Image is of Trudeau and Trump together at Mar-a-Lago in November 2024. Source is here.
The Liberals, headed by Trudeau, have not been doing so hot lately. Polls have been rather poor, showing the party far behind the Conservatives, and the Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (an outspoken apologist for Ukrainian Nazis) resigned recently, with more MPs following her lead. Trump's return to power has shaken the Canadian establishment due to his threats to impose massive tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which will have substantial economic consequences given that Canada sends most of its exports to the US, compounding the economic malaise that has affected most of the world over the last few years.
With all this bad news, there are rumors and reports that Trudeau will soon resign, ending his nine years of rule. His fall would be yet another casualty in the wave of incumbent parties falling across the imperial core, only to be replaced by more conservative parties that have very similar policies but wish to cast all blame and hardship onto minorities.
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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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Change is in the air, and surely I’m not hallucinating?
Three weeks ago, Trump put out a very short statement that the US and China should work together. Ever since, Chinese media have sprung into action.
Immediately the week after, the People’s Daily (in conjunction with Global Times) put out a featured call for submission of “US-China cooperation and friendship stories” followed by an editorial “China and the US should extend the list of cooperation, and enlarge the cake of mutual cooperation” (Dec 26th, 2024, in Chinese).
Last week, Qiushi, the CPC theory website, reposted the People’s Daily opinion piece on “The significance of friendship and cooperation for the people between China and the US” (Jan 4th, 2025, in Chinese) and a corresponding piece on their English outlet, “China, United States should inject more certainty, positive energy into world” (Jan 6th, 2025):
I also checked the English outlets. Global Times editorial puts out several opinion pieces including “1+1>2 is the right path for US-China technological interaction” (Jan 3rd, 2025) urging for increased technological cooperation of both countries especially quantum computing.
Concurrently, on January 6th, “Chinese foreign ministry slams US ‘small yard, high fence’ strategy, vows to safeguard WTO-centered multilateral trading system” blasting the Biden administration for not respecting the (neoliberal) WTO free trade order and criticizing protectionism:
lol
And on the same day an editorial piece titled “What do Tesla’s ‘record high’ sales in China reveal?” that praised Tesla as an exemplary model of foreign investor’s success in China and why more foreign companies should come invest in China:
Meanwhile, still on January 6th, China's two major stock exchanges hold meetings with foreign institutions:
SCMP (not affiliated with CPC) also put out articles from international relations “experts” like “China-US ties may improve if Trump goodwill signals ‘manifest in tangible actions’” (Jan 4th, 2025) and an opinion piece “Why Trump’s return opens door for China to reform capital markets” (Jan 5th, 2025) about why China should open up its capital markets for foreign investors to come in to save its economy lol. Pretty concise read if you want to understand how the libs think.
These are just a sample of the articles and opinion pieces. Overall, I haven’t seen so many articles that signal the thawing of US and China relationships in such a short period. I think we are likely heading towards a rapprochement between the two countries, and a return to a (renewed) status quo. Both countries have realized that they cannot live without one another, and that it is in their self-interests to return to the existing world order after Covid and the Ukraine war.
Wall Street will be happy to enter the Chinese financial markets (and the Belt and Road), the consumption driven by large scale foreign investments will save both China’s economy and allowing further growth and poverty alleviation, while reigniting the US oil and gas boom under Trump. The dollar hegemony is retained and Trump will be happy to declare victory on trade deficit reduction and some token “bring back American jobs” on a limited scale.
Unfortunately, it looks like China’s gonna save the US empire from its crisis once again, and the medium term outcome also means certain victory for Israel.
The questions to follow up on are: are there any forces within the US that will actively undermine this effort? Will the neocons accept it? Maybe Trump give them the war with Iran that they’ve always wanted? Which also brings us to the question of who else benefit from such (re-)arrangement? Will Europe (poised to be the biggest loser) be forced to import Chinese goods under US order to further destroy their industrial capacity? What happens to Palestine, Lebanon, Russia, Iran and the other major players?
I think we're seeing the process of the US slowly getting absorbed and turned into a kind of a capital mitochondria. A type of fuel tank for another bigger thing.
Let's just hope the CPC is really interested in developing other nations as they say they are. This is probably the way out of colonialism on a global scale.
I wonder how China's whole strategy will look like if humanity still exists 100 years from now and we look back at it starting from Deng until 2080 or something.
I doubt Trump reaching power will make a significant difference, the US and China are inextricably locked in conflict regardless of what the people at the top of each party think about it. The US simply cannot tolerate a world power that is competitive with their (decreasingly) monopoly position, and that lack of toleration will force China to oppose them to fulfill the survival instinct of their own businesses.
It's been the path of interimperial/anti-imperial conflict for the last 300-odd years. Capitalism vs socialism has rather little to do with it, in the same way that the Cold War wasn't communism vs capitalism, it was imperialism vs anti-imperialism (and anti-imperialism largely won, but was then defeated by neo-imperialist strategies). Most of Europe was ruled by the same family of inbred monarchs with relatively similar economies (albeit with stronger and weaker powers, especially pre-WW1) and despite their generally similar capitalist economies, conflict over resource and colony control still prompted them to, twice, start apocalyptically destructive wars. China and the US are in a comparable situation, with even greater ideological differences.
