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
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've stopped calling him a demsoc because of this. It would require a revolution to throw the current constitution out and rewrite whatever it is he wants that allows him to be president again. It's the only way.
He already attempted to change the constitution when the Supreme Court told him that was illegal. Back in 2016 here was a referendum and 51% of the voters rejected it. Also there was this bizarre fake news:
There was also some controversy over Evo's fights with his vice-president, Álvaro García Linera, who, as well as being a former guerrilla fighter and a popular figure among Bolivia's white minority, said that Evo should stop doing these things because it was damaging the Bolivian left. And his quarrels that ended up leading him to expel his own older sister, Esther Morales, from the government when she was quite popular with everyone, especially women, because she was seen as a simple working-class woman.
I think the only good ending to this would be if Evo and Arce came to an agreement, like a candidate they could both agree on. But until then, these protests will only make the country more unstable and strengthen the far right. I doubt there will be a coup, since Arce has the open support of Brazil and China, but you never know, especially with the US sending troops to Ecuador and Peru, two countries with extremely weak right-wing governments that are on the verge of collapse. And there always Milei who keeps being a little shit that promotes US imperialism in South America, but at the same time keeps crying and begging Lula, Petro and Xi for money and food.
Things like this always speak to weak parties and organizations. The candidates should be subordinate to their orgs, not the other way around. Even if a leader is particularly skilled, you are creating far too large of a liability when they inevitably fall out of power, at minimum because they will eventually die.
Kruschev was similarly an indicator of a party that could not reproduce competency and did actually overly depend on a team captain to not begin falling apart.
This is probably the most important aspect of protecting a revolution and it really seems like something that needs to be baked into the party/org before the revolution even happens. Where are the thousands of people ready to replace both Evo and Arce? Why are they not better-organized than these two factions? I'm sure the answer is in the details, but those are the details we have to care about.
Incredible behaviour.
The issue is that this is not a simple disagreement or egos. Those play a role, but these are two undeniably different ideologies conflicting with one another for power. The path of the usual south america pink social democracy under Arce or the red path under the radicals. Venezuela or Brazil.
They were always going to conflict over direction eventually. This conflict will always play out in every left-revolution. It is inevitable and MLs should keep this in mind and prepare for it more fully.
It is also not that simple due to Aymara nationalism, far right low land guarani cosplay and of course coca. Bolivia is one of the few places in Latin America where mestizaje and creolism can actually be beaten by indigenist populism.
There is always a possibility that Evo can morph into a weird ethnocaecerist.
Hope that's not true, but either way we need a better plan for this problem. It will happen to our own movements. It arguably has happened in the past to them too. What theory do we have to resolve it? Why haven't we analysed it and built strategy around an inevitable eventuality that has killed the left multiple times?
We're not very good at dealing with the socdem split and I do not know why we haven't thought about how it should be planned around more.
There is no we. Socialism with Bolivian characteristics is much different than anything in the global north. The issue is whether it can survive without splitting the country.
I'm using we to refer to marxists, collectively, everywhere in the world.
I don't agree that Arce is a marxist when what he's doing is the same as Lula.