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Bulletins and News Discussion from March 11th to March 17th, 2024 - It's Eurover - COTW: Portugal

Image is of Portuguese parliament (specifically, during a session in which they recognized the Nakba, in July 2023).

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.

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

::: spoiler 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.

:::

893 comments

  • I think we should be pushing the "soviet union did not collapse, it was overthrown" button a lot more.

    Of all the people I have radicalised, about half of them have later come back and said that this specific thing was a major aspect of what flipped them from being a holdout on communism. They had the brainworm that communism failed and does not work. They felt it was good on paper but had already proven to fail.

    This button seems to be one of the strongest things to push on with a lot of people. We don't do it enough. We don't have enough media on it.

    I know some here disagree with talking about the Soviet Union, I've seen people say that there's no point because it doesn't matter anymore and that it turns people away. But I sincerely think we really should be talking about it more. It sits in people's minds as having failed and is the thing that holds them back from exploring the left further.

    I'm speaking anecdotally of course but I feel like I've personally radicalised a lot of people and I really do believe it's about half of them that this particular thing has turned. I will also say that I think this group of people have all been younger people (16-30) from american right wing families.

  • Niger revokes military accord with US, junta spokesperson says

    Niger's ruling military junta has revoked with immediate effect a military accord that allows military personnel and civilian staff from the U.S. Department of Defense on its soil, junta spokesperson Colonel Amadou Abdramane said on Saturday.

    There were about 1,100 U.S. troops in Niger as of last year, where the U.S. military operates out of two bases including a drone base known as Air Base 201, built near Agadez in central Niger at a cost of more than $100 million.

  • Sounds like China won't be bailing out real estate firms:

    “For real estate companies that are seriously insolvent and have lost the ability to operate, those that must go bankrupt should go bankrupt, or be restructured, in accordance with the law and market principles,” Ni Hong, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said at a press conference Saturday.

    • "Communism" is when the free market is allowed to flourish.

    • Actual free market lmao

    • Why bail out the investors when you can simply take their assets at a significant discount?

      • Because the problem is what happens when all the investors’ financial assets are wiped out.

        Post-2009 crash, the local government found themselves unable to finance themselves as the global consumption slump caused export revenues to fall. At the same time, the central government injected huge Keynesian-esque fiscal spending to prevent a recession, but with export demands down and domestic consumption not adequate to absorb such huge volume of spending, those money naturally went to real estate and infrastructure building. This mitigated the immediate troubles that came with the global financial crisis, and prevented a recession in China, but it also spawned new problems that they would eventually have to deal with, decades down the road. This was the first time property market emerged in China. Instead of investing into the real economy, much of the money went to the real estate virtual side of the economy.

        Local governments in deep debt were unable to get new loans from the financial institutions, so to repay their debt they had to liquidate something. Since the real economy had slumped, the easiest way is to sell land to real estate developers, who build houses and various infrastructures that the investors could spend their money in. This created a complex and emergent relationship between local government, financial institutions and real estate developers whose fates are deeply entangled. Local governments get their GDP up quickly by selling land (instead of making long term investment in the real economy), which allowed banks to make a profit by handing out more loans, and which further promoted the cycle of investments from the private sector into the real estate because that’s the easiest way to make your asset values go up.

        I have simplified a lot, but keep in mind also that the proliferation of shadow banks and the vast amount of non-real estate related corporations that have borrowed and invested into real estate, as well as households that have taken mortgage loans and have invested much of their personal wealth into the properties they bought.

        Clearly, bailing out the real estate companies is just kicking the can down the road. The property bubble has to burst at some point.

        But what happens when those trillions of RMB are getting wiped out? You have many non-real estate companies that will see that assets slashed in half, and that might just tip them into insolvency. What happens when thousands or tens of thousands of companies in China start going bankrupt?

        The local government would immediately lose their cash revenue needed to finance their state functions, and there needs to be a completely restructured system in place to ensure that the local governments don’t fall into disarray.

        The households who have spent a lot of their personal wealth buying houses will also see their assets plunge, and the anxiety might cause them to start saving and spend less, which in turn could trigger a spiraling recession as consumption goes down.

        This is a complex crisis with no easy solution at hand, as far too many sectors not directly related to the real estate have got themselves involved in the investment schemes (some figure says up to 20% of China’s GDP). The central government has to walk a tightrope carefully balancing which and what sectors are going to be negatively affected as the property market fails, enact the appropriate policies to mitigate damages (which is inevitable), and even small missteps could easily snowball into huge crisis.

        To be clear, China is not going to collapse, and the crash is likely not going to be as bad as the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis in the US, but it is undergoing a challenging and complex crisis that needs the government to be extremely diligent to ensure that the damages dealt can be minimized.

