Bulletins and News Discussion from February 24th to March 2nd, 2025 - Fascists? In Germany?! - COTW: Germany

Image is a map of the German election results made by Andolu Agency.

The results are in from the German elections, and the outcome is pretty unsurprising for those who have been paying attention to the German socioeconomic situation, and prove our predictions from years ago correct. The conservatives (CDU/CSU) won the plurality of votes (28%), representing a slight gain from 2021. Meanwhile, Scholz's party, the SPD, collapsed from first place in 2021 to third place this year, almost halving their number of seats; the Greens had a less dramatic collapse but still lost many votes. The coalition of CDU/CSU + SPD seems like the most likely end result of this election; something something nothing ever happens but everything keeps getting worse.

Outside the main coalition, there's three important takeaways IMO.

First is that AfD - the far-right Euroskeptic party - has skyrocketed into second place, achieving a full 20% of the vote. This is definitely very concerning and does not exactly bode well for the future, but it isn't necessarily immediately disastrous, because the CDU/CSU (as well as the SDP and Greens) has vowed that they will not form a coalition with the AfD.

Second is that Die Linke - the pro-NATO, pro-Israel socdem party - has mostly reversed its awful performance in 2021, increasing its vote share from 4.9% to 8.8%. What this suggests is that while Germans are fleeing from the center, a very significant minority are going leftwards (though still aren't particularly anti-imperialist).

Third is that the BSW under Wagenknect, who split off from the Die Linke (absolute classic), appears to have barely fallen short of the 5% vote share needed to get seats in the Bundestag. The BSW has some good foreign policies (peace with Russia, for instance) but pretty awful domestic policies; quite patsoccy.

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Full video, in context, of the Zelensky Trump Vance press conference and argument
@[email protected] you might be interested, just a warning it's over an hour and a half.
Just watching the first five minutes I can already see how this ended in the way it did. Trump starts with his first words about negotiations and peace. Zelensky's first words are the complete opposite. Zelensky's first words were about security guarantees, and to stop Putin. Zelensky then goes onto talk about how Putin is a killer and terrorist, and how no compromises can be made with killer and terrorist Putin over Ukrainian territories currently held by Russia. Yes, he actually uses the words "killer terrorist Putin". Then Zelensky talks about "crazy Russians stealing 20 000 Ukrainian children". Then Zelensky brings out the propaganda photo print outs of Russia starving Ukrainian POWs.
Trump and Vance just let him waffle in the hopes that they can get this over with and sign the resource extraction deal, but were clearly frustrated. Zelensky was just trying to build a case about how Putin can't be trusted and there can be no negotiations with killer Putin for over an hour by the looks of it. Just completely undermining the position of Trump and company. I'm guessing eventually Trump and Vance had enough of Zelensky undermining them for over an hour, which led to Vance pulling the trigger and baiting Zelensky into saying some really foolish stuff. Zelensky completely misread the situation and tried to do all the usual taking points, not realising Trump is actually serious about trying to get a deal.
So I don't think this was a pre planned humiliation ritual of Zelensky. I really think that the USA wanted to get natural resources extraction deal over the line. To be honest, it seems that Trump was incredibly gracious by Trump standards, if he let Zelensky go full slava Ukraini for a whole goddamn hour. But Zelensky kept undermining any future concessions to Russia in public, in front of the press! Zelensky is not helped by trying to communicate in his third language, in the Vance exchange at the end it's quite clear, Vance and Trump ran rings around him.
- Incredible stuff 8 minutes in when trump repeatedly refers to ukrainian "raw earth"
  Another good one at about 28:30, trump's facial expression when asked about the Baltics after he praises Poland rofl
  Thanks for the link, I'll watch this more later on the weekend
  
  Trump being Trump... The most interesting thing is if you actually read the full text of the deal, the words "rare earth metals" are never even mentioned. The deal is an all round natural resources extraction deal, and rare earths are covered under "minerals". Some interesting clauses in the deal:
  The Government of Ukraine will contribute to the Fund 50 percent of all revenues earned from the future monetization of all relevant Ukrainian Government-owned natural resource assets (whether owned directly or indirectly by the Ukrainian Government), defined as deposits of minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, and other extractable materials, and other infrastructure relevant to natural resource assets (such as liquified natural gas terminals and port infrastructure) as agreed by both Participants, as may be further described in the Fund Agreement. For the avoidance of doubt, such future sources of revenues do not include the current sources of revenues which are already part of the general budget revenues of Ukraine.
  50% of all revenues from future natural resource extraction projects, not profits, revenues. Revenue from everything in the extraction chain, from the moment Ukraine digs it out of the ground, to the moment Ukraine processes or exports it.
  The Fund, in its sole discretion, may credit or return to the Government of Ukraine actual expenses incurred by the newly developed projects from which the Fund receives revenues.
  Credit expenses from new projects, so no matter what, the fund gets it's money, even if the projects go bust?
  The Fund's investment process will be designed so as to invest in projects in Ukraine and attract investments to increase the development, processing and monetization of all public and private Ukrainian assets including, but not limited to, deposits of minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, and other extractable materials, infrastructure, ports, and state-owned enterprises as may be further described in the Fund Agreement.
  Monetisation of all public and private Ukrainian assets, wow...
  Ukraine managed to remove the $500 billion clause, but at a big cost in other areas.
  Full agreement here
  
