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.
The probable future coalition partners of the CDU and SPD just announced their basic understanding to proceed with an absolutely INSANE militarization programme.
The outline is at least 500 billion €s for military hardware and investments in military-relevant infrastructure, with no theoretical limit - over the past couple of days, politicians have thrown around numbers like 800 billion and even higher. That’s basically the entire Pentagon budget for Germany to spend over like 5 years or so.
Early statements call for “an army of 100,000 drones, 2,000 Patriot missiles, at least 800 tanks and 1,000 Taurus cruise missiles”, with more to come.
This gigantic defense programme will be financed entirely by debt, and they plan to suspend the “debt brake” - but just for defense stuff, pointless social spending like schools and hospitals will not be exempt from the austerity program.
Just insane. All the German MSMs I’m looking at are celebrating. It will be interesting if any leftist organization can mobilize against this monstrosity, this really can’t be true.
Really feels like Europe is going completely off the rails this week. Maybe I’m a little out of whack too since I’ve basically listened to 5 hours of Mercouris et al. every day for some days now and this was to be expected, sort of…but I can’t see any good come of this.
Oh well, maybe they’ll fix some of the shittier roads at least so that tanks can drive over, or they’ll run out of money, or they just find that throwing money at a problem doesn’t magically create tanks. There’s this adage of “Germany is the country that spends the most on its military and basically gets nothing out of it”, and that was still very true over the last couple of years. As far as I know, virtually none of the hardware that the first 100 billions dollars were supposed to buy actually arrived in the depots, it’s all still mostly on order lol.
Source: The Krautwave
https://x.com/AvivaKlompas/status/1896648081959207076
#BREAKING: The family of hostage Matan Angrest has released this image of him in captivity, taken from a propaganda video released months ago. At the time, they chose not to make it public.
On Oct 7, Matan was kidnapped from a tank, suffered severe burns, and has endured brutal interrogations while being held hostage in Gaza.
no fucking way, is this the guy that a crowd pulled out of a smoking tank??? big LMAO if true
How do you get captured out of a tank? It’s a bunker that can move!
He’s a prisoner of war, not a “hostage”
Funny how the tenfold Palestinians abducted without charge and held indefinitely by Israel never count as “hostages” though
My guy just likes hanging around in tanks. Can’t men have hobbies anymore?
He was peacefully just chilling in his tank and Hamas kidnapped him UNPROVOKED in a senseless act of violence!
Argentina’s Milei To Inaugurate Legislative Sessions At an Half-Empty Congress - Telesur English
Article
The Argentine president, Javier Milei, will open this Saturday night the legislative session before a half-day Congress, due to the absence of 50% of the opposition. The scandal over the ‘cryptofiasco’ $LIBRA, the appointment by decree of two judges of the Supreme Court and the request to resign from the governor Axel Kicillof to intervene in the province of Buenos Aires for cases of insecurity, were some of the factors that motivated the absence of opponents.
Deputies, senators and governors of Unión Por la Patria have announced in a statement that they will not be present this March 1 at the opening of 143° ordinary sessions, considering that the country lives under “an increasingly authoritarian and violent government”.
The Argentine left bloc also decided to leave, while the so-called ‘dialogist opposition’ – which has sought consensus with the government-will have a reduced presence.
The president of the centrist Radical Civic Union (UCR), Martin Lousteau, confirmed on his social networks that he will not attend, nor will some legislators from the center-right Federal Meeting and the Civic Coalition (center).
The presence of 329 legislators, consisting of 257 deputies and 72 senators, as well as all 23 governors and the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires is ruled out. So far, only three leaders have confirmed their presence, although others could send their deputy governors on their behalf.
Under an aesthetic similar to that of last year, the head of state will speak from a lectern by national network from 21:00 hours, the time of greatest audience on Argentine television, trying to imitate the style of American presidents during their state of the Union speeches.
The rest of the reserved seats and boxes will be occupied by representatives of the ultra-right Libertad Avanza, Milei’s party, and its allies from the conventional right Propuesta Republicana (PRO), who for about 45 minutes will appreciate from the front row the political agenda of the Executive for this 2025.
The current rumor is that “tomorrow’s big news” teased by Trump is the US leaving NATO.
I’ll believe it when it happens. (LIKE I WANT IT TO HAPPEN) but I dont trust Comrade Trump thaaat much
Russia has invited Israel to the 2025 Victory Day Parade in Moscow.
(March 3, 2025 / JNS) Russia has invited Israel to attend its Victory Day commemorations in May alongside representatives of China, Brazil, Slovakia and Serbia—but not Germany, the United States or most European Union’s member states, Russian media reported Sunday.
