Happy birthday!

Drugs are bad. Don’t use anything addictive or too mind-altering. I think even regular (daily) consumption of coffee is bad but it’s one of those things that under capitalism I suppose I understand as a kind of necessary evil.

Mind-control MKUltra drugs which encourage frivolous hedonism, individualism, magical/irrational thinking are of course a weapon of the enemy and often directly fund them and their proxies as well. Escapism would not be a needed thing under socialism as well, they are at most a crutch and I am very suspicious of those who advocate their use. This person you speak of is not a Marxist and may well be a fed.

The US is doing everything in its power to undermine MAD and nuclear deterrence in general. This doesn’t surprise me given how many more nuclear weapons the US has to China that they think they can and should use some in a conventional war. The logic being they afford to, it kills enemies that would weaken their conventional forces, and enemy use of the same would undermine their limited stockpile while US use wouldn’t matter to their deterrent. Still deeply alarming.

The mainland can obviously send far more missiles back and destroy their strike capacity. Russia does this in Ukraine all the time.

These are not rational actors. Neither is Ukraine. Both are and would be in this scenario run by liberal fanatics/fascist fanatics willing to burn their nation to a cinder for the US. Ukraine is illustrative of this point not really mattering per se.

Meanwhile, if the island is under blockade then the US trying to fly things in will be an act of war.

And targeting Russia’s nuclear triad and hitting their bombers with obvious help from NATO intelligence isn’t? The point is the west thinks rules don’t apply to them and given Russia hasn’t hit MI:6 with an oreshnik yet they seem to be right. In that they can do whatever they want and if you hit them back directly as long as they have a cover THEY themselves believe in no matter how flimsy for their actions they will fly off the handle into a genocidal self-righteous indignant rage. Russia seems to know this, China probably does as well.

I’m not saying the US wouldn’t do that, but at that point it’s a direct war with China for them.

Only if China chooses to and given Russia keeps blinking they may think China will as well and that they can unilaterally escalate while their foes will avoid it, giving them the advantage.

Also, the whole US strategy is predicated on China doing a ground invasion. Every naval battle the US simulated against China, they lost horribly.

Is it? I saw a story of the head of JSOC talking of naval drones and basically mining the whole straits, turning into a zone China cannot cross and using that time to do whatever they want including landing forces. I don’t think the US plans to send in their carrier battlegroups and fight on China’s front door. They are not that stupid and even if they were good strategy would call for assuming they’re smarter than that as one should never underestimate one’s enemy. They have island chains and have been building naval drones in secret for some time now so they can do over the horizon type fighting. Their point like with Ukraine is to bleed China, not to triumphantly plant the US flag but to bleed them, to hurt them, to study them and learn their secrets, to demoralize them, to force it to take longer and be costlier and to make it a big spectacle they can use to rally the western world against China around as this big travesty and atrocity.

I maintain given the US advantage, given island chains not just around China but those policing west Asia, Africa, etc and NATO’s combined naval sizes plus all the land bases and air assets they have that most likely they want to bleed China in the SCS, use it to justify decoupling, sanctions and an embargo and blockade and carry out that blockade off the coast of Africa, Diego Garcia, in the various straits using the zionist entity in west Asia, etc, etc. To draw China out, to spread them out, to hit them with combined naval and air assets and use the superior logistics and amounts of bases NATO has. By doing this they cross out the major advantage China has in the SCS with land-based missiles and rocketry and fight from the high-ground.

Just look at how the trade war is destroying the US economy right now. Imagine what happens if China explicitly cuts off exports to the US.

Which is why they’re so desperate to decouple. The bribes didn’t work and were pocketed, Trump is very clumsily trying tariffs. But when it comes down to it they might think they can force decoupling with a conflict when all else has failed. Sure the consumer economy would implode but I’m not sure capitalists and empire planners wouldn’t consider that and forcing the proles to a much lower quality of life as they work to re-shore an acceptable if painful cost of survival and maintaining hegemony.

A coup is not that unlikely either, some retired military people in Taiwan have openly talked about it already.

I really hope that happens but I wouldn’t count on it. I’m sure the island is filled with US spies and trained dogs and any coup would face a counter-coup of ferocious proportions with support from US assets in Japan and possibly those US special forces already on the ground.

