Bulletins and News Discussion from September 2nd to September 8th, 2024 - We Love Our Trans Comrades - Chemicals of the Week: Estrogen and Testosterone
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.
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.
"A Sexist Clown Car", Toxic Work Environment in Danish Centrist Party
A toxic atmosphere of creepy comments, a "tyrannical culture" and harassment of women is pervasive in Denmark's liberal centrist Moderate party. So reveals a complaint made by current and former employees to the Danish Working Environment Authority.
Read more (CW: sexism, sexual harassment, CSA)
The party makes up a third of the nation's ruling Social Democrat-controlled right-wing government and controls several key ministries. It was astroturfed from nothing in 2021 as a vehicle for the continued political career of former prime minister and current foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
The employees filed a complaint after repeated appels to party leadership to address the issues was unsuccessful.
Misogynistic Bullying
Many of the complaints stem from issues related to a particular senior employee especially towards younger women in the party. The complaints mention several high-ranking employees including Caroline Stage, a former tobacco lobbyist who was employed as party secretary from the founding of the party and until July this year ago when Lars Løkke Rasmussen hired her as his spin doctor. Last week Rasmussen appointed her as minister of digitalisation despite her not being an elected MP.
The complaint describes senior employees talking behind the back of employees, disparaging comments on female employees' appearances and qualifications as well as harassment of a pregnant employee.
The complaint describes how one male employee had sexual relations to several party employees prior to being promoted to a senior role. This has later caused issues as the employee commented on female employees' appearances after being promoted.
Examples of his comments includes "you can't take her serious in that skirt" and "imagine going to work looking like that". When employees told him to stop he would give replies like "you're just jealous we're not talking like this about you" and "I just need to fuck you and [other party employee]"
Employees afraid of tyrannical leadership
The complaint describes how employees are afraid to stand up as "party leadership is so tyrannical" and describes how employees feel easily replaceable by the "powerful people" in the workplace.
Party leadership has been aware of the harassment but has not acted as documented by an audio file in the possession of the tabloid BT who broke the story.
Following a crisis meeting today, party leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen have a press conference in which he deflected on questions about how long he has known about the harassment. He did however reveal that the party will now hire an occupational psychologist to deal with the toxic workplace.
In official messaging the Moderate party's current party secretary denies knowledge of the harassment and refers to their "code of conduct".
Moderate MP Jeppe Søe is more brash in his public statements where he has stated that the future existence of the party is at stake if they continue their "history of being a sexist clown car".
Cocaine, Fraud and Ebebophilia
The Moderate party enjoys posing as "the adults in he room", the responsible centrist liberals who are above the populism of the extreme wings of the right and the left but this is far from the first time bizarre scandals has struck the party, leading to them being described as a "clown car" by observers.
In 2018 then Liberal Party MP and current minister of culture and Moderate Party second in command Jacob Engell-Schmidt was caught speeding through Copenhagen while high on cocaine. After falling to cover up the story he went on paid sick leave from parliament.
Most of the Moderate candidates for the 2022 general election lacked political experience and seems to have been picked by party leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen to avoid having an internal opposition. Several scandals have emerged.
Shortly after claiming his seat in 2022 newly elected moderate MP Kristian Klarskov had to resign after it was discovered that his public image as a successful entrepreneur was a complete fabrication. Instead he had several bankruptcies behind him and was living off his wealthy spouse's money.
MP Jon Stephensen was forced out of the party after a string of allegations. As managing director of a theater he had pressured performers to go on stage despite being sick. He was also revealed to have forged the signature on a rental contract. It was then discovered that he had been sending creepy text messages to a 19-year old female party member. He was then expelled from the party and went on paid sick leave where "therapists, psychologists and priests" helped him find out why he had sent the messages. Four months later he returned to parliament as a non-inscrit.
The most grave example of misconduct was MP Mike Fonseca who was expelling from the party after telling the parliamentary group the he was in a public "relationship" to a 15 year old girl who he called his "girlfriend". Although the relationship was technically legal, serious concerns was raised over what had transpired over the years as Fonseca had been a friend of the girl's parent for several years. When the girl was one year old the then 19 year old Fonseca worked in the same nursery she went to.
Fonseca was reported to the police for grooming a minor but the police closed the investigation due to a lack of evidence.
Party leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen himself is no stranger to scandal. Ever since he scammed a pop artist out of her payment for a concert as a teenager, an air of dishonesty and grift has followed the powerful politician. He has been caught trying to get public coffers to pay for his beer and cigarettes, getting the Liberal Party to pay for his underwear and has accepted gifts from businessmen who would later benefit from his policies. The latest public example is the story of how he intervened and made sure an offshore wind power project got approved despite this having nothing to with his responsibilities as foreign minister. The consortium behind the project happened to be a major client of the law firm where Rasmussen worked as a "consultant" prior to becoming foreign minister.
Although the relationship was technically legal, serious concerns was raised over what had transpired over the years as Fonseca had been a friend of the girl's parent for several years. When the girl was one year old the then 19 year old Fonseca worked in the same nursery she went to.
What in the ungodly fuck I support prison abolition except for this man. Right to the gulag