Lose what?

Thanks to Trump, they have exactly one opportunity to court the Reaganites and the Cheneys (and soon the Bushes). The establishment Republicans. This is what the Democrats have been dreaming for decades, and Trump pissing off all these factions have made it possible for the Democrats to seize upon this moment.

Might they be losing voters, yes, but who cares? The donor class is the only class that matters.

Because of Citizens United, prioritizing the donor class means endless funding for future campaigns, while the Republican Party is being relegated to a MAGA culture war party that will soon succumb to its own fracture from internal divisions.

Today, Kazan has unprecedented security measures. Mobile Internet is limited. Two blocks from the city hall (a large palace where the BRICS summit and the meeting of heads of state are taking place) there is no Internet at all. On the approaches to the center of Kazan there are heavy trucks ready to block the streets. Police at every intersection. And the capital’s police in cars of the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs of Moscow. On some streets there is a person in uniform every hundred meters. It was surprising that a huge temporary tent with a large corridor leading to the main entrance to the building was erected near the city hall. The limousine drives into the tent, from there the passengers leave along the corridor to the grand staircase. That is, the security guards did it in such a way as to exclude as much as possible the open sky for the high-ranking guests. At the same time, the city, with the exception of a closed square and some central streets, is still free for walking. But the center of Kazan is empty. They say that all the universities and schools have been sent on vacation. By the way, kicksharing and carsharing are disabled.

“‘I gotta say, boss, that was some real gangster shit back there.’ I did feel pretty good. On the biggest of stages, on an issue that mattered and with the clock ticking, I’d pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Granted, the press gave the interim agreement mixed reviews, but given the chaos of the conference and the obstinacy of the Chinese, I still saw it as a win.”

lmao Obama and his vanity

Maybe it’s fate, but it is always going to be a shitshow at the BRICS summit even though I am still hoping to see some positive vibes from it.

Lula has been pushing for a BRICS currency since 2023, which directly threatens the internationalization of yuan. (Personally, I am getting around to the fact that yuan is the only currency capable of defeating the dollar, so a BRICS currency is a no go.) But China is also not so interested in weaponizing the yuan, and has no problem with keeping the dollar strong. So, Brazil and China are likely going to be clashing on this issue, which is not a good look when you have two major players of the bloc that don’t share the same commitment.

The Russians, to their credit, have just put out a new BRICS financial mechanism proposal that correctly identified gold, crypto or a shared basket currency (which have been floated around) as not useful toward de-dollarization. I was actually worried they would propose something like the euro, which is possibly one of the worst designed currencies in modern history. So, at least the Russians aren’t as stupid as the Europeans. I’ll give them that.

At the same time, this also means that there is no alternative that can challenge the dollar (other than yuan, which will depend on the willingness of China to do so, and the answer is very likely a no). The Russian plan comprises of many good ideas that can help pushing a couple steps forward toward building a new financial ecosystem for BRICS countries but they are also realistic about it being very very far from actually de-dollarize, which is imperative toward ending US financial imperialism.

In short, small steps forward (if China is on board with the plan) but nothing major seems to be going. At the same time, things like this should have started two years ago when the Fed rate was still high and countries were seriously looking for an alternative to the dollar. This proposal comes almost a bit too late when the US has just cut the interest rate last month, signaling a flooding of dollars back to the Global South again. If you’re a Global South country in desperate need of dollars to survive the next fiscal year, would you take the dollars or place your entire faith on a BRICS proposal that doesn’t even have an established infrastructure yet?

In any case, going to be interesting to see what is being cooked up at the BRICS summit.

Yeah if Putin and Merkel have gotten their way, there wouldn’t be a communism button to push. Now, maybe there’s a 5% chance.

I think the US strategy is to call everyone’s bluff about nukes. No country would be willing to use their nukes as first strike (maybe apart from Israel and the US itself) so as long as countries are backing down from doing so, the US gets to keep bullying the others.

And we have to remember that the MAD is not a proven deterrence. It just hasn’t failed, yet.

It would be the US that is getting kicked out of NATO.

We weren’t in the US but one of the Western countries. Not sure how the F visas work for students in the US though.

I met a Shanghai girl who worked part-time in McDonalds while studying overseas years ago. I did not know how rich her family was until I saw her Weibo personal album. A lot of Chinese students who went overseas already came from well off families, but this easily places her at the top 1%. So, some people like this do exist, but very rare.

See my other comment. There have been at least 5 major attempts at rebellion.

The Europeans aren’t stupid. They want to be out of the US sphere as well. Russia is perfect replacement for the US here, and Putin knew exactly what Europe needs and had lobbied for Russia joining the EU since the 2000s.

