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.
I agree with most of what Mohammad Marandi says here, it lines up with most of the satellite imagery I have been able to view. Some hits on air defence systems and limited hits on above ground missile and drone production facilities.
Unfortunately the air defence systems protecting the skies came at the cost of the lives of the operators (incredibly brave people who sacrificed their lives to protect their country) and leaving those systems out of action until the radars are repaired or replaced, which is particularly concerning in my view. I'd hope for Russia or China to supply some air defence batteries for Iran in the meantime while the systems that were damaged are repaired or replaced. The USA have supplied Israel with a THAAD battery while they re-arm Arrow-2 and Arrow-3, given that context Russia or China assisting Iran with air defence systems can be seen as a response and not an escalation.
I think Ayatollah Khamenei's insight is, as always, spot on: "the enemies are trying to overstate the impact of the strikes, but downplaying them and saying they were insignificant is a mistake."
I will say, after a year of seeing tens of thousands of Arabs being shredded due to US-zionist airstrikes, it is inspiring to see that the damage from this particular strike was so small and so much was intercepted.
Us-israeli deterrence is not anything like what it was and Iran is now a heavyweight in the field.
Yeah I saw an English subtitled 2 minute clip of his speech that contained this quote, and I agree. Israel will obviously claim that Iran can never make a solid fueled missile again or something to that effect, which is just propaganda and not true. But downplaying the strikes and saying that nothing happened is also incorrect.
Yeah Iran has a good integrated air defence system when compared to Lebanon, Gaza and even Syria. My big worry is how sustainable the air defence would be over a multi day attack. Even in this attack of a few hours, key systems were hit. Without those key systems in action, I worry how effective the rest of the air defence systems will be.
The liberals in the intellectual and political class in Iran have every reason to pretend that the impact was nothing because they are still under delusions that peace is possible. The internal contradictions in Iran are complicated. But it's very clear that the Leader does not want the political class to waste the opportunity to deliver heavy blows to the enemy.
I cant speak to their military capabilities and I dont really think that we can speculate at this moment especially because there are a great number of tricks that the Resistance still has up their sleaves.
We shall see what happens.
We know that Iran can launch way more missiles for way longer than they did in their strike. How much more than this strike do you think isisrael can muster in a single wave? 2 maybe 3 times maximum. We know Iran has tens of thousands of missiles and probably hundreds of launch sites. We don't know for sure but it looks as though Iran's strike capability is untouched by this strike by the entity. We know that Iran did damage done to israeli air bases.
Isisrael be able to find and then damage Iran's missile launching ability after some time but Iran has already begun to degrade isisrael's ability to fly planes. In a sustained conflict isisrael's ability to do damage will be degraded much faster than Iran's.
Isisrael is built for bazzinga special ops and Iran is built for attrition. In a sustained conflict the victor is clear.
Honestly the lack of damage in this strike is scarier than if they had done significant damage. Isisrael is now left scrambling to find a way to establish deterrence. They thought this last move would be a step up the escalation ladder but it was a nothingburger. Their next move has to not just get one step up the ladder but also has to make up for the shame of failure. My bet is that isisrael is thinking about using a tactical nuke right now.