I'd say this sort of ouroboros-esque argumentation that MMT proponents throw out arguing that people who disagree simply "don't get it" and need to "read MMT theory" to "enlighten" themselves on the "logical" nature of it is certainly one aspect that propels me to the skeptic position towards the pitch. I have indeed read Hudson and actually I went out of my way to search for his ex cathedra comments about it. He seems personally supportive, from what I gather, and if so, you could ring that up as a right-hand constituent of his 70%/30%. Given his anti-Stalinist asides, I'm satisfied with having some disagreements with him.

His assessment of the global subsidization of US dollar hegemony shows that no currency is an island and this is something maintained by geopolitical coercion. This is the primary contradiction that makes a Gordian knot of any US currency sovereigntist schemes like MMT and the overall condition of US dollar hegemony. As it turns out, dollar hegemony is turning out to be a two way street turned single-way only by the traffic cop's gun, and the implementation of domestic MMT-derived monetary policies will press upon further necessity for the US state to preserve the external status quo and coerce its involuntary creditors to further subsidize the American "monetary sovereignty." To assert otherwise, that one can print as much as they want for the domestic market without external spillover is rather laughable as it maintains idealism over the materialist outlook, as this scheme under other names has taken place before. Reaganomics at home to rescue the domestic economy was ultimately paid by those economies abroad, to disastrous consequence for the likes of Japan.

However, the technical feasibility of MMT is secondary to my rejection of the pitch. It is, in plain terms, it is a new FDR style New Deal. Appetizing for your progressive liberals and your social democrats, but something entirely objectionable as a ML. It is to put a lipstick on a pig and to, once again, claim that an ever more perfect capitalism is preferable than socialism, suppressing the latter through material financial appeasement. This is why MMT proponents range from Trots like Hudson all the way to mainstream US economists like Kelton. The etiological base of support for an economic policy, the people that proponents stand beside and their fellow travelers says rather a lot. As for Marxists, I recommend reading "Modern Monetary Theory: A Marxist Critique."

How MMT compares contra to neoclassical slop is something I care not for, as to that end, why not go one more step and compare how superior MMT is to feudal monetary economics or the currency price controls of Diocletian in the 4th century? How non-Marxist economics incestuously iterates upon itself to spit out its newest take is immaterial and in that sense, MMT is plainly the new rendition of Keynesianism, meant to plagiarize socialist theory to plaster onto a model of a "reformed, more humane and egalitarian" capitalism. Socialism is the alternative to which MMT must be compared to and in such a comparison, it's the two century old Proudhon argument dusted off and brought out from the museum display: that the only real problem with capitalism is the monetary dynamics.

One thing I will concede is that I have no doubt that if exigent pressures, similar to that during the post-Depression era, were to resurface, this MMT would absolutely be very likely enacted as a concession to curb the winds of support for socialism. It would follow in those footsteps of FDR just as the New Deal followed that of Wilson's "every American a homeowner" concession to sabotage the SPA of Eugene Debs.

I wanted to make a joke about that, but in seriousness, I would guess that the term "Long March" in contemporary Chinese culture, through the legendary status of that heroic campaign, has become rhetorically synonymous with a personal journey of perseverance and struggle basically akin to how Western cultures use the term "odyssey" from "The Odyssey." It's (justifiably) become one of those culturally enmeshed figurative terms, like how TERF island likes to append Dunkirk to the end of everything: "financial Dunkirk, political Dunkirk, etc."

The title likely is an allusion to that or maybe laconically pointing out just that the protagonist absolutely gets their daily steps in because they've meandered all around Tang China.

Everything that has been said against suicide goes round and round in the same circle of ideas. People cite against it the decrees of Providence, but the existence of suicide is itself an open protest against her indecipherable decrees. They talk to us of our duties to this society without explaining or implementing our own claims on society, and finally they exalt the thousand times greater merit of overcoming pain rather than succumbing to it, a merit as sad as the prospects it opens up. In short, they make of suicide an act of cowardice, a crime against the law, [society] and honour.

“Why is it that in spite of so many anathemas people kill themselves? Because the blood of men in despair does not run through their veins in the same way as that of the cold beings who take the time to coin all those fruitless phrases. Man seems to be a mystery to man; he can only be blamed, he is not known. When we see how light-mindedly the institutions under whose domination Europe lives dispose of the blood and life of the nations, how civilised justice surrounds itself lavishly with prisons, chastisements and instruments of death so as to sanction its insecure decisions; when we see the numerical immensity of the classes which on all sides are left in misery, and the social pariahs who are battered by brutal contempt, meant to be preventive, perhaps to save the trouble of lifting them out of their squalor; when we see all this, we fail to understand what entitles us to command the individual to respect in himself an existence which our customs, our prejudices, our laws and our morals generally trample underfoot.

