Bulletins and News Discussion from September 23rd to September 29th, 2024 - The War In The North
Image is of a Hezbollah missile attack on a military camp west of Jenin.
The situation between Hezbollah and Israel is rapidly escalating, with massive bombing campaigns on southern Lebanon by Israel predominantly on civilians (as the tunnels in South Lebanon are mostly unreachable to the Zionists, just like in Gaza), while Hezbollah and its allies respond with missile attacks predominantly on Israeli military facilities. Israel is spreading an evacuation order to the residents of southern Lebanese villages while also bombing their routes of escape and civilian infrastructure, similar to a terror tactic used widely in Gaza.
Northern Israel is currently under military censorship to hide their losses, so we get very little information other than what the Resistance provides and what videos and images get through the censors.
I don't know if Israel will dare a ground incursion soon, but it seems fairly likely in the coming days or weeks.
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. Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Biodiversity has gone down over the last decade a ton so the state already has some new measures but according to the ones who proposed this initiative it wasn't going far enough and they wanted some additional laws and to double the budget for protecting Biodiversity. Why was it reject this much? The No camp campaigned on two major pillars, food insecurity and energy insecurity, No basically said that a ton of farms would have to close and switzerland would have to rely on foreign food imports even more and energy companies said that it'd have made new energy installations, even renewables, very hard to build. I'm personally not surprised by the outcome the proposal wasn't very well written although I agree with the general points.
Pension Reforms:
Yes 32.9% vs 67.1% No
Honestly this is kind of all over the news with media mocking the FDP (market liberals) and GLP (green market liberals) today. So for the past 2 years the FDP has been trying to box through pension reforms aka work longer for less money this third one is the largest no their initiatives have gotten and it's fun seeing the NO grow larger and larger, huge L for neoliberals big W for left and unions who told them to fuck off and try again, also double L for neoliberals because a few months earlier people voted for a 13th pension payment and against their 'raise the retirement age' so now the SP and unions are thinking about actually reforming pensions aka making them better not worse. Also huge not a single canton (basically states) voted yes and the only places that even voted more yes than no are municipalities that are famous for having a ton of rich people even being called the 'Goldcoast'
Don’t forget the fascist SVP party getting fucked there as well, it has been rare in the past 25years that they lose.
They were literally saying the following on their websites a few days ago:
The SP and the unions want to destroy our tried-and-tested three-pillar model by integrating the 2nd pillar into the AHV in a kind of communist people's pension.
Yeah I didn't want to include the SVP because then I'd have to talk about their leadership and their base went basically in two directions as their base realized that they'd be getting fucked too if it passes and do like a whole thing which I think might have bigger consequences in the future if their base is getting away from them but that's all speculative and the whole post would've gotten even longer.