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.
If this is serious, please reconsider this misanthropic and malthusianist train of thinking,it's very gross to cheer on the deaths of people and the destruction of a community
I am always irritated by people that consider themself in a position where they whish harm on other workers for some freaky notion of "General justice"
a notion that they can only ever arrivre at , when one has no class Councious and therefore consider "Humanity collective" at fault and in need of "Poetic punishment"
Also this "us Sinners" who are you to point your dirty german finger on the people of Valencia ? No! they are not Sinners. The Profit of Capitalism is not a "Collectiv Profit" but a Profit for a "Ownership class" it is not "Collectiviesed" and therfore the "Guilt" of this Profit is also not Collectives as well .
If you try to collective the Guilt, then you are activly engaged in an act of Classwar against the Workers.
It's very gross and quite frankly veers into malthusianist thinking
I don't like the West,but to cheer on deaths like this is quite frankly appalling
This isn't some Israeli settlement getting blown up by Hezbollah, this is a community being destroyed by climate change.
Are there any german leftists at all that are not extremely weird
Is this a bit or do you actually think that all these people buying new cars is going to help the environment?
The images look insane. Also apparently Valencia is one of the cities in Europe that has better flood preparedness. However it seems that in 8 hours it rained the equivalent of 1 and a half years of rain, which is bonkers
I'm such a lucky guy that if this happened to me I'm sure that my car would've basically survived this and I'd just need to go get it.
Manifesting
Isn't Spain one of the countries that still wants chinese vehicles? Unfortunately German automotives might benefit from this.
RIP valencia, this should have happened to london
Death to America
Does my car insurance by chance cover "made into automobile soup"?
it is standart in "half coverage " ...(Standing and Flowing waters) So all these 2000-2014 build second hand cars that killed 158 people are perfectly insured propably .. as they are totalled they will get the current market price of their car payed out.
I was kind of joking about the "automobile soup" part more than anything. But yeah: those who aren't poor enough to stick to whatever absolute minimum-coverage liability crap they can get away with will, I'm sure, get some recompense. And who knows, maybe FEMA will help out the others in 3-5 years if it is still around and they can manage to jump through the bureaucratic hoops.