lol is that surrender before or after Musk goes to China for the 2126262th time and gets a red carpet treatment? Before or after China gets flustered and begs wall St for better “investor sentiment”? The real power is not just on his hands, don’t forget that.

I don’t know how serious people are with these memes anymore, like did everyone already forgot they almost killed Trump?

I’d rather believe in some deep state nonsense conspiracy theory where they’ll kill Trump if he goes to far than the seemingly unironic “America will collapse in 30 days!” memes I’m seeing, we’re just missing the youtube thumbnails.

Too busy signing the Mercosur-EU deal after 25 years which results in arguably just as much damage(for his own country) overall.

The more serious mini crash in August due to the Japanese issue looked realy scary… only for another all time high right after, worst still it was one of the biggest runs in history as always…

My belief is nothing will cause a serious crash other than something that realy affects the real world, maybe NY gets flooded one day or a new war happens etc. Financial media narratives are not it and the previous bank crashes e.g the Sillicon Valley bank in 2023 and the Japanese in 2024 are the best argument for a middle ground between real and fictitious financial narratives i.e stuff people look and think it is important but in reality almost always turns out to be a waste of time.

Don’t underestimate the power of investors to make up whatever new bs to justify the next move. Consider that all the movement is made by algorithm trading bots that these days are built to exploit exactly these sorts of news in either direction. Nobody is losing money on this except maybe the rare absolutely bonkers hedge funds with either stupid leverage or incompetent people who basicaly know now how to be a competent corrupt capitalist lol, you know examples like Archegos.

You know they’ll say dipshit CEO lost some 20 billion or something. Almost certainly BS because these people are not just invested long, they probably are part of a private management group or have very competent people managing their investments, whatever they lost today is certainly somewhat mitigated by all forms of short hedges etc.

Important context if you’re not sure what this means in simple language

To sell the debt, bankers will have to convince investors that the company’s financials have stabilized. Musk’s recent rise in power and alliance with President Trump have seemed to help change the narrative around X’s fortunes.

Investors have been reaching out to the banks and have indicated interest in buying the company’s debt because they believe that the company’s financials are on an upward trajectory, one of the people familiar said.

Assuming this article is correct, in other words, every liberal screeching that X was collapsing because “millions of users are leaving”, at least it seems Wall St doesn’t care or it doesn’t hurt the company as much as of right now.

You’re asking one of the most biased places.

IMO it is wrong to look at simply as some strategy game where you “win” or “lose” based a on a check list of victory conditions.

To answer this truthly you can’t turn away from the absurd monstrosity of the war crimes and the severe destruction and death. By no rational standard you’d say the victorious side is the one that got all the civilian infraestructure destroyed including hospitals and a significant part of the population lost.

The real point is what is the price Israel had to pay for it and it is a mixed bag.

On the positive side it shattered a lot of the liberal order consensus, Israel kills UN workers, that whole condemn Hamas meme, it made them a pariah, Palestine become more popular among the younger generations in the west. We saw the elections where Palestine was significant political issue something the Democrats refuse to acknowledge.

But on the other hand the neoliberal order bowed entirely and the lines are even further drawn. You see state level support by Germany and others on a level pretty much only a few steps removed form literal WW2 nazism. Now Europeans will “choose” between the current neoliberal fascists and actual Nazi far right parties with not even a hint of shame. Now how do you see further support for Zionism in the west given this future?

I wont say much more about Trump but Elon toying with his childish edgy Nazi shit but history may look at this just like that Nazi gathering in the Madison Sq Garden before WW2.

Meanwhile we got absolutely nothing from the rest of the world. I’ve already made the point multiple times China is completely not to be taken as a leftist principled position on these issues. Those who want to resist the US are currently on our own. No sanctions against Israel or the US, on the contrary they’ve maintained relations and trade throughout. Worse still is they’ve even more actively pursuing further investments and relations with the current KSA and others. Without the prospect of a new cold war against the socialist threat there may be nothing to stop the US from supporting the genocide at any point in the future.

Likewise we saw that even Ukraine was merely a distraction, the US chose military support for Israel over Ukraine and the EU/NATO. It should tell you the relative ideological strength right now and probably into the future. Trump was already willing to kick EU libs so it shouldn’t be news but Biden tried to push both buttons but only came through for Israel.

