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.
Russia has 3 different hypersonic missiles iirc and they've been using the iskander a lot lately.
In addition to what @aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net said:
Kinzhal is the hypersonic air-launched ballistic missile (modified Iskandr). Several countries including China and Iran also have hypersonic ballistic missiles.
Zircon is the hypersonic cruise missile. Russia is the only country with a hypersonic cruise missile, which is scramjet powered.
Avangard is the hypersonic glide vehicle. China also has a hypersonic glide vehicle.
The difference is as follows:
Note the ballistic missile in the figure is of ICBM, not the typical air-launched ballistic missiles whose flight altitude is much lower.
The main point of a cruise missile is that it flies at relatively low altitude, and at hypersonic speed (say Mach 9 for Zircon), because of the Earth’s curvature, if your radar can detect at 200km over the horizon, you literally have 65 seconds to detect, track, calculate the firing solution and intercept
If the kill rate is 1%, you need to fire 100 interceptor missiles with the hope that one will kill it. Otherwise your ship is dead. The question is, how many interceptors are you willing to unload, just to get a chance at survival? If this is followed by another Zircon cruise missile 60 seconds behind, then you’d have depleted all your interceptors in the first wave, and would have been a sitting duck. Just a few of those can empty an entire fleet’s air defense capability.
Iran also apparently have a hypersonic glide vehicle, as part of the final stage of their Fattah-2 missile system. Though it's debatable weather the final stage is a manoeuvrable re-entry vehicle, or a hypersonic glide vehicle, as the weapon is untested. It looks very similar to the Boeing X-51 but without the scramjet, some Iranian spy probably got access to some blueprints or something.
And also every stupid slow missile russia fires could be a zircon and USA cant tell the difference till its too late.
Makes me think of the cargo container missile paradigm in Nebulous: Fleet Command. one of the factions uses converted civilian ships as warships. One of them is a bulk shipping vessel. Ti can carry huge numbers of conex shipping containes. And with a rocket engine and some guidance software those shipping containers become missiles. The strat is to fire massive salvos of these shipping container missiles. They're so cheap and you can carry so many that they can overwhelm the point defenses of most other ships.
Iskandr and Kinzhal don’t follow that ballistic missile trajectory, though. Neither does ATACMS. These are all semi-ballistic missiles that follow something closer to the "hypersonic glide vehicle" trajectory in your drawing (without the little skim maneuver, though, probably).
The real difference here is range. Things called "hypersonic glide vehicles" are intercontinental. Iskandr is "just" a missile that flys a low trajectory really fast.
Yeah, but those (the Kinzhal and Iskander) are ballistic missiles. Many countries and groups have ballistic missiles that are hypersonic on re-entry. The Zircon is a significant step up on that. It is a scramjet powered, lift generating, hypersonic cruise missile with hypersonic maneuverability. Not a ballistic missile, a cruise missile. Imagine a hypersonic Tomahawk missile. That is what the Russian Zircon is.
: p
I do not like this brave new world. The Tomahawk is already one of the most brutal terror weapons of the recent era.
And according to Russian state media, the solid fuel hypersonic (Mach 8) anti ship ballistic missile the Houthis unveiled last September has been successfully tested. The Tankeel/Raad-500.
Nervous times for anyone in any Navy...
No it's fine the US's point defense systems are totally impenetrable as though they were the very Aegis of Athena and cannot be defeated by any human power!