@BynarsAreOk
@hexbear.netStill not as embarrassing as admitting the Minsk agreements were all just to buy time for Ukraine.
The original narratives about Ukraine no longer matter, the only thing left in the collective consciousness is Ukraine is a democracy therefore the war is about "western values". The good thing is since then even a good part liberals don't care about that anymore, its impossible to manufacture a narrative that Ukraine is winning right now, at best they "resisting" evil Putler and Zelensky does nothing but beg for more aid.
You do realize that a no-fly zone literally means shooting down military aircraft, right? A no-fly zone is a escalatory move against a US proxy. That's not the bare minimum, that's literally violence in a conflict that China cannot win.
You refuse to understand Prashad's point. BTW nice slander calling a fellow Marxist a "pundit". Good job punching left just because they disagree.
The bare minimum is literaly any anti-Israeli resolution at the UN.
If we both admit it wouldn't be enforced than what is the cost here? Literaly what is the cost of proposing this? The fear that this is some watershed moment that now justifies US starting WW3 against China? This is delusional and should be dismissed.
You realized China missed key moments like the student protests. Israel is a pariah state. The ICJ ruled against them. The nazi literaly got the same arrest warrant as Putin. You are ignoring these points to excuse Chinese inaction. Do you actualy believe the world would support any aggressive retaliatory move against China given Bibi is a literal war criminal according to the same liberal western institutions?
Stop making excuses by creating hilariously unrealistic results.
As for China beating the USA on every metric, it's just not true. China is trending towards beating the USA on every metric and will overtake the USA on most metrics eventually. But the USA still has significant material advantages over China, some that China will never surpass. The most important ones to this conversation are:
Almost every point listed here doesn't matter in relation with a war against China unless you think Guantanamo is relevant in WW3 against China.
The US has more nukes but you damn well know you don't need 1000 nukes to destroy any country let alone the entire human race. Literaly 10 nukes from each side is the end of the world. The only relevant point is both countries have large and capable nuclear arsenals therefore MAD is key.
It absolutely has a lot to lose right now that would throw it off the course it has been on to cultivate a socialist experiment that will last longer than the Russian one as we all try to figure out the right path towards communism. You seem to think you have it all figured out. You seem to imagine you can pass judgment on China when you have none of their military intelligence, none of their diplomatic relationships, none of their risks, and none of their strategic analysis.
For someone that started argueing about morality in the end you're the one resorting to a moral argument are you not?
China has a lot to lose? Tell that to the global south being genocided right now. This is not Olympic competition on who is suffering more. Unless it is then it is about morality after all, do you think China importing minerals from Africa is also not a moral issue? Draw a line and stick with it. If the suffering of Chinese matters than so does of every other global south worker.
The only clear point is China refuses to act as an ally when it matters and where it matters. This is all. Keep your own moral judgements to yourself, or don't and embrace you were wrong. You're defending China based on a moral argument in favor of Chinese exceptionalism and I'm arguing against China on the basis they have acted at times as complacent allies of the enemies of the global south.
The most we can agree on is its obviously not their fault. But the bare minimum is
-Some useless UN resolution everyone knows wont pass anyway
-Some BS sanction that wont actualy affect Israel's economy nor military capability
-Some explicit support for Yemen's anti-shipping, instead we get Wang Yi doing a historical major blunder completely misunderstanding the ideological reasoning behind the Houthi's motivation. (careful don't look at Chinese actions in the SCS against Philippines and others, do as we say not as we do).
Instead we get
Yellen and Blinken getting state dinners and high level meetings with the CPC
Xi traveling to SF and Paris, both centers of US genocide and imperialism.
-Literaly not a single actual finger lifted against Israel or explicit support for Yemen.
For context 15 billion CFA Franc = 25 million USD. At a state level for China its literally nothing, probably couldn't buy a couple of Mcmansions in any Chinese T1 these days. Its pennies and as you said perfectly on a imperialist backed currency.
If there is any silver lining perhaps it should be taken not at face value but as a sign of possible future cooperation and bigger loans/investments.
Yeah I agree with this, the stocks keep growing exactly because they completely ignore Biden and US politics almost entirely.
