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.


    • FuckyWucky [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      . 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.

      I think China will be 'fine' by increasing Government spending, that's what they did after 2008. see

      I'm more worried about other global south countries, especially ones with trade/current deficits more dependent on imports.

        • FuckyWucky [none/use name]
          ·
          2 months ago

          I agree, I don't see China rapidly decoupling either.

          But at least China used the tools it had available at the time. India was also hurt by the 2008 crisis and it too increased Government spending to compensate (to lesser extent than China). However by 2011-2012 pressure from the IMF and World Bank forced them to reduce spending and contributed to the rise of Modi.

    • meth_dragon [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      china doesn't have any direct trump cards other than maybe physically retaking reddit island, but a provocation large enough to incite direct confrontation (and thus one that is also large enough to directly threaten hegemonic legitimacy) is probably enough to do in the empire. the geopolitical edging we are currently experiencing is a side effect of no one wanting to be the bad guy and flip the table, but it's not like things are getting any less tense.

      Braudel suggests that the withdrawal of the Dutch from commerce around 1740 to become 'the bankers of Europe' was typical of a recurrent world systemic tendency. The same process was in evidence in Italy in the fifteenth century, and again around 1560, when the leading groups of the Genoese business diaspora gradually relinquished commerce to exercise for about seventy years... After the Dutch, the British replicated the tendency during and after the Great Depression of 1873-96, when 'the fantastic venture of the industrial revolution' created an overabundance of money capital. After the equally 'fantastic venture' of Fordism-Keynesianism, we may add, US capital since the 1970s has followed a similar trajectory.

      reading between the lines (80 years war, anglo-dutch wars, ww1&2), it's pretty clear we're being herded by historical forces towards some conflict of eschatological proportion in the near future. it's not even in real doubt whether or not the us will lose the conflict, the real question seems to be one of how many of us will be left alive after the us system has been turned to ashes.

      on a lighter note, i actually think the current plan of 'making israel die very very slowly' is actually pretty good. if there is a direct intervention, the us is toast. if they don't intervene, you get all kinds of domestic unrest in the ruling class to add to the working class dissatisfaction. basically a lose-lose proposition that is faster than supply chain restructuring and is only solved if the euros decide to fall on their swords and actually do something about russia, and even then is only a temp fix.

    • TechnoAnomie [he/him, any]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Yes, not many were paying attention to the loan structures implying there wouldn't be much of an internal change. However, everyone else already has issues competing on interest rates, and I'd think lowering them would entice money to invest on something; the crisis on the core should come when another tech bubble bursts, no? Which America definitely doesn't want.

      I miss something often enough, but I think you're overthinking a little.

    • newmou [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Are all the low-interest loans China is exporting to periphery countries mostly in USD?

        • newmou [he/him]
          ·
          2 months ago

          Super interesting, thanks for such a thorough breakdown. If these countries that have received USD loans for B&R projects decided to pay those back to China in Yuan rather than USD, would there be any benefit in that? I guess that would mean they would be accumulating USD and would have to procure Yuan through other means to do it. But I wonder if like all these countries just held on to their USD and tried not to spend it, if that would then have an effect on the power of the treasury. Or maybe it would make things worse if we went into a recession, they’d have a lot of currency that would be worth less than it was when they received the initial loan?

    • IceWallowCum [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Great post! This is why I love this site.

      How do you think this would change the world and america itself, compared to where we are right now? Will America import too much cheap products and further deindustrialize? Will American capitalists seek labor for cheap in the wrecked countries instead of at home? Will the global south be pushed by this maneuver towards some level, however small, of multi-national economic planning, perhaps lead by BRICS in some capacity?

      Also, I think the current and possible wars in the future could shift imperialism around in ways we can't predict without some heavy Marxist insight.

    • CleverOleg [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Based on what you’ve told us about decision-makers in China, I wonder if even they are able to see how the US moves their own pieces across the board (moves like you describe above). And if Chinese decision-makers struggle to see the whole picture, then I highly doubt decision-makers in other countries like Nigeria, Brazil, Vietnam, etc can see it, too.

      I really don’t like to assume irrationality or that people don’t act on broadly available information… but I don’t think I have any other explanation. In sports, when a team comes up with a new style of offense, it may take a few seasons for opposing defenses to adjust, but eventually they do. That doesn’t seem to be happening when it comes to the geopolitical maneuvers of the United States.

      I don’t mean to sound like an idealist, but if all this is true then I feel like the only solution to eventually checkmate Western hegemony is for the nations of the periphery to develop a proper understanding the situation as it is, and developing the right tools to counter. Specifically, Marxism is the truly the only toolset that I think can both identify these issues and come up with solutions. I would feel uncomfortable saying the CPC needs more Marxists and Marxist analysis since I’m a westerner who is very ignorant of how “Marxist” the CPC is; except that this seems to broadly be an analysis of the situation that you share. But even broader than that, I wonder if there is a role for rigorous Marxists, who’ve been equipped with the right tools (i.e. they’ve read volume 3) to go to the capitalists nations of the periphery and to try to advise them on the situation. Again, this is somewhat idealistic but I think Marxist analysis can show decision-makers in the periphery how they are getting screwed and what they might be able to do about it without even doing a full socialist conversion of their economy. Or at least, what the periphery needs to do collectively since one nation trying to stand up by itself against western hegemony is likely to get crushed.

    • blame [they/them]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Remember when all the economics pundits crying about how Biden’s interest rate hike will cause a recession from 2022-2024?

      I don't remember it that way at all. The party line on the interest rate hikes was that the fed was targetting a "soft landing" to prevent a recession.

    • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Fuck, this is so evil

      I can't not point out how you spoke well of 'crushing' the USSR and the PRC helping the US bring the rest of the world to heel. At least now you seem to see that the consequences of helping the US are bad.

      In any case, I hope that you are incorrect in this prediction, and that this will not benefit NATO.

    • 3rdWorldCommieCat [none/use name]
      ·
      2 months ago

      doomer Jesus I hate the usa so much, just to delay their inevitable fall they're gonna fuck us all up, very dark times ahead if this ends up happening. They will fall but dear God they're gonna take as many of us as possible down with them, fucking demons.