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.
Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson on The EU Has LOST its Mind
transcript from Wolff:
Understand this—let me come at it from a slightly different angle. I think that the leaders of France, Germany, and England are in very, very deep difficulty at home as political leaders. All of them—the newly elected Merz in Germany, but also Macron, who was elected long ago by a fluke, and Starmer, who got in due to the wholesale withdrawal of British voters from the Conservative Party—are in deep trouble.According to public polling, Merz is taking over a government that is basically a continuation of the Scholz government, with Scholz's party as his partner, just as Merz was Scholz's partner before. This is the same old, same old. These are politicians whose entire political careers have been as junior partners—I'm being polite here; a synonym would be "lackey"—of the United States.
Now, they have discovered that the United States, their backer, their liaison, their supporter, is abandoning them. As a result, they are headed for political collapse. They have no support anymore—their own people don’t want them, and the United States is less and less interested.
Take the absurd visits of Macron and Starmer to Washington last week. They were spoken to as if they were visiting cousins who couldn’t be rescheduled for a later time. Everything they had hoped for was denied, culminating in the Zelensky theater at the end of the week. These were demonstrations of absurdity.
What we’re witnessing here is the behavior of desperate politicians—snatching those 300 billion from the Russians when every major financial advisor has told them the obvious: they will pay a long-term price. No shaky government in the world will ever leave its money in Europe again after seeing what the Europeans are prepared to do with it. This is a bigger blow to Europe's importance than anything related to Ukraine.
Why would you keep fighting a losing war? You have to be desperate to do that.
spoiler
Here's the single largest problem of Europe—just so people get it. Europe is a disunified place. It's got lots and lots of countries, big and small. Every one of them worries about the loyalty of the others. When Mr. Trump comes and offers good deals to one of them and then another, do you really think he won’t get any of them? Don’t be silly—of course he will.The suspicion in Paris about what the Germans might be negotiating, and in both of those places what the British might be doing, and the Italians—oh my God—that's what makes Europe weak as a player. And the last thing blows my mind. "We are unified." Yeah, but the Russia you're thinking of opposing is now part of BRICS and has China as an ally. Are you kidding?
You really want to develop your military with the Americans hostile toward you on one side and the Russia-China BRICS on the other? You're crazy. This is the behavior and mentality of people who are desperate. And if they take their steps—which I think they will—because it will certainly please the people they've always pleased, the industrialists, the financiers, the people who run Europe, they are going to pay a price.
They cut the welfare that has been the uniform gift to the European masses for the last 75 years. You start really taking that away—I don’t mean nibbling, they've been nibbling—but I mean really taking it away, and you're going to see a swing to the far right and the far left that makes what you've already seen look like nothing in comparison.
Only desperate politicians, especially in the history of Europe, would do this. They really are seeing it, and you can see it—look in the eyes of von der Leyen or any of the others. You look closely, and you see desperation and anxiety. These are people heaving Hail Mary passes down the field.
spoiler
I think that the French, the Germans, and the British are lining up behind a war scare. The articles in the Financial Times—the very titles—Warfare Instead of Welfare—that’s it. That’s the only card they have to play.The support of the welfare state? They don’t do it. They never have done it. It wouldn’t look genuine if they tried it now. So they’re going to go down that road.
And let me tell you why, in one last way of doing this, why this is crazy. They are going to be lined up against two major alternative powers—the United States on one hand and China-Russia combined on the other. Those two parts of the world are already many years ahead of Europe in the level of military technology, in the level of military production they can undertake, and they are working night and day in their struggle with each other to get even further ahead.
You know who’s far behind? The Europeans. And they’re not going to catch up. They don’t have the money for it. They don’t have the political support for it. This is a desperate way for a few leaders with a short future to try to hold on for as long as they can. That’s it.
That’s why I call it a Hail Mary pass. This is not thought through. This is desperate.
They came back—Starmer and Macron came back—and told the Germans that they got absolutely nothing in their visit to Mr. Trump. And Mr. Zelensky? Even less. In the days since the Zelensky visit, the United States has announced a reduction in the intelligence that they provide to Ukrainians. They’re leaving.