People will say Israel is heading towards collapse. Be mindful with these thoughts. In the long term the entire world is fucked by climate change. Likewise even in the best case optimistic scenario it will take years if not decades for Palestine to rebuild. You should look away if you don’t want to imagine what will happen to the ME even 50 years from now given the current trends. Climate change will hurt the least developed countries first and foremost.

Israel will collapse? Possibly. The US will collapse? Certainly. Will you be happy living in the climate change hell of 2100? As I said in the beginning, its not a checklist of items where Israel won or lost.

So did Palestine win? The genocide may continue at a later date is the only thing you can say right now imo.

The countries join the bloc as partners, with a lower status than full members, but with the possibility of participating in summits and thematic meetings

This isn’t news, its literaly what was announced before and maintains all the previous criticism and skepticism. Its literaly “they’re members but haha joke is on you but all they get is a hotel reservation for the next Putin party in Moscow” or some nonsense.

Sadly it seems nobody bothers reading and are clearly reacting to a different interpretation of what “joining BRICS” ought to look like which is not at all what is happening(yet if ever). Nothing changed since this was announced months ago, unless the quote here is wrong. What on god’s earth is a thematic meeting rofl makes it sound as bad as the G7 shit lets talk about the climate while everyone flies in on a private jet.

Mutual respect with the devil and worst enemies of the global south and of socialism. Nausiating words.

Dengism continues to show its ugly dirty side. Shake hands with genocide Joe then welcome fucking Trump into the presidency. I only speak for myself but god the CPC can go fuck themselves with this BRICS “multipolarity” scam shit. Multipolarity is when you stand side by side with your enemy, welcome them, praise them. What a bunch of lies and reactionary betrayal of the working class. Trump is literaly a god damn fascist that doesn’t even pretend to be anything else. There is no “neoliberal civility” loophole copium shit like with [insert random walking corpse US dem politician #16676].

The global south must stand alone, the message is and has always been clear. Chinese socialism is definitely not going to help us, heck it may even eventually become our enemies by proxy. This is what we get for having even the tiniest amount of hope.

I’ll try to use US equivalents.

First PIX is a modern QR code style payment system created by the federal government. It became very popular to the point a lot of people are cashless now.

The second major point is every informal(freelancer, gig worker etc) and every small business also use this.

Given those two we have what actualy happened. The Brazilian government sent out a new document saying the Federal Police(FBI) and the tax agency(IRS) are now going to monitor every PIX transaction.

The moral outrage then is two videos(I wont link but you can google “Nikolas Ferreira Pix Instagram”) that by now got a combined 150 million views where the far right guy successfuly created this fake news narrative saying this is the Lula government going after the poor, who have been struggling due to neoliberalism and small businessses by making it harder to dodge taxes. The fear is the “IRS” will put a tax on these transactions and hurt the poor/small business.

It is particularly effective for 3 reasons.

First because the person mixes this fake news narrative along with the real Lula neoliberal government hypocrisy, including instances where the government did lie and went back on a similar promise e.g the promise to not tax cheap imports under US$50 which they in fact did.

Second because he successfuly also mixes the natural inherent exploitation and class issues, its very successful at pointing out the rich politicians, big business owners, state owned business are corrupt and dodging taxes while the poor are still struggling to make ends meet so it is just plain evil for “Lula” to go after the poor now. Indeed its true Lula 3 did not bring any meaningful economic gains so far.

Third because one of the main criticism of this neoliberal shit government from the left is that Lula doesn’t care about communicating with the population. The President could arrange a prime time national announcement on every TV, radio etc network, every week if he wanted to in order to communicate but he literaly doesn’t do that ever. This is a special opportunity where it is necessary for the government to address the population and dispel this narrative. But he hasn’t and he wont.

So in the end the government is only barely responding now after almost a whole week. As a result a single Bolsonaro fake news campaign managed to bring down the whole payment system and as a result PIX transactions are down 15% already so far in January.

As for the Zuckerberg thing, as I said, did you notice why it is so ironic? This PIX fake news campaign was an Instagram video.

