"What the fuck happened to you, man? Shit, your ass used to be beautiful! Now you only post gringe."

Ukraine ‘heading for partial ceasefire talks’ before Kursk offensive

In a major shift earlier in August, both sides had agreed to send delegations to the Qatari capital Doha for indirect talks to halt attacks on energy infrastructure, The Washington Post reported. However, the Russian side postponed the meeting after Ukraine’s troops stormed into its territory on Aug 6. Moscow’s delegation described it as an “escalation”, an unnamed diplomat said.

Russia is yet to call off the negotiation entirely and Ukraine’s presidential office said that the Doha summit would still take place on Aug 22 via video link. However, a spokesman for Russia’s foreign ministry denied the claims on Sunday afternoon, stating that the talks could not be disrupted as they were not set to take place in the first place.

It starts making sense. Maybe someone on the NATO/Ukraine side got worried that ceasefire talks might actually lead to ceasefire.

I'm aware and I support the people in the developing nations that go against these types of plans.

But the fact remains that EVs are the future. Whether with lithium batteries or not, whether we should focus more on smaller vehicles (E Scooters etc.) and E Buses for local transit, some type of EV technology is gonna be required. It's still a relatively new technology. There are a lot of things that need optimization.

The "Gardeners" are trying to do what they always done for the last 300+ years. Build a fortune on the back of poorer nations. That doesn't mean the technology itself is to blame.

I said they will try, I didn't say they will succeed. I explicitly said they will almost certainty fail. People in here I believe sometimes go overboard with the "US doesn't have industrial/technological capacity etc.".

Yes they are a shadow of the US of the 30s, 40s and 50s but they still probably have the most advance R&D sector. They might get lucky with something.

The most probable outcome is that they will try and they will fail and they will end up trying to "kill the neighbor's mule" meaning more sanctions to Chinese technology and like you said adopting a more expensive version of it.

I don't necessarily disagree with most of what you wrote but I do believe West^TM elites genuinely thought they could monopolize the green industry. They could stifle the development of the South and make a killing selling them their tech at the same time just like I said. There is no reason to give up a potential energy monopoly if you know you are capable of being the leader in it. But now they are realizing they can't. Germany 10 years ago was the leader in solar, now their solar industry is pathetic.

The point I was trying to make with my post was not that Burgerland is gonna attack China's EV and Solar industry. It goes without saying that they would do that (and are already doing it). The point is that they are starting attacking the technologies themselves. They are shifting the narrative. And I explain the directions this could take.

PS: Burgerland doesn't have/want industry since Warsaw Pact ended is an exaggeration. They have and they want industry where they feel they have a comparable advantage and they could do without human labour. Human labour means they have to do the fordist thing again, you know building infrastructure, educate worker, keep them healthy...that ain't happening.

Cornel West is the same. You sometimes hear him talk and you think "what a wonderful human being" and then he says something that makes you want to poke your eyes out...

I'll stick to Lenin for inspiration, thank you very much.

Site needs an emoji/gif of DBZ scouter detecting nazi levels and then blows up.

I have started noticing, in the last year or so, a reversal in West^TM in regard to green energy rhetoric (EV and solar in particular) and is becoming worse and worse as time goes by.

This is not the usual global warming denial. In fact you rarely see outright denialist any more (what are they gonna argue about any more anyway, since it is plainly obvious what is happening in the world...).

What you do see from MSM, to YT channels, to everything, is an effort to downplay or even dismiss the potential positive impact EV and solar technology could have and already has in regard to global warming and our way of life in general.

It's quite obvious that this is a result of what is happening in China.

I believe Burgeristan and their puppets thought (10+ years ago) that they would become world leaders in EV, solar and other green technologies.

They thought they could monopolize the industry and sell it to the rest of the world as the only possible solution.

If you didn't subscribe to their, ridiculously overpriced, Greenflix service you would be deemed a barbarian third world nation that leads humanity to catastrophy (which of course we, the West, had nothing to do with...) and you would have many sanctions imposed on you.

So for a time almost everyone went along with green technology in West^TM*.

Green roofs, green roads, green new deals, you name it.=

There was only one problem.

Burgeristan is run by complete idiots.

