this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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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.


top 50 comments
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 49 minutes ago

All those destroyed cars, look at them! So poetic, so beautiful. Thank you, Mother Nature. Good to see you're still capable of dishing out such poetic revenge on us sinners. This might make me a little more of a believer in higher forces that we

Only shame here is that we're not seeing destroyed burgerlandia trucks or even US military vehicles, now THAT would have been a 100% fitting revenge of this tortured planet that we live on.

And of course it's even more shameful that all those shit cars will be rebuilt by the dozen.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 hour ago

A few days ago, I commented on the fact that Daniel Chapo (Socdem, Democratic Socialist) was elected president of Mozambique. People keep going to his article on Wikipedia English and making references to Cumtown and Chapo Trap House. I think the current page still has some references to Chapo Trap House.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

https://eadaily.com/en/news/2024/10/31/american-drone-supplier-on-ukraine-faced-problems-due-to-chinese-sanctions

American drone supplier on Ukraine faced problems due to Chinese sanctions

"China's retaliatory sanctions against the United States led to the fact that the American manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles Skydio, which supplies drones to Ukraine, faced a shortage of essential components that it had previously received from China. This was reported by TASS with reference to the Financial Times (FT) newspaper."

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 hour ago

the US: *gives its the majority of its productive capacity to one country*

China: lol k

the US: *starts a trade war with that country*

China: lol k

the US: *can't produce anything*

China: sit-back-and-enjoy

the US: surprised-pika

[–] [email protected] 1 points 31 minutes ago (1 children)

Probably nothing to do with Ukraine? On some basic googling people say they tried for years to ban DJI(Chinese competitor) in the US? This may just be retaliation?

They're spending 500k a year on lobbying and the ban just passed recently, seems hard to argue this got anything to do with Ukraine imo.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 30 minutes ago

A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 hours ago

DPRK conducted ICBM test-fire on Thursday morning

Pyongyang, October 31 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Ministry of National Defence of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea said in a statement that an ICBM test-fire was conducted on Thursday morning.

The Missile Administration of the DPRK conducted a very crucial test on Thursday. The test-fire, conducted under the order given by the head of state of the DPRK, updated the recent records of the strategic missile capability of the DPRK and demonstrated the modernity and creditability of its world's most powerful strategic deterrent.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un said on the spot:

"The test-fire is an appropriate military action that fully meets the purpose of informing the rivals, who have intentionally escalated the regional situation and posed a threat to the security of our Republic recently, of our counteraction will, and it also constitutes an indispensable process in the course of constantly developing our state's strategic attack forces. As recently witnessed by us, the rivals' dangerous tightening of their nuclear alliance and various adventuristic military maneuvers go to further highlight the importance of strengthening our nuclear forces. We should never allow any threat to approach the security sphere under our state's influence. The security situation of our state and ever-aggravating prospective threats and challenges require us to continue to bolster up our modern strategic attack forces and more perfectly round off our nuclear forces' response posture. I affirm that the DPRK will never change its line of bolstering up its nuclear forces." -0-
www.kcna.kp (2024.10.31.)

http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/b3d35ab730b11b9daba5949a3c27e051.kcmsf
https://archive.is/Pk0Lc

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/north-korea-conducts-longest-icbm-test-amid-storm-over-troop-deployment-russia-2024-10-31/

[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 hours ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

garbage truck nerds: how much does that truck cost

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (2 children)

Almost all of the news coverage of this only has shots of Trump speaking from the cab. But there is one image I found indicating on the door this is a Freightliner M2. The M2 is a very broad vehicle platform for Freightliner with gross vehicle weights ranging from class 6 to class 8. Meaning it can have a combined weight of truck plus whatever body is mounted on it (box, crane, or in this case refuse) ranging from as low as about 25k lbs to in the M2's specs application as high as 65k lbs. A quick look at this particular truck I'd guess it is closer to class 6-7, mainly due to the refuse body mount seeming to be smaller than the "severe" applications that come in class 8. But the key info is the truck has to 1) be made at the Freightliner factory and sold to a refuse body manufacturer. 2) The refuse application is installed and either sold direct by that manufacturer or 3) the finished truck is sold to a dealer who tries to sell it to a customer.