Remember that some people were quick to lick Moraes(the judge) boots just because of that extremely brief spout with Elon Musk where twitter got “banned” except it literaly all went back to normal, all Musk had to do was pay some absurdly tiny comical fines, literaly a few million is what Elon makes within a day or two.

Some random government/federal judge will say anything again today but the key point is Brazil is completely dominated by American IT, Brazil is held hostage by these companies not the other way around it literaly doesn’t matter what political theater they try to pull, money talks and these people are cheap. Brazil is not China, there is no local Brazilian google to fall back on.

I beg you please ignore most of the information by some posters here, I get the feeling there are literaly no other brazilians here these days.

The right wing in Brazil controls every part except the northeast and smaller parts of the southeast. This was 2022.

https://noticias.uol.com.br/eleicoes/2022/analise/presidente-2-turno/mapa-mostra-quem-foi-mais-votado-nos-estados-e-municipios-no-2-turno/?uf=sp

As you can see the last vestiges of the brazilian left are concentrated in the North and Northeast regions. Keep in mind these regions have a much lower population density so it is somewhat misleading.

São Paulo is one of the biggest cities in the world and it was always divided between the suburbs and surrounding smaller cities being a somewhat leftist tendency and the metropolitan urban area being a right wing tendency.

This changed in the 2010s with the complete destruction of labour unions which were the massive source of the Worker Party’s political base. Now the entire south east including these previously left wing cities have turned to the right.

Now as I’ve maintained earlier a few months ago, Lula will most likely not be reelected given the extremely neoliberal government and the massive right wing political shift across the country.

This was already true in 2022 and it got even worse after the last municipal elections a few months ago where they won literaly in 90% of the cities.

The Brazilian left got absolutely crushed winning barely 12% of the total mayoral elections.

You can check this interactive map too The left wing parties, with a huge caveat of “left” here being the usual extremely neoliberal left are only PT-PDT-PSB. Actualy somewhat sucdem left like PSOL continue to not elect literaly nobody and actual socialist parties like PCdoB and PCB have no political power.

It is absolutely pointless to talk about regional differences without this context. Please for the love of god ignore anyone who doesn’t understand this.

To answer your question, Bolsonaro supporters live everywhere, regional stereotypes are not meaningful anymore.

Bolsonaro’s strongholds are in the central states of Brazil and in the small towns in the southeast that tend to vote for conservative candidates. The left tends to do well in the northeast, the Amazonian states, Rio de Janeiro and Brazil’s southernmost state.

Completely and utterly wrong, please double check your information about Brazil because I realy don’t get where you get your information from these days, this is so completely wrong its harmful actualy. Please don’t mischaracterize the situation.

Bolsonaro won in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in 2022 more state capitals than Lula, 16 vs 11, including some of the biggest wins in the state of 56.5% in Rio de Janeiro 55.5% and São Paulo.

Likewise the vote given the state capitals shows a massive bolsonaro victory accross the board.

Lula only barely managed to win because of the northeast, thats it. The entire country is otherwise captured by the right wing already for years since 2016.

I do not know where you get your information about Brazil but Rio de Janeiro hasn’t been a leftist state for for over 20 years after Brizola’s death.

I don’t get this, how would Bytedance selling Tiktok to one of America’s big tech be a pro-China move?

Trump is winning this rethoric no matter what imo. If they sell he claims his idiotic big business guy brain shit “oh and I forced them to sell. See? Even the big Chinese business recognized they were no match for us” etc.

If they don’t it gets banned anyway and China does something else to appease Trump anyway like they’ve been doing with Biden already.

The US doesn’t need “narratives” when China is willing to do whatever it takes to be friendly.

These idiots can say this shit all they want but it is absolute nonsense, any surface level look at Brazilian social media’s most popular apps like Whatup shows its just as infested with bots and fake news as FB/Twitter or any other garbage.

The cultural phenomenon which allows these services to be almost entirely controlled by right wing/far right-bolsonaro/religious fundamentalists(evangelicas) and ultimately still a somewhat decisive political factor is completely adjacent to whatever the American billionaire alien face dipshit says or does.

1he “Brazilian government” will say this and do actualy nothing meaningful about it. Case in point the recent PIX(online transaction) tax fake news scandal/mass hysteria going on. Entirely through social media.