    • China a libertarian's dream??

  • So the tik tok bill also gives the US government the authority to shut down any website it deems to be propaganda for a national security adversary. Like, it sounds like they could absolutely shut down hexbear.

  • Really good post about how the CIA is essentially running American foreign policy in this late stage of imperial decline. Has tons of links to related news articles as well.

    Those angry about the US genocide in Gaza need to understand that his willingness to slaughter millions of innocents in US wars is why he was appointed to be President.

    TL;DR: The CIA is wildly powerful thanks both to it's huge breath of resources and money (not just their government budget either - so much drug money!) and their ability to act freely, especially post 9/11. At this point it can act independently of the president, as it did during the entirety of the Trump presidency, and can work for the benefit of its own brass instead.
    Not that Biden is opposed to them. He is definitely the most genocidal president since Bush, or at least was while his brain was capable of having such opinions.

  • Watching Norm debate Destiny for five minutes was like watching someone knowledgeable in any field debate a Reddit lib. Complete dumbasses that are so smug and overconfident about their own abilities. Couldn’t watch more than five minutes because I could feel bits of my life slowly dying away.

  • lmao I just got invited to a talk with this as the blurb:

    The dollar is the jewel in the crown of the US financial system. The widespread use of the dollar benefits the US in important ways, in particular it allows the US borrow money more easily. It also means the US can use the dollar, and access to it, as a weapon to sanction enemies of the country, unsettling foes and friends alike. In many respects the dollar is as dominant as it has ever been, but that doesn’t mean the position of the buck is at the top of the heap is guaranteed….

    1. saying the quiet part out loud
    2. the financiers are quaking - admitting that the dollar's reign might be coming to an end
    3. I just love the admission that dollar hegemony and sanctions are a weapon deployed against friend and foe alike.

    should I attend and take notes for y'all?

  • Ukraine should introduce Work from Home policy for their soldiers so they can fight the war from the comfort of their homes. They can use Hoi4 and Microsoft Teams for this and stream it on twitch to get donations to fund the war.

  • Report claims Yemen’s Houthis have a hypersonic missile, possibly raising stakes in Red Sea crisis

    The Houthis’ main benefactor, Iran, claims to have a hypersonic missile and has widely armed the rebels with the missiles they now use. Adding a hypersonic missile to their arsenal could pose a more-formidable challenge to the air defense systems employed by America and its allies, including Israel.

    “The group’s missile forces have successfully tested a missile that is capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 8 and runs on solid fuel,” a military official close to the Houthis said, according to the RIA report. The Houthis “intend to begin manufacturing it for use during attacks in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, as well as against targets in Israel.”

    it's ziover

  • The Top Minds at

    are arguing that it's just common sense that the primitive Slav is too corrupt and stupid to operate and maintain seventy year old technologies like an ICBM. Pay no mind to the stalemate in Ukraine, or the simple fact that Russia provided much of the world's space heavy lift capacity for decades. These are just communist propaganda or some shit. The Slavic brain volume is insufficient to plumb the mysteries of hydrazine and slamming chunks of plutonium together really fast.

  • The artist of Stonetoss has been identified as a Hans Kristian Graebener from Texas. CW for uh, all the vile shit in his comics.

    He was identified by his email being exposed in the Gab hack in 2021. Some fun nuggets:
    He lost 23 Bitcoin in a hack in 2014 (current value in USD: 1.6 Million)
    He posted frequently on Reddit about being circumcised and donated to foreskin regeneration startups
    He appeared in a 2014 NYT article where he was described as "an enormous bald man named Hans". He had apparently flown to New York for a pro-Gamergate meeting. It includes this banger of a quote:

    “Naturally, accusations of misogyny are thrown around, but as evidenced by the presence of women, of which there are a few, it is a diverse group.” Hans paused, then winked. “By the way, table dances are $10 and lap dances are $75, if you’re interested. May I recommend Ms. Rain?”

    Also, he works at the Houston office of Open iT... 👀

  • Everything is going extremely well

    Milei government opens up food imports in bid to curb price hikes

    Argentina’s government orders full opening of food imports in an attempt to curb an inflationary spike and introduce more “competitive” prices.

    President Javier Milei’s government has ordered the opening of food imports in an attempt to curb soaring inflation "and make prices more competitive.” The news was announced Tuesday by Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni, who said the decision had been taken after meetings between Economy Minister Luis Caputo and business leaders. "In the meeting, the businessmen acknowledged that prices were rising above the inflation expectations and of course the scenario that the businessmen had evaluated was catastrophic," said Adorni.