The latest growth cycles are based on either
the expectation that the Fed will lower interest rates and if you spend even a casual amount of time each week reading these market headlines you'd go insane, they manufacture some absurd rationales and narratives that literaly change from one day to the next. One day its up 2% because some indicator says inflation is slowing therefore "high hopes for interest rate cuts in the future" and then 2 days later another indicator says the opposite and so flip that headline 180 "oh no investors weigh in on dashed hopes for rates cut" and it changes daily.
the current AI "boom", I think you know this obviously US tech is now a major grift but NVIDIA also got to keep massive markups from the crypto boom during COVID, there was never a correction from those $1000+ GPUs, that is the permanent standard now for the top end. When inevitably another COVID like supply chain breakup/crisis happens they'll hike the prices another 50% from there and $1500-2k gpus will become the standard etc.
Even if AI boom crashes its almost impossible to see NVIDIA going anywhere now outside of major geopolitical events. And when that crisis happens and NVDIA increases their prices again and repeat.
And then you look at what the market says about Trump oh he will be better because of less tariffs and less taxes and that is maybe true, but the Fed is literaly independent anyway and the current boom will keep going until some major event causes a major anti-AI backlash, though the chances of that are minimal now. Yet Trump gets to benefit as being labelled as the "market favorite" even though his direct involvement is almost zero.
The only thing BIden offers to the market is a relative predictability about future wars specially against China. Otherwise the "market" prefers Trump in almost every scenario.
You're saying China doesn't have to fight a battle it can't win but that it has to adopt a moral stance that is equivalent to it.
I refuse this premise from the start. Why are you assuming that
1- The bare minimal political and economic sanctions against Israel leads them to "a battle they can't win". What is this Israel is a shithole with not even an army for themselves. How long would they survive without the nukes and America support?
2- The US doesn't need excuses to fight China, they're already doing that. Whatever China does towards Israel is not going to move the needle on US-China relations at all.
You should be aware this is literaly the exact argument people use to suppress leftist organizations. "Oh if we push for X policy then the fascists will start hunting us down and fighting us in the open" even though they're always doing that and capitalists don't need excuses to fight the left.
China can't do anything about Palestine except as part of a broad coalition and China can't lead that coalition because as much as you think "words don't have power, but you still have to say them", building international voices against USA's military interests is high risk low reward.
Nonsense. I'm not laying it on them to solve the crisis. I'm laying it on them to do the bare minimum from their side.
BTW I'll quote you from the article you clearly didn't read where Vijay Pashrad literaly counters this exact argument. Please I beg you, forget this whole comment chain and just go and read that, please I'd rather have that than pointless arguing. We are literaly talking about bare minimal gestures. Anything, literaly anything beyond just speeches at the UN. China has done nothing and if you think that is a compelling argument by communists towards the oppressed people global south then you're out of touch, sorry.
"Ah yes the literal soon to be global superpower, surpassing the US in every metric, obviously clearly can't lift a finger to defend global south interests." This is not a reasonable position.
Again read the Prashad quotes, he was asking for the bare minimum, not some amphibious assault war against Israel.
But that killing could be stopped with some practical solutions, according to Vijay Prashad, historian and director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. He said permanent members of the Security Council, including China, could bring forward proposals similar to those imposed on Libya during the civil war of 2011.
“To stop the bombing, China can put forward a motion for a no-fly zone over Gaza and have Egypt monitor the flights over the area,” Prashad said. “It can also propose a full arms embargo – not even dual-use technology [goods, software and technology that can be used for both civilian and military applications] should be allowed to be shipped to Israel.”
Prashad said the fact that member states were not offering such motions was “perplexing” and “part of our colonial sensibility” that the UN’s agenda could not be set by non-Western states, who were not traditionally the decision-makers.
“There are moments like when the Chinese representative to the UN [Zhang Jun] stopped the Israeli ambassador from talking in a very undignified way – so it’s not like people aren’t asserting themselves, but why not assert themselves with a resolution?” Prashad acknowledged that the proposals would likely be vetoed by the US, making Washington appear “even more complicit in the massacre than they are right now”.
Winning is the only true moral.
If we talk about Gaza, then saying Palestine is winning is straight up copium. They may eventualy win, some decades from now because Israel loses America support, but you go ask the survivors of this genocide if they give a shit about that and would rather not win today if they could, for example, count with a more broad support from the relevant supposedly enemies of America. Its like going back to 1975 and telling Palestinians back then "don't worry, we're not lifting a finger against Israel today but 50 years from now Israel will be destroyed". Now look its 2025 and we're still saying exactly that.
would you have had China fight to stop the East Timor genocide, only to be destroyed?
