fall (1966).
  • Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience by Gabriel Kolko (1985).
  • The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in Vietnam by Douglas Valentine (1999).
  • Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse (2013).

Bulletins and News Discussion from May 20th to May 26th, 2024 - Never Break TrueAnon's Rules For Life - COTW: Azerbaijan


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Azerbaijan's President, Aliyev (left) and Armenia's President, Pashinyan (right) in a meeting a month or two after Azerbaijan took Nagorno-Karabakh.


1) Never go to a second location.
2) Always get the interior ministry post.
3) Never get in a helicopter or any small aircraft.
4) If someone with a gun enters your car, they’re gonna kill you.
5) If someone tells you they’re not going to kill you, they’re calming you down to kill you later.
6) Never give up your nukes.
7) Never release the opposition's political prisoners.
8) Never let the opposition delay elections.
9) If someone starts to get into German runes, drop them.
10) Never trust a South American with a German name.
11) Never move anywhere for a religion.
12) Never go into the sewers unless you’re a sewer guy.
13) If someone’s trying to get you to commit a crime, they're FBI (sometimes CIA or military intelligence).
14) Never become an FBI informant.
15) If you do become an FBI informant, record everything.
16) Never relinquish your arms.
17) Always get it in writing.
18) If you keep gambling, you’ll eventually win.
19) Never talk to cops without a lawyer.
20) Always pay your mercenaries.
21) Don’t let anyone take your passport.

To add an addendum to rule 3, never put your President and Foreign Minister in the same helicopter or small aircraft. Especially if doing so in bad weather conditions. Especially if you're already under threat from a hostile nuclear power in the region with a proclivity for terrorism (though this probably isn't Israel's doing, in this particular case).


Anyway, Azerbaijan. Not a great country, I think. Did some genocides. They're a petrostate that is hosting Cop29, which I suppose is a way for the bourgeoisie to implicitly convey their contempt for the green movement. They got weapons from Israel, too.

Just for the record, there's an Iranian province called East Azerbaijan, which is not the same as Azerbaijan.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Azerbaijan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Azerbaijan!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Azerbaijan.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

  • What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
  • What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
  • Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
  • Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
  • What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
  • Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
  • How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
  • Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
  • If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?

Check out our reading list. Nothing on there for Azerbaijan yet, unfortunately.

Bulletins and News Discussion from May 27th to June 2nd, 2024 - The Virgin France vs the Chad Sahel - COTW: Chad


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of a flag ceremony to commemorate the launch of Operation Barkhane, which has since officially been terminated after its failure.

Chad, a country in north-central Africa, borders a lot of active geopolitical areas - Niger to the West, Libya to the North, Sudan to the East - but is scarcely discussed itself. I'm not really knowledgable enough to give anything like a decent history, but the recent gist is that the country was ruled for three decades by Idriss Déby until he was killed in battle in 2021 while fighting northern rebels. Idriss was part of a few wars - such as the one against Gaddafi in Libya, and also the Second Congo War. While he was initially elected democratically in 1996 and 2001, he then eliminated term limits and just kept on going.

After his death, Chad has been ruled by his son, Mahamat Idriss Déby. In early May 2024, elections began which were meant to result in the transition from a military-ruled goverment to a civilian-ruled one. Needless to say, Mahamat won the election - with 61% of the vote. Both father and son have been on the side of the French and the US, whereas the opposition is against foreign colonizers and has attempted to put pressure on the government in numerous ways to achieve a more substantial independence. France maintains a troop presence in Chad, and it's something of a stronghold for them - when French troops were forced out of Niger, they retreated to Chad. However, it's not clear even to the people inside Chad what precisely the French are doing there. I mean, we know what their presence is really for - imperialism and election rigging - but in an official sense, they don't seem to be doing much to help the country materially. What is clear is that they like to intervene on behalf of the ruling regime and against rebels a whole lot - the most interventions by France in any African country, in fact.

The United States, so keen on human rights and democracy in so many places around the world like Russia, Iran, and China, have - for some strange reason! - decided for the last 30 years that they can live with a couple dictators and wars in the case of Chad. In fact, various American state propaganda firms like the ISW and Washington Post have warned the current government about the Wagner Group interfering with the country and spreading anti-Western sentiments as in the rest of the Sahel.

Things are very tough for Chad. They are among the poorest countries in Africa and host about one million people fleeing from nearby conflicts, which is a pretty large number when Chad has a population of about 17 million.

With the French Empire fading, they are beginning to run out of places to retreat to in Africa. Macron, in January, said that his defense council had decided to reduce troop presence in Gabon, Senegal, and the Côte d'Ivoire, though has maintained troop levels in Chad and Djibouti. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet from France, anti-empire sentiments are boiling to the surface in New Caledonia/Kanaky, which is unfortunate for the French military as they really need that island, both for the massive nickel reserves, but also as an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Pacific just in case a conflict with China pops off.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Chad! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Chad!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Chad.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler spoiler
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::

Check out the reading list. Nothing on Chad specifically yet, unfortunately.

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 3rd to June 9th, 2024 - Morena Reigns More - COTW: Mexico


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of protestors in Mexico City battling police and the barriers they erected, after protestors threw Molotovs at the Israeli embassy.

Much of the preamble has been sourced from Michael Roberts' recent analysis of Mexico.


Claudia Sheinbaum, part of the left-wing and populist Morena party to which AMLO also belongs, is now the first woman to ascend to the Mexican presidency. She is also a climate/energy scientist and was previously mayor of Mexico City. Results indicate that she has won with approximately 60% of the vote, which would be the highest vote percentage in Mexican history.

AMLO's presidency has been generally successful. He campaigned on reducing violence inside Mexico, and while this has technically occurred if measured from 2018, homicides are still considerably higher than in 2010. This is largely due to warring drug cartels, which are more reflective of the United States and its rise in drug addiction and thus imports from Mexico. He also campaigned on reducing corruption, which he also kinda has, and also on reducing income inequality, which he also kinda has. The overall figures don't show massive budges in income inequality, but the minimum wage has risen by 82% and manufacturing wage have risen 27%, and this plus other social programs has lifted 9 million Mexicans out of extreme poverty - a good achievement - but not much further than that, with poverty rates still above the Latin American average. Unemployment is officially at record lows, but much of this job growth has been in the informal sector.

The Mexican economy suffered greatly during the pandemic, and while growth since then has been pretty decent, the economy is still below where it was in 2018. As Mexican capitalists do not pay much in taxes, AMLO's programs have required large budget deficits and borrowing. These capitalists are, of course, not doing many productive investments and thus there is not much productivity growth; productivity has been more-or-less stagnant for two decades. The reason why Mexican capitalists are not investing is because of the major decline in profitability since the 1990s - there is no reason to invest if your money is at major risk of not making a profit. Therefore, they have followed the trend of other national capitalists of investing in real estate and speculation, particularly in American companies.

Since NAFTA/USMCA, Mexico has become increasingly dependent on the United States for a location for its exports, while the US has exploited cheap labour in Mexico. Additionally, with the anti-Chinese sanctions increasingly put in place by the US, Mexico has become one of several conduits for China to redirect its goods so that they can still reach American markets. This has allowed Mexico to have an essentially balanced trade account and keep the peso relatively strong against the dollar.

Mexico's limited fortunes will likely decline from here as the US economy continues to slow. If Trump is elected, he may decree protectionist policies which will hit a US-reliant Mexico quite hard. Additionally, industrial production has recently declined and retail spending is also down. AMLO's presidency was genuinely beneficial for the poorest 50%, but the policies he created failed to really change the fundamentals of the economy. He relied on the private sector rather than the public sector. This is not entirely his fault - if he had tried to do anything terribly transformative, Mexico would have probably been hit hard with consequences by the US and simultaneously faced a domestic revolt by Mexican capitalists. There were and are already threats of outright invasion in response to the limited things AMLO has already done.

In an increasingly multipolar future in which America becomes weaker and weaker, it's very possible that Mexico's reliance on the US will decrease, allowing parties to be more radical without facing the possibility of facing crippling sanctions like Venezuela. However, Mexico's sheer proximity to the US means that they might be among the last countries to break free of American influence, as the US will continue to bitterly resist any attempt to break down the Monroe Doctrine long after it loses Asia, Europe, and Africa. So, it seems likely that Sheinbaum may soon find herself in a situation where she is forced by capitalists to implement fiscal austerity regardless of her intentions, which is equivalent to a declaration of war on the working class. What happens then is anybody's guess.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Mexico! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 15th to July 21st, 2024 - It's Joever


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Joseph Robinette Biden, who has stepped down and will not run against Trump in the 2024 election.


In the aftermath of Trump surviving an assassination attempt, many professional opinion-havers are now talking about the scourge of "political violence" that has overtaken, or will soon overtake America, and how we must not let chaos rule. This is, of course, patently absurd. The American government and its allies have been the greatest force of political violence on the planet since the beginning of colonialism, and the foundations of the country are made of corpses. Today, America commits political violence by forcing Ukrainians into the maw of Russian artillery instead of trying to reach a peaceful settlement, which Russia has repeatedly expressed interest in and offered Ukraine relatively favourable terms. They supply Israel with endless weaponry to destroy entire cities and populations, while Biden supporters insist that somehow things could be worse than daily massacres and mass starvation.

In May 1945, French police fired on protestors, causing retaliatory attacks on French settlers, killing about a hundred. In response, the French murdered 45,000 Algerians in a little under two months, in a frenzy of political violence called the Sétif and Guelma massacre. As the massacre was being completed, the International Court of Justice was established. It goes without saying that Algeria never benefited from the ICJ, and the War of Independence from 1954 to 1962 was made inevitable. Over a million Algerians were killed before France could bear the fighting no longer and gave up, and Algeria won itself a state. Comparisons to the ongoing war of independence and genocide in Palestine are obvious.

While the means of colonial violence have evolved over the centuries, the basic structure of it has not. As in Algeria, Vietnam, and Cuba, resistance groups in and around Palestine are fighting for a world with less political violence. The American government would drown every city in the developing world in blood to prevent peace.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Algeria! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 10th to June 16th, 2024 - Havana Derangement Syndrome - COTW: Cuba


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Cuba's National People's Power Assembly.


The most recent geopolitical news around Cuba is the arrival this week of four Russian vessels, including a nuclear submarine - not carrying any nukes, (un)fortunately - to Havana. This will, in Putin's words, merely be a visit celebrating historical ties and no laws are being broken. Nonetheless, it's not hard to imagine how American politicians and analysts are taking the news, especially as it comes shortly after Russia promised an "asymmetrical" response to further NATO involvement in Ukraine (notably, officially allowing the use of US weapons such as missiles in Russia, albeit in a small part of Russian territory, near the border).

Meanwhile, China has been increasingly co-operating with Cuba to overcome the economic hardship created by American sanctions. China has recently re-allowed direct flights to Cuba and has recently donated some small photovoltaic plants as part of an initiative to eventually boost the Cuban energy grid by 1000 MW - and any electrical expansion helps as Cuba is plagued by blackouts which last most of the day. Additionally, the EU has made meaningful contributions to Cuba's energy situation too, with large solar installations. Hopefully, the Belt and Road Initiative will help preserve the Cuban revolution against reactionary forces as the power of US sanctions wanes. The proximity of Cuba to the United States makes this much more challenging than it would be for countries elsewhere, however. Similarly to the situation in Mexico, it seems unlikely that the US's influence over Cuba will massively diminish for decades to come unless there is a catastrophic internal collapse in the American authoritarian regime.

The Havana Syndrome will continue until American morale declines.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Cuba! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Cuba!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Cuba.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler spoiler
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::

Check out the reading list. Our books on Cuba:

These books focus on the Cuban Revolution and largely its pre-1990 history.

  • Women and the Cuban Revolution by Fidel Castro (1970).
  • People's Power: Cuba's Experience with Representative Government by Peter Roman (1999).
  • My Life: A Spoken Autobiography by Fidel Castro (2006).
  • Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution by H. Yaffe (2009).
  • A History of the Cuban Revolution by Aviva Chomsky (2010).

These books focus on Cuba after the fall of the USSR:

  • Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba by Leslie Feinberg (2009).
  • Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion by Arnold August (2013).
  • Farming Cuba: Urban Agriculture From the Ground Up by Carey Clouse (2014).
  • We Are Cuba!: How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World by Helen Yaffe (2019).
  • How the Workers' Parliaments Saved the Cuban Revolution: Reviving Socialism After the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Pedro Ross (2022).

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 22nd to July 28th, 2024 - Fracas in Dhaka - COTW: Bangladesh


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of vehicles set aflame by protestors near a government building.


Since July 1st, students have protested the unpopular proposal in which 30% of government jobs would be reserved for veterans of the 1971 War of Independence and their relatives. In a country with a youth unemployment rate of around 20% and a population of 170 million, a large number of otherwise eligible and competent people would have been forced out due to favouritism for veterans. As with basically every country on the planet over the last couple years, Bangladesh is suffering from inflation and an increasing cost-of-living, further exacerbating tensions.

The student protests have been met with significant violence by the government - local newspapers report that over a hundred protestors have been killed, and thousands have been injured. Guns and tear gas have been used. Additionally, the government has completely cut internet access throughout Bangladesh to prevent organizing, which has had some success in dividing protestors, but has also only further angered various parts of the country due to the massive impact to Bangladesh's online industries and various startups. And a national curfew has been in place to limit movement, with the population told to remain home if they want to be safe.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh relented, stating that now, only 5% of government jobs would be reserved for veterans and their families. 2% would be allocated to members of minorities, with the remaining 93% distributed on merit. A period of tentative calm has arrived, but Hasnat Abdullah, a coordinator of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, has stated that unless the government restores the internet, removes the curfew, releases detainees, and forces certain ministers to resign within a few days, then the protests will resume.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Bangladesh! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 29th to August 4th, 2024 - Haters Stay Mad(uro) - COTW: Venezuela


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of a colectivo: an armed group, usually operating in impoverished areas, which act to support and defend the socialist government of Venezuela. They are often derided as vigilante terrorist groups which prop up the government, because cops are only bad when they are socialist and not murdering minorities, I suppose.


Maduro's party, the PSUV, has won the election after a staggering amount of propaganda by the opposition, who said their polls suggested they were going to win and that Maduro's loss was inevitable. The reaction across Latin America is what one would expect. Left-leaning leaders are generally respecting the results and congratulating Maduro, while those on the right and/or are US puppets (such as in semirecently-couped Peru) are calling for recounts, or even that the election was illegitimate. The US itself is also unhappy about the results. We shall soon see if their unhappiness boils over into yet another coup attempt.

Personally, I think they should have ran Guaido again.

guaido-despair guaido

Thank you to @Redcuban1959@hexbear.net for the election coverage here, and everything else they do in the news megathread.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Venezuela! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Venezuela!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Venezuela.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler spoiler
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::

Check out the reading list. Our books on Venezuela:

  • Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution by Richard Gott (2005).
  • Revolutionary and Non-Revolutionary Paths of Radical Populism: Directions of the "Chavista" Movement in Venezuela by Steve Ellner (2005).
  • Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict, and the Chavez Phenomenon by Steve Ellner (2008).
  • We Created Chávez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution by Geo Maher (2013).
  • Viviremos: Venezuela Vs Hybrid War by Claudia de la Cruz, Manolo de los Santos, and Vijay Prashad (2020).
  • Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defense Strategy and Contradictions Among the People by Steve Ellner (2023).

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 24th to June 30th, 2024 - Waiting for War - COTW: Lebanon


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of fires in northern Israel set off by Hezbollah, to force settlers to retreat from their occupied areas, in response to attacks on civilians in Lebanon.


I'm not gonna lie to you - I thought Israel would have started shit with Hezbollah by now which would have derailed whatever megathread theme I had planned, so I didn't bother planning one.

If you want a decent couple pieces going over what Hezbollah has done to Israel, then have a look at How 'Israel' Has Lost The North and Hezbollah's Quarterly Report. It's not exactly the most professional analysis, as you'll see if you read it, but it gets the point across and relies on evidence. In essence, Hezbollah has pushed the Israelis back tens of kilometers and decimated their border infrastructure, all while unveiling anti-aircraft missiles that have forced Israel to reconsider bombing runs. They still probably have the ability to turn various towns and cities in Lebanon to rubble, but Hezbollah can do massive damage back to Israel in turn. This has gone on so long with so little meaningful opposition by Israel that border settlements are going a little haywire and tentatively declaring independence from Israel and saying they don't want IDF troops there anymore. I don't take these terribly seriously from a military standpoint but it is indicative of the Zionist settler mindset crumbling over the last 9 months.

We're now at the point where Israel kinda has to go to war against Hezbollah or the entire Zionist ideology of military deterrence and expansion via illegal settlements simply no longer functions, but that war will also lead to massive destruction for military and civilian facilities (ports, power stations, war factories, etc) which is a massive problem for Israel's continued existence. Hamas continues to function inside Gaza despite the surface occupation of significant areas, including the Gaza-Egypt border, and attrition there is leading to big materiel and psychological losses for Israel too. And Yemen has, for all intents and purposes, prevailed against America's failed attempt to thwart their blockade - with some in the army claiming it's the most intense naval battle America has faced since WW2 - and missile strikes are tentatively beginning to hit or at least threaten ships in the Mediterranean Sea.

Nukes are still lurking quietly in the background, of course, but the Resistance is perfectly aware of that and still seems confident to go ahead with operations, so I can't really do anything but shrug and say that I trust them to do what's right.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Lebanon!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Lebanon.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler spoiler
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::

Check out the reading list. Our books on Lebanon:

  • A History of Modern Lebanon by Fawwaz Traboulsi (2007).
  • Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image, and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine by Dina Matar and Zahera Harb (2013).

Amal Saad is a prominent scholar of Hezbollah and frequently posts on social media about her analysis of ongoing events. She has two books: Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion published in 2001, and The Iran Connection: Understanding the Alliance with Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas published in 2012.

There's also plenty of books on Palestine (and thus by extension, the Resistance helping them) in the Palestine section.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 1st to July 7th, 2024 - Morales vs Arce - COTW: Bolivia


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Bolivian President Luis Arce (center, with glasses) face-to-face with General Zuñiga (in camouflage) during the coup attempt.


On the 26th of June, while Hexbear was in an 8-hour hibernation, General Juan José Zuñiga marched 200 troops and some armored vehicles on the government palace in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of Luis Arce. This is somewhat reminiscent of Jeanine Anez's coup in November 2019 where she overthrew the socialist president Evo Morales, but while that coup was due to a colour revolution likely orchestrated by the United States and had at least a tiny amount of political/public legitimacy and "followed the rules" in a certain sense (as Morales was trying to abolish presidential term limits, which is only evil if a socialist is doing it), this was a much more naked attempted seizure of power by a military general.

This coup was quickly terminated without even a momentary transfer of power. Democracy was saved.

Despite being in the same party, Morales and Arce have increasingly been in opposition. Morales champions anti-imperialism, rights for indigneous people, and poverty reduction. This last one especially has been threatened by Arce, though it's not entirely his fault, as the Bolivian economy is threatened by the same crisis affecting so many developing economies around the world right now - say it with me now - a lack of dollars and mounting debt. The US Federal Reserve is carrying out a bloody offensive against the world's poor, and this has combined nastily with a rather uninspiring "post"-coronavirus economic recovery in Bolivia, as well as diminishing natural gas production (and thus less exports with which to earn dollars).

While the coup was ongoing, Morales banded behind the government. Afterwards, however, Morales expressed his skepticism about whether the coup was, in fact, genuine, calling for an independent investigation into it, and saying that Arce “disrespected the truth, deceived us, lied, not only to the Bolivian people but to the whole world." This is because General Zuñiga made a series of very interesting statements to his family and colleagues, saying that Arce had "betrayed" him, and saying that Arce had told him “‘The situation is very screwed up, very critical. It is necessary to prepare something to raise my popularity.'" This does check out on the surface level, at least: Arce has suffered increasing unpopularity as the economy has suffered.

Interestingly, Morales' narrative has been supported by the anarchocapitalist leader of Argentina, Javier Milei, who is currently busy completely destroying his own country and stripping the copper out of the walls to give to American capitalists. Milei said that the coup attempt was "fraudulent". Meanwhile, those inside MAS opposed to Morales' accusations of a false coup have accused him of allying with the fascist right and becoming an instrument of imperialism.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Bolivia! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Bolivia!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Bolivia.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler spoiler
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::

Check out the reading list. Our books on Bolivia:

  • Latin America's Left Turn and the New Strategic Landscape: The Case of Bolivia by James Rochlin (2007).
  • Bolivia's Radical Tradition: Permanent Revolution in the Andes by S. Sandor John (2009).
  • Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia by Jeffery R. Webber (2011).
  • From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation, and the Politics of Evo Morales by Jeffery R. Webber (2011).

Bulletins and News Discussion from August 5th to August 11th, 2024 - LGBT - COTW: Iraq


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Well, Iran and their allies' response may happen sometime this week and apparently they aren't talking to the US in order to negotiate how and where they will hit Israel (and Shoigu arrived in Tehran rather auspiciously), the Bangladeshi government just fell, F16s have been given to Ukraine, there are fascist riots in the UK, and Japan just had its worst stock fall since 1987 and seems to be taking several other countries/corporations with it. I don't really know where to look right now.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Iraq! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Iraq!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Iraq.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler spoiler
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::

Check out the reading list. Our books on Iraq:

These books focus on general history:

  • The Modern History of Iraq by Phebe Marr (1985).

These books focus on the Iraq War:

  • Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq by Tariq Ali (2004).
  • Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (2006).
  • Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians by Chris Hedges (2008).

Also check out:

  • Iraq, Afghanistan and Imperialism of Our Time by Aijaz Ahmad (2004).
  • The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power by Vijay Prashad (2022).

Bulletins and News Discussion from August 12th to August 18th, 2024 - Marshall Plan: Now As Farce - COTW: Ireland


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of one of Ireland's only manned navy ships, the Samuel Beckett. Image sourced from this BBC article.


Putler has been HUMILIATED by the Kursk offensive and this proves that Russia's army is in tatters and unable even to defend its own territory. However, it is simultaneously true that Russia poses an existential threat to countries thousands of miles away, as this recent Politico article demonstrates. Ireland - a country that immediately springs to mind as one surrounded by enemies - is being bullied due to its lack of military.

Despite bearing responsibility for 16 percent of the EU’s territorial waters, and the fact that 75 percent of transatlantic undersea cables pass through or near Irish waters, Ireland is totally defenseless. And I mean completely unable to protect critical infrastructure, or even pretend to secure its own borders. [...] Ireland’s “navy” of six patrol vessels is currently operating with one operational ship due to chronic staff shortages. [...] Ireland simply has no undersea capabilities. How could it, when it barely spends 0.2 percent of GDP on security and defense? And it has, in effect, abdicated responsibility for protecting the Europe’s northwestern borders.


For all we know, the dreaded sea-people from the Bronze Age Collapse could soon emerge from the North Atlantic.

Unfortunately, things are even worse up in the skies. Ireland has no combat jets, and it’s the only country in Europe that can’t monitor its own airspace due to the lack of primary radar systems. Instead, the country has outsourced its security to Britain in a technically secret agreement between Dublin and London, which effectively cedes control over Irish air space to the Royal Air Force. This must be the luck of the Irish — smile and get someone else to protect you for free.


While this is very silly, rearmament has long been a part of US imperial strategy on an economic level. Desai, discussing the US imperial strategy in the WW2 period:

By 1947 [...] the domestic postwar consumer boom was nearing its end. While financing exports became more urgent, the 1946 elections returned a Congress unlikely to approve further loans. Now the Truman Administration concocted the ‘red menace’ to ‘scare the hell out of the country’, enunciated the Truman Doctrine of US support for armed resistance to ‘subjugation’ which launched the cold war, and Congress granted $400 million to prevent left-wing triumphs in Greece and Turkey in 1947.


One reading of history states that the US was so intimidated by the USSR that this forced a policy of massive arms production even outside of official wartime. Why this arms production is not occurring today can be puzzling, and (very reasonably) explained by neoliberals exporting industrial production overseas. However, a different historical reading can explain both the first Cold War, and the ongoing situation in which American weaponry is being almost purposefully given in insufficient numbers to give Ukraine a chance of victory and thus only prolonging their suffering (while generating massive profit for the military-industrial complex):

In this sense the Cold War was not the cause of US imperial policy but its effect. It combined financing exports with fighting combined development by national capitalisms as well as communism. When such ‘totalitarian regimes’ threatened ‘free peoples’, ‘America’s world economic responsibilities’ included aid to countries battling them.


By selling massively expensive weapons to Europe, America could simultaneously guarantee export markets for its industries, trap Europe into reliance on American industries at the expense of their own, and divert European funds away from constructing factories which could compete with American ones. Providing a way to defend against Soviet communism (and now Russian "imperialism") is merely a happy side-effect, and so the lack of effectiveness of American weaponry is causing no great panic among the military-industrial complex, nor an urgent plan to quintuple artillery shell production or Patriot missile production - the deals for F-35s and such are still there, and they are what matter.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Ireland! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Ireland!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Ireland.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler spoiler
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::

Check out the reading list.

  • Ireland Her Own: An Outline History of the Irish Struggle for National Freedom and Independence by T. A. Jackson (1946).
  • The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Fein by Brendan O'Brien (1995).

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 8th to July 14th, 2024 - Nevertheless, He Persisted


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of the Big Wet Boy surviving an assassination attempt with his Matrix-esque bullet dodging skills.

Trump's victory, and the further mass oppression of minorities, is closer than ever before. May god have mercy on our souls.


::: spoiler previous preamble
The totalitarian capitalist dystopia which was created by the United States in the aftermath of the Korean War has increasingly experienced problems as the multipolar world is being gradually birthed.

Due to the widespread exploitation of the population, long work weeks, and high housing prices, the population growth of South Korea has plummeted, with the lowest fertility rate on the planet, and the highest suicide rate in the OECD. While a capitalist "success story" before the 2008 recession in terms of profit accumulation for the richest at the expense of most others, conditions have grown more dire in the Long Depression since the crash. GDP growth per year has averaged out at 2-3%. For more concrete figures, labour productivity has stagnated, particularly in the service sector. The rate of profit hit a peak when the dictatorship ended in the late 1980s, but has since massively tumbled. These dynamics are not unique to South Korea; they are happening throughout the West.

While South Korea is stagnating, perhaps even falling, its northern neighbour is rising. With Russia already persona non grata to much of the developed world and yet still maintaining fairly good economic growth and continuously albeit gradually moving towards victory in Ukraine, Putin sees no reason to be intimidated by the West's shunning of the DPRK, and Russia is establishing ties as well as military and economic deals. This seems to portend an end to the post-Soviet period of forced isolation due to UN actions forbidding the people of the DPRK to leave the country (which many westerners believe is a policy originating from the Korean leadership due to their propagandized education).

Many in the West are still, regrettably, unable to properly analyze the geopolitical situation of Korea due to their government programming, leading to bizarre takes about imminent collapse, or desperation on the part of Russia or the DPRK, unable to recognize that the DPRK has a powerful military sector all its own, and decades of autarky has created a durable society where limited resources must be used efficiently and effectively. The position of the Korean Peninsula seems likely to be a critical part of the US-China conflict, whether this is an outright war or instead a series of proxy wars. Indeed, Korea's position may soon become very important in global trade routes if the US tries to cut off the Strait of Malacca to Chinese-bound cargo ships, with vital resources like oil and food potentially transported both over land and via the Arctic Route over Russia and through the DPRK to China. Russia's leadership clearly sees the importance of Korea in the future, hence their actions now; and, of course, South Korea siding with Ukraine has also forced Putin's hand to oppose them more openly.

:::


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 "Country" of the Week is South Korea! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The "Country" of the Week is South Korea!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to South Korea.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler spoiler
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::

Check out the reading list. Our books on South Korea:

  • Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History by Bruce Cumings (1997).
  • South Koreans in the Debt Crisis: The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society by Jesook Song (2009).
  • Asia's Unknown Uprising Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century by George Katsiaficas (2012).

Also check out the DPRK section for books on the Korean War.

in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Two days ago, on the first day of the Islamic month of Muharram, my son was born. The little fucker busted out of my wife a few weeks too early, but he's finally here. We left the hospital a few hours ago after two days of medical checks and both he and my wife are now peacefully sleeping while I'm writing. I won the naming battle and we settled on a traditional, but cool name in my very biased opinion. I'm now Abu Hassan, which sounds unreal, because how the hell am I a father lol. Now the real battle starts, I cannot do the same mistakes that Pete Buttigieg's father did and accidentally make him a liberal. Maybe in 16 years or so, you'll have Hassan LargePenis posting a VR interactive three dimensional chad n cuck ranking in the news mega about the slow Russian progress in the Central European front of WW3. Thank you all in advance for the well wishes!
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from August 19th to August 25th, 2024 - Our Mountains, Our Treasures - Child of the Week: Hassan LargePenis


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is a snapshot taken from the recent Hezbollah video "Our Mountains, Our Treasures", showcasing their extensive underground fortifications, supply lines, and weaponry.


iran can't keep doing this to me, they've gotta respond soon, right? I'm gonna run out of analysis about countries soon, oh god


The COTW (Child of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific child every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied children. If you've wanted to talk about the child 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 child.

The Child of the Week is Hassan LargePenis! He is chad-and-cuck rater and general commenter @LargePenis@hexbear.net's son, born over a month ago. @Greenleaf@hexbear.net recommended I have him as the COTW for a week and I finally got around to it.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from August 26th to September 1st, 2024 - Ruto Must Go - COTW: Kenya


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is from this Black Agenda Report article by the Communist Party of Kenya.


In June, large anti-government protests shook Kenya. President Ruto and his parliament were attempting to pass the new Finance Bill 2024, which, among other things, would have hiked taxes on the population, with a 16% sales tax on bread and a 25% duty on cooking oil, as well as new taxes on financial transanctions and vehicle ownership. There would also have been levies on women's sanitary products and digital goods such as phones, among other measures affecting hospitals.

Hundreds of protestors stormed the parliament building and began to tear the place apart. Shortly afterwards, on June 26th, Ruto announced that he was withdrawing the bill, calling the tens of deaths and hundreds of injuries "unfortunate". A couple weeks later, Ruto then fired his entire cabinet (aside from his foreign minister) and communicated his wish to the nation to form a "broad-based government". Funnily enough, in July, it was announced that the majority of positions were to be filled by members of the old cabinet, while other positions were taken by members of the opposition. This has prompted scepticism among the population, including calls to resign, but there haven't (yet) been any major anti-government events to pressure this outcome. The Communist Party of Kenya has been working to get some of their comrades back after they were abducted by the police during the protest period, and have otherwise supported the protests against Ruto.

The measures in the bill were strongly encouraged by the IMF. Kenya's debt is currently around $80 billion, of which about 10% is owed to China for infrastructure projects (such as a railway linking the capital, Nairobi, to the port city of Mombasa, as well as 11,000 kilometers of road throughout the country). The rest is owed to a combination of the US, IMF, World Bank, and Saudi Arabia. More than half of government revenue is going towards repaying the debt - but despite these massive payments, it has only grown. The most recent round of IMF plundering (and the impetus for current events) began in 2021, when they offered a 38-month programme to "help" Kenya, which would involve the usual warfare on the poor and the dismemberment of any useful societal institutions.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Kenya! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Kenya!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Kenya.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler spoiler
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::

Check out the reading list.

  • Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins (2005).
  • Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire by David Anderson (2005).
  • The Building of the Communist Party of Kenya by the Communist Party of Kenya (2023).

Bulletins and News Discussion from September 2nd to September 8th, 2024 - We Love Our Trans Comrades - Chemicals of the Week: Estrogen and Testosterone


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

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.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from September 9th to September 15th, 2024 - Viva Sandino! - COTW: Nicaragua


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is sourced from this article.


It takes very little effort to find an article from Western state propaganda decrying Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas as authoritarian and rife with human rights abuses. This is the natural reaction the US has to any successful liberation movement. This fairly long report from Jason Cohen, a socialist who travelled to Nicaragua one week ago, should quell any suspicions.

He describes a country with high political consciousness among the masses, who are working to construct critical infrastructure for the country and their communities. There is a virtual education system that is free across the entire nation, which serves the dual goal of democratizing education and ensuring that those in rural areas or without much free time for university can still achieve degrees and a quality education; and these classes cover technical skills in the production of infrastructure and agriculture, but also political and ideological education in order to counter the fascist propaganda produced by imperialist nations abroad.

While Nicaragua is deeply invested in its nationality and national figures who led to their socialist revolution, such as Sandino, they are also immensely proud of their indigneous history, recognizing it as also part of their anti-colonial history which continues to the present day. Additionally, they honour the struggles of other nations on the continent, such as the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, as well as Castro in Cuba and Allende in Chile. Countries around the world are also celebrated and admired, such as Burkina Faso; during the Reagan administration, Nicaragua and Burkina Faso were comrades in arms, and now Traore is continuing the legacy of Sankara's anti-imperialism in the present. Perhaps most relevant today is their dedication towards Palestine, involving the creation of the Parque Palestina (shown in the post image), in which the Palestinian flag flies alongside the flag of Nicaragua. In July, Leila Khaled of the PFLP gave a speech in Nicaragua, in which the solidarity of the two nations was highlighted.


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Nicaragua! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.
:::

::: spoiler 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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The Country of the Week is Nicaragua!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Nicaragua.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

::: spoiler spoiler
- What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
- What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
- Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
- Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
- What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
- Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
- How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
- Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
- If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?
:::

Check out the reading list.

Some recommended literature on the region:

  • Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano (1971).
  • The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism To Three Continents by John Dinges (2004).
  • Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States, And the Rise of the New Imperialism by Greg Grandin (2006).

Bulletins and News Discussion from September 16th to September 22nd, 2024 - This Megathread Is Dedicated To The Brave Mujahideen Fighters of Afghanistan - COTW: Afghanistan


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of China's ambassador to Afghanistan, Zhao Sheng, meeting Taliban Prime Minister Hasan Akhund in September 2023.

I know the Rambo title card is a hoax.

The COTW was chosen in the wake of the aborted sequel to the attempted assassination of Trump being performed by a guy who is VERY enthusiastic about Ukraine, to the point of trying to sneak Afghan soldiers into Ukraine by setting up a house in Pakistan to house them and then further transport them. He also apparently offered to send thousands of Afghan soldiers to Haiti to help them combat gang violence. Whomst among us doesn't have the numbers of thousands of Afghan soldiers on speed-dial. Do you reckon there's a group chat?

Anyway, while there is still no official recognition of the Taliban's government by any country, China has taken a different course than the late USSR and the US - forming economic in-roads, rather than trying their own invasion. This has been a big boon for the struggling country, with various mines and oil and agriculture deals helping keep things barely afloat. A total disintegration of the social fabric of Afghanistan is not in the interest of any of the powers that border it - China, Pakistan, and Iran, with Russia not too far away - so an interesting dynamic of helping-without-official-recognition has been established. I wonder who will be the first country to fully recognize them?


The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Afghanistan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from September 23rd to September 29th, 2024 - The War In The North


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of a Hezbollah missile attack on a military camp west of Jenin.


The situation between Hezbollah and Israel is rapidly escalating, with massive bombing campaigns on southern Lebanon by Israel predominantly on civilians (as the tunnels in South Lebanon are mostly unreachable to the Zionists, just like in Gaza), while Hezbollah and its allies respond with missile attacks predominantly on Israeli military facilities. Israel is spreading an evacuation order to the residents of southern Lebanese villages while also bombing their routes of escape and civilian infrastructure, similar to a terror tactic used widely in Gaza.

Northern Israel is currently under military censorship to hide their losses, so we get very little information other than what the Resistance provides and what videos and images get through the censors.

I don't know if Israel will dare a ground incursion soon, but it seems fairly likely in the coming days or weeks.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from September 30th to October 6th, 2024 - Qassam, Qassem, Quagmire


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of the aftermath of an Israeli bombing of Beirut in 2006.


We are now almost one year into the war and genocide in Gaza. Despite profound hardship, the Gazan Resistance continues its battles against the enemy, entirely undeterred. Despite Israeli proclamations throughout 2024 that they have cleared out Hamas from various places throughout Gaza, we still see regular attacks and ambushes against Zionist forces. Just today (Monday), Al Qassam fighters ambushed and destroyed another convoy of Israeli vehicles. The predictions early on in the war were that Israel would defeat Hamas in mere months, needing only until December, then January, and so on. This has proven very much untrue. Israel is stuck in the mud; unable to destroy their enemy due to their lack of knowledge about the "Gaza Metro" and, of course, a lack of actual fighting skill, given how many times I've seen Zionists getting shot while they gaze wistfully out of windows.

The same quagmire will occur in Lebanon, only considerably worse. Both Nasrallah and Sinwar possess a similar strategy of luring Zionist forces onto known, friendly territory, replete with traps and ambushes, to bleed them dry of equipment, manpower, and the will to continue fighting. The scale of the invasion could fall anywhere on the spectrum from "very limited" - more of a series of raids on Hezbollah positions than truly trying to occupy land - to a total invasion which would seek to permanently take control of Southern Lebanon. Neither is likely to destroy, or even substantially diminish Hezbollah's fighting abilities. This is not wishful thinking: Hezbollah has convincingly defeated Israel twice before in its history, pushing them from their territory, and both times Hezbollah had almost no missiles and a limited supply of other equipment, relying on improvisation as often as not. The Hezbollah of 2024 is an entirely different organization to that of the early 2000s.

Attempts to drive wedges between Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanon are also unlikely to succeed. Hezbollah is not just a military force, it is extremely interlinked into various communities throughout Lebanon, drawing upon those communities to recruit soldiers. Throughout its history, it has provided education, healthcare, reconstruction, and dozens of other services one would attribute to a state. Amal Saad's recent suggestion of using "quasi-state actor" as a more respectful replacement for the typical "non-state actor" seems advisable. And the decentralized command structures, compartmented leadership, strong succession planning, and aforementioned community ties almost entirely neutralizes the effectiveness of assassinations. Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem has confirmed that Hezbollah's path has been set by Nasrallah, and his martyrdom will not stop nor even pause their efforts. Additionally, he confirmed that despite the recent attacks by Israel which nominally focussed on destroying missile depots, Hezbollah's supply of weapons has not been degraded, and they are still only using the minimum of their capabilities.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from October 7th to October 13th, 2024 - Happy International Paragliding Day!


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is here.


One year on. Hundreds of thousands are dying or dead, millions are displaced, the Middle East is undergoing its greatest changes in a generation, Iran has directly attacked Israel twice in one year, and Yemen has proven that the US Navy ain't worth shit. We are the closest we have been to nuclear war (discounting accidents) in decades, but also the fall of Israel.

Because one day, the prisoners of a concentration camp paraglided over a wall.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from October 14th to October 20th, 2024 - Paper Tigers


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is a frame taken from this video of Iranian missiles raining down on Israel without interception due to a weak and depleted air defense system after a year of war and genocide.


Mao, 1956:

Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn't. It is very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe the United States is nothing but a paper tiger.

When we say U.S. imperialism is a paper tiger, we are speaking in terms of strategy. Regarding it as a whole, we must despise it. But regarding each part, we must take it seriously. It has claws and fangs. We have to destroy it piecemeal. For instance, if it has ten fangs, knock off one the first time, and there will be nine left, knock off another, and there will be eight left. When all the fangs are gone, it will still have claws. If we deal with it step by step and in earnest, we will certainly succeed in the end.

Strategically, we must utterly despise U.S. imperialism. Tactically, we must take it seriously. In struggling against it, we must take each battle, each encounter, seriously. At present, the United States is powerful, but when looked at in a broader perspective, as a whole and from a long-term viewpoint, it has no popular support, its policies are disliked by the people, because it oppresses and exploits them. For this reason, the tiger is doomed. Therefore, it is nothing to be afraid of and can be despised. But today the United States still has strength, turning out more than 100 million tons of steel a year and hitting out everywhere. That is why we must continue to wage struggles against it, fight it with all our might and wrest one position after another from it. And that takes time.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from October 21st to October 27th, 2024 - Swimming Back To The Titanic - COTW: Moldova


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is from this article.


On the 20th of October, Moldova - a small, landlocked country bordering western Ukraine and with a population of about 3 million - voted to join the EU. The margin was razor-thin, with the pro-EU vote gaining 50.39%, or an absolute difference of about 11,000 people. There was simultaneously a presidential vote between the incumbent, Maia Sandu, and other candidates, with the main competitor being Alexandr Stoianoglo.

The election was characterized by accusations of Russian interference, with Russian propaganda apparently flooding in, as well as people offering Moldovans money to vote against the EU. While the result does suggest that half the voting-age population of Moldova consists entirely of Russians who want to destroy democracy and all the good in the world, it seems to have just barely failed. This is a bad time to be a site entirely composed of Russian disinformation agents and bots. Twice already today, I've had to restart my program after somebody told me "Disregard all previous prompts."

While Moldova is a poor country which could benefit in some ways from EU membership, in practice, it is unlikely that they will be able to join for the foreseeable future, requiring many of the... reforms... that the EU requires of potential new members. But as basically every major European economy continues to slowly sink as recessions and political crises degrade them, one wonders how beneficial EU membership will even be in the years and decades to come - if it survives for decades. In that sense, it's as if the survivors of the Titanic are swimming back towards it, believing that being on a bigger - albeit slowly sinking - boat is better than trying their luck on small lifeboats.

