Image is of the Te Pati Maori (Maori Party) cofounders, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. They have 6 of the 123 seats in the New Zealand parliament.

Officially confirming that the Republican primaries were a gigantic waste of time for everybody involved, Trump has massively beat everybody else in Iowa, and will very obviously be the Republican candidate for 2024. Given the abysmal state of the US economy (for everybody who isn't in the top 1-10%, which is mainly what national statistics reflect when they aren't telling blatant falsehoods), it's more plausible than ever that Trump may indeed once again become President - though I personally refuse to predict one way or another due to how volatile politics and geopolitics currently are. Project 2025 is coming, folks - either as the official Republican governance program, or as what the Democrats will do in 2026 after the midterms, stating that they have no other choice and have to reach across the aisle as they are the Adults In The Room™.

In other news...

Late last year, New Zealand voted in a new and very right-wing government, composed of the center-right National Party, the libertarian ACT Party (ACT stands for the "Association of Consumers and Taxpayers", good lord), and the fascist New Zealand First party. By what I can tell, this was the well-trodden path of "Vaguely center-left party does neoliberal austerity and causes a recession and workers fucking hated it and voted in a different party out of desperation," though the flooding and cyclones did add challenges to Chris Hipkins' short reign after Jacinda Ardern resigned.

It's worth noting that Hipkins was at least fairly China-friendly, meeting up with Xi Jinping on a five-day visit in the summer. They still do the whole "We have concerns about human rights" thing, but of all the countries of the imperial core, New Zealand is - or, perhaps, was - one of the most amicable. In 2021, China was New Zealand's single largest trading partner, with a third of exports going to China (more than Australia, the US, Japan, and South Korea combined), and they receive 22% of their imports from China too, more than any other single country.

Christopher Luxon, the new Prime Minister and sentient thumb, has said that he is exploring a closer relationship with AUKUS:

Luxon said New Zealand was interested in becoming involved in AUKUS Pillar 2: a commitment between the three partners to develop and share advanced military capabilities, including artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and hypersonics.

“We’ll work our way through that over the course of next year as we understand it more and think about what the opportunities may be for us,” Luxon said. “AUKUS is a very important element in ensuring we’ve got stability and peace in the region.”

This is not to say that Hipkins wanted nothing to do with AUKUS or Western organizations aimed generally against China - in fact, pre election, "he was open to conversations about joining Pillar II of AUKUS". But the current government is pushing down on the accelerator pedal.

The left-wing Maori party, Te Pati Maori, has stated that they want New Zealand to remain non-aligned, as joining AUKUS would erode the sovereignty of the country:

As Maori we cannot allow our sovereignty to be determined by others, whether they are in Canberra or Washington. Aotearoa should not act as Pacific spy base in the wars of imperial powers. Joining AUKUS will severely undermine our country’s sovereignty, constitution, and ability to remain nuclear free. There is too much at stake for our government to make a commitment of this magnitude without a democratic process.

In general, the party leaders of Te Pati Maori want New Zealand to be the "Switzerland of the Pacific", which is perhaps not the greatest analogy given all the problems Switzerland had and has, but we understand the intended meaning of desiring neutrality.

The Country of the Week is New Zealand! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

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.
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.

  • Tervell [he/him]
    ·
    5 months ago

    whoops, ship machine broke (archived)

    when you're the global hegemon, but you start running out of your capability to actually deploy globally and enforce your hegemony

    Ship shortage forces Marines to consider alternate deployments

    WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps is looking more closely at how to leverage alternate ships to keep its forces at sea, amid an amphibious ship shortage a top Marine called the “single biggest existential threat” to the service. Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told Defense News the Navy is seeking to improve amphib ship readiness and on-time maintenance. But with the Pentagon weighing whether to pause future amphibious ship production, he said the Marines are more serious than ever about using other kinds of ships, including the expeditionary sea base and the expeditionary fast transport. He said the expeditionary fast transport, or EPF, has been successfully used by Marines in the Pacific several times recently. It’s not tailor-made for amphibious missions, he noted in the Jan. 12 interview, but “we’re just going to have to make do.”

    I love having to "make do" despite my military budget being over 870 billion!

    In the Middle East, Heckl noted, the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit remains on station off Israel. But it’s been deployed since July and eventually must come home. When it does, there is no ready ARG on the East Coast to replace it. ... As a result, in recent and upcoming deployments, the Marines are going to sea through nontraditional means. From September through December, the Marines moved the 11th MEU command element from the West Coast into the Pacific. ... Because these Marines didn’t have the full Marine expeditionary unit capability onboard a full three-ship amphibious ready group, they had to rely on external aviation assets to get to and around the theater. But, Brodie said in a Jan. 19 interview, it allowed the Marine Corps to have a deterrent force at sea ahead of Taiwan’s Jan. 13 election, considered a period of heightened risk with China. In another example, Brodie said, the Boxer ARG on the West Coast will deploy with the 15th MEU in phases. Due to ship maintenance challenges, all three ships are not ready to deploy as planned; instead, the Somerset will leave in the coming days, with Boxer and Harpers Ferry departing California in the March timeframe. This allows the Marines to have some forces at sea now, even if the full ARG is not ready to go just yet.

    Brodie said the Marines are seeking to ensure three MEUs are ready for operations at any given time, even if there isn’t an accompanying ARG available. “We’re working to do the best that we can do to get forces on a sea base; in the absence of that, we’re looking at other ways to have Marines forward for a fleet commander,” he said. Gen. Christopher Mahoney, the assistant commandant, said Jan. 25 during a Hudson Institute event that having three MEUs at sea on three fully ready ARGs is unlikely today. “What we will have is MEUs that are trained and ready,” he said. If there’s an urgent need to deploy them, “they may be conveyed by alternate means, they may be conveyed by the air. Not optimal, and not what they were designed to do.” ... Brodie said putting Marines to sea on alternate ships is “feasible” but “not desired” because the expeditionary sea bases and expeditionary fast transports, while spacious, do not have all the aviation support, ammunition storage and other features of an amphibious ship.

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      5 months ago

      Lol how do you call yourselves the MARINES, a subsidiary of the NAVY, and can’t even send your men to shore?

    • Dolores [love/loves]
      ·
      5 months ago

      marines are so fucking stupid

      youre supposed to be on the NAVY'S boats, not drive around your own

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      5 months ago

      Ridiculous band of light infantry clowns with no place in modern warfare.