Hey everybody, I'm back from sitting atop a mountain and meditating on the meaning of life, reality, and the goddamn news for a few weeks. I'll be getting back into the swing of posting here over the next few days.

I don't have anything to announce, but I do want to gauge interest on a "bookclub" here in the news megathread, the idea being to go through a book like Super Imperialism and other geopolitically relevant books as a community. It would give us something to do other than doomscroll, and get us all on the same theoretical grounding (from which we can then argue with each other at a more enlightened level).

China claims Taiwan as its territory despite never having controlled it

It's so obvious that the State Department forces the media to put this line in all their articles about China and Taiwan. I love the unhinged Ship of Theseus energy it brings.

China donates 70 tons of equipment to Cuba to restore its electric system

The People’s Republic of China has donated almost 70 tons of power generator parts and accessories to Cuba, aiming to contribute to the recovery of the Caribbean island’s electricity system.

The materials arrived in the country on Sunday (29) and were received by China’s ambassador to Cuba, Hua Xin, and Cuba’s deputy ministers of Foreign Trade and Investment, Déborah Rivas, and Energy and Mining, Tatiana Amarán.

According to Ambassador Xin, the shipment is part of China’s second assistance package in 2024 to help restore Cuba’s electricity generation capacity to around 400 megawatts (MW). As part of an “emergency project list,” the donations were included to provide Cuba with effective and rapid aid according to what the Chinese government calls “convenience for the most urgent.”

...

The donations come as the Caribbean country is facing a serious energy crisis that has worsened in recent months. This year, Cuba has suffered three total blackouts in the national electricity system, leaving the country completely in the dark. Currently, power cuts are becoming more and more constant, affecting over 40% of the population daily. The situation has seriously damaged economic activity and the population’s quality of life.

Even with this and the photovoltaic donations, it feels like China is very squeamish about helping Cuba that much. Quite disappointing. Perhaps as the US keeps driving forward on sanctions on China, they'll increasingly not care about potential consequences, but until then, Cuba suffers.

Cryptocurrency miners in Chechnya will be treated as terrorists, Adam Delimkhanov, a State Duma deputy and advisor to the head of the republic, said in comments reported by Grozny-Inform. Delimkhanov said that “cases of illegal mining” have already been uncovered in Chechnya. He noted that “many involve people working in various organizations,” though he did not specify which ones.
“Our leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has asked us to inform all residents that if such cases are uncovered — which also cause electricity issues across entire districts, villages, or cities — the perpetrators will face severe punishment. We will equate them with terrorists because their actions harm society as a whole,” Delimkhanov said

The Trump Tower Tesla bomber was a Slava Ukraini guy, who "served" (as a trainer?) in Ukraine and Georgia, and his wife was a libbed-up cheeto-hater.

Signs are pointing to Trump derangement syndrome?

The FBI let a NY Post reporter and unofficial Israeli PR team member into the home of the New Orleans suspect to do a video tour, in which she found a keffiyeh, a Quran open to a verse about martyrdom, and bomb-making materials:

The interesting thing in the replies/quote tweets is that even the chuds, who I would assume are the NY Posts primary audience, generally seem to think this looks like an op.

first baby of 2025 in turkiye is deniz mahir lol. named after deniz gezmiş and mahir çayan, 2 prominent leftist figures. I hope this is a sign of good things to come. I will not wish for small things anymore. I wish to dance in the ashes of white house this year

Geopolitical Economy Hour: Did Israel and the US win in Syria?

