Image is of Jeff Daniels in The Newsroom, giving a speech (parodied below) about how - gasp - America sucks. But in a patriotic way.
And you - general megathread poster - yeah - just in case you accidentally wander into the news megathread one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest megathread in the world.
We’re seventh in citations, twenty-seventh in accurate predictions, twenty-second in effortposts, forty-ninth in non-mainstream article posting, 178th in guessing when wars will start, third in powerusers, number four in dialectics, and number four in megathread exports. We lead Hexbear in only three categories: pointless infighting, number of adults who believe Putin is based, and copium manufacturing, where we produce more than the next twenty-six lemmy megathreads combined, twenty-five of whom are full of delusional liberals. None of this is the fault of any Hexbear user, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest megathread in the world, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! Jokes about whether they got a Zionist’s semen in time?!
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
It’s actually really uncivil to learn details about treasonous activities of your political rivals
Maybe he already knew all that and was just bored
quite plausible tbh
Can’t wait to be sitting in the hexbear retirement home to watch all the abhorrent coverage when Obama dies
Him and LBJ are such fucking losers for having their GOP competitors dead to rights committing treason and doing fuck all about it.
Add Biden to the list lmao. How civility poisoned do you have to be not to take advantage of Jan 6 to banish Trump to the shadow realm
Wasn’t the issue with LBJ that he was also doing everything the Republicans were accused of and did?
oh so having a big dick is a crime now?!?!
Yeah pretty sure he learned about the republicans sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks by some illegal surveillance method so if he called them on it, he would have implicated himself as well.
And Ford
😤
I remember learning about Yasser Arafat separate of Zionist propaganda. The dude seemed incredibly civil despite all the assassination attempts. So I was confused when headlines and the like kept painting him as a bad guy.
Hey everybody, I’m back from sitting atop a mountain and meditating on the meaning of life, reality, and the goddamn news for a few weeks. I’ll be getting back into the swing of posting here over the next few days.
I don’t have anything to announce, but I do want to gauge interest on a “bookclub” here in the news megathread, the idea being to go through a book like Super Imperialism and other geopolitically relevant books as a community. It would give us something to do other than doomscroll, and get us all on the same theoretical grounding (from which we can then argue with each other at a more enlightened level).
I would be down to go through Super Imperialism. Hudson seems pretty knowledgeable from what I’ve seen of him on Geopolitical Economy
Bookclub yay!
and get us all on the same theoretical grounding (from which we can then argue with each other at a more enlightened level).
That’s the optimistic new years thinking we like to see. By March it it usually fizzles out though.
I’d be interested! On a less related note, I’m hoping we start up the Capital reading group from the beginning again soon, that’s something I want to read as well.
I’m bad at committing to reading clubs but I’d follow what gets written here about it
Yes I’ve been wanting to read that
yes, i’m interested! i tried to read it earlier this year but found it difficult to get through on my own
Super Imperialism is a very challenging but very rewarding read. I’d recommend taking it slower than faster.
The challenging aspect is that Hudson throws you into the deep end right away and assumes you already understand how international monetary flows work, because he’s not going to bother explaining it to you. For example, he references several times how the Vietnam War was creating a massive outflow of dollars. Why is that? Hudson doesn’t explain, I had to Google a bunch myself to get why (because I assumed incorrectly most of the “cost” of the war was to pay American soldiers and military contractors, money that would just be recycled back into the US economy).
That said, that’s why it’s great as group read, everyone will have lots of technical economics questions and we can rely on our collective knowledge to help out. I’ll follow along since I’ve already gone through it (slowly and painfully).
Add me to the book club please.
Yes. I have a copy of the book and have read most of it but I think I would benefit from reading it along with a group
Cryptocurrency miners in Chechnya will be treated as terrorists, Adam Delimkhanov, a State Duma deputy and advisor to the head of the republic, said in comments reported by Grozny-Inform. Delimkhanov said that “cases of illegal mining” have already been uncovered in Chechnya. He noted that “many involve people working in various organizations,” though he did not specify which ones.
