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Inspired by a highly upvoted recommendation by @Commiejones@hexbear.net:

We need to kill the Mega Posting Wars meme. It wasn't very funny to start with and now I get the feeling some people are taking it way too seriously. Clogging up the news thread with bullshit just to try to out post the trans mega is just dumb and annoying.

The News Megathread is now under trans martial law:

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  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.

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Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful. Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

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


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[-] junebug2@hexbear.net 36 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

a provocative headline and a bit of a negative tone, but an interesting article from strategic culture. just for clarity’s sake, the referenced lavrov announcement was in june.

i think the critique of the ‘fence-sitting’ or ‘playing both sides’ from a (i believe) leftist perspective is worth keeping in mind, especially because the material interest of every country trying to join brics is doing so to play as many sides as they can. diplomats and states are not set out towards de-dollarization or ending hegemony as such, but rather towards what they see as prosperity, peace, etc. i don’t personally see brazil’s venezuelan election comments or india’s military industry as a dagger at the heart of brics+. that said, if brics really is going to be a meaningful international and economic forum for the global south, as many of us hope, they will inevitably have to manage and incorporate countries that want economic relations with the USA, Russia, and China.

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 50 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

especially because the material interest of every country trying to join brics is doing so to play as many sides as they can. diplomats and states are not set out towards de-dollarization or ending hegemony as such, but rather towards what they see as prosperity, peace, etc.

This is a really important point historically imo.

The reason why the British Empire became what it did was the combination of its overseas colonies (particularly India), its financial control over large amounts of world trade (e.g. the gold standard), and the fact that it was the first major country to industrialize and it kept far ahead of its potential rivals for decades in that area. What brought down the British Empire wasn't a bunch of powerful enemies ganging up on it; sure, losing America in the late 18th century hurt, but the empire continued relatively unphased for a century afterwards and the US was on generally decent terms after 1812. Instead, industrial and imperial competition resulted in the British gradually losing their advantages, and other countries using protectionist policies to catch up to England by protecting their own baby industries against British competition. Hence the propaganda of Britain being a champion of free trade; to the extent that it was true (and it wasn't especially) it was because it benefited England for other countries to force their industries to compete with more productive and efficient British ones.

The fledgling American Empire literally helped England during WW1 and WW2 - the empire that they were trying to replace! - and so did other on-again-off-again imperial rivals like France. Despite, and even because of this help (America putting Europe into substantial debt), the British Empire fell. It didn't require a ton of countries banding together to form a ye olde principled anti-imperial bloc to combat the tyranny of British financiers and the gold standard; hell, during WW2, even the USSR joined forces with the US and the British Empire. Instead, the British just got outcompeted and chipped away at by a bunch of self-serving frenemies. It's very possible that the American Empire will fall in the same way. Interestingly, we do actually have a relatively principled anti-US bloc in the form of Russia, China, and Iran, but even they aren't doing it for the morality of ending imperialism or whatever (although for Iran and China that might indeed be part of the motivation), it's because the end of empire, and the subsequent loss of international power of American industries and corporations, would strongly benefit them and their industries and corporations.

This is why @shipwreck@hexbear.net (or whatever alt they use nowadays) talks about American control over Europe so much, and why they say that the real purpose of the Ukraine War was to weaken Europe. Somebody who is well-versed in Cold War history might see this as a ridiculous conclusion - Europe and America have been allies for decades! For at least a century, even! Europe had been accepting American military aid to combat a potential Soviet invasion for more-or-less the whole Cold War! The thing is that being allies is insufficient for American aims. It's not just a vague sense of American dishonesty and disloyalty ("it's dangerous to be America's enemy, but it's fatal to be America's ally"). The British Empire didn't need to be allies with India - they owned the subcontinent, and could tell them to set whatever policies and accept British products and told them to eat shit if they didn't like it. Europe, however, has been considerably more resistant to being told to eat shit by America and accept products flooding their markets, and thus are in competition with - and a rival to - the American Empire by virtue of wanting some degree of independence, no matter how many times they state they are very good friends and allies fighting totalitarianism or whatever. Similar thing famously occurred with Japan - they were ostensibly a US ally, and were told to eat shit once they grew powerful enough to be a serious competitor to US industries. Similar thing is occurring right this second with India - they are ostensibly a US ally against Chinese influence in the region, and yet the US is overthrowing neighbouring governments like Pakistan and Bangladesh in order to constraint India's own regional ambitions to ensure they do not become powerful enough to be a serious challenge to the US. Suddenly, the US weakening its own allies makes a ton of sense - the US doesn't really have allies. All it has is rivals, imperial outposts like Israel, and temporary neocolonies. To (unfortunately) quote Kissinger once again: the US doesn't have allies or enemies, it has interests.