An interesting discussion by Mohammad Marandi and Radhika Desai which, via a sober analysis, seeks to dispel a lot of the triumphalism from those on the pro-genocide side, and bitter resignation from those on the left. I shall summarize the video below:

• First, we start from a quote from Responsible Statecraft which more-or-less concludes that Israel is (at least at the current moment) triumphant in the Middle East. A key part of their assessment is that the Shia movement has been crippled, which is the first sign that things are amiss in their conclusion (much of the Resistance is Sunni). What else is wrong?
• Marandi remarks that the events in Syria are a tactical victory for the US, Israel, and Erdogan (not Turkiye as a whole), but this victory is unstable and likely to disintegrate over time, for the following reasons.
• The question for the US is: should they stay or go? If they go, this presents issues for maintaining this instability for Israel's benefit. If they stay, this presents an issue for Jolani, because the US's purpose inside Syria is explicitly to weaken it (they are stealing Syria's oil to ensure that pro-Resistance forces have less resources to work with).
• The question for Erdogan is: can he continue to exert leverage over Jolani now that he has performed a successful uprising and has western diplomats knocking on his door?
• The question for Jolani is: how much humiliation can he - and Syria - take from Israel stealing their territory and bombing their weapons stockpiles? This will naturally cause resistance to once again rise up against HTS and Jolani. Additionally, Syria still has plenty of groups that are internally vying for power and has plenty of economic problems that cannot be fixed quickly. In fact, there could be a new civil war between the different factions inside Syria and even between groups in HTS. This is on top of the returning refugee groups from Turkiye.

• The key mistake for Israel is the delegitimization of their new pet regime in Syria. What Netanyahu should have done instead is not undermine Jolani and held off on the annexations, and instead done all they could to stabilize and strengthen them (like with Jordan and Egypt). This is on top of the obvious problems for the IDF trying to occupy territory with an increasingly dysfunctional and degraded army after their continued defeats against Hezbollah and Hamas.
• Iran and Russia did the right thing in a bad situation by pulling out without further commitment of resources, as Assad or his generals seemed unwilling to fight for themselves to maintain control of their section of the country. It would be too much to say that this was part of Iran's grand plan or anything like that, but by not holding desperately onto Assad and instead deciding to let them go once, say, Aleppo or Homs had fallen, Iran has avoided falling into an unnecessary trap.

• The timing of dangerous gambles/events in Ukraine and the Middle East do appear to be a ploy by the Biden administration to create fait accomplis for Trump's administration; either to ensure they keep the project going, or at least to complicate and delay an eventual resolution on the side of Russia and the Resistance.
• Iran is a stronger country than 8 years ago in terms of foreign relations with non-Western countries, and will be harder to isolate than before. Western sanctions will still present many difficulties, but not as existential as before (so long as China and Russia are in their court).
• Iran is also a stronger country militarily than 8 years ago, and will set the world on fire if Trump (or, indeed, Biden, with a couple weeks to go) tries anything too stupid. It will be too dangerous for the US and especially Israel to start a war against Iran, and Iran's position as the "hub" and suppliers of weapons and expertise means that the Resistance will continue to function relatively well (and has not been "defeated" or anything like that).

Now feels like a good time to link the disgusting NYT coverage of a vehicle attack in Zhuhai, China, in November. (In case you were wondering, yes, they are lying through their teeth about the “cover-up”) (Cover up means the lack of wild speculation and hysterical media coverage shoving cameras in the faces of bereaved relatives and blurring out mutilated corpses)

Also lol at 1984 removing memorial flowers. They do have to go at some point, you know that right, NYT “journalist”? I guess the concept of not leaving shit to rot on the street is foreign to Americans.

When a lot of Americans die, it is the worst thing to ever happen. When a lot of Chinese people die, the main story is that life is cheap in the orient and the Chinese brainpan is programmed to accept death and censorship

God knows why China keeps letting these “journalist” snakes into their country.

Muh brutal authoritarian crackdowns in Hong Kong clearly missed a spot if some professor of Chinese propaganda at a HK university gets to run his mouth about the mainland brainpan for a NYT hit piece. Seems like nativist and supremacist ideologies in HK haven’t yet been entirely uprooted.

https://xcancel.com/AP/status/1874304739938025575

Ivory Coast asks French troops to leave, the latest African country to do so

The new syrian government had almost the entire Syrian Air Force and Navy destroyed and chunks of it's southern territories occupied by "israel" and all they have done thus far is attack Alawites and Christians. How about you attack some "israelis" instead?

