view the rest of the comments
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:
-
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).
-
To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
-
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.
-
Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
Honestly, at this point, we kinda have to stop cutting the tanker crews any slack. We're at, what, "fool me a dozen times, what the fuck am I even doing" by now?
long long maaaaaaaan
("Operation Freedom"
started on May 4, so we're counting the ones since then)
I can empathize that being stuck in the middle of the sea, far away from friends and family, can be stressful and lead one to making decisions out of desperation, but how many ships have to get hit in front of you before any lessons are learned? When you get struck, aside from the risk of dying, you're likely to end up stuck in the strait even longer due to the damage! What are the Iranians supposed to do, start putting heads on spikes or gibbeting people across the strait, medieval-style?
The Iranian route was open for a decent length of time, hundreds of ships transited it - why didn't you go then? (admittedly, there are thousands in the strait, and there's probably some plain old logistical limitations to how many ships the Iranians could process a day, but still, a lot of the ships that are now trying to flee are probably ones that didn't even try to transit back then since they didn't want to pay up).
This was supposed to be a joke
but apparently tanker captains are actually willing to participate in the "unironically doing the kind of shit that anti-communists think the Soviets were doing in WW2" scheme
Tanker crews do not make the decision to go or not go. Their employers do. That's why they keep risking it, the people making the decision are in board rooms not the bridge of the vessel
edit: it's common practice to keep crew passports from them as well. These crews are barely above hostages in this situation, and their employers hold the keys.