Not so much the broader democratic party (their equivalent to the PSOE in this situation), I don’t think they have anything to learn here, but there have been plenty of situations where the Squad congressmembers have been in these situations where they could play hardball and withold their votes for something not to pass, but they have never done that
The center left socdem party has the most seats in the coalition and leads the government, they canceled the deal so that the far-left junior partners wouldn’t pull support and collapse the government probably. No purging or taking power is happening.
And if the government did collapse and elections happened the left (divided between Sumar and Podemos) wouldn’t really gain from it, and it could very well lead to a right-wing majority.
Finally we can test if this beats a coughing baby
at least the indian communists still have the naxalites
Reading Nightmarch I don’t think the naxalites are anything to be too hopeful about, like, they’re fucked and their position is very precarious, more so than other insurgent maoist groups. And they’re MORE fucked the more india develops because the more roads and infrastructure cuts through forests, the less they can go around, and the better material conditions get for the Adivasi they represent, the less incentive they have to not break ranks and snitch for the government.
Also I think the book depicts the naxalite stuff as kind of an ethnic conflict, which just so happens to get its poetry and theory from maoism, I don’t know how much communists in other parts of india find it inspiring.
Crazy how right he is
Saved this comment because that last paragraph is golden
Anyway I just saw this image. And here’s a video of Tagle, speaking in 2008.
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.
Probably because there are 1 or 2 christians here idk. It is time to not care about stuff like this and just enjoy the posting
RIP to the guy. I memed about the pontifex a lot, hope the next guy is more like him and less like the others
Seems like a crazy escalation when they could just…stop outsourcing prison services to the country
the Ukrainian president said in a post on X that the Russian army has violated the ceasefire more than two thousand times.
Russia’s defence ministry has claimed that Ukraine had broken the ceasefire more than a thousand times
By the logic of whoever caps the highest caps the most, I’ll say that ukraine broke the ceasefire
From that coughing baby meme? So who won?
Unless it’s was in a straight line no way those [INSERT ANTI-ROBOT SLUR FROM THAT DAVID CAGE GAME HERE] won against a human
I had to check if he died when I saw this here
Oh my god that’s glorious. You got egg dogged
You’re right it seems like when they do poorly in natiowide elections that tends to presage them losing the elections in the state, except for 2019 when they lost big nationwide but still won the state elections in 2021. In 2024 nationwide they got 33% o the vote and only elected 1 MP so that doesn’t bode well
oh please