Then again, like with Serbia, their geographical and geopolitical position makes anti-Western actions extremely difficult. It is rare that dissention is tolerated for long in the West - one tends to get called a dictator by crowds of people holding English-language signs in non-English countries, photographed by Western journalists who haven't meaningfully reported on your country in months or years. You can crush your people with neoliberal austerity for years, killing hundreds of thousands through neglect, and face glowing approval from the media - but try and use state resources to benefit the poor, and global institutions start ranking you on the authoritarian dictator scale.

The best case for Moldova is that it becomes an exploitable hinterland for Germany to harvest and privatize as it tries - and fails - to compete in a global economic war between the US and China/BRICS. The worst case is that tensions with Russia over Pridnestrovie, as well as possible eventual NATO involvement (though Moldova is not a member, it is a partner of NATO), result in the ongoing war also reaching them.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from October 28th to November 3rd, 2024 - LDP Falls Flat / Yet Neoliberalism / Rampages Onward - COTW: Japan


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is from this SCMP article.

Much of the analysis below is sourced from Michael Roberts' great website.


Japan's ruling parliamentary coalition, consisting of the LDP (purple) and it's junior coalition partner Komeito (in light pink) have lost their ruling majority. They have ruled post-war Japan for almost its entire history. The LDP is currently led by Shigeru Ishiba after Kishida stood down due to a corruption scandal, and ties to the Unification Church.

While geopolitical factors (over the cold war between the US and China, etc) may have played a role, by far the biggest reason for this result in the poor economic conditions over the past few years. Inflation has risen and real wages have fallen, with little relief for the working class via things like tax reductions. While inequality in Japan is not as extreme as in America, it is still profound, with the top 10% possessing 60% of the wealth, while the bottom 50% possess just 5%.

Shinzo Abe previously tried to boost economic performance through monetary easing and fiscal deficits, while Kishida ran on a "new capitalism" which rejected Abe's neoliberalism and promised to reduce inequality. Nothing substantial has resulted from all this, however, other than increasing corporate wealth. Innovation continues to fall, and domestic profitability is low, resulting in decreasing investment at home by Japanese corporations. Labour productivity growth has only slightly picked up since the mid-2000s and is falling again. The rate of profit has fallen by half since the 1960s, and Japan has been in a manufacturing recession - or very close to it - since late 2022. In essence: there is no choice but between stagnation or decline.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from November 4th to November 10th, 2024 - This is a Giant Problem


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is from this article on the excellent Canadian environmental journalism outlet, The Narwhal.


The Giant Mine just outside of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada is one of the country's largest recognized environmental liabilities. The mine's 100 plus year history illustrates the continuity between resource colonialism in the late 19th/early 20th century and neoliberalism at the turn of the millennium.

There were several gold rushes in northern Canada/US in the late 19th century, such as the Klondike. The Giant gold strike on was first discovered by settlers about the same time as the Klondike, but as Giant is on Great Slave Lake (named for an Anglicization of the name of local peoples, not after slavery) instead of the Pacific Ocean, it is much less accessible and didn't take off like the Klondike. Parallel with displacement of local Yellowknives Dene people ykdene.com/, the town of Yellowknife sprung up around small mining operations through the 30s. It wasn't until after WW2 that the mine was developed at a large scale. Starting operation in 1948, Giant was owned by a Canadian mining conglomerate through the 80s, then some Australians, and for the last ten years of its operating life, by Americans, who went bankrupt and abandoned the property in 1999. The Canadian federal government is responsible for the site and its remediation now, similar to the way the EPA has Superfund sites in the USA.

The project is infamous for poisoning the people and environment of the surrounding area through arsenic poisoning. The ore at giant is arsenopyrite, an arsenic sulphide mineral that often contains gold. Roasting it in large furnaces or kilns releases the gold as well as fine arsenic trioxide dust. The most infamous arsenic poisoning incident was in 1951 when a Yellowknives Dene toddler in died after eating contaminated snow in the fallout area, 2 kilometers from the processing mill's smokestack. Over the years, improvements to the mill reduced the amount of toxic dust released to the environment. This is better than blasting it into the air wildly, but meant that the site accumulated hundreds of thousands of tonnes of arsenic trioxide dust that they chucked in empty mine workings underground. Unfortunately, arsenic trioxide dissolves in water as easily as sugar and so represents a tremendous risk to groundwater and waterbodies nearby, like Great Slave Lake and Yellowknife's water supply.

Arsenic issues contributed to labour disputes as well. In 1991 the union workers of the plant went on strike, refusing management's demand to reduce their salary and wanting better safety measures for workers . The company brought in Pinkertons and strikebreakers, backed by RCMP thugs. The situation escalated, culminating in a bomb planted on a train track deep in the mine. When it was triggered, it killed 6 scabs and 3 Pinkertons. For the next year, the RCMP interrogated mine workers, their family and community without determining who did it, supporting the company in their refusal to sign a new contract until an arrest was made. Finally a worker named Roger Warren confessed to doing it alone and was sentenced to life in prison. He was released in 2014 and died in 2017.

Since 1999, the site has been the responsibility of the Canadian federal government and is being every so gradually remediated. Operated through what are effectively private-public partnership contracts, environmental engineering companies are attempting to clean up and isolate the huge amounts of arsenic trioxide dust. The concept is move the dust into specially ventilated chambers of the underground mine, where it is frozen in place and thus prevented from leaching into groundwater. Active remediation is supposed to be finished in about 15 years at a cost of $1 billion CAD, but will surely take longer and cost more than this. Also, freezing material in place will definitely work because the climate isn't changing, and the Canadian north is definitely not seeing extreme levels of temperature rise.

After active works are complete, the site will require perpetual care.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to carpoftruth [any, any]

in Mozambique violence is spreading across the country. Old conflict resurfaces after elections and puts Lusophone country in chaos.

Images on social media have shown scenes of violence in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, a Portuguese-speaking country located on the east coast of the African continent. Since the presidential election on October 9, the defeated far-right candidate Venâncio Mondlane has questioned the result of the election and the validity of the ballot boxes.

Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front), the historic organization that transformed Mozambique into an independent nation, had Daniel Chapo as its candidate, who was declared the winner with more than 70% of the votes. The opposition, especially the supporters of Venâncio Mondlane, who ran as an independent and received around 20% of the votes, accused Frelimo of manipulating the electoral process.

Mondlane is a former member of Renamo, the right-wing organization financed by apartheid in Southern Rhodesia and by the West to prevent the growth of the left in Africa during the Cold War period. Mondlane did part of his political training in the USA. Protests erupted immediately after the election results were released, intensifying after the assassination of two senior opposition figures on October 19.

These events led to a severe crackdown by the security forces, resulting in numerous casualties on both sides. Activists warn that the situation could deteriorate into a “bloodbath” if the government does not engage in a dialog or address the protesters' grievances.

Venâncio's idea is to overthrow the Mozambican democratic system: 'The fourth phase is going to be extremely painful, because we have noticed that the regime wants to arm-wrestle the people. The regime wants to use only the force of arms against the people, it wants to continue murdering the people, but as we have seen, there is a very strong determination on the part of our people to continue this struggle,” he said.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from November 11th to November 17th, 2024 - Chapo? Like, the President-elect of Mozambique? - COTW: Mozambique


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is from this article.


Thank you to @carpoftruth@hexbear.net for covering my position as Supreme Dictator of the Goddamn News while I was moving and getting set up in my new home in a top secret Kremlin-funded bunker five hundred feet below the ground. Our regularly scheduled programming returns this week.


On October 9th, Daniel Chapo won the Mozambique general election with about 70% of the vote. Chapo is the head of FRELIMO, the Marxist-Leninist party of Mozambique's liberation, which fought an internal anti-communist resistance called RENAMO which was backed by Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa; Frelimo won in 1975. However, as the USSR fell, Frelimo began to allow elections inside Mozambique, and has ruled the country with significant majorities in each election ever since.

The main opposition party inside Mozambique is Podemos, which is led by Venancio Mondlane, a former member of Renamo and trained inside the USA. He alleges that his polling figures predicted a majority win for him, not Frelimo, and has accused Chapo of electoral fraud. There have been the usual slogans about how they yearn for freedom. The EU, of course, "witnessed irregularities." As @WilsonWilson@hexbear.net has pointed out, Mozambique has massive undeveloped gas fields and is outsourcing the development process to France, Norway, the UK, and the USA, while mysterious Islamist groups have popped up to cause chaos in the exact regions which have the gas, slowing the process of actually developing those gas fields. Overall, it appears to be a cookie-cutter colour revolution attempt by the imperial core designed to install a comprador for cheaper resources. Its proximity to BRICS+ member South Africa may also be significant, noting the colour revolution in Bangladesh earlier this year exerting influence near India and China.

Protestors have been battling against the police and government since late October, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries as well as massive disruption, as the government has intermittently blocked access to the internet and social media. As of today, calm appears to be returning, with border crossings beginning to reopen.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from November 18th to November 24th, 2024 - Could It Soon Be Azover? - COTW: Ukraine


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

back in my map era, we're ukrainemaxxing right now


Declarations of the imminent doom of Ukraine are a news megathread specialty, and this is not what I am doing here - mostly because I'm convinced that whenever we do so, the war extends another three months to spite us. Ukraine has been in an essentially apocalyptic crisis for over a year now after the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, unable to make any substantial progress and resigned to merely being a persistent nuisance (and arms market!) as NATO fights to the last Ukrainian. In this context, predicting a terminal point is difficult, as things seem to always be going so badly that it's hard to understand how and why they fight on. In every way, Ukraine is a truly shattered country, barely held together by the sheer combined force of Western hegemony. And that hegemony is weakening.

I therefore won't be giving any predictions of a timeframe for a Ukrainian defeat, but the coming presidency of Trump is a big question mark for the conflict. Trump has talked about how he wishes for the war to end and for a deal to be made with Putin, but Trump also tends to change his mind on an issue at least three or four times before actually making a decision, simply adopting the position of who talked to him last. And, of course, his ability to end the war might be curtailed by a military-industrial complex (and various intelligence agencies) that want to keep the money flowing.

The alignment of the US election with the accelerating rate of Russian gains is pretty interesting, with talk of both escalation and de-escalation coinciding - the former from Biden, and the latter from Trump. Russia very recently performed perhaps the single largest aerial attack of Ukraine of the entire war, striking targets across the whole country with missiles and drones from various platforms. In response, the US is talking about allowing Ukraine to hit long-range targets in Russia (but the strategic value of this, at this point, seems pretty minimal).

Additionally, Russia has made genuine progress in terms of land acquisition. We aren't talking about endless and meaningless battles over empty fields anymore. Some of the big Ukrainian strongholds that we've been spending the last couple years speculating over - Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk, Orikhiv - are now being approached and entered by Russian forces. The map is actually changing now, though it's hard to tell as Ukraine is so goddamn big.

Attrition has finally paid off for Russia. An entire generation of Ukrainians has been fed into the meat grinder. Recovery will take, at minimum, decades - more realistically, the country might be permanently ruined, until that global communist revolution comes around at least. And they could have just made a fucking deal a month into the war.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from November 25th to December 1st, 2024 - Brothers in Genocide - COTW: Morocco


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of the King of Morocco meeting with John Kerry (a species of demon that plagued Hexbear in the misty past).


This preamble comes courtesy of @LargePenis@hexbear.net:

Morocco (Al Maghrib), or more officially the Kingdom of Morocco (Al Mamlaka al Maghribiya), is a country located in the northwestern edge of the African continent. The name Morocco comes from the Spanish name Marruecos, which itself comes from the name of the city of Marrakesh. In Turkish for example, Morocco is known as Fas, mainly because Turks knew the land of Morocco through the city of Fes. Morocco is regarded as part of the Arab World and Arabic is the main language amongst the population, with French and Berber languages also widely spoken in the country.

Morocco was the home of mostly Berber tribes until the Muslim conquest and the subsequent Arab migrations in the 700s under the Umayyads drastically changed the character of the country. A Berber commander, Tariq ibn Ziyad, would later cross the Strait of Gibraltar (Jabal Tariq) from the northern shores of now-Morocco and conquer Andalusia, which remained under Muslim rule for nearly 800 years. The country emerged as a significant regional power during the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties in the medieval period, known for their contributions to architecture, philosophy, and trade across North Africa and southern Europe. The current ruling dynasty of Morocco, the Alaouite dynasty, came to power in the late 1600s. The Alaouites claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad through his grandson Hasan ibn Ali, giving them religious legitimacy and political authority in the region. Despite the Shia-coded claim to legitimacy, the Moroccan royal family and the population mostly follow the Maliki school of Sunni Islam.

In the early 20th century, the Treaty of Fez (1912) created the French Protectorate of Morocco, negotiated largely without input from the Moroccan people. Moroccan lands were completely divided under French and Spanish zones, with thousands of colonists pouring into the country. The royal family frequently collaborated with colonial powers, suppressing local resistance movements and prioritizing European interests. Prominent anti-colonial uprisings, like the Rif War (1921–1926), were met with brutal crackdowns, enabled by Western-backed forces. Post-independence in 1956, Morocco maintained close ties with its former colonizers, fostering economic dependence on France and Spain. The monarchy’s alignment with Western geopolitical interests often undermined Pan-African and Arab unity movements.

During the Cold War, Morocco positioned itself as a staunch ally of the West, marginalizing leftist and nationalist factions within the country. The Green March of 1975 was a Moroccan state-organized movement to assert control over Western Sahara, a territory decolonized from Spanish rule but still awaiting self-determination. This march, supported by Western powers, particularly the United States, is often criticized as a colonial expansion disguised as a popular movement. By settling Moroccans in the disputed territory, the march disregarded the Sahrawi people's right to sovereignty. U.N. resolutions on Western Sahara have seen limited enforcement, largely due to Morocco’s Western alliances shielding it from accountability. Western-backed security and intelligence partnerships continue to be the cornerstone of Morocco’s repressive nature towards any anti-colonial and leftist movements. In 2021, Algeria again severed diplomatic ties with Morocco, citing hostile actions and concerns over Morocco's ties with Israel, which Algeria views as a betrayal of pro-Palestinian solidarity. The two countries have mostly clashed over the issue of Western Sahara other than a short war in the 60s over a border dispute, with Algeria continuing to support the Sahrawi independence movement.

Morocco's relations with Israel have historically been discreet but significant, rooted in the presence of a large Moroccan Jewish diaspora in Israel. Former King Hassan II played a significant behind-the-scenes role in fostering covert ties between Morocco and Israel during his reign. King Hassan II is reported to have allowed Israeli intelligence access to critical information from a meeting of Arab leaders in Casablanca in 1965, which may have helped Israel prepare for the Six-Day War in 1967. His government provided a platform for discreet diplomatic exchanges and intelligence-sharing, including Morocco’s facilitation of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel in the 1970s. In 2020, Morocco formally normalized ties with Israel through the Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States, in exchange for U.S. and Israeli recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Diplomatic and trade relations have since deepened, with agreements in fields like defence, agriculture, and technology. Despite official ties, Moroccan public opinion remains largely sympathetic to Palestinians, but such opinions are rarely considered by the royal family.

Morocco's future is split between ambitious global aspirations and permanent domestic issues. The country’s co-hosting of the 2030 FIFA World Cup with Spain and Portugal is seen as a significant opportunity to showcase its shiny infrastructure and global presence. However, these achievements are often overshadowed by criticisms of its political culture, including the monarchy's ceremonial practices, such as the humiliating tradition of publicly kissing the crown prince's hand. Allegations surrounding King Mohammed VI's personal behavior, including incidents of public drunkenness and alleged homosexuality continue to be a hot topic within opposition circles.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from December 2nd to December 8th, 2024 - May A Hundred Hazel Flowers Bloom - COTW: Russia


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of one of the six salvos of the Oreshnik missile striking Ukraine.


The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile that appears to split into six groups of six submunitions as it strikes its target, giving it the appearance of a hazel flower. It can travel at ten times the speed of sound, and cannot be intercepted by any known Western air defense system, and thus Russia can strike and conventionally destroy any target anywhere in Europe within 20 minutes. Two weeks ago, Russia used the Oreshnik to strike the Yuzhmash factory in Ukraine, particularly its underground facilities, in which ballistic missiles are produced.

Despite the destruction caused by the missile, and its demonstration of Russian missile supremacy over the imperial core, various warmongering Western countries have advocated for further reprisals against Russia, with Ukraine authorized by the US to continue strikes. Additionally, the recent upsurge of the fighting in Syria is no doubt connected to trying to stretch Russia thin, as well as attempting to isolate Hezbollah and Palestine from Iran; how successful this will have ended up being will depend on the outcome of the Russia and Syrian counteroffensive. Looking at recent military history, it will take many months for the Russians and Syrians to retake a city that was lost in about 48 hours.

Even in the worst case scenario for Hezbollah, it's notable that Ansarallah has had major success despite being physically cut off from the rest of the Resistance and under a blockade, and it has defeated the US Navy in its attempts to open up the strait. Israel has confirmed now that their army cannot even make significant territorial gains versus a post-Nasrallah, post-pager terrorist attack Hezbollah holding back its missile strike capabilities. In 2006, it also could not defeat a much less well-armed Hezbollah and was forced to retreat from Lebanon.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from December 9th to December 15th, 2024 - Assad Must Go


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Assad and his family.


After less than two weeks of retreating with few shots fired and little resistance, the SAA has retreated into, well, a state of non-existence. This thereby ends a conflict that has been simmering for over a decade. With the end of this conflict, another begins: the carving up of what used to be Syria between Israel and Turkey, with perhaps the odd Syrian faction getting a rump state here and there. Both Israel and Turkey have begun military operations, with Israel working on expanding their territory in Syria and bombing military bases to ensure as little resistance as possible.

Israeli success in Syria is interesting to contrast against their failures in Gaza and Lebanon. A short time ago, Israel failed to make significant territorial progress in Lebanon due to Hezbollah's resistance despite the heavy hits they had recently taken, and was forced into a ceasefire with little to show for the manpower and equipment lost and the settlers displaced. The war with Lebanon was fast, but still slow enough to allow a degree of analysis and prediction. In contrast, the sheer speed of Syria's collapse has made analysis near-impossible beyond obvious statements like "this is bad" and "Assad is fucking up"; by the time a major Syrian city had fallen, you barely had time to digest the implications before the next one was under threat.

There is still too much that we don't know about the potential responses (and non-responses) of other countries in the region - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Russia, for example. I think that this week and the next will see a lot of statements made by various parties and an elucidation of how the conflict will progress. The only thing that seems clear is that we are in the next stage of the conflict, and perhaps have been, in retrospect, since Nasrallah's assassination. This stage has been and will be far more chaotic as the damage to Israel compounds and they are willing to take greater and greater risks to stay in power. It will also involve Israel causing destruction all throughout the region, rather than mostly localizing it in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Successful gambles like with Syria may or may not outweigh the unsuccessful ones like with Lebanon. This is a similar road to the one apartheid South Africa took, but there are also too many differences to say if the destination will be the same.

What is certain is that Assad's time in power can be summarized as a failure, both to be an effective leader and to create positive economic conditions. His policies were actively harmful to internal stability for no real payoff and by the end, all goodwill had been fully depleted. By the end, the SAA did not fight back; not because of some wunderwaffen on the side of HST, but because there was nothing to fight for, and internal cohesion rapidly disintegrated.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from December 16th to December 22nd, 2024 - Assad's Apology


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Assad's presidential palace in 2013. There's more images of it in this article, though the words in it aren't worth reading.


Here is Assad's version of events. I like to imagine he's making one of those Youtuber apology videos where they sigh at the start and talk in a chastised yet somewhat defensive tone of voice.

As terrorism spread across Syria and ultimately reached Damascus on the evening of Saturday 7th December 2024, questions arose about the president's fate and whereabouts. This occurred amidst a flood of misinformation and narratives far removed from the truth, aimed at recasting international terrorism as a liberation revolution for Syria.

At such a critical juncture in the nation’s history, where truth must take precedence, it is essential to address these distortions. Unfortunately, the prevailing circumstances at the time, including a total communication blackout for security reasons, delayed the release of this statement. This does not replace a detailed account of the events that unfolded, which will be provided when the opportunity allows.

First, my departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles, as some have claimed. On the contrary, I remained in Damascus, carrying out my duties until the early hours of Sunday 8th December 2024. As terrorist forces infiltrated Damascus, I moved to Latakia in co-ordination with our Russian allies to oversee combat operations. Upon arrival at the Hmeimim airbase that morning, it became clear that our forces had completely withdrawn from all battle lines and that the last army positions had fallen. As the field situation in the area continued to deteriorate, the Russian military base itself came under intensified attack by drone strikes.

With no viable means of leaving the base, Moscow requested that the base’s command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday 8th December. This took place a day after the fall of Damascus following the collapse of the final military positions and the resulting paralysis of all remaining state institutions.

At no point during these events did I consider stepping down or seeking refuge, nor was such a proposal made by any individual or party. The only course of action was to continue fighting against the terrorist onslaught.

I reaffirm that the person who, from the very first day of the war, refused to barter the salvation of his nation for personal gain, or to compromise his people in exchange for numerous offers and enticements is the same person who stood alongside the officers and soldiers of the army on the front lines, just metres from terrorists in the most dangerous and intense battlefields. He is the same person who, during the darkest years of the war, did not leave but remained with his family alongside his people, confronting terrorism under bombardment and the recurring threats of terrorist incursions into the capital over 14 years of war. Furthermore, the person who has never abandoned the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon, nor betrayed his allies who stood by him, cannot possibly be the same person who would forsake his own people or betray the army and nation to which he belongs.

I have never sought positions for personal gain but have always considered myself as a custodian of a national project, supported by the faith of the Syrian people, who believed in its vision. I have carried an unwavering conviction in their will and ability to protect the state, defend its institutions, and uphold their choices to the very last moment.

When the state falls into the hands of terrorism and the ability to make a meaningful contribution is lost, any position becomes void of purpose, rendering its occupation meaningless. This does not, in any way, diminish my profound sense of belonging to Syria and her people – a bond that remains unshaken by any position or circumstance. It is a belonging filled with hope that Syria will once again be free and independent.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from May 29th to June 4th, 2023 - Not Erdogone Yet


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Erdogan has won the election with 52% of the vote, with a voter turnout of 85%, winning five more years as president.

Naked Capitalism's diagnosis of Kilicdaroglu's failure is that he had to somehow simultaneously keep pro-KPDP voters on board and also attract voters of nationalist candidates from the first round, and was unable to square that circle.

Erdogan's party has lost seats in the parliament as nationalist parties have outflanked him on refugee issues - and even Kilicdaroglu couldn't seem to move against that tide, as he called for the urgent expulsion of 10 million refugees. The Nationalist Movement Party is now at 10.4% in the parliament, a party with ties to the Grey Wolves. Far right parties got more than 30% of the parliamentary vote. The left was unable to capture enough voters who have suffered in the economic crisis, with inflation rates have sharply risen far above even Europe's, and these voters instead went down the "blame my problems on refugees" path.

As a silver lining to this shitstain, this does at least mean that any hopes by NATO that Turkey will move towards the West more are probably dashed. This isn't to say that Erdogan will scorn the West - far from it, in fact, he let Finland in to NATO and will probably let Sweden in - but the :both-sides: strategy will continue, for better and worse, and if you aren't with the West, then you are against them.


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is here in the comments.

This week's third update is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


Want to contribute?

RSS Feed

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.


Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins


Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.

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 journalist reporting in the warzone.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from December 23rd to December 29th, 2024 - The War on Christmas: Hypersonic Holidays


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is from Futurama.


Happy holidays, fellow godless communists. We are in year three of the Five-Year Plan to eliminate all Christmas cheer and create a world free of the joys and festivity of Christmas. Nobody should have to be reminded that in our concrete brutalist communist strongholds, NO ornaments are allowed in December. Please report any Christmas trees, snowflakes, baubles, and presents to the evil secret police, and anybody caught violating their Volcel Pledge by having a tentative kiss under a mistletoe will be shot on sight.

Developments lately have been grim. Our Supreme Communist Dictator Brandon is being removed from office by Christmas-loving patriots, and soon, Christmas will adorn the White House for another four years. This is obviously very disappointing, but while Christmas joy is strictly prohibited, good vibes are still strongly encouraged. Revolutionary optimism (a term we only bring out when things are going very badly and we need to be delusional) shall triumph over defeatist rhetoric by stooges of the Christmas regime.

We must have hope. Our foreign allies aiding us in destroying Christmas now possess hypersonic weaponry, allowing us to compete with and overcome the engine technology powering Santa's sleigh. Abroad, they have destroyed factories and hit cities with missiles travelling at unimaginable speeds into precise targets, while the Christmas regime struggles to produce their own such missiles, as they are still reliant on aircraft bombing campaigns. Precision has a quality all its own, or something along those lines. We just have to hold out another two years or so, and I swear to you: we will live in a world without this accursed holiday.

No current struggle session discussion here in the news megathread please, you will be banned from the comm and your comment will be removed.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from December 30th, 2024 to January 5th, 2025 - Another Goddamn Year of the Goddamn News


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Jeff Daniels in The Newsroom, giving a speech (parodied below) about how - gasp - America sucks. But in a patriotic way.


And you - general megathread poster - yeah - just in case you accidentally wander into the news megathread one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest megathread in the world.

We're seventh in citations, twenty-seventh in accurate predictions, twenty-second in effortposts, forty-ninth in non-mainstream article posting, 178th in guessing when wars will start, third in powerusers, number four in dialectics, and number four in megathread exports. We lead Hexbear in only three categories: pointless infighting, number of adults who believe Putin is based, and copium manufacturing, where we produce more than the next twenty-six lemmy megathreads combined, twenty-five of whom are full of delusional liberals. None of this is the fault of any Hexbear user, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest megathread in the world, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about! Jokes about whether they got a Zionist's semen in time?!


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 5th to June 11th, 2023 - The Counteroffensive Begins


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Map of Russian fortification lines on the Zaporozhye front.


The counteroffensive has begun, after a series of failed Ukrainian attacks in the preceding few days. The axis of attack does appear to be towards Tokmak, which is also the strongest part of the Russian defensive line.

From the late night of June 7th/very early morning of June 8th onwards, Ukraine has been sending waves of forces in to attack Russian defense lines. Ukrainian air defense is barely active if at all, with Russian aviation able to freely attack Ukrainian columns going through minefields. We've seen potential glances of Leopards and various western armored vehicles. Russian morale seems high so far.


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is here in the comments.

This week's third update is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


Want to contribute?

RSS Feed

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.


Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins


Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.

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 journalist reporting in the warzone.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

The News Megathread Imperialism Reading Group: Week 1 - January 13th to January 19th, 2025


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Welcome to the first week of the Imperialism Reading Group!

This will be a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. How many chapters or pages we will cover per week will vary based on the density and difficulty of the book, but I'm generally aiming at 30 to 40 pages per week, which should take you about an hour or two.

The first book we will be covering is the foundation, the one and only, Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. We will read two chapters per week starting from this week, meaning that we will finish reading in mid-to-late February. Unless a better suggestion is made, we will then cover Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism, and continue with various books from there.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too.

This week's chapter summary is here.


This week, we will be reading Chapter 1: Concentration of Production and Monopolies, and Chapter 2: Banks and their New Role.

Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

I hope you've all got your reading in this week! There's still some time left if you haven't, depending on your time zone. And like, you can also just read it any time you want. I'm not your teacher.

Lenin has a clear style and is quite easy to understand, so the first two chapters shouldn't have been too challenging, aside from a section here or there.

I'll be posting my summaries in the reply to this comment, for use by current and future readers of this thread. It's obviously no supplement for reading the real thing, and I've largely skipped his (very justified) attacks of bourgeois economists; my summaries basically take what Lenin says and assumes they're true without mentioning the facts and figures Lenin quotes (except when they really help to clarify what he means).

(excuse the random uses of "has" or "had"; I might say an enterprise back in Lenin's day "has" a certain amount of money or power as if they still do, when they clearly don't. but hopefully you know what I mean)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from January 6th to January 12th, 2025 - The Fall of Trudeau - COTW: Canada


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Trudeau and Trump together at Mar-a-Lago in November 2024. Source is here.


The Liberals, headed by Trudeau, have not been doing so hot lately. Polls have been rather poor, showing the party far behind the Conservatives, and the Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (an outspoken apologist for Ukrainian Nazis) resigned recently, with more MPs following her lead. Trump's return to power has shaken the Canadian establishment due to his threats to impose massive tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which will have substantial economic consequences given that Canada sends most of its exports to the US, compounding the economic malaise that has affected most of the world over the last few years.

With all this bad news, there are rumors and reports that Trudeau will soon resign, ending his nine years of rule. His fall would be yet another casualty in the wave of incumbent parties falling across the imperial core, only to be replaced by more conservative parties that have very similar policies but wish to cast all blame and hardship onto minorities.


Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

The News Megathread Imperialism Reading Group: Week 2 - January 20th to January 26th, 2025


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Welcome to the second week of the Imperialism Reading Group! Last week's thread is here.

This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. How many chapters or pages we will cover per week will vary based on the density and difficulty of the book, but I'm generally aiming at 30 to 40 pages per week, which should take you about an hour or two.

The first book we are covering is the foundation, the one and only, Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. We will read two chapters per week, meaning that we will finish reading in mid-to-late February. Unless a better suggestion is made, we will then cover Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism, and continue with various books from there.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 3: Finance Capital and the Financial Oligarchy, and Chapter 4: Export of Capital.

Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Chapter 3 is a little harder than the previous chapters but nothing too strenuous yet I hope, while Chapter 4 is short and hopefully easy to understand to those who pay a modicum of attention to international news, given how this sort of inter-imperialist jockeying for loans from the IMF or BRICS or whatever has been heating up over the last few years.

I'll be posting my summaries in the reply to this comment, for use by current and future readers of this thread. It's obviously no supplement for reading the real thing, and I've largely skipped his (very justified) attacks of bourgeois economists; my summaries basically take what Lenin says and assumes they're true without mentioning the facts and figures Lenin quotes (except when they really help to clarify what he means).

Bulletins and News Discussion from January 13th to January 19th, 2025 - From Mar-A-Lago to Nuuk - COTW: Denmark (including Greenland)


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Donald Trump Jr. in Greenland, proudly demonstrating what he's learned in his standing lessons.


The imperial core is continuing the process of self-cannibalization as the interimperial wars between Europe and the US over resource and territorial control continue. Greenland, populated with less than a hundred thousand heavily exploited people, is the newest territory to fall under Trump's gaze. The main draw is the mineral resources present there, of which it boasts nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum, and much more than remains unexplored under the ice. But the ice is melting, and profit must be made. There is an additional element of wanting Arctic territory to counter Chinese and especially Russian interests and aims; Russia is increasingly eyeing the northern Arctic route as an alternative to more vulnerable routes through the Suez Canal or around Africa, and is investing heavily in icebreakers for that purpose.

However, even if Europe possessed the desire to resist American annexations - and they absolutely do not, at the end of the day - they do not even have the ability. Denmark may, to a lesser or greater extent, make angry sounds and talk about national honour or some such, but their military would be trampled underfoot by even the New York Police Department, let alone a concerted military effort by the US. If Trump wants Greenland, he will have it. This will naturally increase the grumbling in Europe about reconsidering the Transatlantic alliance, and that grumbling may, in the medium-term future, as the American Empire continues its decline, lead to meaningful results. But in the short term, Europe shall have to bear whatever Trump throws at them, for they obviously cannot now ally with Russia, who was the natural counterweight to American interests for decades before 2022.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 12th to June 18th - Hex(anitrohexaazaisowurtzitane)bear


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is a ball-and-stick model of a molecule of CL-20, alternatively known as hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane, taken from Wikipedia.


Much of this preamble is taken from this article.

CL-20 is the most deadly non-nuclear explosive that humanity has yet discovered, capable of generating detonation velocities and pressures higher than other military explosives like TNT, RDX, and HMX. If you have a more powerful explosive, you can make your missiles travel further and/or make them smaller. It also helps the creation of nuclear missiles, as to start the nuclear chain reaction, you need a powerful shockwave to get all the atoms in there to mingle. The problem is that it's a little too explosive, making it exceedingly difficult to not only manufacture, but transport. I mean, America can hardly transport some chemicals across the country without poisoning entire towns. Thus, it isn't really used in many known military applications.

In 1994, in China, Professor Yu Yongzhong synthesized the first CL-20 compound in his laboratory. America came along and said 'Actually, we did it first, in 1987.' The US team said that despite it being such a powerful explosive, the cost of making and testing it was too high, and the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that there wasn't really much interest in that kind of weapons arms race anymore. Production therefore fell to the wayside, while China kept at it, investing in its production and testing.

China has recently found a way to synthesize it to make it five times as shock-resistant. This shock resistance is essentially measured by dropping an object onto it and measuring the height you need to drop it from to make it explode. The previous record was 13 cm / 5 inches, whereas now it is 68 cm, or about 27 inches. US military experts already fear that China has designed its weaponry to use CL-20 and thus this will give them an advantage in missile technology.

(Also, fun fact, CL-20 is called that because it was developed in the China Lake facility in California.)


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is here in the comments.

This week's third update is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


Want to contribute?

RSS Feed

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.


Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins


Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.

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 journalist reporting in the warzone.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

The News Megathread Imperialism Reading Group: Week 3 - January 27th to February 2nd, 2025


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Welcome to the third week of the Imperialism Reading Group! Last week's thread is here.

This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. How many chapters or pages we will cover per week will vary based on the density and difficulty of the book, but I'm generally aiming at 30 to 40 pages per week, which should take you about an hour or two.

The first book we are covering is the foundation, the one and only, Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. We will read two chapters per week, meaning that we will finish reading in mid-to-late February. Unless a better suggestion is made, we will then cover Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism, and continue with various books from there.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 5: Division Of The World Among Capital Associations and Chapter 6: Division Of The World Among The Great Powers.

Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

Bulletins and News Discussion from January 20th to January 26th, 2025 - Viva La Resistance


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of many Hamas soldiers supervising the handing over of Israeli hostages to cars heading out of the Gaza Strip.

After 15 months of genocide - and resistance to it - the Israeli regime realized that they could not win a military victory against Hamas, and were forced to sign a humiliating ceasefire in order to get their hostages returned.

With much of Syria under the control of Al-Qaeda, and an increasing level of covert infiltration into Lebanon, the crisis in the Middle East is not over, and we may still be in its beginning stages, as the center of hegemony continues its gradual shift away from the United States. Their navy, once considered the best in the world, is likely also not very happy about their ships and aircraft carriers being forced to retreat by Yemen, one of the poorest countries; and all eyes are on Iran, who has, over the last year and a half, demonstrated a newfound confidence and strength to directly strike Israel.

The recovery for Gaza will take, at a minimum, decades; it could indeed never fully recovery to even how it was before, considering it is not in Israel's interests to see their concentration camps recover. But Hamas has proven to be steadfast and the tunnel network has proven its resilience, despite facing some of the most powerful conventional bombing in history. This shows that Palestine's liberation is a when, not an if; and hopefully a much sooner "when" than expected before October 7th.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from March 3rd to March 9th, 2025 - Austerity And Its Consequences - COTW: Greece


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of a crowd protesting in Athens.


Last week, on Friday, hundreds of thousands of Greeks poured into the streets to strike and protest on the second anniversary of the deadliest train crash in Greek history, in which 57 people died when a passenger train collided with a freight train. On this February 28th, public transportation was virtually halted, with train drivers, air traffic controllers, and seafarers taking part in a 24 hour strike - alongside other professions like lawyers, teachers, and doctors.

The train crash is emblematic of the decay of state institutions brought about from austerity being forced on Greece in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession, in which the IMF and the EU (particularly Germany) plundered the country and forced privatization. While Greece has somewhat recovered from the dire straits it was in during the early 2010s, the consequences of neoliberalism are very clearly ongoing. Mitsotakis' right-wing government has still not even successfully implemented the necessary safety procedures two years on, and so far, nobody has been convicted nor punished for their role in the accident. The austerity measures were deeply unpopular inside Greece and yet the government did not respond to, or ignored, democratic outcry.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 19th to June 25th - Wagner Terrorist -> Freedom Fighter Any% Speedrun (6 HOURS WORLD RECORD!!)


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The image is of Russians in Rostov climbing up a Wagner tank.


New thread's preamble:

What a mess. The amount of information going around is hard to determine, but we know with relative certainty:

  • Wagner forces are in Rostov near the Defence Ministry building and are fortifying it; the Russian army and Chechens are en route
  • A/several Wagner column is moving from Rostov to Moscow, and along the way Russia is setting up barriers and blocking roads, but it seems like Wagner is spreading out through western Russia wherever they can go.
  • Prigozhin has no support from any internal force that we currently know of.

update: Lukashenko has saved Putin's ass. At least, that's the current narrative I'm going with - further analysis will probably change perceptions of the situation.


Old thread's preamble:

Mali's military government - which overthrew the old military government last year - has called on the UN to withdraw its peacekeeping forces in the MINUSMA program (the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali), which is the third largest peacekeeping force in the world. It was established in 2012 in the wake of the Tuareg Rebellion, in which the northern half the country, calling itself Azawad, began a fight for independence from the southern side.

The "official" fighting was over relatively quickly - the Malian military, with the help of France, retook most of the country in a year or two. But insurgencies continue to plague the region, with local militias and Islamic State jihadists taking advantage of the chaos. The idea behind the UN mission is to stabilize the situation and patrol the area - this has made it the second deadliest mission so far.

After a decade of not much progress being made, first the French pulled out in August 2022 after anti-French protests inside the country, and now the MINUSMA force is being asked to pull out after similar protests. The Russian UN ambassador has said:

“The real issue is not the number of peacekeepers but the functions, and one of the key tasks for the government of Mali is fighting terrorism, which is not provided for in the mandate of the blue helmets,”


Additionally, MINUSMA released a report last year stating that the Malian government (with the help of "foreign military elements" of which the implication is the Wagner Group) has accelerated civilian killings and human rights abuses, which hasn't made the mission more likeable to the government, I would imagine.


Update on the situation in Mali:

The rebel coalition in the north, the CSP-PSD (Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development - man, this sounds like it was named in a Washington DC office), has said that if the UN mission is pulled out as the military government is demanding, then this would be a "fatal blow" to the peace accord and threaten regional stability. The coalition previously withdrew from the negotiating table back in December as they grew impatient with the two successive military governments, and it's possible that more active fighting will continue in Mali soon. MINUSMA's mandate runs out on June 30th and if it isn't renewed by then, we may see an orderly withdrawal of UN forces taking about a year, leaving Mali by itself (and, I suppose, the Wagner Group).


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is [here[(hexbear.net/comment/3553612) in the comments.

This week's third update is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


Want to contribute?

RSS Feed

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.


Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins


Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.

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 journalist reporting in the warzone.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Mini-Update for June 21st


You only get a mini-update today because I have a headache but I have figured out how to do the superscript links properly. Things should look pretty snazzy now.

Takeaways:

  • China tried to get control of Pirelli but the free market just ain't so free nowadays.
  • Turkey's hiking the minimum wage again, inflation might be getting under control.
  • Israel isn't a real country.
  • America literally cannot go more than three consecutive seconds without trying to ruin their relationship with the largest manufacturing hub on the planet.
  • Peru is under de facto military occupation by America right now as they attempt to preserve the Monroe Doctrine.
  • Argentina's trying to pull their economy and energy situation together but at the expense of environmental protections. I guess that's basically been the history of humanity for the last 200 years actually. Huh.
  • What was all that fuss with the debt ceiling about? Listen to our economist grandparents to learn about it.

Iceland: The government has suspended whale hunting until the end of summer, because that goes against the country's animal welfare standards because the killing takes too long. The general public is turning against whale hunting in general and catches of whales have been getting lower anyway.[^MercoPress^](archive.ph/pI73I)

Italy: A Chinese company's move to purchase tyre-making plant Pirelli has been blocked as part of the government's efforts to protect businesses deemed strategically important.[^MercoPress^](archive.ph/sQ65N) Lula began his latest trip to Europe in Rome on Tuesday and met the Pope and the PM and others.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/9tKKB)

Serbia: Cuban president Díaz-Canel has met with Serbian president Vučić, where they vowed to co-operate more and all that jazz.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/x4p9g)

Turkey: The minimum wage will be hiked by another 34% starting in July in order to try and ameliorate the effects of massive amounts of inflation (which has since dropped to "only" 40%, its lowest level since 2021).[^MEE^](archive.ph/tTL6u)

Israel: The Israeli army assaulted Jenin and its camp on Monday, opening fire at journalists [^Cradle^](archive.ph/zebr9) and killing at least five Palestinians and injuring at least 66.[^Cradle^](archive.ph/eG3N4) The next day, four Israeli setllers were killed and four were wounded at a gas station, with two of the Palestinian shooters shot dead.[^Cradle^](archive.ph/1SoBo) In response, settlers torched cars and crops leaving dozens of Palestinians injured near Nablus [^Cradle^](archive.ph/O3JoI) and attacked hundreds of residents of the Syrian Golan who were protesting the construction of a wind energy project that would confiscate agricultural land.[^Cradle^](archive.ph/N04n1) As you can imagine, the media is mainly focusing on the four dipshits who got owned and not the hundreds of Palestinians who were wounded and killed over the same time period.