The annual May 9 commemorations on Red Square in Moscow feature a military parade and speeches by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in recognition of the sacrifices made by his country in its war against Germany in World War II. This year is a round anniversary since the German surrender to the Red Army 80 years ago.
A national holiday, May 9 is a major patriotic holiday in Russia and throughout much of the post-Soviet world. The holiday’s main event is the Red Square parade. In contrast to past anniversaries this year, Russia did not invite the United States, most of the European Union, Canada, Australia and other countries it deems “unfriendly,” according to News.ru.
And Russia was also forbidden from attending the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January. Satan, whose government policy is verbatim that of Hitler’s policies of Lebensraum and Final Solution, used his platform to declare the ICJ/ICC, South Africa and every Palestinian as an extension of the Third Reich, so extremely huge Holocaust revisionism energy there.
Satan has been granted exemption from the ICC’s arrest warrant by much of the EU including Germany and Poland on the grounds of white supremacy.
Russia’s, or more accurately, the USSR’s role in freeing much of the camps has largely been disregarded as “Kremlin propaganda” following the war in uKKKraine.
Inviting “israel” to the Victory Day parade is a massive
deleted by creator
Extremely disappointing but I am curious what the hell he’s doing, given the growing relationship they have with Iran. If it goes any further than inviting to parades then I’m curious if Putin is angry at Iran for some reason, perhaps over Syria.
I mean, Israel has ties with virtually all great powers. They cooperate with China on miltech and surveillance. They cooperate with Russia on diplomacy. And they are the real 51st state. Not too long ago we had news of Israel lobbying the US to help Russia keep/retake bases in Syria to counterbalance HTS/Turkey, while also making public overtures towards the SDF. Israel will and does deal with everybody, including those arabs they aren’t genociding like Egypt, Jordan, Saudi and so on.
The whole de-Nazifying defense comes off hollow if they’re just going to cozy up to another Nazi-like regime.
I mean come on, that was already pretty hollow.
How was it already hollow? Ukraine has a ton of Nazis in power who were specifically targeting ethnic Russians. It might not have been their core motivator but let’s not pretend that de nazifying Ukraine isn’t an essential goal for Russia’s ability to secure its borders and ensure a neutral Ukraine moving forward.
this is who they sent to fight the Ukrainian Nazis
Ukraine has a ton of Nazis in power who were specifically targeting ethnic Russians.
This is actually a farce of a point, Ukrainian Nazis aren’t stupid. They don’t have enough real support to go blackshirts on Russians. If this was the case the original “de-Nazification” argument would have taken a lot better and a lot quicker in Russia. Ukrainian Nazis went after extremely soft targets like Romani, Jews, and foreigners. “De-russification” has (stupidly IMO) been the most democratic policy post-Maidan. The outsized influence of Nazis in Ukraine has been because they’re effective at hiding behind/within the government and popular sentiment. The reason Ukrainian Nazis are entrenched is because they get bureaucratic positions, they do absolutely terribly in the polls.
None of what you’re saying matters. They killed thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. They ran child camps teaching kids songs about killing and eating Russians, which journalists went to and got on video. They terrorized ethnic Russians, tortured and killed them and their families. Saying they don’t have real support to do the things they were actively doing without anyone trying to stop them except for Russians is nonsensical. They clearly had support, they did it and got away with it and were elevated to higher and higher positions year after year. Why are you white washing literal Nazis?
They killed thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. They ran child camps teaching kids songs about killing and eating Russians, which journalists went to and got on video. They terrorized ethnic Russians, tortured and killed them and their families.
War crimes in the DNR/LNR are not the same as what you were implying. You’re completely mixing shit up when it suits your argument.
Songs about killing Russians have been in Ukraine since time immemorial and have been taught to children since time immemorial. A large portion of Kolomyika songs over the last 2 centuries are about hating Russians in some way. You’re entirely culturally out of your depth. For example the famous "Гуде-шумить сосоночка ", or “The Pine Trees Hum and Rustle” has the line:
Ви, москалі, людоїди, You (slur) Russians are cannibals
It was literally recorded in the USSR in 1988 for the first time and is a folk song from time immemorial. You’re literally out of your depth in figuring out what is and isn’t Nazi. You don’t even speak any of the languages involved.
What have I mixed up? You claimed they didn’t go after ethnic Russians and I pointed out when they did. Where is the mix up?
Okay, so you’re providing a historical context behind anti-Russian sentiment, which if anything just explains the material basis for why Nazism took root since Russians were the definitive anti-Nazi force. A bunch of anti-russian people feeling happy to be Nazis because they hate the Russians who are the ones against the Nazis is pretty common in eastern europe. It doesn’t mean they aren’t nazis.