I just worry most about the nukes flying. I hope this conflict doesn’t start until China has a chance to massively expand their arsenal and proof it against Aegis and ground and orbital interceptors.

I suppose the issue is the puppet regime there would likely respond to a blockade with military force. Not day one, maybe not even week one but eventually.

They have thousands of rockets trained on the mainland which they’d fire and rain down on the military and civilians alike in China to push the issue. Yes they’d eventually run out but the problem is the US would try to fly more in. Ships you can ram and get in the way of and blockades are therefore effective without needing to blow up a carrier, planes you have to shoot down and at that point it becomes a question of whether China would shoot down a US military transport plane and put itself in drawing first blood type of thing at which point you get American chuds hooting and baying for blood in response and liberals declaring we also must respond to “stand with Taiwan”.

Make no mistake the US does not intend to let the Taiwan card be only half played. They won’t let China quietly strangle it into submission with a blockade or sanctions, they will force the government to attack China and start a war no matter how doomed a position it puts them in because it lets them paint China as militarily aggressive and rally Europe and the anglo-sphere and their loyal Asian vassals to decouple from and sanction China in response with a purported cause they can blast to their populations.

Let’s also not forget the US has reserve currency status. They can spend as much as they like. Let’s recall the Berlin airlift where the Soviets cut off truck and land shipments into divided Berlin post-war and the US just responded by using its immense wealth and military and industrial and logistics might to just fly supplies in.

Frankly short of a coup by rational military generals in Taiwan who order the stand-down to save their lives and those of their countrymen I just don’t see a situation where the US doesn’t use Taiwan in a Ukraine style play. They won’t last as long but they really only need to hold out for a week of breathless western propaganda coverage and crying about evil China to get things done. After that it doesn’t really matter if they crumple and China doesn’t need to do a massive invasion because they’ll have drawn the blood they wanted and cast China as the villain and victimized Taiwan to do it.

https://www.rt.com/russia/618344-lenin-mausoleum-moscow-renovation/

News of a big restoration of Lenin’s tomb has come out in the past week or so. More generally reverence for figures like Lenin or Stalin in capitalist Russia divorced from what they stood for.

I don’t think it’s fair to blame them.

The west colonized the area, the west gave it to these jewish fascists, the west looked the other way or encouraged the genocide as it began, the west papered over it by using the holocaust card as if the Palestinians bore any blame, the west turned it into an outpost, the west armed it, the west defended it, the west kept up the charade of “peace” talks and talks for two states for decades to deceive everyone into thinking there was a way out and blocked international intervention at the UN and elsewhere for 3/4ths of a century. The blood is not on China’s hands, it’s not their fault they were born into a world of western capitalist imperialist hegemony and it’s not their fault that the only way to get ahead was to keep their heads down. And they do not have the strength and power to bring down all the evils of the NATO/US empire.

It’s because China is selling itself as impartial. They are selling themselves as an alternative to the US who is well known for using sanctions against countries who displease them, countries who do things they don’t like, countries run by people they dislike.

China’s idea for peeling the world away from US hegemony is offering a better deal. To do that they feel a need to be consistent so that the US has absolutely no examples it can point to of them violating their policy of being impartial and neutral, of not conditioning trade ties on obeying Chinese edicts on domestic policy, on basically trading with everyone fairly and letting countries set their own policies and leaving it to be their internal business.

This kind of selling point is very attractive to many global south countries, some of which may be run by people who are oppressive, the gulf monarchies for example are a group China would like to at least pull closer to their corner.

The second they break this rule for any reason, people start asking questions about why they won’t break it for reason x or for country C doing bad things and it becomes a hammer to hit China with from two fronts: 1) That they like the US will try and use their might to influence your domestic policy, that you risk becoming a vassal to China like with the US if you side with them 2) they start getting hammered for doing it in this instance but not in another instance and the US does it in that instance and they start comparing themselves and China starts looking badly and can either buckle and risk significant real-politik consequences being lured into a trap of sanctioning whoever the US pleases or having to weather that storm.

This is a consistent position that places them beyond the morality of individual nations. They believe they need to build their strength first and for US hegemony to cease before they can even conceive of using power that way because any early use and they risk people fleeing from them. Let’s remember most nations are capitalist and already have a built-in wariness of siding with or being with a communist power like China over a capitalist one like the US.

Partially accurate username.