And if you think the Russians were able to win as much as they have when they were facing the combined U.S. and Europe, then what do you think is going to happen when it’s Europe all by itself? This is a joke. This is a desperate effort.
That’s why they have to resuscitate the danger that Russia will come. And they have to give it a five-year timeline—"It’s going to happen in five years." Normal human beings are able to understand that absolutely nobody knows what’s going to happen in five years. And never did.
Nobody understood where we would be now six months ago. So this notion—"we have to take away welfare from you in order to build up a military in a world where our two potential adversaries are light years ahead of us"—remember, Europe has not developed its own military for 50 years.
It is a trivial military. It’s got to start.
This is a joke.
spoiler
Well, the government's the enemy, and social democracy is the enemy because it's not Russia as such. But the neocons and neoliberals need a convenient enemy around which to mount the libertarian takeover. You always need an enemy to do what you're trying to do.The libertarian billionaires want to do to Europe and the United States just what the neoliberals did to Russia in the 1990s. They want to turn over all of the mass of government property—national parks, government real estate, government agencies—all of these, they want to turn over to the financial managers to turn into monopolies that can be financialized and create wealth in the form of stock market gains and bond market gains. That’s what the game is.
It’s not so much geopolitical antagonism towards Russia—that’s just the superficial wrapping. It’s about a political, anti-government, fascist ideology. That’s what I think we’re dealing with.
No, I see them going on together, using each other, shifting back and forth—whichever flies, whichever gets you the best polling results. Do you demonize Russia? Do you demonize your own government? Mix them up, add them together, link them.
But again, I say it for Europe: the strategy of Europe catching up with either the United States or Russia-China is not going to solve your problem. It’s just not. It’s going to cost you—the very turmoil, as Michael began today’s conversation—the very turmoil of the next three, four, or five years. As you move your resources away from everything you’ve been doing to building a defense establishment, it’s going to create all kinds of difficulties. They have to take those resources away from all of the things they need to be doing to try to catch up with the rest of the world.
The decline of Europe is a hundred years old. I don’t see this doing anything other than accelerating it even further.
Then we’re in full agreement. The Eurozone is a dead zone.
And let’s be clear—it is shooting itself in the foot. It is very busy shooting itself. Its notion—maybe this is a good way to end—you know, for 500 years, Europe could claim to be, and it did make the claim, that it was the center of the world. It was the Roman Empire, then the great medieval era, then the great colonial takeover of the whole rest of the world, organized in, by, and for Europe.
What we are watching is a late stage in the dismantling of the role in the world that Europe played. It is now less and less and less. And the lead is taken by England, which in a way is correct, because they took the lead the other way. They brought Europe forward—it went from a cold, wet offshore island of Europe to the Great British Empire. And now it’s on its way back to what it was, and the rest of Europe with it.
And all of these are ideologically mistaken notions of how in the world you’re going to cope with that decline, let alone reestablish a place. And maybe that’s the way empires always go. They rise, they are spectacular, they rule, and oh boy, do they look bad as they turn into the ruins that all of them before also ended up as.
Why not Europe too?
But we’re watching it.
Wolff spent the entire last decade/2010's going around in circles over his worker co-op shit and now he is role playing as a geopolitics expert?
He's talked about both for the last couple decades, actually. I don't know if you've been just watching clips people post of him or something, but he goes into global issues a ton on Economic Update (or at least used to; I haven't listened much over the last year or two).
And it's good that he focuses on shit you can do locally like starting or joining or making things into worker co-ops, honestly. It's a thing where people have some actual agency and can make direct changes. Unless maybe you're becoming a head-of-state anytime soon?
Yeah people here suck at propaganda. Wolff has a wide reach Among "progressives". Worker co-ops are "baby's first socialism" in a lot of ways. As soon as you have an out from liberal thinking, it's much easier to consider more solutions beyond that, and curious people will find flaws with the co-op model along the way anyway. Even if they don't, co-ops are mostly good for western countries with no hope of an actual socialist revolution, even if they don't get us where we need to go on their own.
He's been pretty good on China but yeah