See my write-up here on another thread the other day.
I have said before that the September 2024 lowering of interest rate marked the start of the second phase of US financial warfare against China and the rest of the world. I think the Wall Street finance capital will be quite happy with entering China’s financial sector and eventually owning parts of BRI and the global supply chain that China has been building (it will probably at some point reach an equilibrium where both sides are fine with). Remember the US no longer has the industrial power - its only play is to rely on China to build the supply chain for itself, at least in the short-medium term.
And I can see why China will also be happy to accept this arrangement. Key regulators and the central bank personnel have come out and said that they are committed to saving the property prices. Together with the local government debt crisis which have driven many local governments to the brink of default, they probably see this as a welcoming boost to the local economy. After all, China is committed to further development and poverty alleviation (see the SCMP opinion piece - they need to sustain a certain level of growth in order to payout the pension funds down the road, among others, because China has not reclaimed its monetary sovereignty yet and continued to adopt the neoclassical model).
I also don’t see China as Socialism in the traditional sense. It is Socialism with Chinese characteristics that employs market socialism to achieve its socialist goals. Market socialism means an adherence to the market principles, and the (lib) economists at least see it superior to the central planning model under Mao.
So basically, the US realizes that reindustrialization is impossible and China realizes that there is need for investments.
So both realize their complementaries to one and the other.
China gets to build up the third world to become better producer and consumer and the states gets to have a cut in the pie as financial returns
Basically yes, but it’s not so much complementary but the fact that the US threatens to blow up its own economy through tariffs. If the US does that, the US economy will be damaged, but all the export economies in the Global South get wiped out just like during the 2009 GFC if not worse, and their ultimate fate is still IMF bail out and privatization. That is the stick.
It is a sane calculation to give in to the US threat because at least we’re not going through a mutually assured destruction in this scenario. It is still a win-win (carrot) for both the US and China and other developing countries if they can keep the US from going into an economic depression, while the US gets a good portion of financial control over their assets in return. This will become the renewed status quo until something in the global capitalist machine breaks again.
I’ve always said that the only way for China to gain leverage over this is to make the painful transition into a domestic consumption led economy, and doing that requires China to reclaim its monetary sovereignty instead of accumulating foreign reserves through export and investment. Without that, we will simply see a return to the status quo but with Europe out of the picture as a major player. None of the Global South debt situation gets resolved, the global financial institutions will remain in place, dollar hegemony will persist and capital continues to flow through the established neoliberal free trade system. An alternative is needed.
Yes lol, the real and difficult question is how? It requires a complete overhaul the global financial system and resolves the external debt burden of the Global South countries that subjected them to Western financial imperialism.
Even the Russian proposal at the BRICS Kazan Summit acknowledges just how difficult it is to de-dollarize and they are proposing to do it realistically and slowly at a limited scale. Thankfully Russia didn’t say things like gold or crypto, which means at least the Russians aren’t stupid and actually understand where the difficulties lie.
Maybe everyone could just use one big google drive spreadsheet or something
https://sputnikglobe.com/20250104/how-us-dollar-will-be-dethroned-by-brics-national-currencies-1121354599.html
Or multiple alternatives. Seems the strategy now is increasing trade amongst members with their own currencies rather than having a single alternative to the petrodollar.
Iirc Adam Tooze’s analysis on the US’ industrialization is impossible due to the fact that 1-the US dollar is too strong to be a viable export economy, 2-a trained/educated labour force and 3- a cheap labour force to compete with the global wages which are needed for industrial production to come back.
Part of me is really skeptical about China having the will to change the status quo of the economy as changes within a nation with a large population is difficult to execute. The other reasons might be that the post covid situation has shaken the health of Chinese economy and there is probably fear within the population’s appetite for spending/investing. I also think the real estate crisis is not over yet, if the Chinese economy was noticeably pegged vastly on its real estate, I don’t think the government would just let it “crash” to transition to say a consumption economy.
I do have a theoretical question: in the events that the USD stays hegemonic in the near and mid future. Is there a way to transform the USD into a Bancor like currency? I know that we need to take into account that the USD is a tool of US financial imperialism, but is there a way for non US states to pressure the US fed to “relinquish” the flow? I guess in this situation one of the means would be to introduce another reserve currency as a counterbalance.
Another reason, and perhaps most important of all, is that reindustrialization is incompatible with Wall Street finance capitalism because raising the wages of labor will reinvigorate the trade unions and workers movement, as the working class in the Imperial Core becomes re-proletarianized again instead of being a neofeudal debt slaves as they have been driven into after 50 years of neoliberalization.
If you’re interested in the theory I recommend reading up 贾根良‘s work (Marxist/MMT/Listian economics professor at the People’s University). After reading so much material, I found his stuff to make the most sense, and is a major source where much of my theory is derived from.