Yet the Lula government did absolutely nothing to fight about it and that will remain true.

Weapons grade copium that could fund a global socialist revolution’s weapons program IMO

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism in January 2021 – just days before leaving office – saying at the time that Havana was “providing support for acts of international terrorism in granting safe harbor to terrorists” after refusing to extradite leaders of a Colombian guerrilla organization who were in Havana for peace talks when a deadly bombing took place in the South American nation. Pompeo accused the nation of reneging on its commitments made when President Barack Obama took them off the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2015.

Senior administration officials also said Biden was rescinding another Trump-era memorandum that established “the so-called restricted list, which is a list of entities that form the base of certain entities in Cuba that are subject to certain prohibited financial transactions.”

Still, the moves are not likely to last. President-elect Donald Trump has filled his team with officials hawkish on Cuba, including Sen. Marco Rubio, his pick for secretary of state. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has long backed punitive measures against the island’s government.

Look at how the CNN article frames it as reversing the 2019-21 Trump move and in general how they contextualize, not once or twice but three times how this Biden move is opposite to Trump.

This is literaly a petty Biden last minute move to make things tougher for Trump on the short term and get some cheap rethoric ready for the next election cycle when some dipshit will remind you Biden did this and then Trump undid it etc etc.

It is absolutely low cost and low/medium return investment for politics 4 years from now. Trump got no reason to be dovish towards Latin America and if that happens its entirely unexpected.

I can assure you despite the mainstream media reporting this story is definitely like 99% true.

First a key point to understand. BYD is not building the factory on its own, the project was outsourced to a Chinese contractor Jinjiang. The key here is BYD and Chinese defense want to argue on BYD’s behalf, but under Brazilian law both parties are responsible, not just the contractor, i.e yes BYD is responsible(negligent) for allowing their contractor to break Brazilian labour law.

This must be understood because it is only an attack on BYD if you completely ignore Brazilian law, that sounds like absolute condescension from the BYD defense side. Maybe make sure your contractors are not breaking the law is common sense. I should note Brazil got a structural problem with migrant labour and attempts to circunvent local labour law by giving double standards. In this story only the Chinese workers are mistreated exactly as a cost-cutting strategy.

Second this is the original Brazilian media investigative reporting. Denúncia: operários chineses estariam sofrendo agressões em fábrica da BYD na Bahia This was at first an allegation of physical abuse by independent journalists. this prompted the Brazilian authorities to launch the investigation.

This was the first opportunity for Jingjiang/BYD to take notice and respond.

The report sought the company regarding the allegations. In a statement, BYD said that it has been operating in Brazil for 10 years “strictly complying with local laws”. The automaker also said that “the works at the factory in Camaçari, Bahia, meet all legal standards, including the installation license obtained in 2024 and approved by the state government”, in addition to highlighting that it made an investment of R$5.5 billion, with the potential to generate “more than 20 thousand jobs”.

I have to note here that BYD can go fuck themselves with this phrasing, it is absolutely horrible to see this same attitude which usualy comes from westerners “yes let me remind you we put a lot of money into it” as if we’re animals begging for scraps at a table. More importantly it shows they’re not cooperative as you can see, in many instances they did not even address the allegations provided.

Also BTW as a reminder 10 years should be put into context that Dilma suffered the coup in 2016. Basicaly 6 out of those 10 years were under the extreme right wing Temer/Bolsonaro governments that severely destroyed our labour rights, specialy the outsourcing reform etc. In that regard the Lula government did absolutely nothing to improve the situation btw.

This is not a bragging moment is what I mean. Jesus leave it for the Chinese to brag about working under a right wing government lol, anyway.

In the note , BYD also informs that JinJiang Construction Group is the construction company responsible for the works. And, because it is a very specific type of building, “it operates in several countries where BYD expands operations”. BYD, however, did not respond specifically to the allegations of violence.

On November 11 of this year, the Federal Police and the MPT were at the construction site to inspect working conditions, but they did not go to the accommodations or tour the entire assembly area of ​​the factory, according to sources heard by the report.

When contacted, the MPT confirmed the inspection of the factory. According to the agency, an investigation is underway to determine information about the “health and safety at work” of the workers. The visit was attended by a prosecutor, an expert and civil servants, in addition to the Federal Police escort.

