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.
The US is close to reaching an agreement on giving Ukraine cruise missiles that could hit targets deep inside Russia, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing US officials.
The officials said the US is expected to include Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) in a weapons package that will be announced for Ukraine this fall. But first, there are technical issues to work through to ensure they can be fired by Ukraine’s Soviet-made fighter jets.
An older version of the JASSM can hit targets over 230 miles, and there are newer versions that can fly over 500 miles. Reuters said it was unable to establish which kind the US is considering sending to Ukraine. Providing the older, shorter-range version would put less strain on US military stockpiles.
The US officials said that providing the JASSMs could alter the conflict by putting more Russian territory in range of powerful precision-guided missiles, which they said was a big concern of the Biden administration.
The comments suggest the administration is preparing to give Ukraine the greenlight to launch long-range strikes inside Russian territory using US-provided missiles, which would mark another significant escalation of the proxy war and risk a major response from Moscow. Russia has said it’s altering its nuclear doctrine in response to Western escalations in Ukraine.
The US is allowing Ukraine to use US armored vehicles, missiles, and bombs in its Kursk offensive but still insists it won’t support long-range strikes, at least for the time being. A congressional staffer told Reuters that giving Ukraine JASSMs would increase the pressure on the US to lift all restrictions on Ukraine’s use of its weapons.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was asked on Wednesday about the possibility of the US providing Ukraine with the JASSMs and said the US shouldn’t joke about Russia’s red lines.
“I won’t be surprised by anything – the Americans have already crossed the threshold they set for themselves. They are being egged on, and Zelenskiy of course sees this and takes advantage of it,” he said. “But they should understand – they are joking about our red lines here. They shouldn’t joke about our red lines.”
This is so bleak, and I now exactly how dumbasses are going to talk about this when the russians talk about retaliating, they'll be like "Putin is so crazy, how is it not fair that ukraine is given weapons to strike deep inside russia, how does this justify russia striking the west?"
It's just a game to them, they don't feel the heat at all
Is this America’s way to start another decades long “anti-terrorist” campaign? When Ukraine inevitably collapses, much of the advanced weaponry will end up on the black market, especially considering the fact that Ukraine hasn’t yet collapsed and it is already a black market hotspot
That's been the speculation for a long time. If Ukraine won, fine. If Ukraine lost it'd become a failed state on the Russian border full of Nazis that would drain Russian resources for decades. Win-win for DC.