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.
Brazilian Judge Alexandre de Moraes orders seizure Elon Musk's cars and aircraft in Brazil
Starlink missed the deadline for appeals. The purpose of the order is to secure funds to pay X fines. In his decision to block Starlink's bank accounts in Brazil, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes authorizes the seizure of the company's cars and aircraft in the country. Starlink is one of the companies in which billionaire Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter), is a partner.
Starlink missed the deadline to appeal against the blockades. According to the Supreme Court, the deadline for challenging the order was Monday (2/9). As a result, the Supreme Court's technical department followed up on the decision and informed the Central Bank about the blocking of the company's funds in the banking system.
In addition, the order to block vehicles was communicated through the National System for the Unavailability of Assets. The National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) and the Port Authority were informed about the blocking of Starlink's aircraft and vessels.
The magistrate also ordered the blocking of real estate, which could affect the company's operations, affecting gateways, which are physical structures needed to allow customers to surf the internet via satellite. The company currently has around 10 gateways across the country.
It's even funnier when you learn that Alexandre de Moraes is a conservative judge who was installed in the supreme court during the 2016 coup. Bolsonarists only hate him because he really fucking hates Bolsonaro, after Bolsonaro did a bunch of shit against him. The Brazilian Supreme Court is basically cucking the far-right congress, and the congress can't do shit because they would have to get support from the President. And even if they remove Alexandre de Moraes, that will give Lula da Silva the chance to select another leftist for the supreme court to replace him.
If I was smarter and read Baudrillard I think there'd be a very funny joke to be made about him being an inverted simulacrum of Clarence Thomas, a left radical Black Nationalist who ended up becoming a far right SCOTUS justice because of all the grudges he held. Like a Mario, Wario, Luigi, Waluigi situation.
Yes, the Supreme Court has a lot of power, and so do judges in general, but Supreme Court justices usually never do anything monocratically, usually everyone has an opinion and all the justices have to vote. They usually vote on issues that are not being discussed or dealt with by Congress, the Senate or the President.
The Supreme Court began to act more after Bolsonaro, who was being screwed over by Congress (In 2016 there was a coup, they began to take powers away from the executive and give them to Congress. Since the 1950s there has been a center-right movement to establish a parliamentary system in Brazil, which ignores the plebiscite of the 1990s that defeated monarchism and paliamentarism, and established that Brazil would be a republic with presidentialism), began to abuse its powers to spy on the opposition and began to orchestrate a way to rig the election to elect a majority in congress.
The Supreme Court started attacking him to stop this coup attempt, then he got angry because they started investigating his family's involvement in drug trafficking. Bolsonaro started making speeches that he was going to kill Alexandre de Moraes (Alexandre is a conservative judge who was chosen during the 2016 coup as a Supreme Court judge) and some other judges. By sheer irony of fate, Alexandre was chosen to be the Supreme Court judge who would monitor the 2022 elections. Then Lula won, Bolsonaro cried, literally tried two coups, which failed. Then there was the great coup attempt of 2023, which ended with 1,000 people arrested, and more arrested afterwards.
After that, there was a problem: Lula da Silva was president, but Congress still had a lot of power and now 40% of Congress was in the hands of the extreme right, while another 40% was in the hands of the opportunistic parties (nicknamed the Center) and only 20% in the hands of the left + small liberal and conservative allied parties. Although Lula actually elected a liberal ally as head of the Senate, Congress remained in the control of the extreme right. Lula da Silva seemed to have allied himself with the Supreme Court in order to put pressure on Congress, prevent any far-right laws from being passed and get important laws passed by the Supreme Court to protect minorities and other things.