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.
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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.
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God this framing. It is not "genocide against civilians" it is just genocide. This is how they forever shift the goalposts.
It's distinct from genocide against nazis per the black book of communism
Weirdly enough I wonder if that actually helped our case. It's like a reminder that palestinians are civilians too.
I seriously doubt this is a case of Biden on being told. I think he genuinely doesn't give a shit what voters think and expects Democrats to fall in line in November. It explains the way his admin and camapign has been acting more so than anything else.
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His "old, healthy self" was a guy who renowned terrorist Menachem Begin thought needed to chill out in terms of his support for Israel
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The cowardice and apathy of the 27% is worse than the outright racist malice of the 24%
Fuck those moral cowards
Remember, a lot of people are not informed or actively misinformed. “Not sure” could mean they haven’t really heard much about it or that they’ve gotten a lot of conflicting information. Even a lot of the Noes are probably just inundated with pro-Israel propaganda and haven’t seen any of the things actually going on in Gaza.
I also think it’s a deep, personal moral failing to hear conversation dominating the news generally about whether there is or is not a genocide happening and then to simply refuse to investigate it. By god just imagining telling a Palestinian dying of hunger right now “yeah I’m not really sure what’s going on, haven’t looked too much into it either way”
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Millions and millions of people who look at everything that’s happened and say no, not a genocide. Of course a portion of them have been straight up brainwashed about it, but millions haven’t, know what it is, are ok with it. More people than I could possibly fathom. It’s hard for me even imagine a thousand people in a group. But this is tens of millions
It's not like these people were not always a fixture of politics in the imperial core. People who wants to have their cake and eat it, who wants to feel like they're good people but who also want to support the status quo.
At least half of political discourse is one variant or the other of "Nobody is more opposed to [bad thing] than I, but this [textbook case of bad thing] is not real [bad thing] because [bad faith red herring]".
The word genocide means almost nothing to a large minority of them, I'd bet. It's just a word that appears on a screen.
It doesn't help when Western media calls things like a conventional war (Ukraine) or anti-terrorist jobs training programs (Xinjiang) genocide.
I think they've caused people to not think of it as mass murder of an entire people anymore, which is super helpful to the West at the moment.
They've never had to use the part of your brain that's supposed to send you into shock and rage when you realize more people than you've met in your entire life have been vaporized in Gaza.
Young adults behind Biden voters WTF?
Maybe the kids aren't okay after all.
Well those young adults would include people from all over the political spectrum, while Biden voters are only liberals
True, but my hope would be that that general demographic of 18-24 your olds would have a better take on genocide than that the demographic of people of all ages who chose to vote for Biden.
It's within margin of error.
Fair, I guess. But still disappointed that it's not above the margin of error in terms of that age demographic being better than the general demographic of everyone who voted for Biden.
appreciate you following up on this
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Wish they would poll for a no fly zone and humanitarian intervention on this one, lol