Can we please ban posts that are little more than unsubstantiated rumours?

Keep seeing posts that are fully just "I heard from a guy that heard from a friend who heard from a co-worker that HL3 comes out with the Steam Machine" as the full post

Sometimes links to whole "news" (used very fucking loosely) articles that are the exact same thing

You like kissing beans, don't you?

Mediazona reports that over a thousand Russian citizens have been murdered or beaten to death by Russian soldiers since 2022, with the perpetrators evading punishment by returning to the front. Where sentences are passed, these are often more lenient than would otherwise be the case, with the victim’s criticism of Russia’s war against Ukraine on several occasions treated as an ‘extenuating circumstance’.

Mediazona’s study has looked in many cases at professional soldiers, not the huge numbers of convicted criminals, including many murderers, recruited from prison colonies. A separate study recently found that just in the first six months of 2025, as many as 25 thousand men had criminal proceedings terminated, or sentences waived by agreeing to kill Ukrainians.

Russia began recruiting convicted prisoners in the summer of 2022. This was initially presented as Yevgeny Prigozhin recruiting for ‘his’ Wagner private military company’. The latter had, however, worked closely with the Russian defence military in both Ukraine and Syria, and the recruitment was clearly in agreement with the Kremlin, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, was, after all, responsible for signing the prisoners’ pardons. By 2023, the defence ministry had taken over, and, as of 2025, there have been reports that men who do not want to agree to fight are subjected to beatings and / or threatened with additional sentences if they don’t sign the military contract.

...

While killers, rapists and perpetrators of other violent crimes may never spend more than a few days in detention, Ukrainians, abducted from occupied territory, as well as Russians who speak out against the war are being sentenced to 15-20 years, or more, on fictitious ‘terrorism’, ‘sabotage’ or ‘spying’ charges, or imprisoned for 7 years or more for telling the truth about Russian war crimes. Unlike in most cases where a sentence was for a real crime, such political prisoners have zero chance of being released early, except in inter-state prisoner exchanges. It has also become tragically clear that even gravely ill Crimean Tatar or other Ukrainian political prisoners will not be released even where Russian legislation prohibits their imprisonment.

...

Russia is notorious for treating fighters as cannon fodder, and the chances are clearly high that men who avoid long sentences or prosecution by agreeing to fight against Ukraine will be killed in action. The Russian defence military has long done away with the original deal offered to convicted prisoners which saw many able to return, free and ‘pardoned’, after a relatively short amount of time. They will, however, be released if badly injured, with this also applying to those first-time confessed killers, even those accused of horrific crimes.

They include Alexander Gook, a 49-year-old lawyer from Sverdlovsk oblast, who almost certainly killed and dismembered 42-year-old Olga Soroka and murdered her six-year-old son. Olga’s head was found in a compost heap, with Gook believed to have dumped other parts of her body in plastic bags and dumped them, together with the child’s body, in a rubbish bin.

The victims’ families are appalled that Gook was never even put on trial with the ‘case’ terminated soon after charges were laid against him.

...

In an article entitled ‘Machine guns issued to maniacs’, Siberian Realities described how, for example, two multiple killers had been taken on by Russia’s defence ministry. The latter, in 2025, signed a contract with 64-year-old Vagan Sarafyan, who was awaiting trial for a double murder, with this only a couple of years after he served an 18-year sentence for another murder.

Serial killer Yuri Gritsenko was a year younger when, in 2024, he signed a contract with the defence ministry, with this enabling him to end a 22-year sentence slightly early. Because of his physical state of health, he was not sent into battle but added to a medical evacuation unit. No concern appears to have been felt about the wisdom of sending a person who had already served a 9-year sentence for one murder when, in 2001, he attacked at least 15 women in Moscow and Moscow region, killing four of them. The attacks were savage and carried out with a hammer.

...

Web archive version

Russian forces have forcibly detained and deported about 50 Ukrainian civilians from the village of Hrabovske in Ukraine’s eastern Sumy region, Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, confirmed in a Telegram post on December 21.

Lubinets said Russian troops illegally detained residents of the border village on December 18, held them without access to communication or proper conditions, and on December 20 transported them into Russian territory. He described the actions as a grave violation of international humanitarian law, including unlawful detention and the forced deportation of civilians.

...

Officer of the Main Communications Directorate Dmytro Lykhovii confirmed in a comment to Ukrainian Pravda that up to 50 civilians, mostly elderly men and women who had previously refused evacuation, were taken from the village. One of the abducted residents is reportedly 89 years old.

According to Ukraine’s Joint Forces Task Force, fighting continued overnight as Ukrainian forces moved to push Russian troops out of the area.

...

Addition:

In a report, British newspaper The Times said the fifty civilians were "abducted in ‘medieval’ border raid on Ukrainian village." -- (archived linkhttps://archive.ph/8XvG9#selection-1795.0-1801.266)

... Viktor Trehubov, the head of the Joint Forces Communications Department, said: “It looks like some kind of more localised provocation in an area that was not a key area before. It’s not about strategic goals, it’s about kidnapping people for some kind of political or information attack.”