Nytimes is now confirming the flag found on the truck killer is an IS flag so strap in folks

Edit: multiple people involved which is pretty uncommon with these “isis inspired” kind of attacks since it usually involves a single person getting radicalized online(by Feds or otherwise) rather than a group like this that even included a woman which I’m pretty sure actual daesh would deem to be an apostate thing to do.

It’s possible the flag was meant to just be more of an edgy thing and something else motivated him but idk this is strange to me

Not enough info for me to go full 👁️ but between this and US military/tech connection this is pretty odd.

Edit 2: Surveillance video was nothing apparently

Probably more likely a case of cops being stupid thinking maintenance people watering plants or something was sus

The ROK is entering a period of time known as “The cool zone”

Also fucking LOL at this

Uplifting photos from 2024. A reminder of the ability of the human spirit to find joy and togetherness in all situations. Compilied from the Associate Press top 100 photos of the year and Reuters 2024 pictures of the year

Democratic Republic of Congo - Children shake hands before a chess game

::: spoiler spoiler

Paris Paraolympic Games - Paralympic athlete Santos Araujo, of Brazil, celebrates after winning the men’s 200 m Freestyle

Haiti - Children playing jump rope

Brazil - Rescue team saves 4 year old child from house destroyed by flood

Gaza - Wedding dress for sale

Kenya - Wildlife management team release Rhino from an animal sanctuary back into the wild

Venezuela - Supermoon surrounded by Christmas lights

Happy new year

No I am NOT reading this article

it's not yoonover yet

A day of high drama has drawn to an end in South Korea, with investigators suspending an attempt to arrest ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol after a six-hour standoff with the security team outside his home.

"We've determined that the arrest is impossible," said the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO), which has been investigating Yoon's short-lived martial law declaration.

"Next steps will be decided after review," the CIO said, adding that Yoon's "refusal of the legal process" is "deeply regrettable".

Yoon's supporters, who have been camped out in front of the presidential residence for days, cheered in song and dance as the suspension was announced. "We won," they chanted.

Investigators have until 6 January to arrest Yoon, before the warrant expires. However they can apply for a new warrant and try to detain him again.

babies are freezing to death in Gaza

death to america, death to the zionist project

First India, now Japan. China is tying up loose ends:
https://xcancel.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1875224303819723142

This is big: China and Japan have agreed on an unprecedented (at least since WW2) list of initiatives to warm their respective public opinions to each other.

This is "manufacturing consent" but for peace and mutual respect, not for war this time. Which is frankly much more constructive and will no doubt displease quite a few folks in Washington who thrive on "divide and conquer"...

The initiatives include:

1. promote youth exchange visits and encourage and support studies and tours between the two countries.

2. deepen cooperation in the field of education, strengthen the mutual exchange of students, and support the establishment of sister school relationships between primary and secondary schools, as well as inter-institutional cooperation between higher education institutions of both countries.

3. support cooperation in the tourism industry and introduce more facilitation measures to promote mutual visits between tourists from both countries.

4. build more bridges for exchange between friendly cities, and actively utilize mechanisms and platforms such as the China-Japan Governors Forum, China-Japan-Korea Cultural Exchange Year, and East Asian City of Culture to expand friendly exchanges between local and civil society in both countries.

5. strengthen sports exchange and cooperation, and mutually support the successful hosting of important sporting events such as the 2025 Harbin Asian Winter Games and the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games.

6. support continued cooperation in entertainment industries including film and television, music, publishing, animation, and gaming. Facilitate mutual visits of high-level artistic groups and support the translation and publication of classic works from both countries.