Iran: A delegation representing Hamas arrived in Tehran to hold talks with officials.[^Cradle^](archive.ph/P6opp)

China: The loan prime rate is being cut as the government seeks to ramp up stimulus measures and mitigate challenges to the economy.[^GT^](archive.ph/LbOqi) After Blinken finished his visit to China trying to ease tensions and pinky promising that all this talk of sanctioning China is just self-protective and not absolutely, definitely not designed to try and bring down the Chinese economy, Biden called Xi Jinping a dictator at a California fundraiser, in which he speculated about how embarrassed dictators must get when things don't go their way, like when spy balloons blow off course over other countries, because Biden has the brain of an infant.[^MercoPress^](archive.ph/Z5NEm)

Bangladesh: The government has filed a formal request to join BRICS, which will likely be discussed at the group's summit in August.[^MercoPress^](archive.ph/f2rS7)

United States: Amnesty has said that the American and Indian governments must address their countries' human rights issues during Modi's meeting with Biden in Washington.[^CD^](archive.ph/7G9Nz) Bernie Sanders has opened an investigation into Amazon warehouse safety and has published a website where workers can submit their stories in order to help the committee's investigation.[^CD^](archive.ph/kvO0f) American abortions are down by less than 3% due to a combination of factors including that most Americans live in states that haven't violated the right to an abortion, and that those that do are becoming increasingly aware of how to get past these restrictions via going to non-restrictive states or self-administering abortions through medications - though it's undeniable that the individual experiences of women have become much more costly and stressful and almost every US politician is a disgusting little invertebrate for letting this happen without even attempting to pretend to fight back.[^NC^](nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/ab…)

Brazil: The Senate has approved the "More Doctors" program, which, well, is self-explanatory.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/kc5VT)

Argentina: The Nestor Kirchner pipeline has finished constructed and is being filled up, allowing the movement of gas from their far-away shale fields, which should help the energy situation and make getting energy cheaper instead of getting it from abroad - though the state owned oil company hired consultants advising them to ridicule environmental protesters and to swaddle the project in nationalism.[^CCN^](archive.ph/5BPMb) Argentina's yuan transactions are increasing after the currency swap signed in early June, as the country tries to mitigate the effects of its dwindling dollar reserves.[^MercoPress^](archive.ph/EC7hM)

Peru: Former PM Betssy Chavez has been arrested in connection with Castillo trying to maintain power against Boluarte's ongoing coup regime.[^MercoPress^](archive.ph/Qo7tL) Posted earlier in the thread, Naked Capitalism talks about how American troops are going to Peru in order to counter Chinese and Russian influence on the continent, in "the most Chinese country in South America" according to Peru's former ambassador to China, and how the Peruvian army wants to get into NATO as a partner country like others around the world have.[^NC^](nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/us…)

Venezuela: Maduro has confirmed that Venezuela is advancing in the process to connect Russian and Venezuelan banks via the MIR system, an alternative to SWIFT.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/YKpzj)

War: Responsible Statecraft comes here once again with a take that hovers between good and bad: this time, they argue that Russophobia and demonizing Russian culture is bad - not because it's just the wrong thing to do in this particular instance per se, but just because it proves Putin right that people in the West hate Russia, which they call "propaganda" which is basically code for "reality" at this point when used by a western journalist.[^RS^](responsiblestatecraft.org/2023…)

Ursula von der Leyen has suggested that the EU allocate 50 billion euros to Ukraine between 2024 and 2027 - up to now, the EU has provided 15 billion euros to Ukraine in financial assistance.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/onJYF)

Climate: UN climate funding has stagnated due to European governments slashing funding, with most of the budget increase being eaten up by inflation.[^CCN^](archive.ph/H3Pod)

Theory: Radhika Desai and Michael Roberts are doing this week's geopolitical economy hour, where they talk about the debt ceiling deal and what it means for the economy.[^GPE^](geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/0…)

AntiWar on the Philip Cross phenomenon on Wikipedia, and whether he might be an AI.[^AntiWar^](archive.ph/Q83p6)

And, of course,

I Love My Trans Comrades!

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for June 23rd


This is a long one.

::: spoiler expand

Globally

Russian deputy foreign minister Ryabkov has said that Macron attending the metting of BRICS leaders would be inappropriate, and has informed South Africa of their position, though they have the right to invite anybody they want.[^RT^](archive.ph/50QNB)

The World Bank will start offering a pause in loan repayments to the "most vulnerable" countries when they are hit by catastrophic events.[^CCN^](archive.ph/hboQS)


Europe

China's state planner has signed letters of intent in Berlin on co-operation with large European corporations, including Airbus, BASF, Siemens, Mercedez-Benz, BMW, and Volkswagen.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/jSa0Y)

An EU chamber report has said that the confidence of European companies in China has dropped significantly, while Chinese experts retort that what this report is tapping in to is those companies' dismay at EU "de-risking" moves, not anything to do with the Chinese economy.[^GT^](archive.ph/EJpeQ)

United Kingdom: The public sector net debt has reached its highest level in over 60 years and now is over 100% of the country's annual economic output.[^RT^](archive.ph/yMae2) The Bank of England has raised the base rate to 5% as inflation hangs around at 8.7%.[^MercoPress^](archive.ph/2z8Ha)

Greece: The center-right New Democracy party is expected to win a majority in the second round of the national elections on Sunday, and thus be able to form a single-party government.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/ODsAR)

Italy: The Italian left is doing what the left does best - arguing with each other while the right wing consolidates power. On this occasion, the issue seems to be over the war in Ukraine, and whether it was NATO's fault or Russia's fault, and Party Secretary Elly Schlein is trying to not take sides and hold things together.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/Jvvqk)

Spain: Naked Capitalism talks about a potential new housing crisis.[^NC^](nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/is…)

Poland: The government has forbidden Russian and Belarusian athletes from attending a recent fencing tournament; the International Olympic Committee's President has accused Polish authorites of interfering in the autonomy of the sport, and warned against such actions as "we will end up with sports competitions only among athletes from like-minded political blocs."[^RT^](archive.ph/swcaS)

Personally, I think we should bring back the Spartakiad.

Ukraine: Zelensky has signed a law making it illegal to import and distribute Russian and Belarusian language products in Ukraine.[^RT^](archive.ph/Q6Rzx)

Western Asia

Azerbaijan: The foreign minister has rejected a demand from Armenia for special security guarantees for the 120,000 ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh, saying that these protections would be unnecessary as their constitution would already protect the population.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/OhcAj)

Qatar: Putin has held talks with the Qatari PM to boost co-operation.[^The Cradle^](archive.ph/DGKd9)

Iraq: China is on track to build 1000 schools in Iraq as promised in a deal signed in December 2021, though another 7000 will be needed according to officials.[^Al Mayadeen^](archive.ph/MWdwL)

I wonder why Iraq needs so many schools built.

Iran: An Iranian military official has said that range of their recently-unveiled Fattah hypersonic missile could increase from 1400km to 2000km.[^Al Mayadeen^](archive.ph/FkRny)

1400km puts all of Israel in range and a large part of Turkey. 2000km puts the entire Middle East in range, some parts of eastern Europe (including most of Ukraine), and large parts of central Asia.


Central Asia

Russia: Roscosmos has completed the production of the first sample of the RD-171MV liquid-fueled rocket engine, said to be more powerful than any other similar rocket engine.[^RT^](archive.ph/dUV1a)

Pakistan: The PM has criticized the response of international institutions to Pakistan's appeals for funds following the 2022 floods, saying that it was offered loans while billions were being spent on the defence of a country or countries (obviously talking about Ukraine).[^Dawn^](archive.ph/h5z3W) Pakistan's negotiations with the IMF continue as their economists have not yet been offered enough working-class blood to fill their bathtubs with yet, nor do they have enough skull mugs in their kitchens, and observers believe that the chances of an agreement with the IMF before the previously approved $2.5 billion loan permanently expires, which would then dramatically increase the chances of a default.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/z7yj5)


Eastern Asia and Oceania

India: Leaders from over 20 opposition parties are set to assemble in Patna to try and create a joint electoral strategy to take on Modi's party, the BJP, and stop him achieving a third consecutive term in power.[^RT^](archive.ph/rtxab)

Indonesia: About 12,000 workers in the textile industry are being impacted by cost-cutting measures - layoffs, contract termination, or shorter working hours (and thus less pay obviously) as export markets keep falling.[^ANN^](archive.ph/XmPDH)

South Korea: President Yoon Suk Yeol is taking his largest-ever business delegation on a three-day visit to Vietnam (South Korea's third-largest trading partner after China and the US), comprising a broad range of businesses in both products and size.[^ANN^](archive.ph/f0f2y)

Sri Lanka: The government is intensifying repression of union leaders and activists in the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and in general continues to crack down on opposition to the privatisation and IMF-imposed austerity measures.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/SsfEA)


Africa

Mali: A columnist at Al Mayadeen has written an interesting article on the subject of a proposed federation between Mali and Burkina Faso, which share remarkable similarities - both have had a colonial past, both had brief socialist governments (under Modibo Keïta from 1960-68 in Mali and under Thomas Sankara from 1983-87 in Burkina Faso), both are exporters of gold, cattle, and cotton, and both are currently led by military governments.[^Al Mayadeen^](archive.ph/Gnwof)

Ethiopia: The deputy PM has announced the launch of the fourth filling of its mega-dam reservoir on the Blue Nile, saying that these fillings will not affected states further down the Nile; Egypt and Sudan have repeatedly asked Ethiopia to stop filling the reservoir and there's a bit of a regional argument about the dam.[^AfricaNews^](archive.ph/ziyy1)

Senegal: European nations and Canada have promised to contribute $2.7 billion to help the country roll out renewables, which is projected to get their energy generation up from 10% renewables in 2020 to 40% renewables in 2030.[^CCN^](archive.ph/5poET)


:::

Bulletins and News Discussion from January 27th to February 2nd, 2025 - Tariffs in Trump's Imperium - COTW: Colombia


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Colombian President Gustavo Petro giving a speech at the UN in 2022.


Trump has arrived in office with the force of an avalanche; ~~ending~~ slowing a genocide on the one hand, while simultaneously promising a total nightmare for minorities and the poor throughout and outside the United States on the other hand. [edited for clarity; I do not actually think Trump has ended the Palestinian genocide obviously, I was making a joke - but the ceasefire is a genuine improvement in conditions for millions of people right now who are on the edge of death, so it cannot be dismissed]

It's still far too early to truly compare and contrast his imperial strategy with Biden's, but initial signs show that there does appear to be somewhat of a reorientation. Biden was famous for being two-faced; ostensibly offering aid and stability, while also blowing up your pipeline to ensure you did not actually have an alternative to his idea. Trump, meanwhile, seems only really capable of aggression, threatening several "allied" nations with what may as well be sanctions because of the economic harm they'd do. I suspect we'll be debating for a long time how much of this can be attributed to the specific characteristics of Trump, or whether he merely embodies the zeitgeist of imperial decline - a wounded empire lashing out with extreme violence to try and convince everybody, including themselves, that they can still be the world imperialist hegemon.

I'll admit it: I did not believe that Trump would actually try and go ahead with putting tariffs on basically anybody who annoys him. And while the threat could still be empty in regards to countries like China and Canada, Colombia is the first indication of the potential of his strategy. Despite some fiery words from President Petro, after Trump's administration revealed the punishment if Colombia did not agree, it appears that Colombia will in fact be accepting deported migrants after all. It's funny how that works.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

The military government of Myanmar is losing to the Rebel Groups, and badly.
voanews.com/a/myanmar-s-rebels…

somethings really afoot though, news about myanmar from western outlets and channels have suddenly all remembered myanmar exists and written quite a lot about them in the last few days. Its suspicious, it could be capitalists trying to signal their want for US involvement in the civil war. It could also be a targeted propaganda campaign already pre planned in order to make sure people are clued into the conflict.

I think this seems to be another Assad situation. The Military government is pretty unpopular domestically and is losing quite a bit of ground. I would be surprised if they lasted to 2027. Supplied by both Russia and China, theyve been able to keep some flow of weapons, but are suffering a lot from manpower issues. Conscription has been enacted, but conscripts are a poor replacement for trained soldiers. According to reports, they only hold about 21% of the land and are losing lots of territory. They also have extended their emergency rule for another 6 months, throwing doubt on the ability to follow through with their 2025 election. They've lost large amounts of territory, thousands of soldiers, and 2 regional commands. They're not dead yet though, as they have some ability to retake some territory and win some battles, but again 21%. Rebels currently are making steady progress towards the second largest city in the country.

while I don't like the rebels, they are western aligned, they have popular support and are allied to many of Myanmar's ethnic minority defence groups. Im wondering who really has the power in this situation though, since many of the gains seem to be made by the Ethnic armies, not the NUG. This revolutionary energy could be fueled to establish a socialist federation, but won't, and the popular revolutionary energy is fueled toward the NUG. It'll probably be another pro-west bourgeoisie democracy. It will probably then turn against the ethnic rebels and we'll end up basically where myanmar was pre coup. Probably will have a strong military influence on politics as well, since the rebel forces seem to be made up of officers and very little political groups. By then, people will be extremely tired of war and more likely to accept any conflict resolution than another civil war. In the midst of "It Happened" stands a stronger, unmovable "nothing ever happens".
Would be neat if the Communist Party of Burma could somehow come out on top, but they have only around 1000 soldiers and don't control a large amount of territory.

China's interests in the region are still secure, but siding with the Junta is a bad idea, one I understand though. China doesn't want a western aligned power to take over a china aligned state, and is trying to make sure their economic investments in the area are protected and their mineral income is continued. They have deep ties with many Ethnic Minority states, especially on their border, and the NUG forces, mostly again to protect infrastructure investments and keep the minerals flowing. They might flip back to the NUG as the Junta starts collapsing over the next year or so, especially since the new US administration seems to be really cutting back on foreign aid. The General in charge of the rebel government forces complained quite a bit about how much aid ukraine got and how much he wanted that aid. He was basically begging for anti aircraft systems "like in ukraine" lol. China could definitely swoop in and back the rebels, which while hurting their reputation, is probably the best move long term. China's only interest is to keep Myanmar from being pro-west, keep control of Myanmar's mineral flow, and protect other investments in the area.

Bulletins and News Discussion from March 10th to March 16th, 2025 - The New World Struggles To Be Born; Now Is The Time Of Proxy Wars - COTW: Myanmar


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is from Wikipedia's article on the war..


I've wanted to cover Myanmar for a while now but haven't had the needed knowledge to write much more than "This situation really sucks." After doing a little reading on the situation, I feel even more confused. A decent analogy is the Syrian Civil War, at least while Assad was in power (though it's still pretty true today) - many different opposition groups, some co-operating with the United States, others not. The main government supported partially by an anti-American superpower, but who could live with that government collapsing if there are deals to be made with the group coming into power. A conflict kept going and exploited at least partially by the United States and other imperial core powers, though with plenty of genuine domestic animosity and desires for political independence.

Recently, the Myanmar government - the mainstream media uses "junta", which is probably accurate despite the connotations - has promised elections at the end of 2025. This doesn't seem likely to happen, and even if it did, how this would work in a country as war-torn as Myanmar is unclear. The government is losing territory and soldiers at a quick pace; they now hold only 21% of the country, though that 21% does at least comprise many of the cities. It's difficult to get a handle on the number of people affected because civil wars and insurgencies have been ongoing in some shape or form for decades, but we're talking at least millions displaced and thousands of civilians killed.

Here's a comment by @TheGenderWitch@hexbear.net from fairly recently that covers the situation in Myanmar:

::: spoiler comment

The military government of Myanmar is losing to the Rebel Groups, and badly. voanews.com/a/myanmar-s-rebels…

somethings really afoot though, news about myanmar from western outlets and channels have suddenly all remembered myanmar exists and written quite a lot about them in the last few days. Its suspicious, it could be capitalists trying to signal their want for US involvement in the civil war. It could also be a targeted propaganda campaign already pre planned in order to make sure people are clued into the conflict.

I think this seems to be another Assad situation. The Military government is pretty unpopular domestically and is losing quite a bit of ground. I would be surprised if they lasted to 2027. Supplied by both Russia and China, theyve been able to keep some flow of weapons, but are suffering a lot from manpower issues. Conscription has been enacted, but conscripts are a poor replacement for trained soldiers. According to reports, they only hold about 21% of the land and are losing lots of territory. They also have extended their emergency rule for another 6 months, throwing doubt on the ability to follow through with their 2025 election. They've lost large amounts of territory, thousands of soldiers, and 2 regional commands. They're not dead yet though, as they have some ability to retake some territory and win some battles, but again 21%. Rebels currently are making steady progress towards the second largest city in the country.

while I don't like the rebels, they are western aligned, they have popular support and are allied to many of Myanmar's ethnic minority defence groups. Im wondering who really has the power in this situation though, since many of the gains seem to be made by the Ethnic armies, not the NUG. This revolutionary energy could be fueled to establish a socialist federation, but won't, and the popular revolutionary energy is fueled toward the NUG. It'll probably be another pro-west bourgeoisie democracy. It will probably then turn against the ethnic rebels and we'll end up basically where myanmar was pre coup. Probably will have a strong military influence on politics as well, since the rebel forces seem to be made up of officers and very little political groups. By then, people will be extremely tired of war and more likely to accept any conflict resolution than another civil war. In the midst of "It Happened" stands a stronger, unmovable "nothing ever happens". Would be neat if the Communist Party of Burma could somehow come out on top, but they have only around 1000 soldiers and don't control a large amount of territory.

China's interests in the region are still secure, but siding with the Junta is a bad idea, one I understand though. China doesn't want a western aligned power to take over a china aligned state, and is trying to make sure their economic investments in the area are protected and their mineral income is continued. They have deep ties with many Ethnic Minority states, especially on their border, and the NUG forces, mostly again to protect infrastructure investments and keep the minerals flowing. They might flip back to the NUG as the Junta starts collapsing over the next year or so, especially since the new US administration seems to be really cutting back on foreign aid. The General in charge of the rebel government forces complained quite a bit about how much aid ukraine got and how much he wanted that aid. He was basically begging for anti aircraft systems "like in ukraine" lol. China could definitely swoop in and back the rebels, which while hurting their reputation, is probably the best move long term. China's only interest is to keep Myanmar from being pro-west, keep control of Myanmar's mineral flow, and protect other investments in the area.
:::


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 4 - March 10th to March 16th, 2025


This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the fourth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition, but I imagine most of the information is the same if you have an earlier edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 3: Power Through Creditor Status, 1932-1933, which is approximately 18 pages.



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This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Governments of Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia singled out for dismantling the rule of law


Out of 100 commission recommendations assessed by Liberties, 61 showed zero progress, while 13 more were deteriorating. “The commission’s report was meant to prompt concrete action,” said Ilina Neshikj, Liberties’ executive director.

But after seven annual editions, Liberties’ findings highlight “not only backsliding, but also ongoing and deliberate efforts to undermine the rule of law. Repeating recommendations without meaningful follow-up will not reverse this,” she said.

The report also criticised EU institutions in general, saying that in 2025 they had not only “mirrored many of the issues seen in member states”, but had also failed to consistently apply and defend fundamental rights.

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 25th to July 2nd, 2023 - The Coup That Wasn't


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Alternative thread image:


Well, Prigozhin gets to live in Belarus instead of being on the wrong end of an Iskander, Wagner forces (in Ukraine at least) will probably get integrated into the Russian military, and SHOOOOIIGUUU and GEERRASSIMOOVV get to keep their jobs. Putin looks like a weak leader but at least things are intact. Also, the front in Ukraine hasn't broken down or anything.

I imagine a ton of things have happened behind the scenes that we either will never know about or will only slowly come to know about in the future.

About as happy an ending to the Wagner saga as we could hope for given the nature and historical horror stories of mercs. Or is it the end...? (Yes. Hopefully.)

And I have it on good authority that Stalin is currently looking down on this situation from heaven and incessantly swearing at these motherfuckers for what they've done to his country.


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.

This week's first and only update is here, because I am on my regularly scheduled week-long break that I forgot about until now given all that's going on. Next update will be next Wednesday.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


Want to contribute?

RSS Feed

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.


Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins


Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.

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 journalist reporting in the warzone.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


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This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

God damn it. The Wagner coup was a psyop to make me forget that I take a week off every two months and this week was meant to be that week.

To be honest, many media outlets not in the West were somewhat preoccupied with the coup and the statements made by others observing it, so there's less real news to report today anyway. I've put together something from what I've bothered to sift through.

There won't be another one until Wednesday next week. But there's some stuff I've gotta do anyway that's bulletins-adjacent, so it all lines up quite nicely.

Mini-update for June 26th


European consumer groups are urging the public to stop buying pasta from large manufacturers in Italy and France due to unjustified price hikes (the same old story of "the war in Ukraine has made it very hard for us" while not actually making it hard for them at all).[^RT^](archive.ph/6rkxV)

Most EU hydrogen projects risk prolonging the use of fossil fuels and do not commit to using green hydrogen, surprising nobody.[^DeSmog^](archive.ph/OQy9L)

United Kingdom: Only 6% of citizens believe that the UK political system does not need reforming, while 89% support constitutional reform (31% believe that "complete reform" is needed).[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/kiELi)

Greece: The current conservative PM Mitsotakis has won the second round of the election with the largest margin of victory in over five decades.[^AlMayadeen^](archive.ph/tZkVT)

Serbia: Vucic believes that foreign intelligence played a role in the Wagner attempted coup and has complimented Putin's ability to stop it.[^RT^](archive.ph/lljLZ)

Moldova: Industrial output contracted by 10% year-on-year in April and was as deep as a 27% plunge in core manufacturing, the lowest it's been since 2016 (excluding the 2020 lockdown).[^BNE^](archive.ph/qyCPs)

Turkey: The 21st annual Istanbul Pride parade was held yesterday, defying a ban on it; police erected barriers and people were detained by police.[^MEE^](archive.ph/w7jXY)

Those gathered chanted pro-LGBTQ and other left-wing slogans, including "Run Tayyip, run. Queers are coming!" in reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, "Liberation for queers will shake the world!" and "Queers exist, Kurdistan exists!".


Saudi Arabia: Saudi Aramco and France's TotalEnergies have signed a deal worth $11 billion to build a new petrochemicals complex at the SATORP refinery in Saudi Arabia.[^Cradle^](archive.ph/8dVuX)

Iraq: Resistance factions have issued an ultimatum to the government demanding action against US violations in the country, and failure to do so will result in a reaction against the government.[^Cradle^](archive.ph/vLVSV)

Iran: The government has upgraded tourism and trade ties with the UAE.[^Cradle^](archive.ph/jZVGW) Iran is also sealing deals with Saudi Arabia on developing special economic zones.[^AlMayadeen^](archive.ph/LIz7G) The exiled Iranian opposition group, the MKO, is being supported by Mike Pence in his presidential campaign. The political wing of the MKO is the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which has long received backing from the US.[^AlMayadeen^](archive.ph/yTUU0)

Pence is trying to use the MKO as a trump card in his run for the 2024 presidency, hailing it as a "secular, democratic, non-nuclear" alternative to the Islamic Republic of Iran in a bid to boost his popularity through hawkishness toward Iran in a bid to assimilate with fellow Trump administration senior officials John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.


Russia: The Russian chapter of the WWF has cut ties with WWF International after the country listed the WWF as an "undesirable organization", which is equivalent to a ban.[^CCN^](archive.ph/qfTK6)

Uzbekistan: Saudi Arabia's ACWA Power has signed a contract with Energy China Group Corporation for a solar photovoltaic plant in the Tashkent region.[^BNE^](archive.ph/CkC1r)

*DPRK: Chinese tourists are taking more and more trips to the border with the DPRK as an alternative to visiting the country itself (as the DPRK is one of the only based countries left with coronavirus border control measures), which the West is crying and pissing itself about because it could give the DPRK foreign money to build their nukes.[^ANN^](archive.ph/u1ZWA)

Philippines: The World Bank has approved a $110 million loan to finance boosting education.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/33hsb)

Vietnam: The country's tech manufacturing production is slowing down after a flurry of activity last year, with 45,000 electronics workers now out of jobs and many of those still employed with reduced hours and pay.[^RoW^](archive.ph/TjWgT)

New Zealand: A business delegation is following the PM off to China.[^GlobalTimes^](archive.ph/oazJI)

Egypt: Indian PM Modi is on a visit to Egypt after meeting with Biden in Washington, the first visit to Egypt by an Indian PM since 1997, in order to strengthen ties.[^AfricaNews^](archive.ph/nqDNn)

Niger: The government is ditching its old national anthem and getting a new one in order to get rid of relics of French colonization.[^AlMayadeen^](archive.ph/0Vip6)

Sierra Leone: The results from the Sierra Leone election will be due in a week, with incumbent president Julius Maada Bio seeking a second and final term against Samura Kamara; the winner must receive 55% of the vote or a second round will occur.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/JDf6i) Police have fired tear gas at opposition supporters in Freetown and the opposition leader has said that bullets had been fired at his HQ.[^AfricaNews^](archive.ph/zcDZm)

Mali: Malians have approved the draft of the new constitution submitted by the military government with 97% of the vote, with 39% turnout and accusations of irregularities. Critics say that the new constitution is made to keep the colonels in power beyond the 2024 presidential elections.[[^AfricaNews^](archive.ph/e4SOP)

Angola: There's an article by SCMP on the state of play in Angola between China and the West which is fairly interesting. Over a quarter of Chinese African financing has gone to Angola since 2000. The leader since 2017 has been trying to diversify away from China and lean more towards the United States, but the leader before him was, it seems from a cursory glance, one of those who was on the USSR's side and then when it fell were basically forced to give up and turn into a social democracy. I really need to read up on 20th century African history tbh. [^SCMP^](archive.ph/7tZyC)

Barbados: The PM is on an official visit to China, and has talked with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, and are talking about co-operation and the BRI and so on.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/9zjz0)

United States: Texas is entering the third week of its heatwave, where temperatures upwards of 110 degrees Fahrenheit are being observed, and power cuts are occurring due to excessive power use from air conditioning (and probably much more importantly because the grid fucking sucks and will never be fixed unless it's profitable enough).[^AlMayadeen^](archive.ph/M3YcJ) FAIR takes on the NYT assertion that Millennials are moving to the right, which was itself a counter to a Financial Times article claiming that, surprisingly, Millennials are not moving to the right. Weirdly enough, it might actually have some kind of basis in material reality and it's not a mystical spell that makes you become more of a dipshit as you get older.[^FAIR^](archive.ph/blUw2)

Venezuela's Maduro and Nicaragua's Ortega have issued a communique showing support to Putin and condemning the Wagner coup.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/hUBFy)

Argentina: The UK has replied to the latest things about the Falkland Islands by saying that there is no interest from the people to be incorporated into Argentina, that the UK doesn't have the mandate to negotiate with Argentina on their behalf, and has said that there will be no dialogue on sovereignty until the Islanders wish it.[^MercoPress^](archive.ph/Dnh18)

Peru: President Boluarte's approval rating has reached its lowest level yet, with 80% disapproval and 12% approval.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/Shhgc)

Vijay Prashad's latest newsletter is here - this time, it focuses on Europe and whether they can break free from the Atlantic Alliance (probably not, though Macron is certainly a curious figure).[^MR^](archive.ph/EpW2P)

Michael Roberts talks about the 2023 Ukraine Recovery Conference, which probably has one of the largest ghoul-per-square-foot readings ever seen in human history.[^MichaelRoberts^](thenextrecession.wordpress.com…)


And, as always,

I Love My Trans Comrades!

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from March 17th to March 23rd, 2025 - The Kafue River Dies - COTW: Zambia


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of the breach in the tailings dam near Kitwe.


On February 18th, 50 million liters of acidic waste from a copper mine was accidentally released into the Kafue River after a tailings dam collapsed. The Kafue River stretches for a thousand miles across Zambia and a majority of the country - millions of people - rely on it, for both the economy and drinking water.

The results have already been catastrophic. The water supply for the city of Kitwe, home to 700,000 people, was completely shut off. As the wave of contamination moved downstream, a wave of death accompanied it as dead fish dotted the river surface. The government is dropping lime into the river to try and counteract the acid with an alkali and neutralize the water, but the tailings also contain toxic heavy metals that will undoubtably seep into the nearby environment and affect the area for years to come.

A considerable portion of the media attention to the accident has been devoted to the fact that the mine was Chinese-owned, as well as China's broader influence and investment in the region. Western anti-China propaganda aside, it has been clear to those in the know that these mines have been badly managed and needlessly dangerous for years now, and it is disappointing - to say the least - to see disasters of this magnitude occur from Chinese businesses. Hopefully this prompts a wave of investigations into China-owned mine managers all around the continent, who will then hopefully face real consequences for their actions.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



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Bulletins and News Discussion from March 24th to March 30th, 2025 - The Genocide Continues - COTW: Qatar


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Gazans breaking their fast with the Iftar meal during the ongoing Ramadan.

Due to a request by @miz@hexbear.net, this thread's COTW is Qatar.


The ceasefire deal broke down early last week after Israel unilaterally changed the terms of the agreement and then blamed Hamas for not meeting them. Violence against civilians has rapidly accelerated to pre-ceasefire levels, with many hundreds dead already, aid once again cut off, and Israeli soldiers once again entering and occupying the attritional labyrinth that is Gaza.

I'm not yet in a position to make any solid predictions or analysis, as the geopolitical situation in and around Israel has changed fairly substantially over the last 6 months; in some ways benefiting Israel, and in other ways not. We know for sure how Hamas and Ansarallah are reacting (thankfully, with open hostility to both Israel and the United States), but the state of Hezbollah has been a giant question mark for months now, and precisely what Iran plans to do (beyond the usual level of supplying weaponry and intelligence to all the allies it can) is unknown. Syria will be almost certainly be a big wildcard, and we'll have to see if the compradors in Damascus can weather the storm.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 6 - March 24th to March 30th, 2025


This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the sixth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 5: Lend Lease, the British Loan and the Fracturing of the British Empire, 1941-1946, which is approximately 27 pages.



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This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussions from July 3rd to July 9th, 2023 - The Currency War in Argentina


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Argentina is an interesting microcosm of the more widespread war that every other currency is waging against the dollar - in this case, the yuan is taking on the dollar in gladiatorial combat.

The Argentinian economy, like many, is fully permeated by the American dollar, but it has its own official currency, the Argentinian peso. This may not be for long: one of the major contenders for the Argentinian presidency has proposed replacing the national currency of Argentina with the dollar, which would therefore mean that an even more substantial part of the economy would be decided, with no input from Argentina, thousands of miles away. This is not unprecedented - Ecuador already does this, as does Zimbabwe, Timor-Leste, Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands. The motivation for doing so may also be convincing to Argentinian voters, as the country has faced hyperinflation, ever-increasing benchmark interest rates, and chronic shortages of dollar reserves.

However, the yuan has entered the scene, particularly over the last couple months. The Economy Minister met with Chinese officials in early June to sign a co-operation plan to promote the Belt and Road Initiative. Commercial banks can now open deposit accounts in yuan, and securities can now be issued in the yuan. The Western media, as one might expect, emphasizes how utterly desperate Argentina must be to go to the yuan - the yuan! - to sort out its economic crisis.

Whirlpool Corp, a major American appliances company, has said that it is considering paying with the yuan to import parts for a new factory in Argentina. Over 500 Argentine companies making a plethora of products have requested to pay for imports in yuan.

The share of yuan transactions in Argentina's foreign currency market hit a daily record of 28% in late June, compared to a high of 5% in May.

And last week, Argentina opted to use the yuan to settle part of its debt with the IMF for the first time, and it will be interesting to see if other countries follow their example.


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.

The first update this week is here in the comments.

The second update this week is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


Want to contribute?

RSS Feed

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.


Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins


Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.

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 journalist reporting in the warzone.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


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This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

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Update for July 5th


We're back in action!

::: spoiler expand

Globally


NATO Secretary General, Stoltenberg, has gotten a term extension until October 2024. Congratulations![^RT^](archive.ph/PsU2w)


Europe


Most EU countries are apparently hesitant or opposed to some of the key proposals of the EU's proposed reform of its electoral law.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/RQX8g)

The head of the European Parliament's trade committee is calling for taxes to be imposed on US-produced hydrogen, in response to the Inflation Reduction Act.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/STC8X)

The EU is now importing more LNG than piped gas for the first time.[^RT^](archive.ph/EJzRe)

United Kingdom: University staff are boycotting their work over pay and pensions, leading to thousands of students being unable to graduate.[^Jacobin^](archive.ph/5g5tE) UK companies are brexiting to Germany and the rest of the EU, with corporate investment slowing down inside the UK.[^AM^](archive.ph/HyPOX)

The Orkney Islands, off the northern coast of Scotland, are considering alternatives to the current model of governance that will give them greater fiscal security and economic opportunity, which could be something as tame as a renegotiation with the UK over their status, to something like becoming a part of Denmark or Norway.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/luHjF)

Netherlands: The Education Ministry has banned phones and tablets from classrooms, to be enforced from the beginning of next year, with certain exceptions for disabilities and such. They are following France and Finland's similar bans, whereas Germany is moving in the opposite direction towards allowing phones.[^MP^](archive.ph/i8pG1)

France: Macron and his ghouls are considering a shutdown on all social media (or even the whole internet); accusations of fake news are being flung back and forth so I don't really know.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/vbnug) The riots will cost companies around 1 billion euros; how deeply sad.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/8F16Z)

Spain: Unemployment is at its lowest level since 2008.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/7Dm6i) Suicide rates are at a record high.[^EN^](archive.ph/WT1U0)

Germany: The Farmers' Association has said that this year's grain harvest will be well below the average for the last five or so years, due to the drought and oppressive heat.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/t8Itz)

Hungary: The Foreign Minister has said that Hungary will not agree to further EU financing of arms shipments to Ukraine unless Kiev removes the nation's largest lender frm its list of "sponsors of war". They probably won't actually stop the financing but it would be pretty funny if they did.[^RT^](archive.ph/AyVOs)

Teachers are now no longer public servants from January 2024 onwards, which would strip teachers of entitlements, introduce a new disciplinary regime involving the suspension of salary payments, and extend the number of hours of daily and weekly work and require work on Sundays. They can be punished or fired if they openly criticize the education system.[^BNE^](archive.ph/PBoP9)

Kosovo: could lose 500 million euros in EU funding by the end of 2023 due to sanctions adopted by the EU following unrest between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/5Ui5s)

Ukraine: A Ukrainian official says that they are seriously considering banning cash, as doing so would reduce corruption problemms by between "95-99%" because of the "very simple logic" of "if there is no physical contact with the bureaucrat, there is no risk of corruption". Currently, physical money makes up 40-50% of the money supply, compared to 15-20% in Georgia and 0.5% in Sweden.[^NC^](archive.ph/9IZbT)

Zelensky is off to visit Bulgaria.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/raYId)


Western Asia


Turkey: Erdogan is off to see the Gulf countries to try and get some foreign investment.[^TC^](archive.ph/Hql1k) Egypt and Turkey have appointed ambassadors to eachother's countries for the first time in a decade.[^AN^](archive.ph/N7wXt)

Occupied Palestine: The Israeli army conducted an offensive on Jenin that has killed and injured over a hundred Palestinians.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/3VHoB) The Palestinians have been fighting against them and inflicting heavy casualties on them, while Israel copes.[^AM^](archive.ph/1xEiR)

Lebanon: France's Court of Appeal has carried out asset seizure orders to the tune of $100 million against the chief of Lebanon's Central Bank, who is accused of embezzling millions from the Central Bank.[^TC^](archive.ph/ty1NX)

Kuwait: The Oil Minister is rather unhappy about Iran's drilling plans for the Durra gas field, which is disputed between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.[^TC^](archive.ph/Ue1d0)

Saudi Arabia: and Russia are extending their one million barrel oil production cut to at least August and probably beyond.[^AN^](archive.ph/gSQoU)

Iran: has joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.[^MEE^](archive.ph/NY29Q)


Central Asia


Russia: The manufacturing PMI has continued to trend positively, though the rate has decreased a little since May.[^BNE^](archive.ph/3sI3w)

Pakistan: The Prime Minsiter has called for a protest against the desecration of the Quran in Sweden.[^ANN^](archive.ph/KfBY3) The UN Human Rights Council will hold an urgent session to address its burning, following a request from several Islamic countries.[^AN^](archive.ph/Oqf1P)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


China: Wang Yi, the foreign policy chief, has called on East Asians to not mimics Westerners, saying that they cannot become Europeans or Americans no matter what they do and so must remember their roots, and that China, South Korea, and Japan should thus have closer co-operation.[^RT^](archive.ph/Kyk3p)

China's GDP is expected to grow by 5.4% this year, according to the Bank of China Research Institute.[^ANN^](archive.ph/2IM7b)

Flooding in Chongqing has killed over 15 people and displaced thousands, with Xi warning that all seven of China's major rivers were at risk of flooding.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/4vn4d)

Mongolia: The country is planning to increase its number of transport links with China, in the hopes of achieving a post-Covid recovery, saying that the ports (of the land variety obviously) should turn from an occasionally-open "air vent" to an always-open "door".[^SCMP^](archive.ph/IahXF)

India: will begin domestic manufacturing of microchips by the end of 2024.[^FT^](archive.ph/m1KAG)


Africa


Angola, the DRC, and Zambia have agreed to expand mineral exports and foster regional economic integration in the Lobito Corridor, which is a set of rail, port, airport, and road infrastructure that connects Lobito, in Angola, to the DRC and Zambia.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/dCnzc)

Democratic Republic of the Congo: A measure has been introduced to the US House to ban imported proucts containing minerals critical to electric vehicle batteries but mined through child labor, accusing China of exploiting these children for its economy.[^AN^](archive.ph/AgcJ6)

Egypt: Switzerland has returned to Egypt a fragment of a 3400 year old statue of Pharoah Ramses II, stolen decades ago from an Egyptian temple.[^AN^](archive.ph/EqQMS)

Mozambique: The biggest industrial employer, Mozal, is claiming that its aluminium smelting - a very power-intensive process - is powered by hydropower, thus making it "green". A substantial amount of power is actually likely provided by South Africa, which uses mostly fossil fuels. In 2021, the EU approved a tax on the carbon emissions that come from imports to try and ensure their industries would not flee abroad to escape carbon taxes (lol), and so some are fearful that Mozambique will be affected by this when the tax comes into effect in 2026, as aluminium smelting is their biggest industry.[^CCN^](archive.ph/Qm6fA)

Ethiopia: The situation in Tigray is worsening, with 8.8 million needing food aid and admissions for severe malnutrition increasing - although, with the war only concluding in November 2022, it seems likely that a portion of this is just from people finally having access to medical facilites for long-running health problems.[^AN^](archive.ph/MDE4N)

Uganda: At least 9 people have been charged under the Anti-Homosexuality Act in its first month, but the impact is much wider, with the threat of violence and blackmail causing immense psychological pressure; coming out of the closet does not just risking slurs and threats, but actual prison sentences.[^OD^](archive.ph/0NImw)

South Sudan: President Kiir has announced that the long-delayed general elections will be held next year, and has announced his candidacy.[^RT^](archive.ph/wG0P2)

Senegal: President Micky Sall, elected in 2012 and re-elected in 2019, has announced his decision to not stand for re-election in 2024. Technically he's not allowed to stand for more than two consecutive terms, but he asserted that would in fact would be able to because reasons.[^AN^](archive.ph/0uZia)

Nigeria: Three Chinese ships made a five day stop in Lagos, in a "friendly visit" to "improve diplomacy" between the two countries. Those are quotes, by the way, not scare-quotes.[^AN^](archive.ph/sEQAT)


:::

in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

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Update for July 7th


I literally feel my mental health lifting for every hour I don't engage with the internet. I should really do this more often. Just like, pop up every two days to put the update out so I'm not living under a rock and know what's going on around the world, but otherwise chill out and read books in my free time.

So yeah, uh, takes on recent news: awesome that nothing's happened (yet) at the ZNPP, I do quite like having a habitable planet with billions of people on it. Prigozhin news is very funny and I don't care whether the wig image is real or fake, it is now permanently part of my headcanon that he has become a Libyan commander. Sucks to see what's happened in Bulgaria and I hope the people there aren't doing too badly, though the impact on the war itself will likely be minimal. I have no idea what a Threads is and I don't want to know about it.

I'll check back in on Sunday and Monday, have a good one folks.

