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.
So it turns out that the hypersonic missile the Russian news outlet RIA Novosti was referring to, was likely publicly unveiled by the Houthis during a military parade in September of last year. You can watch the military parade on Memri TV here. The Tankeel missile makes an appearance at around 7 minutes 30 seconds, including an anti sea variant. There are relevant screenshots in the article if you do not want to watch the video. The Tankeel missile is the Houthi version of the Iranian Raad-500/Zoheir short range ballistic missile, which can reach speeds of Mach 8, has a range of 500km, and has a solid fuel engine with carbon composite components. This perfectly matches all the specifications listed in the media report by RIA Novosti. This missile was first unveiled by Iran during February 2020. The similarities and fins unique to both missiles are pictured below.
So it's not a new weapon in the Ansar Allah arsenal. And it's not any of Iran's "true" hypersonic missiles, or an amalgamation of their technology. What could be potentially newsworthy, is if the missile was successfully tested against a moving target. The report claims a successful test, but no details are reported. There have also been reports of attempted ballistic missile attacks against US Navy vessels, however those attacks made use of supersonic anti ship ballistic missiles and not hypersonics, and were unsuccessful. Getting a ballistic missile to hit a "small" moving target is incredibly difficult with the resources available to the Houthis. China's anti ship ballistic missiles are said to make use of AWACS aircraft for course correction, this is technology that the Houthis obviously lack.
That's the actual name though, at least it's cooler than Raad-500.
And I guess the correct terminology is anti ship ballistic missile (ASBM), The Wikipedia article on it has an interesting section on the attacks done by the Houthis so far using this class of weapon. Not the Tankeel, but other anti ship ballistic missiles. .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ship_ballistic_missile
Not shitting on the name, just getting my giggles in.
We really need a comment/post summarizing the difference between things like:
and their various properties, because sometimes the media will just use the term "hypersonic missile" which could mean something very different to how we use it; e.g. a hypersonic cruise missile is different to a missile that at some point in its trajectory becomes hypersonic. Befuddles me sometimes and I've been paying attention to this stuff for a couple years now
I feel like this is further muddied by journalism (or news rooms) being crap about military terms. The number of things that get called a "tank" or "AK-47" that are not either of those things probably exceeds the actual production of those things. (well, tanks at least)
Yeah icbms go like mach 20 on reentry. But this is very different from hypersonic glide vehicles which is the real thing.
It's an AR-15 Missile
Is there a non-Memri link? Isn't Memri Israeli propaganda literally founded by IDF intelligence?
Yes, but they also provided the world with wonderful translations