“Our leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has asked us to inform all residents that if such cases are uncovered — which also cause electricity issues across entire districts, villages, or cities — the perpetrators will face severe punishment. We will equate them with terrorists because their actions harm society as a whole,” Delimkhanov saidChechnya W
I’ve been waiting for this type of thing to start
US credit card defaults jump to highest level since 2010
Consumers are ‘tapped out’ after years of high inflation and as pandemic-era savings have evaporated
Defaults on US credit card loans have hit the highest level since the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, in a sign that lower-income consumers’ financial health is waning after years of high inflation. Credit card lenders wrote-off $46bn in seriously delinquent loan balances in the first nine months of 2024, up 50 per cent from the same period in the year prior and the highest level in 14 years, according to industry data collated by BankRegData. Write-offs, which occur when lenders decide it is unlikely a borrower will make good on their debts, are a closely watched measure of significant loan distress. “High-income households are fine, but the bottom third of US consumers are tapped out,” said Mark Zandi, the head of Moody’s Analytics. “Their savings rate right now is zero.” The sharp rise in defaults is a sign of how consumers’ personal finances are becoming increasingly stretched after years of high inflation, and as the Federal Reserve has left borrowing costs at elevated levels. Banks have yet to report their fourth-quarter numbers but the early signs are that more consumers are falling significantly behind on what they owe. Capital One, the US’s third-largest credit card lender, after JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, recently said that as of November its annualised credit card write-off rate, which is the percentage of its overall loans that are marked as unrecoverable, hit 6.1 per cent, up from 5.2 per cent a year ago.
“Consumer spending power has been diminished,” said Odysseas Papadimitriou, head of consumer credit research firm WalletHub. US consumers exited pandemic-era lockdowns flush with cash and ready to spend. Credit card lenders were happy to help, signing up customers who might not have qualified in the past based on income, but looked like safe debtors because their bank accounts were flush with cash. Credit card balances soared, rising a combined $270bn in 2022 and 2023, and pushing the total US consumers owed on credit cards above $1tn for the first time in mid-2023. That spending along with coronavirus-induced supply chain bottlenecks led to a burst of inflation, something that prompted the Fed to boost borrowing costs starting in 2022. Higher balances and interest rates have left Americans who cannot pay off their credit card bills in full paying $170bn in interest in the past 12 months ending in September. That sucked up a portion of the excess cash that was in consumers’ bank accounts, particularly those of low-income consumers, and as a result, more of those borrowers are struggling to pay back their credit card debts. Hopes that the US central bank will rapidly slash interest rates in 2025 after cuts this year were dashed last week, when officials predicted only half a percentage point of rate cuts next year, compared with a forecast of 1 percentage point three months earlier. In a sign of how consumers are struggling, even after writing-off nearly $60bn in consumer credit card debt in the past year, another $37bn remains in consumers’ cards that is at least one month overdue. Credit card delinquency rates, which are seen as a precursor to write-offs, peaked in July, according to data from Moody’s, but have only fallen slightly and remain nearly a percentage point higher than they were on average in the year before the pandemic. “Delinquencies are pointing to more pain ahead,” said WalletHub’s Papadimitriou. Donald Trump’s threat of wide-ranging tariffs, which could increase inflation and interest rates, would be “two problematic things for the consumer in 2025”, he added.
Americans are about to literally lose their shirts. Looking forward to Trump competently and accurately fixing this.
spoiler
He won’t. American economy screwed, global economy screwed, new Great Depression incoming.
Just in time for the 100 year anniversary of the first Great Depression.
First as tragedy, second as farce. Nothing will be learned from it, and we’re speedrunning fascism once again, just to stop any leftist threat against capital. But this time without the USSR. 
But this time without the USSR
Don’t feel so gloom and doom, tovarshi SexUnSoc, we have a more stronger China and Russia to keep them in check, in their hegemony at least
That came across as doomerish, didn’t it? It wasn’t exactly my intention. We beat fascism before. We’ll do it again.
USA hitting 1m homeless next year no doubt
no shot it isn’t already, the official numbers say 770k but those are generally considered an undercount
With 15 million vacant homes
How are people still publishing the words “pandemic-era savings” taken seriously?
