Luca

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3261632/xi-jinping-pushes-closer-ties-europe-eu-pressures-china-russia-and-trade?module=top_story&pgtype=homepage

Moving Video!

PDD

Bought more PDD

It is a good discussion and I could be wrong, though something is suspect here to me in this war, we will see how this develops and of course: discuss!! LEARNING MACHINE

Well, we have to disagree on our analysis but I appreciate the pushback

I reread the document, you are right that discussions about the regions are not included but its clear that they wont be returned. I talked with a good friend of mine who is russian and from st.petersburg, also has multiple ukranian friends who have their own little community here in Germany. He also has friends from the annexed regions. In general he said that these regions were looking to Russia for a long time, the regions were shitholes, with no jobs, and bandit kind of local government. The people who didn't like Russia either left before or fled to Ukraine after the war but its not as material as the west might want it to look like. Ukraine tried to break through russian lines but miserably failed because they lack man power and weapons. They went on offense and lost and have to grab more and more man that become also more and more unwilling. My russian friend said that in russia/st Petersburg the atmosphere to this war is surprisingly positive, there are many who want to fight and they get paid very very well. But of course, as with China, we only hear how oppressed and miserable their population is. Absolutely not. At least its relevant if you want to understand why this war gets dragged on so much and why the west is so heavily invested. Did they care that the eastern regions in ukraine were criminal shitholes? Noone cared. But now ukraine is THE media topic in the most positive light. The US also hoped that the Russian population would go against Putin and their government would crumble together with the sanctions...all of this didn't materialize. Well, the Russians certainly learned a lot during the war and look pretty well positioned considering the situation.

Looking forward to the results later.

Pretty much what Zuck is doing right now haha!

Yeah, i also think just staring at em from distance is great too and I cherish life too much too take any extra risk which you do with 8ks...himalaya 6ks are wonderful too from your pictures so...maybe some day the time for me will come too but I had some acclimatization issues on 3200m while skiing already so I think my body is not made for it sadly...at least we have your pictures!!

Great stuff, when will you do your first 8k? Maybe Cho Oyu? Seems to be the easiest one

How can people not see that this war is brilliant for the US? The perfect excuse to weaken russia perfectly legal and approved by all the western courts etc. China weakened too. PLEASE don't negotiate ukraine but drag this on as long as you can so russia wastes as much military as possible. The US is surely also hoping for more Russian inner destabilization so they can sponsor pro-democracy movements that are US focussed and remove the current leadership. Now if you ARE that leadership that sees these moves by the west via your own secret service, what would you do? Is the western media telling us the full story? Why does no one care about nordstream? Why are we only hearing the same one dimensional pro war arguments on the telly? The western populations were perfectly prepared to accept this war and the media sector for the most part played perfectly along. Dudes like tucker etc will be removed and called nuts, right winger whatever for even talking to putin...

Two of these regions wanted to leave ukraine quite some time ago and see themselves closer to russia, the rest were annexed illegally, yes. But still, why risk this war and your people if peace agreements were in reach? They did. The peace agreement was already drafted, and agreements on territory were also made. Ukraine was convinced to not agree and follow Boris Johnson and western pro-war arguments which led us to today. Again, negotiated peace is better than this war, what else is an option for Ukraine? Because Ukraine is sitting next to a nuclear power that will not have its security impacted. The US would not allow anyone doing the same to them and would retaliate similar to russia if China or Russia would do the same at Canadian or Mexican borders...that's just the empire game. Ukraine is not in a stalemate, they are in a way worse position by manpower, intact infrastructure, inner political stability, weapons. They are kept alive by US and western support and also we have to realize that we need negotiations and not further escalations with more and more damaging weapons.

Great country...I miss it...

Absolutely phenomenal! Congratulations. Your family is fit as f***!!! And brave too...can be proud of yourself!!

Yeah sure, which leader would not try to negotiate peace here? Why is zelensky sacrificing 100k people+ which are either dead or permanently injured just for a couple of rural regions? Why is the west sponsoring hundreds of billions of dollars for these regions but was unwilling to fund anything in their own countries for other reasons (infrastructure investments, schools, energy etc)? The west escalates this war together with zelensky, the west stopped peace negotiations that could have saved ten thousand people and many damaged regions in ukraine. Negotiated peace is better than war, Putin was and still is willing to give security guarantees but Ukraine has to agree on not joining nato, no foreign military trainings, forbid nazism etc considering that zelensky by now literally IS the west and already sees ukraine joining nato, inviting all the US capitalists over, having US military training, maybe even US military bases close to the Russian border? Which independent and security-orientated country wouldn't interfere or invade here? What would the US do when China does the same to Mexico? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/world/europe/ukraine-military-recruitment.html#:~:text='People Snatchers'%3A Ukraine's Recruiters,commissions and coercive mobilization tactics. This is horrible, similar to what Russia is doing.

