Political Posts

[John Hjorth]

12 minutes ago, ValueArb said:

 

NATO is the vaccine to cure the virus of Russian expansionism, which is why RFK Inferior dislikes it. 

 

Please elaborate a bit, @ValueArb, as I did not understand this post of yours in the first place.

[Pauly]

38 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

 

Please elaborate a bit, @ValueArb, as I did not understand this post of yours in the first place.

I believe he's equating RFK Jr's noted anti-vaccine stance with why he also doesn't like NATO. As NATO acts as a 'vaccine' to the 'disease' of Russian expansion. Correct me if I've misunderstood, of course.

 

I also wonder if RFK's parasitic brain worm has been influencing his thoughts (literally) on vaccines. Strange fellow.

[Blugolds]

35 minutes ago, Pauly said:

I believe he's equating RFK Jr's noted anti-vaccine stance with why he also doesn't like NATO. As NATO acts as a 'vaccine' to the 'disease' of Russian expansion. Correct me if I've misunderstood, of course.

 

I also wonder if RFK's parasitic brain worm has been influencing his thoughts (literally) on vaccines. Strange fellow.

 

That is also the way I understood it. 

 

RFK Jr is a tough guy to read, some of the things he talks about and complains about are spot on, and you dont hear the other two candidates say a peep about those problems/issues, so in that regard I think he’s great..but then sometimes some of the things he comes out of left field with, its like WTF are you talking about man, you sound like the crazy uncle who spends too much time in the conspiracy corners of the internet. 

 

I think in many other election years he would get an automatic pass from most voters, but since this year we have, yet again, two horrible and embarrassing choices, all of a sudden RFK looks more normal/rational than he probably would otherwise. No way RFK wins, but I would like to see numbers higher than Ross Perot at least in hopes that maybe someday we can get away from the two party system, especially since over time that division has become so drastic, there used to be left leaning conservatives and more right leaning liberals, it was more of a grey line…but that line is pretty well established now and it doesn’t seem to really represent what the majority are looking for. 

[Eldad]

1 hour ago, Blugolds11 said:

 

That is also the way I understood it. 

 

RFK Jr is a tough guy to read, some of the things he talks about and complains about are spot on, and you dont hear the other two candidates say a peep about those problems/issues, so in that regard I think he’s great..but then sometimes some of the things he comes out of left field with, its like WTF are you talking about man, you sound like the crazy uncle who spends too much time in the conspiracy corners of the internet. 

 

I think in many other election years he would get an automatic pass from most voters, but since this year we have, yet again, two horrible and embarrassing choices, all of a sudden RFK looks more normal/rational than he probably would otherwise. No way RFK wins, but I would like to see numbers higher than Ross Perot at least in hopes that maybe someday we can get away from the two party system, especially since over time that division has become so drastic, there used to be left leaning conservatives and more right leaning liberals, it was more of a grey line…but that line is pretty well established now and it doesn’t seem to really represent what the majority are looking for. 

Agree we pretty much have to have a viable 3rd party to get out of this mess. 
 

Been reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution and the similarities to present America are a little scary. 
 

You have the Democrats telling the poor that the country is screwing them and was set up from the beginning to screw them, but at the same time is doing very little about it and is being run for the benefit of the left leaning rich. You have the GOP pointing out the hypocrisy of the Democrats on this point but at the same time too married to the business owners to actually help. Then you have a country that has never been better off financially for say the top 20% but the country is more frustrated and dissatisfied than ever. 
 

All of this is exactly how he describes France from say 1770 to 1789. Both sides are fomenting the anger of the poor but give them no choices. 

Edited June 17, 2024 by Eldad

[UK]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-17/trump-security-adviser-urges-cutting-china-ties-resuming-nuclear-weapons-tests?embedded-ch

[ValueArb]

23 hours ago, John Hjorth said:

 

Please elaborate a bit, @ValueArb, as I did not understand this post of yours in the first place.

 

RFK Junior is most famous in the US for being an anti-vaxxer, he believes they have egregious side effects that science is unable to discern. I was just using poetic license to compare his position on the Ukraine & Russia to his anti-vaccination stand.

 

Like my college professor, you found my creative writing unclear, and like her, gave me a failing grade.

[John Hjorth]

6 minutes ago, ValueArb said:

 

RFK Junior is most famous in the US for being an anti-vaxxer, he believes they have egregious side effects that science is unable to discern. I was just using poetic license to compare his position on the Ukraine & Russia to his anti-vaccination stand.

 

Like my college professor, you found my creative writing unclear, and like her, gave me a failing grade.

 

Thank you very much, @ValueArb ,

 

This reply of yours is to me just soo awesome, thank you!

