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.

    • TechnoAnomie [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      6·
      6 days ago

      Double entry book keeping that sums to zero. You can find a better description, but it’s something like this:

      Government spends first, telling treasury to increase numbers in appropriate accounts. The treasury “withdraws” money from the Fed, which is also the state, creating a deposit from the left pocket to the right, and from the right pocked to the left. When taxes are payed, the treasury can “return” the money, wiping the spending from circulation. If the Fed sells debt, it can only be payed with money on the same currency that was already spent into existence. Loaning also creates money in the form of extra debt, but that debt can only be payed if it is spent into existence.

      • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        When taxes are payed, the treasury can “return” the money, wiping the spending from circulation

        That means that the money is not destroyed. Equating destruction of money with taking money from circulation and putting it into what is effectively a government’s savings is incredibly silly and non-informative.

        • TechnoAnomie [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          The only savings are the paper, if it’s physical money. The consolidated government reduces and increases the total value of reserves when needed either way.

          • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            1·
            5 days ago

            Notably, physical money is still in use.

            I maintain that the ‘money is destroyed’ analogy is silly and uninformative. It is much better to just say specifically what you mean - that money is taken out of circulation.

            • TechnoAnomie [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              1·
              3 days ago

              Perhaps. I think the issue is that how money works is counter-intuitive, especially after being used to common nonsense,that simplifications are useful… in a particular context, and they fail in others.

              The important point is that money isn’t scarce, so all the limitations you’re used to exist because of other reasons. I believe that creates an opening for thinking and criticism, even if the American branch prefers thinking you just to fiddle with the numbers to keep the system going.

      • What_Religion_R_They [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        7·
        6 days ago

        Ok people pay taxes, the money goes to the government, it gets allocated and used elsewhere. then you’re saying they just fudge the numbers at the treasury to make taxes be cancelled out? To have this manipulation, the people doing the manipulation must be cognizant of this process, but acknowledged processes are not how capitalism works, so what is the magic trick here? How does this money destruction take place and what is the rationale that the treasury uses for it?

        • coolusername@lemmy.mlEnglish
          6·
          6 days ago

          https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/federal-taxes-do-not-finance-spending-and-cost-benefit-analysis-must-change/

          According to MMT, all dollars are spent into existence by the federal government first and taxed out of existence later.[8] When the federal government taxes dollars, it does not collect them— it destroys them.[9] This destruction of dollars serves an existentially important purpose: it guarantees private demand for the dollar, which otherwise has no determinable minimum value. Companies, households, and other currency users must pay their federal taxes in dollars to the currency issuer or else face severe punishment. The dollar’s unique ability to cancel tax obligations becomes its stable baseline value in the private market.

          The federal government, of course, does not tax itself. It has as much need for its own dollars as a teacher does for their own brownie points. As the currency issuer, the federal government never collects its own dollars because its purpose is to allocate them. It must spend more dollars into the economy than it taxes out, or else dollars would drain from the economy until none existed.[10] When considering how many dollars to spend into existence, the federal government’s true concern is whether the new dollars will dilute the currency, causing inflation.[11]

          • What_Religion_R_They [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            6·
            6 days ago

            It doesn’t answer the question, just reiterates what is said. Saying taxation destroys the currency is good and all but it’s fundamentally untrue, because taxes do go somewhere in the end. They get allocated, reallocated, and spent elsewhere. They do not cease to exist. I am open to being proven wrong.

            • CascadeOfLight [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              4·
              6 days ago

              They get allocated, reallocated, and spent elsewhere

              They don’t. You can’t tag a particular dollar and follow it as it leaves a taxpayer’s account, goes into a government account, gets allocated to a particular item of the budget, and then gets spent out again into the economy. When a dollar is taxed, it basically goes into a furnace and disappears. Separately, dollars are conjured out of thin air and sent into the economy by the government.

              The amount of dollars thrown in the furnace in a given day are tallied, sure. But that doesn’t determine the amount of dollars the government can create, it only informs it. The government can create as many dollars as it likes at will.

              • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                3·
                6 days ago

                They don’t. You can’t tag a particular dollar and follow it as it leaves a taxpayer’s account, goes into a government account, gets allocated to a particular item of the budget, and then gets spent out again into the economy

                You actually can. However, that’s actually not relevant, as you seem to misunderstand what the other person is saying.
                Also, if you were correct, it wouldn’t be possible to say that money is destroyed in the first place, making What_Religion_R_They correct.

                When a dollar is taxed, it basically goes into a furnace and disappears

                It doesn’t. It gets reallocated. The fact that we supposedly can’t trace it (marking physical currency and following electronic transactions is a thing) doesn’t change that fact. The supply of money in the circulation+savings+treasury does not magically decrease.