  The Fund's investment process will be designed so as to invest in projects in Ukraine and attract investments to increase the development, processing and monetization of all public and private Ukrainian assets including, but not limited to, deposits of minerals, hydrocarbons, oil, natural gas, and other extractable materials, infrastructure, ports, and state-owned enterprises as may be further described in the Fund Agreement.
  This means that all future assets of Ukraine will be fund owned, either by Ukraine or by the US, at a rate of percentage set by the fund based on contribution to the fund (will almost entirely be the US).
  They got the $500bn clause out but this would sell 100% of the future development of the country's infrastructure to the fund, which will be majority controlled by the US if not close to entirely controlled by them.
  Ukraine essentially becomes an overseas territory of the US. Ukraine doesn't need a security guarantee in the text of the deal if so much of Ukraine is owned by American interests that the US military stepping in to protect those interests is fundamentally inevitable.
  There is no out clause on this and no exit timeline. It's perpetual. Agreeing to this deal would completely guarantee Ukraine (or its people) have a future war with the US to get back any of it or to get out of that 50% revenue clause.
  This is worse than $500billion. At least with a number like $500billion there's an out in the form of reaching that number. With no number there's no end to it.
  
  Remarkably bad. There is no end to the shit
  
  What strikes me is how bare faced the robbery is. The most obvious fact being that the only way out of the deal is war with the US. A Ukrainian insurgency against the US is literally the only possible outcome of this.
  The most interesting thought going through my head about it is that I can't see that being a fascist insurgency. This would be an anti-imperialist resistance insurgency on par with anything in the global south. Perhaps it would look something more like Israel? With the fascists holding together the shit mess for the American interests while various factions try to free it. In the longterm a resurgence of leftism in the country might occur.
  
  It could be like Afghanistan, the Taliban are very reactionary, they still hate the us, I can see some nazis going the same way.
  
  Maybe but I somewhat doubt this without the religious element to sow things together. All of these groups are essentially backed by billionaire/millionaire interests in the region. If these people are given an interest in the fund then they'll become subservient to capital. The groups they back will either pivot to fascist enforcers of the colonial overseas territory providing tribute to its master the US arrangement or they will collapse on a timeline of 5-15 years of sporadic poorly guided terrorist acts.
  
  Not to mention, even if this deal turned out to be not as terrible as it sounds, unless it helps Ukraine win the war, Ukraine is essentially signing away its future for nothing in return. But outside of a MASSIVE escalation on the part of NATO, Ukraine has no way of winning the war. And even if the US is promising that massive escalation, the person making that promise is Donald Fucking Trump, who is well known to always honor his commitments….
  
  Yeah the $500 billion and matching 2021 GDP clauses were hard, but at least they were an endpoint. With this new deal, there is no definitive endpoint.
  
  50% of all revenues from future natural resource extraction projects, not profits, revenues.
  If ukraine operates like other governments, then they only earn revenue from resources, not profit. Most states where resources are privately developed get revenue as tax on resources, which isn't profit. You never hear the phrase tax profits, you hear tax revenue.
  
  This is worse than I could have imagined
  
  @[email protected] you might be interested in reading the full text of the final, now unsigned, deal yourself, I think you expressed interest in such.
  
  ooo yes please and thank you comrade
  
  It's impressively bad: https://hexbear.net/comment/5950978
- That sounds like one of the most painful missed memos ever
- That was beyond incredible, wow. Thanks for sharing. BTW it’s actually 49 minutes long it just repeats a second time in that YouTube video, which is why it looks like it’s over an hour and a half.
  
  So Zelensky only went full Slava Ukraini for around 35-40 minutes then. Still was given a lot of time to change his tune after a lot of hints being dropped by Trump and Vance.
  
  Yeah he really did that to himself tbh. Vance I think was being really nasty to him in the end, it could have been a little less ugly if it was just Zelensky and Trump probably since they were just talking past each other a lot.
  
  Vance just saw an opportunity to bait him, real nasty work but he saw the opportunity and took it.
- I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
  yewtu.be
  inv.nadeko.net
  yt.artemislena.eu
  piped.video

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