Говорит Шестиугольный Медведь!

Сообщение Совинформбюро!

Hi!

I'm here to publish the list of proposals, made both by the mod team in internal discussions and from proposals made by users last week, to be voted on by the news heads.

The process will be quite simple. Below this comment will be a series of comments from me.

They will follow the format of...

• YES VOTE

• NO VOTE

If you agree with the proposal, upvote the comment with YES VOTE. If you disagree with the proposal, upvote the comment with NO VOTE.

The voting margin to pass a proposal as approved shall be with a minimum floor of 36 upvotes, based on the rounded rough average of megathread upvotes of popular comments divided in half. Should a proposal be passed but prove to be controversial by also receiving a no vote of at least 26 votes, the proposal shall be tabled and reworked for presentation at a future megathread should the need arise.

Additionally, the floor will still be open to new proposals with a caveat that the minimum floor for acceptance for deliberation by the council of news mods shall be 31 upvotes. This is just in case someone is struck by the lightning of inspiration and wants to bring up an idea to shape the comm in a better direction.

The polls are now open.

Semper post, news hogs.

Edit: P.S, I know some of the proposals are kinda scuffed looking, if they pass I'll format them so they look like the others on the rule sidebar. chalk it up to my laziness lol

In the Danish city of Odense, the mayor is malding that he can't ban ships from legally and peacefully docking in the local harbour:

"Deeply frustrating": Odense mayor wants Russian ships out of the harbor

Russian ships should not be allowed to dock at Odense Harbor and receive services.

This is the message in an email from Odense's mayor, Peter Rahbæk Juel, from the Social Democrats, to the Minister of Transport, Thomas Danielsen, from the Liberal Party.

The call comes in response to reports on how ships with Russian connections are creatively bypassing current sanctions, for example, by transporting natural gas to Russia.

"The ships are being serviced by companies located at the harbor. They’ve done so completely legally - and without Odense Harbor being able to refuse them, which is deeply frustrating," writes the mayor in the email.

Odense Harbor is obligated to accept ships as long as they do not break any laws or sanctions - and officially, they are not, according to the mayor.

• Source: Machine translation from DR (state media), September 27th 2024

Progressives Sound Alarm as Harris Courts Crypto Industry

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), is friendly with the crypto industry and personally owns hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin.

Harris, for her part, gave a nod to the cryptocurrency industry during a major economic policy speech in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, saying she wants the U.S. to “remain dominant” in “emerging technologies” such as the blockchain.

Harris’ economic policy platform states that, if elected in November, she would “encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting our consumers and investors.”

https://xcancel.com/ArmchairW/status/1839453350854853047

There's actually a critical lesson to draw from this and other Ukrainian fiascos, of which the Bakhmut saga and the Zaporozhie Hundred Days come to mind: Ukraine will have ended up losing this war in large part because it consistently tried to fight beyond its means.

The Ukrainians started this war with an enormous army, well in excess of what the Russians could and actually did commit to the fight in 2022. That huge force (the "First Army") was badly mauled in early 2022, but it was rejuvenated later that year by a combination of ruthless mobilization and massive aid from NATO. This convinced the Russian Stavka to transition to the defensive and consolidate their position in Ukraine, withdrawing troops from more exposed positions in east Kharkov and right-bank Kherson. Any serious assessment of the situation at that point would have been that the Russians had consolidated into a basically impregnable position that the AFU was incapable of breaching (lest we forget in the wake of Russia's totally unhindered withdrawal from the area, their attempts at reducing the Kherson bridgehead by force in mid-2022 were bloody disasters), and the correct course of action was to start digging in and negotiate a peace treaty in the meantime.

