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.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
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.