This dealer selling what should be a very close match and manufactured in 2024 has it listed at $180k. Given the custom Trump paint and probably some other obnoxious custom features that may have added to the Trump truck, I'd estimate it goes for $200-225k+.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 27 minutes ago (1 children)

I almost cried when I saw the textwall in my notification then I realized this is about agarbage truck

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 hour ago

Fuck yeah dude, excellent comment

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

He looks awful. I don't think the vest is helping the whole orange thing

[–] [email protected] 72 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (7 children)

There's a lady on tiktok that comes up for me very often and she sets off my psyops alarm bells every time.

https://www.tiktok.com/@openbookshelf

She shows up for me often and has nominally soft socialist-adjacent criticisms of power, authority, current government, wealth, landlords, even anti-monarchism and anti-cop, etc etc etc. But when it comes to the biggest issues? The issues of anti-imperialism? She falls on the side of nato EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.

She's a pretty lady, whose brand is basically a caricature of Britishness, she pulls off the British librarian caricature that I can only describe as like Rachel Weisz in The Mummy. Is almost always seen with a mug of tea in her hand and if it wouldn't make it too obvious I think they'd throw the British Union Jack flag in every video but instead they keep that to only a few.

It's like she's tailor-made to suck people in to a kind of up your arse intellectualism that then redirects any potential anti-establishment or revolutionary energy into fucking uselessness.

The biggest giveaway here however is that she worked in China until recently, for the Chinese government she claims, for 3 years. Yet she calls the party by the shibboleth CCP and regularly performs anti-China propaganda unprompted, like it's a job. She does not promote other left accounts. She does not promote events. She exists solely as a sheepdog.

This strategy is what I think should be called "de-influencer", the goal is to stick people into the left that appear left and have a great media image that's attractive and easily something people can be sucked in by, and to use that to suck air out of the sails of real leftist influence in online platforms.

I'm telling you, this woman is a cop. GCHQ, Scotland Yard, MI, some branch of Civil Service, maybe military, I don't know. But she's one of them.

The fact that she stopped working in China at the exact moment in time China cracked down on western agents within their government makes me think she was pulled out because it got dangerous.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 hours ago

By aesthetics alone it looks like if a McKinsey dweeb decided to become an Instagram (image only) influencer. Like they took the basic formula of conventionally attractive and lots of pictures with text on them but then tried to make them look a bit like a corporate headshot combined with a powerpoint slide.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 hours ago

Followed her broefly until she made some shitty takes I don't remember, then dropped her. There's definitely something off there

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

Here's an article about her from 2016: https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/language-assistant-to-chinese-government-official

She got her degree in 2013, which would make her around ~33 years old. I thought maybe she said she's pursuing a PhD to obscure her age, but there's this article, so her pursing a PhD appears to be genuine.

She has a Twitter account: https://xcancel.com/AbbeyHeffer

Here's some tweets:

The relative absence of Gaza in her Twitter is also peculiar, but it more points to her either not being comfortable about discussing Gaza or general disinterest in Palestine. I feel like if she were an infiltrator, she would either try to pink-wash the Zionist entity to get people to be anti-Palestine or she'll be vaguely pro-Palestine so her cover wouldn't be blown. But the few tweets about Gaza are pro-Palestine, including one that tried to relate a West Bank shooting of a kid to what's going on in Gaza. And as a final note, she didn't condemn Hamas at all or even talked about Hamas.

Overall, she comes across as some clueless academic lib more than anything else. However, it's possible that even though she herself is genuine, her platform isn't natural. Feds probably saw that she's a conventionally attractive woman with the aesthetics of an academic saying a bunch of NATO-leftist shit and decided that they could platform her with fake accounts, which makes this tweet pretty funny.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 hours ago

If she's drying to deinfluence, pinkwashing Israel would spoil that. If she's deinflyencing, she's better off simply pulling people away from leftist influencers and ideally onto a different, parallel tok. She would need to seem reasonable enough to a baby leftist, but offer liberal positions on issues that people easily get confused on.