I am from Germany, Article 4 of our constitution forbids to force people against their own conscience to fight with a weapon in war. Now in Ukraine, they literally grab young guys who know they will end up dead from the streets and drive them badly trained into a battle they can not win. Even worse, now the guys who fled because they knew it was game over for them are denied consular services to try to force them back into the country that will just grab and sacrifice them at the front lines. It's a pretty sad state of affairs and the pope is right, negotiated peace is better than a war without end. Zelensky should stop his meat grinder, be the bigger man, ignore the West that uses him to fight a proxy war, and take care of the few remaining guys at the front by restarting the negotiations for a peace agreement and get the security guarantees putin is willing to offer. For what is zelensky fighting here? What is there to save that justifies hundreds of billions of dollars to keep this front-line sustainable--> Blackrock etc are all ready to buy up the land, and build the country up so it acts as a satellite and extended market for the US...that's surely bringing putin to withdraw and allow even closer US sphere expansion to their borders...nuts...

Nigerian Warren E Buffet with a T missing haha

I don't mean that investments out of the private sector are inefficient in general. In the US/west these investments are subpar, too little, not well meant, resulting in an almost sort of ghetto system.

The US became so expensive due to the market power of these services and that all of this is in the control of private hands that you need 10-50x as much money to live the same lifestyle I could live in a tier 2/tier 3 city in China. The privatized schools, the privatized healthcare, the privatized daycare for kids, The housing sector. At the same time, investments in basic services outside of the private sector are really inefficient, and public schools are not good often. Subways are dirty and broken, deteriorating social fabric in society. And then imagine how China looks like 10 years down the road, running a mixed public and private economy and not walking into the financialized economy trap...when the sky airs up due to EVs, the automation of production that is not far away on a different continent. The scale of their city design...next decades going to be very interesting, especially in China.

I will

The real economy is the traditional form of capitalism where profits are made through the production of goods by expanding the economy through tangible capital formation and productive investment. Employing labor to produce and sell commodities at a markup. What the US developed into is a financialized economy where manufacturing mostly moved away to other countries while they engaged in wealth extraction through financial channels rather than production and investment. GDP growth in the US literally includes the insane 20% credit card debt US citizens are getting delinquent on now, which has 0 productive value to the economy. Then you have all this housing speculation and appreciation, investment speculation/services which are big parts of GDP, rent-seekers and high rents that push up GDP, banks that don't provide money for tangible investment but do speculation on loans which led to the financial crisis, etc. Thats 30% of the US economy...crazy. Yes, the US has a few shining star mega-cap companies and worldwide financial services providers, those are all basically monopolies. Looking at the US GDP, you can see the impact of this financialized economy, monopolies for healthcare that rip off US citizens, end-game housing market with prices unaffordable for most, and further shrinking manufacturing sector. The point is, China has been building out the real economy and owns the largest labor force worldwide, the most efficient supply chains worldwide, and now slowly the best products worldwide for a cheaper price the US could ever have. Looking at the SP 500, if the market doesn't develop in this western protectionist and war economy against the uprising economies, China can replace many of these businesses with cheaper prices simply because of the low-cost infrastructure the government provides and the fact that their economy is not controlled by these mega-services monopolies that are just very expensive for doing business. That's why the US needs tariffs and trade blockage because their companies can not survive and they arent willing to invite Chinese companies either. That's why the US can only attract manufacturing with huge subsidies. The economy with the cheapest labor pool, most efficient supply chains, and best products wins. BYD, XIAOMI, TEMU, Commodities at cheaper prices, food at cheaper prices...its only a matter of time... At this point chinas economy is self-sufficient enough to develop internally. Yeah, these deflows are providing headwind but the core of china is a powerhouse and they arent bad finding partners globally either with russia, saudis, BRICS etc. Meanwhile the US faces highly inflationary forces with their derisking so I think the incentives over the longterm are pointing towards a "with China" than without. Biden playing a deficit and subsidy game but that's not sustainable. The problem is an uncompetitive manufacturing basis and dependence on foreign countries producing their expensive high margin products. I don't think it can last over time. On the other hand, things like alphabet and Microsoft will and can last but how many Americans work there...alphabet has 150k employees globally...most Americans wont feel the impact of their success, at max in their retirement funds.

Again, zero arguments in this response. There is a good book about this, kicking away the ladder by economist Ha-Joon Chang.

Microsoft and Alphabet are up 4% and 13% each after Q1 reports, I guess the rally can and will continue!