... Ukraine has previously accused Moscow of systematically abducting civilians from occupied or contested areas, actions Kyiv said violated international humanitarian law.

Russia has also forcibly transferred thousands of civilians, including children, from occupied territory during the war. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants over the alleged deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, a charge Moscow denies.

Never before have Australians witnessed their alternative government blame their current government for a terrorist attack. In the midst of that, we have seen what the Jewish Council of Australia has called a “divisive pro-Israel wishlist” adopted as the only answer.

NSW premier Chris Minns has used the massacre to announce his government will adopt gun reform discussed at national cabinet as part of a major crackdown on protests. Neither Minns or his Liberal counterpart Kelly Sloane, who is in wholehearted agreement, have managed to explain how further limiting protest would make anyone safer or improve social cohesion.

Follow up video from MegaLag on the Honey scandal.

The previous Hexbear Revolutionary Calendar is gone, along with the account that posted it; clearly, it is proof that it was not good enough. Below is the TRUE Hexbear Revolutionary Calendar (HRC).

The HRC starts on 29 June in the old calendar, as this is the day that r/chapotraphouse was banned. All months are 30 days long, and there is a 5-6 day period between the end of the last month and the start of the new year. Rhyming months indicate the season.

The months are as follows (with the equivalent in the old calendar in parentheses):

• Chapodor (29 June to 28 July)
• Icepickdor (29 July to 27 August)
• Hodor (28 August to 26 September)
• Hexbaire (27 September to 26 October)
• Octobaire (27 October to 25 November)
• Stalinaire (26 November to 25 December)
• Maoôse (26 December to 24 January)
• Beanôse (25 January to 23 February)
• Luxemburgôse (24 February to 24/25 March)
• Leninal (25/26 March to 23/24 April)
• Marxal (24/25 April to 23/24 May)
• Cheal (24/25 May to 22/23 June)

Five-to-six additional days are added, representing AES:

• China Day (23/24 June)
• Cuba Day (24/25 June)
• Korea Day (25/26 June)
• Laos Day (26/27 June)
• Vietnam Day (27/28 June)
• Past and Future Socialist Experiments Day (28 June every four years)

Today is 27 Stalinaire, Year 5.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47730619

A record number of Japanese nationals are working for United Nations agencies around the world.

This growth is the outcome of a five-year plan to install experts in key positions in the sprawling international organization and to counter what Tokyo perceives as China using the UN to exert greater influence over other nations.

While the experts, analysts and bureaucrats who work for the UN are meant to be non-partisan in their decision-making, Japan is among the nations that have become concerned that instead of remaining neutral, China is utilizing the UN to further its own geopolitical aims.

Some Japanese observers say that while Beijing uses vast amounts of aid to woo developing nations and is rapidly expanding its military capabilities, diplomacy through a multilateral organization such as the UN gives it another tool with which to sway other nations.

[...]

Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. Enjoy the subpar GIMP edit. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive, libgen

"This giant bubble on the island of Sardinia holds 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. But the gas wasn’t captured from factory emissions, nor was it pulled from the air. It came from a gas supplier.... "The facility compresses and expands CO2 daily in its closed system, turning a turbine that generates 200 megawatt-hours of electricity, or 20 MW over 10 hours."

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday questioned who began the Russia-Ukraine war and criticized Western leaders for supporting Kyiv.

Orbán said EU leaders are justifying their support by framing Ukraine as a small country that has been attacked.

“Of course, it’s not that small,” Orbán said, referring to Ukraine. “And it’s not even clear who attacked whom. In any case, it is a country that has been subjected to violence.”

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he said two of Moscow’s key goals were to “liberate Donbas from the Kyiv regime” and to “demilitarize and denazify” the country.

In his annual press conference on Friday, Putin defended what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine. “We don’t consider ourselves responsible for people’s deaths because it wasn’t us who started the war,” Putin said in response to a question, blaming the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a “coup d’etat.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha responded to Orbán’s comments by posting on social media: “Just as ‘not clear’ as it was for Hungaryʼs leadership in 1939.”

Orbán was speaking to reporters after the European Council summit, where EU leaders agreed to jointly borrow €90 billion to send financial aid to Ukraine.

Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia chose not to participate in the program to fund Kyiv, cementing their Ukraine-skeptic alliance and delivering another blow to the EU’s unity after leaders failed to reach an agreement on using more than €200 billion in frozen Russian state assets to help Ukraine.

Orbán also revealed before Thursday’s EU summit that Putin had warned the Hungarian leader that Moscow would take countermeasures if the EU tapped Russian assets to help Ukraine.

According to Orbán, Putin told him there will be “a strong response using all the instruments of international law, and they will take into account the position of each individual member state of the union.”

“So we Hungarians have protected ourselves,” Orbán said.

body

I realised today that I cannot actually remember the last time I felt relaxed. I'm so fucking tired.