7. enhance exchange and cooperation between media outlets and think tanks, playing a positive role in bilateral relations, and focus on improving public opinion and the media environment. Support both sides in developing exchange and cooperation in new media circles, and encourage positive content creators from both countries to interact with each other

One dead and seven injured in the cybertruck explosion outside the Trump International hotel. The fatal victim is still inside the car and firefighters are trying to pull him out. Authorities have yet to say what caused the fire that led to the explosion.

Not fort Bragg man, don’t make me go all 👀

https://www.wbtv.com/2025/01/02/new-orleans-terror-suspect-was-stationed-north-carolina-army-base-report-says/

For context: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/fort-bragg-murders-1153405/

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/01/10/more-dozen-special-operations-soldiers-center-of-drug-trafficking-probe.html

China's gonna reach 50,000 kilometers of high speed rail this year.

As of 2024, high-speed lines accounted for 30 per cent of the national railway operating mileage of 162,000km, a significant increase from the 20 per cent proportion reported in 2017.

With the first high-speed passenger line only opening in 2008, achieving the milestone in 2025 would indicate an extraordinary pace of expansion.

cybertruck bomber and NO attacker served at the same base according to LE, and they both used the Turo app to rent their vehicle

News station Denver 7 cited law enforcement sources on Thursday that Livelsberger and Jabbar had served at the same military base – a possible connection the US army has not independently confirmed to the Guardian.

from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/02/cybertruck-explosion-driver-las-vegas

PayPal is getting sued by a bunch of content creators for their Honey extension, which literally works by stealing affiliate referrals. But PayPal is probably big enough to never see real consequences from this, so who knows what will happen.

Same company that is complicit in genocide btw.

Biden's address of the New Orleans attack was classico. He stumbled and slurred his way through the teleprompter before walking off the stage the second he was done talking like he pooped his pants.

Reuters best photos of 2024. New mega compilation part 2

Philippines - Man takes a smoke break during flood recovery efforts

Jolansky appeasing the watermelon seller by deleting Ottoman atrocities from Syrian history textbooks (CW: hanged victims):
https://xcancel.com/RaniaKhalek/status/1874621498327265681

Erasing history to please their neo-Ottoman sponsors.

Turkish soft power has been quite successful in romanticizing the Ottoman Empire among certain Arabs for at least a decade now. But that power isn’t so soft anymore.

This is not very important news but the latest conspiracy theory is people taking videos of the fog and claiming that the government is spraying them with a virus. The problem is that you can't even laugh at dumbass conspiracy freaks since it wouldn't be the first time that the USA government did a secret biological warfare experiment where it sprayed bacteria on its own population. You can't make up any conspiracy theory that's more horrible than something that the USA government has already done and admitted to.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2w51gjxpro Drunken Zambian policeman freed 13 suspects to celebrate New Year

lol

Hey everyone, was gonna post this like five hours ago but the site was down lol.

To continue on the idea of a reading club: If anybody has any recommendations for broad books on geopolitics then I'd be down to hear them. I've been told that Super Imperialism is a tricky read right off the bat, so we could instead:

a) start with something that starts from a more basic level like Lenin's Imperialism, albeit perhaps less applicable to the specificities of the current moment b) start with a book that's actually more recent than Super Imperialism, like Desai's Geopolitical Economy, which I have read and I can say requires only the prior knowledge that somebody who frequents this site would likely have c) start with something else entirely, if there's any suggestions. d) just stick with Super Imperialism, like @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net is urging us to do all the time.

I recognize that book clubs are one of those things where you have like a hundred people join in and then by the time you're halfway through the book, there's like five people left. I'm the kind of loser who takes summarized notes on the books he reads, so my plan would be to release my chapter summaries as we go so that even if you cannot be assed to actually read a book, you can still benefit from the gist of it. Starting with b) would be advantageous because I'd only have to clean up my current notes.

