Bulletins and News Discussion from September 2nd to September 8th, 2024 - We Love Our Trans Comrades - Chemicals of the Week: Estrogen and Testosterone
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.
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.
Hey comrades, is there any resource I can dig into to better understand the current situation in Cuba? To my uninformed knowledge, the situation appears to be rather bleak, with rising anti-government sentiment due to increased liberal reforms and economic struggles compounded by COVID and the trade embargo.
With the application to join BRICS, this should see increased trade, and tourism especially, which may pay off.
Are there any Cubans here that can offer better explanations for what I am hearing, or provide more accurate sources not infected by western bias? I support Cuba and the Revolution, of course, I just want to know more about the current situation.
Cuba depends a lot on help from Mexico, Brazil, Russia, China, Venezuela and Spain. I don't think there will be a counter-revolution in Cuba any time soon. Ever since Russia intervened in Syria, they has also sent its navy and some soldiers to Venezuela and Cuba. I believe Russia still has its nuclear submarine in Havana to put pressure on the US not to do something stupid in Ukraine, like sending actual NATO troops there.
Iirc during the big protests in 2021, both pro and against the government. The economy was very bad due to the Covid pandemic and Biden didn't keep his promises to ease the embargo, as Obama did, and actually sanctioned Cuba even more. This angered AMLO (Mexico's President) enough for him to send a load of free food, medical aid and oil to Cuba on a Mexican Navy ship. This basically ended the protests because it eased the situation.
Nowadays, it seems that Cuba's situation is better than it was in the 1990s and during the Covid pandemic, but it wasn't good when there was the Soviet Union and during the First Pink Tide (1999 - 2012), when all the Latin American countries, France, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Portugal were openly trading with Cuba and building things there.
What prompted the question I posit is being linked this article by Spanish bourgeois media outlet El PaΓs. Immediately I distrust El PaΓs accurately depicting the truth of the matter, but combined with overall knowledge of struggles in Cuba since COVID it prompted me to ask here for more knowledge.
No investigation, no right to speak applies to me as well. I do not wish to expand upon the chaos of misinformation, but to rely on more knowledgeable comrades to help me understand more.