They thought that we are in the 30s and 40s where US still had semi-competent captains of industry that could compete with the rest of the world or that they had a political elite that was actually capable of multi-year planning and wasn't completely subservient to the economic elite.

Instead what they got was the Cybertruck and Solar Freaking Roadways.

So what now?

I believe the rhetoric against EVs and Solar is gonna get much worse for starters. The "China is spying on you don't buy from them" is not gonna fly for long.

What we are gonna see more and more is a focus on the technologies themselves. "These technologies are not viable/profitable" is what you are gonna hear.

The next step will probably be Burgerland developing their own version of "green technology". Maybe focus on hydrogen, "clean coal", maybe something else who knows**. They will probably give it some asinine name like "Green Freedom" or something...

Then they will try to create a new Edison vs. Tesla, Direct vs Alternative Current situation and will use their military/economic influence to force countries to adopt their inferior technology.

They will fail of course because again they are run by complete idiots (and I'm not even taking politicians into account, they have no say in this anyway...) but what else are they gonna do at this point. They can no longer compete with China. This is their only play.

So when that finally fails (because you know at the end of the day even puppet nation have a survival instinct) all that they will have left will be an empty anti-China rhetoric.

Their barbarian germanic protestant syphilitic brains could not imagine a "non-white" nation surpassing them. But here we are. So instead of taking all the ill gained surplus value they extracted from the rest of the world for 300 years and actually invest it in something sustainable, they just want to go and kill their neighbor's mule.

Judging by what is happening in the last year or so, I would say we might see a complete reversal in 2-4 years with people that previously where telling you to vote insert status-quo party otherwise "X guy comes and it's the end of the world (due to global warming)" now they will call you a China puppet for wanting the most affordable green high-tech in the world made by China.

Sorry for the long thread. I was thinking about making a post about it but I'm not sure people outside the news mega give a damn about these things anyway.

*Fossil fuel industry at that point was playing both sides. They knew that the world moving from fossil fuels was inevitable, but they wanted that transition to happen on their own terms. It had to be gradual so that they kept making superprofits and they had to create and control the new "green" monopoly.

**I wouldn't be surprised at all if lets say someone like Elon Musk does 180 in regard to EVs. Maybe he will pivot to another technology or maybe even he finds an excuse to outright sell Tesla (somehow...) and pivot to another grift altogether. That's if he manages not to go bust until then...

Steven Runciman's books about the period are considered some of the best.

I wonder what it would take for Burgerstanies to realize that they actually don't live in a democracy and their politicians are at best middle managers for a conglomerate of financiers, MIC/Security apparatus and energy/food monopolists. Does the Lockheed Martin CEO have to go in the Senate and start swinging his dick around screaming "I OWN THIS BITCH" while all the senators applaud? I mean Netanyahu basically did that and still nobody gave a shit.

Contrary to popular (social media) belief you do not have to have an opinion on everything. You can just shut up. If you got to have a opinion, have one that contributes , first and foremost, towards building socialism in your own country and if possible towards international solidarity. What you absolutely shouldn't do is cosplaying as the morally superior philosopher king up in the mountain that judges everything and everyone and especially people that have done things to better this world and the lives of ordinary people, despite all the limitations and all the contradictions.

So there is lot of talk from the McDonalds "Left" about the Venezuelan elections being fraudulent or whatever. I don't have first hand experience but a journalist that I respect has and she went as an election observer in Venezuela. (Breakthrough news has also done some great coverage from what I have seen)

She reported that:

• The election system that they have is probably one of the best (if not the best) in the world and is very hard to cheat. They have a triple verification system where you vote in an electronic machine using your fingerprint (instead of just an ID), you then get a receipt of what you voted (without any identification on the paper), and also the machine leaves a physical vote in a separate box so afterwards they can verify the differences between the receipts and what's in the ballot box.

• Things were very calm in every election center she went. There was violence in certain places elsewhere. The world on the street was that certain people(...) where giving 150 dollars to anyone willing to participate to anti government riots. She said there is tremendous misinformation. At some point they were saying that an airport was taken over by anti-government forces. The problem was she was at that airport at that time and nothing was happening!

• Internet is completely censor free. (Maybe you should rethink of it Nicolas...)

