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.
Electoral politics meets rocket test flights!
Two years ago, NASA launched it’s Lockheed-Martin built Orion spacecraft in an uncrewed test flight around the Moon and back to Earth on the mission named Artemis I launched on the first SLS rocket flight. SLS’s prime contractor is Boeing. SLS was designed to re-use as much Space Shuttle technology as possible so that the defence contractors involved could pad their profit margins and not have to spend much on R&D of new technology.
The Orion heat shield uses an Apollo-era technology called AVCOAT. NASA thought it was a safe choice because it worked fine for all the Apollo missions despite a newer, better material called PICA being available. PICA has been used for almost 20 years on some of the most demanding missions with the highest re-entry speeds. Basically if you want to get back to Earth safely and you have your choice of heat shield material, you want a variant of PICA. It’s as safe and proven as space technology can get.
Well, it turns out that the AVCOAT heat shield didn’t burn away evenly and cleanly like on Apollo, because while the chemistry is the same, they applied it in a different way. The first test flight’s capsule had great big chunks missing from the heat shield. That Orion capsule did splash down intact out of pure dumb luck, but those missing chunks sparked an independent review because they are a potential crew-killer. Missing chunks out of a heat shield killed the space shuttle Columbia’s crew.
So here’s where the politics comes in!
NASA has announced that they know what the problem is, but they’re not going to announce what the problem is before the end of the year. And the person who made that decision is Administrator Bill Nelson, a career politician and loyal lifelong ally to Joe Biden.
Orion is an overweight pig of a ship, deliberately so. Right now the only production rocket can that lift it around the moon is Boeing’s massively expensive SLS. SLS works but it’s ridiculously expensive at an estimated $4 billion per flight. NASA claims less, but independent government audits put it at about $4 billion factoring in all ground support costs and averaging the R&D costs on top of direct hardware costs. There’s about an 18-month production time per rocket minimum. And SLS only exists to lift Orion. Cancel one and you cancel the other. They were designed in lockstep with each other so that the US senate could spend as much as possible on local subcontractors for personal political gain.
Artemis II is to be the first crewed Artemis flight, doing orbits around the Moon and testing systems and procedures before coming back, like Apollo 8. Artemis III is to be the first crewed landing using a variant of SpaceX’s Starship called HLS. Artemis III’s HLS landing vehicle is to launch uncrewed, with an Orion capsule acting as the taxi to get astronauts to it and as their return vehicle to come back to Earth. Artemis II’s hardware is nearly ready to fly, including that AVCOAT heat shield. But the heat shield debacle has put it all on hold.
Even though NASA knows the fix, they’ll have to test that fix. Which means another test flight of SLS. Which means building another SLS rocket, and building another Orion capsule. That could put the additional test flight cost over $5 billion minimum. Plus years of delays for the first crewed mission as they need to build another rocket and capsule. So the scuttlebutt is that Bill Nelson, as a personal favour to Biden, is deliberately withholding the expensive bad news from public release until after the election.
More fun facts! The Orion program has cost, in 2024 inflation-adjusted dollars, about $30 billion without a single successful test flight, let alone any crew flights. And SLS has cost about $26 billion with a single successful test flight. And this is all because the US senate, who keep an iron grip on NASA pursestrings, wanted both programs to be as expensive as possible so that they’re as profitable as possible for their defence contractor friends.