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.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
A week late but Carmakers Must Bring Back Buttons in Europe
Bazinga brains in my life called me a boomer for saying that vehicles should be required to have manual, physical controls as back ups, who's laughing now? (Probably still them because no one cares and they make more money than me but still)
Every critical function in a vehicle should be physical. I will never trust a touchscreen to behave properly during a moment of panic.
For real, I just don't see a single advantage in it being touchscreen
As a software engineer: 10000% yes.
all American car companies know how to do is make truck bigger and make touchscreen bigger
in 10 years every car in the US will be an iPad with monster-truck wheels and a screaming toddler on top smacking the screen to make it go faster
Tagline material, this.
Fuckin Chevs have screens larger than my old flatscreen at this point. IMAX ass trucks.
Thank God, these fucking iPad cars are so fucking stupid.
I believe it was Mazda? I saw recently that was already doing this since they saw distracted driving massively increases with less buttons and knobs and whatnot.
I feel like whenever my current car dies I'm going to be looked at like a weirdo because I want buttons and knobs and analog gauges.
Edit: Thought the Mazda thing was more recent. I guess it's from 2019 Why Mazda is Purging Touchscreens From its Vehicles
My current car has a screen smaller than my phone. It doesn't even have a digital speedometer. My only concerns are heated seats and bluetooth. Turns out having those minimums means cars are relatively inexpensive, because it is the bare minimum at this point.
Yeah, I have the same. I would like carplay/ android auto or whatever. But really don't need much of a screen. Just something big enough for GPS and see the current thing playing.
Otherwise yeah I could care less about most of what others consider essential. I don't even like leather seats lol.
Lmao, the Ranger i had a few years back had a cassette player. I just played my music and podcasts off of a bluetooth speaker on the dash. Now i have a phone holder that cost me ten bucks that i use for gps nav. "Convenience" for vehicles has stretched far longer than what's actually necessary.
You missed out on the classic tape to headphones jack adapter, I got so much mileage out of those
I burnt out two of those before i switched to a speaker lmao. The speakers in the Ranger were toast by that point anyways.
sounds like a ranger for sure!
The Danger Ranger lived a long and rough life. Kinda want one again, but my car gets way better mileage than it.
I used have a early 00s Sentra and did the same cassette to aux thing. I thought it was a big deal when I got some head unit on clearance put in, and then and I blew out the speakers.
My car has the FM radio it was built with. I've bought a dirt cheap Bluetooth FM sender off the internet that goes in the cigarette lighter socket so now the radio is a Bluetooth speaker.
Thank the gods
Love that both of my cars have knobs and switches for almost all controls. The thing I hate about the Mazda is that I cannot easily turn off the screen and when I do turn it off, the backlight stays on.