Image is of the Te Pati Maori (Maori Party) cofounders, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. They have 6 of the 123 seats in the New Zealand parliament.
Officially confirming that the Republican primaries were a gigantic waste of time for everybody involved, Trump has massively beat everybody else in Iowa, and will very obviously be the Republican candidate for 2024. Given the abysmal state of the US economy (for everybody who isn’t in the top 1-10%, which is mainly what national statistics reflect when they aren’t telling blatant falsehoods), it’s more plausible than ever that Trump may indeed once again become President - though I personally refuse to predict one way or another due to how volatile politics and geopolitics currently are. Project 2025 is coming, folks - either as the official Republican governance program, or as what the Democrats will do in 2026 after the midterms, stating that they have no other choice and have to reach across the aisle as they are the Adults In The Room™.
In other news…
Late last year, New Zealand voted in a new and very right-wing government, composed of the center-right National Party, the libertarian ACT Party (ACT stands for the “Association of Consumers and Taxpayers”, good lord), and the fascist New Zealand First party. By what I can tell, this was the well-trodden path of “Vaguely center-left party does neoliberal austerity and causes a recession and workers fucking hated it and voted in a different party out of desperation,” though the flooding and cyclones did add challenges to Chris Hipkins’ short reign after Jacinda Ardern resigned.
It’s worth noting that Hipkins was at least fairly China-friendly, meeting up with Xi Jinping on a five-day visit in the summer. They still do the whole “We have concerns about human rights” thing, but of all the countries of the imperial core, New Zealand is - or, perhaps, was - one of the most amicable. In 2021, China was New Zealand’s single largest trading partner, with a third of exports going to China (more than Australia, the US, Japan, and South Korea combined), and they receive 22% of their imports from China too, more than any other single country.
Christopher Luxon, the new Prime Minister and sentient thumb, has said that he is exploring a closer relationship with AUKUS:
Luxon said New Zealand was interested in becoming involved in AUKUS Pillar 2: a commitment between the three partners to develop and share advanced military capabilities, including artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and hypersonics.
“We’ll work our way through that over the course of next year as we understand it more and think about what the opportunities may be for us,” Luxon said. “AUKUS is a very important element in ensuring we’ve got stability and peace in the region.”
This is not to say that Hipkins wanted nothing to do with AUKUS or Western organizations aimed generally against China - in fact, pre election, “he was open to conversations about joining Pillar II of AUKUS”. But the current government is pushing down on the accelerator pedal.
The left-wing Maori party, Te Pati Maori, has stated that they want New Zealand to remain non-aligned, as joining AUKUS would erode the sovereignty of the country:
As Maori we cannot allow our sovereignty to be determined by others, whether they are in Canberra or Washington. Aotearoa should not act as Pacific spy base in the wars of imperial powers. Joining AUKUS will severely undermine our country’s sovereignty, constitution, and ability to remain nuclear free. There is too much at stake for our government to make a commitment of this magnitude without a democratic process.
In general, the party leaders of Te Pati Maori want New Zealand to be the “Switzerland of the Pacific”, which is perhaps not the greatest analogy given all the problems Switzerland had and has, but we understand the intended meaning of desiring neutrality.
The Country of the Week is New Zealand! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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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Literally how does Alexander Mercouris not get tired of making 1+ hour videos about Ukraine on the daily. I don’t have the attention span to listen to all that, let alone talk about it
I feel the same way about Andrew Korybko also featuted in 🩳📰. Like a dozen screeds per day. Well except Mercouris is a lot more reliable with the takes.
These mfs have a degree in this shit, and it is their job, I sure hope they can show it
Mercouris always is winning cause he couches everything in qualifiers and is very cautious about claiming anything dubious. It’s really impossible to get him on a “gotcha” incorrect take when all he does is sum up the generally accepted truths, qualifies it heavily and delivers it in a long winded fashion
Lol. I had the exact same thought. I finally started watching one of his videos yesterday after however many months of people referencing his analysis on here. After five minutes I looked at the length and was shocked to see he would be continuing for over an hour. Good god. Seemed… informative, but I promptly closed that window. No thank you, Alexander.
Much appreciation for anyone here with the time and attention span to watch these and sum them up for the rest of us. Truly a service.
Seemed… informative, but I promptly closed that window. No thank you, Alexander.
You are weak and not fit to serve in the revolutionary avonguearde. As a real hexbear newshead I watch almost every episode, only breaks allowed when I’m sick or something.
You should start listening daily ASAP, it will also clear all sexual urges from your bourgeuois body as well.
Literally how does Alexander Mercouris not get tired of making 1+ hour videos about Ukraine on the daily.
Here’s a perspective:
Imagine you’re Marxist professor who has been lecturing about Marxism weekly for a small room of audience for over 10 years. It is niche knowledge but you like to teach and share about it, even if it’s just the same 20 people turning up every week.
Then, suddenly, there is a socialist revolution in your country. People started to get interested in Marxism quickly, and your audience grew overnight by 200-300 times. Would you not get excited at the prospect of being able to spread your knowledge to the wider community?
Even if you’re mostly repeating the same materials, every day there’s someone new who hasn’t heard about it before, and every day there is a potential to reach out to someone new. It’s no longer the same group of loyal audience who showed up every week over the years. Now you’re engaging with the public at large.
(I had been listening to the Duran for at least a couple years before the Ukraine war started. They’re fairly good source of geopolitics news, especially back then when it was just 2-3 videos per week. However I do think they are reaching their limits, since I don’t think it is possible to perform a deeper analysis without bringing capitalism into the discussion. Some of their guests are outright low quality, and over the months I really only listened to the Michael Hudson one (who did bring capitalism into the discussion), and I really liked that episode).
Duran definitely isn’t Marxist even though they use decent geopolitical analysis, unless they are playing 5d chess and hiding power levels to reach the chuds. I think it’s more likely they’re foreign propaganda agents paid by Russia, Cypress, Hungary, etc. and just spreading anti-American views (which is pretty cool lmao i’m not saying that’s bad, I think it kinda rules).
Countries have used lesser known people and organizations in intelligence operations, but wouldn’t Russia also want to push the same perspectives to mainstream republican news sources? Russian derangement aside, the republicans love working with Russian businesses and simp Putin so it wouldn’t be too much of a pivot
