Bulletins and News Discussion from August 19th to August 25th, 2024 - Our Mountains, Our Treasures - Child of the Week: Hassan LargePenis
Image is a snapshot taken from the recent Hezbollah video "Our Mountains, Our Treasures", showcasing their extensive underground fortifications, supply lines, and weaponry.
iran can't keep doing this to me, they've gotta respond soon, right? I'm gonna run out of analysis about countries soon, oh god
The COTW (Child of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific child every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied children. If you've wanted to talk about the child 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 child.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section. Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war. Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language. https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one. https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts. https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel. https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator. https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps. https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language. https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language. https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses. https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier announces that the next federal election in Germany will take place on September 28, 2025. A survey by the INSA institute carried out between August 16 and 19 showed the CDU/CSU, the center-right party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, with 30.5% of voting intentions and in second place the far-right AfD, with 19%.
Easy prediction to make is that the next government still won't include the AfD obviously, and when you add Wagenknecht with a possible 7-9% that's almost 30% for parties that won't be allowed in government, and since the SPD likely won't get 20% and the FDP is at 5% (which is the treshold for them to get any seats, if they go below that they're gone from parliament), you're for sure getting a CDU-SPD-Green government. So the war cabinet stays the same probably, or maybe they'll find an even crazier war hawk that Baerbock
That's Wagenknecht's party that I mentioned polling at 7-9%. They already have some MPs because of defections from Die Linke, and in the european parliament elections they got 6%, but from what I understand it's not actually a "party" yet with local militants and stuff it's still more of an association to contest elections so who knows if the results will actually match their polling.
All the parties already hinted that they're not going to work with the BSW, the CDU even said that "Anti-Americanism, proximity to Putin, and socialism are completely incompatible with our stance", and even if they would I imagine Wagenknecht has red-lines around continuing german policy on ukraine, nuclear energy and deindustiralization, which puts her outside the governance arc, I dunno if she's the type to concede.
She's socially conservative but I haven't read that trans issues are a major enough campaign issue to make or break government coalition deals in germany.
So I doubt the party will have a big effect on german politics for now, even if they get 9% in practice they might just be taking Die Linke's spot (since they'll probably get less than 5% and be kicked out of parliament) and grabbing some vote share the CDU, SPD and AfD. I assume there's still gonna be enough seats between CDU-SPD-Greens-FDP to govern without the "extremist" parties
The whole "discourse" around this party's founding was that they'd take votes from conservatives in the east that used to vote for die linke but switched to the AfD so idk