i wish political discussions abt china werent so absolutely loaded with propaganda bullshit and tankie discourse. would be so great to see someone talk about their foreign policy on a given country without them audibly sucking every drop of cum from pooh bear or without sounding like it came out the mouth of senator joseph mccarthy

considering that the majority of the conversations i'm thinking of come from americans, you'd think we'd be able to have a reasonable discussion about the growing empire that's following in our footsteps and has already shown interest in colonization both economically and militaristically, but here we are

The West’s attempt to recruit large swaths of the global community to enlist for the sanctions war has decidedly failed, notes ‘The American Conservative’. Outside of the U.S., E.U., and a few close allies (i.e., economic dependents and military protectorates) such as Canada and Japan, practically no other countries have joined in, preempting any economic dogpile sought by the self-proclaimed defenders of democracy. Increasingly, transatlantic policy seems to be having the exact opposite effect.

As of June 9, Pakistan is the latest country to begin accepting large shipments of discounted crude oil from Russia, as much as 100,000 barrels a day. “This is the first ever Russian oil cargo to Pakistan and the beginning of a new relationship between Pakistan and Russian Federation [sic],” announced Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

In the present geopolitical landscape, such a move is perceived to be in direct defiance of Western efforts to obstruct Moscow’s revenues. The motive behind Islamabad’s shifted political and economic calculations is not difficult to decipher. Nor is it exceptional.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that Moscow is now sending out 8.1 million barrels of oil a day, the highest number going back to April 2020. In January 2023, almost half of those shipments were destined for China and India, which have respectively increased as a proportion of Russia’s oil exports from 21 percent to 29 percent and 1 percent to 20 percent since January 2022.

Chinese oil imports alone jumped in May to the third highest level ever recorded. Beijing also recently issued a crude oil import quota of a whopping 62.28 million tons of allotments. This makes the total import quota amount issued by Chinese leadership 20 percent higher than that of the same time last year. At the same time, Beijing’s natural gas purchases continue to push upward, increasing 3.3 percent year-on-year in Quarter 1, with a 10.3 percent year-on-year increase in April of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Just as important, if not more so, as the massive shifts in quantity and direction of the energy trade, however, are the size and scope of the joint initiatives—usually under the leadership of Moscow and Beijing — that continue to proliferate in opposition to Western-led international organizations.

The recent St. Petersburg International Economic Forum saw representatives of various economic groupings and cooperation organizations outside the Atlantic orbit meet to discuss greater interconnectivity, development collaboration, transportation corridors, as well as investment options for funding various cross border initiatives.

One of these groups is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which continues to focus on greater cooperation and integration with ASEAN nations. This year’s meeting included a notable presentation on the creation of a SCO investment bank to provide the capital necessary to facilitate such collaborative projects.

The BRICS organization featured prominently at the St. Petersburg forum as well. It also includes an important investment bank — the New Development Bank — that provides ready access to liquidity for its members, funds infrastructure projects, and facilitates increased industrial manufacturing. BRICS continues to grow in both clout and size.

A number of new countries applied for membership last year, including Iran and Argentina. 2023 has also seen membership bids from nineteen additional nations before an upcoming summit in Johannesburg this August. One of the most recent applications came from Egypt on June 14. Potential bids from important players in the energy market such as Venezuela (with direct support from Brazil’s President Lula) and the United Arab Emirates are also being discussed.

UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan traveled directly to the St. Petersburg forum in order to meet with Putin on June 16, where the two discussed their desire to build a closer relationship between the countries.

Gulf neighbor — and traditional U.S. ally — Saudi Arabia has to some degree also hedged its geopolitical bets. After refusing Biden’s phone calls in March of 2022 and denying his request to increase oil production to help lower international prices, Riyadh’s friendship with Washington has somewhat soured as of late. (Saudi Arabia also joined the SCO in March 2023, and is a potential candidate for BRICS membership.) In another move that will likely meet with the displeasure of its Western allies, Saudi Arabia additionally decided to move forward with further production cuts of 1 million barrels per day beginning in July.

Consider that, as discussed earlier, China alone has increased its trade with Russia by about 40 percent, and is set to reach a record $200 billion this year. Perhaps most importantly though, more than 70 percent of that trade has been settled in either yuan or the ruble, with the Russian central bank currently holding 40 percent of its reserves in yuan.