The Ukrainian leadership instead threw a disturbingly large portion of the "Second Army" into Prigozhin's meatgrinder in Bakhmut and then ordered not one but two large-scale counteroffensives into Zaporozhie and the Bakhmut flanks using the post-Bakhmut remains of the "Second Army" and their NATO-supplied "Third Army." Those failed with enormous losses, opening the way for Russia to transition back to the offensive in late 2023 and begin systematically rolling Ukraine out of the Donbass. The correct course of action at this point was, again, to find a tenable defensive line and start digging. Zelensky instead ordered a "Hail Mary" offensive in Kursk with the remnants of the "Third Army" and significant elements from a lightly-equipped "Fourth Army," hoping Russian border defenses were weak despite their having ample warning of Ukrainian designs on the border region (courtesy of several earlier, smaller raids) and plenty of time to prepare. It proceeded to fail with enormous losses - Ukrainian forces breached the border, began to exploit, and ran square into a Russian haymaker counter-punch that stopped them in their tracks. The Ukrainians then reinforced failure, sending massive reinforcements into a death pit in an attempt to keep a sliver of Russian soil under their flag as a middle finger to Putin.

And while this was happening the front in the Donbass started to collapse with Russian troops making large advances and seizing key terrain, in no small part because the AFU's resources had been systematically redirected to a tertiary operation far to the north. We've seen, again and again and again, that when the Ukrainians got resources and generated forces, rather than admitting they are the weaker power here and working to strengthen their positions and conciliate, they instead squandered them on hugely ambitious and equally doomed offensives. In 2023 these offensives were aimed at restoring their pre-2014 borders when Donetsk may as well have been on the Moon for them, while in 2024 their ambitions transitioned to the outright insanity of conquering southwest Russia despite the fact they'd been on the military back foot for the last year. These are the moves of a power setting objectives beyond its means to achieve, and they will probably end up dooming Ukraine as a sovereign state going forward.

I don't have anything interesting to post right now so here's a picture of a PLA soldier on the disputed border with India. Nobody in the disputed territory is allowed guns so the PLA have polearms instead.

mfw the first tenured professor fired for anti-Zionist speech is Jewish:
https://xcancel.com/natashalennard/status/1839285771892633911

The University of Chicago just received $100 million from an anonymous donor. I wonder where this anonymous donor stands on the issue of Palestinian liberation:
https://xcancel.com/emanabdelhadi/status/1839309088397639860

Terrorist getting arrested in Morocco:
https://xcancel.com/RyanRozbiani/status/1839102434498822423

Israeli soldier Moshe Avichzer was reportedly detained in July while vacationing in Marrakesh.

He is accused of committing war crimes in Gaza after completing a three-month tour of duty there.

Avichzer had shared photos from his vacation in Morocco shortly after posting images of himself amid destroyed Palestinian homes and rubble in Gaza.

Following protests by hundreds of Moroccans demanding his prosecution as a war criminal, a Moroccan court is now reportedly preparing to hear his case.

Brazil will present a Chinese-Brazilian peace plan for Ukraine to the countries of the Global South by the end of the week, Reuters reports.

The meeting, which will take place on September 27 in New York, is expected to include Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the UAE and other countries from the Global South. Representatives of European countries were not invited to the meeting.

The meeting will be chaired by Brazil's top foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, who will try to persuade those present to support the six-point Brazil-China plan. In particular, this concerns an immediate ceasefire, de-escalation and the beginning of peace negotiations between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq threatens the UAE:
https://xcancel.com/Seamus_Malek/status/1839410871325630859

The leader of the Sayyid ash-Shuhada Brigades, part of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, directly threatens the UAE, saying it is the "first line of fire" if a larger war erupts, and that the militia's drones, which have reached Israel, can easily reach "alternative locations".

Yesterday I was reading some borderline crank post on substack, about a slideshow leaked from the british counter disinformation unit

I think i found it here but now i cant find it to finish it, does anyone know what I was reading lol, i cant find it in my history and I didnt save it :/

ps death to israel, obviously

Trump said he will meet with Zelensky on Friday in New York - BBC

Trump and Zelensky to meet amid Republican anger

A record large container ship has made the Arctic transit between Russia and China, saving a lot of time compared to the Suez route during the open water season.

https://gcaptain.com/first-panamax-containership-sprints-across-arctic-reaching-china-in-just-three-weeks/

Good news for eurasian integration, bad news for climate change