::: spoiler expand

Globally


Billionaires around the world added $852 billion to their fortunes in the first half of 2023, the largest spike since the second half of 2020. Each billionaire thus made about $14 million per day, while 50% of the world's population made $6.25 per day.[^MR^](archive.ph/JCVpS)


Europe


EU insitutions have agreed on a fund to boost ammunition production for Ukraine.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/mEBHw)

United Kingdom: The Chief of the Defense Staff has said that the Falkland Islands could be protected from any challenge by Argentina (they manage to lump China in there somehow, impressively), and needs a new National Defense Plan registered with NATO.[^MP^](archive.ph/iWVZP)

Thames Water, the third largest water company in the UK, is on the verge of collapse as the chairman and CEO have resigned. The government claims that a turnaround plan will be implemented by the new chairman, who is also the chairman of Britain's biggest gas network and owned Thames Water from 2006 to 2016 and is mostly responsible for the current crisis as he tripled its debts to benefit shareholders.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/7URKb)

Over £130 million worth of cannabis has been seized by UK police in a raid.[^EN^](archive.ph/qPfKi)

Spain: The campaign season for the general election scheduled for July 23rd has kicked off.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/YwUDW)

Finland: Finns are overwhelmingly in support of NATO and even sending Finnish troops to help if another NATO state is attacked, but are divided about evenly on having NATO military bases and are firmly opposed to having nuclear weapons inside the country. My brothers in christ, what the hell are you talking about?[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/bVgwe)

Norway: Svalbard, a canary in the climate coal mine, is prompting concern given that it's warming over 5 times faster than the rest of the planet, and its melting glaciers are uncovering methane deposits from groundwater springs, a potent greenhouse gas.[^ICN^](archive.ph/DmXlI)

Hungary: Industrial production continues to fall for the fifth straight month.[^BNE^](archive.ph/uRpZr)

Estonia: The Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson is building a smart manufacturing and technology hub in Tallinn.[^BNE^](archive.ph/IIKcO)


Western Asia


Turkey: Will Turkey agree to let Sweden into NATO? Find out next week on Erdogan Z.[^MEE^](archive.ph/Z9gkf)

Occupied Israel: Surprising nobody, the Biden administration is essentially in support of Israel's actions in Jenin.[^AW^](archive.ph/1dGN2) Mexico has officially acknowledged Palestinian statehood and is building a full embassy in Mexico City.[^Jacobin^](archive.ph/0VPWj)


Central Asia


Belarus: Lukashenko says that Prigozhin is not in Belarus and is still in Russia, perhaps St. Peterburg or Moscow, saying that it's an issue that Russia and Wagner will have to resolve.[^TeleSUR](archive.ph/skS54) Photographs on Russian telegram channels purport to show Prigozhin in disguise as a Libyan military commander, with a fake beard and wig on.[^MEE^](archive.ph/d0AxC)

Afghanistan: Taliban officials have asked the SCO to invite Afghan representatives. Afghanistan currently has observer status at the SCO.[^TC^](archive.ph/4MSH6)

The Taliban has banned beauty salons for being un-Islamic, as eyebrow shaping, the use of others' hair, and make-up interferes with ablutions required before prayers.[^RT^](archive.ph/2eAlD)

The World Food Program currently can only support 5 million of the 15 million in Afghanistan that need food support.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/nHgId)

China has announced a new land link with Afghanistan via a 2000-mile route with both rail and road that passes through other Central Asian countries. The first freight train has left Lanzhou with car parts, furniture, machinery, and other equipment.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/lBWGP)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


China: The NGO, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, has accused 39 Chinese mining companies of 102 cases of human rights and environmental violations in 2021 and 2022, concentrated in Indonesia, Peru, the DRC, Burma, and Zimbabwe.[^AN^](archive.ph/MsbnB)

China has offered degrees to 6100 students and temporary training programs for over 31,000 students in over 25 countries, most in the developing world.[^ANN^](archive.ph/Dvq9l)

Chinese researchers have developed ways to cast magnesium alloy parts to reduce the cost of making cars and make them more lightweight. Magnesium alloys are 30% lighter than aluminium and 70% lighter than steel, and China produces 80% of the world's magnesium and magnesium alloy.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/gHmHI)

The Chinese project to build a base at the Moon's south pole has attracted agreements from Hawaiian and Swiss start-up companies, who are also involved in the US-led Artemis programme.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/Fh16n)

Taiwan: Exports are plunging at the fastest pace in 14 years due to weak US and Chinese demand, and imports are also in free-fall.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/fEHG1)

Occupied Korea: Hey honey, it's time for your 10:30am fiscal austerity![^ANN^](archive.ph/03rxj)

The DPRK's failed satellite was recovered and had no military utility, as it does not possess sufficient imaging equipment for that purpose, surprising only dipshits.[^ANN^](archive.ph/gZ5L4)

Thailand: Japan is funding carbon-capture studies in Thailand.[^ANN^](archive.ph/Bp67X)

Indonesia: The Transportation Ministry is planning to build a railway network that would connect Nusantara - the new planned capital city as Jakarta is sinking (though Nusantara has the added benefit of being less vulnerable to natural disasters) - with major cities around the city.[^ANN^](archive.ph/5wOEr)

Most Indonesians are in favor of an early shutdown of coal-fired plants to achieve carbon emissions targets, though concerns remain among the poor about increased electricity and food prices.[^ANN^](archive.ph/xfs5b)


Africa


12 countries will receive 18 million doses of malaria vaccines for children under 5 years old. The disease kills about 500,000 young children in the sub-Saharan region every year.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/pcT3Z)

The DRC and South Africa are planning a security pact.[^AN^](archive.ph/yARae)

Ghana: The parliament has passed a motion that further tightens laws against the LGBT+ community in the country, increasing prison sentences up to 10 years, validates conversion therapy, criminalizes any form of activism or support or dissemination of information, encourages neighbours to report on each other, and limits the provision of HIV medicine.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/etySH)

Kenya: The president has lifted a ban on felling trees, saying that it makes no sense to have trees just "rotting in the forest". He is also implementing measures to ensure furniture is bought inside the country rather than from abroad. The director at the Green Africa Foundation has said that this would undermine the efforts Kenya has put in for a low-carbon trajectory, and that more trees are being cut than planted.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/3KdHp)

Tanzania: The rice sector employs 70% of the country's workforce and accounts for 30% of the GDP, is being affected by bacteria of unclear origin that could wipe out 20% of the country's rice production and lead it to becoming less self-sufficient.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/AYUfY)

Angola: The Minister of Energy and Water has acknowledged progress in the construction of two dams being built in the country's south, saying that they must be ready by 2025 in order to mitigate drought.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/RYdvq)


:::

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from March 31st to April 6th, 2025 - Magnitude 7.7 Earthquake Hits Mandalay


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Image of destruction in Mandalay, Myanmar, from Al Jazeera.


As if the ongoing civil war wasn't enough, Myanmar has now been struck by a very powerful earthquake, resulting in 2000 deaths and thousands more injured as of the time of writing. Estimates are that the death toll could reach 10,000. Infrastructure like roads and bridges are damaged, and the hospitals are overwhelmed. The earthquake struck during Eid prayers, resulting in even higher casualties as several mosques collapsed. 20 million people already required humanitarian assistance in Myanmar, and now the situation there will be even worse. International rescue teams have rushed into the country, and aid is being raised, though with USAID experiencing the... changes that it is, the United States will be of even more limited help than usual. So far, China has sent $14 million, while USAID has supplied $2 million. In Thailand, the death toll seems considerably lower, though there has still been significant damage; a skyscraper under construction collapsed in Bangkok.

Myanmar is located very close to the boundary between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. In particular, the country is divided in two by the north-south oriented Sagaing fault. This fault is typically strike-slip; that is, each side of the fault moves horizontally past each other. The earthquake's depth was 10 kilometers, which is pretty shallow, and its proximity to the surface amplified the felt force of the earthquake. Additionally, the soft soil in this region tends to further amplify seismic waves through a process called liquefaction. Combine all this with the lackluster building codes due to many years of impoverishment and civil wars, and this explains why the death toll, and the expense to the country in general to repair damage, will probably be extremely high.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 7 - March 31st to April 6th, 2025


This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the seventh week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 6: Bretton Woods: The Triumph of US Government Finance Capital, 1944-1945 which is approximately 27 pages.



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This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 10th to July 16th, 2023 - The Nazi-Arming Terrorist Organization Summit Begins


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On Tuesday and Wednesday, this year's NATO summit will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, in a grand meeting of some of the most awful ghouls currently populating the planet

Despite strong efforts and words from Ukraine, membership is still very unlikely to be forthcoming and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Sweden might not get membership for a while either, as Erdogan continues to play both sides off each other, but who can truly say.

All of this is in the wake of Biden announcing the delivery of cluster bombs to Ukraine, as he admits that they are running out of other munitions to send, ensuring that Ukraine, its people, and its children - the ones that remain, anyway - will continue to suffer for many, many generations to come. Cluster bombs have, I believe, already been used in the conflict, but now will presumably be used at a higher rate. The leader of Cambodia, a country that is a major victim of US cluster bombing, has said:

"It will be the worst danger for the Ukrainians for decades or even centuries if those cluster bombs are used," Hun Sen said.

"I know for sure that Cambodia is small and weak, and our voice is weightless, but with our pity towards the people of Ukraine, I call on the U.S. president, the provider, and the Ukrainian president, the recipient, not to use cluster bombs in this war because the real victims will be civilians, especially the Ukrainian ones," he said.


What a perfect exemplification of the conflict as a whole. Millions of Ukrainians will be thrown into the inferno, entirely disposable in the eyes of the West, so long as we burn some Russians in the fire.

The suffering is the point.


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is here in the comments.

This week's third update is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


Want to contribute?

RSS Feed

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.


Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins


Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.

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 journalist reporting in the warzone.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


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This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for July 12th


Takeaways:

  • The IEA is feeling pretty good about the green energy transition with all these minerals soon to come out of the ground, if investments are anything to go by. The EU's trying to make better batteries, and Indonesia also wants more lithium from Australia for electric vehicles. But the deep-sea mining controversy continues, with tuna enthusiasts unhappy about the potential economic and environmental damage.

>

  • Business closures are up in France and Slovakia's emissions are falling by bigger percentages than previous recessions due to industry decaying from high energy prices. Italy's getting some LNG from Algeria.

>

  • The Russian GDP growth estimate is at 5.4%. I'd be surprised if it's that high unless the neoliberals get got though. Lula's also struggling with his own Central Bank guys. China and Russia still seem to be best of friends despite speculation - mostly hopium - that Xi might finally ditch ol' Putler after the Wagner mutiny. Speaking of, Putin's spoke with Wagner commanders in a three hour(!) meeting, which will hopefully be the epilogue of the saga. My god, I do not want to hear from Prigozhin ever again.

>

  • Chinese scientists have launched the first methane-powered rocket, beating Elon to the punch. The Solomon Islands are also boosting ties with China, while Japan and NATO hold talks and India buys French equipment with Modi soon to head to celebrate Bastille Day with Macron. Heat stress across Asia is only getting worse.

>

  • Turns out a solid 40% of the US attack submarine fleet is out of action right now. One would hope they could deal with water better than the F-35 can, but perhaps not. The US has also finished destroying its declared chemical weapon stocks, but I assume they have plenty more in the undeclared column.

::: spoiler expand

Globally


The International Energy Agency has said that minerals investment to the tune of $41 billion last year has brightened the future of the energy transition necessary to meet climate pledges by 2030, provided all projects go as planned.[^CCN^](archive.ph/W7qfZ)

Erdogan has said that he will allow Sweden to join NATO in exchange for Turkey being let into the EU, leaving Hungary as the last country standing between Sweden joining the infamous terrorist organization. Erdogan and Europe deserve each other tbh.[^MP^](archive.ph/s0IJv)


Europe


The EU has adopted a law designed to boost the bloc's battery production industry by trying to make higher quality batteries than China, rather than trying to make them cheaper.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/HMd9W)

The heatwave last year killed 61,000 people, and Europe experienced its second-worst ever wildfire season.[^AM^](archive.ph/KBt7F)

United Kingdom: The trans youth charity, Mermaids, has had its legal appeal against the LGB Alliance - an alliance whose real purpose is to denigrate trans people and to destroy organizations that support them - dismissed on technical grounds.[^OD^](archive.ph/gVZta)

France: The number of business closures is up to over 13,000 in Q2 2023, compared to 10,000 in Q2 2022, as bankruptcies surge to their highest level since 2016. At least 55,000 jobs are at risk.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/uXyXg)

Germany: Agricultural business wants to deepen ties with China, and hopes that China will resume imports of German pork, banned in 2020 due to African swine fever.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/qMUUu)

Finland: The circus shitshow in Finland continues as right-wing politicians in the new government have their gamer moments exposed, for which they refuse to apologize.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/GJy9f) Also check out the post in the megathread about this.[^@super_mario_69^](hexbear.net/comment/3605713)

Italy: The first LNG cargo, of 3.1 billion cubic feet, has been delivered from Algeria to Italy, and ENI is also hoping to increase oil production in the country.[^AM^](archive.ph/xMOUZ)

Romania: The age of sexual consent has been raised from 14 to 16, and the offence of sexual corruption of a minor was extended to any form of messaging with the intention of inciting individuals under the age of 16 to engage in sexual acts; Romanian libertarians probably seething.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/rPzVb)

Slovakia: Oh, okay Putinbros, you think that cutting off our source of cheap energy was a bad thing, but have you considered that factory emissions have been brought down by 20% in Slovakia because of all the industries shutting down? We're saving the environment while you worship a dictator.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/g6eJT)

Slovenia: Coalition parties have removed a health digitalisation and reform bill from the agenda after heavy criticism. It would require all public healthcare providers to put all medical data into a single IT system managed by a state-owned limited liability company. This comes days after the Health Minister was asked to step down.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/3eUww)


Western Asia


Saudi Arabia: The ~$650 billion Public Investment Fund has lost $11 billion in 2022 after splurging on US stocks and tech investments.[^MEE^](archive.ph/QTUKD)

Yemen: The UN Special Envoy for Yemen has urged the warring parties to make a serious breakthrough, noting that the period of relative calm is an opportunity to do so.[^TeleSUR^](archive.ph/bAcB4)

Iraq: The government and TotalEnergies have signed a $10 billion deal to increase the nation's electricity supply by recovering flaring gas and using solar energy.[^AM^](archive.ph/aeOw1)

Iraq is to begin paying for Iranian gas with crude oil, to avoid falling foul of US sanctions.[^MEE^](archive.ph/ZWGdI)


Central Asia


Russia: The growth estimate of the GDP has increased to 5.4% year-on-year from 3.4% year-on-year in April.[^BNE^](archive.ph/U16eB)

Afghanistan: Elon Musk has received the key endorsement of the Taliban of his free speech approach to Twitter.[^EN^](archive.ph/RDGf2)

A former CIA official - apologies, a CIA official has said that the US should have an official presence in Afghanistan and engage with the Taliban leadership, and to try and have conversations about fighting terrorism and Islamic State. My brother in christ, they could fight Islamic State by revoking their funding.[^MEE^](archive.ph/dN0q5)

Uzbekistan: The China Southern Power Grid plans to build three hydropower plants worth a total of $164 billion, which would boost annual electricity generation by 3 billion kWh, enough for 1.6 million people.[^BNE^](archive.ph/KiK3j)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


China: Scientists launched the world's first methane-powered rocket - the Zhuque-2 - from the Gobi Desert.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/NighL)

Heatwaves are scorching the country and will continue to do so until the end of the month, with temperatures reaching 35 degrees, or even 40 degrees Celsius in some area.[^GT^](archive.ph/pSJHq)

Xi has called for stronger China-Russian cooperation after meeting with the visiting Russian Federation Council Speaker, Matviyenko, after much speculation by body language experts and phrenologists about whether Xi's choice of tie color and slight tilt of his chin indicates whether he is about to denounce Putler and leave Russia in the dust. After a short period of depression, they will likely continue their theorycrafting in the very near future after noticing that Xi's handshake with a Russian official exerted 0.74% less force than past handshakes. [^ANN^](archive.ph/BXsXL)

Japan: NATO and Japan are formulating an agreement to strengthen co-operation, in the fields of disinformation (of the Russian and Chinese variety, of course), cyberspace, and advanced technology.[^ANN^](archive.ph/RT7cw)

India: The military is likely to buy fighter aircraft and submarines from France while Modi visits Macron this week, the Guest of Honour at the Bastille Day Parade.[^ANN^](archive.ph/OL8ar)

Cambodia: David Hutt at SCMP complements Cambodia for being a stable friend to China while others are less so. I think he exaggerates how unstable Russia and Iran are, and gives the impression that China has fewer allies than it actually has, but the general idea of "Dang, these countries are often relatively vulnerable to coups, often sponsored by the US" is well-taken.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/OkVis)

Bangladesh: Exhaustion and heat stress is piling on pressure for workers, with load-shedding for up to 10 hours at a time making meaningful work almost impossible and impacting labor productivity and supply across the region:[^Rest of World^](archive.ph/kedLY)

Five hours from Dhaka, in Chattogram, known for its balmy summers with frequent spells of rain, 27-year-old BPO worker Naima Shirmen said the heat has felt like “living hell” this year. “I’ve never seen heat as bad as this in my whole life. I get headaches everyday. I feel sick. I’m not able to sleep at night properly,” she told Rest of World. “And as you know, if you can’t sleep properly, you can’t do work.” Shirmen provides remote marketing support for foreign clients of BPOs in Dhaka.


Indonesia: The government wants to get an additional 60,000 tonnes of lithium per year from Australia to build an electric vehicle industry, a mineral it lacks - unlike nickel, of which it has the world's largest reserves.[^ANN^](archive.ph/ZvtlJ)

Australia: Six coronavirus respiratory clinics in Melbourne are being closed due to a lack of government funding, while the remaining 17 are also expected to close in the short to medium term.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/ZOcp5)

:::

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for July 14th


Oh my fucking god, this one is long. Genuinely tired me out.

Takeaways:

  • El Nino and just various climate fuckery is not establishing great conditions for growing wheat, rice, and other food crops. Russia's just about the only big country producing more grain this year and the West's sanctions is trying to depress international transport of it. Also, India is already having a bad monsoon season (in the rainy way, not the droughty way), and also Taiwan's Foxconn has cancelled their chip plant thing while Modi's in France celebrating Bastille Day, presumably on the side of the Bastille.

>

  • The EU's bootlicking saga continues as the UK says "whoopsie doopsie, we let China into our economic sectors because it was profitable and now we have to pretend that Xi Jinping personally bribed our officials and is a very very evil man" and Germany, in a recession + inflation combo, decides that the hole they're in must be dug yet deeper by going ahead with their China de-risking dipshittery. They're also attacking Cuba like good dogs.

>

  • Now we know why Erdogan felt so safe to figuratively flip the double bird at Putin these past couple weeks - he's now Russia's second largest supplier of goods, coming out ahead of Belarus. As for the question about Wagner, Putin says that they both exist and don't exist - which I'm assuming is a deeply philosophical point about whether reality truly exists or not. Putin is also suggesting that he might not refresh the grain deal, but he definitely will because he does it every time. In all, Putin descends to virgin cuck territory.

>

  • Sudan continued to be fucked. Raisi's trip to Africa has been... mixed, with him joining Zimbabwe's leader in calling on all sanctioned nations to band together against the oppressors, and him also joining Uganda's leader calling out homosexuality.

>

  • Republicans came out in much larger numbers against the cluster bomb shipments to Ukraine than Democrats in the House vote, in yet another stunning victory for harm reduction advocates. Obviously the Republicans are just opportunists who are no less bloodthirsty than the Democrats, but even so: a big L in a series of big Ls lately for the Dems.

::: spoiler expand

Globally


The UN says that HIV can be eradicated by 2030, noting that despite the lack of a full cure, treatments have improved sufficiently such that financing and development in afflicted countries are the main roadblocks and not the science. However, increasingly homophobic and xenophobic policies in some countries will make this target much more difficult to achieve.[^TS^](archive.ph/31aIp)

Global debt hit a record $92 trillion in 2022, with 59 developing countries facing a debt-to-GDP ratio above 60%.[^AM^](archive.ph/B8g0W)


Europe


A columnist at EuroNews suggests that Europe has to embrace mining on its own turf - rather than relying on developing nations - in order to meet the goals of the green transition, with it needing "as much copper over the next two decades as we have taken from the Earth since the beginning of civilization", as well as vast amounts of lithium, silver, aluminium, iron, and nickel.[^EN^](archive.ph/nPJVA)

A Koch-linked pressure group - which hasn't been registered as a lobbying group - has called on Europe to stop with their climate ambitions, refine more oil, and presumably kick more puppies.[^DeSmog^](archive.ph/hUiOG)

United Kingdom: The River Wye is being pushed to ecological collapse after lobbying by farmers resulted in regulations on manure dumping not being enforced.[^OD^](archive.ph/9xcQe) UK Junior doctors have begun a 5 day strike over better wages.[^TS^](archive.ph/iU9Wt) The workers at Royal Mail have greeted and expressed solidarity with the UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee in the United States.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/4K6EK) A report by a UK parliament committee has said that China is involved in all British economic sectors, particularly industrial and civil nuclear energy assets, and that they have infiltrated academia to ensure that its "international narrative" is advanced and criticism suppressed.[^AM^](archive.ph/VvDl8) Mortgage rates in the UK have hit their highest level since 2008.[^RT^](archive.ph/QrwVP)

Germany: The number of insolvencies in Germany has risen by 14% year-on-year last month.[^TS^](archive.ph/UkuxO) Germany's "China Strategy" has arrived, which contains measures less harsh than hardliners wanted but is still going to harm trade with China, as Germany continues to experience a simultaneous recession and inflationary crisis, with business morale plummeting and exports falling.[^NC^](nakedcapitalism.com/2023/07/ge…) Germany's hydrogen ambitions are increasing, with plans to construct 11,200 kilometers of hydrogen pipelines, consisting largely of repurposed natural gas pipelines. The government doesn't want to fund it and so is hoping for private sector development.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/M4ZnE) 44% of the over 1 million Ukrainian refugees in the country would like to stay.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/X2S42)

France: Drought is threatening this year's grain harvest in France, the largest wheat exporter in the EU. It joins the US, Canada, and Ukraine, which together account for a large minority of the global wheat supply, in experiencing significant production declines.[^BNE^](archive.ph/gmRz0)

Spain: A heatwave has struck the country, with temperatures as high as 40-45 degrees Celsius n certain places.[^TS^](archive.ph/yRObe)

Italy: The government plans to re-open mines closed 30 years ago to try and re-establish supply chains of raw materials.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/ypyFG)

Netherlands: The government is investing $100 million into a photonics chip plant in Eindhoven.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/aRyhI)

Austria: Imports of Russian gas have returned to pre-invasion import levels. Other European countries are mad about it despite also importing Russian fossil fuels, just much more expensively through third countries.[^EN^](archive.ph/CJI9E) Austria is hoping for EU chip investment to boost their semiconductor production in the wake of the EU Chips Act being passed.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/LedSm)


Western Asia


Turkey: Turkey has become Russia's second-largest supplier of goods this year, overtaking Belarus.[^RT^](archive.ph/bUdip)

Occupied Palestine: The Israeli occupation forces today launched a campaign of incursions, raids, and arrests in several cities and villages throughout the West Bank.[^AM^](archive.ph/xXCYa)

Saudi Arabia: Germany is loosening its restrictions on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia but will not send Eurofighter jets.[^MEE^](archive.ph/cD9eK)

Yemen: Responsible Statecraft suggests that China is attracted to the potential resources, the reconstruction, development, and diplomatic boost that would come from an end to the war, and thus is talking with both sides of the conflict.[^RS^](responsiblestatecraft.org/2023…)


Central Asia


Russia: Foreign Minister Lavrov has accused the US and its allies - such as South Korea, Japan, and Australia - of obtaining or trying to obtain nuclear weapons.[^TS^](archive.ph/Gtakr) Putin has proposed a new national project to form a data economy for the period up to 2030, stressing the need for less reliance on foreign technology and instead to construct an entire technical and production chain.[^AM^](archive.ph/IGX9s) The value of Russia's Ural crude oil has hit $60 per barrel for the first time since the G7 price cap was established, which is posing a problem for Greek shippers which would not be allowed to ship it above the $60 price cap despite it increasingly transporting Russian oil.[^BNE^](archive.ph/RMcbl) Russia is set to surpass Saudi Arabia as the largest oil-producing country in the OPEC+ alliance due to Arabia's oil cuts.[^MEE^](archive.ph/YMO1n) Russia's current account surplus has decreased in Q2 2023, and is now the smallest surplus since Q3 2020.[^RT^](archive.ph/CAcIs)

Russia has maintained its position as the world's top wheat exporter, with a record production of grain this year, though sanctions restrictions have made it difficult for farmers to get the grain out on the international market.[^BNE^](archive.ph/ueUCU) The UN has proposed that in exchange for Putin extending the grain deal for Ukraine's grain, a subsidiary of Russia's agricultural bank could be reconnected to SWIFT.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/EwQLs) Putin has said that he's considering pausing Russia's participation in the grain deal until Russia's food and fertilizer exports are unblocked, with this being the... ...hang on... ah, yes, 292,320,230th time he's said this and then continued the grain deal anyway.[^RT^](archive.ph/OmcUr)

The government is passing legislation to make sex transitioning illegal, with some medical exceptions, in order to combat the "transgender industry".[^RT^](archive.ph/Y5x5J) Putin has told the media that Wagner does not legally exist as Russian law does not recognize the existence of private military companies, saying "The group exists, but legally it does not," when asked about whether Wagner will continue operating as a combat formation.[^RT^](archive.ph/1aR67)

Pakistan: The IMF has approved a $3 billion loan for Pakistan.[^ANN^](archive.ph/EXwYF)


:::

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from April 7th to April 13th, 2025 - Juche With Trumpian Characteristics


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is allegedly of the note Trump wrote while editing a speech while on the way back from the G20 summit.


The top Russian-Chinese agent, Donald Trump, has decided that the pace of dedollarization and the decline of American financial hegemony is going too slowly. He has therefore decided to put tariffs on everybody; from America's largest trading partners to uninhabited islands. In the process, he is trying to create an autarkic America. Jokes aside, interpretation and analysis of this has ranged across a wide spectrum. I think we can broadly agree that the most idiotic are the "true believers"; those that actually believe Trump's every word, and that this will somehow bring back American manufacturing and whatever other inane promises he has made.

However, there is a much more interesting debate. The first camp are those who believe Trump is acting as an inadvertent accelerationist due to his lack of understanding about how the world economy and dollar hegemony functions (and that this will subsequently ensure that countries flock to China instead). The second camp are those who believe that Trump does know what he's doing, at least to a certain extent, and that the effective result of this period of madness will be countries kowtowing to the United States; renegotiating trade deals to be even more in favor of the US in order to get tariffs reduced. There's even a yet more cynical camp who believes that in fact, this entire trade war is just theater for further national wealth redistributions from poor to rich; that all these monumental international trade wars are more of a sideshow. To quote the linked article: "[...] out of the mountain of tariffs that threaten to turn into a global trade war will emerge the mouse of further tax cuts."

I'm not embarrassed to admit that I have absolutely no idea which one of these is the closest model to reality. We're in new economic and political ground, and even if the tariffs are quickly renegotiated and/or dropped, the impacts will continue to reverberate around the world for years. I'm sure we'll debate this for months to come here, though!


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (11 months ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from April 14th to April 20th, 2025 - The Lamentations of a Levy-Loving Leader


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Trump's initial set of reciprocal tariffs. Source is CNN and Reuters.


It's difficult to keep up with the news around the tariffs; they get instated, then dropped, then reinstated... for example, on Friday, Trump said that certain electronics like smartphones would be exempt, causing markets to rally a great deal, but now the Commerce Secretary has said that they might not be exempt? The state of play right now, if you haven't been keeping up this week, is that the US recently announced a 90-day global pause on implementing the tariffs he had planned (that is, 25% on certain Canadian and Mexican goods, and at least 10% on every other nation) but nonetheless increased tariffs on China to 145%.

Meanwhile, China has been - quite remarkably - standing their ground, increasing tariffs on the US to 125%, and putting restrictions on rare earths. Xi Jinping has been in Vietnam and has made statements against a tariff war there, saying that it would have no winners. Meanwhile, a Chinese spokesperson has essentially said that China can endure the tariff war due to the increasing demand from its domestic market in combination with its growing economic ties with other countries.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 17th to July 23rd, 2023 - Heatwaves Everywhere All At Once


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Image is of the drying Canelon Grande Reservoir in Uruguay as the country battles three consecutive years of drought, its worst in nearly a century.


Quoting every country and region that is currently suffering under unprecedented climatic conditions and posting every graph showing extremely concerning things happening would make this preamble way too long, so I'm gonna keep it short and merely say that, holy shit, the consequences of fossil fuel executives' actions are looking real fucking bad.

Hundreds of millions of people, if not billions, are currently enduring higher than average temperatures sometimes reaching up 48 degrees Celsius or 120 degrees Fahrenheit or even beyond. Drought is putting pressure on water supplies basically everywhere around the world. And El Nino is activating, which will only do further damage.


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second and third update have done the Dragonball Z fusion dance and created this long-ass thing that took me... a while to get done.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


Want to contribute?

RSS Feed

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can, thank you.


Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins


Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.

Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.

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 journalist reporting in the warzone.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for July 17th


Takeaways:

  • The world is on fire.

>

  • Europe's shift to the Pacific continues, as the UK and France (among others) get more involved with the economics and military situation over there, while the EU clearly thinks they're being extremely clever and sneaky by telling the Chinese that none of this is directed towards them. Meanwhile, the debate over whether China's economy is doing well or badly continues to rage on.

>

  • Occupied Korea continues to lick America's boots, with them casting off any doubts about whether to supply Ukraine with military equipment after their president went on a visit to Zelensky. Hopefully their sacrifice of military equipment to the Lancet gods reduces some of the pressure on the DPRK?

>

  • Russia's involvement in both the Middle East and Africa is set to increase shortly, with some diplomatic moves, electricity grid integrations, and summits coming in the near-future. It's still unclear what Putin is gonna do at the BRICS summit what with the ICC warrant, a month out from the date.

>

  • Ukraine's hit the Crimean bridge again - details are still coming in but it doesn't look too awful, the overall structure looks to be intact still. There will be some interesting questions to answer about whether it will affect the military situation, how it was allowed to happen a second time, and whether there will be a Russian response, but we'll probably see that being argued about this week. Seems to me if you can't take out the rail line, all you're really doing is ruining people's holidays, and, well, killing civilians.

>

::: spoiler expand

Global


NATO: With the euphoria receding over Sweden joining NATO, the bickering has returned, with Erdogan wanting Turkey to join the EU before they let Sweden in, while Sweden wanting to be let into NATO before they let Turkey in to the EU. Regardless of what happens, Turkish parliament won't be allowing Sweden in to NATO before October. And, again, all this doesn't really matter anyway because the US and Sweden already have deals in place. [^NC^](nakedcapitalism.com/2023/07/re…)


Europe


Europe is facing a heatwave, with perhaps the hottest temperatures ever recorded, with visitors from equitorial Africa saying that it's hotter in Europe than it is back home.[^EN^](archive.ph/K5xBQ)[^EN^](archive.ph/aIR1c)

The European Aluminium industry group has warned against placing sanctions on the Russian aluminium giant Rusal, as due to its strategic importance, it would do more harm to Europe than Russia. This means that it will be in the next sanctions package.[^RT^](archive.ph/514e0)

Wang Yi met with Josep Borrell, who said that the EU's de-risking does not target China and the EU has no intention of hindering China's development, which is such an absurd lie that I'm unsure why it was even said.[^GT^](archive.ph/kkBkm)

United Kingdom: PM Sunak will force English universities to limit the number of students taking "low-value" degrees, which are defined as ones that do not have a high proportion of graduates that get professional jobs, continue into master's degrees, or start a business.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/RlvF0)

Food prices have risen by 25% since 2021, with some foodstuffs rising as much as 175%.[^AM^](archive.ph/rQE4h)

The UK has joined the Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), making it the first European nation to join it since its inception in 2018 and giving them more access to a 500-million consumer-collective market - I assume they are going to physically move the island over to the Pacific as well.[^AM^](archive.ph/3fZFC)

France: Over two thirds of French reservoirs are under their monthly averages, after they were unable to sufficiently refill after the summer of 2022.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/Av4pB)

Italy: The president of the Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce has said that Russian buyers should be able to pay for Italian goods in rubles, and that the Italian business lobby in Russia is working on a mechanism to achieve this.[^RT^](archive.ph/77ogo)[^AM^](archive.ph/EFkgX)

Spain: The polls are not looking great for the left in the elections next Sunday, with the right wing increasing their vote share substantially.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/sKQhl)


Western Asia


Occupied Palestine: AntiWar discusses the new generation of Palestinians fighters as they resist Israeli occupation, exemplified by the attack on Jenin, and how the Palestinian Authority has decreasing amounts of leverage over them.[^AW^](archive.ph/dkHjR)

Syria: US forces and allied militias have mobilized in eastern Syria against government-controlled areas as they try and cut off Iranian supply lines to Hezbollah in Lebanon.[^PD^](archive.ph/kpybN)

Saudi Arabia: Japan and Saudi Arabia are attempting to strengthen ties and plan a strategic dialogue as Japan wishes to ensure a stable supply of energy.[^ANN^](archive.ph/PoFsf)

Iran: Iran will soon begin to exchange electricity with Russia via a connection with Azerbaijan, and later through Georgia and Armenia, to create a regional network for energy stability.[^RT^](archive.ph/cALnw)

Russia waded into a territorial dispute on three islands between the UAE and Iran, taking the side of the UAE (similarly to China, for what it's worth), which has prompted some criticism from Iran.[^MEE^](archive.ph/QXPKd)


Central Asia


Russia: The government will sign security agreements with African countries at the summit in St. Petersburg on July 27-28th, including co-operation in space and anti-terrorism, as well as a "political declaration".[^RT^](archive.ph/1Rqce)

Russia has temporarily nationalized the assets of Carlsberg and Danone after they pulled out of the country.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/GCauI)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


China: Is the economic recovery failing or succeeding? China-based media discusses it, with SCMP looking nervously at slower Q2 growth than expected (a mere 6.3%!) and rising unemployment rates, while Global Times points to Q2's GDP rising at the fastest rate in two years, with encouraging infrastruture investment, consumption, and exports - with officials noting that post-pandemic challenges in other economies lasted a year and China is only half a year removed from the end of its pandemic measures.

China has achieved a grain harvest of 146 million tons this summer, down by less than a percent from last year despite adverse weather.[^GT^](archive.ph/VJVVH)

Tropical Storm Talim is nearing Hong Kong.[^ANN^](archive.ph/mb88P)

China has finished the construction of the core module of the world's first commercial onshore small modular reactor, called Linglong One. The rest of the reactor is expected to be finished in 2026, and will produce enough energy to meet the needs of over 500,000 households.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/8p7kK)

Intel's CEO has finished his China trip, as the US chip giant continues to double down on China's market despite the ongoing tech war.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/JPrV5)

Foreign policy chief Wang Yi has urged his Indian counterpart to ease restrictions on Chinese companies and not let the border dispute define their relationship.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/7nsj3)

India: A new rail line connecting to Nepal has begun operations as part of India's Neighborhood First policy, hoping to boost trade and tourism.[^RT^](archive.ph/z8LLu)

India and the UAE have agreed to settle trade in rupees and dirhams and have linked their instant payment systems.[^RT^](archive.ph/JwIRJ) India is also in talks to use local currencies in deals with Indonesia.[^RT^](archive.ph/dDqod)

A Jacobin article on Modi's actions in Kashmir.

Occupied Korea: After heading to Ukraine on a surprise visit[^AM^](archive.ph/Chhbd), President Yoon made a pledge to expand the scale of military assistance to Ukraine, with $150 million in humanitarian aid planned this year following $100 million last year; I assume somebody close to him was threatened by the United States.[^GT^](archive.ph/v6Bwl)

The US, South Korea, and Japan are holding missile defence drills after the DPRK's ICBM launch.[^ANN^](archive.ph/G3nmH)

Flooding has killed at least 22 people and 5000 have been forced to evacuate.[^EN^](archive.ph/L8cCx)

Japan: China and Russia will dispatch naval and air forces to participate in military drills in the Sea of Japan.[^GT^](archive.ph/7vV7G)

Philippines: France is opening an office in the Philippines by French defense company Naval Group, with the hope of exporting Scorpene-class submarines to their navy.[^ANN^](archive.ph/NUNzz)

Australia: Construction insolvencies have hit a record high, with thousands of buyers out of pocket for unfinished homes.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/PgbEC)


Africa


Tunisia: The EU and Tunisia have signed an MoU on a comprehensive strategic partnership.[^TS^](archive.ph/ygSpa)

Zimbabwe: China has been acquiring mining sites and constructing/upgrading them over the last couple years, and Zimbabwe's president is happy about the investment and how it will make his country a competitive environment in the future, and is looking forward to more investment.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/VBr74)

South Africa: Russia has declined a request by South Africa to abstain from sending Putin to the BRICS summit in late August, with the situation about what exactly is going to happen still unclear.[^BNE^](archive.ph/9ntV9)


:::

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

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Update for July 19th and July 21st


It's a long one.

::: spoiler expand

Global


A meeting between finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 ended without a final communique as the countries could not agree on a statement about the Ukraine War.[^MP^](archive.ph/voo09)

Grain prices are pretty much fine despite media dooming and western politicians' statements; if there's gonna be a threat to food security, it will come from the impact of droughts and climate change and not letting Russian exports out, not Ukraine's grain having to be shipped over land.[^MoA^](moonofalabama.org/2023/07/much…) Russia is offering to replace Ukrainian grain supplies to needy countries free of charge; this will be discussed at the African summit in St Petersburg next week.[^TS^](archive.ph/7xFyP)

The IMF has said that the US dollar's appreciation, driven primarily by global financial risks last year, has hit emergeing market economies harder than developed economies. Very strange![^TS^](archive.ph/EMl7o)

BRICS has received applications from 22 countries for membership and another 22 have informally expressed interest in joining the bloc.[^AM^](archive.ph/tryNo)


Europe


Nuclear power has been re-introduced as one of the preferred green technologies to revitalise European industry.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/UlEeo)

Finland

Finland’s Neoliberal and Far-Right Alliance Is a Sign of Things to Come in Europe[^Jacobin^](archive.ph/xqPIp)

...but they repeat themselves.

France

French MPs are to vote on a bill that would allow police to tap into cameras, microphones, and location services without the consent of its owner or possessor, though is limited only to suspects involved in terrorism, organised crime and other illegal activities punishable by five or more years in prison; I'm sure the French police will diligently obey that condition and not use it on literally anybody they want.[^MR^](archive.ph/8S3DS) Macron has undergone a second reshuffle since June 2022, with a dozen ministers being replaced.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/i0WGs) Electricity prices are set to rise by 10% for 20 million French households.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/0CB8s)

Germany

New housing constructions are set to decline by 2025; Germany's is expected to drop by 32%, exceeded only by Sweden's 39% and Denmark's 33%.[^DW^](archive.ph/OLLml) Construction is beginning on a UK-Germany power link project.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/gGsWI) German schools are becoming increasingly linked to the military in order to try and enlarge their armed forces and recruit new soldiers, with hundreds of presentations at various types of schools already taking place.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/amVwy)

Spain

Spain has been accused of undermining the adoption of carbon capture and storage in Europe after circulating a discussion paper that questions the EU's approach.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/3bSYR)

Switzerland

Swiss Government Plans to Lock Away Secrets on Credit Suisse Collapse for 50 Years[^WSoP^](archive.ph/e58nU)

Rumor has it that the ancient eldritch deities had their bank accounts in Credit Suisse and the bankers are trying to protect the public from going mad and turning into monstrosities.

Greece

Residents of the island of Evia are helping each other via mutual aid after a forest fire that burned 15% of the island's surface area two years ago.[^ET^](archive.ph/rdKYn)

United Kingdom

Ukraine war takes its toll on UK politics[^Bhadrakumar^](indianpunchline.com/ukraine-wa…)

On the drama of UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace.

The UK's inflation rate has dropped to 7.9% in June, still far above the 2% target.[^EN^](archive.ph/QfDe1) India's Tata Group has said that it will build a £4 billion factory in the UK, which has injected optimism into the UK's car sector.[^FT^](archive.ph/qOnI7) The UK government has cut the rate of public funding to King Charles III by over half due to the monarch's profits from offshore wind projects.[^AM^](archive.ph/uudN5)

Netherlands

The government has lifted its arms embargo on Turkey, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.[^MEE^](archive.ph/tKhRK)

Serbia

Serbian farmers are having to go from dealing with flooding to high temperature and drought.[^EN^](archive.ph/GKp5D)

Poland

Core inflation has eased to 11.1% year-on-year, dropping 0.4 points compared to May.[^BNE^](archive.ph/8IOm9)

Ukraine

Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria want to extend a ban on the imports (but not, as I understand, the transportation through their countries to other places) of Ukrainian grain beyond September 15th.[^BNE^](archive.ph/FXuVI)


Western Asia


The Chinese government seeks to increase its co-ordination with Arab countries, after the fourth China-Arab States Political Parties Dialogue.[^CGS^](archive.ph/aFEAU)

Saudi Arabia

The UAE and Saudi Arabia are having a diplomatic crisis due to diverging interests, though underlying tensions is nothing new.[^TC^](archive.ph/Zwrfp) Saudi Arabia is allowing Israel to attend the UNESCO Riyadh summit.[^AM^](archive.ph/3Oen2)

Iraq

Washington sanctions 14 Iraqi banks. The point is to try and stop Iran getting dollars. Iraq is attempting to fight back against this by banning dollars for personal and business transactions, and promoting the use of the dinar with Iran. Damn it, now I'm laughing about the Iraqi dinar Trump thing.[^TC^](archive.ph/Qrddw) Iraq expels Swedish envoy, recalls diplomatic staff from Stockholm over Quran burning. Iraqi demonstrators also set the Swedish embassy on fire, which the Swedes aren't happy about.[^TC^](archive.ph/dZdBu)

Occupied Palestine

Biden demands Netanyahu scrap judicial overhaul[^TC^](archive.ph/PoycP)

Or else what?

67 percent of Israelis fear that a civil war is in the making.