Needless to say this is horribly wrong. Reading Parenti would disabuse you of this to say nothing of actually reading Marx and understanding DiaMat.

Local sims may require things like an address or Chinese bank account or some other verification. I know in the west this is the case in Europe under the guise of stopping terrorism via remote detonated disposable phones. In fact looking very briefly into this it looks like you can get a local sim at the airport you just need a passport valid for 6 months, your visa, and a hotel address you can give them with proof of your booking of that hotel. You should be able to do this at the airport.

Just the same you might still want to get a travel e-sim to fall back on. Looks like at least one provider (airalo) offers 30 days, 10GB for $28 or 5GB for $16 in China. Beware this does not include Hong Kong or Macau from the looks of it, they do offer an Asia plan instead for basically the same prices and even up to 120 days of coverage though which cover all those.

Moscow says it won’t be pressured over Ukraine 30-day truce --RT

This is foolish. As foolish as Trump’s tariffs war. It’s trying to bully someone with a strong hand into a deal when they already offered you one. Trying to bluff them in a situation where if they call your position collapses entirely is foolish.

Trump is showing he truly is someone swayed by whoever talks to him last. Zelensky was instructed by psychological experts from western intelligence I’m sure just how to appeal to him at their last meeting.

Russia’s bottom lines have been the same since the start and the only change has been the addition of recognition of the eastern oblasts (which Russia within its own legal system incorporated as de jure parts of Russia (under Russian law)) as part of Russia.

I can only assume that this ceasefire is another Minsk agreement deception. They intend to attempt to force it, to re-arm and re-train and re-group Ukraine’s military so they can put more of their men into the meat grinder and stall a collapse of the front another 10 months. And quite frankly given all the talk from France and other members of sending in troops once a ceasefire is achieved of trying to push the envelope of the acceptable slowly until Ukraine is de-facto but not de jure part of NATO.

Trump is going to ensure the US gets very little or no minerals to plunder from Ukraine if Russia has to push through to the finish.

I also wouldn’t be shocked if Trump is testing the waters with this, says nothing and then when Russia pushes back hard he’ll claim he never agreed to that and attempts to leave Europe on the hook for it all.

There are different definitions of win. I certainly fear nuclear war. But I think the west believes their island chains will strangle China, prevent a break-out beyond the SCS or retaliation against US interests and notch them a win. China will repel them from the SCS, reclaim Taiwan and unless subjected to continued attacks I think it’s possible they won’t pursue the US much further though who knows. The US will use the fall of Taiwan and the inevitable missile attacks on island chains around China such as Philippines which were used in attacking China/PLA, etc to further justify their presence and cast China as an aggressor and “threat to democracy” and as justification for Russia level sanctions and attempts to economically strangle or at least isolate China and push it into its own bloc which can gradually be attacked and undermined.

China itself doesn’t want to put the US in a spot where there is zero relations and incentive for the US to just go sicko-mode so they’re likely to go along with the decoupling and ship products for finishing to third countries while counting on US decline. This would allow the US to prevent China from claiming the commanding heights, the name brands, the finished products, and totally removing the US ability to sanction countries by denying them product (China could still sanction but so could US, both would have a veto) and allow the US a very ugly kind of managed decline in an attempt to reclaim greatness.

West still thinks it has tricks up its sleeve. Their special forces people talk vaguely of swarms of AI sea-faring drone-mines they’d plan to deploy in the SCS to totally deny China its use for their navy but I also believe for the purposes of stopping Chinese shipping and forcibly decoupling them from the world.

They’re better products when made in China no doubt.

Russia doesn’t particularly care. They’re not some bastion of progressivism. Realpolitik dictates it’s useful to bang the drums of “Russia saved the Jews in world war two and Ukraine and the EU are run by Nazis”.

Barbarism.

I fear that RFK is not just a crank put in to create chaos but as an intentional ploy to cull the proles, to make us sicker, to live shorter lives, to be more desperate for healthcare that must be paid out of pocket, to go into medical debt more readily because the only covered healthcare is quackery and the air and water and soil are poisoned.