“There is an ongoing investigation. The report is not ready yet and must be attached to it. Complaints help us begin the investigation. In this case, there is an investigation that will have to reach a conclusion,” the agency responded, via press office.

When asked about the MPT inspection, BYD said that the inspection “indicated the need for specific adjustments in the operation”. And that the nonconformities had already been identified, with demands that JinJiang “act urgently to correct them”. The company did not specify what these corrections would be.

So at first they deny and deflect with a condescending tone and then finaly actualy despite the BS, the capitalist screeching they actualy admitted they were at fault and asked their contractor to fix it.

Except they didn’t and then you saw the shameless abhorrent attempt to intimidate the workers with that recent PR video.

Later more evidence came out including reports of injuries at the working site. This should not be taken lightly, the local Union is involved too, though even if you give them minimum legitimacy, it means there are witnesses and this is not fake news or whatever US plotting.

BYD confirmed the accidents took place and they were treated on site. I personaly don’t think this is appropriate, certainly not an amputation shouldn’t be taken lightly as a mere simple working accident. There is no defense for this kind of coincidence only the fact many others may have happened that we don’t know about.

Two accidents involving Chinese workers working at the Build Your Dreams (BYD) construction site in Camaçari , in the Salvador Metropolitan Region (RMS), were reported to the Bahia Labor Prosecutor’s Office (MPT-BA) this Tuesday (3). One of the foreigners had a finger amputated and the other suffered a broken leg.

The situation was reported by the Union of Civil Construction, Assembly and Industrial Maintenance Workers of Camaçari and Region (Sindticcc), which is monitoring the situation and visited the workers at Santa Helena Hospital, in the city, where they are hospitalized.

In a statement, the entity reported that the accidents occurred on consecutive days, last Sunday (1st) and Monday (2), but the circumstances were not detailed.

BYD/Jiang admitted the workers were treated on-site. I’m sure you’re aware this is wholy inadequate to put it mildly when these are not special conditions e.g a oil rig in the ocean or some base in antartica. Its a city in Brazil with adequate public and private health options.

Then finaly as is ample photos and available video evidence. They had absolutely appaling hygiene standards, workers were eating from buckets, the kitchen looks like an open market with absolutely no health inspection standards i.e this is already illegal by Anvisa standards to prepare food in such places.. Also in the same video you can see their beds are of low quality, some lack even a mattress which is something even poor families in the favelas have access to. Its inexcusable.

I still think Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 marked perhaps one of the most radical points in history over the past two decades. I will admit I had perhaps way too much optimism back then. Unfortunately, the opportunities opened up by it weren’t seized upon and things are slowly reverting to status quo.

What I’ve been thinking since Syria is there are bigger issues here with how the “alternative media” or whatever you call it handled the '22-25 period so far that specially now after Syria, I think this NC post is a good example(“Russia Dodged a Bullet by Wisely Choosing Not To Ally With the Now-Defeated Resistance Axis”) only slightly gets to some of it, not even the author or the article(its pretty whatever I don’t even agree with it) but the commenters are fascinating to me, and some of it is something I’ve come to agree with some time.

These people we turned to as “geopolitical experts” have questionable biases and track records, looking at the comments and some of the people mentioned and how they handled Syria is very telling.

I say this because some people are eager to say “oh but China isn’t doing anything new they’ve been opening up since Deng duh” as if they don’t understand this is embarrassing and ultimately a condemnation of China.

We were correct imo as I said often now for a brief moment it realy did look as if we were actualy going towards the start of what could be a long chain of events/conflicts between the west and the rotw. It realy did look as if China wasn’t going to take it anymore(following HK, Xinjiang, COVID etc) and we could see Russia having to choose between a Chinese led opposition to western interests and the usual post soviet neoliberal history. Of course even back then it was only though the hopes of Russia having an impossible choice between their worst enemy and their “biggest” ally that through this relationship(Putin literaly went to China and traveled together with Xi and all that shit) that they/he would learn something about what needed to be done.

China is too comfortable for a radical transformation, not to mention the entire Xi’s (and many others’) family history with the Cultural Revolution, so they’ll want to play it slow and steady.