Russia has everything that the US can provide but cheaper.

Raw materials for European industries? Check.

Military equipments and technology? Check.

An educated workforce with a strong technical and scientific background? Check.

Geographical proximity and a bridge between the EU and China? Check.

This is why Europe needs to be defeated.

The last 2.5 years of Fed rate hike had pretty much exhausted the capital flight from Europe and the Global South back to the US. This is why you see countries like Egypt, Sri Lanka, Pakistan went into famine and energy shortage because they had run out of dollars. This is also why there are two dozen African countries now on the verge of default. There are no more excess dollars from the Global South - this is why Europe can only turn to the US.

NATO Europe has been subservient to the US since the end of WW2.

This is not true though. There have been numerous major attempts at rebellion from the Europeans and every time they had to be put in their place.

I will skip over WWI but it is worth noting that the US plan to destroy Europe was already in play since the 1910s, when the US demanded the Allies to repay their war debt, which directly led to WWII as the European powers squeezed the defeated Germany to pay reparations so they can in turn pay back their debt owed to the American creditors, and this led to the rise of Nazi Germany and WWII.

Post-WWII, the limits of Bretton Woods were soon felt by Europe, and by the late 1960s, the US had printed so much dollars in Vietnam that the French Indochina banks simply did not know what to do with those dollars. This resulted in the French President Pompidou demanding that the US pay them in gold (as per Bretton Woods agreement) rather than paper dollars, and led to Nixon abruptly abandoning the Bretton Woods. The French got nothing in the end. This was their first punishment.

The second attempt occurred in the 1990s, following the dissolution of the USSR. Seizing on the non-financialized Soviet industrial assets, the European capitalists were able to convert them into a vast amount of finance capital that enabled the creation of European Union (formerly EEC) in 1993 and the currency euro that was formalized by 1999. This was also a major attempt at directly challenging the hegemony of the US dollar. A prominent clause in the Maastricht Criteria is that EU member state has to stay within 3% of GDP deficit spending. In response, the Balkans were immediately destabilized and forced the EU countries to militarize and overspend their budget. As a result, Euro plunged from ~1.2 EUR/USD to 0.85 EUR/USD by 2000. This was Europe’s second punishment.

The third attempt happened in the 2000s when Europe realized that they needed to seek energy sovereignty to improve its chances of decoupling. They found in Saddam the desire of Iraq to sell their oil in euro instead of the dollar. This also involved the Chevron “bribery” case during which they “illegally paid” Iraq with the oil purchased from 2001-2002 under the UN “oil-for-food” program. The result was that Iraq was immediately invaded in 2003, ending this nonsense that the Europeans started. Chevron was also subsequently fined in 2008 for its illegal kickbacks made to Iraq. This was the third punishment.

Concurrently, apart from Iraq, Europe also sought a long term and steady energy supply from Russia. This led to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004-2005, which eventually led to the construction of Nord Stream pipeline that flows directly from Russia to Germany, bypassing Ukraine. Their chances came during the 2009 financial crisis, which dealt a serious blow to the US finance capital. With Nord Stream I coming online in 2011, the EU was able to reinvigorate its manufacturing sector (mostly high tech industrial products and vehicle exports). This needed to be disciplined - and so the Maidan Revolution happened in 2013, and led to the Ukrainian Civil War in 2014-2015. This was the fourth punishment.

The fifth and final punishment is now. Nord Stream 2 finished its construction in 2021, and was met with various regulatory red tapes that perpetually delayed its commission. At the same time, Russia and China signed a 30-year natural gas supply contract to be paid in euro. This needs to be immediately disciplined - and so the Russian invasion of Ukraine began and the sanctions against Russia also cut off their energy supply to Europe. When Europe was about to fold in the summer of 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines were bombed, which completely broke any possible alternative energy source for Europe.

And with the loss of energy sovereignty, this permanently puts an end to the sovereignty of the EU.

The vassalization of Europe is now complete. The Ukraine war has succeeded in turning Europe away from China as an export market, and towards the US. In other words, Europe now depends on the US for security, energy and its consumer market.

This is to be expected because Europe now needs to earn dollars to pay for its energy bill, and to earn dollars you gotta sell stuff to Americans. America gets free stuff from a dependent Europe simply by starting a war between Ukraine and Russia.

The exhibition “Lenin” has opened in the State Historical Museum. It will last almost a year!

1200 rub per ticket for adult citizens of the Russian Federation and EAEU countries; 2600 rub for adult citizens of all other countries.

Hexbear group tour when?

