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.
I love all the "um, actually, real NATO troops wouldn't have attacked without air superiority!" responses... so, Western militaries are just never going to get around to actually attacking, because gaining complete air superiority in the modern day just ain't happening?
The Iraq War has thoroughly mind-broken westerners into thinking that they can solve all their problems with bombing, and they've completely ignored all the advances in air-defense, as well as the advances in long-range strike capabilities thanks to ballistic missiles and drones - where exactly are your planes going to fly from once the Russians hit your major airbases? Where are they going to get their fuel from once the Russians hit your logistics? Something that people forget about Iraq was that in both 1991 and 2003, Western forces had months to prepare, build up, and stockpile, during which the Iraqis couldn't really do much but sit and watch. An air campaign of that scale simply isn't sustainable normally - you'd just run out of fuel and munitions (and later in Libya, there were indeed ammunition issues, and bombing had to be paused for a bit). Westerners don't even understand why they actually won the victories that they did, and how in a different situation things might go differently, just complete
I can't stress enough that most US troops aren't used to intense combat so much as they are militarized cops. They're used to be an occupying army without the experience of actually beating a near-peer adversary.
That expert Israeli training shining through. Remember when Israel boasted that they had like the second or third best military on the planet?
Conversely, when Ukrainians say that they have (or perhaps had) the best military in Europe, I don't think they were wrong. The problem for NATO is that, well, Ukraine had the best military in Europe, and it is being destroyed by Russia. Why NATO thinks it would have a better time than Ukraine is beyond me, especially considering that Ukraine is such a massive country that trying to use the West's aviation advantage seems more difficult as (as Tervell expands on) you have to fly across the whole goddamn country to reach Russian forces in the East, not get shot down by Russian anti-air defenses, and then fly back (presumably with refueling). Sounds like a total pain in the ass. Otherwise, we've seen how NATO's wunderwaffe equipment is really nothing special, especially now that Russia has been given ample time to figure out how to counter HIMARS and Storm Shadow and Western tanks and artillery and all those other things.
From my uneducated military position, it seems like NATO would have a few months of activity (an even more incompetent version of Shock and Awe) that might even qualify as "success", and then the same attrition that is bringing down Ukraine and Israel will knock on NATO's door, the logistics chains will steadily break down, industrial production would be insufficient, bodies will be coming home in coffins, and the fascist populists will be agitating against the very unpopular war and winning elections.
Russia is very lucky to have enemies who don't want to learn from mistakes
This is such a critical point for any future American real ground campaign. Wherever that might be, it won't be like iraq. Either it will all be amphibious landings or it will be advancing across western ukraine under fire.
I really wonder how much of Iraq's performance in the Gulf War was affected by the Iran-Iraq War which ended 2 years before. You're obviously not going to be in top shape coming out of an 8-year war.
Any military that isn't doing the same is run by idiots. Drones have changed everything about war.
Reminds me of some historical document I read on hexbear about how the nazis would give all the shiny new shit to completely green SS hitler youth divisions, I think, instead of distributing the equipment across the veteran units that have been fighting for years, and the moment those shiny new nazi divisions were deployed they started fucking up on their way to the front line, fucking up and getting owned the moment they made contact with the Red Army, and fucking up as they retreated.
Famously, a number of Nazi tanks at D-Day were knocked out when the crew fled by turning the tank 180 degrees and driving away rather than just reversing, eliminating the advantage of the giant frontal armor.
Saddam Hussein was just the tutorial level; the next opponents are much harder...