You’re literally saying “the azov nazis teaching children songs about eating russians is actually just ukrainian history, not nazi stuff” ???
The reason Ukrainian Nazis are entrenched is because they get bureaucratic positions, they do absolutely terribly in the polls.
Please tell me you’re joking.
I don’t even bother with pulling the exact figures because even Wikipedia couldn’t whitewash the Ukrainian support towards Bandera:
A poll conducted in early May 2021 by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation together with the Razumkov Centre’s sociological service showed that 32% of citizens considered Bandera’s activity as a historical figure to be positive for Ukraine, as many considered his activity negative; another 21% consider Bandera’s activities as positive as they are negative. According to the poll, a positive attitude prevailed in the western region of Ukraine (70%); in the central region of the state, 27% of respondents consider his activity positive, 27% consider his activity negative and 27% consider his activity both positive and negative; negative attitude prevails in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine (54% and 48% of respondents consider his activity negative for Ukraine, respectively).[207]
Also you are conveniently forgetting that far more Communists joined the Wagner to fight the Ukrainian Nazis than whatever far right militias there are fighting for Russia. Don’t get me wrong, these people do exist, but you only hear about them being disproportionately amplified by Western media that also conveniently ignore all the communists (who by the way do not like Putin) that volunteered to fight for Russia against Ukraine.
I think Russia invites the president of Israel to the victory parade quite often, ultimately WW2 is known for the Holocaust for obvious reasons, so having the president of what’s seen as the Jewish state present is seen as important. I know that Netanyahu has attended previous victory parades before, and that the president of Israel attended in 2005, along with G.W Bush during the height of the Iraq war.
Russia effectively exports white people to Israel, they’re very cozy. Russia is Israel’s main supplier of oil. Which is why the Ukraine and Gaza Wars have always been funny from the
perspective.
Are the Assadists in the room with you right now?
https://xcancel.com/eu_eeas/status/1898487797348225207The European Union strongly condemns the recent attacks, reportedly by pro-Assad elements, on interim government forces in the coastal areas of Syria and all violence against civilians.
It appears he plans to put tariffs on all agricultural imports 
Canadian oil is partially exempt from the US tariffs, will be tariffed at 10% (current tariff is 0%), instead of at 25% like everything else.
All Canadian energy is going to be 10%. I can only hope that in New England this is going to be the year where we
regional energy conglomerate CEOs. Our prices are a cluster fuck because of inept government management (thanks “transition” fuel and “free market” energy) and the fact that our regional energy conglomerates are monopolies that have captured all regulation, to the point where they are freely admitting they haven’t done proper maintenance and also that money is gone so they need to raise the rates to do maintenance. Obviously the YoY profit keeps coming.
Trump ‘strongly considering’ large-scale sanctions and tariffs on Russia
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36wkpy3497o.amp
What’s going on with the Don? Did
convince him that Putin is evil actually and can’t be reasoned with?92 of the International Republican Institute’s destabilization programs in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have been CANCELED following cuts to State Dept. and USAID grants. 175 of the Institute’s programs worldwide are now in limbo because they directly depend on NED funding.
Yet another open admission that the opposition activists, “political prisoners”, and US-bankrolled “religious groups” in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela exist only because of DEEP, LUCRATIVE and sometimes long-standing CONTRACTS.
Washington’s political and media mercenaries (see: “democracy activists”) have been making bank 🤑💰💳 in recent decades in Latin America. SecRubio’s friends in Latin America are desperately calling him to try to get their payments resumed. He probably had to change his number.
Another L for Narco "Nazi’ Rubio
A thought just occurred to me on these tariffs. There is of course the bullying and domestic political reasons for Trump doing it. But it could also be accomplishing a roundabout, latent greedflation sort of thing for US companies.
These tariffs go into effect, US companies importing these goods raise their prices at least in commensurate, but in many cases a little more. It sucks for a while but the economy absorbs it generally; people are just forced to take out more credit and/or shift their spending (even though for a great many, there is not much more blood left in the stone). Eventually Trump takes the tariffs away, and perhaps companies lower their prices a little bit, as a PR show, but nowhere near to reflect the full tariff relief. That then sets the new standard, and latent profits start flowing.