Just to be extra anti-communist they literally declared it the “national day of prayer”. :agony:

I feel they’ve been told that 2030 is go time for a war with China (and already waay too late to be doing it but the outside year that we can do it) and we have to be ready and I think there’s clearly a group of people who think it’s okay to inflict a ton of pain now to save our economy from imploding when we do go to war. To suffer a relatively moderate blow now in order to not be decapitated by the blow that comes with war with China in 5 years. We should also not underestimate the willingness of the bourgeoisie to discipline the proles (end of cheap treats, shortages) and to marshal and discipline themselves to fight this war by taking some losses as a kind of investment in an attempt to gain the upper hand, seize as much of the world as possible for plundering and exploitation by the US bloc and they hope come up with something that will enable them to destroy China.

I feel there may have been planners in the US who wanted to not only field test new technology but create a quagmire in Ukraine specifically to keep Russia occupied through the coming US war with China so it wouldn’t want to render or wouldn’t be able to render full military aid because of its own distractions. That could yet be the case, they could set off something else in Georgia or one of the 'stan countries and distract Russia again with problems and there is a chance they intend to throw Europe at Russia by that point, to get them to build up so by 2030 they can throw themselves against Russia as a distraction and drain.

Trump’s golden shield program for example which is just more Star Wars/SDI has I think real backing. The US is not confident enough in being able to defeat the PLA in conventional combat BUT (and here comes the magical thinking much in the same vein of capitalist magical thinking on climate change that some revolutionary technology will come along to solve it) if they can actually build a missile defense system capable of reliably intercepting 95% of incoming ICBMs for example then they can solve their problems, they turn the shield on, nuke China, deflect the incoming blows and invade it and cut what remains of her people and resources up into pieces to be plundered. What stops me from dismissing this as just raving fantasy is technology has progressed significantly (we’re in the hypersonic age and from Russia’s systems to some US tests there has been some success and evidence that kinetic interception and kill is possible if expensive) and the level of desperation the US feels could compel them to stumble into some sort of technological advance that they think will enable this. Because we must recall work or fail we’re fucked if they BELIEVE they have such a system and launch on China, if the Chinese counter-attack gets through that’s good but the Chinese are still dead and it’s just the US that joins them in the grave of their own digging.

Of course it could also be Trump’s golden shield is merely a give-away to the war industry or it could be part of that whole small yard high fence defensive posture the US wants to adopt for a multi-polar world. So many ways the wind could blow.

So what’s interesting here is the owner confirms the US capitalist class/corporations told him decoupling was happening and they did that years ago under Biden and attempted to pressure him to move production. It’s not a case of empire managers pushing reluctant bourgeoisie who slow-walk the process to make chumps of them. They’re trying genuinely to do what they can while delaying to keep profits but the intent is there and telling Chinese factory owners to do this is beyond any part of a mere show. Easier said than done obviously but short of a collapse I do see the US continuing to push on this slowly. Trump’s mistake may just be trying to get it done quickly.

Once that happens I expect the west to go nuclear on this.

They’ve already said it’s national security concerns to sell latest AI chips to China and to buy Huawei, they will slap a total import embargo on these chips and I feel most likely ban western companies from developing software for them to attempt to choke their utility. Could lead to a hard forking of Linux at that point among other more interesting things. I also would expect the west to start enforcing their “clean network” initiative on allies a bit out of the anglo-verse, say leaning on counties in Latin America, Africa, Asia, etc as well as individual companies within them to not use Chinese chips, maybe even slapping on sanctions that western software cannot be used in the same institution or in contact with systems using these “dangerous CCP spy chips” to again attempt to lock in markets for themselves, crush Chinese exports, etc.

We’ll have to see how the current trade war pans out, it could leave the US in a position where it can’t do this, it could leave the US in a position where it can, it could leave it in a position where it’s very easy.

It will be an uphill battle, the west has the high-ground in terms of controlling all the major software, the operating systems, gaming, entertainment, productivity, specialized applications, etc and will likely try and leverage that to lock people into a western hardware/chips+software ecosystem. But it’s good because it will mean a reckoning and a real fight and real independence for China from the west though it will come at the price of some pain obviously.

Needless to say I don’t think westerners will be able to get anything nearing cutting edge or 10-years-recent in terms of these chips due to restrictions.

It’s not just about maintaining the edge on high technology, backdoors in chips like these and sitting atop the vulnerability disclosure process allows the west unprecedented hacking abilities and Chinese chips threaten their global hacking and intercept spying network and thus blinding them (as Huawei did by displacing Cisco/Juniper).