This year really is just gonna be us swinging from election to election, I suppose. I feel Lenin's beaming red eyes on me.
Up next on our electoral tour is Portugal. The current government - a coalition of the center-left Socialists and the center-right Social Democrats - has been mired in corruption scandals, resulting in a general election being called a mere two years after the last one. The fascist and vaguely populist Chega party has gained significant support over the last two years due to the economic hardships. Yesterday, the Social Democrats secured a narrow win of 79 seats compared to the Socialists' 77. Chega, in third place at 48, would appear to be the best candidate for a coalition, though the leader of the Social Democrats has said that they would refuse a coalition with them due to their xenophobic views. Regardless, the fascist surge is worrying, if expected.
Portugal's economy is going pretty badly even as European countries go, with little growth in productivity or investment over the last decade. The origins of this crisis date back to Portugal making the euro their national currency in the early 2000s, thus surrendering their ability to control their own currency, becoming reliant on investment from Germany and France, and suffering greatly in the 2012 European debt crisis. Unemployment and low wages spurred emigration; in 2013, the youth employment rate was about 40%; this has only come down to 25% recently and is increasing again. The government is heavily reliant on debt for public spending, with a debt-to-GDP ratio skyrocketing to over 100% in the two decades since the turn of the millennium. The capitalist sector is simply not profitable enough and hasn't been for 40 years, which is only a problem if you are a capitalist economy. For more on the Portuguese economy, check out Michael Roberts' recent analysis, from which I obtained a lot of this information.
Inside Portugal is the same story playing out across much of Europe. A failing center or center-left political party, unable to cope with the economic troubles of the last few years due to absolute obedience to neoliberal policies. A fascist party rising, but with no alternative economic plan, hoping that perhaps oppressing minorities and going after "wokeism" will make their God, The Economy, rain blessings down on them again.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country 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 Country of the Week is Portugal! 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
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.
This is honestly some next-level
:
If you watch the video the article links to, she even describes how the Hamas "terrorists" who captured her went out of their way to get her a cigarette in the middle of the operation. And made sure she put on better clothes than she had on while sleeping.
What the absolute FUCK?! Thank you for nearly murdering me, but I wish you'd finished the job! (They also would have finished the job if the helicopter hadn't run out of ammo; her reaction: "If only their ammunition hadn't run out.")
I've said it before Israelis are a far more deranged people than those of Nazi Germany
They definitely seem to be uniquely fanatical and racist at the very least. I feel fairly confident saying that Zionists are the most deranged, bloodthirsty and hysterical people currently alive on the planet, which is an impressive milestone with the Nazis in Eastern Europe and particularly Ukraine still tragically alive.
Perhaps only those in imperial Japan could exceed them - though, now that I think of it, I'm unsure how deeply the kamikaze attitude truly penetrated general Japanese society at that time versus those in the military.
The Nazis had 12 years to brainwash the Germans. And they got all the Germans, not just those sympathetic to their project to begin with. The zionists have had almost eight decades to brainwash the settlers and you only choose to become a settler if you agree with the project to begin with.
Hamas was too kind
This is why I don't vibe with people that quickly condemn the actions of revolutionary groups bc of the "victims".
The truth is: just like there were no victims (besides the enslaved) during the Haitian revolution, there are no victims (other than the Palestinians) during Oct 7th.
I just don't feel fucking sorry for settlers, they brought that shit onto themselves. If they didn't want to get GTA'd then what the fuck were they doing in an ethnostate????
Yeah. Except maybe children, because they likely don't have a choice whether to be there or not. My understanding, though, is that it has been pretty well-determined that there were exactly two Israeli children killed on Oct 7: one by Israeli security forces, and one that it is kinda weird to count because it was a fetus which, after the mom died, was delivered via emergency c-section and then died itself.
I ageee that the children are victims, but I still place the blame on their parents and the Israeli government. There are hundreds of millions of children who aren’t being killed by resistant groups as collateral damage during a war against genocide. Israel chose to commit this and they killed their children. Any sane parent would never put their children in harm’s way when they can CHOOSE to live anywhere in the world.
Now THIS is Stockholm syndrome. Almost every Hamas hostage has said good things or were neutral, even this insane woman who has a death wish. This is incomprehensible to me.
This is the armchair psychologist in me, but perhaps there is a sense of guilt seeing so many Palestinians becoming martyrs in the fight against genocide, and Israelis know their deaths are not as honorable. The Hannibal Directive keeps getting pushed subconsciously, and Now they’re trying to make up for their genocidal actions by becoming martyrs themselves and becoming angry that they’re not.