Pakistan has reportedly also paid for its new shipments of Moscow’s crude with Chinese yuan. Earlier in 2022, Saudi Arabia suggested the possibility of denominating its oil transactions with Beijing in the currency.

The present geopolitical system with all of its accompanying features is only made possible by the dollar reigning supreme as the world’s reserve currency. Champions of the present order faithfully hold that this system will be maintained indefinitely, guaranteed on the back of U.S. military might and Western economic dominance.

But the international environment is beginning to shift, as much due to the burgeoning economic alliances outside the confines of Western-backed international agencies as because of the policy decisions of those latter agencies and their U.S. patron. No recent move has acted as a greater accelerant to this shift than Washington’s decision to freeze and then seize the foreign currency reserves of the Russian Federation at the outset of the Ukraine war.

The weaponization of financial reserves has increased distrust in the present system to new heights. The end of dollar dominance may not be nigh, but it is a much more likely possibility than many in the West care to admit.

Russia has demonstrated that having an economy based on commodities and heavy industrial production matters more in today’s international environment than a narrow set of economic indicators such as annual GDP growth or per capita income. Should dollar dominance ever come to an end, this fact will be made painfully clear.

The United States and other Western countries have adopted an increasingly ideological perspective regarding the future course of economic development. Leaders choose to accept only information that aligns with their dogmatic beliefs.

A failure to remove its ideological blinders and comprehend political and economic conditions as they objectively exist will spell disaster for the Western bloc.

The Dollar Is In DANGER! | Yellen Admits The Obvious, U.S. Hegemony At Risk

So Janet Yellen just had an interview With CNN and she finally admits the Obvious that the sanctions have Backfired and I think we kind of knew This for months now but it's really Telling that the head of the U.S Treasury can no longer hide the truth And let's travel back to early 2022 when Yellen told the world the aim of the Russian sanctions not the sanctions were Engineered to devastate the…

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the fact that I've been buying sodas from the same gas station all my life and the price has more than doubled since I was a kid (and I'm only 23!!!) should tell you more than enough about the state of capitalism today

You Should run for political office. You actually give a shit and want to make a difference in people's lives.

like srsly there's so much mass suffering and I think a lot of ppl are just putting on a brave face to endure this genocidal economic violence coming from the ruling class. it's so so saddening

"you hate capitalism because you're jealous of rich people" well I wouldn't mind having an in-ground pool but there's also other reasons to hate capitalism such as the fact that owning a chocolate company that doesn't use fucking child slavery earns you praise because it's so uncommon, or the fact that it by design results in repeat economic collapses when the average consumer can't afford to stimulate the economy, or the fact that our future (and current) existence on planet earth is full of detrimental environmental disasters because pursuing fossil fuels was more profitable in the short-term, or the fact that entire wars are started specifically to make money, or...yeah the list goes on

via @wizard_bisan1

21 January 2024

Hi everyone, it’s Bisan from Gaza, I am still alive Alhamdullah.. it’s been 107 days of genocide, 15 weeks, 2568 hours of killing us, taking over our homes and lands in Gaza Strip, and forcing us to choose between leaving or death.. and sometimes we can’t even choose.. the Israeli air strikes simply kill us without any warnings. Now, we are without any connection, neither the internet nor the cellular, we can’t reach each other’s inside Gaza, we don’t know if our families and friends are alive or not, wounded or not.. still in their places or not! We take hours of walking and searching to reach someone, while moving became very risky! We can’t reach to you as well! The footage, information and news from Gaza are not reaching you as before because the Israeli army intentionally destroyers the signal towers and the servers, even using the E-SIM requires being in a high place which is very risky!. I borrowed this vest to upload this post! I am not scared of death, but of being displaced, scared of losing my family or friends, scared of being wounded and can’t have my treatment because the health system is collapsed in Gaza, and to die in pain! I am not scared of the destruction.. I lost my work place.. my home and my family work place and source of income, I am terrified of being killed by an occupier, and to be forgotten, one oppressed Bisan of a whole occupied people. The strongest governments and weapons manufacturers are supporting this genocide against my people, and you are our only hope! STRIKE globally and call for a ceasefire! Strike, protest, stop the economic movements and make pressure on your countries to stand against this and stop it, if ISRAhell don’t find the financial and weapons support, or governments to hide their crimes they will be forced to stop the genocide! Go to the streets, protest and Globally strike for a week, (21-28) January! YALLA Brave and free people of the world, CEASEFIRE NOW!