40 bln on trillion debt, pathetic.
(according to documentary (some kino slop, don’t remember which one) you need 8% to fuck up cdo)
“what’s in your wallet, jack?”The frequent usr of the word consumer in this article really angers me. There’s no reason not to use words like ‘people’ or ‘US Americans’, and calling them consumers really dehumanises them.
Well, the cradle knows more about these guys than we did https://thecradle.co/articles/hts-appoints-foreign-extremists-to-top-positions-in-new-syrian-army
“Abd al-Aziz Daud Khudaberdi, also known as Abu Mohammed Turkistani, is a native of Turkistan and has been promoted to lieutenant.
Omar Mohammed Ciftci, also known as Mukhtar Turki, is a Turkish national who has become a lieutenant.
Abdel Samriz Bishari, an Albanian, has been promoted to colonel.
Maulana Tirson Abdul Samad, a native of Tajikistan, became a colonel.
Ala Mohamed Abdul Baqi, an Egyptian, was promoted to colonel.
Ibn Ahmad Hariri, a Jordanian, became a colonel.”
dang really seems like an organic domestic revolution
Free Syria baby!
Well people did say that they wanted Pan Arabism, but I don’t think this is what they had in mind…
Copium manufacturing sounds too low to be honest. There is no way we only bested 26 instances. The only people on the English internet who have us beat on copium are the USA democrats who think the election was stolen and want to do a blue January 6th. Also the rest of hexbear has us beat in pointless infighting by a mile lol. Putin based numbers seem about right, only the Moon of Alabama comments section has more Putin fans.
I mean, the only thing keeping Copium in the news comm in check is y’all anons, Marmy, Z_Poster, xiaohongshu, and so forth… that may explain the discrepancy
Removed by mod
Maybe Hexbears shouldn’t be fatphobic or pick and choose which marginalized people matter and which people don’t
Also the rest of hexbear has us beat in pointless infighting by a mile lol
Marginalized people demanding to be treated better is not pointless infighting. Non-marginalized people putting their fragility on display is.
Maybe there wouldn’t be so many struggle sessions if there wasn’t so much fragility and reaction to people asking to be treated with dignity
This feels like an unnecessary thing to say.
According to air raid monitoring channels, Russian 5th generation Su-57 stealth aircraft are carrying out missions again, for now suspected to be simulations of cruise missile launches. The Su-57 can carry the Kh-59 cruise missile on external pylons, or the Kh-69 cruise missile in it’s internal weapons bays. The Kh-69 is a stealthier more advanced version of the Kh-59. Both are low observable, terrain following subsonic cruise missiles that fly at low altitude, with a range of around 300km/190mi. The most infamous Kh-69 attack of the war so far was the attack on Trypilska thermal power plant near Kyiv, completely disabling it. Kh-69s launched from Su-57s are reserved for high value targets, Ukrainian air defence operators say that they are even worse to deal with for them than the Kinzhal air launched ballistic missiles.
Be “stealth craft”
people even know when you are dicking around in your own airspace
tfw instead of making 1000 shit reaper look-a-likes you imported usa obsessions
AFAIK, it’s (relatively) easy to detect the simple presence of stealth aircraft in a general area. The tough part is maintaining a precise radar lock for long enough to shoot them down.
You’d be able to tell it was a stealth aircraft by being unable to maintain such a radar lock.
Don’t they just look like small cross-sectional object (e.g. you automated processing software expect 30 squared meters thingy moving at sonic speed, but it’s like 2 squared meters instead, so you have to fight electronic noise to track it)
Stealth is more effective on the high frequency radars used for tracking and locking missiles than the low frequency radars that can’t do that, iirc.
Can only do it for target radar. It is not possible to hide the large object from the long wavelength warning radar. Can see the position but not exact. Only short wavelength can be reflected to hide.
Name 《stealth》 is not true. Can not hide the large supersonic object. Only protect from missile.
