Image is from this SCMP article.
Much of the analysis below is sourced from Michael Roberts’ great website.
Japan’s ruling parliamentary coalition, consisting of the LDP (purple) and it’s junior coalition partner Komeito (in light pink) have lost their ruling majority. They have ruled post-war Japan for almost its entire history. The LDP is currently led by Shigeru Ishiba after Kishida stood down due to a corruption scandal, and ties to the Unification Church.
While geopolitical factors (over the cold war between the US and China, etc) may have played a role, by far the biggest reason for this result in the poor economic conditions over the past few years. Inflation has risen and real wages have fallen, with little relief for the working class via things like tax reductions. While inequality in Japan is not as extreme as in America, it is still profound, with the top 10% possessing 60% of the wealth, while the bottom 50% possess just 5%.
Shinzo Abe previously tried to boost economic performance through monetary easing and fiscal deficits, while Kishida ran on a “new capitalism” which rejected Abe’s neoliberalism and promised to reduce inequality. Nothing substantial has resulted from all this, however, other than increasing corporate wealth. Innovation continues to fall, and domestic profitability is low, resulting in decreasing investment at home by Japanese corporations. Labour productivity growth has only slightly picked up since the mid-2000s and is falling again. The rate of profit has fallen by half since the 1960s, and Japan has been in a manufacturing recession - or very close to it - since late 2022. In essence: there is no choice but between stagnation or decline.
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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 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.
I heard an interesting take on the USA elections and the Democrats today. Of course Trump is rejected by many people, but his popularity and the way he manages to really draw a crowd are remarkable. No Democratic politician today can do that, I think the last one who really did it was Obama during the 2008 elections (which in four years’ time will be 20 years ago). The Democrats simply can’t draw a crowd like Trump because their candidates have no charisma and no real proposals for the people, all they do is “We’re not Trump, we’ll protect democracy”.
Now, compare any Kamala/Biden speech (except the MINI SODA speech) with Trump’s rallies, of course Trump says a lot of nonsense and garbage, but he knows how to get the crowd going. Meanwhile, the Democrats are all boring and no energy. It seems that their voters are hostage to the Democrats because they fear that if they don’t vote for the Democrats, they will lose all their rights and that at least the Democrats will slow down the decline of freedom a little.
I’ve seen some comparisons between democrats and socdems/leftists in Latin America. Lula da Silva, who is the same age as Trump, is always energetic, the crowd is always cheering and talking, he’s there making jokes, comments about soccer, using language and slang that most people will understand, making proposals that actual affect people in a positive way. Compare Lula’s rallies with Bolsonaro’s. All Bolsonaro does is cry about the fact that the “evil” Supreme Court judge Moraes won’t let him do livestreaming anymore (even his supporters are bored of this shit). And Lula is a cancer survivor who literally has a broken hip bone. The same goes for Nicolas Maduro, he’s always dancing, making long speeches, bringing cool guests, he knows what his people want to hear, when people say Maduro is like the left-wing Trump, they’re not lying, his rallies are very energetic. The same goes for Petro, José Mujica and even the Kirchners in Argentina.
People focus too much on Trump the reality TV host and not enough on Trump the professional wrestler. I think his stint at the WWF served him well. Him pumping his fist after the assassination attempt is pure wrestling shit. The way he can work a crowd and is super funny has nothing to do with his reality show, which is him filming in a studio where the contestants are more likely to laugh at unfunny jokes, which should actually degrade his sense of comedic timing. But in front of a live audience like at a professional wrestling venue?
Liberals are blind to this because by tying his success to being an ex-professional wrestler, they have to admit that the presidential elections, like professional wrestling, is fake shit. The presidential election is fake spectacle just like wrestling, so what better candidate than an ex-professional wrestler?
Trump is selling a dream. It’s a delusional dream (bringing the jobs back? deporting the immigrants who “stole” your jobs?) that will never be fulfilled, but at least it’s a dream to indulge in for many desperate people while it lasted.
Kamala and Biden are selling fear (Trump is worse than Hitler) while not bringing anything to the table. You’re not getting anything unless you belong to the affluent upper middle class segment of the population. It’s living in fear knowing that Trump could become a president again.
Trump’s charisma, like Obama’s, lies in knowing how to weave together a dream-like story and sell it to their credulous audience. But a dream is still a dream, and deep inside the subconscious, everyone knows that it has to end at some point. That’s when dreams turn into nightmares - the harsh reality that awaits them when they finally wake up.
Yeah. I’d personally add that I think Trump is selling himself, not really policy promises. The “promises” all just point back to, “I’m going to be the biggest asshole you can possibly imagine.” So he doesn’t really have anything concrete he has to live up to. Whereas the Democrats have—at least historically—made big promises and then let everyone down on them in monumentally spectacular ways. Obama promised to fix the 2008 housing and financial crisis, to immediately codify Roe v. Wade, to implement universal healthcare, to end the wars…and did absolutely NONE of it. And they were big enough promises and obvious enough non-delivery that the Democrats’ propaganda couldn’t fool people into thinking he had carried through at all. So with the Democrats, everyone is pretty much like, “You can’t fool us again”, whereas with Trump it’s like, “There’s nothing to fool us on. We know exactly what we’re getting.” So I think the donkeys have backed themselves into a corner where they not only don’t make any real promises, but no one would even believe them if they did.
Kamala just had like 30K people in Houston. Granted, Beyonce was there, but still. Also Bernie drew big crowds.
I don’t think this is true. Kamala pretty regularly pulls bigger crowds than Trump, she got like 75k in DC a few days ago. His rallies aren’t anywhere near what they were in 2016.