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Bulletins and News Discussion from March 3rd to March 9th, 2025 - Austerity And Its Consequences - COTW: Greece

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.

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546 comments

  • The Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum is a forum founded by Ukrainian restaurant business owner Oleg Magaletsky, exiled Russian separatists, as well as foreign sympathizers, which advocates for the disintegration of Russia. It was registered in Poland. On 17 March 2023, the forum was designated an "undesirable organization" in Russia.

    The forum participants set as their goal the separation of the Russian Federation into independent constituent states. At the second forum, the topics for discussion included the deimperialization, decolonization, de-Putinization, denazification, demilitarization, and denuclearization of Russia. The forum participants also appealed to the national and regional elites of United Nations member countries, urging them to begin creating national provisional governments-in-exile.

    According to French historian and sociologist Marlene Laruelle, the calls of the forum participants for the "liberation of enslaved peoples" refer to the slogan "prison of peoples" from the times of the Russian Empire and to the CIA-sponsored Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations during the Cold War. On 25 July 2022, the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, ridiculed the Free Nations of Russia Forum held in Prague. He thanked the "pseudo-liberals" for confirming the words of the Russian leadership about attempts to disintegrate the country.

    WTF is this? Micronations LARPing but with CIA backing?

    • It looks like a grift first and foremost, a bunch of political entrepreneurs trying to leverage their cultural heritage for personal profit. They hope that if they start calling eachother president in exile of Kalmykia or whatever, the CIA and their European counterparts will start pouring money into their operations.

      I doubt that the grift is going to be very successful. There's very little that can do in return for the money besides larping.

      • Redditors will go from not knowing a region exists to cheering for mass slaughter to “liberate” it from Bad Country with the flip of a switch, these people should try milking them for their life savings.

        Just put up a “BAZINGIA NEEDS ONE BILLION DOLLARS NOW” banner ad and watch as redditors and their families starve to death in the streets because they sold the house to fund international terrorism.

    • Wikipedia has a bunch of rando separatist movements listed - its whack literally Bashuria, Yuyencia and goetland levels

    • every oblast, a juan guaidó

    • Do we have an emoji of that weird German/Austrian guy who wants to balkanize every country?

546 comments