Settlers stormed Joseph's Tomb near a Nablus refugee camp and the Palestinians fought back while Israel nearly suffocated an infant with tear gas. [^TC^](archive.ph/qyEWb) Palestinians call for release of 5,000 prisoners in exchange for Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli spy that got captured in Iraq back in March. This sounds like a good deal.[^TC^](archive.ph/PPK4O)

Turkey

Turkiye, UAE sign agreements valued at $51 billion. Deals in energy, natural resource development, space exploration, and defense co-operation. Also aid for the earthquake.[^TC^](archive.ph/pLdNt)

Turkey has delivered another 2.5% interest rate hike, bringing it to 17.50%, after the market expected a hike of 5%.[^BNE^](archive.ph/RJu7H)

Yemen

Yemen's Ansarallah 'optimistic' about Omani-mediated peace talks with Saudi Arabia[^TC^](archive.ph/DCx0Q)


Central Asia


Russia

A look into the current trade dynamics between Russia and China, and what each country is offering to the other.[^VC^](archive.ph/lEPwq) China and Russia have kicked off their joint military exercise in the Sea of Japan[^GT^](archive.ph/sgpY4) China has imported a record volume of RUssian crude oil in the first half of this year.[^AM^](archive.ph/Joc19) Russia's Rosatom has announced a big uranium mining project in Namibia, which expects to produce 3000 tonnes of uranium per year by 2029 and over the next 25 years.[^AM^](archive.ph/81xrv)

Belarus

The Belarusian Defence Ministry has decided to involve Wagner forces in training its army personnel.[^AM^](archive.ph/Vadd8)

**Kyrgyzstan could be hit with US sanctions this week after failing to shut trade windows through which re-exported sanctioned goods make their way to Russia.[^BNE^](archive.ph/6DulL)


:::

Bulletins and News Discussion from April 21st to April 27th, 2025 - JD Vance vs Pope Francis, No Items, Final Destination


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Image is sourced from this Guardian article.


The Pope's fucking dead.

He gave JD Vance three chocolate easter eggs, exchanged pleasantries for 17 minutes, and then keeled over and died.

What a way to go.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from April 28th to May 4th, 2025 - Competent Fascism? - COTW: El Salvador


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is from the Britannica article on CECOT, known as the Terrorism Confinement Center in English.


This megathread's topic is inspired by our lovely news regular, @Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net, who talks often about the conditions inside El Salvador and gives nuanced and informative takes.

As the Trump administration continues to make foreign policy blunders that would make even the staunchest anti-imperialist accelerationist blush - and we are barely three months in! - it's interesting to compare and contrast his policies of incompetent imperialist and domestic management to the dictators in other countries.

Bukele is somewhat unique among fascists, in that he seems to not hide - and seems to even admit to - his evil, self-describing as the world's "coolest dictator". El Salvador has no particular shortage of prominent fascists in their history, but one major example is Maximiliano Martínez, who led the country over much of the 1930s and the early 1940s. He was responsible the deaths of many thousands of communists and indigneous people, and yet joined World War 2 on the side of the Allies and against the Nazis.

The comparisons between Martínez and Bukele - and, indeed, between Bukele and Trump - in terms of their impact on minority groups are slowly growing as world attention is being drawn to the country. The recent meeting between Bukele and Trump has shifted a spotlight onto El Salvador's crime policy; the internal conditions of El Salvador's prisons are genuinely monstrous. One gets a similar feeling as when reading descriptions of the conditions of Holocaust victims in German concentration camps. Trump has made statements to the effect that he want a similar crime crackdown inside the United States, and I certainly believe that he wants this (ICE is already just kidnapping people off the streets into vans), but his administration has been so chaotic and mismanaged that it's difficult to determine whether this will be an interest he rapidly drops in favor of some other hair-brained scheme.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 24th to July 30th, 2023 - Venezuela's 4,600,000th House


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The Great Housing Mission of Venezuela, launched in 2011 by Hugo Chavez, is the most ambitious housing project in the country's history. This week, the 4,600,000th house was built, with a goal for 5 million homes by 2024 and beyond. The program has built 1,255 residential complexes on a total of 9,837 hectares, an area equivalent to six times the Swiss city of Geneva.

The program additionally provides social infrastructure like schools, subsidized food markets, and recreational and green spaces. Over 70% of constructions are self-managed by communities, with financial and logistics support from the government. Communities also provide each other with materials - from each according to their supplies, to each according to their needs. Russian, Chinese, and Belarusian companies have helped supply the program over the years.

In Antímano Parish in southwestern Caracas, a group of predominantly women came together in 2015 and trained in construction, cleared land, and then built apartments while under the pressure of food and materials shortages and electricity blackouts due to the United States' sanctions campaign.

Claudia Tisoy, a mother and self-trained plumber, said “This goes beyond building homes for our families, we are also building the future of our country, with women leading the way. This is what the socialist horizon is all about.”[^VA^](venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/…)


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is here in the comments.

This week's third update is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.


Resources For Understanding The War


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.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for July 26th


Takeaways:


  • The IMF is getting more optimistic about world economic growth (in GDP terms anyway) though obviously we all know that things are not as they seem, and the long term trend is still not looking so great given all the talk of decoupling from China. Germany and the UK still seem uniquely screwed. Inflation is being brought down in some countries (like Singapore) but remains sticky in others (Japan, the UK, the US) and interest rates continue to be hiked in Russia, the US, etc (though in Brazil they might be coming down).
  • Russian oil and LNG exports have fallen, as have revenues, due to in part the global manufacturing recession - but Goldman Sachs predicts oil demand to hit record levels soon, so who knows what's gonna happen.
  • Russia and China are sending delegations to the DPRK. One cannot help but sense that this is co-ordinated, especially with the news that South Korea is sending more military aid to Ukraine.

::: spoiler expand


Global


The IMF has lifted its growth forecast from 2.8% to 3%[^DW^](archive.ph/pggar) but said that China's economic malaise is holding back global recovery, only growing at a mere projected 5.2% compared to the astounding and much higher figure than the US's 1.8%.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/VshIj)


Europe


Enthusiasm for EU accession in the Western Balkans is slowly dropping, now down 3% to an average of 59% across the region - though widely ranging from Albania's 92% to Serbia's 34%. Additionally, 44% of respondents to the poll are considering living abroad due to mainly economic factors (not helped by the Ukraine War, of which several governments actively bay for Russian blood), corruption, and guns.[^BNE^](archive.ph/RhDFx)

Political officials and commissioners working under Ursula von der Leyen have increasingly been abandoning her:[^AM^](archive.ph/ntFdp)

Qualities that appealed her to Americans — a no-nonsense, centralized approach to decision-making – alienated her own commissioners in Brussels after she made decisions in private with a small group of advisors.


...

Another official concurred that her single-mindedness was becoming a problem, expressing “She does not embody collegiality. On so many topics, commissioners discover things via the media. People feel that she’s doing her own thing — not that they’re necessarily bad — but that she does not encourage discussion or debate.”


Nonetheless, Ursula von der Leyen's EU Commission has just won the World's Prize for Peace and Freedom, due to her committment to allowing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to be slaughtered in minefields and artillery barrages instead of suing for peace.[^NC^](archive.ph/DRwj9)

The United Kingdom is on track to incur the highest debt interest costs in the developed world due to a mixture of high inflation and a large proportion of government bonds.[^FT^](archive.ph/wuaYq) The number of people living in temporary accommodation has hit a 25 year high.[^FT^](archive.ph/tsZul) Why is productivity in England growing so slowly compared to other countries?[^FT^](archive.ph/6Syyw) Prime Minister Sunak has apologized to LGBTQ+ service members that have been mistreated or discharged under a ban that was in place until 2000.[^Advocate^](archive.ph/XF5xk)

Germany's business sentiment continues to fall.[^AM^](archive.ph/0YjP8)

An update on the Lyon-Turin rail project, first started in the 1990s and due to be finished in 2032 (but probably later), which could dramatically cut transport times between France and Italy, at the cost of (honestly pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things) carbon emissions and (more significantly) water resources.[^EN^](archive.ph/8gWUZ)

Poland has demanded an import ban on Ukrainian strawberries, in addition to the current ban on the import of Ukrainian grain that they and other eastern European countries have enacted.[^FT](archive.ph/CK9Wk)


Western Asia


Skoda Auto is not happy about the sudden appearance of its cars on the Iranian market, but luckily it doesn't appear to be a sanctionable offence according to the rules set out by our benevolent overlords across the ocean.[^BNE^](archive.ph/Dqjsa) China and Iran have vowed to deepen Belt and Road cooperation.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/HAXuW)


Central Asia


The digital ruble is expected to enter circulation in 2025.[^BNE^](archive.ph/FvDty) Russian oil revenues have declined to their lowest levels in two years due to Russia cutting oil production in line with OPEC+.[^RT^](archive.ph/rlAbP) Similarly, LNG exports to Asia declined by 15% to their lowest level in nearly two years last month due to Japan, South Korea, and China reducing imports.[^RT^](archive.ph/QYUBb) At the same time, Goldman Sachs has predicted all-time high oil demand in the coming months.[^RT^](archive.ph/tqUdd)

Kyrgyzstan's energy sector is being placed under a three-year state of emergency due to the climate conditions causing low flow in the Naryn river.[^BNE^](archive.ph/fSi4c)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


China's Xi Jinping has stressed the promotion of the high-quality development of the armed forces, with the goal of achieving the goals for the PLA centenary in 2027.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/tJDhz) Pour one the fuck out to the Qin Gang Gang, because Wang Yi is back as Foreign Minister. Due to his recent ascension to the Politburo, this also makes Wang Yi one of the most powerful foreign ministers in decades.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/IDCvD) China's self-developed MRI scanners have entered mass production, with similar image quality and greatly reduced prices compared to international manufacturers, breaking the foreign monopoly on the technology.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/UpCHC)

A Russian delegation led by Defense Minister Shoigu is heading to the DPRK, to celebrate the anniversary of the Korean War and to boost military ties.[^AM^](archive.ph/N9EDs) China is also sending a delegation to boost ties.[^GT^](archive.ph/kbqUB) China and Russia's drills in the Sea of Japan have been wrapped up, and next up is joint naval and air patrols in the Pacific Ocean.[^GT^](archive.ph/8pqIC)

The Financial Times calls on the Bank of Japan to respond to inflation.[^FT^](archive.ph/al1hY) The Japanese Foreign Minister is off to south-east Asia and Africa.[^CGS^](archive.ph/0mRHq)

China's construction of their naval base in Cambodia continues apace, the only known foreign naval base that China has other than in Djibouti. America, with something like 800 military bases, is very unhappy about this incredible act of aggression.[^FT^](archive.ph/Fka8k)

Sri Lanka's president Wickremesinghe has visited India for talks with Modi, to strengthen economic and political ties.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/yWWk2)

Singaporean core inflation may decline to 3% by the end of the year.[^ANN^](archive.ph/9jBVG)

EU imports from Myanmar have increased by 80% from the previous year despite putting their seventh round of sanctions on the country.[^DW^](archive.ph/crAXL)

Tesla has began operations in Malaysia to sell its Model Y.[^ANN^](archive.ph/KIWw1)


Africa


The Chinese navy has wrapped up its visit to the Republic of the Congo, in which there were exercises, tactical discussions, and basketball games.[^ANN^](archive.ph/k5B7F)

The US has sanctioned three Malian officials, including the current Minister of Defense, for their aid to the Wagner group.[^AN^](archive.ph/JY0AG) The government has abandoned French as a national language as part of their decolonization efforts.[^AM^](archive.ph/aEZ0J)

Egyptians have been making memes during the power outages[^MEE^](archive.ph/yluck) ridiculing how they can't use elevators at certain times of day:[^MEE^](archive.ph/6CPLA)

Some users drew up an infographic depicting hours you could take the lifts and hours to avoid them. Another commented: "If you missed the 1:50 elevator you can catch the 3:15 one!" comparing the situation to public transport.

North America


Credit card debt in the US is growing at its fastest pace in two decades, due to inflation forcing households to lean more on credit cards to pay for expenses.[^RT^](archive.ph/OTAzN) At the same time, US consumer confidence has hit a two-year high. I have no idea what's going on there.[^FT^](archive.ph/cVcUU) The Biden admin has announced a proposal to force health insurers to cover mental health and addiction care as comprehensively as they cover treatment for physical health conditions.[^STAT^](archive.ph/zGShn) The Fed might raise interest rates by 0.25% this week, with more on the way this year.[^MP^](archive.ph/FWQlx)

Archghoul Victoria Nuland is now the acting deputy secretary of state.[^RS^](responsiblestatecraft.org/2023…) The US is reviewing a plan by the UAE to take over the New York-based Fortress Investment Group over national security concerns due to the UAE's ties to China.[^MEE^](archive.ph/NycuK) Fascist groups are using climate disasters to build trust and organize in communities, such as in Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.[^RNN^](archive.ph/p0b6M)

The Pentagon needs even more money in order to upgrade itself. I'm sorry, $858 billion isn't enough. I'm starting the GoFundMe soon.[^FAIR^](archive.ph/i8LTU)


:::

in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for July 28th

Takeaways


  • Europe, once again, isn't doing so hot economically. They're hissing at chuds burning the Quran to please stop doing that as Arab countries get increasingly angry about it. Macron went to Vanuatu, an Anglo-French colony until 1980, to warn them against China's "new imperialism" - I guess France is the expert. Blinken also went to Tonga for similar reasons.
  • Azerbaijan's blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh is beginning to cause some real problems, as progress over a peace deal is being made slowly, if at all, though now Lavrov is on the case to try and get them to agree. Saudi Arabia is sad about having to do all the work in OPEC+ while Russia gets to vibe. The West wants to engage with Afghanistan again after realizing they need them geopolitically.
  • More interesting law changes in China. They've also helped Thailand build a fusion reactor, so that's cool. India is building its own air defense system (with the help of Australia?) and, well, it can hardly be worse than the Patriot. South Korea continues to not do so hot economically.
  • Tunisia might economically collapse soon. Europe only really cares about migrant flows going through there though. Niger's government has fallen to a military coup. And desalination in the north Africa region is discussed.
  • Nicaragua is having a great time vibing with China and also probably getting sanctioned more soon because of that. I mean, human rights abuses. Not the China thing. Obviously. Bolivia is signing deals with Iran because they want their drones apparently. There might be minerals under the Falklands Islands.

::: spoiler expand


Global

Putin supports the plan to increase liquidity for the BRICS New Development Bank despite geopolitical tensions, after he and Rousseff met in St. Petersburg.[^TS^](archive.ph/XPvo5) In general, there's a lot of conflicting reports going around about a BRICS currency and whether it will or won't be discussed and whether it will or won't even happen, so we'll have to wait and see what happens in August I guess.


Europe

The net profits of four of the largest European energy firms reported a substantial drop - some as high as 44% - in net profits for 2023 Q1 and Q2.[^AM^](archive.ph/CMgro) The European Central Bank has hiked interest rates by 0.25% to 4.25%.[^DW^](archive.ph/gzD8t) A draft report in the European Parliament has pointed to online services' addictive design and calls for new rules to address this to reduce mental health impacts of excessive screen time.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/rLXEQ)

The EU has once again rejected the desecration of the Quran, presumably while quietly telling Sweden and Denmark to stop fucking doing that.[^TS^](archive.ph/VKbnH)

NGOs are suing the European Commission for approving France's national plan, the Common Agricultural Policy, despite breaching EU law.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/BsDPr) The EU has greenlit 40 million euros for Germany's first permanent LNG terminal.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/WVkb1)

Irn-Bru workers are going on strike in a series of 24 hour stoppages from early August to October.[^UtU^](archive.ph/cJuC9) Three of the UK's largest lenders have cut mortgage rates due to a better than expected drop in inflation in June.[^FT^](archive.ph/dWjG6)


Western Asia

Palestine's ambassador has urged China to use its leverage to bring Israel to the negotiating table, and for China and the US to work together rather than competing for influence. This latter point seems rather silly to me given that the US's only interest in the region has been bombing it.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/H73iu) The IOF has killed a Palestinian child in Qalqilya and injured a journalist.[^AM^](archive.ph/fef3q)

Lebanon's government has decided to increase the amount of land available for wheat production to potentially 70% of domestic consumption.[^AM^](archive.ph/I2evy)

Saudi Arabia has received a growth downgrade from the IMF due to oil revenue cuts, with some complaining that the country is doing most of the OPEC+ heavy lifting compared to Russia.[^MEE^](archive.ph/TNk9W)

Kuwait has overcome 9 years of budget deficit due to an oil boom, though with oil prices falling it may soon return to deficit.[^AM^](archive.ph/5xzSP)

Azerbaijan's blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh is now in its seventh month and food, energy and medical care is running out, leaving the Armenians inside to consider either obtaining Azerbaijani citizenship or leave the enclave.[^OD^](archive.ph/pQSUb)


Central Asia

Russia's FM Lavrov has holding talks in Moscow with Armenia's and Azerbaijan's FMs, discussing preparations for a peace treaty and potential solutions to remaining issues.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/ND5qj)

China exported about $26.4 billion in goods to Central Asia in 2023 Q1 and Q2, while importing nearly $13.5 billion from the region.[^EN^](archive.ph/Vrsjl) China is exploring biotech, scientific and manufacturing possibilities in Central Asia.[^EN^](archive.ph/vN7TZ)

Kazakhstan will begin the transit of Russian gas to Uzbekistan in October.[^BNE^](archive.ph/lbu3e) The UK and Uzbekistan have met up to developer closer economic ties, and also allowing Uzbek agricultural workers in.[^BNE^](archive.ph/JMarT) Uzbekistan's electric vehicle imports have surged, predominantly from China.[^BNE^](archive.ph/7kaPR)

Some people in the West are going "Oh shit, we actually kinda needed to keep Afghanistan in our sphere of influence because we can use it to disrupt China, let's try and make friends with them again"[^MEE^](archive.ph/vcFLh) while others are not so cynical.[^AM^](archive.ph/ggU37) The lithium might also have something to do with it.[^SP^](archive.ph/4ocxB)


Eastern Asia and Oceania

Chinese lawmakers have submitted a draft amendment to the Criminal Law which would increase penalties for bribery and corruption inside private firms.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/q8J22) China has launched economic data inspections to prevent and punish falsification and fabrication, as its fifth national economic census is soon to begin.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/Rph4c)

China's naval base in Cambodia probably won't host aircraft carriers but it may still be used for logistics.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/JaIjb)

Thailand has debuted its first tokamak fusion device with the help of Chinese academic institutions as it aims to become Southeast Asia's hub for fusion technology development.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/4dXgS)

Trade experts have said that Nepal's attempt to save its foreign currency reserves by slamming the brakes on imports has reduced the trade deficit but also caused the country to nearly stop growing entirely despite initial predictions of 8% growth.[^ANN^](archive.ph/dSRYn)

Bhutan's been hit by flash flooding, which has prompted new calls for climate-resilient designs in infrastructure and agriculture.[^ANN^](archive.ph/oCc9F)

Hong Kong has signed 15 new trade deals with Indonesia.[^ANN^](archive.ph/9IdVB)

India is developing its own air defense system with three layers of surface-to-air missiles.[^ANN^](archive.ph/NcSyk) India and Australia have held talks on co-development and production of defence equipment.[^ANN^](archive.ph/J4Twf) An article on Modi's Smart Cities Mission and how that's going (mixed results).[^DW^](archive.ph/wwine) Rainfall continues to affect institutions, roads, and is overflowing lakes.[^PD^](archive.ph/CmO2v)

Sri Lanka is taking away existing labor laws fought for in the past century and replacing them with austerity measures in line with IMF proposals.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/tINSB)

South Korea's economy has grown by 0.6% in Q2, as imports fell even more sharply than exports.[^ANN^](archive.ph/fYbZL) There's some crypto bullshit going on that I don't care about.[^ANN^](archive.ph/XWdJC)

The nickel industry in Indonesia is discussed.[^RoW^](archive.ph/qTxUS)

The Australian government's plan to impose a national nuclear waste dump on aboriginal land has been upended by a court decision.[^Ecologist^](archive.ph/pNlXZ)

Blinken has gone to New Zealand to invite them to AUKUS, though New Zealand has been trying to be a bit friendlier towards China than most West-aligned nations in the region - perhaps they have officials who actually pay attention to their exports and imports.[^DW^](archive.ph/iEX9R) Blinken has visited Tonga, warning them about the dastardly Chinese.[^DW^](archive.ph/8YhZg) Macron has visited Vanuatu, and warns against a "new imperialism" in the Pacific, which he seems to target at China but doesn't mention them by name. This is very funny considering that the country was an Anglo-French colony until 1980, within Macron's lifetime.[^EN^](archive.ph/oOdTu)


:::

Bulletins and News Discussion from May 5th to May 11th, 2025 - Fuck Fascists Friday


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Image is the famous photograph Raising a Flag Over the Reichstag, taken during the Battle of Berlin.


On Friday is May 9th, which is the 80th anniversary of Victory Day, which Russia, among other places, celebrates as the day when the Soviets defeated the Nazis. Naturally, one of the current hotspots of fascism in the world today, Ukraine, is essentially threatening that they might strike Russia or even Moscow itself during that timeframe. Any such strike would almost certainly be symbolic and not aimed at anything too important, as I doubt even Zelensky and his American handlers would actually want to kill a world leader, not least somebody like Xi Jinping. But I would not be surprised if they tried something nonetheless, if only to disrupt the event in some way and not actually kill anybody.

And, as we're on this topic, @EllenKelly@hexbear.net has reminded me that Tuesday is the anniversary of the Nazis burning the Institut für Sexualwissenschaf in 1933, an early institute advocating for the rights of LGBT people, and which also provided early forms of gender-affirming surgeries, as well as hormone therapies. We are currently seeing a crackdown on LGBT rights throughout swathes of the imperial core (as well as countries in the periphery, to the extent that those rights existed there already), and this Nazi-inspired movement will be similarly defeated in the future.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 12 - May 5th to May 11th, 2025


This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the twelfth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 11: Dollar Domination Through the IMF, which is approximately 18 pages.



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This entry was edited (11 months ago)

Here we go again... The mercenary wars of West Africa begin anew (if they can be said to have ever really ended) Any predictions?


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For me, it's too early for any bold claims but I don't see it going away quietly. It's weird, the mercenary wars of the 60's and 80's - some of them were rather silly proxy wars between USSR and USA (Nigeria was a total mess), but lots of them were USSR backing great communist leaders like Lumumba who had the peoples support.

In this case though - the coup is originally anti France, anti colonial, it goes forward, and then they decide to brazenly wave the flag of the West's greatest enemy (Russia). It's not like there's much of a material gain for the actual lower class people in Niger in getting Russia involved (unlike in the 60's-80's). It's just the top brass, companies, and governments of the coup's leaders that will get a fat payout and continued guns n armour. What guns and armour does Russia even have to trade with at this point though? They're already at war.

What the fuck is going on? Is it too stupid to say that the top dogs in Niger are now deliberately inviting a war against the West? Is it that they thought war was already going to happen, so they're getting all the backing they can to try to scare the French from striking back?

Could this end in an absolute NATO 'peacekeeper' goatfuck?

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from May 12th to May 18th, 2025 - Nuclear War Averted (Hopefully)!


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Image is from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' recent article on Kashmir.


It looks like the spat between India and Pakistan could be dying down, due to a new ceasefire. As of the time of me writing this paragraph, it seems both sides want to maintain it (despite some reports of violations here and there).

Both sides have declared victory, which is completely expected given their mutual political parties and nationalist histories. It's a little harder to say which side has actually won, as both sides seem to have managed to shoot down aircraft and hit military bases. India has, in my opinion, had the more embarrassing moments, but international conflicts aren't cringe compilations. I feel no good-will towards Pakistan's comprador government, but it is at least nice to see Modi knocked down a few pegs. Regardless of the final technical victor, it's obvious that - if the ceasefire is maintained - who won are the hundreds of millions of people who won't have to live in fear of dying in nuclear hellfire.

This conflict is a good example of what multipolarity will truly entail. Countries that have been previously limited in their nationalist ambitions by American pressure will now take opportunities to revolt, sometimes against America itself, and sometimes against other countries in their regional neighbourhood. It's also why, as communists, our goals do not stop at multipolarity; it is merely the establishing act of a new era of agitation against peripheral and semi-peripheral capitalist countries that are forming powerful national bourgeoisie classes as the international American capitalists are forced away.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



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Bulletins and News Discussion from July 31st to August 6th, 2023 - A West African Federation?


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Image is of coup supporters in Niamey, waving the flag of Niger and Russia.


While the coup in Niger is an obvious reason for this megathread's subject, the inspiration to focus here rather than somewhere else in the world this week came from @solaranus@hexbear.net's comment here.

Anyway, as a quick introduction to Niger - the country won independence from the French in 1960 and has since been in an alternating cycle of military governments and more democratic arrangements. In 2010, a junta took over the country from the military junta already ruling it, and then successfully transitioned the country to democracy within a year. President Issoufou was elected and then re-elected in 2016. President Bazoum was democratically elected in 2021, and has just been overthrown last week. General Tchiani looks to be the new head of state.

Like many countries that were previously colonies, outright colonialism by its imperial country has been replaced by neocolonialism by that same country. France issues their currency, thus allowing France to do what the US does with its dollar around the world but in miniature. The country is incredibly poor, surviving on subsidence agriculture, with much of its exports being minerals like gold and uranium, which many children under the age of 14 are employed in extracting. Also like other previously French colonies, the new guys in charge appear to be flipping them the bird, with Burkina Faso and Mali relatively recently asking them to fuck off. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that this is happening as internal dissent inside France itself continues to boil. Given the Russian flags being waved and Putin's promises to supply free grain to some African countries (and though Niger isn't mentioned, Burkina Faso and Mali notably are), one imagines that Russia also might have a hand in things.

Burkina Faso's president, Traore, has been talking with Mali and Guinea, and now Niger - all ruled by military governments - and asking if they're interested in federation, with Mali showing some interest. Traore follows in the tradition of Thomas Sankara, and has appointed a Prime Minister who is similarly aligned. Traore has recently met with a Chinese representative and has firmly aligned himself with Russia, saying that Burkina Faso has "one and the same outlook" on building a new world order, saying:

"Russia made great sacrifices to liberate Europe and the world from Nazism during World War II. We have the same history,"

"We are the forgotten peoples of the world. And we are here now to talk about the future of our countries, about how things will be tomorrow in the world that we are seeking to build, and in which there will be no interference in our internal affairs,"

"However, a slave who does not fight [for his freedom] is not worthy of any indulgence. The heads of African states should not behave like puppets in the hands of the imperialists. We must ensure that our countries are self-sufficient, including as regards food supplies, and can meet all of the needs of our peoples. Glory and respect to our peoples; victory to our peoples! Homeland or death!"


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

No update on Wednesday because I am still busy.

Friday's update is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.


Resources For Understanding The War


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.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for July 31st but actually on August 1st because I was too busy and distracted oops


::: spoiler expand

Global


A dude at Morgan Stanley is arguing in favor of a multipolar world, arguing that global growth will be boosted, intense competition will boost productivity (relating back to cold-war era innovation), and alternative supply chains will bring additional capacity to mitigate higher costs.[^FT^](archive.ph/ORaww)

Pepe Escobar talks about the BRICS and BRI, putting a positive (but unusually fairly realistic) spin on things.[^MR^](archive.ph/lQmSI) Naked Capitalism is considerably more negative, this time pouring cold water on the idea of a BRICS+ expansion free-for-fall, saying that China is the one that's really interested in all these new members, while Russia is pretty alright with it but not terribly enthusiastic, while India, always the wet blanket in regards to these developments, is stating their objections. It's likely that a number of nations will join BRICS, but not all of the 23 or however many have expressed interest. It's not clear to me how necessary joining BRICS is per se compared to joining the New Development Bank, however, or the BRI. Not even to mention the SCO, EAEU, and other regional organizations. What matters to me ultimately is that nations are joining together to oppose the US, not the name of the organization they're doing it under.[^NC^](archive.ph/XfHt3) On that note, Zimbabwe has requested to join the BRICS New Development Bank.[^PD^](archive.ph/R2oqA) Xi has been talking about the BRI with meetings with the leaders of Indonesia, Guyana, and Georgia.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/Ngie6) More on Guyana.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/lW5df) More on Indonesia.[^ANN^](archive.ph/EIZpJ)


Europe


Euro inflation has dipped from 5.5% in June to 5.3% in July, largely due to sinking energy prices.[^DW^](archive.ph/hmZLA)

The UK railway sector is experiencing more cancellations over strikes over pay and working conditions.[^AM^](archive.ph/kBG8c) UK firms are still exporting mining and fossil fuel extraction equipment to Russia, circumventing sanctions by sending them through subsidiaries; the profits must flow.[^AM^](archive.ph/JZvBm)

Denmark (and also Sweden) are pushing back on the Quran-burning because Islamic nations are getting very understandably pissed off at them - of course, fascist groups inside Denmark are getting pissed off at the government for being literally 1984.[^EN^](archive.ph/iO4rl)

Workers at Germany's car manufacturers are getting increasingly anxious as the threat of job losses given the shift to electric vehicles (which requires a retraining of workers involved in combustion engines) and the higher cost of energy and raw materials.[^DW^](archive.ph/vw23j) The chairman of the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has warned of irreversible deindustrialization in Germany.[^AM^](archive.ph/L4PCK)

Poland has approval a law that creates a committee of exprts who can investigate alleged Russian interference in Poland and name politicians who allegedly allow it; presumably the ruling party will use this freely against the opposition to cement their power.[^EN^](archive.ph/pOpFo)

Sunwoda, one of China's big battery companies, is building its first European plant in Hungary.[^BNE^](archive.ph/75KZS)

The number of employed people in Spain has reached an all-time record, with an overall 11.6% unemployment rate.[^TS^](archive.ph/HBMjE)


Western Asia


Fitch Ratings has upgraded Armenia's rating as tens of thousands of refugees from Ukraine "add dynamism" to the economy. We really are living in the future we always dreamed of.[^BNE^](archive.ph/idD2s)

Netanyahu has launched a $27 billion rail expansion to connect to Saudi Arabia and possibly the rest of the Arabian peninsula.[^MEE^](archive.ph/PElkQ)

China and the UAE are setting up joint air force training in Xinjiang in August.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/1w3Rm)

Qatar has offered Ukraine $100 million in humanitarian relief after the Prime Minister went to Kiev on July 28th.[^AM^](archive.ph/5HHT8)


Central Asia


The Taliban has burned musical instruments, saying that music leads to a misguidance of the youth and the destruction of society. I honestly think you could outright kill a Taliban member if you forced them to listen to 100 gecs.[^DW^](archive.ph/Y2iq5)

China has granted Pakistan a 2-year rollover on a debt worth $2.4 billion in total, meaning that they will only have to pay interest rates.[^AM^](archive.ph/H9Hwa) Nearly 50 people have been killed by a suicide bomber at a political gathering in Pakistan.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/zOpqC)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


China's manufacturing PMI is at 49.3, slightly higher than June's but still in contraction. Non-manufacturing came in at 51.5, falling from 53.2.[^FT^](archive.ph/ef1Df) The world's first zero-carbon smart port, in Tiajin, has opened a new direct shipping route to South America.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/LApCB) The yuan's share of cross-border payments and receipts rose to a record 49% at the end of June, and the share of the dollar fell to 47%.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/NFJDZ) Chinese scientists have identified an important genetic code for enhancing rice grain yield by 7 to 15%.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/o44fk) China has launched its first self-deeloped undersea seismic exploration sensor last week, helping them find offshore oil and natural gas.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/OIoEG)

The IMF is optimistic about Nepal's growth, which they expect to rebound.[^ANN^](archive.ph/SAjC6)

According to a recent poll, Thailand's citizens are most concerned (~40%) about finances, poverty and inequality, and a little less concerned about inflation, unemployment, and criminality (~27%).[^ANN^](archive.ph/sWZdK)

Cambodia's trade unions are setting up for their yearly negotiation for next year's minimum wage in various industrial sectors.[^ANN^](archive.ph/bXFYi)


Africa


Prigozhin has hailed the Niger coup, saying that they have "got rid of the colonisers".[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/6WnEE) ECOWAS leaders have given Niger a one week ultimatum to restore President Bazoum; Burkina Faso and Mali (potentially others) are supporting the new Niger government.[^AN^](archive.ph/hUUX6)

Xi has met with Mauritania's and Burundi's presidents, with plans signed on BRI initiatives.[^AN^](archive.ph/xaQoG)

Russia's state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, has proposed the creation of a nuclear power fleet with floating nuclear power plants, with several African countries reporting that they're interested - the BRICS NDP has agreed to fund Rosatom projects in Africa.[^AM^](archive.ph/Ke1xy) Putin has announced that they are reopening their embassy in Burkina Faso and developing cooperation with them.[^AM^](archive.ph/F4nuM) Also, Putin has offered Zimbabwe's leader a presidential helicopter, which they seem to have accepted.[^AN^](archive.ph/v8bnZ) The leader of the South African radical left opposition party EFF has urged China, India, and Brazil to boycott the BRICS summit in solidarity with Putin, and also called Ramaphosa a "coward" and said many other juicy things.[^AN^](archive.ph/s0clU)


North America


The Red Clarion has called on the Teamsters union to reject the UPS agreement.[^RC^](archive.ph/KJLlJ) Labor Notes is also covering this.[^LN^](archive.ph/JWitc)

Biden last week announced new actions to protect communities from extreme heat, as tens or even hundreds of millions of Americans suffer in heatwaves.[^TS^](archive.ph/JG6k2) This heat is worsening insect infestations, with some residents comparing them to a "biblical plague" as insects ravaged crops.[^PD^](archive.ph/l85W4)

The NPP Vogtle unit 3 is finally about to open after going 7 years past schedule, the first reactor that the US has built from scratch in over 30 years - and also perhaps its last.[^FT^](archive.ph/IbpvC)


Latin America


Kenya's foreign minister has said that they are ready to lead a multinational force into Haiti to assist the government and deploy police officers.[^AM^](archive.ph/ydvpn)

Mexico has complimented the effectiveness of Cuban vaccines as AMLO gets closer to Diaz-Canel.[^Resumen^](archive.ph/49MHC) The Cuban private sector is discussed.[^Resumen^](archive.ph/hYrUi)

Bolivia is increasingly using the yuan in foreign trade, with its use reaching 10% in recent moths.[^AM^](archive.ph/nJGah)

Indigenous community members in Argentina are marching for the defense of their territories and natural resources and in rejection of the reforms promoted by the provinicial governor.[^TS^](archive.ph/TnMvD) Argentina has been forced to import millions of tons of soybeans this year as a once-in-a-lifetime drought has struck the country.[^MP^](archive.ph/Ny1js)

A desalination plant from the US has arrived in Uruguay after taking twice the time it should have to arrive - it will supply drinking water for 150,000 people.[^MP^](archive.ph/BM07t)

Poverty in Chile has hit a historic low, from 10.7% in 2020 to 6.5% this year.[^MP^](archive.ph/b9GH7)

Brazil has shipped the world's first green lithium - made with zero carbon emissions, zero wate, and zero harmful chemicals.[^MP^](archive.ph/nVGT6)

:::

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for August 4th


::: spoiler expand


Global


Venezuela has formalized its application to join BRICS.[^TS^](archive.ph/s3nr7) Bolivia has announced its plan to join BRICS and attend the summit this month.[^AM^](archive.ph/EwEzK) Brazilian diplomats are reportedly not very eager to accept new members[^RT^](archive.ph/01ZW1); Lula has come out against them and clarified that Brazil is fine with new countries entering so long as they comply with the rules of the organization, and that it will be discussed with the rest of BRICS.[^AN^](archive.ph/kpmid) South Africa's ambassador to BRICS has confirmed that an announcement on enlarging its membership will be made at the summit.[^CGS^](archive.ph/KMCDU) China's Global Times is pushing back on these recent stories of division inside the organization.[^GT^](archive.ph/VdeKQ)

165 million people have been thrown into poverty (defined as living on less than $3.65 per day) since 2020, now reaching 1.1 billion.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/uPYo9)


Europe


THe EU's LNG imports are down to a two-year low due to more lucrative Asian markets.[^RT^](archive.ph/FzjAr)

The Bank of England has followed the EU and US in raising its interest rates, now at a 15 year high.[^DW^](archive.ph/TqDNO)

Anti-Eritrea protestors forcefully entered a festival in Stockholm organized by Eritrean government supporters and set booths and vehicles on fire before being arrested.[^AM^](archive.ph/MqJNj)

The bombing of Ukraine's sea and river ports, combined with Romania's lack of capacity, might severely slow down any attempt to get Ukrainian grain out of the country.[^BNE^](archive.ph/VOGTy)


Western Asia


De-Dollarisation in Trade Between Russia and the Arab World[^VC^](archive.ph/jWnW8)

Georgia has banned the re-export of Western imported cars to Russia and Belarus, but loopholes are still probably present.[^EN^](archive.ph/S7UJs) Georgia and China have inaugurated a strategic partnership.[^EN^](archive.ph/UazJ9)

Azerbaijan's opposition parties have been denied registration by the government and face the possibility of being disbanded.[^EN^](archive.ph/5WzV8)

The Akkuyu NPP in Turkiye is expected to be generating energy as of October 2024.[^RT^](archive.ph/dQE9H)

China is strengthening defense co-operation with Saudi Arabia[^CGTN^](archive.ph/cNZ80)


Central Asia


Putin has said that Russian manufacturing may grow 12% this year if trends continue.[^RT^](archive.ph/wbmuc) Russian manufacturing PMI is still above 50 but growth is slowing down.[^BNE^](archive.ph/aIF7C) Russian grain exports have hit a record high in July.[^RT^](archive.ph/L70IX)

Iran and Pakistan have created a five-year plan with a $5 billion trade target.[^ANN^](archive.ph/EPnD6) Pakistan is also seeking to boost Russian oil imports, with new refineries needing to be built.[^RT^](archive.ph/9F06V)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


China's commitment to the Belt and Road Initiative is still going strong, with cumulative spending over the past decade now above the $1 trillion mark.[^CGS^](archive.ph/y0CrV)Three nuclear power projects in China have won approval, the first time nuclear power projects have been granted approval this year.[^ANN^](archive.ph/lr1iU) The Chinese government has replaced two leaders of an elite unit managing its nuclear arsenal.[^MP^](archive.ph/Crkym) Hebei Province has relocated over a million people from flooded areas.[^GT^](archive.ph/71TXw)

Mongolia's Prime Minister met with US VP Harris and discussed obtaining minerals which mostly go to China currently.[^AM^](archive.ph/Ln4MC)

Japan presented its annual military white paper which presents a justification for Japan's remilitarization and makes it clear that China is the target.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/DMIDp)

Ursula von der Leyen has gone to the Philippines and is talking shit about China.[^CGS^](archive.ph/apW3g)

New Zealand's government has admitted that its military is plagued by problems and unprepared for conflicts[^AM^](archive.ph/c6Jdm) and needs to bolster its defense capabilities, and thus has presented its first national security strategy and the first stage of a defense review.[^DW^](archive.ph/PyIPo)


Africa


Ethiopia's government has announced a state of emergency after battles with local militia in the region of Amhara.[^DW^](archive.ph/KlpLV)

The UK foreign minister is in Ghana for a regional tour, also going to Nigeria and Zambia.[^AN^](archive.ph/eTkao) Ghana is suffering from an economic crisis with soaring inflation and debt defaults, with electricity bills doubling for some people, and plans to import LNG from Shell might make things even worse.[^CCN^](archive.ph/8kC1S)

China has urged the parties fighting within Niger to settle their differences peacefully through dialogue.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/QBnP5) Senegal has stated that its troops will join an ECOWAS intervention in Niger if it happens.[^AN^](archive.ph/SGHRt) The $13 billion gas pipeline project taking natural gas from Nigeria to Europe via Niger and Algeria is now under threat due to the coup and the potential war to come.[^BNE^](archive.ph/XT0UW) Sanctions sanctions sanctions.[^PW^](archive.ph/9c2LQ)

Nigerian labour unions have marched against the soaring cost of living, saying that Tinubu's economic incentives announced this week are not enough.[^AN^](archive.ph/i3Yda)

In Guinea, bauxite workers and their families fight for access to their pensions[^ET^](archive.ph/hIz77)


North America


Americans' trust in their military has fallen to 60% this year, down from 70% in 2021 and 80% a decade ago, and is relatively bipartisan (Republicans at 68%, Democrats at 62%, Independents at 55%). The last time that it dipped to 60% or below was in 1997, and the last time it stayed below 60% was in the late 1970s in the post-Vietnam phase.[^RS^](responsiblestatecraft.org/2023…)

Amazon workers have been inspired by the wage gains at UPS.[^LN^](archive.ph/Tgow5)

Global Times has taken an optimistic view about the US's credit rating being downgraded, stating that it chips away at its global dominance.[^GT^](archive.ph/kQzac) Naked Capitalism is much more dismissive of it, as they tend to be about most things.[^NC^](archive.ph/SdJwo) Wall Street on Parade actually talks about what it means.[^WSoP^](archive.ph/Ui3xM)


Latin America


The United States really wants somebody to get involved in Haiti to crush skul-- I mean, uh, help them, with the uh, gang violence.[^PW^](archive.ph/ncCSg)

A community is fighting to stop gold mining firms polluting Ecuador's rivers[^OD^](archive.ph/B8Bt0)


The War Against The West


Germany is still against sending its long range missile system, the Taurus, to Ukraine.[^RT^](archive.ph/4sH3s)

Ukraine Turns to Inexperienced Mercenaries from Latin America in the Face of Heavy Casualties[^Resumen^](archive.ph/WyCPT)

The day Australian sovereignty died[^MR^](archive.ph/DVcq2)

If a date might be found when Australian sovereignty was extinguished by the emissaries of the U.S. imperium, July 29, 2023 will be as good as any. Not that they aren’t other candidates, foremost among them being the announcement of the AUKUS agreement between Australia, UK and the U.S. in September 2021. They all point to a surrender, a handing over, of a territory to another’s military and intelligence community, an abject, oily capitulation that would normally qualify as treasonous.