“It was thought that it would be possible to prevent suicide by degrading punishments and by branding the memory of the culprit with infamy. What can one say of the unworthiness of such branding of people who are no longer there to plead their case? The unfortunates, by the way, are little worried by that; and if suicide accuses anybody, it accuses above all the people who are left behind, because there is not one in this multitude who deserves that anyone should stay alive for him. Have the childish and cruel means devised been victorious against the whisperings of despair? What does he who wants to flee the world care about the insults which the world promises to his corpse? He only sees in them yet another act of cowardice on the part of the living. What kind of society is it, indeed, where one finds the profoundest solitude in the midst of millions; where one can be overwhelmed by an irrepressible desire to kill oneself wthout anybody being aware of it? This society is no society, it is as Rousseau says, a desert inhabited by wild animals. In the positions which I held in the police administration suicides were part of my responsibility; I wished to learn whether among the causes motivating them there were any whose effect could be obviated. I undertook extensive work on the subject.” I found that any attempts short of a total reform of the present order of society would be in vain.

• "On Suicide" by Jacques Peuchet; collated by Karl Marx, 1845.

No need to apologize between comrades. I get your point: the Zimbabwean land reform is flawed, in various aspects, and the economic conditions of the country are not exactly great despite having gone through these reforms. Your first response construed Zimbabwe's land reforms to its current economic woes, which is a perspective I took issue with, as it puts the cart before the horse. It is misleading and does not invalidate the choice to undergo through its reforms as there is no cause to believe land reform alone guarantees economic prosperity or that the failings of Zimbabwe's reforms are solely due to its own mishandling rather than the reprisals it received from global imperialism. Even the comprehensive socialist land reforms of Czechoslovakia led to an economic slump that was used as a pretext for the infamous reactionary uprising. This does not mean that Czechoslovak land reforms caused its later economic underperformance.

The important thing I've been emphasizing is the material conditions underpinning Zimbabwe's land reforms. Zimbabwe is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the Maoist guerilla forces of the fascist Rhodesian occupation era were subsumed, akin to the acquiescing of the communists to the ANC in the South African experience, under what eventually became the Mugabe government. Furthermore, the goal of land reform in a non-socialist context is principally the redistribution of market power. This is the difference from socialist landform which is aimed at the eradiction of rentier and landlord classes, the equal distribution of wealth and dissolution of landed class privileges to create the material conditions for establishing collective and public land ownership. In terms of Zimbabwe, the intent was to break the hold of the settler colonial commercial landowners and to atomize 1 large farm into 50 smaller farms. The intent was not any of those that propel a socialist reform.

To expect a non-socialist state to conduct a more socialist manner of land reform is unrealistic. Post colonial governments across the Global South which have had their socialist revolutions suppressed are led by national bourgeoisie. The outcomes of socialist land reform is against their class interests.

The question then turns to whether market-based land reform like Zimbabwe is worth pursuing nonetheless. Zimbabwe's example proves such a program form is possible so is the answer that it should be rejected and that the populace must wait for a socialist revolution in order to do a much more genuine and comprehensive land reform like those of the USSR, China and Cuba? This is the question that pertains most immediately to countries like South Africa but also in the miraculous but inevitable event of a liberated Palestine as Al_Sham had inquired about. My answer is to this is no and that Zimbabwe's example does still serve as a model. Of course it goes without saying that it should obviously not be followed to the letter as the internal flaw of the Zimbabawe example is that this was a popular movement under the Jambanja that co-opted governmental inertia and forced the governent to go along with it but such is the nature of non-socialist land reforms where the national bourgeoisie will always be unwilling to accept the cost-benefit analysis of such a program, a dilemma that Zimbabwe's case highlights very clearly.

The First Congress of the Communist International once famously said: "We say: In the colonial and semi-colonial countries the first phase of the revolutionary movement must inevitably be a national-democratic movement." This must apply to the pursuit of land reform as well if a non-socialist state of the Global South embarks on the program. It is important and momentous enough for the working classes that even an imperfect rendition can be critically supported, particularly in the circumstances of decolonizing states like Zimbabwe that must contend with resolving settler colonial residual control which even market-based land reforms can ameliorate.

