Image is of a crowd protesting in Athens.
Last week, on Friday, hundreds of thousands of Greeks poured into the streets to strike and protest on the second anniversary of the deadliest train crash in Greek history, in which 57 people died when a passenger train collided with a freight train. On this February 28th, public transportation was virtually halted, with train drivers, air traffic controllers, and seafarers taking part in a 24 hour strike - alongside other professions like lawyers, teachers, and doctors.
The train crash is emblematic of the decay of state institutions brought about from austerity being forced on Greece in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession, in which the IMF and the EU (particularly Germany) plundered the country and forced privatization. While Greece has somewhat recovered from the dire straits it was in during the early 2010s, the consequences of neoliberalism are very clearly ongoing. Mitsotakis' right-wing government has still not even successfully implemented the necessary safety procedures two years on, and so far, nobody has been convicted nor punished for their role in the accident. The austerity measures were deeply unpopular inside Greece and yet the government did not respond to, or ignored, democratic outcry.
Last week's thread is here.
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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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Since the megathread is about the greek train scandal and crash i'll maybe make an exaustive post describing how deep the corruption goes but as a note since im seeing again a lot of "omg based" reactions to footage of "protestors" clashing with the police in left twitter and such here is a reminder, especially for the west:
In Greece and in a lot of western countries these "black bloc" violent clashes with the police are very often directly started & instigated or even fully done by some dozens of undercover cops and state paid agent provocateurs to, for one give an excuse to the cops to tear gas and break up the larger crowd of the actual protests and beat innocent people up, to scare everyday people from attending protests in the future ,especially people of older age and families with Kids and of course paint a violent picture of the mass actions later in the media, making it the focal point. Some dumbass anarchists and maybe some other lumpen usualy join the fun and stone and molotov throwing after the cops vs undercover cops etc instigate the party.
So its not "wow based expression of worker and anti-state rage" when you see some dumbass molotov suspiciously always falling short of a cop in some footage from Greece or wherever. In this case it was a gladio like tension stretegy made to ruin a mass protest and strike of a million people in Athens alone, organized and pushed by a lot of communist adjustent unions and worker centers that undermines any possible revolutionary leftist cause. Im not saying its the rule and for example the clashes in the yellow vest protests couple of years ago should be painted with the same brush without analysis. But its something to always have that at the back of your head as a leftists attending protests and observing and analysis mass movements
Is this comment about black blocs in Greece specifically or in the West more generally? I'm far from a Greece Understander© but I was under the impression that Greece has more of a history of this than in somewhere like the US and that their black bloc style protests tend to be relatively more organic given the larger public presence of leftist groups of various ideologkes.
The RCMP in Canada does this, infiltrating protests and acting as agent provocateurs. Most of the stories I've seen about it come from Quebec. For example
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/01/05/cana-j05.html
The movie Z by Costa-Gavras is a wonderful demonstration of exactly this dynamic, where the government of Greece hires fascist thugs to pose as protestors to instigate political violence as an excuse to crack down. Crazy that this has been the working strategy for at least half a century and shows no signs of stopping.
We saw, what, 15 percent of the country protesting? Of course the vast majority of it is peaceful. You have basically the entirety of Greece up in arms and most of them lack a molotov arm, so to speak. Even then they need to repeat the same instance of protestor violence over and over again to maintain the illusion that these people are at the margins of society.