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.
The US government takes dollars from US taxpayers and points to the military budget as part of the reason why.
If this is a "fundamental misunderstanding of what the US military's purpose" is, what is?
Sorry, this is just flat out wrong. Michael Hudson’s Super Imperialism had thoroughly dissected how the US can uniquely fund hundreds of military bases around the world simply through recycling the excess dollars spent overseas back into US treasuries.
Governments with monetary sovereignty aren’t funded by taxes. If you’re US citizen who earns dollars, then those dollars are simply “tax credits”. All of the dollars in your bank account belongs to the US Federal Government, who reserves the right to take away your money (usually through tax hikes) because you never owned them in the first place!
When you pay your taxes, they don’t go into funding government programs. Your money gets destroyed in the Treasury.
Instead, you use the extra “tax credits” (money not being taxed yet) to obtain real goods and services that you can use, consume and enjoy. The government controls how much treats you can get simply by adjusting how much “tax credits” you can have. When the government raises taxes, you get less “tax credits” to buy stuff to consume. Similarly, when the government reduces deficit spending, there are less “tax credits” being circulated in the economy, and so you (and everyone) get less “tax credits” to buy stuff.
The Republicans are king at deficit spending - but the money goes to the military industrial complex instead of public infrastructures that benefit the working people. Biden’s interest rate hike over the past two years also paid out interests mostly to rich people, while poor working class people are being squeezed harder than ever. This is the power of the State - they can do whatever they see fit with the currency simply by spending where it matters (to them).
The same goes for billionaires. None of Elon Musk’s money belongs to him. They all belong to the US Federal Government, who reserves the right to confiscate every single dollar that Elon Musk “owns” if it ever wishes to do so. The government does not need a single dollar from Elon Musk to fund its spending, it can print the dollar any time it wants! The government can tax billionaires because they simply want to, not because they need the billionaires’ money. This is the power of the State.
From the perspective of the government, money and taxation are simply tools to shape the socioeconomic activities. If some segment of the society has accumulated too much wealth, then taxation can be used to decrease inequality. If the government wants to punish bad behavior (smoking, public hazard etc.), then taxes are incurred on such products to discourage consumption.
Remember, money is debt, and debt is just promise. Money has no inherent value (Michael Hudson would literally call you a fascist if you believe in such nonsense lol - a few years back during an online discussion, he suddenly lost it when a random person in the audience asked this innocuous question and got called a fascist by Hudson lol) - it is simply debt/promise from the government (hence “government debt”).
Once you have made this fundamental shift in understanding how money (debt) works, you will understand how powerful the State truly is over Private Capital. And once you have realized how the dollar is a global reserve currency that is not tied to anything (i.e. fiat instead of gold standard during the British Empire), then you will understand how much power the US State has over the rest of the world.
how
Double entry book keeping that sums to zero. You can find a better description, but it's something like this:
Government spends first, telling treasury to increase numbers in appropriate accounts. The treasury "withdraws" money from the Fed, which is also the state, creating a deposit from the left pocket to the right, and from the right pocked to the left. When taxes are payed, the treasury can "return" the money, wiping the spending from circulation. If the Fed sells debt, it can only be payed with money on the same currency that was already spent into existence. Loaning also creates money in the form of extra debt, but that debt can only be payed if it is spent into existence.
That means that the money is not destroyed. Equating destruction of money with taking money from circulation and putting it into what is effectively a government's savings is incredibly silly and non-informative.
The only savings are the paper, if it's physical money. The consolidated government reduces and increases the total value of reserves when needed either way.
Notably, physical money is still in use.
I maintain that the 'money is destroyed' analogy is silly and uninformative. It is much better to just say specifically what you mean - that money is taken out of circulation.
Perhaps. I think the issue is that how money works is counter-intuitive, especially after being used to common nonsense,that simplifications are useful... in a particular context, and they fail in others.
The important point is that money isn't scarce, so all the limitations you're used to exist because of other reasons. I believe that creates an opening for thinking and criticism, even if the American branch prefers thinking you just to fiddle with the numbers to keep the system going.