Anyway, this one was not.

Oh you get to decide that, huh? Ma faute, didn't realize I was talking to the UN General Secretary here.

Reread your own citation. The press release is quoting the US ambassador who claims it is "non-binding." The UN press office is allowed to publish partisan and deceitful material so long as it is attributed and not in the UN's own voice.

The Arab group statement in no way insinuates the current resolution is "non-binding." It is comparing the resolution to an ideal resolution not based on prisoner exchanges or time-limited, as the current resolution only demands a ceasefire until after Ramadan.

China has additionally stated that the UNSC resolution is binding. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/un-resolution-in-gaza-is-binding-china-challenges-us-at-security-council/

Didn't expect to see stray weeb wastewater apologia here.

All these Reddit "science understanders" can't comprehend nuclear by-products aren't just tritium alone. FFS, criticism denouncing TEPCO's discharge plan was literally published in Nikkei Japan and yet this is just apparently a "China beefing" thing.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/It-is-not-too-late-for-Japan-to-change-course-on-Fukushima-water

Interesting theory, though I don't think the Reddit Genshin crowd would take it well.

I think what I've noticed in Hoyoverse games isn't the presence of any explicit ML themes, but rather the absence of explicitly liberal ones. That's the one distinctive facet of their storytelling that often leaves the impression that there's something different between their themes and Western media tropes.

The most plain example of this isn't in Genshin, but in Honkai Star Rail. There's a moment in the first planet of the game where the land is near collapse from environmental disaster, on the brink of civil war due to an apartheid regime and badly demoralized about the future. The authority figure, who is ideologically compromised to put it mildly, is deposed and the new leader decides to refrain from publicly broadcasting how compromised the previous government has been. They choose to do this because it would badly shake confidence in the planetary leadership and because knowing that the past authority purposefully exacerbated the world's class segregation would inflame tensions towards civil war. Revealing to the public the nature of the past leadership would do nothing but harm at a critical moment, especially when the planet was finally offered an opportunity to rebuild by resolving the environmental crisis.

Let's just say the Reddit crowd did not take this well. One of the hallmarks of liberal storytelling is the importance on individualist moral purity towards core liberal values. The ultimate deontological anti-utilitarian mentality. In a context like HSR's, you are meant to tell the truth, no matter how destructive it might be, and damn the consequences. The liberal mindset loves to bash utilitarian "end justifies the means" decision making, but their "means justifies the end" reverse calculus is far more destructive. Walking away from a fire you gave the spark to is worth the moral absolution of having stuck to your "principles."

In other words, although the surface rationale for this principle is "democratic accountability to the collective," the result of valuing the means over the end means that the true intent is that individual self-gratification is more important than the collective common good. Wthholding the "truth" from their perspective is a massive sin, and the idea that someone could commit a sin for the sake of the betterment of the community is completely anathema to the liberal worldview. There are stories like that of HSR's dilemma in liberal Hollywood and Video game storytelling, but it is always baked in a overarching thematic emphasis that what the character did is wrong or at best, indicate to the audience through a whole song and dance that the story is self-indulgently bathing itself in "grey," "complicated" themes. HSR simply has the leader character make the decision in an aside and then the story moves on. The player character gets to make a dialogue choice to blurt out "a lie is always a lie" HBO Chernobyl-style liberal outburst, but it's a comestic line and the leader ignores the player's input. This is not their decision to make.

The story was flamed on Reddit for revealing Hoyo's Communist roots to detractors on one end and with the most favourable interpretation being that the government forced Hoyo to insert "pro-authoritarian" propaganda themes in the story. They can't fathom the idea that "leaders withholding societally damaging information" is a fact of human governance rather than a trait of the West's designated adversaries. The West simply puts a bow on it and calls it "classified information" or "national security" to dodge their surface claims of "democratic accountability." They always mentally masturbate to their fantasy of the Soviets not fully disclosing about Chernobyl and never reflect on how they were led by the nose to the Iraq War by an administration that openly lied about WMDs, by consecutive governments that openly sponsored programs like MKUltra, by endless lies from their leadership ranging from the Vietnam War Gulf of Tonkin false flag to the Nicaraguan Contra war crimes. None of those crimes by their own leadership was ever punished and yet the liberal theme that "the truth will always come out and lies will never last" is still odiously and hypocritcally pervasive.

This is what I've noticed that Hoyoverse's storytelling has. Not a presence of leftist themes but an absence of liberal ones.