Bulletins and News Discussion from September 2nd to September 8th, 2024 - We Love Our Trans Comrades - Chemicals of the Week: Estrogen and Testosterone

Image is of the Cuban flag and the Pride flag on the Havana Health Ministry building.

Inspired by a highly upvoted recommendation by @Commiejones@hexbear.net:

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.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

You're viewing a single thread.

1.3K comments

Sam Altman (OpenAI), Marc Andreessen (Meta), and Peter Thiel (Palantir) are about to bankrupt the entire country of Honduras.
The entire thread unrolled is worth a read, as is this article about the local resistance to it but the basics are this...
In 2009 the democratically elected government is overthrown in a violent coup, backed by American business and the Obama administration. Hilary Clinton in particular insisted it couldn't be called a coup in the media and was accused of actively supporting it by groups in Honduras.
The coup government introduced special enterprise zones known as ZEDEs, a kind of ultra-extreme freeborn where private companies could have their own laws, courts, police, and military with zero oversight or taxation.
In return for bribes, the oppressive coup government signed proposals and deals for more and more of these until they could potentially cover a massive amount of the country. And cracked down hard on political opponents and people the companies wanted gone - making Honduras the most violent place on the planet at the time.
These deals clearly weren't legal, so the coup government just started the courts with corrupt judges.
When the new, elected government got back in during 2021 they naturally passed a law repealling the ZEDEs. The votes were unanimous.
Now this group of billionaires is suing Honduras for breaking the agreements, despite the fact that these companies were likely supporting the coup, and many of the coup government members have been invited on not just corruption, but murder and drug trafficking charges.
They want $11bn, more than a third of Honduras' GDP.
And worst of all, they're probably going to win, bankrupting the country.
As an additional remember when here's coverage of leading environmental activist Berta Cáceres speaking out about Hilary Clinton's coup backing before she was assassinated.
- If they default the parasites will try to get American courts to seize whatever assets Honduras has with the American banks, like they did with Argentina.
  Still though better to fight than trying to pay back.
  In response, Próspera is suing the govt for ⅔ of its annual state budget. An op-ed in Foreign Policy states that the suit’s success “would simply render the country bankrupt.”
  This is only partly true. The parasites will only accept Dollars, they won't accept Honduran currency if they can't get it all converted to Dollars at the price they want. Honduras is a tiny country, but it's not like they lose their land and resources because they default. Though, the US could orchestrate another coup.
- Honduras recently also kicked out the ROC (Taiwan) diplomats and recognize China (PRC). Theres a lot of support to Zelaya's family, they were basically the richest family in Hondura and were right-wing until they were elected to power back in the 2000's when they turned center-left, and after the coup they went full far-left establishing their own ideology of Democratic Socialism. The US this month have been attempting a new coup, Xiomara Zelaya, the current president and wife of Manuel Zelaya, went on TV yesterday to denounce the coup attempt.
  
  I was reading about the new coup talk attempt this week, but didn't realise Xiomara had been on TV to denounce it yet. Thanks for the extra up to date context.
- If I was Honduras, I’d just invite them to receive a giant check, then take them out back and shoot them.
  
  Agreed. This is the sensible pragmatist's position.
  
  Really wish some cool shit like that would actually happen

1341 comments