The specific place they are talking about, Gonghe County, is around 9,400 ft high (at least at the random point I picked within it off a map). The average height across the Tibetan Plateau is 14,800 ft, but that’s an average, not a minimum.

There were elections during Assad’s regime, they were just single-party shams. First (hopefully free and fair) election in a long time, though, which I’m sure was your actual point.

I’m not saying that there is only support for AfD in east and none in the west, but there is definitely more support in the east: see recent state elections map.

A ton of AfD support is actually geographically split. Much of the support is in former East Germany, not in the west of the country. While their overall support has been rising steadily, this could have been a bellwether moment that showed that support rising to electoral success in the west. These results aren’t a mystery, they’re just not a simple as you would believe reading only headlines.

I definitely understood their comment as “Israel claims everyone in Gaza as Hamas, so they’re more likely to die from a random airstrike than they are at sea”

A Wild Mimic’s info is what you asked for, but for what it’s worth, you can just look at the election that happened earlier this year to see if it passes the smell test (and it does):

The AFD won 20% of the vote in the election earlier this year and then the incoming chancello passed a policy with the old parliament (as leader of the opposition still) that would change a financial rule that would have no chance to pass once the new parliament was seated (because the AFD and most of his own party opposed the change), so a lot of the people who voted CDU/CSU (his party) felt betrayed and said “fuck it, I’ll vote AFD next time”

“The highest quality oil there is on the planet, and they only gave me a drop of it…so I’m not thrilled,” Trump joked.

This headline is such bad clickbait it’s basically misinformation.

A truly towering achievement.