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.
Hexbear News Mega America desk, I have caught the electoralist bug and want a sitrep on the upcoming US presidential election - which are the key swing states? what are the battlegrounds to look out for? where are the biggest upsets likely to happen for Harris and Trump?
Give me your informed analysis, give me your spicy takes, give me your conspiracy theories, but please keep them realistic and not the wishful thinking ones. I want to become an “expert” on US electoralism.
Latest polls showing Maine, Kansas, and Oregon as totally unpredictable swing states. All other states pretty much settled, about half on Jill Stein. Rumors are Bernie made a few calls this weekend to try and consolidate the race in Trump’s favor, but there’s not much time left before election day. Biden has replaced Waltz as Kamala’s running mate, and with Kamala’s poor health most people are seeing that as a positive, last ditch effort to win over voters in Florida and California. Could be decisive, but again Jill Stein is looking very strong so it’s anyone’s game right now. In a repeat of last year, it’ll basically come down to Kansas again, and how their Arab population (big on Waltz) perceives the last-second swap.
Most accurate non partisan polls I've seen show the election to be at a statistical tie. But I think Trump is the more likely candidate to win as it stands.
Copied from a post I made a few days ago:
This race is the most "who fucking knows" since I've followed US elections.
Some things of I think are of note
Republicans take the Senate
I think a 269-269 tie is an incredibly possible situation and I think it would fall under funniest timeline theory (for those reading this results in a Trump presidency due to tiebreaker rules favoring him).
Ask any questions you have and I'll try to further expand with the few things that have changed (early voting data) since I made that original post.
The dems chosen path to theoretical victory is through a continued huge delta in suburban white women voters (trying to build off of 2020 and 2022 momentum in this group) flipping from Republican to Democratic tickets. They're performing worse with men across basically every strata available.
Early voting leans dem but those previously huge margins are probably greatly lessened this time around (general trend that early vote is becoming less partisan but still is probably largely in favor of dems)
Georgia changed their rules from 2020 regarding absentee ballots which will likely depress mail-in ballot quantities. Whether those voters instead elect to vote early (GA is breaking early voting records and this is possibly part of it) is yet to be known due to not knowing the inpact of confounding factors like decreased partisanship in early voting trends.
How does this even happen lmao. Is he like buying tons of porn videos or is it sex toys
I think it's even worse that it was in-store viewing services? I haven't thought about Mark Robinson since I made that post originally but it's worth your time reading about because he's that wild of a figure.
That's bleak for them. While I imagine abortion being a key issue this time round will help Democrats, white women voted for Trump in 2016 over Clinton, from what I remember.
You're right about 2016, but in 2020 republicans saw a collapse in the white suburban vote (from 54%-38% in favor of R in 2016 to 51%-47% in favor of R in 2020). The collapse of support in that group was the margin Republicans lost the election on.
It appears the US is also going to have the largest gender gap in voting in the nation's history this election, so it "makes sense" that the democratic party who is entirely unwilling to decouple from its genocide platform has chosen this sole route as their theoretical victory. The more baffling thing is that they've identified this new core group they need to win but don't even message effectively (abortion) on this flip wedge issue.
In case it wasn't abundantly clear I think all of these people are monsters- just trying to provide the analysis of how the democrats think they may possibly win.
Y'all ever stop and wonder how maybe talking about 3% as collapses and landslides is just a giant con to hide the coinflippery electoralism books down to because people don't believe in things?
I grant there are much stronger evidences for the hypothesis than this, but still. It always seemed to me, in a democracy, most votes would be more like 60/40 minimum for anything but purely vibes shit.
The collapse rhetoric isn't because if the 54->51% R support in isolation, it's more so that D support in the suburban whites group went from 38->47% as well over the course of 4 years.
Broader point understood though. In a uniparty bourgeois democracy like the US with such an intentionally stunted electoral system the boundaries of electorally viable candidates are defined by the capitalists way, way before any candidate thinks about running for a primary ticket.
It's why when you see actual on-the-issues polling you get results like you'd expect in the or 60s-40s splits for issues but once capitalists create the electoral abstractions around elected government you see election-gridlock in favor of non-populist-action which results in the coinflippery you call out and downstream austerity measures and further privatization of services.
The Georgia ballot is so bad it's fucking hilarious, check this shit out
Although credit where it's due, Jill Stein, Claudia De La Cruz and Cornell West are all on the ballot this year. I've seen elections where it was literally just Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian.
And will not be counted, lol, hence why I imagine Stein will take some of their votes because she will count. Georgia dems and reps colluding against PSL.
Thanks, that’s exactly what I needed.
I saw a chart a few weeks ago that the Democratic gains in PA from the past two cycles have been wiped out. What’s going on with PA? I know about Fetterman but he cannot possibly be the sole reason that the Dems lost almost all their advantage there.
to add to @riseuppikmin@hexbear.net's answer, pennsylvania in 2016 was doing relatively well for pennsylvania historically. the 00s oversaw a fair amount of economic revitalization especially for pittsburgh as it developed a modern healthcare industry that provided residents with job opportunities they hadn't seen since the steel mills shut down in the late 70s. philadelphia is more of a finance hub and benefited from low interest rates. the opioid crisis and pandemic greatly stressed the healthcare system, pennsylvania rural hospitals were especially unprepared for covid. that's true everywhere, but i get the sense pa got hit worse than most in that regard and because so much of their recent economic renewal depended on the healthcare industry and low interest debt, now the whole state is feeling like it's the 80s again last time i was through. the dems have offered nothing except "not trump" and scolding, which doesn't sit well with the confederate-flag waving denizens of the vast stretches of sparsely populated karst forests known colloquially as "pennsyltucky" in between pittsburgh and philadelphia.
Fetterman's rabid Zionism is (unfortunately) probably immaterial to PA. PA is a hugely white (74%) older (20% over 65) state whose primary stated driver is economic decline (nothing novel here). The people seem to correctly recognize their quality of life and material conditions are declining, but there's no real "reason" being presented by dems as to why other than Kamala's campaign vaguely alluding to price-gouging which she'll do something? about. Trump messages that the economic woes of PA (everywhere really) is due to migrants.
When the democratic ticket switch occurred people largely decoupled Harris from the Biden administration's economic policy but consistent messaging from Republicans seems to have wiped that out.
People are feeling their material conditions collapse due to the continued financialization of basically everything under capitalism and neither party provides real analysis/plausible solutions under the existing system so figuring out specific voter grievances there is hard to figure out outside of individual vibes. Democrats are hoping the possibility of a federal abortion ban under Trump advances the white women vote delta past their inaction/various atrocities and Trump is playing towards generic populist racism with romantic fascist idealation.
PA also isn't a state that I know a lot about relative to some of the other swing states so my analysis is probably lacking here but I've tried my best.