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.
I don't see a war declaration without a catalyst and the strongest possibility imo is they're concerned that the US election will lead to some provocation in Taiwan. Maybe they're preparing for the worst case scenario.
We know the Dems will push the war president button and if war in the ME is unpopular then there is always war with China and DPRK. In fact we know this since the Ukraine war became unpopular among some of the neolibs as far as back in '22. Many see Ukraine as a waste of time and the real enemy is China.
So DPRK wants to position themselves as a real threat, the US can't escalate in Taiwan and risk having a Korean war at the same time. This is the only thing that makes sense in the short term.
All the things they've been putting out through their official news outlet say that the provocations from the western bloc have escalated and continue to escalate. That the "training" operations the US and partners do with South Korea are about their plans for a war in the near future. Dprk seem legitimately concerned that the US intends to start a war with them.
I also think that the most likely candidate for a proxy war with China in the eastern theatre is Korea. Not Taiwan. Taiwan can not be supplied and China has every geographical advantage. That's not the case with Korea.
Glad im not alone in thinking all this
If they want to fuck with China... Korea is just the logical choice to do it through.
It will use the same playbook at Ukraine.
It will have support from western populations because they've all been convinced dprk is evil forever.
This has historical precedent in the Imjin War and the First Sino-Japanese War. An invasion of China is always proceeded by an invasion of Korea. There may very well be a DPRK vs ROK/Japan conflict with China and the US playing a backseat role.
And as for Taiwan, Carl Zha had an interesting interview with that patsoc Taiwanese rapper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2_L3cYxYQ4. The rapper believes that not only will the PRC not invade Taiwan at all (because Taiwan is so economically reliant on the PRC that the PRC can coerce Taiwan exclusively through economic means), but that Taiwan separatism itself is dead. I need to type up a short summary of the interview because although the interview is good, I think many people will have misgivings about having to listen to some patsoc who malded hard over Canadian nudists.
To wrap this up with Korea, I think the DPRK has made the calculation that reunification is not possible through peaceful means and is taking all appropriate action towards reunification through other means. As Carl Zha and the rapper explained, peaceful reunification is possible for China because the PRC's economy completely dwarfs Taiwan and the PRC can employ both economic carrots and sticks to pull Taiwan closer to the Mainland until a de facto 1c2s relationship emerges. The DPRK does not have the economic carrots and sticks to reunify Korea, so while the carrot is the common cultural identity of Korean, the stick, well, we all know what the stick is.
Sounds interesting, I'd give it a fair look. I'm not convinced it's dead though and think anyone pronouncing it dead is overconfident, Brexit never should have happened and then POW everything was fucked. Not ruling anything out until they're completely out of power.
His basic argument is not that the DPP has their hands tied up politically, but that the DPP itself is also de facto status quo. He predicts the soon-to-be president will make a lot of pro-independence noise at the beginning of his term only to cash out his pro-independence cred on an economic deal with the PRC since Taiwan's economy is completely stagnant.
Personally, it feels like one of those "famous last words" type of deal. His argument is convincing, especially since he's serving his conscription duties in Taiwan and has his finger on the pulse of Taiwanese conscripts who 100% don't want to fight and know they'll get owned by the PLA, but you never know.