I mean you can’t disguise an aircraft or drone visible on a runway, a geosynchronous orbit spy satellite over the airbase will see it. Stealth is to do with reducing radar and heat signatures in flight, and is a valuable technology being developed by the United States, China, Russia and even Turkey.
You can say that, but also patriot missile production is 500 per year. 1000 reapers will fuck up any air defense for 2 years, even assuming 1 to 1 interception.
Expensive toys work for usa cause they can offload like 50 percent on satellite-states, and have 1000 of the fuckers, not like 30.
The purpose of stealth is to penetrate air defenses, not launch missiles from your own airspace
You can’t replace an air force with drones though. Look at Iran, lots of drones, but an outdated air force. The lack of a modern air force has hurt them, it’s why they want to get the Su-35 form Russia. Drones similar to an MQ-9 Reaper drone also can by shot down by a lot of air defence systems, you don’t need Patriot or S300/400 high level system to shoot down a drone of that level. Ansar Allah has shot down over a dozen Reapers using SA-6/Kub SAM systems first deployed in the 1960s, forcing the USA to use drones which fly faster and at higher altitudes for intelligence gathering. And in a direct war with the US, their way of achieving air superiority is with their aircraft shooting down your aircraft and drones and destroying your air defence systems in an offensive action and not a defensive war. So something like AIM-120 and AGM-88 HARM production rates and stockpiles would be more useful than Patriot or SM-3 production rates as a metric.
They have single use, long range suicide drones, not controlled ones. (and they haven’t used them, the scaredy cats they are).
High altitude, precisely. fly at 5 km, drop small bombs (-nyt) on training facilities you see. miles better than nerd out @materials, surface angles and radar wavelengths for 10 years, make 5 planes a year and then be afraid to fly them inside aa systems range anyway, and use them to launch expensive missiles.
Usa way requires the runways to be functional, which might be a little hard to achieve with mass drones making small craters in them. Yes repairing a 1m hole is easy, you still can’t take off tho.
how do these ‘simulated’ actions work? are planes readied to put air defense on alert and then they don’t do anything? or do they actually take off? in the latter case i have to question if the cost to the enemy for a false alert is higher than what it takes to deploy a ‘juke’
The planes usually take off and practice launch maneuveres according to the air raid channels. With aircraft like Tu-95M strategic bombers that launch the Kh-101 missiles, their movement is usually monitored, they are large and hard to hide. With something like the Su-57, the most you’ll get is a take off and general estimated location (example, airborne over x oblast), it’s a stealth fighter after all.
The value of these simulations I’d imagine is training and experience for the flight and ground crews outside of actual combat so that they’re ready for it, and it does keep the enemy on it’s toes. There was even a simulated Oreshnik strike a few days ago. These large air attacks are quite complex, the launch timings of the cruise missiles, drones, ballistic missiles, etc have to be exact and at certain intervals for the desired result to occur. So training on this is always useful.
i hadn’t really considered they’d have training value, tbh good point. guess i assumed the russian air force was more or less the same size/personnel as it was at the beginning of the war, lol—has it expanded very much/have they had to do many replacements? my brain has russian air filed under ‘uncontested supremacy’ vis-a-vis ukraine so i didn’t really pay attention
Russian Air Force when directly compared to the Ukrainian Air Force yeah pretty much uncontested. MiG-31s and Su-35s can fire R-37 missiles from much longer ranges than Ukrainian aircraft can return fire with their own R-27 missiles. Su-35s also make very capable escort aircraft for Su-34 bombing missions, the Su-35 can carry R-37 BVR long range air to air missiles, R-77 medium range BVR air to air missiles, R-73 short range infrared heat seeking air to air missiles, and Kh-31 anti radiation air to ground missiles, all simultaneously. So an escort capable of dealing with all possible threats at the same time. The Ukrainian F-16s are deployed in a defensive posture, not an offensive one. But Ukraine has plenty of air defence systems capable of taking out Russian aircraft, Patriot and S-300 being the highest level ones. So Russia can’t just fly over Ukraine, they could only do that at the beginning of the war. The only Russian aircraft you’ll hear of or see operating behind Ukrainian lines is again, the Su-57. There was a video of one shooting down it’s S-70 drone companion within Ukrainian airspace after losing control over the S-70.
