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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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.
The problem is that the right to strike has been removed from the PRC Constitution since 1982. It was first introduced in the 1975 сonstitution by Mao but they removed it after his death. There is very little constitutional protection for workers rights and trade unions in China which was part of the reason why Western capitalists so happily de-industrialized from the Imperial Core and moved their production to China (it allowed them to crush the rising domestic trade union movements in the West that had been increasing their demands for workers rights.)
China has done a lot of great things but labor rights is not at all like the Soviet Union, which is possibly the closest example we have to a workers state despite all its flaws. There have been positive signs of China returning to its Marxist roots since Xi came to power in the mid-2010s, but if you have ever lived in China in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was very clear then that the deep rot of capitalist corruption was already set in that coincided with the turn toward neoliberalism. The current endeavors to reverse course is not going to be trivial. There is still a lot of work to be done.
"why Western capitalists so happily de-industrialized from the Imperial Core and moved their production to China (it allowed them to crush the rising domestic trade union movements in the West that had been increasing their demands for workers rights.)"
The irony is that the argument to move the sweatshops to China was the high education level (quick to learn, highly technical) and gender\economic equality (cheap) achieved during Mao's era created an army of high quality workforce. The state's centralization post- 80s is just a bonus since you can use it to discipline the workers when they start to feel nostalgic for the old days under Mao.
Capitalists love when socialists create high quality workers that they don't have to pay for their education, but want to have the right to squeeze every drop of profits from their labour
Regardless of constitutional labor rights, these gig economy workers wouldn't benefit from any labor laws because their contracts are engineered to fall short of the minimum requirements for the jobs to count as employment. I do wonder what potential there exists for the CPC to crack down on these tricks, but I doubt there's much will to expand the meager labor protections to gig workers too.
The government just decided recently to put Party representatives in private company of a certain size. This is not a mechanism to make sure that the CEO is applying dialectic materialism in this company management, this is basically a way to make sure that the company doesn't do anything that deviate from the greater scheme of the thing for the country (this is not so different from British empire's, Japan 's or USA's capitalist development tbh)
As my grandma from the party used to say: "there is no real reason for normal people (like me) to join the party. Unless you want to start a company and you want to build connection to get financing."
For me as a dumb westerner with no real eyes into China, how effective are the endeavors currently in your opinion to "correct course?"
The structure of the CPC creates a system that takes years for a member to end up into the the higher position of decision making (at each level of the process you can be purge for not respecting the "party line"). At the end of the process you are basically a conservative communist party technocrat but highly competent.
Reforms come slowly and most of the time they come as a cure and not a prevention of an actual issue. However, the organization is sometime competent enough to execute their plan if they really want to. (then again, this is not unique to the governance of China)
Gotcha, so the current positive trends, while not unobstructed, are likely to continue, it seems.
I would say a lot of the positive trends are not necessarily made for people’s wellbeing, other issues such as economic development, population and wanting to stay in power are some of the factors that are in the equations.
We are going to see probably more “utilitarian” reforms and not a lot of social reforms imo
Hmmm, guess I need to investigate further.
This is a good way to go. There are still a lot of obstacles to get informations (language, accessibility,etc.)
I don’t think it is productive to idealized CPC, the CPC isn’t going to disappear any day soon and our criticism of the system is not going to topple it neither.
No, we shouldn't idealize the CPC, but as a westerner it is incredibly difficult to find nuanced takes on the PRC in English, which is frustrating, hence asking in the Hexbear News Mega.