Oh my god why is this always the assumption? You are talking about the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal. The largest military, they can sink half the US navy with a dozen hypersonic missiles, they have thousands and thousands of modern 4th and 5th fighters, drones, bombers, a completely modern military far more efficient and capable than the current world imperialist powers. The largest commercial and military shipbuilding capacity in the world etc etc.
But also smol bean China can't even lift a finger against Israel because otherwise uncle sam comes to the SCS blockades them and 1 billion people die within a week. This is not realistic, this is a convenient excuse.
Nobody is asking for China to do an amphibious assault on Gaza to stop Israel. Why is it that nobody acknowledges this? People are asking for the bare minimum anti-Israeli real world action like economic sanctions. China can do that, and no 1.4 billion people will not die because they stopped sending treats to Israel. This is insane.
China will not be defeated because they stopped sending treats to Israel. This is embarassing to read. If a Democrat said America must support Israel otherwise America's enemies will destroy it within a year you'd laugh at them and call them genocidal maniacs. Yet the reverse logic is used to say China can not only excuse themselves from geopolitics but keep supporting our global enemies and believe that unironically.
In any case, while you can make that argument in favor of US-China relations, no you can't make that argument over why China wont do anything against Israel, not even the bare minimal sanctions. You can rightfuly say but those minimal gestures wont stop Israel either and that would be fine. So what? People in the global south want and need real support, not excuses and rethoric.
The USSR could fight, and it won some battles, but it died before it could challenge and destroy the bourgeoisie.
This assumption that Dengism is winning because of token gestures and saying the right shit even though they repeatedly make contradictory decisions that cause real world harm is just dogmatic. China goes and says the thing we want to hear and then goes and does the exact opposite. China's got more billionaires now than ever, the US is closer to war for Taiwan now than ever, the global leftist movement is weaker now than 5 or 10 years ago. BRICS embarassed themselves with Argentina etc.
Its not to say China hasn't done good things, I conceded that already. But I will push back against this blind narrative that China is winning overall and they shouldn't be criticized for obvious mistakes that even calls into question their theoretical stance as Communists.
I'll give you one example. People on HB are traumatized by COVID still. How do you think most of the people here reacted when the CPC gave in and ended Zero COVID due to the protests? I imagine the same people that criticized China then would be facing backlash because clearly the CPC can do almost no wrong.
I realy don't understand why people suddenly refuse to hold the Communist party responsible for checks notes acting completely opposite to supposedly communist beliefs and ideology. People confuse support for Chinese Communism for support of Chinese Nationalism.
I don't like the turn to neoliberalism of China one bit either but it seems to be working out now that the imperialists have fallen for it and lost all their means of production through capitalist means to China. If it weren't for Dengism maybe China today would be just like Russia, a sad ruin of something that used to be great, but it's not. It seems to be reaching a turning point and slowly giving capitalists the boot.
This is a perfectly fine point and its not what I'm arguing about. You can say Dengism does crucial important things while still recognizing the current mistakes and hypocrisy. They're not mutually exclusive.
Sadly people seem to very much want to have blind hope the same hypocritical dengism approach wont lead to even more crucial mistakes in the future. Its fine to hope for that, but not admitting their currently obvious flaws is just wrong imo.
They come about explicitly because they don't let moral considerations impinge on the strategic needs of defeating capitalism. That means no Iron Curtain, no bloc enforcement, no hard resistance based on ideology. It means letting American businesses come in, abuse their people, pollute their land and air and water. It means letting American politicians come and go and feel superior. The entire strategy is play to Western and capitalist hubris and let them take all the actions that will be their undoing.
If you think its just about morality than you're being entirely superficial about it.
China is hypocritical because they hope the same fascists they deal with will honor their business deals. It only works until it doesn't but as far as I can see if China is not willing to help the global south by taking the bare minimal critical stances towards their enemies then China will lose their claim as their ally.
Not everyone is willing to drink this Chinese koolaid. China has failed on Israel. Its as simple as that, and its not even bringing up their historical deals(e.g BRICS investment in Israel IT).
If it helps you to sleep at night and have this insiduous double standards on the CPC can do no wrong, please do it with the understanding you're not speaking for everyone. China will create enemies if they don't sort out their hypocrisy should be a room temperature take.