Bulletins and News Discussion from March 3rd to March 9th, 2025 - Austerity And Its Consequences - COTW: Greece

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.

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What is happening in Syria is pure insanity, here's my little breakdown of the wider geopolitical situation from what I'm understanding from scrolling through Arab Facebook and Telegram today.
There are basically two opposing sides when it comes to how to do deal with the new Jihadi government in Syria. One side is pro-cooperation and consolidation of the new government, and the other side is pro-chaos and making it as hard as possible for the new regime to gain any legitimacy both internally in Syria and internationally. Here's how the situation currently looks if we're talking major regional players:
Pro-regime: Saudi, Qatar, Sunni Syrians, most other Arab states and Turkey
Pro-chaos: Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Hezbollah, SDF, minority Syrians and Israel
So we have a rare situation where the interests of Iran and Israel converge and they're both interested in making any effective ruling difficult for the Jihadis. The Israelis' partners in this clusterfuck are the Druze in Southern Syria, and some possible backdoor collaboration with Syrian Kurds in Eastern Syria. The Iranians still have good relations with former SAA members and are popular with Alawites and other Shia-adjacent groups in Syria, which is why they're backing them in Western Syria on the coast. Iranian and Axis media also seems to have shifted towards a more positive coverage of the SDF. I personally don't even have a take at this point, this is all developing way too quickly.
- poor Syria. so far from Allah, so close to Israel and Turkey
- I think hts overplayed based neoliberal jihadism: inflation, economy still in shits (but now without oil), minorities suppression (allegedly, cause there is wild mix of old and new videos), same corruption of passersby. Which couples with complete internal incoherence of “pisrael is our regional partner, we don’t have beef with them” and fundamentalism. So they have central asian true believers, cynical turkish elements, local former isis members, people with grievances with alawites and shias/hezbollah, and desire to centralize power without money (oil/food).
  Means kurds become a rather urgent issue, even if they drown this rebellion. And that’s all internal mess, without pisrael strikes, qatar promises and turkey desires
  
  Poor syria, hasn’t it suffered enough with radical cowards and cowardly radicals 😭
  
  That's a good analysis of the situation. The Jihadis expected that they could rule a devastated country through vibes and positive energy, where people would stop complaining about the complete destruction of the economy simply because Assad was gone. The electricity situation is horrendous, no one except some returning expats has any money, and even the Turks and the Qataris are realising that the country is basically a corpse, all they can do is send aid because there are no institutions or functioning economic organs that can cooperate in any larger projects to rebuild anything. The state has zero control over the fertile Euphrates lands nor the oil, which will remain unsolved because the SDF aren't that interested in cooperating with the Jihadis. Add Israel's continuing sabotage of the state by the constant bombing and the incursions into southern Syria. The situation is basically fucked and will continue to deteriorate, HTS can't consolidate power without their hard-line Jihadis murdering people in the streets, which will only embolden internal and external enemies. A bankrupt state can't fight multiple battles if it's too poor to even pay pensions and operate border crossings.
  
  And as you mentioned, Israel blew up the majority of state infrastructure that was left standing in Syria (which some HTS supporters celebrated for some reason?). Israel literally bombed the passport office, the remaining scientific centres, and the majority of military equipment. I think the numbers were crazy, 1800 bombs, dropped in 500 sorties, over 72 hours if I remember correctly. So HTS inherited almost nothing from Assad and the SAA. No Navy, no fighter jets, very few tanks and helicopters, and civil infrastructure bombed, from passports to tax records. So they have nothing left to run a state with and consolidate power effectively on both the military and civil sides, HTS is sending in a bunch of technicals (pickup trucks with guns in the back) now to reinforce Latakia, whom are armed by Jihadists with ISIS and Al Nusra uniform patches and committing atrocities.
  
  I meant there were several other ways out: agree to kurds demands, whatever, you can subjugate them later (!read-some-history-books jolani) (maybe same for latakia, under russia aegis, kick turks out in exchange, this will pacify pisrael as well); call for jihad against pisrael from all good muslims around (borders are non existent, they could probably get 100k volunteers) (as a plus - internal divisions sort of won’t matter, cause you will have so many armed people around, and a good cause, outside of christians) - !blaze of glory/!believer jolani; do sunni centralization under turkey - piss of hezbollah/iran and pisrael, didn’t get the food from euros (got luxury cars though), didn’t get the oil from qatar - !actually-existing-jolani (drown rebellion in blood probably 😭); formation of cooperatives for farming (need buyers for fruits tho) and getting solar cells from imf - !solarpunk jolani
  
  “Allegedly”
  Shut the fuck up there have been many people from the region in here posting reports and videos of the abuse of the jihadists against minorities. They are gunning down Alawite crowds right now. Like seriously why are you like this. Stop downplaying the voices of the oppressed so you can shield Al Nusra.
  
  Now it’s not allegedly, obviously, already 100 reported dead. I mean a video of some guy in the dirt, and some people say it’s local police chief, while others say it’s some guy who defended his sister, or some people being sad near mosque, with description jihadis are throwing shias out, that sort of thing. I cannot get motives from videos like this, and I don’t seek out a lot of them, nor verify time frame (was it in og isis time or not, cause they still have isis patches) (for what’s it’s worth, mainly from migrant coworker, that their (alawites) family sort of didn’t see that shit, outside of first jubilant days of shooting officials, mainly left alone for months, but with troubling rumors, but more concerned with shias/hezbollah sympathizers)
  (I don’t think reprisals against government officials especially strange in a coup)
  
  I think you and a certain other user in here make your ambivalence or even favor towards towards Al Nusra very clear in the tone and wording you use. I’m done talking to you, this is like the twentieth stupid ass comment from you
- Turkey has deployed to the north to enforce SNA positions, the SDF attempted some raids against ISIS and the SNA while Turkey bombs them, then there's the uprising in Latakia by SAA loyalists against the HTS, with HTS sending in reinforcements. ~~The only party not currently engaged in fighting is Israel right now~~, no Israeli airstrikes or raids as of yet today. Nevermind, Israeli ground troops have opened fire now. And no Russian airstrikes either. This is just crazy, full on Libya kind of factionalism.
- I think that a lot of us that fully supported Syria against the West's proxy war, well, we are very happy to see resistance against this new "HTS" neo-liberal regime. Especially resistance forces organized and led by former SAA soldiers. However, in principle, I do not want to see Syria disintegrate into one billion little microstates either. The best case -- dream scenario to me -- would be the resistance takes back Damascus and reunifies the country similar to how it was before 2011. Sadly, there does seem to be a growing possibility that Syria may "collapse" into several smaller states... and we definitely do not want that because that would only benefit the Western imperialists.
- Oh, i though Egypt would back the Jihadi regime, I could see the kurds becoming allies to the Iranians because while Israel has tried to get them on their side but at the end of the Turkey is the kurds main enemy and Israel needs Oil from azerbaijan too much to drop Turkey and Iran doesnt like Turkey
  
  Sisi (as in the military) is paranoid about muslim brotherhood stopping the gravy train of imf/usa golden shower

1060 comments