I kind of dismissed his “warning” back in 2018 Trump’s trade war when he said that the real goal of Trump’s tariffs were to eventually force China into opening up its financial market, because I thought the trade war didn’t really go anywhere, so I thought it was rubbish.
The thesis was that the contradictions built up by the hyperfinancialization of the US i.e. the growing of MAGA movement (or the disgruntled working class of Bernie Sanders’s movement) due to the persistent trade deficit over the years that led to a huge loss of domestic jobs needs to be resolved somehow. By transitioning the export of dollar from running trade deficit gradually into entering China’s financial market as investment, the US gets to retain its dollar hegemony while allowing trade deficit to be partially reduced (limited scale reindustrialization), thus preventing the lid to be blown off.
Honestly I wasn’t paying much attention until it started to make sense after the Ukraine war and Europe’s economy is now blown into pieces, as the US has reshaped a new geopolitical situation where Europe in austerity can no longer absorb the rest of the world’s exports, and that means the US becomes the world’s only and biggest consumer market that carries the export economies of the world (doesn’t even matter what currencies the trades are settled in).
This is why China is scared of US’s tariffs because they haven’t built up their consumer market enough to absorb the loss of trade with the US, and Europe/Japan are already out of the game to pick up that role.
I don’t think so. Bancor is a clearing currency that is used only by central banks to settle balance of payments, so the US dollar cannot become that.
However, in constructing an alternative financial system, bancor is ideal to prevent the situation we have today where the US can run a huge trade deficit without contributing anything, and China can accumulate huge trade surplus. The concentration of the world’s productive capacity into China was a pre-requisite for the US to deprive the rest of the world of their industrial capacity and rendering them vulnerable to US imperialism. A bancor system will punish both the US and China for running such huge trade imbalances.
So we now end up in a situation where the world’s two largest economies are reluctant to give up the status quo, and the sheer size of their economies completely eclipse the rest of the world’s. This is why the way out is for China to transition into a domestic consumption economy, as it will ease their ability to give up this advantage since it no longer has to accumulate so much trade surplus, and hence can allow industrial capacity to be distributed more equally to the rest of the world while China focuses on giving free healthcare, education and various utilities to its people and pioneering high tech sector.
Chinese liberals are either fully delusional or they're actively trying to surrender to the US empire Gorby-style
Ironically America's racism and inability to tolerate any competition to their hegemony may save Chinese socialism in the long term, since even if Chinese liberals embrace a surrenderist mindset, that doesn't mean American liberals will, they mean business when they rail against Chinese "violations of the world order"
With 1.4 billion people’s lives at stake, it’s not as easy to change radically the economic structure. China wants to do it slow and steady. The first 30 years of overthrowing the Qing dynasty ended up with warlords carving out fiefdoms all across China and the weakness resulted in the Japanese invasion. Nobody wants to relive that era once again.
Again I remind everyone that the radical and transformative change under the USSR took place was extremely brutal. China’s socialism adopts a stance that integrates itself into the global trade order in order to achieve its socialist aims.
We cannot treat the post-feudal conditions of the USSR and Warlord-era China as a general theory for action, we are literally a century removed from those realities
The problem with global integration is that radical and transformative change can now be hurled onto China by external actors like the United States, the choice of confrontation is out of China's hands and firmly in the United States's and the Americans have made their position clear
China may buy itself time by playing the ruse of cooperation (assuming it is a ruse) but the US in desperation will eventually instigate a hot war to smash and isolate the Chinese economy
I can see china-us relations warming under trump. I remember Branko Milanovic made a point a while ago that basically said that if trump wants a transactional relationship with china, where china agrees to import more from the US in exchange for this or that, and doesn't meddle too blatantly in china's internal affairs, aside from the obligatory "Human rights" talk, then that gives space for tensions to ease.
This is opposed to sleepy joe's CRAZY ideological approach to china, which explicitly aimed to overthrow its government on ideological grounds and went around gathering allies internationally to support that, as well was blatantly intending to slow china's development
He also said, ironically, russia-us relations could get WORSE under trump's transactional approach because from russia's position of strength in the ukraine war it will be hard for trump to get concessions out of them
I think this will be a temporary reproachmont if it does happen. What's the problem with taking US money in the short term if you're expecting a rupture later they could simply leave the US high and dry and not repay the investment. A political or military conflict would reduce all this to monopoly money and the real economy (that is of course the cash, grass or gas economy, lol) would take over and the producers would have priority, right? US is the consumer market that seems like it can't be replaced (although the EU could have a reproachmont with Russia and reinstate their industry and consumer power, that's basically what much of the right wing populist want), likewise Chinese production can't be replaced. If the US tries to block the world from Chinese consumer and industrial goods it would be rejected globally and probably especially in the US itself. The belt and road in my estimation is an effort to industrialize the global south to compliment a future Chinese consumer economy. Even everything with Israel and Syria now... It's just that the victory is theirs to ruin.
All in all it simply seems everyone is waiting to see what will happen and putting their best foot forward in anticipation of the Trump administration.