At the meeting of the Russian President with the BRICS media, the first question was from a representative of the Chinese CGTN, the second question was given to the Arab colleagues: “Does Russia feel like a junior partner of China in what is happening (in the confrontation) between China and the US?”

Putin: "Russia and China listen to each other, for 5-7 years I have spoken many times about “improving the balance” in trade - so that there would be more Russian industrial products in China. We hear each other, we straighten everything out, we are succeeding.

We do not interfere in the relations between China and the US.

The US is 15 years late, they will not be able to slow down the development of China, the same as telling the sun - don’t rise.

NATO is dragging the Europeans into Asia. They were asked if they want to spoil relations with China? They are being dragged by a lasso like little dogs.

In relations with China, there are no seniors or juniors.

China is our strategic partner and ally.”

Looking forward to BRICS summit next week.

The whole point is to show how ridiculous the Chinese libs are, including the thought that Russia is going to lose in Ukraine.

If you have been following closely the events for the past 2-3 years, you cannot not notice that the recent policies are all lib brained in stark contrast to the purge of the liberals back in 2022-early 2023 when China seemed to want to take on a global leadership role in establishing an alternative bloc to US imperialism. Now China seems content to keep the dollar dominant as long as they don’t have to suffer for it (can’t say the same for the rest of the world though, that’s the point).

We’re now approaching the end of 2024 and it’s clear to me that the libs are back in charge. I honestly think that ending Zero Covid in early 2023 marked the first victory turn for the liberal faction and many things that followed since then have their fingerprints all over the place.

I’m simply waking up earlier than the others here, but soon enough everyone will have to wake up from the same dream.

There were serious discussions about it back in the summer of 2022. Russia first cancelled $21 billion of Africa’s debt in August 2022, then China followed suit with forgiving 23 loans for 17 African countries. I genuinely believed that we were on the right track toward de-dollarization, or at least China seemed to finally be willing to take on the leadership role.

We haven’t seen anything since.

Just want to show how out of touch these Chinese libs are (and easy to post since it’s in English so I don’t have to bother with translating). These people still think Russia will lose in Ukraine in the year 2024 lol.

As I have emphasized above, this are the kind of people we’re dealing with. The change in rhetoric and policy over the last year indicates that Xi’s purge of the liberals has most likely failed, and they’re back running the show now.

Yes, but it’s not going to happen. You have to learn to read the intentions of the US imperialist strategy here.

Just like how a lot of people mistook Biden’s tariffs on Chinese EVs and solar panels as indication of US wanting to protect its own industries and compete with China on green technology, when the actual intention was to scare the Chinese libs into opening up their capital markets. This is already happening, and the Chinese libs fell for it hook, line and sinker. The US empire is never going to re-industrialize, it’s dominance and exploitation on the Global South until the end.

Similarly, there is no way that the US can defeat China or Russia in a conventional war. This is why they are sending in outdated equipments to Ukraine for them to be blown up. None of that was a serious attempt at fighting Russia, but it was good for the US economy because of how GDP is calculated (which affects the strength of its currency) and how capital can flow into the defense industry every time a piece of military equipment is blown up.

The battle line between US and China is going to be fought on the financial front, and if the US cannot win this fight, escalates into a hot war. That can only mean a nuclear war. This is the only shot the US can temporarily get out of its predicament before crumbling under the weights of its own contradictions.

Shanghai (also the wealthiest city in China by GDP) is truly one of its kind.

They wanted to emulate “Western style lockdown” and screwed up the Zero Covid strategy so bad that after 2 years of success (only 2 (two) Covid deaths in China in 2021, and practically maskless), Omicron eventually broke through and spread across the entire country. China had to give up the Zero Covid policy by early 2023.

And don’t tell me that the city population is simply too dense, Omicron is too contagious and cannot be contained. Shenzhen (18 million people) and Shanghai (25 million people) both went into lockdowns at nearly the same time in January 2022, and yet Shenzhen somehow managed to do its job of containing the virus spread within a few weeks while Shanghai failed miserably.

Fun fact: The Chicago boys were specifically invited to turn Shanghai into China’s financial center. It is the most neoliberal of all places in China.

Another fun fact: perhaps the most famous of China’s economic policy advisors, Justin Lin Yifu, was the first Chinese PhD student to graduate from the Chicago school of economics, the protege of Theodore Schultz (co-founder of Chicago school with Milton Friedman). Many of today’s China’s economic policies have been shaped under his school of New Structural Economics.

So you shouldn’t be surprised at all that these libs practically worship neoliberalism. The recent monetary easing plan to open up the financial sector to foreign capital to “save” the stock and property markets has their fingerprints all over it.