So even if you're a leader of a country that is a total piece of shit (e.g. Sisi in Egypt, MBS in Saudi Arabia), if you perform self-serving actions that have some degree of independence from the aims of the US and instead boost your own industries, you are still indirectly acting to weaken the US. That's the reason why BRICS is important, and why, even if Lula and Modi express that they're total besties with Biden and Kamala and would love to have Blinken over for dinner next week, they are still threats to American hegemony. It's also the reason why the American victory in the Cold War was so pyrrhic - the damage to imperialism was already done, China had been set up for success thanks to Soviet help, and colonialism had already been effectively ended (albeit replaced with neocolonialism, which is now China's duty to fight). Shock therapy in Eastern Europe was merely the US trying to recoup some of the losses of that pyrrhic victory.

[-] BynarsAreOk@hexbear.net 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This is why @shipwreck@hexbear.net (or whatever alt they use nowadays) talks about American control over Europe so much, and why they say that the real purpose of the Ukraine War was to weaken Europe. Somebody who is well-versed in Cold War history might see this as a ridiculous conclusion - Europe and America have been allies for decades! For at least a century, even! Europe had been accepting American military aid to combat a potential Soviet invasion for more-or-less the whole Cold War! The thing is that being allies is insufficient for American aims.

They can say that but it doesn't mean its a compelling argument.

Not only we know the US thought Russia would fold due to the sanctions, there were key events and circunstances pre-'22 that were not particularly under US control. For example the German Green party are largely responsible for Germany moving away from nuclear power, but this policy started in the 2000s even. Germany was supposed to become a green energy monster, there was so much propaganda about how wholesome Germany got so many solar panels or something.

The anti-nuclear movement didn't care, back in the 2000s everyone also thought the cold war was over and Russia was going to be integrated into the west as this was what both sides wanted. Some people were still scared about Russia but it was not worth taking Russia as an enemy compared to the relatively cheap energy.

Key events like Fukushima played a huge role too.

But also the EU was the only export market for American corporations and high tech. Europeans were the ones rich enough to buy shit from American industry. It would serve no purpose for the US to "weaken" Europe if it means no secondary market for US exports.

Remember the 08 crisis and the fallout over the EU? Remember how Spain, Italy, Ireland and Greece got fucked? The only reason the EU survived was German imperialism over this periphery. If Germany falls, so would the EU back then.

By the mid 2010's we're barely out of the '08 crisis, certainly any major geopolitical event could be an unsustainable setback for the global economy. I can't imagine anyone would be thinking about a NATO proxy war in Europe as a good thing for a global economy just barely recovering from 2008.

So to look at that and arrive at some conspiracy theory that 14 years later Russia would actual pull the trigger over retaliating against Ukraine(and we have to skip 2014 and Crimea issue too) was actualy a grand plan everyone knew all along this is what would happen?

But we have even more evidence during the war, for example the attempts at putting an oil price cap remember? The US/EU thought, no they demanded to be handed over energy for the price they felt entitled to. No they went further, they practically made Russian tankers illegal by removing their insurance from England.

They literaly, actualy realy thought Russia would fold one way or the other, they tried almost everything. Why? Because they recognized the EU was in serious trouble and the US wanted to eat their cake and have it i.e remove Putin but also ensure Russian energy remains in the global market.

If they didn't think this would work then who was leading who here? Was the US playing dumb telling the EU "hey we'll put some more sanctions on Russia, maybe even force them to send you oil because they have no alternative and it will all be fine just trust me bro"

Their ideal solution was a coup led by a population suffering from sanctions, it always works until it doesn't.

[-] meth_dragon@hexbear.net 5 points 2 months ago

imo the us thought it was basically a no lose situation while europe gambled on russia folding

then october 7th happened and now the west is staring down a three front war that it cannot lose lest the mcm' military keynesianism that underpins its entire currency falls apart

crazy how well timed oct 7th was, i am this close to thinking it was a joint chinese/russian conspiracy

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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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