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.
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On 25 October, the Al-Quds Foundation in was live on Salaamedia, issuing an “emergency appeal”, which included both praise and criticism of South Africa’s response to the geenocide by “israel”, as well as harsh condemnation of Middle Eastern nations, especially Egypt. It was also heavily advised to put more pressure on the South African government to begin taking more meaningful action against Isnotreal, such as a total ban on trade with the Apartheid state. The programme also urged much more direct action including storming “israeli” embassies/consulates and complicit arms industries (much like Palestine Action) in not only South Africa, but all over the world. Even martyrdom was suggested onboard flotillas delivering food and medical aid, in an attempt to tell the ISISraeli blockade to eat shit and push forward anyway. That’s really about as radical as they probably could take it without consequence, even on South African airwaves. Still,
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Several more universities in South Africa have severed ties with their Pissraeli counterparts - University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape, Nelson Mandela University, University of South Africa, University of Fort Hare and University of Venda. AFAIK, all 4 campuses of University of Johannesburg have maintained their boycott since 2011.
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Wits University had rejected demands for boycott.
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Several media outlets have named and identified a South African named Aaron Bayhack who joined the IDF’s elite sniper team in Gaza. One more who is due to be sent to the
if he ever steps foot back into South Africa. Of course, there’s also outrage of the pro-Apartheid “community” of a “brave, patriotic, innocent young boy” being doxxed by major outlets such as IOL and News24. Let alone the fact that a South African IDF serviceman stepping foot back into a country hostile to “israel” presents a very immediate threat to public safety. -
South Africa also submitted it’s memorial to the ICJ on the morning of 28 October. “israel” was given 9 months (until the 28th of July) to submit a “counter-argument”. It’s not a mystery as to what this so-called counter-argument contains.
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The move to change Sandton Drive to Leila Khaled Drive is again delayed. So much for the socialist fraternal kiss under the Leila Khaled street sign with the US Consulate getting Falastin-2’d in the background 2 weeks ago.
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SAJFP also picked apart that one Haaretz article “Scary Time To Be a Zionist” and called out many a salty settler.
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A journalist by the name of Hamza Chalan has escaped Jabalia and fled to South Africa with his footage also 2 weeks ago.
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Google Earth still shows Mariupol in ruins and the
still claims the city is a bombed-out ghost town, even as the population is back to over 400,000 and most services and infrastructure has been restored.
Death to AmeriKKKa; Death to “israel”
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So fucking perfect
mandate of heaven lostThis is quite literally a Tom and Jerry bit.
My hate for liberals burns like a sun:
NSFL From a Journalist in Gaza NSFL
It’s only text report but NSFL some of the most depraved evil Zionazi shit you’ll ever read. CW Death, mass murder of children…
NSFL
A mother from #Jabalia says:
“They took all the children from their mothers and put them inside what resembled a pit or a hole. The tank came to circle around them repeatedly until their bones cracked under the pressure of dust and sand, amidst the screams of children and the wailing of mothers.
“After that, the soldiers came and started throwing the children towards the mothers, and whoever caught a child was ordered to carry him and move away quickly, with no guarantee that the child would be their own. “Many mothers carried children who were not their own, and were forced to leave with them, leaving their own children in the hands of other mothers.
This marked the beginning of a new chapter of suffering, with mothers searching for their children in the arms of other women, trying to calm the children they held until they found their real mothers.“
This and the event when they started playing the sounds of babies crying from drones to lure Palestinians out of a camp to kill them are stories that are simply incredibly evil. This is beyond depraved. There can’t ever be justice at this point.
Kamala fucking sucks but at this point I kind of want to see her win for the sole reason that it would make Elon sad
Called it.
Yemeni Forces Unveil Advanced Home-Grown Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Al Ahed News
Named al-Qari’a [Calamity], the domestically engineered AUV was showcased during a naval exercise in the Red Sea on Sunday.
This new suicide AUV is poised to bolster Yemen’s military strength against maritime security threats, supporting the country’s efforts to safeguard its territorial waters and enabling Yemeni naval units to conduct more precise operations.
In recent months, Yemeni forces seized a US Navy REMUS 600 AUV off Yemen’s coast, which has reportedly been under study by Yemeni military experts and engineers. The midsized REMUS 600 AUV can reach speeds up to 5 knots [9.3 km/h] and operate for up to 70 hours at a cruising speed of 3 knots [5.6 km/h].
Biggest proof that the only thing stopping the third world from building stuff is intellectual property
Sink the carrier!! Sink the carrier!!
hehe… wasn’t that US war game where the USA simulated invading Iran (can’t remember how long ago and in the middle to eating to do research) had the Iranian forces use suicide boats to try to knock out as many ships as possible during the beginning of the exercise?
Millennium Challenge, the perfect dessert after a good meal
Unlimited Torbeado on the us Navy!
Unlimited Calamities on USN Carrier Task Forces
A postal voting station was set on fire in Clark County, Washington overnight. Hundreds of votes in the USA were lost as ballots had not been collected since Saturday.
With no record of who did or didn’t vote, Vancouver-Washington authorities have asked everyone who cast a ballot as of 11 a.m. on Saturday to show up at their offices to find out the status of their vote. In Portland, Ohio, two of these ballot boxes also suffered attempted arson.
I know there was an attempted ballot box arson in SE Portland, but I haven’t heard anything about a second arson.
Also lmao neither of these states are remotely close to being swing states, though Clark County is a swing county where Republicans win office pretty regularly. There are also cameras pointed at the Portland box, at least. Not a very well thought out plan.