I’ve maintained China has been the critical actor, with the biggest influence and biggest potential and the turn around is inexplicable except by the obvious realization we were wrong and China wasn’t in fact looking to be oppositional at all.

3 years later it is even clearer China wants the consensus, as I mentioned many times they’re not even afraid, let alone embarrassed lol to shit on the entire global south left/socialists conception or hopes of international socialism by working as closely with the US as they can. Be it state media or Xi himself, they’ll say US bad one day and then beg Wall St for money and shake hands with Genocider in Chief the very next day.

We weren’t wrong to have hope, we were wrong for not understanding Xi’s fundamental change of the CPC had absolutely nothing to do geopolitics. As far as China is concerned the year may as well be 2002. Not understanding or appreciating this enough is at least what I consider my own mistake, not realizing the Dengism hole goes quite a bit deeper and nastier. I leave this quote

Economic globalisation resulted from growing social productivity, and is a natural outcome of scientific and technological progress, not something created by any individuals or any countries. Economic globalisation has powered global growth and facilitated movement of goods and capital, advances in science, technology and civilisation, and interactions among peoples… Whether you like it or not, the global economy is the big ocean that you cannot escape from. Any attempt to cut off the flow of capital, technologies, products, industries and people between economies, and channel the waters in the ocean back into isolated lakes and creeks is simply not possible (Xi 2017)

Yes praise globalization says the Great Communist Leader, fucking kill me 8 years ago already lol. There is “taking it slow” as you put it and then there is whatever this brainworm is. I have serious doubts dengism has any meaningful intentions of moving beyond the current status quo. China wants a seat on the table and only to keep the inadequacies of our global south suffering away from their borders(and preferrably out of sight by begging the US to be “nice” to everyone). I could be wrong, I want to be wrong, I’d like to see them actualy do anything before believing it though.

There is both video and photo evidence of their working conditions, including things like eating from a fucking bucket and working without proper equipment. In any abuse situation you don’t trust just the victim given the conflict of interest but rather what is the evidence you can find on the actual scene.

Not only that this is a very shitty move, a shitty clueless PR move and its classic victim blaming, “oh how dare you shame our workers telling them they’re being treated like slaves, have you considered their feelings” you say as you beat them with a leash?

There is no justification for confiscating their passports even, that is complete BS.

You should trust the Brazilian reporting on this, these violations are also against Brazilian labour law. They found them eating with little or no hygiene, sharing 1 bathroom/toilet for as many as 30 workers, sleeping in beds without mattress etc. Here for example, the shit beds and the “kitchen” the person says it looks like a open(fair) market, trust me this is slum like conditions.

I do not believe the US has any reason to be involved, because this is not an out of the blue move. The Brazilian authorities were notified 1 month ago, nothing was done until the government raid. There was even a working accident 3 weeks ago after the first reporting on their conditions, an amputated finger and a broken leg.

I can only say I’m sorry for them, I do not believe for a second you’d work 10h a day in conditions like that and then still turn around record a video like this.

I’ll give a tip, don’t mistake Chinese capitalists for principled Communists, fuck these assholes. Brazilian authorities caught them with the smoking gun.

The Chinese left hand working right along side the right hand, the epitome of hypocrisy and double faced charity.

Yeah Google is censoring new satellite imagines, the comments mentioned Mariupol yeah its obvious look at the Mariupol rail station on google maps its clearly destroyed despite the 2024 copyright.

The before and after

I would not look at India so superficialy like that. The US is at very least looking at that as a favor that they will call back on later. The US doesn’t have much to care about what other countries do unless it is relevant to agenda.

This is the sort of rethoric around the Khashoggi murder. They did that, they shocked the world, they got all the liberal media and even the NGO clown shit circle to turn their head away in disgust and then what exactly materially changed about KSA and USA relations? 5 years later KSA is as big a vassal as ever.

For India as a country I think rather this double faced BRICS and US relations will bring them absolutely nowhere but the bottom pit of the global south material conditions. Climate change, Bangladesh. These are some of the keywords that matter for 10-20 years from now.

Government shutdown due to fake political theater over infinite fake money and the “budget”.

Government shutdown due to bird flu pandemic.