news
Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
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To learn about and discuss meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
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To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
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To support healthy and good faith discussion as comrades, sharpening our analytical skills and helping one another better understand geopolitics.
We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:
The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
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Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
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Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
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Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
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Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
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Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
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American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
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Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
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AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
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Why are the anglos so fucking eager to start World War III? Do they just want to prove their dicks still work and that they're not America's little pet poodle?
Labour thinks they have to act tougher than the Tories to try to win over chuds, much the same way Kamala was campaigning on Trump being too weak on the border. This will obviously never work, but they either don't care because it's all for show or they're too stupid, take your pick.
The economy is irredeemably cooked and there's no more copper wiring left to strip out of the public sector once the final round of NHS privatisation goes through. All the major political parties have completely collapsed and have functionally zero actual democratic support. The Starmer project has always been one funded and ran by American intelligence and the British establishment is desperately trying to carve out a future for itself the way it did with international financialisation after the loss of its empire.
What they've settled on is using Israel as a model to build a lean, AI-run, low tax, low spend, fascist country in name only, turning much of the country into 'free enterprise zones' for foreign capital and operating a perpetual privatised war economy. But they face three major problems:
Demand for weapons and military technology will fall if war doesn't continue in Ukraine or if Israel is forced to scale back it's genocide in Gaza and increasing numbers of wars against its neighbours.
The economy already cannot support the number of people who require a living and it's only going to get worse as they make this transition. The government doesn't want to be on the hook for social welfare spending for unemployment, underemployment, or disability and sickness. They need to shrink the population, starting with those people, and are doing so with a mixture of ultra-austerity to sanction and starve people out of the system, cut payments to remove disabled workers from jobs they're already in, and introduce a euthanasia scheme that allows for 'financial burden' being a criteria and can also be run at a profit. For the first time ever, the state's Strategic Defense Review listed as one of its needs for increased surveillance and military force as "dealing with demands for employment and income from politicians by the people".
Even considering the plans above, there's simply far too many able-bodied young people who are pissed off or nihilistic, and the state has absolutely nothing to offer them even in terms of future or aspiration. Currently they're trying to manage the problem by funnelling them towards fascism and the distraction of attacking immigrants and asylum seekers, whilst heavily investing in new private prisons. In the longer term, and related to this article, the plan is to use increased military conflicts to create demand for conscription or mandatory military service of other sorts (both have seriously been floated by military and political leaders recently) to thin out the numbers and control them.