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.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA 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.
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.
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.
Seriously what’s going on between Brazil and China?
On Dec 23rd, 2024, Brazilian authorities halted the construction of BYD factory after Chinese construction workers were found living in “slavery-like” conditions. This would have been the first BYD factory outside Asia and a significant expansion into Latin America. On Dec 27th, Brazil had stopped issuing temporary work visa to BYD, with the factory merely three months away from completing its construction.
Very conveniently, on the same day, China launched an investigation into its beef import, citing that oversupply has caused a squeeze on its domestic price.
This is clearly pointed towards Brazil. Is this China sending a warning shot to Brazil that they better not interfere with the BYD incident? Will Brazil fold to China’s pressure? Seriously, what’s going on? I hope they don’t start fighting or something.
IIrc, the Ford Motorcompany left Brazil during Bolsonaro's government because Bolsonaro was fucking moron. I think Ford thought that Lula da Silva would sell back the empty buildings and factories that Ford left, back to Ford or Tesla. That didn't happen, Lula da Silva sold them to BYD and also gave China basically all the lithium mining rights in Brazil (probably because Elon Musk, out of fucking nowhere, decided to attack Lula da Silva and the Brazilian Supreme Court, and because Lula's government had closer relations with the Chinese government than with Biden).
I think this is pressure from the United States, Ford and Tesla, who have already pressured Brazil in the past to increase taxes on Chinese imports. And Brazil's far-right congress is happy to do what the US wants because it hates Lula and China. I think the BYD workers insisted that they were not in conditions of “slavery”.
Oh no, willingly working an overseas contract job for pay. Sounds like slavery.
Also it's not uncommon for labor armies (and actual armies) that come from overseas to live in meager conditions for a while. They usually get compensated fairly for this and it makes sense to use temporary housing for a temporary workforce.
how can you be fairly compensated if you don't control the surplus value you have created?
also yeah it does sound like slavery, Marx wrote a lot about this thing called wage-slavery.
Because it is not that different from any other 'low skill' job in the Brazilian private sector.
It is highly exploitative and as the other commenter said Chinese capitalists can be just as monstrous as domestic ones. And the workers might be saying the conditions are fine because they don't want to lose their jobs.