In Croatia, the incumbent president, Zoran Milanovic, won the presidential elections. He was noted for his constant criticism of arms supplies and spending money on Ukraine. He is considered to be close in views to Orban and Fico. But unlike them, in Croatia he has far fewer real powers.
In December 2021, Milanović criticised prime minister Plenković’s visit to Ukraine made at the start of a new escalation of the crisis over Ukraine calling it “plain charlatanism”. The prime minister responded by saying that the government sought to maintain good relations with Russia too.
Harsh reaction from Ukraine’s government followed Milanović’s statements made on 25 January 2022 about Ukraine not being fit to join NATO, as well the country being corrupt and Russia deserving to be given a way to have its security demands met. Milanović also referred to the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine as a “coup d’état”.
Milanović supported the expansion of same-sex couples’ rights and introduced the Life Partnership Act. During 2012, a Law on medically assisted fertilization was enacted, health education was introduced in all elementary and high schools, and Milanović announced further expansion of rights for same-sex couples. The referendum, organized by the citizen initiative For the family of Željka Markić, proposed an amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, thus creating a constitutional prohibition against same-sex marriage. Milanović opposed the proposal and told HRT that he would vote against it.
In October 2023, Milanović criticized Israel’s retaliatory strikes on the Gaza Strip, saying: “I condemned [Hamas’] murders, I even expressed disgust and abhorrence, but the right to defense does not include the right to revenge and the killing of civilians.” In October 2024, he compared “Netanyahu’s regime” to Putin and said that for him: “both Netanyahu and Putin are defendants on International Criminal Court”
Some news agencies say he won and others say there will be a second round. It seems that this Zoran Milanović is like the social-liberal version of Robert Fico. He’s a socdem, critical of Ukraine, but he doesn’t seem to openly support homophobia or xenophobia against other Slavs. I’d also like to say that it really annoys me when you go to Wikipedia or news outlets and they report that a presidential/executive candidate is “independent”. They are not even independent, they literally have parties supporting them and openly say that these people are their candidates.
hts appointing rogue’s gallery of international moderate rebels to army posts
pakistan or jordan, pakistan or jordan any context to this?
edit: saw the other comment with the context
thought i answered to that comment tbh
NEEEEEEWS
TALKING ABOUT NEEEEWSI found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Sports News: Tampa Bay Buccaneers score touchdown with a duck streaker on the field.
foul play: Duck is shown nutmegging the ball boy through the legs when he tried to pick it up:https://xcancel.com/NFLonCBS/status/1873463600129728652
Duck is seen being caressed by “duck dynasty guy” off the field
I kinda fuck with the giant mustache + mullet
ahem
FOWL playI had to
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
Reuters have released their 2024 best of photos compilation. Here are 10 from around the world relevant to the news mega. Part 1
Lebanon - Hezbollah fighterspoiler
Occupied Palestine - Police disperse ultra orthodox protestors
India - Gathering of Mohdi supporters
Ukraine - “Hate and Revenge” Ukrainian soldier
Haiti - ProtestersUkraine - “Hate and Revenge” Ukrainian soldier
Bruh
Westerners when looking at Nazis with tattoos of “violence” and “terrorism”: cool! Look at this heckin epic badass
I am unable to post more images. Is there a posting limit?
Yes sort of. There’s a limit on how much you can do in a given time. If you wait it will let you include more over time but it takes (iirc) between 5 and 10 minutes for each new one once you hit the limit.
Next year humanity will enter beta production
me in elder care listening to classic betoomer tunes in 40 yearsDid they get Jeff Daniels’ cum in time?
Aliyev is demanding apologies from Putin a day after Putin addressed the issue to him, called the event tragic, but didn’t accept full blame for the Azerbaijani plane crash.
I think Putin is going to have to give a full apology at some time, maybe not right now, but eventually. The current apology is not enough if they did shoot at a civilian airliner, and all the evidence points to that at this moment.
