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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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.

  • Rania 🇩🇿@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    24·
    3 hours ago

    can someone explain to me how isn’t there a revolution in Egypt yet? like not even some unrest, literally just sitting there no life yet no sanctions

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    22·
    3 hours ago

    Evo Morales begins hunger strike in Bolivia

    Former president says strike will continue until national dialog takes place, which he claims is “the only way” to resolve differences

    “We began the hunger strike from the Territory of Struggle, convinced of the need to find solutions to the problems facing the Bolivian people today. ”

    “The revolutionaries do not give up or give in. We will remain firm in the defense of better days for our Homeland and we demand the immediate release of the comrades unjustly apprehended during the day of protest.”

  • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    33·
    4 hours ago

    I vaguely remember Obama, still as president, making a speech where he says in no uncertain terms that ‘the US shouldn’t go into Ukraine’ because ‘it’s way more important to the Russians than to America and therefore Russia will put much more into than the US ever will’. Which goes to show that the guy was a pretty good steward of empire whenever he didn’t listen to his dumbass secretary of state. If someone knows what I’m talking about, much obliged.

  • Al_Sham [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    37·
    7 hours ago

    Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on November 2, 2024:

    “The enemies, both the US and the Zionist regime, should know that they will definitely receive a teeth-breaking response for what they are doing against Iran and the resistance front,”

    “This is not merely a matter of revenge but a logical action—an approach aligned with religion, ethics, and the Sharia, in accordance with international regulations,”

    (Presstv)

  • Al_Sham [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    54·
    7 hours ago

    The Cradle

    According to local Lebanese media outlet Al-Mahatta, an Israeli special force of more than 25 soldiers (sailors and divers) carried out a landing operation on the Batroun coast in northern Lebanon and kidnapped a Lebanese citizen from a chalet near the beach, yesterday morning.

    The force then fled on speedboats into the open sea.

    According to military officials, this operation was carried out in some coordination with the German Navy operating within the UNIFIL forces, to ensure that the Lebanese Navy (active in the region to combat smuggling to Europe) would not be able to intervene during the operation.

  • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    29·
    7 hours ago

    Fed seen on track for 25-basis-point rate cuts next week and in December

    Traders of futures that settle to the Fed’s policy rate instead moved to price in about a 99% chance that the central bank on Nov. 7 would cut its policy rate by a quarter of a percentage point to the 4.50%-4.75% range, compared with 92% before the release of the jobs data. They see about an 83% chance that the policy rate will be in the 4.25%-4.50% range by the end of this year, compared with 69% earlier.

    Fed policymakers will begin their next two-day policy meeting a day after the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, and though the result is not expected to directly factor into their decision two days later, many analysts see election uncertainty as an added temporary weight on the labor market in October that could be reversed in coming months.

    Financial markets currently see the Fed lowering its policy rate to the 3.50%-3.75% range by September of next year.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: September’s first rate cut really marked the commencing of Phase 2 of US imperialist war against the rest of the world. This is quite possible the most evil plan that the US is about to pull.

    As I’ve said before, the rate cuts will do two things: first, all the dollars sucked into the US capital market will flow into the foreign sector again, to make the Global South countries become addicted to the dollar again; and second, the rate cut will dry up the interest payment that had a huge contribution in the US deficit spending over the past two years, which can only mean a recession.

    Remember when all the economics pundits crying about how Biden’s interest rate hike will cause a recession from 2022-2024? Well, they were all wrong. I’ve always said that the recession will happen after they start to cut the rate, and this is well timed to happen until months after the election (we won’t see the consequences until at least 6-9 months from now, depending on how fast the interest rate is being cut and how much deficit the Treasury is creating to compensate for that).

    What to expect: many export-dependent countries are going to be economically crippled when the US goes into recession, as consumption and demands for goods and services slump. If the US can replicate the Global Financial Crisis of 2009, expect to see an explosion of IMF loans and waves of mass privatization across the Global South over the next few years.

    These countries have been hit very hard since Covid, then the fallout of sanctions against Russia (commodity price increase), US fed rate hike (debt interest went up, investment capital outflows), they cannot sustain another shockwave like this.

    The US will then exploit the crippled global economy to reshape the global supply chain to its own interest in its big fight against China. The economy over the next decade is likely going to be bad, and the outcome will be decided by a race to see who - the US or China - will get to reshape the global supply chain over the coming decades.

    Fuck, this is so evil I cannot even begin to comprehend how ghoulish it must be to weaponize the global economy to retain its hegemony over the world. Unless China has some trump cards (I’m not seeing them), there’s no way we can escape from this. China’s monetary easing that was timed just after the US fed rate cut was a sign that even China, the strongest economy in the world in real terms, is afraid of what the US recession is going to do. This is the power of monetary imperialism.

    The US is about to take a “big bite” on the globe.

    (also BRICS has turned into a joke now, we shouldn’t expect to see a real challenge against US hegemony on that front as well)