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!
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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.
Rofl this headline https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/help-ukraine-win-or-risk-kicking-off-a-us-losing-streak/
I'm not reading the article but that header is great
incredible cope
It really isn't that interesting. Nothing new or unique. A few key quotes:
They really do believe that the Ukrainians destroyed the Russian army twice over for the cost of a candy bar. As discussed consistently in the news megas, Ukraine has already lost not just the war but its future. The USA also cannot even produce half as much key military hardware and munitions that Russia does at a fraction the cost.
From the same kinds of people who will say we aren't an empire built on the suffering of the global south.
I don’t understand why they don’t send Ukraine F-35s and hundreds/thousands of M-1 Abrams tanks if they really want to win the war.
I know there are some Abrams already there but this is merely a drop in the bucket and won’t change the strategic outcome unless hundreds if not a thousand M-1 Abrams tanks (the US has 6000) can coordinate an assault on Russian positions. This, combined with state-of-the-art F-35 stealth fighters would be able to bypass the Russian air defenses and take out high value targets that are critical to the Russian supply line.
They don't want to risk an F-35 getting shot down, because of the risk of 1) NATO tech falling into Russian hands when a lot of the planes haven't even been manufactured or delivered yet and 2) it's harder to justify the price of the planes if the Russians are already able to shoot them down.
Also, I think NATO is still clinging onto the idea that they can drain Russia economically by keeping this war going, and they don't need to send the latest tech in order to do that. By sending Ukraine the hand-me-downs, it also means that the NATO countries have a big excuse to buy all new stuff.
You can pretty much send however many tanks you want, but the level of surveillance and precision strike weapons on the battlefield today means tank pushes are not really a thing anymore. All aspects of war other than drones have to work in small teams (tanks and artillery work in pairs, infantry work in small fireteams) otherwise they’re just going to be found, targeted, then killed.
The f-35 is terrible and would probably be destroyed by Russias air defense which is the best in the world at the moment.
The Russians report they can track F35s and the tanks would be slaughtered by artillery and air munitions.
This is a decent article on issues with SEAD in the war, just ignore all the cope about the US being able to do it (because they already provide significant support to Ukraine for air defence targeting) https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/getting-serious-about-sead-european-air-forces-must-learn-failure-russian-air-force-over-ukraine
Russia could also escalate the war significantly (it's still legally an SMO) and start using their reserve forces that would otherwise be required to deter a conventional European/US attack.
Russia can (and regularly does) hit anywhere they like in Ukraine. If a giant load of tanks showed up Russia would smash them with missiles and drones before they even got them off the trains. Even if they could get them all into ukraine without being destroyed. The abrams require stupid amounts of fuel. Even if they could get that much fuel into ukraine without it getting destroyed. They would need massive amounts of depots near the front to distribute it and Russia would be able to destroy them with short range drones.
War is won and lost by logistics and Russia has decent fire control over all of Ukraine's transport routes. The larger the target the more likely it will be hit.
i feel like for a lot of ppl in the MIC and Pentagon the thought of even a couple of f-35s getting shot down by an S-400 is a way worse prospect than Ukraine losing the war
"risk kicking off a US losing streak" US has not won a war in the last 10 years iraq insurgency, syria, afghanistan were all usa failures
I'm glad the competent ghouls are gone and the yanks are stuck with a sad bunch of nitwits disconnected from reality