I came to realise a difference between myself and the rest of the people staffing the racket – the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) workers, the economists in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and so on. […] While I was coming to understand how the racket really worked, I started to see them as willing dupes.
"Turkey, for example, is more interested in playing the role of a middle power between the West and Russia while expanding its own influence in the Middle East, often openly sympathizing with Islamists groups such as Hamas whose fighters have been receiving medical treatment in Turkey. This is quite remarkable, considering that Nato’s original purpose was as a defense against the Soviet Union, and that Article 5 (stating that an armed attack against one member state shall be considered an attack against all member states) of the North Atlantic Treaty has only been invoked once in the 75-year history of the alliance. In that case, it was against the violent Islamism of al-Qaeda after 9/11."
interesting, we'll see if they take the coexistance road. Leaving Taiwan, peace in Ukraine and abandoning Israel are the 3 key issues rn that would signal that.
My money is on no, on all three counts. They won't stop antagonizing China over Taiwan, they won't let go of project Ukraine, and they certainly won't abandon their most precious neocolony. These people have no reverse gear. All they know how to do is double down.
Whether US ruling class decides to consolidate its power on what remains of the empire or kill us all in a nuclear holocaust is the big question. It's encouraging to see that recognition that US hegemony has come to an end is starting to settle in.
Probably. I haven't clicked on that link but that sort of thing is to be expected from this source.
When i recommend a piece i generally vet it for that sort of stuff, and if there is any problematic content i try and add a warning. But i don't vouch for other things the same author may have written.
We should always be aware of the bias of the media we consume, and when reading analysis by conservative leaning authors like this one, caution is advised. That's part and parcel of critical media consumption, knowing what we can take that is of value from a piece of media and what to discard.
The president of a miscellaneous Global South nation was walking along the beach with Xi Jinping.
"Xi," said the President, sometimes it feels like you're there for us, but sometimes it feels like you've abandoned us.
Xi bade the President to look back along the two sets of tracks they had made on the beach.
"My like-minded good friend," said Xi Jinping, "the Chinese people have been walking hand-in-hand with you ever since we stood up in 1949."
"But Xi," said the President again, "sometimes one pair of footsteps veers away."
"Those are the times you turned to the Americans." Xi pointed to where the straying footsteps came to an abrupt stop at an ice cream truck. "But we have always been here to resume walking together once your people grew weary of being fed junk food."
Well, there is more to it coming from Brazil, like it is true that there is a lot of good will towards the BRICS members and with straightening ties with China, but it's important to not make it seem that Brazil's internal politics are more to the left than they actually are, there are some very pro market and austerity inducing measures in course in Brazil, that bodes poorly for the short to mid term future. There is a need here for grater popular protests and movements, and there are some groups showing promise on the subject, but the situation here is not good, although Lula's posture on international matters are nothing short of amazing, his team of ministers here are a far cry from what it would be expected of him. TLDR: Things are good, on one side, but really not good on the other.
That said, Brazil becoming aligned with China and having its economy aligning away from the west will help drive political change as well. These things don't happen overnight, but I think that the overall trajectory is promising.
for sure, not to dismiss that at all, that is something that I'm very proud of my country, but I think it's important to show the struggles we're facing internally too, to enrich the vision of the country, cause when this nice parts are getting traction people tend to think that Brazil is going hard to the left, which is not exactly true, and if a right turn come about people know where it came from
Completely agree, and I think there's a broader point here that any serious political change is a long and complex process that will have many setbacks. One of the traps people fall into is thinking that change can be accomplished via single action like a protest, a strike, or an election. Lack of realization that it's going to be a struggle and that people need to commit to this struggle for a long term vision is how movements fall apart.
One of the best recent examples of this was the whole Bernie movement in US. He managed to organize and motivate millions of young people across the country, but all that was focused on winning an election without any broader vision. Once he was shuffled off in favor of Biden the whole thing fizzled overnight. This illustrates why a politically literate and principled vanguard is so important.
I know for sure that it takes time, but the issue, is that Lula's strategy inside the country seems to be treading away from lasting change and more into the hands of the pressures of the capital, one of those austerity inducing measures, and quite a heavy one, is from one of his main allies, the equivalent the secretary of treasury, which was the presidential candidate when Lula was in jail. There is quite a bit of departure from a leftist line on his government in many issues, and a concerning lack of organized mass movements in the country. So the struggle is quite real, and rough
Indeed, Lula strikes me like a version of Bernie in many ways. He's not trying to create a dictatorship of the proletariat, but rather to stabilize the current capitalist system.
Basically it looks like decoupling is continuing apace.
The US is in a spiral here and I don't see any way it stops and there's a feedback effect on China whether they like it or not. This will not help China, it will slow China's progress somewhat. It will hurt the western proletariat.
Basically the more they do this, the more China has to take actions to secure their own ability to do things by investing in domestic manufacturing. The more they do that, the more the hawks in the US point to it as a threat that China is going to do that to industry x soon as well (despite the fact China only does this in response to these kinds of moves) and uses it to justify more decoupling in yet another industry. China has to keep pace with this and eventually will probably start guessing industries the US is going to do this to next (as you can't spin things up in a day you have to) which adds further ammo to the deranged borger-imperialists idea that they have to have "clean" (free from China) supply chains.
In practice of course they can't entirely eliminate China from the supply chains but they know that, it's just banter from the more ignorant politicians but the point all along is to secure the heights of technology. So sure China can produce precursors to advanced medical drugs and such which are laundered through Vietnam and drive up prices in the west BUT China cannot be allowed to directly export the drugs, to enter into partnerships with US or European companies in any way that gives them and not the west the advantage, they can't be allowed to get graduates from top university programs in the US and so on.
And they've done this with high technology, with AI, with green energy, with social media, and now this.
In other words, doubters be banished, this is full cold war 2.0, the sanctions, the blockade. There will be trade of course, more than between the US and USSR but the US will seek to taper even that and shift resources to India, etc this and next decade. Unfortunately the US likely has enough plundered loot and momentum to see at least some of this plan through and cause horrible problems for the global south and annoyances and growing pains, stunting to China for at least the foreseeable future, into next decade I'd say.
What's interesting is this is being done at the west's pace. It is not China calling the shots. The west is being cautious, acting slowly, methodically, prying away one industry at a time rather than passing blanket bans and making it known to increasing amounts of businesses in various sectors that it's not safe to invest or do business in China because you could be cut off any time by these kinds of things. This is designed to have a chilling effect on anyone involved in anything more advanced than making clothing or McDonalds meals toys there.
China doesn't want to provoke the west for several reasons. One being I think they want this process to happen as slow as possible so they can take maximum advantage of what trade they have until the last moment. The other being delaying war which they don't want but the US is dead set on. Sadly by doing this they hand US the power to act freely and without any caution or consideration to Chinese retaliation. There are definitely arguments to be made for China trying to gut-punch the US economy in retaliation for these sanctions. Which yes would spur more and more quickly but would cause a lot of short-term pain and who knows could even get enough bourgeoisie off the side-lines to slow down or stop it though it seems unlikely. If China were to do such a thing, I'd advocate doing it very soon, soon enough that the US economy tanks before the election so Biden loses and Trump may maybe feel a little bit that China helped him which won't go that far in relations but at least flexes power. Then again it could lead to a war. So many variables. The Chinese route is one of caution, but the US knows this and plans around it.
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