• Maduro made a request to the Venezuelan supreme court so that the opposition parties submit any evidence that they have in regard to the elections so they can be cross examined. (BTW, the supreme court is elected by the parliament that included the opposition parties of course...)

• Maduro had 5 assassination attempts against him in March alone. He wears bulletproof vest in his public appearances.

• In the last 15 years the government has built 5 million houses and has made the country food independent.

• Maduro when he gathered people around to express his thanks after the election he had 3 ambassadors beside him, those of China, Turkey and Iran

• Many of the cars in Venezuela streets are Chinese (a phenomenon that I see not only about cars but in everything across Latin America)

• Burgerland companies like Edison Research (that takes contracts from CIA, Voice of America etc.) where trying to create a climate, months before the elections, that basically the opposition was far ahead (they were polling the opposition as high as 70%!) so that when the real election results came they could say "Aha you see, our polling (that was 100% real of course) didn't match the election results so that means the government cheated!". So the western muppets ("left" and right) take what burgerland polling companies claim as better evidence than the election results themselves!

• NYT about a month ago reported that the base of the opposition was inside the embassy of Argentina! They did that because the government can't check what's getting in and what is getting out of an embassy. That's why we show supporters of the government trying to get inside the embassy after the elections.

Loser "Left" is very concerned about elections in Venezuela, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet in China, arming Naz...excuse me freedom fighters in Ukraine, women rights in Iran at convenient times, LGBT rights in Palestine at convenient times and voting for the lesser of two evils in the imperial core in order to protect their proper...democracy. All of this just happens to be a stance that is very convenient for the US state department...nothing to see here.

Oh so the Communist Manifesto is political now? Fucking commies turning everything into politics.

If Japan can survive for 30 years, it's dead, and the vast amount of post-doc number wanking justifications for every single crisis are pathetic.

Japan is able to run those high dept-to-GDP number because, by suppressing all other financial investment mechanisms in its' economy, it has deemed dept as one of the most profitable places for a Japanese person to park their savings accounts. They have essentially tied dept to savings. They are buying their own dept like crazy and finance their government expenditures that way but at the cost of increased inflation. The reason that they can still get away with it, is because they have some of the biggest car and tech industries in the world. But they haven't grown in decades, their country is literally dying (one of the 3-4 worst birthrates on the planet), , they are one of the most depressed countries in the world and their debt keeps rising. Where will this end? Should they let the dept go to 700%? What happens when their actual economic engine (their industry) slows down? Presenting Japan as the model for your theory is not the win you think it is...

I seriously don’t know you’re being intentionally obtuse or something. Greece cannot do MMT because it is in the eurozone and cannot print its own money! Seriously I’m going to need a better argument than this if you want a serious discussion. Also **Global South countries have difficulties implementing MMT in full form because they lack food and energy sovereignty, and often has high external debt **(denominated to a foreign currency)!

Oh so 99% of the countries on the planet! If your theory doesn't work 99% of the time, IT'S NOT A GOOD THEORY. Greece goes to drachma tomorrow. Now they control their own currency. HOW ARE THEY GONNA PAY FOR CANCER MEDICINE USING MMT? How about Armenia (that I mentioned and you didn't answer)? How about Angola, Bangladesh, Morocco, Colombia? And you have the nerve to say I'm obtuse? Get out here and take your bogus theories with you.

You are talking about the past and not about the present. I’m not really interested in these moralisms, you are not being a serious geopolitical analyst of present reality when you couch things in this Manichean way. I have to say to people again and again and again here, moralism is a poor lens of analysis and intent is irrelevant. I see it a lot from baby leftist idealists in the west who are framing every situation into one where they can have perceived moral superiority. This includes inventing hypotheticals to get mad at instead of looking at reality occurring in front of you.

What the hell are you even talking about?

Look at actions and results, that is all that matters.

The results are that since Putin took office almost all of the former USSR and ex-socialists countries became NATO countries.

China has sat around indecisively doing nothing.

China doesn't have to do anything because they put out the fire before it spreads through the forest. Xinjiang, Tibet, HK, Taiwan. You hardly hear any news about them. Why? Because China takes care of the problem. They don't let US spread its' poison. If Germanophile Vlad was the leader and his liberal friends were running things in China we'll be in the second Xinjiang war by now.