Gee i wonder what could be the reason

Inadvertent Self-harm

— Liu Rui | January 21, 2024

Illustration: Liu Rui/Global Times

American Pundits Predicting China’s Economic Collapse Doomed To Fail

— Wen Sheng | January 21, 2024

Illustration: Chen Xia/Global Times

After the National Bureau of Statistics recently reported major economic indicators, including yearly GDP growth, industrial output, consumer and factory prices, domestic retail and import and export volume, housing investment and demographic changes for 2023, some Western media pundits seem to be delving into narratives to prove that China's economy is in dire straits, "stumbling" or even "collapsing."

The New York Times published an essay on Thursday entitled "China's Economy Is in Serious Trouble", authored by American economist Paul Krugman. In the article, he opined that Chinese economy "seems to be stumbling," with the announced official data showing that "China is experiencing Japan-style deflation," and "there's reason to believe that China is entering an era of stagnation and disappointment."

It is not the first time Krugman has decried the Chinese economy. In last August, he penned another opinion piece under the sensational headline "How Scary is China's Crisis?" in which he claimed that China "seems to be teetering on the edge of a crisis that looks a lot like what the rest of the world went through in 2008," pointing to the last global financial crisis triggered by the US' chaotic subprime debacle.

But the economic crisis that Western pundits like Krugman wrote or hoped for isn't happening in China at all. They have been spinning a story on a hypothetical crisis to engulf and tear down the world's emerging economic giant, and others are gloating over it. They will be disappointed again.

Actually, the strength of China's unique social system and the resilience of the Chinese economy, tested by the 1997 and 2008 financial crises and other events like the Biden administration's repulsive trade and technology war, should not be underestimated and denigrated by pundits. By all metrics, it is truly a great feat in human history to build a country as large as China from scratch in 1980 to its present size of nearly $18 trillion, or more in PPP (purchasing power parity) terms.

Official statistics revealed that the Chinese economy expanded by 5.2 percent in 2023 from the previous year to reach more than $17.5 trillion, as it rebounded from three years of anti-coronavirus control measures. Compared to merely 3.0 percent rise in 2022, the 5.2-percent growth last year is significant and impressive, obviously being one of the highest growths reported by the world's major economies.

As the single biggest engine of global economic growth, all of China's neighbors and trade partners, including those in Latin America, Africa and Europe, have become aware of the business opportunities created by China. With their factories, ranches and ports increasingly intertwined with China's, these partner economies are rapidly thriving. So it can be presumed that one of the untold reasons leading Western pundits to criticize China and its economy is to muddy the waters and plant seeds of doubt among China's major trade and economic partners.

US politicians have attempted to suppress China and hinder its growth by imposing high tariffs, sanctions, and restrictions on tech exports. They have also made attempts at "decoupling," which have been witnessed by the whole world in the past few years. However, those efforts have been unsuccessful. Now, pundits in the US media and academic circles want to support their politicians to go even harder at China, in their desperate hope to frighten away China's business partners and international investors interested in buying Chinese yuan-denominated assets and diversifying their investment portfolios to reduce their holdings of US dollar assets.

In his essay "How Scary is China's Crisis?" Krugman stated that China's government debts were "unsustainable," facing the "Minsky Moment" - meaning an impending implosion of the fiscal crisis. Many months have passed, yet the world hasn't seen a debt crisis in China.

Compared with the US government which added up to $7 trillion to its federal debts since the COVID pandemic to a total of more than $34 trillion, and it is running more than $1 trillion debt each year, China certainly is in a better fiscal shape. China has more than $3.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserve and has a very positive current account balance. Also, Chinese households' bank savings rate is much higher than their American counterparts. Correspondingly, China has more tools and means to accelerate economic stimulus over coming years to ramp up fiscal spending and cut savings rate to ramp up investment and inspire domestic consumption.

Chinese economists believe that the country has more room to maneuver to support government spending on a wide variety of projects and services, including rural infrastructure, urban utilities and amenities, technology innovations, expansion of manufacturing plants as well as improving its sprawling social safety net, including pension coverage for the retired people and better medical care for all newborns and other citizens.

