My sources for the preamble come mostly from here, here, and here.
The thread image depicts Kenyan police, trained by the Zionist entity, in a meeting with President Ruto before being sent to Haiti, sourced from this article.
As has been planned for the last couple years, foreign police officers have been inside Haiti for a few months now. It will surprise nobody to learn that this has not gone very well. Gangs continue to control much of the country, and violence has continued in the form of massacres and forced relocations (approximately 1.3 million). Something like 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, is under the control of one gang or another.
The aim by the US was to import 2500 police officers to Haiti from a wide variety of countries. One of those was Kenya; President Ruto had to fight his own country's courts to force this through, and ironically is now apparently considering withdrawing those officers once the UN mandate expires on October 2nd. The issue here is not only the limited manpower (Haiti has a population of 12 million), but also very pedestrian things, like the fact that the officers who arrive don't even speak the language.
The situation in Haiti appears to be a fairly standard operation of American national control, in which both battling sides are being supported by the US in order to create maximum disorganization and prevent a coherent political force from arising and thus threatening their Caribbean interests. While the US funds foreign forces to arrive in Haiti to "control the situation" or similar justifications, the Haitian gangs get their weapons smuggled in from the US itself. That this is happening alongside escalations against Venezuela is obviously not a coincidence - in a world in which American interests are being gradually shrugged off, and where the American state military is becoming rapidly more impotent and unable to dissuade and defeat even tiny states like Yemen, total imperial dominion of their immediate surrounding territory must be ensured by any means necessary.
The police and the gangs are likely designed to be mutually reinforcing, without even much kayfabe of fighting each other. As an example, once the Kenyan police arrived, they immediately began brutalizing anti-government protestors instead of focussing on gang activity. They were trained by the Zionist entity, after all.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Haha true. Do note that I only respond to misinformation about data or economic theory I’ve seen on this site. There are way too many misinformation being spread on China on the internet from both sides these days, unfortunately. You are welcome to interpret the data anyway you like, and if others want to live in a fantasy, they are of course welcome to ignore my posts.
Also, eventually the Chinese government will release official statements that slap one of us in the face. I think it will be you, but I hope it’s me lol.
I still dont understand the insistence in using somebizarre framing. You again and again repeat that China hasnt done and isnt doing enough to raise Chinese workers income to unleash their consumption and the stagnating wages and worker conditions. Maybe i can understand that if we restrict ourselves to the behavior and experience of the upper quintile of urban residents during the real estate "crisis". And to be fair that group does make like 30% of consumption. Not just in China, in most countries. But i cant see how thats true for any other group of workers or recent period.
Lets take cars. Even taking out the subsidies regime the average Chinese factory worker has to work 7-10 TIMES LESS to afford an entry level vehicle compared to idk 2010-12. Same is true for a high speed rail trip and domestic vacations. Or for buying the latest i-phone. Inflation at worst is x1.5 in some goods over the same period after all. Non "consumption" household expenditures like rent or mortages and dept servicing simply havent grown not anywhere near that. The median household does not pay monthly anywhere near 4-5 times more in those things compared to a decade before then this buying power goes somewhere. And even if it does that increase has been from a base of mear zero. If chinese consumers chose to save way more or invest in RE thats a behavioral thing the CPC must socially counter engineer to a degree.
But it hasnt mainly went there either. And this is reflected in the very large growth of per capita volumes of those sales(cars, domestic trips and tourism, restaurant visits etc) through the last 15 or even 10 years. No other place on earth has seen this kind of consumer surplus and such a reduction in workhours needed to afford X good or Y service and then the workers do buying xand y thing in largely increased volumes. Even tho of course its not with the same multiplier because there is a cap in the consumption of a lot of these goods.
For example the annual per capita cars+motorcycle sales in China are already near 40%+ that of the US. With the quality of the average vehicle sold not been notably behind. Considering tha large gap in per capita income rn no matter the growth in China and given the public transportation prowess of most of urban china vs the car centric society, this number is right where one would expect and not suppressed in the slightest, has expanded massively over the last 10-20 years especially considering the convergence in quality of vehicles sold between the countries. More importantly it will never reach more than 60-70%. The Chinese consumer unleashed right now wont bring the 40% number much higher. There is neither the need, the cultural consimersim tendencies nor the built up per capita accumulated wealth for that still.
You want to unleash chinese car consumption depressed by the neoliberal wage regime of the CPC to a level that will at the same time satisfy domestic car production (since you said no large scale deindustrialization remember. Car and EV production arent low tech sectors after all) and to absorb a huge chunk of additional demand importing cars from markets like mexico or other countries that now or in the future will slowly move up the value chain to that sector). The maths dont math up even if magicaly China can increase their annual per capita sales to near that cap i mentioned (70% of the US ) within a decade. Which is a sci fi timescale to begin with
Like the other user, you are still not getting it.
