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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • Teekeeus [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    61·
    19 days ago

    Why Does the EU Want to Become More Like the US?

    Some highlights:

    The EU-US Trade and Technology Council is currently hard at work getting EU regulations in line with American interests. The EU is already dominated by US IT companies that supply software, processors, computers, and cloud technologies and we can expect more of that as Draghi and Ursula call for more mergers and acquisitions and more US private equity and venture capital.

    A significant allure for US companies investing in Europe is the potential for acquiring assets at bargain prices. Economic uncertainties, geopolitical fluctuations, and evolving market dynamics have led to decreased valuations of European companies in recent years. This creates a favorable environment for US investors, allowing them to purchase valuable assets at more attractive prices than those typically found in the US market.

    US private equity giant Clayton Dubilier & Rice destroyed the UK’s fourth largest supermarket chain in a few short years. Warburg Pincus joined a consortium to snatch up T-Mobile Netherlands a couple years ago. US-based Parker Hannifin is taking private the UK aerospace and defence group Meggitt. Gores Guggenheim grabbed Swedish electric carmaker Polestar.

    The private equity firm KKR, which includes former CIA director David Petraeus as a partner, took home the fixed-line network of TIM, Italy’s largest telecommunications provider. German energy service provider Techem was just sold off to the US asset manager TPG, and Germany’s awful economy is increasingly making its companies more likely targets for takeovers. The spooky Silicon Valley company Palantir is already making itself at home in the UK National Health Services, and it’s knocking on the door in Italy.

    Draghi actually mentions the healthcare sector as an example of where the US outcompetes the EU. How is that competitiveness measured? By things like productivity and profit.

    It’s so eurover

    • Big_Bob [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      51·
      19 days ago

      Blowing up Nordstream was the EU equivalent of blowing their own brains out.

      Now the American flies are coming to feast on its corpse.

        • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          34·
          19 days ago

          Very long, unfortunately. One key factor that I don’t often see discussed is the US is now able to tap into the European labor force with very little cost.

          Europe has a large pool of labor especially in the high tech sector that can sustain the US leading edge industries for a long time, even as a declining empire. As the European economy goes to shit and fascism takes hold and the region continues to be destabilized by wars in the periphery, many people will be looking to emigrate.

          Since the Ukraine war in 2022, the US has resettled some 200k Ukrainian refugees and another 350k Ukrainians arrived on temporary visas, with little controversy:

          While the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border has strained resources in some communities like New York City, Chicago and Denver, the resettlement of Ukrainians has not provoked the same backlash, nor triggered major political problems for the Biden administration.

          Unlike the program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, which is capped at 30,000 approvals per month, Uniting for Ukraine has no numerical limit. Applications for the Uniting for Ukraine program are also adjudicated fairly quickly, sometimes in a matter of weeks or even days — a rarity in a backlogged and understaffed U.S. immigration system.

          Incredible. The process has already begun. While brown and non-white immigrants have caused much controversy, the white European immigrants are being welcomed with open arms with no backlash.

          This is also why Harris is comfortable with getting tough on the borders and immigration - the timing matters. Trump and the Republicans have no answer to their “America for Americans” plan when it comes to replacing the gap in labor force after the “purge”. The Democrats actually made the Fourth Reich possible by first destroying the European economy.

        • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          32·
          19 days ago

          The US doesn’t need industry. It needs ownership of capital. The EU has the resources, real estate, and consumption markets to revitalize the US economy via the sheer amount of debt that can be issued with Europe and Europeans as collateral.

    • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      46·
      19 days ago

      An Onion joke

      Draghi actually mentions the healthcare sector as an example of where the US outcompetes the EU. How is that competitiveness measured? By things like productivity and profit.

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      43·
      19 days ago

      A significant allure for US companies investing in Europe is the potential for acquiring assets at bargain prices. Economic uncertainties, geopolitical fluctuations, and evolving market dynamics have led to decreased valuations of European companies in recent years. This creates a favorable environment for US investors, allowing them to purchase valuable assets at more attractive prices than those typically found in the US market.

      Wait, so did US investors actually essentially go “um sweatie your regulations are bad so no one wants to invest”, valuations drop, same US investors immediately buy everything?

    • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      37·
      19 days ago

      I saw a video the other day from the Dutch equivalent of John Oliver where he (a neoliberal who seems progressice because he likes gay people) talked about why the EU needed to become more like the US because the EU was falling behind. But to prove it, he showed a chart with the US, China, and EU GDP per person from the past 40 years. The US started growing more than the EU a few years ago, so he pointed there, ignored the enourmously high rate of growth of china compared to the others, and said “we should copy the US, because theyre growing faster than us”.

      I thought that someone would have told him that that was at least dumb. Like leave china off the chart if youre gonna do such dumb propaganda.

    • FuckyWucky [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      29·
      19 days ago

      In an ideal textbook free market ‘competitiveness’ is when prices are pushed down as low as possible.

      In Draghi’s real world ‘competitiveness’ is when prices are pushed up as high as possible.

    • 2Password2Remember [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      27·
      19 days ago

      ight i was gonna try to move to europe so that i can have kids in a country without school shootings but fuck it i think imma move to mexico instead, its decidedly less mexicover

      Death to America