Meanwhile, Chinese companies are rapidly catching up in research and development for new technologies. For example, the country is leading the world in producing clean renewable energies and exporting batteries, electric cars and other higher value-added products. Although China's urban housing sector is undergoing a correction after more than two decades of heated growth, the slowdown could be offset or mitigated by the boom in auto production and new-energy transformation.

As for the allegation that China "is entering an era of stagnation" similar to Japan's "Lost Two Decades," it is a preposterous assumption or Western pundits' wishful thinking about the Chinese economy. Any economist won't consider an economy with a trajectory of more than 5-percent annualized expansion to be falling into "stagnation." China's policymakers have the ability to issue more government bonds by raising the budget deficit ratio to 3.8 or 4 percent of GDP in 2024, which is still dwarfed by the US' 6.3 percent federal budget deficit ratio in 2023, to ratchet up economic activity and consumer prices. The policymakers' only concern is they don't want to leave a heavier burden on future generations.

When all of these factors are considered, there is no reason to be alarmed about China's growth. In comparison to the US, where the cost of living from housing rent to groceries to medication remains high, coupled with political infighting and dysfunction, China has a much more nimble decision-making system and can turn things around efficiently. American pundits, driven by ideology, have been predicting an imminent collapse of the Chinese economy since early this century, but so far, they haven't succeeded.

— The Author is an Editor with the Global Times.

Chinese Trade Lifeline Rescues Argentina Amid Deepening Currency Collapse

Amid Argentina’s deepening currency collapse, a lifeline emerges in the form of Chinese trade. The resilience of this trade partnership has played a crucial role in rescuing the South American nation from the grips of economic turmoil. With their vast resources and unwavering support, China has stepped in as Argentina’s savior, providing much-needed stability amidst the chaos. This blog post…

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we found a town with lower priced homes for the area ($300k-$500k range) and a still decent school system and just overall looks like a nice place to live

aaannnnddd in the last few weeks a bunch of developers have moved in and torn down several small homes and are advertising $850k-ish monstrosities once construction is complete and it's looking like they're planning to essentially take over the entire town

we need to burn this system to the ground RIGHT now i swear to fucking god

Berlin announced on 23 April that it will resume cooperation with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza. Germany’s move came after an independent investigation headed by former French diplomat Catherine Colonna that found “neutrality-related issues” in implementing UNRWA’s procedures to “ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles of neutrality.” Colonna’s report made note that Israel provided no proof of whether UNRWA staff were involved with the Palestinian resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October. “The German government has dealt intensively with the allegations made by Israel against UNRWA and has been in close contact with the Israeli government, the United Nations, and other international donors,” a joint statement by the German Foreign Office and the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development read. The former French diplomat’s investigation proposed reforms to UNRWA to increase the neutrality of staff and behavior, education, and governance, including methods to achieve these goals through engagement with donors. Germany pushed UNRWA to implement these recommendations, strengthen its internal audit functions, and improve the external surveillance of project management. “In support of these reforms, the German government will soon continue its cooperation with UNRWA in Gaza, as Australia, Canada, Sweden, and Japan, among others, have already done so,” the joint statement continued. Germany gave the UN agency over $200 million in 2023 and is the organization’s second-largest donor after the US. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said the attacks on the agency “have nothing to do with neutrality issues but in reality, they are motivated by the objective to strip the Palestinians from the refugee status.”

UBS takeover Credit Suisse  for $3.25 billion.

Switzerland’s biggest bank, UBS, has agreed to acquire Credit Suisse in an emergency rescue deal for $3.25 billion to curb the impact of financial market instability. It said the rescue would “secure financial stability and protect the Swiss economy". READ MORE

How do you not realize your Marxist ideology is false when it says shit like a trans black woman small business owner is oppressing her cis white man employees?

I don't think you're, like, genuinely asking, or are curious, here, but I'll answer anyways, for everyone else who might be confused on issues like this: it's intersectionality.

You could make this argument about essentialy any axis of oppression - 'how do you not realise your LGBT ideology is false when it says shit like a cishet black person is oppressing their white trans gay employees', or, conversely, 'how do you not realise your racial ideology is false when it says shit like a white trans gay person is oppressing their cishet black employees'.