I will actually start posting again soon lmao, just getting my sources back together again and catching up with what's been going on

Elon exposed himself as the person on the "Adrian Dittman" twitter account by going on 4chan as "Adrian Dittman" and posting a twitter screenshot showing that "Adrian Dittman" had admin features like the ban button:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1hs2d45/adrian_dittmann_elon_loses_his_shit_on_4chan/

EDIT - Bonus of Elon talking about himself:

I have been doing quite a bit of deep dive into China’s labor market and I thought I’d share the notes that I’d written down for BYD Zhengzhou and Tesla Shanghai. Not sure if this will be interesting to the audience here but I’m gonna dump the info here just in case someone is interested.

This website is an excellent resource that aggregate crowd-sourced and media reported labor news in China (pay structure, layoffs, work conditions, lawsuits, scandals etc.) and this week, separate articles came out on BYD Zhengzhou and Tesla Shanghai. I am also including another article that compares BYD and Foxconn in Zhengzhou since the two megafactories are closely related.

TL;DR:

• Tesla has better pay and less overtime, more rest days and recreation time for employees. Does not cover rent but employees can afford to live in individual housing at some distance away. Average monthly salary is ~10k per month.
• BYD offers free hostel accommodation (shared room) and meal subsidies, salary depends on how much overtime you’re willing to work. Average monthly salary is 5k-7.5k per month, can reach 10k with full overtime load and minimum rest days.

BYD (and Foxconn) Zhengzhou Factory

Source:
Foxconn workers are migrating to BYD, August 2024
BYD Zhengzhou production line soars, December 2024

Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone (ZAEZ)

—-

Employment

Short term employment model

—-

Aging population - manufacturers all across the country are competing for labor

—-

BYD and Foxconn scheming to each other’s lunches

—-

Workers’ interviews

via FT December 30th 2024

US credit card defaults jump to highest level since 2010

Consumers are ‘tapped out’ after years of high inflation and as pandemic-era savings have evaporated

Defaults on US credit card loans have hit the highest level since the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, in a sign that lower-income consumers’ financial health is waning after years of high inflation. Credit card lenders wrote-off $46bn in seriously delinquent loan balances in the first nine months of 2024, up 50 per cent from the same period in the year prior and the highest level in 14 years, according to industry data collated by BankRegData. Write-offs, which occur when lenders decide it is unlikely a borrower will make good on their debts, are a closely watched measure of significant loan distress. “High-income households are fine, but the bottom third of US consumers are tapped out,” said Mark Zandi, the head of Moody’s Analytics. “Their savings rate right now is zero.” The sharp rise in defaults is a sign of how consumers’ personal finances are becoming increasingly stretched after years of high inflation, and as the Federal Reserve has left borrowing costs at elevated levels. Banks have yet to report their fourth-quarter numbers but the early signs are that more consumers are falling significantly behind on what they owe. Capital One, the US’s third-largest credit card lender, after JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, recently said that as of November its annualised credit card write-off rate, which is the percentage of its overall loans that are marked as unrecoverable, hit 6.1 per cent, up from 5.2 per cent a year ago.

“Consumer spending power has been diminished,” said Odysseas Papadimitriou, head of consumer credit research firm WalletHub. US consumers exited pandemic-era lockdowns flush with cash and ready to spend. Credit card lenders were happy to help, signing up customers who might not have qualified in the past based on income, but looked like safe debtors because their bank accounts were flush with cash. Credit card balances soared, rising a combined $270bn in 2022 and 2023, and pushing the total US consumers owed on credit cards above $1tn for the first time in mid-2023. That spending along with coronavirus-induced supply chain bottlenecks led to a burst of inflation, something that prompted the Fed to boost borrowing costs starting in 2022. Higher balances and interest rates have left Americans who cannot pay off their credit card bills in full paying $170bn in interest in the past 12 months ending in September. That sucked up a portion of the excess cash that was in consumers’ bank accounts, particularly those of low-income consumers, and as a result, more of those borrowers are struggling to pay back their credit card debts. Hopes that the US central bank will rapidly slash interest rates in 2025 after cuts this year were dashed last week, when officials predicted only half a percentage point of rate cuts next year, compared with a forecast of 1 percentage point three months earlier. In a sign of how consumers are struggling, even after writing-off nearly $60bn in consumer credit card debt in the past year, another $37bn remains in consumers’ cards that is at least one month overdue. Credit card delinquency rates, which are seen as a precursor to write-offs, peaked in July, according to data from Moody’s, but have only fallen slightly and remain nearly a percentage point higher than they were on average in the year before the pandemic. “Delinquencies are pointing to more pain ahead,” said WalletHub’s Papadimitriou. Donald Trump’s threat of wide-ranging tariffs, which could increase inflation and interest rates, would be “two problematic things for the consumer in 2025”, he added.

