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

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:

Loving trans people on this site and elsewhere is strictly mandatory.
Posting about the "comment wars" between the trans and news megathreads is now strongly discouraged inside the news megathread. No shame in it - I also recently made jokes about it - but though they were almost always just jokes, it was unrelated to current events and was beginning to feel more like padding the comment count instead of trying to improve the quality of the thread. If you want to boost comments and engagement here, then post articles and analysis!

The COTW (Chemical of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific chemical every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied chemicals. If you've wanted to talk about the chemical or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Chemicals of the Week are Estrogen and Testosterone! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

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

Israel-Palestine Conflict

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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France seems like it might be headed towards a deadlock or even a constitutional crisis, with Macron and his ever-diminishing mandate trying to indefinitely postpone naming any ministers from LFI for what looks like grudge-based reasoning.

The NFP achieved a disproportionate victory, largely by tactical voting, where they pulled ahead of the RN to successfully stave off the fascists. It's pretty clear to everyone that without a major shift or series of political developments, they would struggle to pull this off again in the face of increasing turnout from the FN/RN base every election.

Maybe a year or so ago, someone posted an article/analysis piece about how instead of earnestly opposing the far-right, Macron uses the threat of it alternatingly as a cudgel and a shield, to maintain power.

Does Macron seem to have the relative weakness of the left-wing coalition as a key piece of his political strategy over the past month? Is he paving the way for the fascists to easily win next go-around, just to keep his ~~cult of personality~~ self-made party going for a few more years?

I'd really like to hear from anyone who has a better grasp of the situation than I do. (I don't peruse the news mega very often.)
- I wouldn't call the NFP's victory disproportionate, the RN was still in first place in terms of vote share (especially in the second round), the NFP only made a deal with the center to game the system and ended up with the most seats but nowhere close to an absolute majority, and still only 20 seats ahead of the centrists (which were practically saved by the deal), so not a blowout at all and honestly a bit discouraging if you see it as the best the left (along with the center-left, greens, liberals, and other such deplorable ideologies) can do right now when amassed together.
  
  I said it from day one that since the left program is so anathema to macron the only thing he could do, besides just making a deal with the RN for another macron government with the RN as junior partner, was delay and try to get the squishier parts of the NFP (the center left socialist party and greens) to split from the coalition, along with the center right republicans, to support him in government.
  
  And I don't know the details of how well that's going (it's probably all backroom talk anyway) but I did post on the mega an article about splits in the NFP.
- real talk? were fucked.
  
  im probably dead within ten years from a police raid "gone wrong" but i refuse to leave. Many comrades will likely suffer the same fate. c'est la vie.

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