Being Zionist or even Zionist.adjacent will get you excommunicated from the left, to the extent that even a prospective or tentative leftist will reject you

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

Overall, she comes across as some clueless academic lib more than anything else. However, it's possible that even though she herself is genuine, her platform isn't natural. Feds probably saw that she's a conventionally attractive woman with the aesthetics of an academic saying a bunch of NATO-leftist shit and decided that they could platform her with fake accounts, which makes this tweet pretty funny.

She claims China is a "country I love" in that britishcouncil article you link though.

Yet all she does is advocate against China, posting the exact shit that nato liberals would post. It's unlike anything from genuine China lovers I've ever seen.

She claims to be a feminist, I think she's a terf because there's a huge absence of trans or lgbt issues anywhere in her feminism.

Another notable aspect of her presentation as "feminist" is that the China she's advocating for by opposing the CPC is foot-binding-and-Tibetan-slavery-China. Very feminist?

I'm more inclined to say this is branding. Feminism as a core pillar of her claim to being leftwing and "I worked for the CCP who are ebil totalitarians" appeal-to-authority to convince people she should be listened to on the topic over others. Whereas the reality is she's neither a feminist because she appears to me to be exclusionary of queer feminism which is sus af and the end of her work in China happens to coincide exactly with China cracking down on foreign agents.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 hours ago

Here's another thing I thought of. From one of the articles, she graduated from the University of Exeter and got her masters and is currently pursuing her doctorate in the University of Tübingen in Germany. So, unless she's doing remote learning, she's not actually in the UK but in Germany. That's very strange to spend around a decade in China only to move to Germany out of all places instead of returning home to the UK.

I don't know anything about the University of Exeter or the University of Tübingen. Surely she had a reason to pick those universities especially the one in Germany where she got her masters and is pursing her PhD. If those two universities are notorious for being where British and German intelligence graduate from, then it would be a strong argument that she herself is an agent as well.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

She claims China is a "country I love" in that britishcouncil article you link though.

Yet all she does is advocate against China, posting the exact shit that nato liberals would post. It's not unlike anything from genuine China lovers I've ever seen.

Yes, I've noticed that she doesn't really discuss Chinese culture, food, architecture, or treats at all, which is what the vast majority of genuine "love China" people do. You don't have to love the PRC or the CPC to appreciate some pagoda build during the Ming dynasty or some cool-looking drone delivering boxes to people.

Whereas the reality is she's neither a feminist because she appears to me to be exclusionary of queer feminism which is sus af and the end of her work in China happens to coincide exactly with China cracking down on foreign agents.

Hmm, the timing is pretty sus. There are a few tweets mentioning that she's a mom with a 4 year old kid. So, the timeline would be she had her kid in China before leaving China (she had her kid 4 years ago and the kid turned 1 before they left China 3 years ago), which is kinda weird if she had plans of moving back to the UK since she isn't exactly in a rush to have a kid because she would've been in her late 20s/early 30s. But if she didn't initially had plans to move back to the UK, then it makes more sense. She had her kid in China because she wanted to settle down in China for various personal and "professional" reasons but was forced out of China, so she had to change plans and take her 1 year old toddler back to the UK.

From her tweets, she lives with her partner. I don't think there's any real way to find out who her partner is, but I'm curious about their identity. Are they a Chinese national? Are they also British? And what is their occupation? I don't think she could financially support herself and her 4 year old kid with a not-particularly-big Tiktok on top of trying to get a PhD, so it's either their income is mostly handled by her partner or she's an agent lol

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 hours ago

Earliest media of her I can find

https://archive.is/1F5EJ

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 hours ago

I never trust someone in a big scarf. They’re subconsciously using the big scarf to “hide” their true selves.

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