The point here isn't to have a rock-paper-scissors, Pokémon type-effectiveness ranking of which axes of oppression 'outrank' which others, it's to understand that each axis of oppression is an entirely distinct social system that overlaps with the other. A black business owner suffers from the social system of antiblackness, and benefits from the social system of capitalism. The specific overlap of their blackness and their class character also gives them an entirely unique character with regards to their segment of society. If they are USAmerican, for example, in their specific case the state and progress of the national liberation movement in the US means that they make up the rear of the revolutionary movement, despite being themselves petit-bourgeois. These systems of oppression are qualitatively different, and cannot be simply, quantitatively, summed up against each other.

With this in mind, it should be understood that the Marxist understanding of class as the principal contradiction does not mean that class is the most important, overruling factor, and that other axes should be ignored. Class is considered the principal contradiction because it is the contradiction that all other axes of oppression, genuine in their own rights, grew out of. Antiblackness was created by the slave trade (not vice-versa), and the slave trade was created by the growing European bourgeoisie's need to extract surplus-value, in the collapse of the Feudal economy. In the example you gave, the petit-bourgeois business owner exploits the labour of her workers, and is supported in doing so by an entire legal, political, and philosophical system based on the expropriation of the proletariat. She is also herself repressed and exploited on the basis of race, gender, and transness. These do not cancel each other out. However, given the ultimate source of racial, patriarchal, and cissexist oppress is political-economic class, her ability to genuinely fight for her interests in those fields will be hamstrung by her class position - just as her ability to attain and maintain that class position in the first place is itself hamstrung by her oppression in other fields.

Ultimately, there are no simple rules that society can be flattened down by. Each and every instance and scenario must be investigated in its own right. The idea that people are driven to Marxism because it provides an easy or simplified way of looking at the world is (perhaps unfortunately!) wrong, it actually means a lot more work!

This is all I heard last night from the sotu

I think people forget that the Nazis never said they were the bad guys. If someone says, hey, I’m evil! You don’t let them take over your country. They presented themselves as scientific, not hateful. By their own account, they were progressives, and the superiority of White Europe over the other races was a proven and immutable fact. They had scientists and archaeologists and historians to prove it. They didn’t tell people they wanted to kill the Jews because they were hateful. They manufactured evidence to frame us for very real tragedies, and they had methodological research to prove that we were genetically predisposed to misconduct. Wouldn’t you believe that?

Hollywood has spent the last 80 years portraying the Nazis as an obvious and intimidating evil. That’s a good thing in some ways, because we want general audiences to recognize that they were evil. But we also want them to be able to recognize how and why they came to power. Not by self-describing themselves as an evil empire, but by convincing people that they were the good guys and the saviors. They hosted the Olympics. Several European countries capitulated and volunteered themselves to the Empire. There were American and British Fascist Parties. They had broad public support. Hollywood never shows that part, so general audiences never learn to recognize the actual signs of antisemitism.

People today think they can’t possibly be antisemitic, because they’re leftist! They abhor bigotry! They could never comprehend Nazi ideology coming from the mouth of a bisexual college student wearing a graphic tee and jeans. How could they? The only depiction of antisemites they’ve ever seen have been gaunt, pale, middle-aged men in black leather trench coats with skulls on their caps.

If the Nazis time-travelled from the 1930s and wanted to take power now, they’d change their original tactics, but not by much. They would target countries suffering from an identity crisis and an economic collapse. They would portray themselves as the pinnacle of what that society considers progressive. Back then, it was race science. These days it’s performative wokeness. Once they’d garnered enough respect and reputation, they’d begin manufacturing propaganda and lies to manipulate people’s anger and fears at a single target— Jews.

If the Nazis made an actual return, they wouldn’t look like neo-Nazis. They wouldn’t be nearly as obvious about their hatred. Their evil wouldn’t give them yellow eyes, and no suspenseful music would play when they walked in the room. They’d be friendly. They’d look like you. They would learn what things your community fears and what things you already hate. They would lie and fabricate evidence to connect the rich elites and the imperialists you revile to a single source of unequivocal Jewish evil. It wouldn’t be hard— they already have two-thousand years of institutional antisemitism they can rely on to paint their picture.

If you’re curious why antisemitism today is coming from grassroots organizations, young, liberal college campuses, suburban neighborhoods with pride flags and All Are Welcome Here signs? That’s why. It’s because, as a global society, we’ve forgotten that the world didn’t used to see the Nazis as bad guys. And what is forgotten about history is doomed to be repeated.