Some people expect the next pope to follow in Francis' steps since he appointed so many electors. I hope they're right, but I just read some counter-arguments in this piece which I think are worth sharing.

It is difficult to predict the outcome of the forthcoming conclave. However, there are strong reasons to believe that Francis’s successor will be a more conservative pope. First, his pontificate has been highly transformative, both institutionally and in its public messaging, making it unlikely that the cardinals will choose another candidate equally inclined toward reform. The Church tends to resist radical and sustained change.

Perhaps more importantly, although the Sistine Chapel has thick walls, the Vatican is invariably influenced by global political trends. With Trump in the White House, and with the far right on the rise worldwide, electing another pope as progressive as Francis would be swimming against the tide – and the Vatican has a long history of adapting to changing realities rather than confronting them. That is why the next fumata blanca will likely announce a more conservative figure than Jorge Bergoglio. Indeed, the mood of the moment suggests that he may well be a stark antithesis to the ‘leftist’ pope.

So the arguments are that, since Francis was a transformative pope, it's not likely that they'll elect another pope that's transformative in the same manner since that would entail too much transformation for the church too quickly.

And that, in 2013 electing a progressive pope seemed apt for the time, but in 2025 with the far-right on the rise, it would be against the current trend, so it's likely they'll ride the wave and elect a conservative or even, god help up, a far right pope.

Hope whoever wrote this is wrong, whatever one may think about the catholic church, it was politically useful for me to be able to say "well the pope agrees with me, you brain dead warmonger" whenever I argued with liberals who wanted to keep the ukraine war going.

Also something I found interesting in the piece.

As Gerard O’Connell recounts in his book on the 2013 conclave, The Election of Pope Francis, the then-Archbishop of Buenos Aires gained popularity among prelates for his strong stance on financial transparency – a sensitive issue following the Vatileaks revelations.

So the electors in 2013 warmed up to Frances not so much because of his leftish credentials but moreso for his anti-corruption stance. This checks with the idea I've heard that since he only had 1 lung, they probably didn't expect him to live that long and to change anything.

MAJOR PORTUGUESE election campaign drama, possibly compromised judiciary???

So the public prosecutor received an anonymous complaint about possible wrongdoing in the acquisition of 2 apartments (or something like that) by the leader of the center-left socialist party, Pedro Nuno Santos (often called PNS). This comes after the leader of the center-right government, Luis Montenegro has been under public scrutiny for months because of payments made to his family's company by casino and hotel conglomerates, which the public prosecutor said they were "pre-investigating" but nothing came of it yet, and the guy is still still running for PM. Also after the former socialist party PM Antonio Costa (now president of the EU council) resigned after the public prosecutor announced they were investigating him for possible corruption, which ended up not leading anywhere.

PNS immediately came out and, unlike Montenegro who just insisted he did nothing wrong, explained everything about those properties and how he acquired them (and how he owes the bank 400k), basically, he has a rich dad and a rich wife, he used to have a really good car that his dad bought him but he sold it off after saying it "didn't match with his socialist values", honestly I doubt he actually did anything illegal and so do most people that's why this smells fishy.

The government and the socialist party are pretty much tied in the polls now but the socialists have been rising, and after striking down an absolute majority socialist government, and mostly ignoring a PM that technically gets monthly payments by private companies, the public prosecutor suddenly announces they're investigating the leader of the opposition 1 month away from elections?

The guy is also the most "left-wing" leader the socialists have had this century, during the troika he got caught on a hot mic saying portugal should just declare we wouldn't be paying our debts to german banks and then "their legs would shake", during the contraption government he was also in charge of negotiating with the left block and communist party for them to approve government budgets. That's pretty based but he's also not that left-populist guy anymore, he's to the right of, say, Bernie and Corbyn, and his idea of a developmental regime for Portugal would immediately have to face EU restrictions, which would split the socialist party (one of the most europeanist parties in europe).

In better news, there's some groundswell for Paulo Raimundo the leader of the communist party's performance in the 20 minute long televised debates between party leaders, I'm hearing this from both friends and, surprisingly, family who did not like the guy 2 years ago. Now I despise the format of these debates so I'm not watching them, basically each candidate gets in theory 10 minutes and then after each debate they bring out the fucking dumbest pundits in the office to talk for 30-60 minutes and, I shit you not, "give scores" to each leader for their "performance", not the content or politics of what they said, just their performance and how much they owned the other guy, WHICH IS CRAZY, does that happen in your country too???

