Image is of German farmers blocking the road near the Brandenburg Gate in early January 2024.


The ruling German coalition - the FDP, the SPD, and the Greens - has been in dire straits since the war in Ukraine began due to their steadfast commitment to destroying their country as much as possible in solidarity with Ukraine destroying themselves too. Scholz is deeply unpopular, with a record low approval of 20%, and his party’s approval is even lower.

The German left has been entirely unable to take advantage of this situation, with Die Linke fragmenting due to split opinions on what position they should hold on Ukraine, among other issues. As a result, the major conservative party, the CDU, has gained a lot of voters over the past couple years. Most worrying, however, is the gains that the fascist party, the AfD, has made - from 10% in 2021 all the way to ~20% today. A significant chunk of the vote is likely protest votes due to the lack of an alternative, but a vote for fascists makes you a fascist nonetheless.

Recent controversies with the AfD - including an allegation that they held a secret meeting discussing a plan to mass-deport millions of migrants in an obvious parallel to Nazi meetings planning to remove all Jews from the country - has recently slightly damped approval for the AfD. This meeting generated counter-protests and condemnation from many Germans. It was later revealed that the meeting might not really have happened as alleged, but it doesn’t actually matter, because the AfD’s stance is being increasingly reflected by the ruling coalition, who recently introduced a bill allowing faster deportations of rejected asylum seekers and significant new powers for authorities in that regard, including potentially the criminalization of sea rescue organizations and imprisonment for aid workers.

The German government is increasingly considering banning the AfD, with their anxiety and motivation to do so rising as the AfD maintains and improves its position as Germany heads towards elections in late 2025. There are intermediate steps that could be done, such as revoking state funding, but if that doesn’t work, then the party might well be banned. While I will never argue with fascist parties being banned, this probably won’t fix anything, as the underlying economic and social conditions that are fueling these electoral shifts in the first place are not improving. Germany, the largest industrial power in Europe, is mired in a recession, particularly a manufacturing recession, from which there appears to be no escape. It has so far carefully shepherded its natural gas resources to keep the population as mollified as possible, but this has come at the expense of industry. In a trend starting from July 2022, manufacturing PMIs are still well below 50, reaching 45.5 in January 2024, which indicates decline. I suppose if you wanted to look on the bright side, it’s better than it was in July 2023, where it was a whopping 38.8, so the rate of decline is becoming a little slower.

And this is just the domestic stuff. Germany has also famously sided with Israel to support them during the ICJ genocide case, has kowtowed to Netanyahu as they bond over being Genocide Experts, and maintains its support of Ukraine, continuing to send military gear and money to be converted to scrap metal by Russian artillery - rather than spending money on doing anything about the cost of living. In the face of a historic economic downturn, it has only more fervently stated its desire to remain militarily opposed to Russia for decades.


The Country of the Week is Germany! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

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.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


  • ImOnADiet@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    But officials said in the report that it would be hard to convince a jury that Biden retained the information willfully — a necessary basis for conviction. That’s because, according to officials, his “memory was significantly limited” and that it wouldn’t have been all that notable for Biden to discover classified information in his home less than a month after he left office.

    “Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023,” the report said.

    it’s never been more Joever biden-forgor biden-fall

    WP link | archive link

      • To expand on the sentence at the end there:

        And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.

        Surely they’re gonna switch him out for someone else to run for president, the legal system is effectively saying “yeah he’s way too fucking senile to talk to a jury”. It’s either that or the libs embrace the contradictions and say “the legal system is rigged against joe biden” sicko-beaming

        • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          It’s either that or the libs embrace the contradictions and say “the legal system is rigged against joe biden”

          Well, /r/politics is currently going with, “The special prosecutor is a Republican, and this is just a smear.” So yeah: if the online neoliberal focus group crowd is any indication, it seems like they’ll go with that one.

    • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      Wait, wait, wait. You’re telling me he is literally admitting his is guilty of the exact same crime they are charging Trump with, but it’s okay and different because he is too senile (while still in the role of president) to be trusted with classified documents?

      When does this episode of The West Wing come out?

      • RonPaulyShore [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        No. He’s not admitting guilt, some intentionality or scienter is, definitionally, an element of the crime. He’s literally not culpable because he didn’t willfully take classified documents and refuse to return them; the Republican Special Counsel is, essentially, attributing this to his dementia.

        • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          All right. Let me correct:

          You’re telling me he is literally admitting his is guilty of the exact same crime [took the same actions] they are charging Trump with [crimes for], but it’s okay and different because he is too senile (while still in the role of president) to be trusted with classified documents?

          • RonPaulyShore [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            Still not the same actions. Again, I think the statue requires willful taking/withholding of the documents. Trump took the docs, refused to return them, continued to hide some of them; Biden took the documents, returned them immediately. There’s a salient difference there, and I believe that difference is sufficient to explain difference in prosecutorial, uh, treatment.

            The Counsel is shading Biden by bringing up Biden’s demented answers, but I don’t think that’s even a necessary justification for not charging him.

            But yes. That Biden has dementia, or, can be credibly alleged to have dementia on the official record, is bad for Biden’s reelection chances/ is indicative of a sclerotic politics.

            I’m wrong again! Or, at least, in his memo, Hur focused on Biden infirmaties as big reason for not prosecuting, and, if not explicitly, implicitly drew analogies to Trump’s treatment of similar confidential documents. From the NBC article above:

            Now, the distinctions may be harder for Biden allies to draw, given that Hur wrote that there was evidence Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified material after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”

            The report mentions an instance in February 2017, when he was no longer vice president, when Biden read notes containing classified information “nearly verbatim” to a ghostwriter helping him with his book, “Promise Me, Dad.”

            Storage of sensitive government secrets was haphazard. The report describes certain classified records involving the war in Afghanistan in Biden’s Delaware garage inside a “badly damaged box surrounded by household detritus.”

            Obviously maybe still a qualitative difference between T and B, but there’s a lot for the GOP here – lawfare against Trump, Biden is demented/juiceless.

        • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          I support simply turning the White House into a nursing home. Then we can convince all these straight old white men that they are getting “elected” and live in glorious anarchy once the doors are shut on them.