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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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.
Is Bukele really that popular, or are there some shenanigans going on here? Hard to look at the results and not think that the West would be calling this a sham election if it was a leader they didn't like. I frankly don't know enough about him or the situation in El Salvador.
He's incredibly popular and he's been influential across the region. More Central American countries are looking at what he's done to lower crime and are now either contemplating or replicating what he's done. Ironically doing what they claimed to hate Nicaragua for allegedly doing. His party has five times more seats in Congress than the second largest party.
At least Ortega got his party democratically elected to carry out his reforms. Bukele practically used the police and army as his personal henchmen to intimidate the legislative and judiciary into approving his reforms.
Also, Bukele's idea of putting a bunch of people in a mega-prison can't last forever. It will be like Ecuador, but much worse, if there is a big enough riot there.
supposedly, it's a short-term measure that is going to be followed by social policies
to be fair, it would be impossible to effectively apply any kind of social policy in their previous situation. if it was a left-wing government, i would support the crackdown, lumpens can be dangerous as fuck. the problem with it coming from the right is that i don't trust them to do the necessary social policies, and it's gonna end up the same it was, just with different people
also, what worries me is other latin american leaders wanting to do the same. el salvador's situation was uniquely bad, few places in the continent have anything remotely similar. for instance, it would be ridiculous to defend that kind of crackdown in brazil
I may be wrong, but Ecuador, under the leftist Rafael Correa, did the same thing. He jailed practically all the country's top criminals, but after that he immediately started supporting social policies and gave the prisons a better budget to deal with it and rehabilitated some of the criminals.
During Correa's government, Ecuador was the safest country in South America. Then came the comprador Lenin Moreno, who destroyed these policies and cut police salaries and the prison budget.
To actually implement social policies will draw the ire of the capitalist class and if they control the media that means his popularity will come down, and they’ll use all sorts of scheming and trickery to replace him with somebody who will keep doing austerity. Seems to me they aren’t even worried about him implementing social programs though, hence glowing and fawning media. Doubt those social programs are ever going to come, or they’ll be totally half assed.
Another commenter mentioned Correa, just look what they did to him. He was the best president Ecuador ever had and he was constantly smeared as corrupt and a thief by the media, then when he was term limited out and his VP won the election the VP did a 180 and implemented IMF austerity measures and used lawfare to keep Correa out of the country. He faced the media being against him from the beginning since it was clear he actually had a social democratic agenda.
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador tend to trade places over who has the highest murder rate in North America. These are also the countries that want to implement Bukele's policies the most. Honduras has already started its crackdowns and two of the biggest candidates in the Guatemalan election were promising to implement their own mega prisons. Our dark horse President-elect claims that he doesn't agree with the "social repression" in Nicaragua. Let's hope that it means he feels the same about El Salvador.
Costa Rica has also expressed interest but their issues have never been as bad as ours and the will to make it happen isn't with their congress. At best they'll get a watered down version of it if at all.
Every accusation a projection, no such thing as hypocrisy. The wounds of colonialism will take centuries and lifetimes to repair, even under a hypothetical socialism