Bulletins and News Discussion from October 28th to November 3rd, 2024 - LDP Falls Flat / Yet Neoliberalism / Rampages Onward - COTW: Japan
Bulletins and News Discussion from October 28th to November 3rd, 2024 - LDP Falls Flat / Yet Neoliberalism / Rampages Onward - COTW: Japan
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.
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All the analysts are saying that Israel's attack on Iran failed. They had 100 airplanes in the air.
Iranian air defense (with the help of Russia) is really good. Better than Israel's. And Iran also has better missiles as well!
Provide sources.
Where is this coverage?
YouTube. Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, Colonel Douglas McGregor
Scott Ritter
Isn't that the guy that has been going on about Iran having S400 air defence systems and Su-35 fighter jets for eons now, with no evidence presented of such occuring. Also with regards to Russia and Ukraine, everytime Russia takes a village he reacts as if the Ukrainian frontline is going to have a full on collapse.
Su-35 has been rumored to be received in Iran just this week actually, credible sources inside Iran report
I think that's based on satellite images with above ground aircraft shelters big enough for them. But it's still going to take a while for them to be operational, unless Russia has trained Iranian pilots covertly. In that case, the aircraft will be operational as soon as they're assembled, assuming they arrived in pieces.
Isn't he also a pedo? Yeah, it's ad hominem, but I also don't want to go around quoting some pedo to make a point on geopolitics lol
He didn't actually do any sex acts with minors. I'm not going to defend his actions or anything but this came after his vocal criticisms of the war in Iraq and the lack of evidence of WMDs. He was convicted for chatting with someone who he says thought was and adult roleplaying a teen ager in a sex chatroom but the prosecution says was an actual teenager. (who is conveniently unidentified)
To me it looks like a honeypot/set up designed to make him a toxic source.
Yea but he’s also one of the only public figures that was pushing back against the WMD narrative and starting the Iraq War, and it was brave of him to do that and still earns him a lot of credibility
These people are literally imperialist spies.
Edit: i seriously can't spell
I wouldn't say the attack was a failure. Key air defence systems responsible for defending key assets, early warning radars and above ground missile and drone production facilities were hit. This has been evidenced by satellite imagery, photos of the attack, and Iran's own claims, and not IDF claims.
Vast majority were intercepted. It was a failure. They fired a LOT of missiles. Hundreds. They planned for the operation to go for something like 8 hours but just gave up a few hours in.
I wouldn't say hundreds of missiles being fired is realistic given the amount of planes involved. Of those 100 or so jets, some are going to be fighter escorts not carrying any air to surface missiles. That's not mentioning aerial refueling and AWACS craft. Then there's the amount of Air Launched Ballistic Missiles (ALBMs) each jet can carry. With each jet fully kitted out with drop tanks for the required range needed to get to Iran, you're looking at two ALBMs max per plane in the case of the shorter range ones like ROCKS, and with the heavier ALBMs carried on the F-15s, with a detachable booster stage, you're probably only looking at one per aircraft max in a asymmetric loadout with drop tanks, as pictured below.
If you do an estimate on the very high end, and say 80 jets were carrying ALBMs while the rest were escorts and support aircraft, and 20 jets were carrying one ALBM, and 60 jets two ALBMs, that's 140 missiles at most, and I'd say that's a high end estimate. Realistic numbers are probably under 100. The legitimate leaked documents had detected that 56 ALBMs were prepared by October 15th, so I'd say that would be a reasonable minimum.
As for interception rates, satellite imagery that I have been unable to see or access yet (please take that into account) shows no damage at Bidganeh, but lots of probable air defence activity. So we can assume if such imagery is accurate, then air defence systems had success in interceptions there, but hits were also landed on air defence systems at other locations.