this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024

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Bulletins and News Discussion from October 28th to November 3rd, 2024 - LDP Falls Flat / Yet Neoliberalism / Rampages Onward - COTW: Japan (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Interesting analysis of Iran's political (and soon to be military) response to the Zionist attack (CW: Looking through his Twitter, apparently he's some cringe patsoc. But the tweets are interesting enough.):
https://xcancel.com/FORTRESSMAXXING/status/1851226851529588739

But then, Khamenei, being the intelligent strategist that he is, made a speech in front of family members of martyrs & using only 60 words on the topic of Israel & the attack, said that Iran must retaliate, but he leaves the nature of the retaliation up to state/military official

Even the editors of Ayatollah Khamenei's official website presented the speech in such a way as to make it seem like he was saying don't retaliate. But if you listen to the speech, it's very clear that he is giving orders for a retaliation.

The foreign-backed Opposition and channels like BBC Persian and Iran International are now shocked as well, saying that this must be a sign that Ayatollah Khamenei is suffering from “ill health” and has “lost his mind.”

Immediately after the speech, New York Times published an article saying Khamenei is “about to die”, giving his enemies (both implicit & explicit) in Iran an excuse to kill him and get away with it. Aka Westophiles implement a similar action as to what likely happened to Raisi.

Opposition channels are even analysing his speech saying “you can hear impending death in Khamenei's voice”. They're essentially calling for his assassination now.

This is also why Israel called for a second series of strikes, in retribution for the attempt on Netanyahu's life. They basically want to kill Khamenei. And these strikes that they want to conduct would be pre-emptive strikes for the strikes that Khamenei has ordered.

Once again, it has become clear as day that the only man truly defending Iran's sovereignty and the achievements of the Islamic Revolution in the post-Khomeini era is Ayatollah Khamenei. His enemies have finally had enough and now it seems like they're going to try to kill him.

By the way, important but unreported news: the “Society of Teachers and Scholars of the Qom Seminary”, an organisation close to the Reformist movement, published a statement the other day saying that the only way to achieve peace in Palestine is to implement a two-state solution.

They also state that Iran must recognize the State of Israel. This is the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic that this has happened with an official organization. Previously only a few house arrested politicians (like former reformist president Khatami) said this.