Anyway while a lot of these pundits would never give a communist a good score some of them have pretty much been forced to, or at least they lower the score of whoever he as debating since they can't possible argue that Raimundo had lost the debate. Surprisingly I'm hearing that there's not a lot of ukraine talk, there's only been a couple of instances where Raimundo had to reiterate for the umpteenth time that the party doesn't support arms shipments to ukraine. Now this has a lot of comrades feeling very hopeful that the party might regain some of the vote share it lost last time, which would mean the party would increase its vote share in a national election for the first time since 2015, and possibly regain some of its strongholds. I'll remain cautiously optimistic since the anti-communism and vulgar propaganda skyrocketed after the ukraine war, but if the party manages to regain support in these conditions I'll call that a victory regardless of what comes out of the elections

The h3 sub bans you for literally anything

I guess it's over for canadian black obama

I remember hearing that some of the prisons in syria where people are being released from USED to back in the day be CIA blacksites, where america could hold people indefinitely and that lasted until syria-us relations deteriorated. Anyone know if that's true?

Also the syrian had arrested abdullah occalan and then also released him?

Preliminary results show the incumbent Georgian Dream (pro-eu, not pro-russia but more sovereignist than the opposition) winning today's elections.

It's funny because the media will sell this as a huge defeat to the EU because they were pretty blatantly backing the opposition, but ultimately the government still wants to join the EU, they're just not as cucked about it. Honestly there's a lot to be written (and I hope someone here does because I don't wanna do it) about what's really at stake in georgia and how it's not really pro-EU vs pro-russia contest, and what it means that the west insists on depicting it as such.

I recommend everybody listen to the podcast Remembering Soviet Georgia for the upcoming episode on the results election and anything georgia.

EDIT: At least 2 parties have said they won't recognize the results. Oh boy there we go again, all this over nothing

Ethan KKKlein of Heinrich3Himler3 and the ADL teamed up for this one, honestly we're lucky hasan isnt getting it too because Ethan is leveraging his huge platform against him

Great point by Branko Milanovic regarding Moldova's EU referendum.

It is absolutely bizarre, but very much in keeping with how EU operates, to vote on EU membership when no-one is offering it.

Macedonia voted in such a silly referendum in 2018. Did anything happen? No new member was accepted for 11 years. Countries are in a limbo for decades. It is a waste of time & energy to think about it.

Moreover, to be accepted several countries (incl. France) require referendum which would definitely reject new members,

Referendums like the one in Moldova are meaningless & they simply add fuel to fire and destabilize countries for nothing.

Same thing I was thinking, there is no guarantee that any more countries, even ukraine, will actually get to join the EU even, they're just going to get in line forever. Which affects the countries' politics negatively (in the eyes of europhiles), ie Georgia

What EU does is to play an entertaining game. It displays to small countries pictures of wealth to come, countries begin fighting within themselves for these illusory pictures, and nothing real ever happens. What EU does is what in French is called "miroiter". You disembark in a poor country, show them in a mirror all kinds of glowing things, they get excited, and in exchange fo these images, they give you land. It worked wonders in the 19th century.

Both EU/NATO and Russia want to provoke conflicts and even civil wars in the European neighboring countries. Creating dissention and political mobilization over absolutely unattainable things (like EU membership which is a mirage) is the right way on that path. For small countries that are polarized in many respects, it is a suicide in this geo-political climate, to choose one or the other side. Neutrality or non-alignment is not just a "nice" policy. It is necessary in order to survive without a civil war. Libya & Iraq are cautionary tales.

Interesting piece on Phenomenal World: Adaptation in the Sanctioned Economy: Domestic manufacturing, overcapacity, and the limits of Iran’s economic resilience , it shows how despite the belief that sanctions resilience is entirely a matter of state capacity and state policy Iran's private sector actually invested a TON to fill the space left by foreign manufactured products, like washing machines, to the point where they're even building too much of this stuff so the government can be faulted for not influencing these sectors to allocate capital appropriately.

Also interesting is how these big private firms believe that they can actually do well in the sanctions environment, so they lobby the government AGAINST lifting import bans even if economic sanctions are also lifted, so there's another point against the american sanctions regime as a useful behavior changing tool even by its own terms.

Today marks 25th years since portuguese communist writer Jose Saramago won the Nobel prize in literature, don't know if they ever gave the award to anyone else as based as him but it's pretty cool. I've read a few of his books in audio form they're very interesting

Here's a quote from when he visited Palestine

During the Second Intifada, while visiting Ramallah in March 2002, Saramago said that "what is happening in Palestine is a crime we can put on the same plane as what happened at Auschwitz ... A sense of impunity characterizes the Israeli people and its army. They have turned into rentiers of the Holocaust." In an essay he wrote expanding on his views, Saramago wrote of Jews: "educated and trained in the idea that any suffering that has been inflicted . . . on everyone else . . . will always be inferior to that which they themselves suffered in the Holocaust, the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner."

Iran didn't really retaliate against israel killing the leader of hamas on iranian soil, apparently this was because israel proposed that if they didn't retaliate there would be a ceasefire in gaza, a proposal which iran seemed to have accepted, since hezbollah probably knew about this deal it's speculated that they might've relaxed security a bit and left israel an opening to attack them and, of course, there's no ceasefire in gaza so they lied. And iran believed

the world’s only Jewish state

This is such a weird thing to say, like, what should there be 2 of them or something then it'd be fine? Imagine referring to france as the world's only Gaulish state.