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.
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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 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.
People have posted it before but the transcription of the Biden rally is the most jokerfying thing I've ever read
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The liberals have reached the starship troopers phase
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/01/24/remarks-by-president-biden-at-a-campaign-event-manassas-va/
Edit: forgot to add source
Whatever horrible things happen to this satanic empire in the near future, it won't be enough.
The worst case climate change scenario is likely to happen to the US with how unprepared they've been compared to other countries that are at least trying the bare minimum. They'll be facing the backlash of their neoliberal imperial greed by that point.
IDK the U.S. has been treating climate crisis as a "threat to national security". Not in that it has been prioritizing actually halting/reversing it, but meaning the state has been preparing to take advantage of it and ensure capitalists maximally profit from it. So while that's obviously going to help accelerate us into irreversible human extinction, in a relative sense it's probably aimed pretty well at maximizing U.S. power as we progress along that death spiral. Arctic shipping lanes, border militarism, refugee exploitation, etc.
You're probably right they`ll try to profit from it, but when Florida goes underwater and millions of people start migrating the relatively mild ideological conflict between libs and chuds/Trumpists of the current 20s will look like an absolute joke in comparison.
Imperialism was never meant to come back home, the modern capitalist world can't accept going back to the early 20th century conflicts anymore. Ultimately I don`t think there will be capitalists sitting drinking wine on Wall Street while millions are fleeing from the south. Civil war? Nah the cages are meant for blacks and Mexicans not white racist Floridians imo.
The capitalists are going to drink wine on Wall Street fire as long as there's capitalism. My guess is that eventually they'll come up with a way of dehumanising internally displaced climate refugees and treat them just as nice as they treat non-white refugees or the homeless. Just because Floridians are chuds doesn't mean that the bougies won't throw them under the bus to keep their shrinking Green Zone safe.
You'd think they would workshop a better counterchant, but I guess they feel like they can fully go mask off. They probably believe that everyone who could turn against them because of Gaza has already done so and the November election results are already locked-in in a way.
Has anyone done the work of checking Biden's event crowds for the same faces at each event? Remember the 2020 primary? Attendance of his events was laughable.
That was before he was the Democratic nominee. As soon as Obama coalesced all the center and rightwing democrats around Biden by getting everyone besides Sanders/Warren to drop out before Super Tuesday Biden became a darling and all the DNC loyalists raised their banners for him
they've been chanting "four more years" every time joe's been interrupted by this stuff for a while now. really gives off nuremburg rally vibes
They cheer anything he says as well, even if it is unintelligible gibberish. Doesn’t matter what he says or does, he wears blu so gotta voot no matter who.
Not getting Nüremberg vibes for the reason that they’re simply following whomever is wearing blue at the moment, it is sports to them.
Anyone have the wh website link to this?
I've added it to original comment
It has the same vibes as the crowd at Goebbels' "total war" speech had but somehow even less dignified.