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Bulletins and News Discussion from September 30th to October 6th, 2024 - Qassam, Qassem, Quagmire
  • Traffic through the Suez Canal has fallen from around 2,000 transits per month before November 2023 to around 800 in August,

    Greece-based Conbulk Shipmanagement Corporation stopped Red Sea voyages after its vessel MV Groton was attacked twice in August.

    Torben Kolln, managing director of German-based container shipping group Leonhardt & Blumberg, said the Red Sea and wider Gulf of Aden was a "no go" area for their fleet.

    An executive at a third shipping company, which has also received a letter, said they decided to end business with Israel in order to be able to continue to use the Red Sea route.

    The Houthis have not stopped all traffic and the majority of Chinese and Russian-owned ships - which they do not see as affiliated with Israel - are able to sail through unhindered with lower insurance costs.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/houthis-warn-shipowners-new-phase-red-sea-campaign-prepare-be-attacked-2024-10-03/

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from September 23rd to September 29th, 2024 - The War In The North
  • It's a good point, but I think we have to be open to the idea that the people running the show are not rational, not intelligent, and perhaps even in the throes of hubris. Perhaps they have an exaggerated sense of their own capability and a mistaken belief in the power of their bombs and drones. Maybe they think they can defeat Iran easily, even if their generals tell them otherwise. And they believe that they need to clear the board before engaging with China, to pick off China's potential allies ahead of time.

    The only evidence I can give for this hypothesis is that they do seem to believe that by giving Ukraine an unlimited number of missiles, that Ukraine can expel Russia from its borders. That is without going into the absurd predictions being made at the onset of the war about Russia's imminent total economic and industrial collapse. They have not (recently) proven themselves as being able to, uh, calculate.

  • Young men, like 18-24 year old males on Hexbear: Is the culture for your age group completely fucked, or am I out of touch?
  • I'm not of that age, but imo it's more a technological thing than a generational thing. People, of any age, cannot put their phones down. I personally have to make the conscious decision to disconnect if I'm going to read something or watch a movie or whatever. I imagine that for people who grew up with smartphones, that's like cutting off a limb.

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from September 9th to September 15th, 2024 - Viva Sandino! - COTW: Nicaragua
  • That's a good question. You are right that if we wanted to see the extent of Anne's vapidity we could just read her book. Speaking for myself, I was never going to do that. While I'm sure most here figured her out a long time ago, seeing her talk at length like this was eye-opening to me at least. And probably the same for a lot of people whose only exposure to her is from the odd piece in the FT or whatever. Honestly, if someone wanted a primer on how and why western hegemony is failing, I think an hour of Anne Applebaum discussing her honestly held views is as good an explanation as any. In this respect, I prefer a guest like Anne Applebaum over a Mehdi Hassan if only because the former embodies the actual values of the state rather than the professed values represented by the latter. It really is something to behold the emperor without any clothes.

    But, if it's telling you something you already know, it IS pointless and counter-productive. There are people who will watch it and think, "Gosh, she's right, Poland DID do well in its transition to neoliberalism and therefore the system is sound and was implemented with good intentions and Russia is just innately full of bad people who can't succeed". Is it acceptable to allow obvious falsehoods like that to be stated without any pushback? Ehhhh....

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from September 9th to September 15th, 2024 - Viva Sandino! - COTW: Nicaragua
  • Bastani never asks tough questions, he just lets his guests speak at length. That's his style. Applebaum is hard to take at such concentrated doses, but I do think it is an insightful glimpse into the diseased and delusional mind of the imperial elites.

  • The Beginning of Xenoblade vs. The Beginning of Xenogears
  • The later entries in the series from the looks of it lean heavy into the Shonen look with weeb fanservice.

    Artstyle wise, maybe, especially 2. All three have a lot of Saturday Morning Cartoon nonsense going on, though. Silly schoolyard bully villains hamming it up, lots of "fights" that involve characters standing around and talking about their Special Power or whatever.

