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.
Not content with murdering millions upon millions, not content with creating death factories, not content with sending children, women and the elderly to gas chambers, not content with beheading people, not content with throwing people into pits while they were still alive, not content with throwing millions of people into a war as they launched their worldwide campaign for blood and murder, Germany doubles down and stands firm and proud next to their most precious student, “Israel”, as they continue to genocide arabs in their quest for blood and conquest.
History will not be kind to them.
My hate for liberals burns like a sun:
Are these real subscribers and not some elaborate laundering scheme thats getting wound down or scaled back? If I met a wapo subscriber irl I might die laughing
I mean i believe 2.5 million happy hogs pay bezos for their merica good, israel good, china bad, russia very bad, iran very bad coverage
(although they did do that series on sanctions, so thats something)
Another important thing to consider is that with the total bloodbath of local newspapers (driven in part by their reliance on ad revenue, and substantially by the social media monopolies sucking up most of that revenue stream), and consolidation of the remaining scraps, national publications like the NYT and WaPo have effectively filled the void. Very few people have any desire to subscribe to multiple newspapers, so outfits like these are well positioned to become the default. They are efffectively the Netflix of print news.
I would likely subscribe to WaPo before subscribing to the biggest regional paper in my area (where many of the articles are just syndicated from USA Today or Associated Press anyway). Good, class conscious, local reporting which isn’t enmeshed in the local political machinery is an exceedingly rare thing in this country.
I mean if one were subscribe as a communist to big newspapers, there is only demonic, but honest, ft
bezos post still bleeds money, new york crimes is floating by game-ification for bored nerds
Maybe there’s institutional subscriptions that count as X number of users. I’ve seen that arrangement in some niche business publications.
8 percent of WaPo subscribers have cancelled their subscription because Jeff Bezos refused to endorse Hitler 2, not because he has a conscience, but because he doesn’t think she’ll win.
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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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Burger national election news is scary and depressing. Got anything fun happening in your local or state elections?
Portland Oregon is choosing a new mayor and oh boy. Our choices this round include the lady with 150 unpaid parking tickets, who really probably shouldn’t be driving at this point, or we have the guy who falsely accused someone of assaulting him on the train, (there are cameras) who also used public funds to spiff up his wikipedia page and of course hates the homeless.
Or we got Keith, the guy who doesn’t seem to hate homeless people, provided they stay at an overnight shelter (he’s on the record as being against the 24-hour shelters with onsite case management). Or Liv, maybe better known as the stripper Viva Las Vegas, who seems to be running on a platform of…make Portland good and artsy again? Somehow? (The solution is lower rents).
There is also Mingus. Idk what Mingus has been up to. He’s already in the city government, probably coasting on being mediocre and not attracting controversy idk. I think he might be our water guy? Idk the city government is split really weird here. Anyways, not spicy enough to win, or get any real juicy news articles. Has a cool name though. Mingus Ulysses Mapps. Yeah that shit is tight.
You guys got anything fun going on?
Wow, watch StateSpox laugh and make jokes when Matt Lee asks about a UN vote condemning the US embargo on Cuba
Lee: You aware of the vote tomorrow
Miller: I wasn’t tracking this on my bingo card
Lee: How is the US going to vote
Miller: I doubt we’ll be voting to condemn ourselves (laughs)
Lee: Last year of Obama’s presidency you guys abstained, as you probably know it’s basically the entire world votes to condemn it and you and Israel vote against, so do you have anything to say about this yearly display of international isolation
Miller: I don’t (smirks)
MUST NOT FEDPOST…
MUST NOT FEDPOST…
MUST NOT FEDPOST…
https://nitter.poast.org/AssalRad/status/1850980965503680900
Lula doesn’t endorse an arms embargo on israel
My man has been posting Ls ever since his head hit that sink.
Mossad with the “fall over clipping toe-nails” gun
I’d be dead 500 times already if such a weapon existed, I really struggle with tasks like that due to my spinal issues
the pattern of punished succ dems becoming ultralibs is setting in though. Please say safe and don’t fall to revisionism or to slippery bathroom flooring.
I wonder what’s going on. The PT’s radicalism in foreign policy usually compensates for moderate domestic policy, but I iirc lula’s government has been even less than moderate on that front, and now they’re even moderating foreign policy wise. Might just be that there are local elections in brazil rn and he doesn’t want to rock the boat
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
This is quite literally a Tom and Jerry bit.
So fucking perfect
Poetry
mandate of heaven lost
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
Not gonna lie I hoped folks might shelve this genre of posting on here now that Kamala has openly pivoted to Total Shorkicide. Will nothing restrain you people?
This is the first time I have learned that something called “Shorkicide” exists, I’d ask what it means but I think my brain is already pouring out of my ears so I’m a bit afraid to
Let us pray I just invented it and no one overhears us.
i googled it and it was used once two months ago on reddit on r/femboymemes
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.
Death is to good to zionazis, they need to suffer.
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].
Sink the carrier!! Sink the carrier!!
Biggest proof that the only thing stopping the third world from building stuff is intellectual property
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 Calamities on USN Carrier Task Forces
Unlimited Torbeado on the us Navy!
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
Population 534
Oh ohio
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”