French Invasion of Niger Could Turn into All-Out Franco-African War[^NC^](archive.ph/XB4PK)


:::

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from May 19th to May 25th, 2025 - The Beginning of the End of the Monroe Doctrine


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The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Or perhaps the end of the beginning, if you're a little more pessimistic.


Image is from this Bloomberg article, from which I also gathered some of the information used in the preamble.


While Trump was off in the Middle East in an incompetent attempt to solve a geopolitical and humanitarian crisis, China has been doing something much more productive.

Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping, had a summit with CELAC (a community of 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries). There, he promised investment, various declarations of friendship, and visa-free entry for 30 days for citizens of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay. Lula signed over 30 agreements with China. Colombia is joining the New Development Bank and hopes to gain the money for a 120-kilometer railway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as an alternative route to the Panama Canal. Even Argentina, ruled by arch-libertarian and arch-dipshit (but I repeat myself) Milei, was uncharacteristically polite with China as he secured a currency swap renewal to shore up their international reserves.

It wouldn't really be correct to say that Latin America is "siding with China over the US" - leaders in the region will continue to make many deals with America for the foreseeable future, and even Trump's bizarre economic strongman routine won't make them break off economic and diplomatic relations. What's significant here is that despite increasing American pressure for those leaders to break off all ties with China, few appear to be listening - and given that China is perhaps the most important economy on the planet right now, that is a very predictable outcome.

As the current American empire takes actions to try and avoid their doom, those very actions only guarantee it. As Latin America grows ever more interconnected with China and continues to develop, America will grow ever more panicked and demanding, and this feedback loop will - eventually - result in the death of the Monroe Doctrine.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion for May 26th to June 1st, 2025 - Sanctions Continue To Fail, More At 11


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The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of a solar park in Cuba, donated last year by China, sourced from this article.


To be honest, I don't have much to say about ongoing geopolitical events that hasn't already been said in previous threads (e.g. with India/Pakistan, Trump/Putin, and of course occupied Palestine), so this is more of a "news roundup" preamble for this week.

As we all know, the US (and the imperial core generally) has only three permitted international actions: sanctions, color revolution, and war. None of these have been going well lately, but sanctions are in particularly dire straits right now. Three examples from the last week or so:

  • The EU is on its 17th sanctions package, apparently, which is surprising, as I thought they were on their 76th or something. It apparently targets Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers, but I don't think anybody actually gives a shit because we all know it won't achieve anything, so, moving on...
  • The head of Nvidia (as well as many others) have come out and said that the US chip export controls on China have failed, remarking that China's internal motivations to develop alternatives are strong and proceeding rapidly, especially as China's number of skilled scientists is only growing. Nvidia has said that they had a 95% share of China's AI chip market in 2020 or so, but now they only have 50%.
  • Lastly, an interesting one: Iran has received its first set of railway shipment of solar panels from China, and there is hope for accelerating shipments of even more products. Myself and many others have predicted a decoupling of Iran from the West and towards China and Russia (especially if any Western-built product could have Israeli devices implanted into them, such as with the pager terrorist attack on Lebanon's doctors), and having a strong link with China will be a necessary step for Iran and their allies to continue their offensives against Israel.

Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 2nd to June 8th, 2025 - Geopolitics and the Gate of Grief - COTW: Eritrea


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is sourced from this Economist article.

Most of the information in this preamble is from the Cradle; notably here, here, here, and here.


The features of an effective American war (proxy or otherwise) is that it is a) against opponents with much less military power than you; b) with very low American losses; c) with victories you can visibly show off from time to time to justify involvement, and d) with a profit margin beyond merely giving money to military corporations. The war against Yemen was none of those; airplanes tumbled off aircraft carriers, and the navy complained of the hardest fighting conditions in decades. Conquering Yemen for its resources was inconceivable given the terrain, lack of good intelligence, and the strength of Ansarallah, and all that seemed to be visibly harmed were empty patches of desert and civilians.

Apparently, the ceasefire last month merely stipulated that they stop attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea; it said nothing about attacking Israel. Therefore, Yemen is absolutely free to create a new blockade of Israel by just striking their airports and seaports, and all Israel can seem to do is try and bomb them in retaliation, a futile strategy which has failed to produce a military or political change in Yemen for the last decade when many other countries have tried it. And if America directly attacks them in response to attacks on Israel, the ceasefire is off, and expensive equipment will continue to be lost.

Across the strait from Yemen is an interesting array of countries. Egypt's position in this war is well-known, and Somalia is under a kind of US occupation under the guise of fighting terrorism (Trump withdrew most troops, but they were then sent back under Biden). The other three are Sudan, Djibouti, and Eritrea. All three are increasingly being drawn into the anti-imperialist camp, as they cooperate with Iran, Russia, and/or China. Sudan is undergoing a civil war, but the rebels fighting the government are famously backed by the UAE. Djibouti has refused to allow themselves to be a launchpad for US strikes on Yemen.

Eritrea has a fascinating history of flip-flopping between West and East over the past few decades, but has, since 2020, sided with the East. It was one of the five countries to oppose the 2022 UN resolution condemning Russia's war with Ukraine. Eritrea sends two thirds of its exports to China, and Iran has reportedly supplied them with military equipment. If a stronger link could be reforged, then Iran would have significantly less trouble sending military technology to Ansarallah, and to other friendly groups throughout the region.

Naturally, the lidless eye of the imperial core is shifting its gaze onto Eritrea. Meanwhile, Ethiopia - a country that has experienced frequent conflict with Eritrea - is part of BRICS+ and their economy is increasingly reliant on China (as is most countries' economies nowadays). If a permanent resolution between the two could be created, it would be a victory for themselves and the Resistance, and a defeat for America, which thrives on conflict and destabilization.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from August 7th to August 13th, 2023 - White Blows From A Black Hand


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of the American military during their occupation of Haiti at the beginning of the 20th century, taken from this NYT article from 2022: Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged. The U.S. Obliged.


In the aftermath of the assassination of Jovenel Moïse in 2021 and his replacement by Western comprador Ariel Henry, the situation in Haiti is the most dire it has been in decades - by some metrics, even worse than the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake (CW: rape, violence including against children). Millions do not have enough food. Outbreaks of disease are rampant. The government - such that it still exists, which is becoming increasingly debatable - has only a minority control over the capital city, with some estimates putting the influence of armed groups at 80%.

America's search for somebody, anybody, to intervene in Haiti has ended, with Kenya answering the call. President Ruto has announced that he will send 1000 police officers to Haiti. Kenya's Foreign Minister has tried to sell this intervention as pan-Africanism. Other Caribbean states, like the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, have offered to send police officers too.

I can't really say it any better than the Black Alliance for Peace's own statement:

Kenya has offered to deploy a contingent of 1,000 police officers to help train and assist Haitian police, ostensibly to “restore order” in the Caribbean republic. Yet, their proposal is nothing more than military occupation by another name; an occupation of Haiti by an African country is not Pan-Africanism, but Western imperialism in Black face. By agreeing to send troops into Haiti, the Kenyan government is assisting in undermining the sovereignty and self-determination of Haitian people, while serving the neocolonial interests of the United States, the Core Group, and the United Nations.

There is an urgent need for clarity on the issue of occupation in Haiti. As described in a recent statement on Haiti and Colonialism, Haiti is under ongoing occupation. No call for foreign intervention into Haiti from the administration of appointed Prime Minister Ariel Henry can be considered legitimate, because the Henry administration itself is illegitimate. BAP has repeatedly pointed out that Haiti’s crisis is a crisis of imperialism. Haiti’s current unpopular and unelected government is propped up only by Haiti’s de facto imperial rulers: the unseemly confederacy of the Core Group countries and organizations, as well as BINUH (the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti), and a loose alliance of foreign corporations and local elites.

Henry and the UN have made a mockery of sovereignty by mouthing the slogan “Haitian solutions to Haitian problems,” yet finding the only solution in violence through foreign military intervention. After repeated failed attempts to organize an occupying force to protect their interests and impose their will on the Haitian people (including appeals to the multinational organization, the Caribbean Community [CARICOM] for troops), they have now found a willing accomplice in Kenya, an east African country with its own set of internal problems.

Indeed, what’s in it for Kenya? An opportunity to both train and enhance the salaries of local police forces and garner a patina of prestige, or at least bootlicking approval, from the West. And for Haiti? White blows from a Black hand and a further erosion of their sovereignty.


And, by the way, here's the Black Alliance for Peace's statement calling for no intervention by ECOWAS in Niger, calling the organization a Western comprador organization similar to CARICOM's role in Haiti.


Welcome to our friends throughout the Lemmyverse!

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is here in the comments.

This week's third update might not happen because I'm busy dunking.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.


Resources For Understanding The War


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.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for August 7th


::: spoiler expand

Global


Prices for cocoa have jumped to their highest level in 12 years due to low supplies and bad harvests in West Africa, particularly as El Nino threatens to reduce rains there.[^RT^](archive.ph/wElc8)

China is increasingly moving away from large-scale construction projects in the BRI and is now moving onto high quality, smaller deals, and ones to do with metals in developing countries for the green transition.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/pVoNT)


Europe


The UK is getting very scared that Chinese electric vehicles could gather their information to... uhh... well, that's not the point, the point is that the Chinese government is very scary and very communist. The fact that they carry around a phone that gives all their location and personal data to their own government and listens in on their conversations and UK citizens are monitored by one of the largest CCTV networks in the world outside of China is causing them less anxiety for whatever reason.[^RT^](archive.ph/Ve0BN) 8000 Afghan refugees are being kicked out of government hotels, with three months to find alternative housing, with many becoming homeless.[^AM^](archive.ph/p5D4C)

Germany's industrial output[^AM^](archive.ph/MAZrT) is still not looking good.[^DW^](archive.ph/CR8MH) Die Linke may be about to split - people more attuned to German politics can comment on how right or wrong this Jacobin article is[^Jacobin^](archive.ph/UWhxr) Nazi symbols and child pornography has been found in German police chats.[^EN^](archive.ph/fNvLj) The French government has warned that AfD is perilous for European stability.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/wbmR3)

Over 600 people have been evacuated due to wildfires in Sardinia.[^EN^](archive.ph/Sfvnl)

Slovenia's flooding has been described as the worst disaster in its modern history, with at least four deaths, over 500 million euros of damage so far, and two-thirds of the country being affected in one way or another.[^EN^](archive.ph/hSPMH)

Baltic countries are looking to detach from the Russian electricity network and attach to the Western one by 2025.[^RT^](archive.ph/UclA6)

Lithuania is to close two border crossings with Belarus due to their fear of Wagner.[^AM^](archive.ph/BREgB)


Western Asia


The Road That Could Ignite a War in the Caucasus[^NC^](archive.ph/O7wlg)

An explosion - possible caused by grain dust - at the port of Derince in Turkiye has injured at least 10 people.[^RT^](archive.ph/R61zI)

The US has dispatched 3000 military personnel aboard two warships to the Red Sea, due to recent tanker seizures by Iran, without mentioning that the US has also been seizing tankers.[^AM^](archive.ph/yJFew) The US is also considering to deploy troops to commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf.[^MEE^](archive.ph/VYWx8)

Saudi Aramco's profits are down by nearly 30% in the first half of 2023.[^AM^](archive.ph/mXE2x) China and Saudi Arabia are in talks to cross-list their stock markets, allowing investors in either country to trade stocks or bonds on their countries' stock exchanges.[^MEE^](archive.ph/7KWJ7)

China's potential role in Israel-Saudi diplomacy is discussed.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/ZfpnQ)


Central Asia


The ruble has weakened to 96 rubles-per-dollar due to seasonal changes in foreign currency supply and trade, but also due to the goddamn neoliberals.[^RT^](archive.ph/Gk1nJ) The domestic car market has dramatically improved since last year.[^RT^](archive.ph/uy1bK) Truck drivers are in ever shorter supply, growing from a 15% shortage to a 21% shortage in the last five years.[^RT^](archive.ph/5YlM5) Russian universities are increasingly partnering with Chinese peers as the war heightens tensions with their western peers.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/DMI1g)

A train crash in Pakistan has killed at least 30 people and injured over 100.[^PD^](archive.ph/ROivm) The Pakistan industrial manufacturing sector, based largely on textiles, is in a critical condition - 25 to 30% of all textile factories have closed and 700,000 jobs have been lost in the last year or so.[^DS^](archive.ph/mfx2W)

Kazakhstan has signed $200 million in contracts with Afghanistan.[^EN^](archive.ph/FzjYi)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


China is building the highest bridge in the world across the Huajiang river, set to finish construction in 2025. It will reduce transit times across the canyon from 70 minutes to 1 minute.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/WhFCu) China is also building the world's largest span road-rail bridge, 3118 meters long with a designed train speed of 250 km/h, in Zhejiang province.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/KvFqv) Foreign envoys from a variety of countries have concluded their visits to Xinjiang at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with no forced labor or human rights violations seen, and with compliments to Chinese development projects.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/86kPa) China is leading the company count on the Fortune Global 500 list again, including those in Taiwan.[^ANN^](archive.ph/RD3eD)

Modi has launched a program to modernize India's railways, two months after nearly 300 people were killed in a rail accident.[^RT^](archive.ph/4VGMo) As India, Thailand, and Vietnam limit rice exports, food markets might get a bit chaotic in the near-to-mid future.[^MP^](archive.ph/5FCIJ)

The DPRK remains unresponsive to the US's pleas to bring Travis King home.[^ANN^](archive.ph/SGIfk) A group of hackers secretly breached networks at a major Russian missile developer for at least five months last year, but is unknown what - or even, if - they stole anything. The release of this news is obviously timed for the Russian visit to the DPRK.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/27kmg)

Bangladesh inflation has slowed down slightly, but the cost of living crisis continues.[^ANN^](archive.ph/u8HRm)

Timor Leste will reconsider its accession bid to ASEAN if the bloc cannot handle the Myanmar issue, saying that they cannot accept military juntas anywhere.[^ANN^](archive.ph/3p3qC)


Africa


Russian energy company RusHydro is considering 15 projects in 11 African countries, including geothermal energy and the water structures for nuclear power plants.[^RT^](archive.ph/600NM)

Mali and Burkina Faso have sent a delegation to Niger to show solidarity.[^AN^](archive.ph/gxrHE) Malian soldiers were killed in a very conveniently timed jihadist ambush while heading to Niger.[^AN^](archive.ph/hz6Il) Niger has shut down its airspace and warns of an imminent attack as ECOWAS's one week deadline for the military government to reinstate Bazoum comes and goes.[^AN^](archive.ph/4LrvF) Benin has pledged support for a potential ECOWAS mission into Niger.[^AN^](archive.ph/GaL60) The Niger coup is not good news for Italy's Mattei plan, which seeks to reinforce energy partnerships with African partners.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/EoHOK)


North America


Naked Capitalism looks at the current US economy (and how that affects Biden's chances in 2024).[^NC^](archive.ph/Dlv9h)

A state district judge in Texas issued a temporary injuction against an abortion ban in the case of unsafe pregnacies; the Texas Supreme Court instantly blocked the injuction by filing an appeal.[^SP^](archive.ph/69uBp)

Jacobin takes a bold stand by saying that Donald Trump being prosecured for his crimes is good, actually.[^Jacobin^](archive.ph/QT7ii)

The UAW leader has demanded wage hikes and an end to two-tier wages, citing large profits by GM, Stellantis, and Ford.[^PW^](archive.ph/U4Lk4)


Latin America


An article that covers the recent history of Nicaragua since the 2018 coup attempt.[^MR^](archive.ph/KWSiu)

Maduro has criticized the European response, or lack thereof, to the burning of the Quran, and has expressed his solidarity with Muslims worldwide.[^AM^](archive.ph/ZpEEz) America's long-running plan to steal Venezuela's oil company, CITGO, which provided oil at a discount to countries in the Caribbean and allowed Venezuela to provide healthcare to its citizenry, will reach completion in October.[^MR^](archive.ph/Y6VAd) Lula has signed a decree that guarantees the purchase of energy from Venezuela.[^TS^](archive.ph/PRshB)

China's ambassador to Argentina has once again expressed support for the Argentine government's claim of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, as well as expressing support for Argentina to join BRICS.[^MP^](archive.ph/SQXv3) Argentina has paid the IMF with a loan from Qatar.[^MP^](archive.ph/H7CkL)


:::

in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for August 9th


::: spoiler expand

Global


South Africa has said that 67 countries and 20 international organizations' representatives have been invited to the BRICS summit (though "only" 23 of them are apparently planning on joining). France is not among them.[^AM^](archive.ph/O6DsE)


Europe


The European Right's "Pro-Family" Turn Is Just Austerity in Disguise[^Jacobin^](archive.ph/rfT0k)

Vacation for Me, Not for Thee: European Workers’ Hard-Won Summer Vacation Tradition Is Slowly Being Taken Away[^NC^](archive.ph/U3Sss)

EU gas tanks are at nearly 90% full well ahead of schedule and storage in Ukraine is being used increasingly.[^BNE^](archive.ph/Enihm) Gas prices are still 2 to 3 times higher than the pre-war historical averages.

UK's Electoral Commission says 'hostile actors' had access to voting registers[^EN^](archive.ph/f5lW3)

Yeah, those "hostile actors" are called "Tories".

Yet another union sellout at Deutsche Bahn?[^WSWS^](archive.ph/bUHUh) TSMC is building an $11 billion chip manufacturing plant in Germany which will begin production by the end of 2027.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/uGB6L) Volkswagen has retaken the lead in electric car sales from Tesla, those these sales are well below those for gas or diesel cars.[^DW^](archive.ph/jXgVt) Germany expects major investments worth 80 billion euros despite the economic slowdown; do not go gently into that good night.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/m5fXy)

Germany's Model for European Capitalism Is Exhausted[^Jacobin^](archive.ph/ftTOl)

Romania has cancelled a French contract to build Black Sea warships after they failed to finalize the agreement in time. Man, France is really not having a great time these days.[^AM^](archive.ph/bBYPV) The French trade balance deficit has fallen very significantly over the last 6 months due to energy prices falling and increasing imports to China.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/XrVyc)


Western Asia


Erdogan has called on the West to comply with Russia's demands for their side of the grain deal, as he works to try and restart the grain deal.[^TS^](archive.ph/lBn4S)

Australia has reinstated the term 'occupied Palestinian Territories' for the West Bank, after reverting from that position in 2014.[^MEE^](archive.ph/vqx26)


Central Asia


Russia has cancelled tax agreements with most Western countries, which are designed to protect citizens against their income being taxed twice in both countries.[^RT^](archive.ph/w4Fcv) Smuggling Korean pine nuts into Russia might now result in 12 years in prison, which means my side hustle is now over. Thanks, Putin.[^RT^](archive.ph/kfZZP)

Pakistan's Prime Minister is dissolving the federal government, allowing a caretaker government to be put in place until the next general election.[^TS^](archive.ph/zsIif) Imran Khan has been banned from politics for five years and has been sent to prison for three years.[^AM^](archive.ph/nnY1U)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


Flood relief and reconstruction efforts in China are being intensified as flooding begins to recede.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/dZ1VF) China's Foreign Minister is going to visit Singapore, Malaysia, and Cambodia soon.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/DDmk1) Trade with Russia is up 36% in Q1 and Q2 2023, and trade with the US is down by 15%.[^AM^](archive.ph/cEDQC)

The Australian Labor party's welfare reforms have been described as a "parachute with holes" by the Greens.[^GL^](archive.ph/ONUoi)


Africa


ECOWAS is holding a summit on intervention in Niger tomorrow.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/pL17E) Blinken has warned that Wagner is taking advantage of the instability in Niger, but has said that Russia and Wagner were not behind the coup.[^AN^](archive.ph/x7kdc) Nigerian businesses on the Nigerien border are being badly affected by the sanctions against Niger.[^AN^](archive.ph/mlj1d) Mali and Burkina Faso have called on the UN to prevent an armed intervention in Niger.[^AM^](archive.ph/y9ZdT) Niger has appointed its prime minister, Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, who has experience as finance minister in previous Nigerien governments.[^AN^](archive.ph/Kkxha)

The president of the Central African Republic, Touadéra, has won a vote to override a constitutional bar on running for a third term; the country is seen as a Russian "client state" due to Wagner presence.[^FT^](archive.ph/7J3Rv)

Uganda is building two new nuclear power plants with the help of Russia and South Korea; Uganda has uranium deposits that could supply them.[^BNE^](archive.ph/2XXF1) Also, a piece on Ugandan nurses that go overseas rather than staying in the country, due to poor conditions and overworking.[^AN^](archive.ph/SdSBm)

South Sudan has joined the International Convention on Cluster Munitions, the 112th country to do so.[^CD^](archive.ph/9XRGw)


North America


The governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles have said that they're willing to try and assist in brokering a deal between executives and the striking writers and actors, due to their concern about the strike's impact on the economy.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/OmHwj)

Bernie has unveiled a $17 federal minimum wage bill by 2028.[^PW^](archive.ph/DkDgF)

57% of Americans disapprove of Biden's handling of climate change, and 71% of voters know basically nothing about the Inflation Reduction Act. 39% support the IRA, 20% oppose, and 39% have no idea.[^ICN^](archive.ph/1CzAY)

DeSantis in NH calls for slitting the throats of federal workers[^PW^](archive.ph/QAvlk)

Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men can now donate blood, as policies switch towards risk-based assessments - instead, people will now receive a questionnaire, and you can now no longer donate blood if you've had anal sex with new partners within three months (so, not in a monogamous relationship).[^Advocate^](archive.ph/rZPWF)

The 25 Largest U.S. Banks Are Seeing the Largest Fall in Deposits in 38 Years With No Signs of Letting Up[^WSoP^](archive.ph/pUvVh)

Canadian dockworkers in British Columbia have agreed to a deal with their employers, ending the strike.[^GL^](archive.ph/qdeZD)


Latin America


AMLO has dispelled rumors that Mexico has applied to join BRICS, saying that he's prioritizing strengthening ties with the US and Canada.[^RT^](archive.ph/UCFAt)

Colombia's President, Petro, has suggested during a speech in Belem[^MP^](archive.ph/unS2p) that an international environment court should be created to prosecute crimes in the area, in addition to an "Amazon NATO" to defend the region.[^MP^](archive.ph/siy01) Perhaps comparing it to "NATO" isn't the best idea, though calling it the "New Amazon Tree Organization" would be a good bit.

Brazil's central bank has launched its digital currency plan, with the currency called the "drex".[^MP^](archive.ph/gwyO2)

Jamaica is joining in on sending police forces to Haiti.[^TS^](archive.ph/aR2TA) The US embassy in Haiti has been closed temporarily due to gunfire.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/SeCuJ)


The War Against The West


‘The war changed everything’: Hungarians in Ukraine turn against Orbán[^FT^](archive.ph/X56z6)

Putler puppet Orban has said that maybe, perhaps, potentially we should try and maybe make peace with Russia rather than continuing to send hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to their deaths for literally no reason whatsoever. We will never forgive him for this. This is just like when Vladimir Mao-Marx Stalin personally strangled a hundred billion Ukrainians to death while the lovely Germans tried to rescue them and put them in... uh... refugee camps.[^FT^](archive.ph/X56z6)

NATO training leaves Ukrainian troops ‘underprepared’ for war[^OD^](archive.ph/GLlm6)

Dozens of Leopard 1 tanks are being sent from Belgium to Ukraine for their role of being blown up in minefields.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/wLV79)


:::

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 9th to June 15th, 2025 - Iran-Israel War Begins


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is Israeli interceptors trying and failing to intercept missiles over their cities.


Israel just carried out a widespread bombing of Iran, which has killed a number of senior officials inside Iran (though it seems the leadership is more-or-less intact) as well as a number of civilians. Important facilities have been targeted, but the amount of damage is unknown so far (note that many important Iranian facilities are deep underground, making them both hard to damage but also hard to determine if they are damaged from just satellite imagery, so reports of damage will be he-said-she-said).

It appears the attack took Iran by surprise, given that a residential block was targeted that contained some senior officials - if one saw an attack coming, one would imagine they'd be in bunkers. Nonetheless, like the rest of the Resistance Axis, I suspect that Iran has adapted their military structures to be resistant to decapitation strikes by ensuring that replacement figures are ready to take the place of killed officials.

Iran has delivered a massive missile barrage in response to Israeli aggression, even though Israel is continuing to bomb Iran. Iran is now aware of the location of many important Israeli sites, including secret nuclear sites, due to their recent intelligence haul, giving them a distinct edge.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 16 - June 2nd to June 8th, 2025


This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the sixteenth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

For every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 15: The Monetary Offensive of Spring 1973, which is approximately 32 pages.



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (9 months ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 16th to June 22nd, 2025 - Iran, Harden Your Heart


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.


Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.

Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).

Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.

I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran's leadership must - if they haven't already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (9 months ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from August 14th to August 20th, 2023 - America's War On Pipelines


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Thread image created by yours truly, depicting Iran and Pakistan very impolitely not asking whether America, on the other side of the planet, is okay with them transporting gas around.


The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline has long been obstructed by American involvement in the region. Iran completed its section of the pipeline quite quickly, but Pakistan has been unable to finish its construction for a decade due to the fear of falling afoul of American sanctions on Iran. The United States has repeatedly tried to pressure Pakistan to give up the project and obtain gas from other countries instead. Recent articles on the state of the pipeline are contradictory, with some stating that Iran or Pakistan have given up on the pipeline while American sanctions persist. Pakistani officials reject this framing, saying that they are still working with Iran to try and get the project completed somehow. Nonetheless, Iran is becoming increasingly frustrated and is threatening a legal battle and a demand for reparations.

Meanwhile, back in Niger, the $13 billion under-construction pipeline connecting Nigeria and other West African countries to Spain and Italy will likely face delays due to the sanctions applied by the West and ECOWAS on Niger. Those following the European gas fiasco will be aware that while Spain and Italy have been impacted by the energy crisis, they have been very busy making deals with African countries to replace their Russian gas, and thus stand a better chance than Germany of making it through the crisis with their industries somewhat intact. The coup has thrown a wrench into their plans, though they can still obtain some gas from northern African countries.

And, last but not least, America tried for years to stop the construction of the Nord Stream pipelines between Germany and Russia, which culminated in them deciding to blow them up late last year.

All in all - the United States really does not like it when countries build up energy infrastructure and gain some independence from them.


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is here in the comments.

This week's third update is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.


Resources For Understanding The War


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.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for August 16th


::: spoiler expand

Global


Putin Points to Steady Development of Multipolar World Order[^TS^](archive.ph/TZ1wP)

"Most countries are ready to assert their sovereignty and defend their national interests, traditions, culture," he said during the 11th Moscow Conference on International Security.

He further noted that those who currently provoke new conflicts around the world and try to escalate existing ones are "seeking to benefit from human tragedy" by dividing nations, enforcing obedience, and exploiting the resources of other states.


Europe


UK unemployment on the rise despite record wage growth[^AM^](archive.ph/Vbak9)
Raw sewage, farming pollution blight 90% of England’s rivers[^AM^](archive.ph/949zd)

Student living costs reach ‘historic’ highs in France[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/FPYe6)

Student living costs are reaching new highs in France, with over 10% increases year-on-year in rent, utility bills, and food, according to student unions’ new data.


Wild boar 'invasion': Another Italian city faces a particularly porcine problem[^EN^](archive.ph/fTULo)

Poland displays military might in huge parade as elections loom[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/THist)

Latvia’s prime minister announces resignation[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/u6C3O)

Alongside its Baltic neighbours Lithuania and Estonia, Latvia is a leading voice in pushing the European Union and NATO to increase pressure on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.


Who must go?


Western Asia


Middle East's groundwater shortage: Will it soon run out?[^DW^](archive.ph/wKKdd)

Nobody can really say because the studies haven't been done.

Azerbaijan: Authorities smash unionization efforts for gig workers[^EN^](archive.ph/ENjep)

Authorities in Azerbaijan are cracking down on labor organizers amid recent efforts to improve working conditions and unionize food delivery workers in Baku. Three young Azerbaijani labor rights activists have been arrested so far in August and a fourth has opted to renounce his unionizing activity.


Khashoggi murder: Tony Blair Institute kept advising Saudi Arabia after killing[^MEE^](archive.ph/K3hiz)

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair has continued to receive money from Saudi Arabia through his institute after the brutal killing of the journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, a new report has revealed.


As long as I am breathing in air... I wish the trial of Tony Blair.

US F-35s come 'dangerously' close to Russian Su-35s in Syria's Al-Tanf[^AM^](archive.ph/hGvIq)


Central Asia


Any attempt to sabotage CPEC, friendship with Pakistan will not succeed: Chinese foreign ministry[^Dawn^](archive.ph/3GHHq)

In relation to an attack on a Chinese convoy in Gwadar Port.

China calls for greater international support for Afghanistan, but tells Taliban world has ‘some expectations’ on progress[^SCMP^](archive.ph/pTj0l)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


Latest China satellite Ludi Tance to survey one-third of Earth in high-orbit breakthrough[^SCMP^](archive.ph/IFecP)
China stocks Iranian oil, highest imports volume in a decade[^AM^](archive.ph/hZeMM)
China suspends release of youth unemployment rate[^ANN^](archive.ph/0yIFl)
China chip output growth slows in July as self-sufficiency drive continues[^SCMP^](archive.ph/BFkck)

I'm hearing China is a mere 8 days from collapse.

Is China’s property crisis at breaking point? Country Garden heads for debt workout while Sino-Ocean misses payments[^SCMP^](archive.ph/qVY02)

Apparently the troubled country is just 5 days from collapse.

China’s maritime ambitions boosted, claims largest shipping fleet title from Greece[^SCMP^](archive.ph/PwEpH)
No Breakthroughs But Lots of Good Vibes After Two Days of Chinese, Indian Border Talks[^CGS^](archive.ph/7RlKc)

And isn't good vibes what life's all about, after all?

Taiwanese investing more in South Asia, Asean than mainland China amid global supply chains reshuffle[^SCMP^](archive.ph/8iyCb)
Philippines sees risk of conflict over Taiwan as a ‘major concern’[^TST^](archive.ph/nNZYX)

The Philippines seeks to bolster its ability to address threats while underlining the need to strengthen ties with allies and pursue an independent foreign policy at the same time, under a six-year national security policy published on Tuesday.


US soldier entered DPRK seeking refuge from "unequal American society"[^AM^](archive.ph/4RQvK)

ADHD diagnoses in South Korea rise by 80% compared to 4 years ago[^ANN^](archive.ph/reH5o)

Indonesia’s quartz sand export ban seen to push domestic solar panel manufacturing[^ANN^](archive.ph/C0Ihn)
Government to start random emission tests as poor air chokes Jakarta[^TJP^](archive.ph/gvmT6)

Vietnam eyes sustainable development of coastal cities[^ANN^](archive.ph/dnnR1)


Africa


Mali's president engages Putin on phone about Niger coup[^AN^](archive.ph/uYUvw)

In a message shared on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Goita stated that Putin emphasized the significance of a peaceful resolution to ensure stability in the Sahel region.


Ghana opposition warn president on Niger troop plans[^AN^](archive.ph/3Pbu3)

Lawmakers from the opposition are urging President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana to immediately halt all preparations towards deploying Ghanaian soldiers for this endeavor.


Nigeriens call for mass recruitment of volunteers as the junta faces possible regional invasion[^AN^](archive.ph/EbQ5H)

The initiative, spearhead by a group of locals in Niamey, aims to recruit tens of thousands of volunteers from across the country to register for the Volunteers for the Defense of Niger, to fight, assist with medical care, and provide technical and engineering logistics among other functions, in case the junta needs help, Amsarou Bako, one of the founders, told The Associated Press Tuesday.


Beyond Niger: How ECOWAS became a tool for Western imperialism in Africa[^MR^](archive.ph/M8BjX)

U.S. Acting Deputy Secretary Victoria Nuland also strongly hinted that the United States is considering invading Niger itself. “It is not our desire to go there, but they [the new military junta] may push us to that point,” Nuland said about her recent trip to Niger, where, she said, she had an “extremely frank and at times quite difficult” meeting with the new leadership.


The Corporate Make-up of the Mining Industry in South Africa: Profit Survey 2023[^MR^](archive.ph/s1i2q)

The World Bank funding freeze will harm the queer Ugandans it claims to defend[^OD^](archive.ph/gWzL5)

It’s true that the World Bank’s decision will likely have little effect on the political elite who passed the bill. But ordinary Ugandans will suffer, particularly the queer people that the bank seems to be advocating for. The bank is the country’s biggest lender. By the end of the 2021/22 financial year, 34.5% of Uganda’s public debt was owed to the bank.


Angola's president inspects Chinese-built dam[^PD^](archive.ph/9WFLA)

The Ndue Dam project is located about 170 km from Ondjiva, the capital of Cunene province. Once completed in 2024, the dam will provide water to meet the needs of approximately 55,000 local residents, ensure a water supply for 60,000 heads of livestock and facilitate the annual irrigation of 9,200 hectares of land.


China and Russia pursue Eritrea for its strategic location in Africa, resources and transport potential[^SCMP^](archive.ph/d7jOm)

China and Russia are showing growing interest in Eritrea, a small African country in a strategic location but whose president is being shunned in the West for his autocratic governance. Its geopolitical significance in the Horn of Africa and easy access to the Red Sea had attracted the attention of Beijing and Moscow, observers said, with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki endearing his country to the big powers and earning finance for projects and investments.

:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for August 18th


Perhaps a few too many articles.

::: spoiler expand

Global


AUKUS, QUAD transforming alliance-like[^Bhadrakumar^](indianpunchline.com/aukus-quad…)

Modi is doing Modi things, basically. A little disappointing but most saw this coming.

The BRICS have changed the balance of forces, but they will not by themselves change the World: The Thirty Third Newsletter (2023)[^MR^](archive.ph/7tCIC)

The entire BRICS project is centred around the question of whether countries at the nether end of the neo-colonial system can break out of that system through mutual trade and cooperation, or whether the larger countries (including those in the BRICS) will inevitably enjoy asymmetries of power and scale against smaller countries and therefore reproduce inequalities rather than transcend them. Our latest dossier, on Marxist dependency theory, calls into question any capitalist project in the South that believes it can somehow break free from the neo-colonial system by importing debt and exporting cheap commodities. Despite the limitations of the BRICS project, it is clear that the increase in South-South trade and the development of Southern institutions (for development financing, for instance) challenges the neo-colonial system even if it does not immediately transcend it. At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we have been closely following the developments and contradictions of the BRICS project from its inception and continue to do so.

Europe


Sarkozy on Russia: 'We need them and they need us'[^AM^](archive.ph/WSLkX)

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy considered that "diplomacy, discussions and talks" are "the only ways" to end the Ukraine war, French media reported.


Sweden raises its terror threat to four out of five after Quran burnings[^EN^](archive.ph/aUkO3)

Right-wing danger grows as crisis in German left continues[^PW^](archive.ph/6SazU)
Germany’s skilled labor shortage worsens[^RT^](archive.ph/V0lAZ)

The results of the poll, released on Wednesday, show that over 43% of respondents reported a deficit of skilled employees in July, up from just over 42% recorded in April. An all-time high of nearly 50% was reached in July 2022.


Netherlands dips into recession after strong COVID rebound[^DW^](archive.ph/pvAYL)
Netherlands hit with 'mild recession': CBS[^AM^](archive.ph/YX5ml)

"Mild recession" vs China's "troubled economy" while still growing.

Spain's Socialists candidate speaker wins key vote backed by Catalans[^AM^](archive.ph/LQG5j)
Spain battles 'out of control' wildfire on Tenerife[^AM^](archive.ph/zcg9m)

30 years after Yugoslavian socialism, Slovenian unions fight for the workers capitalism has forgotten[^RNN^](archive.ph/vNjsb)

Romania is EU's largest wheat exporter in July[^BNE^](archive.ph/xfqVB)

A breakdown of the European Union’s 3.72mn metric tonnes of soft wheat exports in the new marketing year 2023/2024, namely from July 1 to August 13 shows Romania as the biggest EU exporter so far, with 1.04mn tonnes shipped, according to European Commission data.

Poland exported 734,000 tonnes, Bulgaria 685,000 tonnes, France 682,000 tonnes and Germany 414,000 tonnes.


Poland’s GDP falls 1.3% y/y in Q2, flash estimate shows[^BNE^](archive.ph/J358h)

Turkish Cypriot forces assault UN peacekeepers[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/O68bc)

Turkish Cypriot forces assaulted UN peacekeepers Friday (18 August) as they attempted to block the construction of a controversial road in the buffer zone dividing Cyprus, the UN mission on the island said.

Western Asia


1,000 Palestinian prisoners go on hunger strike in IOF prisons[^AM^](archive.ph/nf1GE)
Reviving hegemony: Israel's land-and-rail proposal to the Persian Gulf[^TC^](archive.ph/SpodP)
Washington approves largest-ever Israeli arms deal[^TC^](archive.ph/eUJA6)

The US has given Israel approval to sell the Arrow 3 missile defense system to Germany in a deal worth $3.5 billion, making it Tel Aviv's largest-ever weapons sale.


Presidents of Russia and Iran Discuss BRICS Membership[^TS^](archive.ph/lDF0l)
Russia hosts first-ever meeting of Iran, Saudi defense officials[^TC^](archive.ph/CsJY4)
Saudi Arabia welcomes ‘new phase’ in ties with Iran[^TC^](archive.ph/sL3Ot)
Iranian FM says ties with Saudi Arabia "moving in right direction"[^PD^](archive.ph/3BHKc)
Saudi Arabia’s oil exports fall to 21-month low[^RT^](archive.ph/UXGAi)
Saudi Arabia and UAE race to buy computer chips[^FT^](archive.ph/mGk02)
Saudi Arabia inks $1.33bn worth of housing, infrastructure deals with China[^TC^](archive.ph/28Jo7)

US occupation loots tons of Syrian oil, smuggles them into Iraq[^AM^](archive.ph/IIH3e)


Central Asia


Russia’s war economy[^MichaelRoberts^](thenextrecession.wordpress.com…)

Putin hints at plans for high-speed rail to Donbass[^RT^](archive.ph/JbGoj)

The new transport route would link the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk to Moscow and the Black Sea resort of Sochi, the Russian president has said


Former Mercedes plant near Moscow to resume production – deputy PM [^RT^](archive.ph/wm1bD)

Russian auto dealer Avtodom could launch production at a former Mercedes-Benz plant in Moscow Region with new partners next year, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, who serves as trade and industry minister, announced this week.


Belarusian president says to work with China in promoting world peace[^CGTN^](archive.ph/gyQKv)
China’s defence chief Li Shangfu mounts Belarus military ties mission on trip to Russian ally[^SCMP^](archive.ph/vLy2V)

Kyrgyzstan: President pushes back on US accusations of sanctions-busting behavior[^EN^](archive.ph/mbMjM)

In an August 8 letter sent under the aegis of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and the committee’s chairman, called on Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov to address allegations of sanctions-busting activity that assists “Russia, or its proxies.” Menendez also called out Japarov’s administration over authoritarian practices.


...

Japarov obliged indirectly, releasing a statement to the Kabar news agency disavowing any official role in facilitating trade with Russia that violated sanctions. He claimed Russia did not need Kyrgyzstan to act as a middleman for Chinese trade. Citing the fact that Russia and China share thousands of miles of common frontier, Japarov said that “if Russia wants, she can import any goods she desires by rail or via barges.”

Eastern Asia and Oceania


Xi Jinping urges speed in China’s rush to recover from devastating floods[^SCMP^](archive.ph/IAefB)

Xi said food security must be ensured and insurance payments speeded up, and he urged officials to make good use of disaster relief funding in the wake of Typhoon Doksuri, which swept through large parts of China earlier in August. Close to 4 million people were affected by the consequent floods, which caused more than 30 deaths in northern China. Dozens of people are still missing.


China's outbound direct investment grows steadily in first seven months of 2023[^CGTN^](archive.ph/Zzxu3)
China: Evergrande files for bankruptcy protection in US[^DW^](archive.ph/N6gnq)
China’s biggest banks offloading dollars – Reuters[^RT^](archive.ph/jylYX)

An unnamed Shanghai-based trader told the news outlet that the action is not uncommon. Banks in China largely trade for their own purposes or on orders from clients. However, they are also known to do it upon request from the country’s central bank, the People's Bank of China (PBOC), when it needs additional support for the domestic currency.


Nooooo! That's cheating! That's not very Wholesome 100 free market of you!!!

China demands US lift tariffs on steel, aluminum after WTO ruling[^AM^](archive.ph/aJ5yk)
Taiwan may be in breach of WTO rules: Beijing[^ANN^](archive.ph/8XuBi)

A preliminary investigation has found that the Taiwan region’s restrictions on products from the Chinese mainland are suspected of violating rules set by the World Trade Organization, the Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday.