There’s a Portland, OH LMAO.
Wonder how big their port is
Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua and Cuba condemn the attempt on Evo Morales’ life. The Bolivian government also condemns the attempt on Evo Morales’ life.
European Hedgehog In Decline: Now “Near Threatened”
The European hedgehog is officially classified as “Near Threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), signaling a serious risk of extinction without immediate conservation efforts. Research shows a decline of over 30% in hedgehog populations across multiple European countries over the past decade.
Read more...
Sophie Lund Rasmussen, a prominent hedgehog researcher and author of the assessment report, highlights that the hedgehog’s status reflects an urgent need for action. “In my view, it’s extremely sad and deeply concerning that even such a beloved and popular animal as the hedgehog is disappearing from nature. This is a species that people truly want to protect, which tells us something about the general state of nature,” she stated.
The decline is attributed to various human-induced threats, including traffic fatalities — accounting for up to a third of hedgehog deaths annually — intensified agriculture, urban development, and the dangers posed by robotic lawnmowers. Furthermore, 90% of examined Danish hedgehogs contained pesticide residues.
Rasmussen emphasizes the importance of making gardens more hedgehog-friendly to improve their survival chances.
The “Near Threatened” classification is seen as a conservative estimate due to incomplete data from some countries, with existing data suggesting that the actual situation may be even more dire.
- Source: Aalborg University press release, October 28th 2024
Sophie Lund Rasmussen, a prominent hedgehog researcher
This job should be the best job ever but no… we gotta fuck up the environment and make this person’s job depressing.
What hedgehog research ought to be like:
Look at this cute little fella!
What hedgehog research is actually like:
… he’s going extinct and getting chopped up by robot lawnmowers
Shouldn’t it be European The Hedgehog?
Someone managed to get a video of what could be Israel’s RA-01 stealth ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) stealth UAV, mentioned for the first time in the legitimate leaked US spy documents, off of the coast of Lebanon. Remember as of weeks ago, no one even knew that this UAV existed.
Here’s a comparison with the HA-10 concept that many posted about earlier.
The thin high aspect detachable wings appear to have been kept, but not as extreme. It’s also not a characteristic shared by many stealth drones, and rules out flying wing designs like the RQ170 and RQ180. Other potential candidates are the Rafael Aeronautics Orbiter 5, which looks similar.
Algeria cuba news: Army General Saïd Chanegriha and Cuban Vice Minister Joaquin Quintas chilling in a room and drinking water from a wine glass(?), nothing important just the usual “they agreed on coordination and appreciate the history and agreeing on Palestine and Western Sahara”
The results of the 2024 Brazilian municipal elections (Huge Text):
It was a victory mainly for the center-right (neoliberal, opportunistic, some pro-Lula, others anti-Lula). And the center-left parties also did well. The Workers’ Party (Lula’s party) increased its number of mayors. The Liberal Party (Bolsonaro’s party) received a lot of money to try to elect 1,000 mayors, but ended up electing only 500.
Bolsonaro’s biggest defeats were in the Northeast (Where most of the socdems won), Minas Gerais (Pro-Lula Liberal won) and Rio de Janeiro (Bolsonaro’s stronghold, and he lost really hard to the current mayor who is a Pro-Lula Liberal, who is really popular). Lula’s party also won some cities in the Southern region of Brazil (usually a pro-Bolsonaro stronghold, but they have a huge leftist presence due to the rural workers and the popularity of Trabalhismo ideology, which is basically Brazilian Peronism).
Bolsonaro’s biggest victory was in Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo. But Bolsonaro is a coward and is known for betraying his own candidates. There is a good chance that he will get jealous of this candidate and start attacking him, as he usually does. The two biggest losers of this election were the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) (former party in power during the 1990s, neoliberal, socially conservative, was destroyed after the 2016 coup) and the former presidential candidate, Ciro Gomes (member of the Trabalhista Party, supposedly a socdem, decided not only to give his support, but to openly support Bolsonaro’s candidate, the one who shaved his own asshole on youtube and mocked the women who died at the hands of men, against the “evil and opportunistic” candidate of the Workers’ Party).
Even with very strong support against him, the Workers’ Party candidate managed to win by less than 1%, which guaranteed the Workers’ Party control of the state and the capital. Now the Trabalhista Party wants to expel Gomes, and he said that he wants to ally himself with Bolsonaro’s candidate for president and the governor of São Paulo. These elections weren’t great for Lula, but they weren’t completely bad. From what I’ve read on Twitter and Bluesky, it seems that left-wing parties in Brazil generally don’t care much about the municipal elections and prefer to focus on the general elections for the Legislative and Executive branches.
The Israeli terrorist regime has banned the UN agency UNRWA from operating inside “Israel”. This includes the west bank territories.
Death to Israel, death to America
Allegedly this could lead to Israel getting booted out of the UN. Whether or not that actually happens…
It’s like thinking the principal’s kid will get detention
Let me guess, security council members can veto this and keep Israel in? Yawn
What a fucking useless organization
Oh it’s very useful, just not for us.
banned the UN agency UNRWA
very normal thing to do in the rules-based international order
i feel like iran is cheating or something , like in a PC game you would not even get a choice to show this much restrainted , if somebody bombs your soil or embassy or honored guest for presidential inaguration…
It would just be a Pop up window with “So theres war now” …
Anyway … Israel will now apperently strike Iran again because of the 2 Palmtrees that got damaged on nethanyaus Residence or something
Edit: wtf is that even suppose to mean …
The discipline and focus of the Iranian people will result in victory over the Zionist entity.