Chinese people are not getting what they have worked for because a tremendous amount of wealth and surplus values created by Chinese labor and resources have been sent to the West in exchange for foreign IOUs over the past two decades! That’s what happens you follow the IMF model - the reason for such excessive accumulation of foreign IOUs is nothing more than to balance the budget to make their deficits look “small” (<3%).
China now already has a scale of economy that does not have to do that anymore (not that it ever needed to), there is simply no need to keep following the same neoliberal model other than as a pure belief system.
Your comment about Chinese workers having to work less to get more is also wrong. Clearly, if they abandon the neoliberal model like I said, most people will have their lives immediately improved and have access to improved living conditions simply by not having to send over surplus values to Western countries.
But that is not our reality here: for the first time in 2020, the late Premier Li Keqiang said that 600 million of Chinese people still live on an average income of 1000 yuan (~$150) per month.
This is the bottom 40% (mostly rural) demographic who are so disconnected from the rest of the middle class in urban areas, in spite of recent boasts about poverty eradication, that they are effectively not capable of contributing to raising the consumption in the local economy.
It is not hard to see why the consumption is falling - the middle class who are contributing the most to consumption are now pulling back their spending because of the house price depreciation. Similarly, many companies that have jumped on the housing investment bandwagon are also experiencing loss of asset value, and they are also cutting back their expenses to offset such loss. The combined effect is a downward spiral where less spending leads to business downsizing, and less work opportunities.
Are you telling me that the Chinese government cannot simply run up the deficit to raise the income of these people on average 1000 yuan monthly income so they can actually consume? What’s stopping the government here if not neoliberal policy?
Are you also telling me that the Chinese government cannot simply run up the deficit to provide a jobs guarantee program to allow for full employment, especially since we have high youth unemployment now? Again, what’s stopping the government here if not neoliberal policy?
The fix is simple, you simply need to abandon the neoliberal framework. It is always bizarre to see people who call themselves socialists say that government spending is a bad thing.
It is only “sci fi time scale” when your mental framework is still constrained to the neoliberal ideology. Once you can see beyond that, the possibilities opened up. Stalin’s USSR was one such example where permanent deficit spending allowed the USSR to build up the industrial capacity in just 10 years to face off Nazi Germany without having to rely on lowering worker’s wages or foreign investment.
Also, paradoxically, Chinese people are not working less as the countries developed and become more advanced. Instead, we are working longer hours than ever - we have reached the first place amongst global annual average working hours! Maybe that’s something to be proud of lol.
Do you also realize that most people do not even have a two-day weekend? Unless you are one of the lucky 60-70 million who work in SOEs (and even then, I’ve heard some SOEs also push for overtime).
The chinese labor force is like 750 million people. 600 out of 750 million working Chinese obviously dont have a monthly income of 150$ per month. The original source of this figure was from a chinese state study 11 years ago! that surveyed household/family income and divided it by the number of people in the family, publishing it as "average discretionary household income per capita". Discretionary income if im not mistaken is the income after the cost of various taxes and necessary spending (housing cost and rent, basic average monthly basket of food and clothing) is substracted. These stats were reproduced years later using 5-10 year old data using houshold disposable income inputs which again is a reduced figure compared to general monthly income. What this means eventualy means is that 600 million Chinese people (working people, kids,infants, college students, elderly, unemployed) somewhere during the 2010-18 period belonged to households where the total income coming into the household minus the expences mentioned (with one definition or the other) , divided the number of people in the household, was 1000 (140$) yuan or less.
My household in Greece for most of the last decade would have had a per capita (disposable/ or discretionary) household income of around 350 Euros? Less depending on the definition? And this is probably the case for like 30% of Greek Households. So like 40% of Chines housholds (most likely mostly rural ones) were 40% of the way to struggling but making end meet Greece Household status 5 to 10 years ago in nominal terms. With 2nd and 3rd tier Chinese cities having like half the cost of living of the bigger Greek cities. And more rural towns having almost certainly lower. We can go back and forth on this but this is quite acceptable and expected actualy. It doesnt make me reconsider anything. It even reinforces my priors. Greek Household consumption as a % of GDP is like 68% btw
It also reinforces my desire to try and not engage with your posts like. You are too smart to use an already misrepresented stat that has been used as an clickbait by YT videos and people like Drew Pavlou and purposefully phrase it in a similar way to them, where most people who will read your comment will come away with "WOW i cant believe like half of Chinese people make like 100 bucks per month!! It sure just seems like neoliberal China is on the menu. I guess Chinese growth and improvement of QoL isnt what it was made out to be at all". It simply doesnt sit right to me
The fact that i tried to touch on a specific subject asking specific questions with figures and analogies about what the math and numbers of what you are descibing is gonna work out and you touched on none of it and instead made the same kind of general comment i have read a bunch of time already is also a bit tiring. Either way whatever take care