Idk, it would be playing with fire though, especially in very low margin industries. For smaller companies that can’t handle it, they may get hit too hard and could go under. Doing this could also open space in tight markets and provide some further juice to capital consolidation
Tariffs are only useful for developing countries to protect developing industries. They will only serve to make US companies even less competitive with overseas companies. When the tariffs go away, US companies will have to have competitive prices again or go under. Many would go under, as you said. Engels said it best 140 years ago
I have no idea how anyone could think this is sound economic strategy
The real problem is that it is not even a strategy. Import taxes are an useful and strategic measure that you can take. Just not in a blanket fashion or by themselves. Let’s say you want to start hiring americans into blue collar jobs to make cars or whatever. You may or may not want to raise import taxes over cars brought in from México or China. What you probably don’t wanna do is raise import taxes over everything that comes from México or China. Or better yet Canada. China/México can probably offer capital goods (machinery, etc) that bolster your competitiveness. Canada is your resource colony, that’s where you get input goods and extra energy from.
Hence all the contradiction in Trump’s speeches. He says that tariffs can substitute income taxes while at the same time saying they’ll reindustrialize the country. That can’t happen by default. If your tax base is tariffs then you’re still importing everything you need, just paying for government via import taxes. If you reindustrialize then you don’t have to import nearly as much and therefore needs to levy taxes some place else. The former is exactly what Trump’s government wants to achieve. The most regressive taxation system imaginable, the sort which you only see in countries like Brazil.
Brazil used to do developmentist economics, even during the pro US dictatorship era. There was protectionism as part of a broader industrial policy. The 1982 onwards financing crisis triggered by the Volcker Shock made that untenable. So Brazil ended up devaluing its currency and retooling the economy away from import substitution towards being export driven. Most things tied to industrial policy was dismantled - except for a handful of things such as the regressive heavily consumption based tax system, the high import taxes and agricultural subsidies. Trump’s tech-landlords seem to think even agricultural subsidies are superfluous. All you need to do is levy export taxes instead.
I think the US (and west in general) has the capacity to do it in an alternate way, though subsides.
It can setup a EV plant as a SOE and hire workers and as it is the state, it can set prices to be lower than or close to imported EVs from other countries.
Global south countries have to worry about exchange rates (so it makes sense to tax and take away purchasing power to prevent unnecessary imports) and there are external debt issues but that’s not the case with the U.S. and west which have very liquid markets for their currencies and allowed to float.
The US does not have the capacity to set up a competitive SOE. The federal government doesn’t have the ability to do anything other than print money or drop bombs. It can’t even build roads without hiring 100 subcontractors.
Apparently lots of pigs out protecting Tesla dealerships today in Chicago and New York
What’s going on with the Greek left these days? Haven’t really heard shit since Syriza was in power.
Politics in Greece are unfortunately more or less dead. After Syriza’s capitulation in 2015, they were in government for one term, they lost the next election but they were a close second to the conservative party. The election after that we have a surge of extreme right wing parties (I think since the restoration of democracy in Greece it was the first time that the right wing parties all together get more than 50% of the vote) and the collapse of Syriza. After that Tsipras resigned from its head and then Syriza splits into 2 parties both of which collapsed in the polls even further. Right now, the polls show a very weak conservative party at ~25%, and then 5-6 parties around 6-10%, some of them being far-right, christian fundamentalist and the others center left and left. On a bright side, the communist party is making some gains, even though not sure how much faith to put in them.
2 years ago a horrible train crash happened (head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train). The result was the death of 57 people, many of them university students returning after a holiday to Thessaloniki where they were studying. The train company (used to be public but privatized during the economic crisis) had dismantled many of the security measures, so the accident has a political dimension and caused a shock in Greek society. Furthermore, there seems that the government tried to botch the investigations on the accident, there is a theory that one of the trains was carrying illegally some flammable substance which is used to adulterate gasoline that made the fire that was caused by the crash even worse, and this is why the government is trying to hide what happened. Last Friday was the 2 year anniversary of the accident, and a general strike was called that was joined by most sectors, and lead to the biggest demonstration in Greece at least in the last 40 years (some estimates puts the number of Greeks attending throughout Greece at more than 1 million people). I was quite surprised by this, and shows some fighting spirit back in the Greeks which had disappeared after the capitulation of Syriza. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is any political party leadership who can use this discontent and push for real left change in the country, but we will see.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn48q3150dxo JDPONDON at it again my God
“What they’ll have to do is build their car plants, frankly, and other things, in the United States, in which case they have no tariffs,” he added.
WITH WHAT LABOUR DON?
i guess that depends on whether or not rfkjr gets his labor camps (plus all prison slavery)
America has no qualified workers, no production chains to supply production, and no capital interested in industrial development. It’ll work great.
North Korean media have published photographs of the country’s first nuclear-powered submarine, armed with “guided missile nuclear weapons,” under construction. Thus, the DPRK is preparing to enter yet another elite club of powers.
- Telegram
