Macron has recently called a snap parliamentary election in the aftermath of the far-right getting a large proportion of the votes in the EU elections. Why exactly he called an election at a point of profound weakness is a little beyond me. Explanations that I’ve seen range from “He thinks the element of surprise will benefit his party and not others,” to “WW3 is about to start and he doesn’t want to be leader for it,” (which, like, isn’t true - Macron is the President of France, not Prime Minister, he won’t be unseated by this election and he has said he will not stand down regardless of result), to “He doesn’t want to swim in the shit-filled Seine.”
While we still have a couple weeks to go, the polling I’ve seen generally puts the far-right in first place with the left-wing coalition slightly behind, with Macron’s party all the way back in third place. Anybody who knows anything about French politics knows that while France does actually have something of a left opposition in aggregate (in contrast to the two wings of the Capitalist Party in the UK and the US, for example), French left coalitions are profoundly unstable and this one will inevitably split - perhaps even before the voting begins - meaning they aren’t nearly as useful as they otherwise could be.
Living in a France governed by far right parties would be awful, but maybe they might at least be against the carnage in Ukraine, and sue for peace with Russia? Well, possibly not, if the example of Meloni in Italy is anything to go by. It seems that the differences between the “centrist” parties and the fascist ones truly are not that great, beholden to the exact same set of capitalists regardless of which party wins, and will likely bend the knee to NATO, though they may grumble a lot. Would a left coalition be better on Russia/NATO? They have already helpfully told us that they won’t (only opposing sending French troops to Ukraine but otherwise being full steam ahead), and additionally are genocidal Zionists. Western leftists have long been hampered by a dramatically faulty misunderstanding of how geopolitics works, with many seemingly believing “imperialism is when countries interact with other countries” and “democracy is when you can vote between two parties even if widely popular policies aren’t at all represented by either of them, and if those popular policies are enacted but it’s by a one-party state then that’s authoritarian evil” and other such strange ideas, making them terminally useless on foreign issues and pretty unremarkable on domestic issues too. France is no exception.
And just to top it all off, this is coming in a period of further imperial decline for the tattered remains of the French empire, with West Africa rebelling and Kanaky (New Caledonia) deeply unhappy with recent French decisions.
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.
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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 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.
starting an offensive after Hezbollah has destroyed your border infrastructure and blinded you and while you’re demonstrating your inability to “pacify” Gaza with Hamas 70%+ intact despite the most intense war per square kilometer fought in decades is a really strategically sound idea that could have only come from the best Western generals
if Israel goes hard on this offensive and it’s not just some half-hearted march of some battalions into a grinder before they declare victory a kilometer past the Israeli border and then retreat again with thousands dead then Israel is collapsing this year. those roads into Jordan will become awfully congested once the ports are smoking wreckages
These people genuinely believe they are wearing plot armor.
I’m starting to think it’s such an obviously bad idea, is there something Israel knows that we don’t? Like, they plan on dropping a nuke on Beirut or something? Or that Biden has guaranteed 100,000 US troops and 2 carrier groups? Is there anything strategically we might be missing here?
Back when inbred nobles decided when to go war, I can see massive blunders like this. But presumably there are professional military folks on the IOF who can understand the costs and risks and know it’s suicidal go after Hezbollah.
there absolutely are - this is why Israel hasn’t tried to go really hard on Hezbollah or Lebanon for the last 8 months. not out of the kindness of their hearts, they would love to reduce every structure in southern Lebanon to rubble, but they know they cannot without facing huge reprisals. the only reason they might go for it soon is because they’re running out of options given that a) peace in Gaza is completely politically untenable; there isn’t a single person within 20 miles of power who wants to allow even a single Gazan to be alive after this war, which therefore means b) that Hezbollah will remain true to its word and will not go for a separate peace with Israel or its entire raison d’etre as an organization (resistance to Israeli imperialism) ceases to exist. if peace is impossible, war is inevitable unless there is an internal collapse in Israel before then, but while there are encouraging signs of incoming collapse, I fail to see what will be dealing the final major blows if it isn’t Hezbollah making life in Israel extremely difficult.
I mean, they could, but where does that actually get them? hundreds of thousands of dead civilians in an hour, but Hezbollah is still perfectly intact and still firing missiles into their territory, now with a renewed vigor. they would be a pariah state to even half of the West, though the US will obviously continue to support them. it’s a similar logic to bombing Gaza with conventional weaponry except compressed into a very short timeframe so the consequences are even worse for Israel.
killing civilians en masse doesn’t win you wars, it actually loses them. you inspire resistance to your actions and those munitions aren’t being spent on military targets.
the US no longer has the ability to field armies like this made out of their own troops, and Ansarallah has proved the futility of modern aircraft carriers except in very, very well defended areas