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.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
What is happening in Syria is pure insanity, here's my little breakdown of the wider geopolitical situation from what I'm understanding from scrolling through Arab Facebook and Telegram today.
There are basically two opposing sides when it comes to how to do deal with the new Jihadi government in Syria. One side is pro-cooperation and consolidation of the new government, and the other side is pro-chaos and making it as hard as possible for the new regime to gain any legitimacy both internally in Syria and internationally. Here's how the situation currently looks if we're talking major regional players:
Pro-regime: Saudi, Qatar, Sunni Syrians, most other Arab states and Turkey
Pro-chaos: Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Hezbollah, SDF, minority Syrians and Israel
So we have a rare situation where the interests of Iran and Israel converge and they're both interested in making any effective ruling difficult for the Jihadis. The Israelis' partners in this clusterfuck are the Druze in Southern Syria, and some possible backdoor collaboration with Syrian Kurds in Eastern Syria. The Iranians still have good relations with former SAA members and are popular with Alawites and other Shia-adjacent groups in Syria, which is why they're backing them in Western Syria on the coast. Iranian and Axis media also seems to have shifted towards a more positive coverage of the SDF. I personally don't even have a take at this point, this is all developing way too quickly.
poor Syria. so far from Allah, so close to Israel and Turkey
I think hts overplayed based neoliberal jihadism: inflation, economy still in shits (but now without oil), minorities suppression (allegedly, cause there is wild mix of old and new videos), same corruption of passersby. Which couples with complete internal incoherence of “pisrael is our regional partner, we don’t have beef with them” and fundamentalism. So they have central asian true believers, cynical turkish elements, local former isis members, people with grievances with alawites and shias/hezbollah, and desire to centralize power without money (oil/food).
Means kurds become a rather urgent issue, even if they drown this rebellion. And that’s all internal mess, without pisrael strikes, qatar promises and turkey desires
Poor syria, hasn’t it suffered enough with radical cowards and cowardly radicals 😭
That's a good analysis of the situation. The Jihadis expected that they could rule a devastated country through vibes and positive energy, where people would stop complaining about the complete destruction of the economy simply because Assad was gone. The electricity situation is horrendous, no one except some returning expats has any money, and even the Turks and the Qataris are realising that the country is basically a corpse, all they can do is send aid because there are no institutions or functioning economic organs that can cooperate in any larger projects to rebuild anything. The state has zero control over the fertile Euphrates lands nor the oil, which will remain unsolved because the SDF aren't that interested in cooperating with the Jihadis. Add Israel's continuing sabotage of the state by the constant bombing and the incursions into southern Syria. The situation is basically fucked and will continue to deteriorate, HTS can't consolidate power without their hard-line Jihadis murdering people in the streets, which will only embolden internal and external enemies. A bankrupt state can't fight multiple battles if it's too poor to even pay pensions and operate border crossings.