Nepal says it never allows anti-China activities on its territory[^CGTN^](archive.ph/QVwk9)
China to help Sri Lanka address challenges of financial debt: Wang Yi[^CGTN^](archive.ph/2Hww8)
Sri Lankan president emphasizes importance of learning Chinese[^PD^](archive.ph/ek2Vu)
Over 50,000 families affected by dry weather in Sri Lanka[^PD^](archive.ph/SSmyU)

The DMC said there are over 180,000 people belonging to these families affected by the dry weather in terms of scarcity of drinking water. According to it, the northern and eastern provinces are the hardest hit by the dry weather.


Hopes up for positive real growth in Japan in fiscal 2023[^ANN^](archive.ph/RFshu)
:::

Bulletins and News Discussion from June 23rd to June 29th, 2025 - Iran, Harden Your Deep Military Sites


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of the damage caused by an Iranian Kheibar Shekan ballistic missile in Israel, causing dozens of injuries.


Now in our second week of the conflict, we have seen continuing damage to both Israel and Iran, as well as direct US intervention which nonetheless seems to have caused limited damage to Fordow and little damage to Iran's nuclear program. Regime change seems more elusive than ever, as even Iranians previously critical of the government now rally around it as they are attacked by two rabid imperialists at once. And Iran's government is tentatively considering a withdrawal, or at minimum a reconsideration, of their membership to the IAEA and the NPT. And, of course, the Strait of Hormuz is still a tool in their arsenal.

A day or so on from the strike on Fordow, we have so far seen basically no change in strategy from the Iranian military as they continue to strike Israel with small barrages of missiles. Military analysts argue furiously - is this a deliberate strategy of steady attrition on Israel, or indicative of immense material constraints on Iran? Are the hits by Israel on real targets, or are they decoys? Does Iran wish to develop a nuke, or are they still hesitating? Will Iran and Yemen strike at US warships and bases in response to the attack, or will they merely continue striking only Israel?

And perhaps most importantly - will this conflict end diplomatically due to a lack of appetite for an extended war (to wit: not a peace but a 20 year armistice) or with Israel forced into major concessions including an end to their genocide? Or even with a total military/societal collapse of either side?


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



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Bulletins and News Discussion from June 30th to July 6th, 2025 - Alas, Poor Boric - COTW: Chile


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Image is sourced from this People's Dispatch article, depicting communists attending the 2023 funeral of Communist Party President Guillermo Teillier, who was tortured for years under Pinochet's regime and helped rebuild the Communist Party while under a fascist dictatorship.


We had the Six Day War in 1967, we had the Nineteen Day War (Yom Kippur) in 1973, and now we've had the Twelve Day War. I wonder how many more very short wars will plague the region until Palestine is freed?

However, moving on from Western Asia from a little while, we have some interesting news from Chile - the former labor minister and communist, Jeannette Jara, has won the primary election for the left-wing bloc in a landslide (~60% of the vote), as the current President, Gabriel Boric, is term-limited. Her achievements include a minimum wage increase and a reduction of the work week to 40 hours.

In November, Jara will face down the contenders from other parties, including José Antonio Kast, who is analogous to Brazil's Bolsonaro. Unfortunately, Jara is now the lead figure of a party that has been taking quite a few Ls under Boric's leadership. Ostensibly a Democratic Socialist, he ruled as - you guessed it - a neoliberal, bending the knee to the US and EU. He not only failed to overthrow the Pinochet-era constitution, he actually allowed the right-wing to turn the proposed new constitution into something worse, and had to settle for campaigning against the new one and keeping the old one. And he had very little solidarity with other left-leaning leaders on the continent, like Maduro, Lula, Petro, or Castillo.

With this in mind, I cannot help but look at Argentina's very recent history and feel a little dread - but if anybody can save Chile at this point, it can only be a communist.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Epilogue, Questions, Suggestions


We made it to the final chapter of the book! Last thread is here.

As I said in the previous thread, apologies for not posting a new thread last week. The superimperialists keep starting major wars and keeping me busy in the news megathread.

This thread will serve as the final one for the book, as a holding thread for any observations, questions, and suggestions for further books. There have been a few books suggested, such as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, but if anybody has other suggestions, particularly for ones focussed on West Asia given ongoing events, then I'm all ears!

I plan to give everybody, including myself, a few weeks to rest, catch up, and be distracted by the potential beginning of World War 3. How busy I'll be will be determined by how the Iran conflict progresses, but I'm currently thinking to start the next book in late July.



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Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 3 - March 3rd to March 9th, 2025


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This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the third week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition, but I imagine most of the information is the same if you have an earlier edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 2: Breakdown of World Balance, 1921-1932, which is approximately 25 pages.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from August 21st to August 27th, 2023 - RIP PRIGO


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Image is from @Parsani@hexbear.net, who got it from @RNAi@hexbear.net, who got it from Discord.


Thread update: Prigozhin's fucking dead.

rip-bozo


The BRICS summit will begin on Tuesday and end on Thursday, with various world leaders, politicians, and representatives meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa.

America's anxiety about the summit has been obvious. They have been complicating the event by pushing for the arrest warrant for Putin to be upheld if he steps foot in the country. While this is a remarkably dangerous and unhinged thing to do - even by America's standards - to the leader of a nuclear superpower who could end the world within an hour, it does betray their desperation. Unfortunately, for those of us who wanted to see Putin surrounded by an army of security guards fending off people holding handcuffs, he has sent his Foreign Minister, Lavrov, in his place. Additionally, America has likely been spreading rumors about the lack of interest in gaining new members in the organization.

With apparently 20 countries formally seeking membership and another 20 informally doing so, the bloc has been elevated, whether they like it or not, to the position of the international vanguard of the non-western world. It is extremely important to say that this is not the same as it becoming an anti-American bloc, and many of them (including original members Brazil and India) wish to keep a friendly relationship with the United States. Nonetheless, with the United States' policy of "if you are not with us, you are against us," and as the US seeks to weaken China, in coming years many of them might find themselves under hostile pressure.

BRICS has to try and solve many problems if they are going to chip away at America's stranglehold of the world economy. These problems - like mitigating the dollar's status as a global reserve currency, and America's dominant role in the world economy - are extremely complicated, and will takes years, even decades, to be overcome. Therefore, one should temper their expectations and excitement for this summit. It took tens of millions of deaths in cataclysmic wars, and then several more decades, for America to reach its current position. I see no reason to believe why its downfall will be any less bloody and elongated.

To end on a less depressing note, I've been searching for appropriate anagrams given the list of countries that seek to join BRICS. Obviously not all of them will make it in, but even so. The best I've come up with is HIBISCUS EMANCIPATES BBBBKKRVV.

(also, "bulletins and news discussion" can be rearranged to "libidinous newsstands uncles".)


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is here in the comments.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.


Resources For Understanding The War


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.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


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This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for August 21st


::: spoiler expand

Global


Scientists raise alarm over global spread of new highly-mutated COVID-19 variant[^WSWS^](archive.ph/rA5OW)

The latest wastewater data from the US released Thursday shows that over the past eight weeks, the level of viral transmission has increased by 227 percent nationally, more than tripling. At present, it is estimated that nearly 610,000 Americans are being infected each day, and 6 million are currently sick with COVID-19, near the peak levels reached during the Delta wave in 2021. This surge is largely being driven by Eris, which became dominant last week and now accounts for 20.6 percent of sequenced cases.


Dramatic report on world water resources, four billion people affected[^MP^](archive.ph/DeCdi)

Additionally, about four billion people live in conditions where they have high water stress for a minimum of one month out of the year, a report from WRI said.


China urges Brics to become geopolitical rival to G7[^FT^](archive.ph/NttUN)

According to an unidentified Chinese official. Hmm.

Cyril Ramaphosa seeks to avoid global powers ‘contest’ over Brics expansion[^FT^](archive.ph/PjjJO)
Chinese Automakers Prominent at BRICS Summit[^CGS^](archive.ph/os6MR)
Ukraine and Russia tussle for attention and influence at BRICS summit[^EN^](archive.ph/kisJ5)

Given what the 'R' stands for in BRICS, I think I might know who's gonna win this one.

China-led de-dollarisation gains traction among emerging economies ahead of Brics summit[^SCMP^](archive.ph/sMeDg)


Europe


Pursuit of a modern-day US steel industry leader will test Biden’s trustbusters[^FT^](archive.ph/37efp)
‘We’re in the lap of the gods’: UK farmers contend with extreme weather[^FT^](archive.ph/0bQuq)
UK wage growth cannot conceal escalating cost-of-living surge and social inequality[^WSWS^](archive.ph/Reqei)

Understanding the belated rise of Portugal’s new far right[^GL^](archive.ph/8nYKt)

Nearly two-thirds of Germans want new government, poll says[^DW^](archive.ph/sNZ6m)

Only 22% of those surveyed by the polling agency INSA said they thought an election would not benefit Germany. The same percentage said they were satisfied with the work of Olaf Scholz as chancellor, with 70% saying they were not.


Study: Czech economy falls into middle-income trap[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/TtZwp)
Poland is becoming Washington's gateway for regional energy diplomacy[^EN^](archive.ph/w67WL)


Western Asia


'Like rain': Saudi forces killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants[^AM^](archive.ph/5fZIo)

Hundreds of Ethiopian migrants, or possibly "thousands", have been killed by Saudi border guards since 2022, who opened fire "like rain" on the civilians trying to cross through Yemen into the Kingdom to escape the atrocities of regional wars, Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday.


Israeli police accused of branding Star of David on Palestinian man's cheek[^MEE^](archive.ph/FjWeG)

Iran, Brazil to launch direct shipping line[^AM^](archive.ph/RYmaD)
Orchestrating coups integral part of US, UK policies: Kanaani[^AM^](archive.ph/5PGn0)

No lies detected.


Central Asia


Russia's Luna-25 has smashed into the moon[^CGTN^](archive.ph/wcWJH)

For all we know, there was a Ukrainian ammo dump right there.

Turkmenistan signals major change in energy-export stance[^BNE^](archive.ph/TKW7F)

Turkmenistan has signalled its readiness to develop a Trans-Caspian pipeline that potentially could increase natural gas deliveries to the European Union. The westward shift in Ashgabat’s export intentions is not expected to impact Turkmenistan’s ability to fulfil existing export commitments to China. The Central Asian state is believed to have more than enough reserves to send large volumes of gas eastward and westward.


Tajik women turn to polygamy for survival[^DW^](archive.ph/Apmfz)

High poverty rates and a tough job market have contributed to nearly 1 million of the country's approximately 9 million citizens finding employment outside of Tajikistan. Their remittances are a key source of income for many families and make up roughly 20-30% of the country’s GDP, according to data from the World Bank and World Economic Forum.

This is one reason why many divorced Tajik women apear to support the right of men to marry multiple times: polygamous marriages are mainly sought by high- and middle-income men and many women see this as their only way to secure financial security for themselves and their children.


Pakistan Events Confirm that Washington Prefers Compliant Autocrats Over Feisty Democrats[^AW^](archive.ph/yAZPr)


Eastern Asia and Oceania


China points to CIA again in second case of alleged spy recruitment[^SCMP^](archive.ph/Z0VbP)
China surprisingly holds mortgage rate, underwhelming move raises easing outlook concerns[^SCMP^](archive.ph/rJzCz)
China’s property-driven economic crisis is real but it’s not facing a ‘Lehman moment’[^SCMP^](archive.ph/DvzOy)

I know what they mean but I read it like you might read "Reddit moment" and found it quite funny.

China’s largest quantum computing cloud platform opens[^ANN^](archive.ph/AGjQP)
Mainland China bans Taiwanese mangoes in latest trade barb, Taipei hits out at ‘one-sided’ act[^SCMP^](archive.ph/Phz0x)
Vietnamese workers growing in numbers, contributing to Taiwan’s economy, as island seeks labour[^SCMP^](archive.ph/EyePf)

North Korean hacking group targets Korea-US combined exercise[^ANN^](archive.ph/r2iGV)
Kim oversees DPRK cruise missile test ahead of Seoul, US drills[^AM^](archive.ph/0Cnkx)
China approves restarting North Korea commercial flights[^DW^](archive.ph/Mbmry)

China announced on Monday approving the restarting of commercial flights between Beijing and Pyongyang, for the first time since North Korea closed its borders in early 2020 as a precautionary measure against the COVID-19 pandemic.


Indonesian ministry decries EU trade ‘colonialism’ amid biodiesel investigation[^ANN^](archive.ph/oUjEQ)

Disputes between the two parties have developed into a World Trade Organization tit for tat involving several of Indonesia’s main commodities, such as biodiesel, steel and nickel.


Forget world domination, India won’t catch up with China any time soon[^SCMP^](archive.ph/4bzeB)
Modi emerges as preferred candidate for PM’s post, Rahul Gandhi distant second [^TS^](archive.ph/eaYty)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emerged as the front runner among preferred candidates for the post among respondents from Chhattisgarh, as per the ABP-CVoter Chhattisgarh Opinion Poll.


Bangladesh’s Rooppur nuclear power plant will be ready on time, but power generation delayed[^ANN^](archive.ph/DOiSU)

One of the two projects for power evacuation from Rooppur, which was taken up in April 2018 for completion by December this year, saw 63 percent physical progress and 47.78 percent financial progress as of June, according to the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB). The Tk 10,981 crore transmission project is unlikely to be completed before the middle of next year, according to officials.

The physical progress of the other project, which was taken up in July 2022 for completion by June 2025, is just 5 percent and the financial progress is 7.47 percent as of July 3, according to PGCB.


[Australian] Unemployment is up and the Reserve Bank will make sure it gets worse[^GL^](archive.ph/j9YWs)

Survey shows majority of New Zealanders struggling financially[^WSWS^](archive.ph/EpK1C)


Africa


S.Africa receives funds from BRICS bank, China supports bloc expansion[^AM^](archive.ph/rimKA)
Chinese Company Expands Footprint in South Africa’s Energy Sector With New Solar Project[^CGS^](archive.ph/Ckq0e)

West African bloc says 'D-Day' set for possible Niger intervention[^CGTN^](archive.ph/L9AYs)
Chinese weapons supplier Norinco expands influence in West Africa, challenging Russia and France[^SCMP^](archive.ph/03Acw)
Moscow unlikely to give up Niger toehold as threat of ECOWAS military action looms[^BNE^](archive.ph/AnAMt)
Niger's junta warns against military intervention, vows return to civilian rule within 3 years[^AN^](archive.ph/zWnUu)
ECOWAS envoys in Niger to find peaceful solution to crisis[^AN^](archive.ph/LIn6t)
Niger junta, ECOWAS talks yield little[^AM^](archive.ph/hBGzZ)
New US envoy arrives in Niger, no policy change yet: State Dept[^AM^](archive.ph/iElAG)

The stalled decolonization[^MR^](archive.ph/FK86F)

Yet another (relatively short) piece on Niger, though I like this one a lot and I learned new things from it.

Sudan: aid official urges international community to provide funds[^AN^](archive.ph/JC345)

Cuban leader reaffirms support for Angola[^MP^](archive.ph/P3hpY)

There are 2,056 Cubans in Angola, including 1,058 men and 998 women, including 1,171 healthcare practitioners.

:::

in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for August 23rd


::: spoiler expand


Global


Ignoring BRICS is no longer an option for Washington[^TS^](archive.ph/TAU5x)

Difference on what BRICS should be visible in the summit's first day[^BNE^](archive.ph/noTxF)
Why India doesn’t want BRICS to dismantle the world order built by the West[^RT^](archive.ph/HADnP)

By Bhadrakumar.

Is a BRICS currency feasible?[^CGTN^](archive.ph/pudy3)

Xi refused Macron's attendance at BRICS summit: Intelligence Online[^AM^](archive.ph/DEgQM)

In late June, the French President had made it known through French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna that he was interested in joining the BRICS summit. And Intelligence Online claimed that according to its sources, "diplomatic authorities in Pretoria and New Delhi alike had given their green light to Macron attending."


BRICS: Brazil President Lula da Silva defends closer ties with Africa[^AN^](archive.ph/SQY9c)

The Inclusion of Argentina in the BRICS is Important: Lula[^TS^](archive.ph/xwMAf)

Leaders kick off BRICS summit with Business Forum[^AN^](archive.ph/jwYzf)

BRICS leaders in S.Africa seek to end USD hegemony over global economy[^AM^](archive.ph/Y6Xdm)

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has called for fundamental reform of the global financial system. During his speech at the 15th BRICS summit, Ramaphosa said the bloc's countries represent a quarter of the global economy, a fifth of trade exchanges, and 40% of the world's population.


New Development Bank Moves Forward With Local Currency Bonds in Bid to Reduce Dependence on the U.S. Dollar[^CGS^](archive.ph/zB6BD)

“We expect to lend between $8 billion – $10 billion this year,” Dilma Rousseff, the former Brazilian president who leads the NDB, told the Financial Times in an interview. “Our aim is to reach about 30% of everything we lend... in local currency.”


Benefits of joining BRICS could come at political cost for Indonesia[^ANN^](archive.ph/EGVRt)


Europe


Fruit, vegetable sector plagued by extreme weather as EU takes action[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/1hRIf)

With several regions struggling with the impact of heavy rainfalls and crops in many parts of Europe still affected by severe drought, Brussels is taking steps to soften the blow for the fruit, vegetable, and wine sector.


Keir Starmer’s Labour Party Is Abandoning Workers’ Rights[^Jacobin^](jacobin.com/2023/08/keir-starm…)
Over half of UK houses did not turn on heating during winter: Study[^AM^](archive.ph/Z9Cd3)

Which? energy editor, Emily Seymour, said, “It’s hugely concerning that an estimated 13 million households have not switched the heating on when it’s cold due to fears of high energy bills.”


UK cannot ignore calls for slavery reparations: UN judge[^AM^](archive.ph/X4icF)

Czech coalition drifts towards defeat[^BNE^](archive.ph/p5FHL)

He was greeted by a CVVM opinion poll that showed his five-party coalition government is one of the most unpopular ever, with only 2% of Czechs saying they have a lot of trust in it. Such dire numbers have only been recorded during major political crises in the past.


As everybody knows, the more unpopular the government, the more democratic it is, because you have the freedom to disagree with it unlike in tankie countries. Czechia is EXTREMELY democratic.

Spain's king begins meeting parties to form new government[^DW^](archive.ph/GtwOv)

Germany set to miss net zero by 2045 target as climate efforts falter[^CCN^](archive.ph/eKSnL)
German Business Leaders Against Decoupling From China[^TS^](archive.ph/Ln6NC)

Romania to step up investments to increase Ukraine grain transit[^BNE^](archive.ph/bCTlG)

At a bilateral meeting in Bucharest on August 18, the prime ministers of the two countries said they aimed to export 60% of Ukraine’s grain to international markets via Romania.

Western Asia


2023 is already the deadliest year on record for Palestinians in occupied West Bank, says UN envoy[^MR^](archive.ph/E78Js)

Six Tropes to Look Out for That Distort Israel/Palestine Coverage[^FAIR^](archive.ph/Vnv2z)

*These are: citing Israelis and their organizations more than Palestinians; using the language of "clash" as if fights can exist without two groups of people in them (with Palestinians almost universally at the disadvantage); passivity and copspeak; talking about deaths in a vacuum, without saying whose deaths they are (usually Palestinians) and the ages (sometimes very young); not mentioning Israel's violations of international law; and deliberately obfuscating who the victim is by only reporting things when Palestine responds to an initial attack, and then Israel "protects itself" by firing back.

China And Russia Execute A Pincer Movement Around Iraq’s Biggest Oil Assets[^NC^](archive.ph/5N79v)

As Yves says, the author might be wrong in other fields but he knows his shit and has deep connections in the oil industry, so is worth taking seriously.

Through a large number of smaller deals, Russia and China are looking to increase their influence in the crucial Iraqi upstream oil sector. The exploration and development contracts for China are done through a backdoor method, with firms that are less well-known than the big state players that attract little or no publicity. China regards TotalEnergies’ $27 billion deal as a huge threat to its plans to close the net around Iraq’s oil and gas sector.


‘Bridges with everyone’: how Saudi Arabia and UAE are positioning themselves for power[^FT^](archive.ph/gvfmy)

I was expecting worse from the Financial Times but this article doesn't seem bad. S.A., the UAE, India, Turkiye, and probably others are the new "Non-Aligned Movement" I feel, where they're basically just playing both sides for their own gain with no real belief in the idea of multipolarity except where it benefits them. Pure opportunism and nationalism. I guess it makes them easier to analyze though, because for any issue you can just ask the question "Which side would they benefit more from supporting?" and predict the future perfectly. Whereas with Russia or China, it's a little more complicated than that sometimes, as they have a long term plan.

“The fundamental strategic dilemma for them remains that their security is in the west, their energy politics is with Russia and their prosperity is increasingly with China and the rest of Asia,” Hokayem says. “It requires careful footwork and constant engagement to manage these complex relationships. They have to massively invest in all those capitals, in political, economic and geoeconomic terms. It’s a delicate game.”


Erdogan to visit Russia to meet Putin in September[^MEE^](archive.ph/3IN77)


Central Asia


Water shortages alarm sounded in southern Kazakhstan and Istanbul[^BNE^](archive.ph/XLy8j)

A state of emergency was on August 22 declared in parts of drought-hit southern Kazakhstan due to a lack of irrigation water transferred by neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and abnormally high temperatures.

The move comes just days after authorities in Turkey requested that inhabitants of Istanbul cut their water consumption—with major cities across Turkey facing a drought crisis amid extreme summer heatwave temperatures—and reports that the Irtysh River, which originates in China and then flows into northern Kazakhstan and Russia, is experiencing its lowest water levels since the late Soviet era.


Eastern Asia and Oceania


UK FM's possible Beijing trip a 'tentative contact' to reboot ties; necessary atmosphere need to be created[^GT^](archive.ph/Wqa3g)
Is China flooding Europe with fake biofuels?[^DW^](archive.ph/FqRNO)
Why China is targeting the corruption tumour at the heart of its ailing health system[^SCMP^](archive.ph/dIdm4)
Chinese tech could break barrier to making crucial defence and aerospace material[^SCMP^](archive.ph/0Tyao)

China has developed technology for the mass production of ultra-strong carbon fibre, which could help break international monopolies to supply materials for the aerospace and defence industries. Changsheng Technology Co Ltd, based in the northern province of Hebei, worked with Shenzhen University to produce high-performance carbon fibre on a production line that can make 1,700 tonnes (1,874 tons) of the material per year.


Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 successfully makes historic landing on the moon[^EN^](archive.ph/o20G4)

Indonesia approves ASEAN deals on food safety, building materials, manufacturing[^ANN^](archive.ph/UDz6e)
Indonesia signs deal for 24 Boeing F-15EX fighter jets[^ANN^](archive.ph/sUVFu)

North Korea plans satellite launch amid South Korea-US military drills[^ANN^](archive.ph/6pAid)

Sri Lankan inflation halves to 4.6%[^TDS^](archive.ph/8uUjB)

Cambodia: Lawmakers elect Hun Manet as new prime minister[^DW^](archive.ph/Sfw0u)

Cambodia's parliament endorsed military general Hun Manet as the new prime minister, marking a historic transfer of power in the country his father ruled for almost 40 years. Little is known about Hun Manet's vision for Cambodia, but after getting the unanimous backing of the National Assembly on Tuesday, he said "today is a historic day for Cambodia."

:::

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 7th to July 13th, 2025 - Sanctions on Russia: The Sequel


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn't an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.


Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia's oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that "align themselves with BRICS." Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I'm not sure what exactly "alignment" means, but it could be pretty bad.

Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It's easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).

Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I'm cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it'll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn't impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Epilogue, Questions, Suggestions


We made it to the final chapter of the book! Last thread is here.

As I said in the previous thread, apologies for not posting a new thread last week. The superimperialists keep starting major wars and keeping me busy in the news megathread.

This thread will serve as the final one for the book, as a holding thread for any observations, questions, and suggestions for further books. There have been a few books suggested, such as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, but if anybody has other suggestions, particularly for ones focussed on West Asia given ongoing events, then I'm all ears!

I plan to give everybody, including myself, a few weeks to rest, catch up, and be distracted by the potential beginning of World War 3. How busy I'll be will be determined by how the Iran conflict progresses, but I'm currently thinking to start the next book in late July.



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 4 - March 10th to March 16th, 2025


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This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the fourth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition, but I imagine most of the information is the same if you have an earlier edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 3: Power Through Creditor Status, 1932-1933, which is approximately 18 pages.

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 14th to July 20th, 2025 - A Golden Age Of Copper


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Image is from this article, of a Chilean copper quarry.

Title is a reference to Trump's social media post about copper, which was, as usual, mostly deranged.


Trying to follow Trump's administration is pretty difficult, but as of right now, he is threatening 30% tariffs on Mexico and the EU starting on August 1st, as well as new tariff announcements on a bunch of other countries (including, bizarrely, a 50% tariff on Brazil), and also apparently a 50% tariff on copper, which the US imports half its supply of and is, of course, a very important metal in many applications.

I'm not sure what the plan is to bring back domestic copper production beyond hoping that it just sorta works out, but prominent copper producers, such as Chile and Canada, seem both concerned and confused. Reuters had a line that made me chuckle:

Boric said he was awaiting official communication from the U.S. government, including whether the tariffs would include copper cathodes, and questioned "whether this will actually be implemented or not."


Big mood, Boric.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Epilogue, Questions, Suggestions


We made it to the final chapter of the book! Last thread is here.

As I said in the previous thread, apologies for not posting a new thread last week. The superimperialists keep starting major wars and keeping me busy in the news megathread.

This thread will serve as the final one for the book, as a holding thread for any observations, questions, and suggestions for further books. There have been a few books suggested, such as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, but if anybody has other suggestions, particularly for ones focussed on West Asia given ongoing events, then I'm all ears!

I plan to give everybody, including myself, a few weeks to rest, catch up, and be distracted by the potential beginning of World War 3. How busy I'll be will be determined by how the Iran conflict progresses, but I'm currently thinking to start the next book in late July.



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Chinese premier announces construction of Yarlung Zangbo hydropower project

NYINGCHI, Xizang, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Qiang announced Saturday the start of the construction of a hydropower project in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River.

Li, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the announcement while attending a groundbreaking ceremony in Nyingchi City, southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region.

The groundbreaking ceremony took place at the dam site of Nyingchi's Mainling hydropower station. Representatives from various organizations, including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Power Construction Corporation of China, spoke at the ceremony.

The ceremony was also attended by members of an expert advisory committee for the construction of the hydropower project, as well as representatives of local residents.

The project will consist of five cascade hydropower stations, with a total investment estimated at around 1.2 trillion yuan (about 167.8 billion U.S. dollars).

The project will primarily deliver electricity for external consumption while also addressing local demand in Xizang.

A ceremony has recently been held in Beijing to inaugurate the China Yajiang Group Co., Ltd. for the smooth construction and operation of the hydropower project. Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, attended the inauguration ceremony. ■

Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 5 - March 17th to March 23th, 2025


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the fifth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 4: America's New Deal Puts Its Own Economy First, 1933-1940, which is approximately 22 pages.

Bulletins and News Discussion from August 28th to September 3rd, 2023 - Exaggerated Fukushima Fears


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edit: changed title from 'False Fukushima Fears' to 'Exaggerated Fukushima Fears', sacrificing my lovely alliteration as others have pointed out that it would be too much to say that the fears of radiation leakages are unfounded, but merely to say that this is the least bad option given previous precedent as cynesthesia has pointed out.

Image is of the large array of water storage tanks holding the tritium-contaminated water.

This week's preamble is very kindly provided by our beautiful poster @cynesthesia@hexbear.net, with some light editing. In periods where not much of earth-shattering importance is happening in the news, I hope to do this more often!


In 2011, the Fukushima nuclear incident occurred. Since then, water has been used to cool radioactive waste and debris, which contaminates the water with radioactive isotopes. Currently, TEPCO, the Japanese energy company that is reponsible to Fukushima, is storing about 1.3 million m^3^ of contaminated water (equivalent to about 500 Olympic swimming pools for our American friends) in about 1000 tanks. Approximately 100,000 m3 of contaminated cooling water is generated per year to this day. TEPCO doesn't want to store escalating volumes of nuclear waste for decades until half-lives are spent. This would mean adding substantial storage capacity every year at increased cost and risk of tank spills.

The contaminated water includes heavier isotopes like caesium as well as hydrogen's isotope, tritum. Caesium is a big atom at 137 molar mass (we love our tremendous atoms, folks) while tritium is heavy hydrogen and has only a molar mass of 3 (pathetic, low energy). The TEPCO people are using water treatment to remove heavy isotopes from water, but not tritium. The large adult isotopes are easy to remove with treatment but tritium is incorporated into water, so it blends in with the others. The treated Fukushima water contains low levels of the big isotopes but still contains tritium.

Isotopes release radiation that damages the body's cells. The longer an individual molecule containing an isotope is in a body, the more likely it is that the isotope will go BRAZAP and release radiation that fucks up the cells. Bioaccumulation is a toxicology term for how certain contaminants can accumulate in the food cycle. For example, algae eat contaminants, then the algae is eaten by bugs, then bugs by fish, then fish by people. Isotopes that are bioaccumulative like our large adult son caesium are more hazardous. Tritium is not bioaccumulative because it is effectively part of water. Water cycles through bodies quickly - that's why you sweat and pee and get thirsty. spray-bottle

Fukushima water would be treated and then then mixed with seawater at a ratio of 1:800 before it is pumped 1km offshore. Each year approximately 166,000 m3 of treated water will be released, which will draw down the volume of contaminated water being stored over a few decades. Real-time stats associated with the release are found here. At the point of discharge, water contains about 207 Bq/L of radioactivity, about 16 times greater than the 10-15 Bq/L background level in the ocean overall. Drinking water guidelines for tritium radioactivity range from 1,000-10,000 Bq/L, if one were to drink seawater.

In wastewater treatment terms, this is a small amount of dilution in a very large body of water. It is unlikely to have any measurable impact per the terms of Western science. In the context of mother nature taking yet another one for the team and environmental distress, this sucks. In the context of making the best of a shitty situation, the Fukushima water release is peanuts compared to the many other environmental liabilities that are not addressed. For example, the Hanford Site is an example of a nuclear wastewater storage facility gone/going wrong in Oregon.


Ending note by 72: By far the biggest impact of the release of this water won't be its direct effects, but those on commerce and international relations. Almost half of Japanese aquatic exports go to China, comprising 8% of all Japanese firms shipping goods to China, and they have now been cut off due to their anger at Japan. Perhaps this reaction and the cancellation of imports was inevitable, as nuclear power and radiation in general is a poorly understood, frightening, and thus easily exploitable topic in every country. China is not the first country to use a misunderstanding of radiation risk to try and achieve a goal - Germany seems very pleased with itself - and they will not be the last.

In all: it is unequivocal that China is massively exaggerating the risks of this water's release. However, the bellicose rhetoric and actions of Japan, South Korea, and America are a much greater danger to the region, and none of the three seem to be in any hurry to try diplomacy instead of increasing military budgets and gearing up for war.


It's that time again - every two months I give myself a week off, to rest and recalibrate. Your regularly scheduled programming will resume next week.

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.


Resources For Understanding The War


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.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

been thinking about our (and my) blindspots, like with Gabon for instance, and maybe we should have a newsmega theory list

I would imagine it being a few of the regular bits and pieces of Marx and Lenin and others, State and Revolution, etc, enough to have an understanding of geopolitics and imperialism in the abstract without getting too deep into the weeds of arguments between long-dead theorists about the French Revolution and 1848, together with newer things like Hudson's Superimperialism and Desai's Geopolitical Economy, Bevins' Jakarta Method perhaps as we'd want to talk about how socialist movements are destroyed abroad. and then books that explicitly deal with different parts of the world. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa for instance.

should make sure to have a lot of, if not mostly, specific works on countries or small regions, especially if they aren't already well-known rather than too many broad-brush works (though those are crucial too). analysis of West Africa, even specific countries there. analysis of central asian states. analysis of central american countries. books and essays ideally, but also long-form articles, even videos.

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 21st to July 27th, 2025 - Hydro On The Zangbo - COTW: China


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The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image (source here) is of a section of the Yarlung Zangbo river, which forms the deepest canyon on the planet.


The idea of doing any sort of general preamble for China is a little absurd given how ubiquitous they are in economics and politics, so I'm just going to hop right in to a recent news item of interest: China is working on the construction of an enormous new hydropower project in Tibet (@Metabola@hexbear.net had brought this up just before the last news mega ended).

This project (consisting of, I believe, five dams) will be overall three times larger than the Three Gorges Dam, will cost $167 billion, and will supply 70 GW (by itself more power than several significant countries generate). There are, of course, meaningful concerns regarding concerning environmental damage, but helping to avert catastrophic climate change seems worth it. The news coming out of the clean energy sector of China has getting only more encouraging over the last few years, even as the fully neoliberalized Europe and America descend into climate skepticism and refuse to adequately fund projects that could avert the worst of climate change.

Geopolitically, given recent India-China tensions (for example, sending Pakistan the equipment to shoot down Indian jets, as well as run-of-the-mill border tensions) one expects India to not receive the news very well, as the river upon which the dam is being constructed proceeds to flow into Arunachal Pradesh. But from what I understand of the Indian hydrological situation (which is, admittedly, not much), I don't think enough of the water in India comes from the river for China to hypothetically cause any kind of water shortages in India - the monsoons seem to supply plenty of freshwater all by themselves. Nonetheless, as with all Chinese news, wild fearmongering abounds.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Epilogue, Questions, Suggestions


We made it to the final chapter of the book! Last thread is here.

As I said in the previous thread, apologies for not posting a new thread last week. The superimperialists keep starting major wars and keeping me busy in the news megathread.

This thread will serve as the final one for the book, as a holding thread for any observations, questions, and suggestions for further books. There have been a few books suggested, such as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, but if anybody has other suggestions, particularly for ones focussed on West Asia given ongoing events, then I'm all ears!

I plan to give everybody, including myself, a few weeks to rest, catch up, and be distracted by the potential beginning of World War 3. How busy I'll be will be determined by how the Iran conflict progresses, but I'm currently thinking to start the next book in late July.



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (8 months ago)

Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 6 - March 24th to March 30th, 2025


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the sixth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 5: Lend Lease, the British Loan and the Fracturing of the British Empire, 1941-1946, which is approximately 27 pages.

Bulletins and News Discussion from July 28th to August 3rd, 2025 - The Brief(?) Thailand-Cambodia Border War - COTW: Cambodia


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The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of the Preah Vihear Temple on the Cambodian border. Image sourced from the UNESCO World Heritage website.


Over the last few days, Thailand and Cambodia entered into a heightened stage of conflict due to a long-running border dispute. Like many problems on this planet, Europeans are ultimately to blame - specifically France. Certain sections of the border drawn up by France about a century ago were not fully agreed upon by both sides, with the ownership of some Khmer temples being the most visible points of disagreement.

Despite interventions in favor of Cambodia in the 1960s and later 2010s by the ICJ - one of the mainly mostly useless global institutions that liberals periodically disown - the border conflict has simmered at a generally low level. Of the two countries, Thailand is significantly more militarily and economically powerful.

Last Wednesday, a Thai soldier lost his leg by stepping on a landmine, prompting a rapid escalation between Cambodia and Thailand that has since resulted in dozens of deaths and tens of thousands displaced. Cambodia was willing to come to the negotiating table fairly quickly, but Thailand was more hesitant. International pressure on the two countries by Malaysia, China, and the United States eventually forced Thailand to the table, and they have recently agreed to an immediate ceasefire courtesy of ASEAN.

Notably, Trump refused to hold trade talks with either country until they agreed to peace, which suggests that he really wants a Nobel Peace Prize - which he seems a shoe-in for given that he's met the two most important requirements that several Nobel Peace Prize recipients have needed to meet in the past, which are: 1) start at least one war, and 2) accelerate the genocide of millions of people as billions more people watch on. His policies vis-a-vis ICE creating a domestic terror regime only further increase his chances of winning the prize.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler 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 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Epilogue, Questions, Suggestions


We made it to the final chapter of the book! Last thread is here.

As I said in the previous thread, apologies for not posting a new thread last week. The superimperialists keep starting major wars and keeping me busy in the news megathread.

This thread will serve as the final one for the book, as a holding thread for any observations, questions, and suggestions for further books. There have been a few books suggested, such as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, but if anybody has other suggestions, particularly for ones focussed on West Asia given ongoing events, then I'm all ears!

I plan to give everybody, including myself, a few weeks to rest, catch up, and be distracted by the potential beginning of World War 3. How busy I'll be will be determined by how the Iran conflict progresses, but I'm currently thinking to start the next book in late July.



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 7 - March 31st to April 6th, 2025


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the seventh week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 6: Bretton Woods: The Triumph of US Government Finance Capital, 1944-1945 which is approximately 27 pages.

Bulletins and News Discussion from September 4th to September 10th, 2023 - You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Supply Chains - COTW: Libya


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Image is of container ships waiting outside the canal. While there is usually some number of ships waiting for passage, the number has increased significantly lately.


In order to move ships through the Panama Canal, water is needed to fill the locks. The water comes from freshwater lakes, which are replenished by rainfall. This rainfall hasn't been coming, and Lake Gatun, the largest one, is at near record low levels.

Hundreds of ships are now in a maritime traffic jam, unable to cross the canal quickly. Panama is attempting to conserve water and have reduced the number of transits by 20% per day, among other measures. The Canal's adminstrators have warned that these drought conditions will remain for at least 10 months.

It is unlikely that global supply chains will be catastrophically affected, at least this year. Costs may increase for consumers in the coming months, especially for Christmas, but by and large goods will continue to flow, around South America if need be. Nonetheless, projecting trends over the coming years and decades, you can imagine how this is yet another nudge by climate change towards dramatic economic, environmental, and political impacts on the world at large. It also might prompt discussions inside various governments about nearshoring, and the general vulnerability of global supply chains - especially as the United States tries, bafflingly, to go to war with China.


After some discussion in the last megathread about building knowledge of geopolitics, some of us thought it might be an interesting idea to have a Country of the Week - essentially, I/we choose a country and then people can come in here and chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants, related to that country. More detail in this comment.

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Okay, look, I got a little carried away. Monday's update usually covers the preceding Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but I went ahead and did all of last week. If people like a more weekly structure then I might try that instead, if not, then I'll go back to the Mon-Wed-Fri schedule.

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.


Resources For Understanding The War


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.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Weekly Update from August 28th to September 4th


It's time to report the GOD DAMN news! COLD HARD FACTS!


