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.
China will be “fine”, but it needs to be noted that the “Keynesian” approach during the 2009 GFC by printing 4 trillion yuan stimulus can no longer be replicated today. It gave rise to the many problems that China is facing today.
The reason was that the stimulus was pumped into the economy when the real sector went into a slump (reduced consumption from America which was served by the Chinese export industries). As a result, most of the stimulus money went into infrastructure building and real estate market (which did not exist in China before 2008).
This is why you see so many infrastructures like high speed rails and new cities (“ghost cities”) cropping up across China in the 2010s. It directly stimulated the utilization of raw materials like concrete production, as well as infrastructure building sectors. It also allowed the local governments, whose finances had been hit hard by the GFC and the slump in the real sector, to make quick cash by selling land to property developers. It also drove up GDP numbers so many local governments would compete with one another by selling more and more lands, building more and more properties even knowing that they can not be filled in the long run. It was a way of “gaming” the system to get promoted and receive more funding from the central government.
These actions would eventually precipitate in the real estate bubble and the local government debt crisis that China is facing today.
But today’s China has a very different problem: the problem of excess housing and “ghost cities”. There are many housing properties that could not be sold, and will not be sold, and will be left empty for a long time. You might have heard stories about the ghost cities being filled up eventually, but many of those cities were actually planned around the early 2000s (for example, Binhai New Area in Tianjin, Zhengdong New Area in Zhengzhou etc.), and also rare exceptions like Pudong New Area in Shanghai that benefits from being a prime location. There are many new cities that were initiated in the 2010s that will never see their properties filled up.
So now the infrastructure building route is a dead end. Building more properties would be a waste of resources because nobody is ever going to live in them, and many infrastructures like high speed rails are good but they are not strong enough stimulus to drive the entire economy. You need people to consume (buy stuff) to drive the local economy.
This is why transitioning into a domestic consumption economy, and abandoning the export oriented economy, is the most straightforward way of decoupling from the US. It’s painful to radically re-orientate the industries you have built up over the decades, and it’s painful to abandon the export revenues, but the US imperialists are betting precisely on China procrastinating on initiating a transformative change to its own economic system.
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.
Definitely, China’s economy is strong enough that they can resist multiple waves of onslaught (it all depends on how it plays out in the longer term), the developing countries won’t be so lucky as you said.