Image is of the Te Pati Maori (Maori Party) cofounders, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. They have 6 of the 123 seats in the New Zealand parliament.
Officially confirming that the Republican primaries were a gigantic waste of time for everybody involved, Trump has massively beat everybody else in Iowa, and will very obviously be the Republican candidate for 2024. Given the abysmal state of the US economy (for everybody who isn't in the top 1-10%, which is mainly what national statistics reflect when they aren't telling blatant falsehoods), it's more plausible than ever that Trump may indeed once again become President - though I personally refuse to predict one way or another due to how volatile politics and geopolitics currently are. Project 2025 is coming, folks - either as the official Republican governance program, or as what the Democrats will do in 2026 after the midterms, stating that they have no other choice and have to reach across the aisle as they are the Adults In The Room™.
In other news...
Late last year, New Zealand voted in a new and very right-wing government, composed of the center-right National Party, the libertarian ACT Party (ACT stands for the "Association of Consumers and Taxpayers", good lord), and the fascist New Zealand First party. By what I can tell, this was the well-trodden path of "Vaguely center-left party does neoliberal austerity and causes a recession and workers fucking hated it and voted in a different party out of desperation," though the flooding and cyclones did add challenges to Chris Hipkins' short reign after Jacinda Ardern resigned.
It's worth noting that Hipkins was at least fairly China-friendly, meeting up with Xi Jinping on a five-day visit in the summer. They still do the whole "We have concerns about human rights" thing, but of all the countries of the imperial core, New Zealand is - or, perhaps, was - one of the most amicable. In 2021, China was New Zealand's single largest trading partner, with a third of exports going to China (more than Australia, the US, Japan, and South Korea combined), and they receive 22% of their imports from China too, more than any other single country.
Christopher Luxon, the new Prime Minister and sentient thumb, has said that he is exploring a closer relationship with AUKUS:
Luxon said New Zealand was interested in becoming involved in AUKUS Pillar 2: a commitment between the three partners to develop and share advanced military capabilities, including artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and hypersonics.
“We’ll work our way through that over the course of next year as we understand it more and think about what the opportunities may be for us,” Luxon said. “AUKUS is a very important element in ensuring we’ve got stability and peace in the region.”
This is not to say that Hipkins wanted nothing to do with AUKUS or Western organizations aimed generally against China - in fact, pre election, "he was open to conversations about joining Pillar II of AUKUS". But the current government is pushing down on the accelerator pedal.
The left-wing Maori party, Te Pati Maori, has stated that they want New Zealand to remain non-aligned, as joining AUKUS would erode the sovereignty of the country:
As Maori we cannot allow our sovereignty to be determined by others, whether they are in Canberra or Washington. Aotearoa should not act as Pacific spy base in the wars of imperial powers. Joining AUKUS will severely undermine our country’s sovereignty, constitution, and ability to remain nuclear free. There is too much at stake for our government to make a commitment of this magnitude without a democratic process.
In general, the party leaders of Te Pati Maori want New Zealand to be the "Switzerland of the Pacific", which is perhaps not the greatest analogy given all the problems Switzerland had and has, but we understand the intended meaning of desiring neutrality.
The Country of the Week is New Zealand! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Last week's thread is here.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
Blockade is working
If I was a shipping company I would simply ditch all zionist connections and continue to sail safely through the Red Sea.
Zionism is bad for business.
the real BDS was ~~the friends we made along the way~~ Ansar Allah
They took the sanctions part very literally
Bomb, Divert, Siege
You can see the
there too in Mar 2021. Looks like the volume has actually been reduced close to those levels which is crazy
Ansarallah has the opportunity to do something extremely funny...
But there was a big dip in March of 2020 too?
canal got covid
Oh. LOL. Good point. Thanks. I fail at timeline.
If the rubric of blocking western aligned ships but allowing Chinese aligned ships continues, the over time I expect the impact of this blockade to be reduced because more shipping contracts will migrate to Chinese shipping companies, regardless of where goods are coming and going to and from. Chinese shipping interests are benefiting significantly from the blockade in dollars and cents terms because these are contracts that leave western owned shipping companies. As we saw with the attempts to sanction and squelch Russian oil transportation, shipping interests find a way to evade a lot of restrictions. Oil is not the same commodity as the goods being transported between continents, but the act of transporting containers can be thought of as a commodity service. I wouldn't be surprised if more western trade is facilitated by Chinese shipping lines the longer this blockade persists. Along similar lines, ansarallah/the axis of resistance/the CPC will have to think about how to address this.
As long as Chinese companies don’t do business with Israel then it’s working as intended. Western companies punished, Israel isolated, western “enemies” given a boon
Yeah but it would be very easy to just do business with a company in turkey or something - transit the Suez canal, sell to a third party in turkey, Turkish third party sells to Israel. The experience of sanctioning Russia has shown how much grey area there is in shipping and how difficult it is to actually cut places off. Even the CPC hasn't been that outspoken about Israel's genocide - I suspect the leadership of COSCO or other Chinese shippers to be even less hardline about this action.
You can't sanction and isolate Russia because it's one of the largest and most resource rich nations on Earth, filled with hundreds of millions of people, with borders touching 14 nations, 3 oceans, and 13 seas. It has deep economic ties with neighboring China and India who are likewise massive resource and manufacturing rich nations willing to trade with them openly.
Israel in comparison is absolutely minuscule, bordering only 4 nations - 2 of which are overtly hostile nations basically at war with them (Syria and Lebanon). They border 0 oceans and 2 seas, but their one red sea port is basically shut down by Ansarallah already. It is much more likely we could sanction Israel into submission if we had the will, as they are a tiny desert nation dependent on imports to survive.
Yeah except ansarallah's activities aren't sanctions and function differently. No one in the west is ceasing trade with Israel, and ansarallah has no way to impact the transit of goods from Europe to Israel in the Mediterranean. If Chinese ships get a pass through the Red Sea, then there is a material incentive for Chinese companies to sell to Israel friendly countries in Europe so that goods can be sent on to Israel. If this happens to a significant degree, this will be a challenging problem for ansarallah/china to address. I understand that we all like China here but let's not pretend that just because a company is Chinese that it aligns with the geopolitical positions we'd like China to have.
Ansarallah is enacting unilateral sanctions, that is in fact what they are doing.
I think even if it would be "easy" the negotiations, cost increases from having a middle man, and the time of unloading and reloading it is probably just easier to go around the long way.
Could be. The indicator to watch is the number of China affiliated ships passing through the canal and China-turkey trade volume. If that spikes the same way that russia-Kazakhstan and Kazakhstan-everywhere else trade did in 2022, that's what is happening.
Whered you get this?
Wooooo! I love a graph that tells a story and this one tells a lovely story.