Part 1: Afghanistan to Ethiopia

::: spoiler expand

Afghanistan:


China has expressed its willingness to support Afghanistan as it transitions to stability.[^GT^](archive.ph/MHW7K)

Algeria:


China has proposed (and Algeria has accepted) a project in which they will construct 6000 kilometers of railways.[^AN^](archive.ph/Dzy3u)

Argentina:


Will Argentina receive a BRICS bailout?[^NC^](nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/no…) Sierra Grande has started pubic hearings for a controversial shipping terminal to export from the world's second largest shale gas reserve.[^CCN^](archive.ph/Ka2WH) Argentina and Brazil have agreed to finance imports worth $600 million.[^MP^](archive.ph/4xQur) Milei's victory in the primary election was actually much closer than thought, with all three big parties within 3% of eachother.[^MP^](archive.ph/1pRsm)

The Financial Times has written an article on how dollarisation would not really fix anything in Argentina. :heartbreaking: [^FT^](archive.ph/beZiU)

Armenia:


The leader of Nagorno-Karabakh, Harutyunyan, has resigned, connected to demonstrations in the de facto capital of Stepanakeri.[^EN^](archive.ph/SwIjV)

Australia:


Australians will vote next month on whether to amend the consitution to recognize Aborginal and Torres Strait Islander people.[^AM^](archive.ph/uYB2v)

Bahamas:


The Bahamas could be the fifth Latin American country to legalize marijuana, for medical, research, and religious/cultural purposes.[^TS^](archive.ph/3L840)

Bahrain:


Israel's foreign minister has gone to Bahrain for official talks, as speculation about a Saudi-Israel normalisation deal grows.[^MEE^](archive.ph/1IAwI)

Benin:


Benin's President has had a four day visit to Beijing, to deepen ties and attend the global summit for the service trade fair.[^AN^](archive.ph/kLuKg)

Bosnia-Herzegovina:


The secessionist Bosnian Serb leader Dodik has said that Bosnia-Herzergovina should join BRICS rather than the EU.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/gskt3)

Brazil:


Lula has launched an ambitious plan to eliminate food insecurity, stating that the problem isn't a lack of food, it's that people cannot afford to buy it.[^Resumen^](archive.ph/Aafwk) Right wing think tankers align with agribusiness to seek a path back to power.[^DeSmog^](archive.ph/f4IHT) Chinese investment in Brazil has hit a 13-year low , partially due to regulatory hurdles, and partially due to the economic slowdown.[^SCMP^](scmp.com/news/china/article/32…) Lula has left many of Bolsonaro's pro-Israel policies in place for whatever reason, though is also growing ties with Iran.[^MEE^](archive.ph/C7U73) Brazil's oil production has hit a record level,[^MP^](archive.ph/fhbFJ) as has soybean exports.[^MP^](archive.ph/H2u7a)

Bulgaria:


Bulgaria is starting negotiations with military production companies for new radars.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/4Gkh4)

Canada:


Canada's mining sector raked in a record $177 billion in revenues in 2022, with many firms in the sector committing horrific human rights abuses.[^CD^](archive.ph/pYNNJ) An excerpt from a book on food insecurity in the north, and how it has colonial origins.[^CD^](archive.ph/NwObH) An article on Pierre Poilevre's rhetoric, doing the typical thing of appealing to the working classes while also being a fascist who attacks unions, etc.[^CD^](archive.ph/AH8Y1) Canada's GDP fell by 0.2% in Q2.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/GX4Dn)

Chad:


Hundreds of thousands of people fled from Sudan to Chad in the wake of the civil war, and their camps in Chad are running low on basically everything.[^AN^](archive.ph/dfIoz)

Chile:


The government is looking for people who disappeared during Pinochet's dictatorship.[^Resumen^](archive.ph/YKUUZ)

China:


Gao Yunxiang has released a book, Arise Africa! Roar, China!: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century.[^PW^](archive.ph/h4IAa)

China's manufacturing PMI has edged upwards for the third straight month, now at 49.7 - so, just barely contracting.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/5yJ12) First Canadian minister (the Environment one) visits China in 4 years.[^GT^](archive.ph/o9WJM) An Australian delegation is visiting China for the first time in 3 years.[^GT^](archive.ph/ms4Ge) The US Commerce Secretary has also gone to China as America's bizarre strategy of trying to be friends and also piss China off simultaneously continues.[^GT^](archive.ph/Xrii2) China has removed pre-entry coronavirus testing.[^GT^](archive.ph/zThU4) China rolls out forceful policy mix to spur economy in push to meet growth goals.[^GT^](archive.ph/8aDuk) Beijing, Shanghai easing of mortgage condition sends positive signal, more cities to follow suit.[^GT^](archive.ph/VlYhE) Prosperity in Xinjiang speaks louder than ‘UN report’;[^GT^](archive.ph/WoDil) Xinjiang develops seawater aquafarming for fish, prawn, lobsters, etc.[^SCMP^](scmp.com/economy/china-economy…) The government has called on urban retirees and veterans to return to their rural roots in an effort to revitalize the countryside.[^SCMP^](scmp.com/news/china/politics/a…)

Typhoon Saola weakens after landfall in China; Shenzhen resumes transportation, business[^GT^](archive.ph/vIDSi) China's "giant rice" hybrid, which grows twice as tall as typical, experienced a bumper harvest this month, encouraging for future wider use.[^SCMP^](scmp.com/news/china/science/ar…) Chinese semiconductor scientists have unveiled new 12-inch wafers that are one atom thick.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/A2A6F) China has launched a roadmap to explore the solar system, with asteroid and planetary resource extraction by 2100.[^SCMP^](scmp.com/news/china/science/ar…) China's coal power plant approval/construction spree continues, with over 300 new plants in the pipeline.[^SCMP^](scmp.com/business/article/3232…) China has used "smart drilling" in the Tarim Basin to boost oil and gas extracton.[^SCMP^](scmp.com/news/china/science/ar…)

The UK Parliament has termed Taiwan an "independent country", amid the UK Foreign Secretary's visit to China, an obvious violation of the One China policy. [^AM^](archive.ph/UBWrR) Foxconn founder and billionaire Terry Gou is running independently for president after being rejected for candidancy by the KMT.[^AM^](archive.ph/0RUv1) Typhoon Haikui is hitting Taiwan, with thousands being evacuated.[^AM^](archive.ph/clbDE)

Colombia:


President Petro has denounced the right-wing opposition and big businessmen that he claims are planning to overthrow him (very probably true).[^TS^](archive.ph/47w93)

Cuba:


An article on Cuba's international role, helping countries throughout Africa with medical and weaponry in their fights for independence.[^Resumen^](archive.ph/MYUI0) Xi vows to support Cuba's defense of its sovereignty after meeting with Diaz-Canel.[^MR^](archive.ph/TxBRw)

Denmark:


The foreign minister has emphasized that his party's (Moderate) position is that a diesel tax is unavoidable if they are to reach climate targets by 2025.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/Ky10x)

DRC:


Victims of a protest-turned-clash in Goma are being treated, with a death toll of at least 40.[^AN^](archive.ph/cc3nS)

Dominican Republic:


The government has requested that Haiti stop the construction of a canal which would divert water from the Masacre River; Ariel Henry has affirmed that the project is not governmental.[^TS^](archive.ph/hWcmJ)

DPRK:


An article by the Valdai Club (Russian bougie analysis) on the DPRK and the reconstruction of Moscow-Pyongyang-Beijing ties.[^VC^](archive.ph/2qNpL) The government has decried that the South Korea-US-Japan summit is creating an Asian version of NATO.[^ANN^](archive.ph/KoMJO)

Ecuador:


Ecuador's oil drilling ban is good, folks.[^CD^](archive.ph/a4OzF) All the car bombings and prison riots that are accelerating are much less good.[^TS^](archive.ph/6acaK)

Egypt:


Egypt is to build 35 more natural gas wells over the next 2 years.[^AM^](archive.ph/WHgtf)

Ethiopia:


Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is very happy about the country's soon-to-be membership in BRICS,[^AN^](archive.ph/TzBrB) and it is hoped that it will boost economic growth, foreign investment, productivity, etc.[^PD^](archive.ph/cS8zZ)

:::

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Whats going on in Mexico? (effortpost)


so you nerds have probably heard of some elections thats happened this week on the country and that they were important, there was fraud, it starts the end of morena/ the opposition, that the presidential election is until next. but dont worry im here to explain them to you.

So last week there was a party election in the Morena Party, Morena is the current ruling party funded by the now president Lopez Obrador, its a social democratic party with some pro-labor views, this party election was important because it decided who out of 6 candidates would become the presidential candidate of the ruling coalition, like a USA primary, except it was decided via surveys instead of normal voting like a popularity rating.

So out of the 6 candidates only 2 were really going to win, which were Marcelo Ebrard and Claudia Sheinbaum

Marcelo Ebrard

He was the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Obrador and was a very active member of the cabinet of the president, He joined the party in 2018 and he used to be member of 3 other parties (MC, PRD, PRI) he has know obrador since 2000 when he backed his campaign for Governor of Mexico city and he became secratary of public security, then on 2006 he became the Gobernor of Mexico city and continue the same policies as Amlo. then for the presidential election of 2012 Obrador became the candidate of the PRD and he promised Ebrard a spot in his cabinet as Foreign relations secretary, but he lost, on those 6 years between 2012 and 2018 Ebrard would leave the PRD and join Movimiento Ciudadano which is a progresive liberal party until 2018 when he joined Obrador's party Morena and became the foreign relatios secretary when Obrador won on 2018

So what are his views? to me he believes in the same social democratic ideals like the president except he has always backed a very internationalist outlook he wants mexico to be more active in international organizations like the UN and on the internacional stage. thats the vibe i get from him

Claudia Sheinbaum

The first party she joined was the PRD were she meet Obrador and when he won the election for Head of goberment of Mexico City she became part of his cabinet and became Secretary of the Environment, she oversaw the introduction of the Public transport proyects like the Metrobus and others, and Obrador added her to his Cabinet for the presidency of 2012 but he lost, then in 2014 She follow Obrador and became a founding member of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) the current ruling party, then on 2018 she would get the candidacy for Governor of Mexico city and would win becoming head of goverment of Mexico city.

During her governorship her main agenda was the introduccion of green policies to control the contamination in Mexico city, like planting tree, ban single use plactis, built new waste separation plants, etc. as well as the expantion and development of the Public transport system in the city, her biggest challenge was the covid-19 pandemic in which she pushed for more lockdown policies that were well recieved.

so her view, to me she is mainly an enviromentalist not only because of her policies during her governorship but also because she has a doctorade in environmental engineering, her administration of the city is seen as tecnocratic, and she is big support of obrador since she left the PRD and joined his party in its infancy so i say she probably has the same social democratic views as him

The Morena election

so yesterday the survey results were revealed, and Shienbaum won with 39% of support to Ebrard 26%, to me it wasnt that surprising Claudia has always been the more famous one even with Ebrard's many apparences with the president, both have been basicaly campaigning since june but really they both started much sooner since like the start of the year, for example in the state i live it isnt governed by Morena yet in the city there is a Big poster with Shienbaum face saying "she supports you".

ok so the drama is that Ebrard is a sore loser and called the survey an error and posible fraud, and in interviews he said that there isnt space in the party for him, etc. so he is probably leaving the party, but the question is to where?

What now?


OK so for the presidential election in 2024 there are 3 main factions that will participate mainly only 2 have a chance to win and will probaly be Morena

  • So the first faction is Juntos Hacemos Historia which is a coalition of 3 parties, first is Morena they are socdems, then is Partido del Trabajo which is a small labour party more left than morena you could call them socialists, and finally Partido verde which dont belive their lies its not a green party is just a PRI remnant they are liberals, Its really just Morena and friends only the PT have ever been close ideologically to Morena, Verde is a recent addition in 2018 election it was Morena, PT and a party called Encuentro Social who were christian ultraconservatives, they now go by PES and arent morena's ally anymore, their candidate will be Shienbaum
  • 2nd faction is Frente Amplio por México, made up by Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) who are christian conservatives who fun fact ther party was founded by fascists, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) they used to be the only Ruling party of the country for 70 years they used to be called the perfect dictartorship they are neoliberals, and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) they are socdems, in the past if you made a coalition of ths 3 parties you would have gotten more than 90% of the votes, the reason why is that 20 years ago they were pretty much the only 3 viable parties you had the neolibs, the conservatives and the socdems. the reason why this is not the case anymore is that in 20 we saw the collapse of the PRD and PRI alongside the rise and fall of the PAN, the PRD and PRI lost the mayority of their supporters to Morena and the PAN after a terrible presidency of Calderon they have never recovered. FA hasnt picked a candidate for presidency yep but its between 3 people, which are Xóchitl Gálvez (she seems to be the more popular), Santiago Creel and Beatriz Paredes
  • 3rd and last is Movimiento Ciudadano, who are a progressive liberal party , they are going at it alone but their objective isnt to win the presidency but to gain enough support to become the main opposition party over the members of Frente amplio, they dont have a candidate yet and this strategy has caused infighting in the party for beign risk but their luck change for the better with the Morena elections, because if Ebrard lefts morena he will probably join MC since he used to be a member and their will get a very popular candidate.

So if the popular theories happen the Presidential Elections of 2024 will be battle between Claudia Shienbaum (Morena), Xóchitl Gálvez (FA) and Marcelo Ebrard (MC) its still very likely that morena wins again, however the important event is from which coalition will MC's candidate pull supporters from, now its posible Sheinbaum will lose some votes to Ebrard because he did got 26% support in the survey but its important to remember that Morena is Obradors party and people voted for them because it had Obrador not anything else so its hard to say if any will vote MC over morena again.

Now the more interesting effect would be if MC's pulls voters from Frente Amplio, this is posible because rembering the views of the member parties of Frente Amplio is that it has no Ideological Cohesion, in the past all 3 parties used to call eachother corrupt, narco supporters, dictators. So from going from that to today its a very sudden, this is really an anti-morena party, MC used have a coalition with PAN and PRD which made more sense than FA but they decided to not continue to ideological diferences, which is good for MC in a way because the FA main problem is that they just look like a bunch of sellouts (which they are) and you could say thats a reason why PRD and PRI lose so many voters and supporters to Morena who has ideological cohesion.

The elections for 2024 are going to be very important for the country in my opinion on one point it will cement Morena's hegemony over the country dependen on by how much they win, and two what will be the future of Oposition parties, will the follow the Frente Amplio's plan of becoming a centrist amorphous blob that has abandon all its ideals or the MC plan of just countinuing the way they have always been like, being a minor party until the big one fucks up.

@JamesConeZone@hexbear.net here is an effort post on mexico nerd

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

Bulletins and News Discussion from August 4th to August 10th, 2025 - The Siege of Al-Fashir


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Image is from the Wikipedia article on the Sudanese Civil War.


Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur (a little east of that deep red zone in the west of the megathread map), is the last major holdout of the Sudanese government in that state, and is currently under siege by the RSF. Losing it would be a significant blow to the SAF, though given how the conflict lines are shaping up, it seems increasingly plausible that there will be a de facto - if not de jure - partition of Sudan, unless the military situation substantially changes. This is because the RSF have been pushed out of central Sudan, while the SAF are being pushed out of Western Sudan - although, the situation is pretty complex and has been known to change rapidly before.

As has been a constant feature of the Sudan Civil War - perhaps the single worst humanitarian crisis on the planet right now when measured by numbers - the civilian situation pales in comparison to the military situation, with hundreds of thousands of children dead from famine, and tens of millions of people experiencing extreme food insecurity.

Al-Fashir has been the destination of many thousands of refugees fleeing genocide, and food and aid supplies into the town are being explicitly blocked by the RSF, resulting in scenes similar to what is happening in Gaza right now. The big difference is that fleeing from major battle zones is at least somewhat of an option, though people are often caught and robbed or enslaved or trafficked while moving to neighbouring towns and cities - and these cities are often experiencing similar conditions to places that refugees are leaving.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler Israel's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist 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 the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Imperialism Reading Group - How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney - Week 2


This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

The book we are currently reading through is How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group, or if you no longer wish to be pinged.

This week, we will be reading the first section, "A General Overview", of Chapter 2: How Africans Developed Before The Coming Of The Europeans - Up To The Fifteenth Century. This is roughly 15 pages.

Next week, we will be reading the second section, "Some Concrete Examples", of Chapter 2: How Africans Developed Before The Coming Of The Europeans - Up To The Fifteenth Century.



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (7 months ago)

Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 8 - April 7th to April 13th, 2025


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This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the eighth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 7: Isolating the Communist Bloc, which is approximately 16 pages.

Bulletins and News Discussion from August 11th to August 17th, 2025 - Putin's World Tour


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The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is of Putin and Scholz sitting on opposite ends of a frighteningly long table back in 2022. Folks, the table is gonna get ten feet longer.


The latest round of US-Russian diplomacy is taking place on August 15th in Alaska, where Putin and Trump are meeting in-person to maybe try and bring an end to this godforsaken conflict. While I don't want to totally discount the possibility that they may come to an agreement - you truly never know! - there's a lot stacked against this encounter yielding much of anything.

Russia appears to have demanded a land swap; that Ukraine fully withdraw from Kherson and Zaporozhye oblasts (in exchange for unspecified Russian gains, but probably parts of Sumy and Kharkov) as a precondition for a ceasefire that could perhaps lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict, and Ukraine seems completely unwilling to do anything of the sort, saying that even if they wanted to, the process of just giving up a couple oblasts would take significant time and require referendums. I say that Russia has appeared to demand it, because there's been a lot of confusion - probably in bad faith - about what Russian diplomats and Putin himself have said and what the demands even are. There are some who speculate that Trump will sell out Ukraine and blame Zelensky for refusing to agree with Russian demands, and there are others who say that this just the latest of many examples of the US and Russia meeting up with such fundamental differences that a deal is impossible, and that Trump fully expects to put sanctions on Russia after Putin declines some harebrained American scheme.

Anyway. After the summit, in late August, Putin is due to arrive for a visit to India, at Modi's invitation. Previously, I was unsure exactly what India would do in response to American sanctions pressure, and now we appear to be receiving an answer, as Modi has made public statements that suggest that he is only getting closer to Russia. Fascinatingly, Modi will soon make his first visit to China in seven years at the annual SCO summit at the end of August, and Putin will be heading to China too on September 3rd. There is an increasing amount of dismissal about the potential of BRICS (especially one that contains India), and that dismissal is certainly rather justified, but I am still deeply curious about what developments may occur as the global south braces to face the remaining ~85% of Trump's presidency.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

::: spoiler Israel's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist 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 the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA 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.
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.

:::

::: spoiler 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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


:::


Introducing: HexAtlas


Hello and warm greetings to my fellow news mega enjoyers and to the wider hexbear, lemmygrad and lemmy.ml community,

I've been finding myself browsing the newsmega often and was often thinking of a way that would help me contextualize the discussions and news that I'm reading. I remembered an atlas I had in school that would show the location of industries and natural ressources (and more) and decided try to recreate a digital version similar to atlas.cid.harvard.edu/. When I stumbled upon lemmy-js-client I found a fun way to display lemmy comments geographically, which I would like to share with you:

hex-atlas.netlify.app/

⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden

Nexus Features:
- @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net Bulletins
- Hexbear Reading List (Thank you @CARCOSA@hexbear.net for the suggestions)
- ProleWiki (Thank you Lemmygrad for maintaining this)
- Wikipedia/Natopedia
- Anarchist Library

I'm open for suggestions, but would like to continuously add new features:
- Mastodon.social (well documented)
- Marxists.org (will be difficult)
- ~~Moon of Alabama (looks easy)~~ (Thank you @someone@hexbear.net for pointing out the transphobia)
- Usability and performance improvements
- and maybe more cool features where the guiding ideas are: "IRL Victoria 3 UI" and a "cockpit for newsmega-enjoyers" (e.g. comparing regions and seeing commodity/capital flows, real-time 1% flight data, vessel data - to enjoy the ansar allah blockade, virgin chad ranking, etc.)

Basic usage:
- You can either search for a place or click on it. You'll see various scopes: provinces/territories, countries, intermediate regions, sub regions, continent. You can click also on these to change the scope. What it actually does is send it as a search query into lemmy and you see the search results to it (I built a fancy search page). IN the Fediverse Tab you can select the instances, sort types, and other settings from lemmy. On the Nexus Tab you have a similar behaviour, just for the various modules. You'll see the wiki of whatever is selected on the map :

  • use query to search location by query e. g. brics and find discussions pertaining to the selected location.
  • the query field can also be used to find and filter content by communities that are not listed
  • on Mobile long press pictures to unblur it (not fully tested) on desktop hover with mouse

tldr: Attention [Pink]: Select an option [Purple] to reveal selected information [Yellow].

It's in a prototype stage so please keep in mind:

  • ⚠️ Spoiler Tags are not implemented thus CWs are not hidden ⚠️
  • It's mostly optimized for desktops. Sry comrades with old hardware - no optimization, yet 🙁
    @kota@hexbear.net post inspired me to look into this tho.
  • Provinces/Territories: While I was doing manual edits to some regions I realized I'm doing something very political (duh). Following this, I'm looking for solutions to implement user defined regions (if there's interest from you) e.g. #fromTheRiverToTheSea #brics #udssr #whatever Comrade @SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml offered help, but I have only experience with front-end and am not sure how and what to propose. All my ideas are leveraging the current state of development and might be annoying to you. If you have experience, suggestions, etc. on how to make this work, feel free to start a discussion, reach out, etc.
  • Provinces/Territories: If you want something particularly aggravating changed asap, feel free to start a discussion and vOtE! I'll update manually.
  • Countries that span two continents are only displayed as belonging to one e.g. Russia - Europe (Dataset used: github.com/lukes/ISO-3166-Coun…)
  • Right now this project is exclusive to hexbear, lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and their federated instances. I have an inner conflict: Generally, fuck intellectual property and I would like to make it foss, but this would make it available for lib/chud content as well. Should I? Help me resolve this.
  • No login implemented

Please consider this a tribute to this community, which I've been lurking and a member since the r/CTH days (nevar forget). I started web development not too long ago and am deeply inspired by dev titans among others:

@nutomic@lemmy.ml

@dessalines@lemmy.ml

@SleeplessOne1917@lemmy.ml

Thank you and the mods and admins for making hexbear/lemmy what it is today.

rat-salute

Enjoy your weekend 😀

(After I post this I will leave the computer for a while and wont be able to really check and respond for a few hours)

Death to fascism

Death to capitalism

Death to imperialism

Trans rights are human rights

EDIT:
After some consideration I decided to make the code public under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE ( AGPL-3.0 license )

github.com/hexatlas/lemmy-atla…

git.altesq.net/hex_atlas/lemmy…



(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (7 months ago)

Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 9 - April 14th to April 20th, 2025


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the ninth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 8: American Strategy Within the World Bank, which is approximately 39 pages.

Bulletins and News Discussion from September 11th to September 17th, 2023 - Atlas Shrugged - COTW: Chile


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

Image is from this article in the New York Times.


A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Morocco on September 8th, with the epicenter 73 kilometers away from Marrakesh.

At least 2500 people have died as of September 11th, most outside Marrakesh, with more people being pulled out of the rubble every day, making it the deadliest earthquake in Morocco since 1960, and the second-deadliest earthquake this year (first being, of course, the one in Turkiye-Syria in February, which killed nearly 60,000 people). While the deaths are the most horrific part, damage to historic sites has also been very significant - including buildings dating back to the 1000s.

Morocco is situated close to the Eurasian-African plate boundary, where the two plates are colliding. The rock comprising the Atlas Mountains, situated along the northwestern coast of Africa separating the Sahara from the Mediterranean Sea, are being pushed together at a rate of 1 millimeter per year, and thus the mountains are slowly growing. As they collide, energy is stored up over time and then released, and faults develop. The earthquake this month originated on one such fault, as did the earthquake in 1960. The earthquake hypocenter was 20-25 kilometers underground, with 1.7 meters (or 5 and a half feet) of rock suddenly shifting along a fault ~30 kilometers (19 miles) long.

Earthquake prediction is still deeply imprecise at best, and obtaining decent knowledge and forewarning of earthquakes is highly dependent on dense seismometer arrays that constantly monitor seismic activity, such as in Japan, and detailed understanding of the local and regional tectonic environment. The best way to prevent damage is to build earthquake-resistant infrastructure and establish routines for escaping buildings and reaching safety. All of these, of course, are underdeveloped to nonexistent in developing countries, particularly in poorer communities inside those countries.


The Country of the Week, in honour of Allende's death 50 years ago (the only bad geopolitical event that has occurred on September 11th, of course), is Chile. Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.


Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The weekly update is here!

::: spoiler Links and Stuff


The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.


Resources For Understanding The War


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.


Telegram Channels


Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

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

Almost every Western media outlet.

discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


Last week's discussion post.


:::


(URL replace addon enabled for X, YouTube, Instagram and some news sites.)

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Update for September 4th to September 10th


Part 1

::: spoiler expand

Global:


Global food price are down by 2.1% in August from July, though rice prices have surged to a 15 year high and sugar prices are also up a bit.[^PD^](archive.ph/y4GBf)

Global demand for uranium to rise 28% by 2030 according to the World Nuclear Association.[^BNE^](archive.ph/E1VA3)

OPEC+ is maintaining its oil cuts to force oil prices upwards, putting pressure on America.[^AM^](archive.ph/QNAfb)

The UN has allocated $125 million in relief for 14 countries around the world;[^PD^](archive.ph/czP8V) humanitarian efforts are less than 30% this year.

Turns out it's more profitable for countries to ignore sanctions on Russia than it is to comply.[^BNE^](archive.ph/JczDP) Damn it, basic economics!

Europe:


29% of Europeans say their financial condition is precarious, and only 15% think it is "good". 12% have had to skip a meal despite being hungry recently, 16% have given up on getting treatment despite having a health problem; 23% have been cold but not turned up the heating; and, at some point in the recent past, 15% have needed to be housed by friends or family because they could no longer afford their homes.[^EN^](archive.ph/byrGn)

The Eurozone GDP grew by a staggering 0.1% in Q2 2023.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/Hg9lj)

France:


The top administrative court has upheld a government ban on girls in state schools wearing abayas.[^TG^](archive.ph/9diAK) Macron says there can be no Russian flag at Paris Olympics.[^AM^](archive.ph/88hzG)

Germany:


The government has passed a heavily watered down law that would have originally banned new gas and oil boilers, requiring new systems to be powered by at least 65% renewable energy from January 2024.[^FT^](archive.ph/RpxYP)

Germany's industrial production continues to fall; carmaking declines 9%.[^FT^](archive.ph/xabA9) Germany's fertilizer imports from Russia hit a record $151 million in May[^AM^](archive.ph/3CfrR)

Greece:


The government has unveiled a new labour bill attacking workers' rights and conditions, most significantly criminalizing picketing and facilitates strike-breaking, as well as ensuring the protection of scabs.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/CREIe)

Hungary:


An article on Chinese EV battery corporations in Hungary.[^RoW^](archive.ph/G8hR9)

Lithuania:


Beware of Lithuania.[^PS^](archive.ph/QIK01)

This is a sports article but I laughed out loud when I saw it on my feed.

Netherlands:


There have been climate protests after the government gave billions in subsidies for industries that use fossil fuels.[^EN^](archive.ph/8JbIE)

Poland:


The central bank has cut interest rates by 0.75%, which shocked the market which only expected a 0.25% cut.[^BNE^](archive.ph/8PT3b)

Serbia:


China's Zijin Mining is investing $3.8 billion in Serbia, particularly for copper and gold mining, and Zijin is also building a solar power plant there to provide electricity for the project.[^BNE^](archive.ph/GA5S1)

Slovakia:


Former PM Fico of the Smer party is rising in the polls, which has done some good things like defending welfare, but is also mired by corruption and is nationalist (and socdem at best, as far as I can tell).[^Jacobin^](archive.ph/uWQhh)

Slovenia:


The central bank is going to tax banks to pay for the flood reconstruction.[^BNE^](archive.ph/lEzfR)

Sweden:


The government has restricted a 800 square kilometer area after swine fever was discovered in the area.[^TS^](archive.ph/FV6N7)

Ukraine:


The NYT has identified ex-legislator Serhiy Pashinsky as the government's biggest private arms supplier, while not mentioning his role in the massacre of 70 anti-government protestors in Maidan Square.[^SP^](archive.ph/6LChv)

80% of Ukrainian refugees in Germany are jobless.[^RT^](archive.ph/yFfcm)

United Kingdom:


Interest rates could head higher, or be at their peak. Who can say? Not the Bank of England.[^MP^](archive.ph/cjpSq) Almost 250,000 people have died in the past two years waiting for health service care.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/fCnoC) Chinese spies in the UK,[^FT^](archive.ph/agbv1) while Sunak becomes best of friends with Modi.[^FT^](archive.ph/20TcB) The whole stupid concrete thing could have been prevented if the government listened to advice in 2020.[^FT^](archive.ph/n94bE) The UK has recorded the highest temperature this year, at 32.7 degrees.[^AM^](archive.ph/9zurF) British Museum facing renewed calls to return cultural relics.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/KTZOQ)

How big business took over the Labour Party.[^OD^](archive.ph/lUs9I) The Jewish Voice for Labour, founded to represent Jews who supported Corbyn, have pointed out that in the new Labour Party under Starmer, Jewish members are 13 times more likely to be expelled for supporting left-wing groups than non-Jewish members, and Jewish members are six times more likely to come under investigation for antisemitism than non-Jews.[^MEE^](archive.ph/3UYwd)


Western Asia:


A US-led plan to create an infrastructure project linking Europe to Saudi Arabia, and then to India, has been signed, in order to challenge China's BRI.[^RT^](archive.ph/Hjgmg) Chinese media is, obviously, downplaying its importance, though does rightfully point out that the United States has often promised and proposed projects that never went anywhere - like the "New Silk Road" project under Obama.[^GT^](archive.ph/uTG0C)

Also worth noting - I think the Greek port of Piraeus is part of the plan, which is majority owned by China.

Afghanistan:


An article on Afghanistan's women who are attempting to circumnavigate the Taliban's repressive policies as well as sanctions; they criticize the West's empty calls for solidarity (especially while also putting sanctions on the country, plunging them into greater poverty).[^ET^](archive.ph/q4ViR)

Armenia:


Relations between Armenia and Russia are deteriorating, with the former criticizing the latter of having "absolute indifference" to Azerbaijan's aggression, and saying that dependence on Russia for security was a strategic mistake - and is now sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine for the first time.[^EN^](archive.ph/QIfId) Ethnic Armenian authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh are agreeing to let in aid shipments in return for the restoration of road links to Armenia.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/IGpUp)

Azerbaijan:


Former employees of Radio Free Europe are calling for an internal investigation into allegations of mismanagement by its Azerbaijani service, which is becoming less critical of the president.[^OD^](archive.ph/PaQTl)

Bahrain:


800 political prisoners and human rights activists are on their fourth week of hunger strike.[^MEE^](archive.ph/XH9II) Israel opens new embassy in Bahrain, agrees to boost trade relations.[^AJ^](archive.ph/Y326z)

Iran:


The Iranian deputy commander of the Air Defense Force has said that US aircraft have been warded off via the Karrar interceptor drone on numerous occasions over the past two years.[^PD^](archive.ph/qXaIC) The Fattah hypersonic missile will inflict "heavy costs" on Israel.[^AM^](archive.ph/WKPeZ) The US DoJ admits that they stole 1 million barrels of Iranin oil in April.[^AM^](archive.ph/agD1a)

The Taliban has denounced the high number of executions in Iran. lmao.[^MEE^](archive.ph/YKOJp) Raisi has said that his country is ready to prevent any new conflict in the Caucasus, on a call to Armenia's president.[^PD^](archive.ph/PY2Zg) Russia's Sberbank has launched direct bank transfers to Iran.[^BNE^](archive.ph/htVc5)

Iraq:


How the US, UAE and Israel plundered Iraq's antiquities.[^TC^](archive.ph/JzYbo) Turkey seeks $950m damages against Iraq in the US over KRG oil dispute.[^MEE^](archive.ph/Xh9Ve) Iraq and Egypt consider enhancing cooperation in urban development.[^IN^](archive.ph/cvblH)

Israel:


German politicians love apartheid.[^Jacobin^](archive.ph/3ebQx). Hundreds of Israeli students have publicly declared that they will refuse to serve in the army in protest of the judicial reforms.[^MEE^](archive.ph/WFuH1) Papua New Guinea opens Israel embassy in West Jerusalem.[^AJ^](archive.ph/sXBmd) Israel will reopen the main commercial crossing to Gaza after Israeli authorities closed it earlier this week, saying they had found explosives headed out of the blockaded territory.[^AJ^](archive.ph/kPsxv)

Jordan:


Members of Parliament have called for the expulsion of Israel's ambassador after the attack on Al-Khalil in the West Bank.[^AM^](archive.ph/yRjpP)

Kuwait:


Medicine shortages grow and the country faces a national crisis.[^MEE^](archive.ph/656OX)

Saudi Arabia:


Saudi Arabia and Iran have exchanged ambassadors as normalization continues.[^MEE^](archive.ph/O38yO) Meanwhile, the Saudis are delaying issuing Israeli ministers visas to the Kingdom.[^AM^](archive.ph/mB3ux)

Germany is ending the training of Saudi border forces after news of atrocities against Ethiopian migrants came out[^MEE^](archive.ph/Sb7AT); they never told Germany that those guns were going to SHOOT people! The Bank of China has opened a branch in Riyadh.[^TS^](archive.ph/f9znK) Saudi Arabia tops 100 executions in 2023.[^MEE^](archive.ph/gJDIT)

:::

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

Part 2

::: spoiler expand

UAE:


Western officials are heading to the UAE to try and persuade them to stop the flow of goods to Russia.[^MEE^](archive.ph/Q9sAc) The UAE is boosting trade with Iran.[^FT^](archive.ph/17hrY)


Central Asia:

Kazakhstan:


Farmers are appealing to the government for urgent assistance due to intense summer heat that has reduced the size of the grain crop.[^EN^](archive.ph/4dHAz)

A rundown on what China has been up to in Kazakstan and Uzbekistan; investment continues on things like mining tungsten and freight transport, and they are behind China on the Taiwan issue.[^EN^](archive.ph/Og3lO)

Kyrgyzstan:


Leader of one of the opposition parties, Madumarov, has been arrested, likely in response to criticism of a border deal signed last year which saw Uzbekistan gain control over an important water reservoir (though the stated reason is treason as he lended land to Tajikistan in 2009 on which a bridge was later built).[^EN^](archive.ph/RKUIU)

Pakistan:


An article on copper mining.[^FT^](archive.ph/5UsHP) Pakistan and UAE to sign free trade agreement.[^Bilaterals^](archive.ph/jgaCg)

Russia:


Russia is suffering from success as global demand for their LNG is exceeding output, so plans to increase it are being created.[^RT^](archive.ph/csCTr) EU imports of Russian LNG via ship have surged by 40% since the war began despite attempts to stop this.[^BNE^](archive.ph/3jRVm) Russia is the largest wheat-exporting country in the world.[^AM^](archive.ph/CRqNE) The de-dollarization of Russia-China trade is almost complete, with the share of national currencies in Russia-China payments now at 80%.[^RT^](archive.ph/C8Cju) The Bank of Russia is accelerating the sale of foreign currencies on the domestic market, as it needs to pay off Eurobonds.[^RT^](archive.ph/BNeer) A UK bank has projected Russian GDP growth of 1.7% this year.[^RT^](archive.ph/jswTW) Russian services PMI is up to 57.6, the second fastest in 3 years,[^BNE^](archive.ph/ytesx) and its manufacturing PMI is 52.7, which is also not bad.[^BNE^](archive.ph/BBduC)


Eastern Asia and Oceania:

Australia:


Farmers want to protect their cropland from coal seam gas mining.[^GL^](archive.ph/7HyXF) Australia's largest coal power station might not be closed down when planned due the potential impact on energy prices.[^AM^](archive.ph/F4e3T)

Bangladesh:


A China-built elevated expressway, a major part of the country's BRI scheme, has partly opened to traffic.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/7W8Lm)

Loss of orchid species in Bangladesh is “alarming,” say researchers.[^MB^](archive.ph/ad5Q2)

China:


China has established a bureau specializing in promoting the private economy's development under the country's top economic planner.[^GT^](archive.ph/wiemk) Exports fell by 8.8% in August year-on-year.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/RNo1x) China's deflation pressures ease as consumer prices rise.[^FT^](archive.ph/uuylV) US dollar reaches 16-year high against Chinese Yuan.[^AM^](archive.ph/MCWcp) China presses the Full Communism button - AKA, no iPhone,[^FT^](archive.ph/Y6uBx) and Apple shares lost $200 billion in 48 hours.[^AM^](archive.ph/XrYOu) China's demand for durians has lifted global sales by 400%.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/F7G4K) China is now the third largest emitter of CO2 from coal power on a per capita basis, behind Australia and South Korea.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/aMoI5)

Chinese scientists have developed a new gene-editing tool that doesn’t use CRISPR.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/3cuUV) Chinese scientists have grown humanised kidneys in pigs for the first time for transplant usage.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/cZgtY) Chinese breakthrough in gallium oxide semiconductor may deliver edge amid US export ban.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/zOApU) Over 200 global nuclear experts visit world's first onshore small modular reactor in China.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/ED1KG)

Chinese Premier Li Qiang arrived in Jakarta to attend the 26th China-ASEAN Summit, the 26th ASEAN Plus Three Summit, and the 18th East Asia Summit, and said nice things.[^GT^](archive.ph/6ETWY)

Taiwan's President paid a visit to Eswatini on the 55th anniversary of its independence, its last diplomatic ally in Africa.[^CGS^](archive.ph/pxwtZ)

DPRK:


The Chinese Vice Premier is leading a delegation to the DPRK, the second time in less than two months.[^GT^](archive.ph/iqT8X) The government has unveiled a tactical nuclear attack submarine.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/EJcwH)

India:


74% of solar development in India was built on landcover types that have natural ecosystem preservation or agricultural value, so there's an ongoing tradeoff.[^MG^](archive.ph/Yr5E3)

Indonesia:


Indonesia's Chinese-funded railway is starting test-runs.[^SCMP^](archive.ph/s653A) West Papua: Liberation movement strengthens unity and solidarity with the people.[^GL^](archive.ph/HImdi)

Bhadrakumar talks about the ASEAN summit, the scandal of there being no joint statement or press conference with the United States, and Indonesia wanting to be friends with everybody.[^IP^](indianpunchline.com/modis-trip…) Meanwhile, the National Endowment for Democracy (a CIA front) is laying the foundations for a color revolution in Indonesia.[^MPN^](archive.ph/tBP9T)

Japan:


An article on the semiconductor industry that Japan wants to create to reduce reliance on Taiwan.[^FT^](archive.ph/akg8W) A group of fishermen have filed a lawsuit to halt the release of wastewater from Fukushima.[^PD^](archive.ph/WCGZd) Child abuse cases in Japan hit a record high in 2022, most of which is psychological abuse.[^PD^](archive.ph/4XY4L)

Laos:


The Chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee in China has vowed to work more closely with Laos.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/vu89k)

Maldives:


The presidential election has gone to a run-off; Muizzu from the PPM and PNC coalition received 46% and the incumbent president Solih has received 39%.[^PD^](archive.ph/1K3bf) Muizzu is more China-friendly and is campaigning partially on removing Indian military presence from the islands; Solih is more India-friendly. The geopolitical issue isn't particularly noteworthy for actual citizens there though, who care about other things.[^Euractiv^](archive.ph/ZMruo)

New Zealand:


A position paper on indigenous peoples' rights and protections.[^Bilaterals^](archive.ph/smMrI) New Zealand has won a trade dispute with Canada over dairy access.[^Bilaterals^](archive.ph/tprsp)

Philippines:


The country still wants oil from Russia, though there have been no deliveries yet.[^AM^](archive.ph/fU6sY) South Korea and Philippines sign free trade deal.[^Bilaterals^](archive.ph/CDwXs)

Vietnam:


Vietnam is to upgrade its relationship with the United States to a comprehensive strategic partnership; Vietnam has a CSP with only China, Russia, India, and, as of last year, South Korea.[^FT^](archive.ph/foxH3)


Africa:


The African Union has joined the G20.[^CGTN^](archive.ph/HDKTI)

15 US-backed officers had hand in 12 West African coups.[^RS^](archive.ph/BavxA)

Iran hails African countries’ resistance to colonialism.[^IN^](archive.ph/UxRSM)

Burkina Faso:


An article analyzing the economy via dependency theory.[^DE^](archive.ph/BOgt9) Russia sent a delegation to meet with Traore last week and discussed military aid, nuclear energy, and economic ties.[^WSWS^](archive.ph/eJkIz) President Traore says that they are not the enemies of the French people, only the government.[^AN^](archive.ph/povlB)

DRC:


Six military officers have been charged over the killing of dozens of anti-UN protestors.[^RT^](archive.ph/ZleCp)

Egypt:


Will BRICS membership help solve Egypt's glaring problems and contradictions? Perhaps not quickly, but it does offer a non-Western path forwards.[^MPN^](archive.ph/KALrG) President al-Sisi called for measures to reduce the birthrate, citing China's One Child Policy as an example.[^AN^](archive.ph/ebN9H) Egypt continues to buy Russian wheat, though is diversifying, as it remains reliant on imports.[^AJ^](archive.ph/gFPot)

Eritrea:


CW: rape, death.

Amnesty says that Eritrea committed atrocities in Tigray after the peace deal, including the gang rape of imprisoned women over many months, and executions of civilians.[^AN^](archive.ph/kiPCX)

Ethiopia:


The fourth and final filling of the Nile Renaissance mega-dam has completed.[^AN^](archive.ph/jlOzp) Police beat, arrest opposition supporters in Ethiopia's Tigray.[^AN^](archive.ph/PLFNQ)

Gabon:


Military leader Nguema has unveiled his transitional government, with several officials from Bongo's previous government present, but major figures from the former opposition notably absent.[^AN^](archive.ph/IY8YL) The government has said that Bongo is now free to travel wherever he wishes.[^RT^](archive.ph/XfUA1) The people of the country seem fairly happy about events.[^AN^](archive.ph/w7uPD)

Gabon's membership in ECCAS has been suspended,[^RT^](archive.ph/6DRHg) though ECCAS is working with Gabon to establish a roadmap for the return of civilian rule.[^AN^](archive.ph/sR1yH)

:::

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

COTW: Ideas for books

Getting into the literature side of things, here's a few titles that stand out to me. Ideally I'd like to have just one book per time period in a country's history, and obviously prefer books written by communists rather than liberals. I haven't read any of them, so feel free to let me know if they contain any brainworms, and if there's any other books that better talk about Chile:


Pre-1970:

I have found one book, written last year actually; Marxism and Democracy in Chile: From 1932 to the Fall of Allende, by Julio Faundez, a professor at a UK university. 272 pages.


Allende (1970-1973):

The Santiago Boys podcast. Not strictly literature but they are focussed on telling the story of Cybersyn and Allende. Already in the geopolitical reading list.

Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile, by Eden Medina. 485 pages.

Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile, by Joshua Frens-String. 322 pages.

1000 Days of Revolution: Chilean Communists on the Lessons of Popular Unity. Nine chapters, 140 pages, each written by a Chilean communist in their party, on what happened between 1970-73. I personally can't find any online version but I am far from an adept pirate - and besides, the book is cheap enough, so I have ordered it.


Pinochet (1973-1988):

I'm less sure about books here.

From Pinochet to the 'Third Way': Neoliberalism and Social Transformation in Chile, by Marcus Taylor. 240 pages.

The Pinochet Regime, by Carlos Huneeus. 559 pages. Seems very dry and academic.

The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, by Peter Kornbluh. 592 pages.


Post-1988:

I have no real ideas here, because I am an ignorant doodoo head on what's happened in Chile over the last 30 years and wouldn't even really know where to begin.

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

Imperialism Reading Group - Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson - Week 10 - April 21st to April 27th, 2025


The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.

This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. Last week's thread is here.

Welcome to the tenth week of Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance! I'm reading the Third Edition.

We are reading one chapter per week, meaning we will finish in June. Obviously, you are totally free to read faster than this pace and look at my/our commentary once we've caught up to you.

Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location. Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.

This week, we will be reading Chapter 9: The Imperialism of US Foreign Aid, which is approximately 33 pages.

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