    The spokesperson said that Argentina’s economy is “gradually normalising” after years of protectionism. “The decision has been taken to definitively open imports for certain products of the family basket in order to make prices more competitive for the benefit of Argentine families and consumers,” he added.

    Adorni added that there would be "some tax relief" on certain imported products. The move was announced just hours before the INDEC national statistics bureau confirmed inflation data for February, with analysts forecasting a rate of around 15 percent. Various local news outlets reported that Caputo received on Monday representatives from the largest supermarket chains in Argentina. According to reports, he said that prices of mass consumption products were not reflecting Argentina’s new economic reality.

    By default, Argentina is a producer of food. It's literally our natural condition, we produce stuff that we eat, we produce so much food we can export it to the US, Europe and China and have so much to spare we can easily supply our internal consumption.

    Shit has gotten so bad the government decided the solution is to import food. A country that produces food now must import food. Ancap land is doing extremely well.

    Communism is when no food, I guess.

  • This is honestly some next-level

    :

    An Israeli woman taken captive by Palestinian fighters on 7 October 2023 is grateful to the helicopter pilot who shot at the vehicle she was riding in, killing another Israeli as well as all of their abductors....

    When the gunfire ceased, Goren realized that the helicopter’s high-caliber bullets had killed all of her abductors, as well as one Israeli woman....

    At least one survivor of the same Israeli helicopter attack that killed Nir Oz resident Efrat Katz has blasted Israel’s repeated readiness to sacrifice the lives of its citizens....

    Cunio’s anger over Israel’s repeated implementation of the Hannibal directive is not shared by Goren, however, who was taken to Gaza on the same tuk tuk – a small motorized utility vehicle.

    Asked what words she has for the helicopter pilot that sprayed them with gunfire, Goren replied with appreciation – and regret that he did not resume his fire at the second group of Palestinians that carried them off to Gaza.

    “Thank you – and why didn’t you stay?” Goren told Channel 12. “Also, why weren’t you there, here, to take down everyone here? If one helicopter had fired, everything would be okay. We would never have gotten to Gaza.”

    Goren’s appreciation is all the more striking since she appears to understand that she could have been killed just like Efrat Katz if the helicopter had returned.

    “I was also trying to hide, to get inside as much as possible,” Goren explains to Ilana Dayan as they watch footage of the second vehicle laden with people that would eventually make it to Gaza. “At that moment my fear was if the helicopter shot at us again. And this time my back is exposed. If he shoots again, it’s me who dies.”

    If you watch the video the article links to, she even describes how the Hamas "terrorists" who captured her went out of their way to get her a cigarette in the middle of the operation. And made sure she put on better clothes than she had on while sleeping.

    What the absolute FUCK?! Thank you for nearly murdering me, but I wish you'd finished the job! (They also would have finished the job if the helicopter hadn't run out of ammo; her reaction: "If only their ammunition hadn't run out.")

  • A note on something I can see becoming a problem after the Ukrainian War is over: the "Ukrainian Vatnik" cope. It will become an article of faith in the West that the AFU's failures can all be laid on incompetence, and Real NATO Troops would do better. Is this true though?⬇️

    Let's examine the case of the Ukrainian 47th Mechanized Brigade, an organization that was intended to be the showpiece unit of the new NATO-standard Ukrainian Army. This was an organization that was stood up in late 2022, filled with young, highly-motivated volunteers, many of them already with high-intensity combat experience. These troops were then sent through months of additional training, both in the West and in maneuver areas in Western Ukraine. This unit was lavishly equipped with the pick of donated Western equipment fully equal to anything fielded by any NATO army - Leopard 2A6s and M2A2 Bradleys, supported by 155mm howitzers and HIMARS. It had distributed high-speed tactical internet thanks to Starlink. And it had something that no NATO formation has - a fully integrated drone group, created from the ground up to incorporate the hard lessons of the war by people who learned them personally.

    In short, the Ukrainian 47th Mechanized Brigade was in all likelihood equal or superior in combat power to any heavy brigade in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization when it attacked in Zaporozhe in the summer of 2023. The Russians proceeded to beat this unit so hard it became a meme. "Bradley Square," anyone? I quipped at the time it looked like the Battle of 73 Easting in reverse, with attacking NATO armor burning in failed breach after failed breach. But when this war is over - after the Russians break Ukraine and humiliate NATO - an awful lot of very senior Westerners are going to cope about how the Ukrainians were dumb brutes who just didn't get maneuver warfare. Couldn't be trained. Soviet dinosaurs. Wasted effort.

    Anything to avoid admitting that could have been us.

    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

  • Seems like Ukraine has given up on any kind of military victory and will now focus on terrorism inside Russia. The only problem is that it makes Russia retaliate with more force than usual which is directed at western cities.

893 comments