    3 probably has the least of that, and of the "fanservice" of the type I think you mean, and is possibly the most like Xenogears. But still not the same thing (but maybe if Xenogears was made today it would be like Xenoblade anyway - maybe the real difference is in fidelity and amount of acting etc., I dunno! Some things that work when read don't when heard...). Honestly, I think the biggest similarity between 3 and Gears is that the makers once again tried to do something immense and profound and kind of whiffed. But still totally worth experiencing even though it's compromised. Pretty pro-communist as well. Amusingly so.

  • Fear grips UK's Muslim communities as far-right riots spread nationwide
  • But also, what if he had been a Muslim immigrant? That obviously wouldn't justify anything that had happened. And so the race, religion and nationality of the attacker are entirely irrelevant.

    I wonder why the government is having a difficult time signalling to its population that collective punishment is unacceptable...

  • Fear grips UK's Muslim communities as far-right riots spread nationwide
  • The British state-run media organisation has been egregiously bad. Look at this shit. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cervv8rz8mzo

    An anti-immigration protest began peacefully outside Bolton Town Hall earlier, but within half an hour, about 300 people, who mostly had their faces covered with black face masks or balaclavas, charged towards the building. They began shouting "Allahu Akbar" - a phrase meaning God is greatest - as they arrived at one side of the town hall, where a separate group had gathered waving England flags.

    Meanwhile, here is footage of that event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3QDnJeoYJM&t

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from July 29th to August 4th, 2024 - Haters Stay Mad(uro) - COTW: Venezuela
  • A lot of these disgusting gammon emigrate to other countries when they age. They then exist in Little England enclaves where they can eat the horrible British cardboard food and speak English in dimly lit "gastro pubs" for the rest of their lives. This, after lecturing other cultures to adopt "British values" the entire time. Some of them actually have the fucking gall to lecture minorities in the UK from afar.

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from July 29th to August 4th, 2024 - Haters Stay Mad(uro) - COTW: Venezuela
  • I dunno what gave you the idea that the UK was less racist than the USA or France. Race relations are... different here in the UK than in the states. British identity is coded exclusively white. There is an assumption that "British values" are a thing that exists, and that, for example, Islam is incompatible with them. In general, the conception of what makes someone British is very narrow, whereas US identity is necessarily broader. On the other hand, our cops don't generally make exterminating non-white people their primary goal.

    I distinctly remember a Labour MP - I think it might have been Yvette Cooper actually - going on BBC Newsnight... This was maybe ten years ago... And saying, point-blank, that multiculturalism had failed. This was in the context of David Cameron banging on about instilling British values in prospective immigrants and the need for "integration" (conformity) and the like. It was the moment Labour lost me and become a for-the-whites party. This was before Corbyn even. Labour saw their record on immigration as something to apologise for.

    For the past five years, to distract from the terrible failures of neoliberalism and austerity, both main parties and our entire media establishment have laser-focused on the few thousand "small boat" refugees that arrive on our shores from countries we've bombed and sanctioned. It was, for some reason, the dominant issue of the election, and prior to this, the key benchmark on which the Conservative party was being judged was in their ability to enact a performatively cruel plan to deport refugees to Rwanda while their claim is being processed (keep in mind, for example, that some of these refugees will be turning up because they're gay, and Rwanda does not enshrine their protection against discrimination and public attitudes towards homosexuality are negative). Both parties pledged to "stop the small boats". Keep in mind, the spectacle of small boats only exists because the UK refuses to allow people to claim for asylum from afar. Anyway, on the first day of these riots, what were people chanting? "Stop the small boats". The media's response is to suggest that it's all Russia's fault.

    But yes, also as Awoo says, there is a violent subculture that exists within British society that is always itching for a fight regardless, and that might be a key difference as well.

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    catonkatonk [none/use name] @hexbear.net
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