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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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 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.
The whole “Ana Kasparian is turning right-wing for money” is an annoying narrative. Now I personally don’t care about tyt drama but it points to a larger issue that baby leftists don’t know how to deal with.
Seeing your comrades get older and a number of them turning right-wing over some stupid culture war shit happens all the time and they don’t need paychecks to make the turn.
I’ve seen a number of former guerrilla fighters from our civil war turn right wing because they hated how the current left has embraced homosexuals more. None of them are rich either or making the rounds with local right-wing personalities.
Claiming that anybody making the switch purely for financial reasons or “they were never a leftist to begin with” overlooks the bleak reality that anybody can get stuck in culture war nonsense at some point if they’re unable to adapt with the changing social climates.
I definitely think there are people who were grifting from the outset or change for the money, but my understanding that this shift with Kasparian happened after she got SA'ed by a homeless man and parts of the online left either didn't support her or she felt like they they didn't? I have never watched more than like 5 minutes of any TYT so I don't really follow it or Ana, but that's what I have heard. As far as reasons someone becomes right-wing/right-leaning, I suppose that's at least more understandable, even if I don't agree with her positions.
I think she also started calling for homeless people to be locked up or something, and after receiving pushback for that she started moving right.
Scratch a liberal...
I dont get how that ever translated to being transphobic though...
The money can be nice tho
Never seen a coherent observation with the term "baby leftist" in it. If you haven't figured out what The Young Turks were up to this whole time, you probably want nothing to do with the investigation into the history of alt-media outlets linked to ANSWER.
Maybe you should consider that propagandizing you is Kasparian's job, everything she does is for money. Everything about this analysis you dropped here obscures the financial and intellectual apparatus that produces journalism.
What does ANSWER have to do with TYT?
Throughout their alt media careers they frequently associate with all the same key figures of the alt media and activism NGO network associated with Democracy Now, The Intercept, ANSWER and PSL and CODEPINK and the like https://youtube.com/watch?v=pGtrnXI0ai4
It's just an example to demonstrate the scope
AFAIK TYT and ANSWER or PSL do not have meaningful overlap, the one degree of Kevin Bacon is Democracy Now (which kind of seems to connect a lot of nondominant political movements)
ANSWER and PSL have extremely meaningful overlap. Let's start you off with an easy one, do you know who John Kiriakou is? Did you know Gloria la Riva is literally in-laws with the family of financiers of ANSWER and its 500 sister organizations and fractures?
Amy Goodman built her career in a very shady fashion, nobody should have been surprised by the Uyghur genocide lies by the way. These people have so much overlap with each other on their programs you wouldn't think anyone else in the world exists.
They're not political movements, they're NGOs, whistleblowers, and dissident journalists. You have immediately discarded the point I made about what Kasparian is doing. These aren't just passionate people trying to raise consciousness by providing entertainment for you. They are a guidestone that directs you into their brand of organizing. My point is, without getting into the actual investigation only to be met with "mmm not meaningful, I have Steam games/manga to catch up on", there is clearly an alt media industry of non-Marxists whose job it is to manage dissent. They just frame their management of dissent as positive. It isn't, it's all following Noam Chomsky and Gene Sharp's philosophy of nonviolence and antiauthoritarianism.
Ah yes, I didn't mean to say that there isn't an obvious link between ANSWER and PSL, but that neither of these groups have (afaik) demonstrated meaningful and intense overlap with projects like TYT or Democracy Now, for example in the same way ANSWER or BreakThrough News or PSL have. From my awareness and personal experience, ANSWER and PSL are deeply ML in ways that Democracy Now and TYT clearly are not. These are two separate bubbles is my meaning and I don't see a link between them for the reasons you stated, which for example is because Democracy Now and TYT are not Marxist.
There are definitely ideological lines within the larger professional bubble with its financial bubbles like the Becker and LaRouche people, and I don't think I have the full picture. I put off working on it for a few years expecting other people to do it but instead they all stopped posting.
TYT and Democracy Now are definitely on the morw Kevin Bacon than Key People degrees of separation side. But that was my point, I was trying to delineate this from the "we just need to find the bad financial actor" thing pursued by many paranoiacs, by mentioning different alt media sources which collaborated, then later split, but are part of the same industry, as there are multiple financial forces working in the new media. There is also of course the genuine grassroots online people faction (which I would categorize this thread in) which imitates the behavior of these groups (the people my messaging is going to be aimed at in forthcoming screeds)
The alt media industry members that launder fake whistleblowers into countercultural heroes and redirect political dissent away from the imperialist powers-that-be, no matter which faction, those are my targets. But that has to come with a full teardown of the industry that is successfully conditioning the behavior of its counterparts in China, Russia, and Iran. So they can understand what is and what is not worth imitating to try to reason with people (lol)
They were absolute doofuses for thinking she was ever leftist in the first place, TBH. There was no grift. She (and TYT in general) were always open about it. People are just so ignorant of political philosophy that they can't read the writing on the wall.