Geopolitics is a game and you need to learn the rules instead of getting mad about someone else’s play.

OK Sun Zhu.

What is needed is a new ,mature, credit generation mechanism that fits China's current state of development,administrative capacity and local finances.

What is this mechanism gonna be based on?

Many chinese economies advocate (more conservatively) for the direction you describe ,even before and during this plenum. The holdup is in the details of what the specific circulation and dept generation mechanisms will be and how they should work, how to steer them to the right kinds of activities and behaviors, use of credit, resources mobilised, the system’s turnover velocity etc

It's one thing to turn gradually towards domestic consumption and increased standards of living (things that China is already doing) based on your economic output and it's another to run large deficits for an extended period of time and still have a functioning economy. I only know one country that has done it in history and it did through monetary imperialism...

Yes, not only am I advocating for MMT [...] No offense but you don’t understand the topic at all.

Called it. Touched a nerve didn't I? The only ones that rival libertarians on the "you don't understand economics" are MMTers. 2010 called dude, they want their snake oil economic theories back.

So USSR under Stalin were doing MMT now?! Haven't heard that before I admit. Go tell that to your boy M.Hudson, see how fast he will throw a vase at you. Although these days he seems too embarrassed to associate himself with MMT.

To all this ahistorical bull I have to say during Stalin's period USSR did a thing called war communism. They nationalize/collectivize everything, they mobilized all their productive forces to the maximum, they focused on heavy industry. They industrialize their economy in about 27 years while it took other countries more than 100. They did all that because THEY HAD TO. Noone wanted to trade with them and the Nazi threat was looming.

And all this came with an ENORMOUS cost for the people of USSR. But it had to be done. And of course it was reflected on growth, since Russian was one of the least industrialized countries in Europe and industrialize in such a small period of time. But that wasn't supposed to be a model for other countries to emulate! It happened due to absolute necessity. Comparing 30s USSR to the current situation is nuts.

How's the "father of MMT" Mosler doing these days? Is he still running his tax evasion schemes? Still waiting his answer on how can a country like Greece or Armenia do MMT? I remember those people back in the recession years coming to my country advising the "lefties". Yeah didn't end well for us but I bet they made a lot of money giving speeches and selling books...

Not that USAian elections mean anything but it is hilarious that the guy survived an assassination , had a -let's face it- very iconic, almost cinematic moment and then he managed to completely f this up by selecting the biggest dufus on the planet as his VP and not being able to shut up for a second. It's like you score from the middle of the court and then your shorts come of for the world to see your tiny dick with a "I love furniture" tattoo in it. Just sit in front of a camera and say "I love Jesus" for 3 months dude and you win.

You are right about EVs having a higher profit margin in Europe. So what? Are they gonna ban every import from China? Good, let them do it. We saw how brilliantly the sanctions worked against Russia. I beg them to do it against China. Let's unravel this thing 2 decades earlier. USA thinks they can squeeze China like they did with Japan. But China is no Japan. I don't see Apple leaving China (they tried but they failed), I don't see Tesla, I don't see any of the other big USA ones leaving. The simple truth is if you are a company that doesn't do business in China you are a company that can be beaten. West(TM) can squeal, can scream unfair but at the end of the day they will have to choose between having to live with China or economic suicide.

Can you explain how running on deficits means opening up capital flows and losing control over yuan? This doesn’t make any sense to me. The only way for China to sustain its industries is to make its citizens rich enough to purchase their own EV at a price that can sustain the growth of those industries. Another way is to nationalize it and make it state-run, otherwise the company always need to make clean profit to reinvest into R&D. Whichever way, it means transitioning into a domestic consumption model.

You put too much on the table for a comment section. In brief. Who works on those EV factories? Workers. Who pays them? The factories. With what money? From profits. Sounds great in theory. USA tried that model up until the 70s and it blew up due to high inflation and led to neoliberalism/reganism. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but you sound like advocating for some type of MMT (a.k.a repackaged Keynesianism). I see that from liberals in China. I think it would be a huge mistake. I don't want to relive the last 50 years but with China as (monetary) imperialist protagonist instead of USA.

Maybe I'll make a post in the future in regard to MMT, China and how to avoid the same mistakes labour did in 20th century. That's all for now.