Well, the cradle knows more about these guys than we did https://thecradle.co/articles/hts-appoints-foreign-extremists-to-top-positions-in-new-syrian-army

“Abd al-Aziz Daud Khudaberdi, also known as Abu Mohammed Turkistani, is a native of Turkistan and has been promoted to lieutenant.

Omar Mohammed Ciftci, also known as Mukhtar Turki, is a Turkish national who has become a lieutenant.

Abdel Samriz Bishari, an Albanian, has been promoted to colonel.

Maulana Tirson Abdul Samad, a native of Tajikistan, became a colonel.

Ala Mohamed Abdul Baqi, an Egyptian, was promoted to colonel.

Ibn Ahmad Hariri, a Jordanian, became a colonel.”

The Pantomime King's Great Speech: Denmark Celebrates The Cult Of Mediocrity

Denmark, January 1st, 2025

Under the oppressive gloom of a grey, windy and rainy Danish winter, last night the nation’s eyes turned toward the imposing Amalienborg compound, a strictly laid-out collection of opulent rococo palaces in the heart of Copenhagen funded by the blood and sweat of enslaved Africans in the West Indies. Last night, this bastion of inherited privilege set the stage for the most sacred spectacle in Nordic hermit kingdom's official cult of personality, the monarch's annual new years eve speech.

The occasion was particularly historic—or farcical, depending on one’s perspective. Nearly a year ago, the nation's aging ceremonial figurehead, Queen Margrethe Glücksburg, abdicated in favor of her son and hand-picked successor, Frederik Montpezat, in a bloodless but wholly undemocratic transition of power. Last night, Frederik, a man born into power and spared the inconvenience of earning it, addressed his subjects for the first time in this annual exercise of carefully choreographed worship.

US LNG exports soar, Europe remaining the main destination

US LNG exports reached near record levels in December, rising to 8.5 million metric tonnes (MT) as two new plants started, and driving up full-year shipments 4.5% over 2023.

In 2024 Europe accounted for 55% of total US LNG exports, 34% of total US exports went to Asia while the next 11% went mainly to Latin America with a few cargoes to the Middle East, mainly to Egypt and Jordan, LSEG data showed.

I still don't really understand why Biden was considered decent on climate change, US hydrocarbon production continues climbing higher regardless of who's president.

Apparently its illegal to have fun in worst Korea. What’s the point of being president if you can’t have a little martial law as a treat? What happened to guys being dudes?

New information from The Washington Post claims that the 37-year-old soldier shot himself in the head before the Tesla cybertruck exploded in front of the Trump International hotel in Las Vegas. Authorities have identified the victim of the Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas: Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty soldier in the elite Green Berets.

He worked at Fort Bragg, California and for the last 3 months had been working as a “Remote and Autonomous Systems Manager” for the US Army.

The FBI is investigating the motives of Matthew, who died inside Tesla's Cybertruck. A curious connection has been pointed out by them: Matthew and Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar (ex-military who ran over dozens in New Orleans) worked at Fort Bragg, but at different times, officials say.

Happy New Year everyone, I want to wish everyone a good 2025

Cuba and Bolivia officially acquired the status of associate countries of the BRICS group, joining a platform that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa as founding members.