[Libs]

A compelling analysis of the role culture plays in China's rivalry with the west. I think we focus on the economics and overlook this factor.

 

In a nutshell, China views the west  as decadent and in decline (so does Russia and Iran, BTW). The CCP is trying to take advantage of this, and at the same time keep the decadent influences out of their society. Some great background on the roots of this, going back to the early 90's.

 

Would love to hear other's thoughts on this. Seems like China is playing their hand well, much to my dismay.

 

https://www.restorationbulletin.com/p/china-and-the-global-culture-war

 

 

[crs223]

3 hours ago, Libs said:

https://www.restorationbulletin.com/p/china-and-the-global-culture-war

 

Wow.  That was depressing.

 

Could be disinformation meant to further divide America.   I'd be curious how a liberal views the article -- does China have it wrong?  Is the US on the right path?

[Libs]

25 minutes ago, crs223 said:

 

Wow.  That was depressing.

 

Could be disinformation meant to further divide America.   I'd be curious how a liberal views the article -- does China have it wrong?  Is the US on the right path?

Depressing indeed. With all due respect, does it matter what western liberals / conservative think? All that matters is what the CCP thinks. 

[crs223]

45 minutes ago, Libs said:

Depressing indeed. With all due respect, does it matter what western liberals / conservative think? All that matters is what the CCP thinks. 

 

I happen to agree with the article, but I wonder if it is a) disinformation designed to further divide us or b) the CCP's actual estimate of US direction.  In addition I wonder if the article is true or false.

 

The article states that CCP believes "white liberalism" [rough translation from Chinese] has sent the USA into decline.  If "white liberals" disagree with the article, then I will suspect it is disinformation and/or false.  Maybe.  I don't know... I guess like you I'm looking for someone to provide a counter-argument to the article and I imagine that "white liberals" will be the ones to do so.

 

 

Edited June 19, 2024 by crs223

[Hektor]

Can’t speak for the above. However, I came across the following in a number of news reports. In the last couple of years, China seem to have removed many of the saber rattlers in the army and the wolf warriors among its diplomats. Is China reining back the hawks in the military and among the diplomats to avoid a conflict? Or, are they replacing the hawks with others in preparation for a conflict?

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xi-says-army-faces-deep-seated-problems-anti-corruption-drive-2024-06-19/

 

China's Xi says army faces 'deep-seated' problems in anti-corruption drive

 

China's President Xi Jinping said there were "deep-seated problems" in the Chinese military's politics, ideology, work style and discipline, state-run CCTV reported Wednesday, amid an ongoing military anti-corruption purge.

"There must be no hiding place for corrupt elements in the army," Xi was quoted as saying at a military political work conference this week in the northwestern city of Yanan, the founding stronghold of the Chinese Communist Party.

[Hektor]

Also, never let a opportunity to get under the skin go to waste 

 

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/dalai-lamas-legacy-will-live-on-you-will-nancy-pelosis-grim-prediction-for-xi-jinping/articleshow/111114024.cms
 

Dalai Lama’s legacy will live on and Xi will be gone, says Nancy Pelosi

In a strongly-worded statement on the Chinese President, Pelosi — who is part of a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress — said that the former “will be gone and nobody will give him any credit”.

[Xerxes]

The most important unstable beached ship. 
 

https://thepacificreports.com/2024/02/07/why-brp-sierra-madre-is-important-for-the-philippines/

 

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64634814.amp

[Xerxes]

Fun fact: China’ greatest Admiral was actually of Persian descent. 
 

 

https://www.kavehfarrokh.com/news/the-hui-communities-of-china-and-admiral-zhang-he/

 

Edited June 20, 2024 by Xerxes

[Spekulatius]

So the CCP around Xi is now a 5000 year old civilization. Sound similar to the 1000 year Reich. I think it’s all BS but I agree that Xi likely thinks that way . Of course for him things start with securing his power for life.

[sleepydragon]

4 hours ago, Xerxes said:

Fun fact: China’ greatest Admiral was actually of Persian descent. 
 

 

https://www.kavehfarrokh.com/news/the-hui-communities-of-china-and-admiral-zhang-he/

 

isnt he was also castrated by the emperor since a child — ironically that no matter how great a nation China is, it’s always been under the ruling of some very backward system/class.

 

[Xerxes]

1 hour ago, sleepydragon said:

isnt he was also castrated by the emperor since a child — ironically that no matter how great a nation China is, it’s always been under the ruling of some very backward system/class.

 

yeap, he was an eunuch. 
 

I think he was a relic and legacy of the Mongle empire, as conquered people (Turnians, Iranians etc) from the Middle East came to serve as administrators in China under Mongole imperial rule. 
 

Interestingly when I was in the Yunnan province back in 2013, I heard lore of Persian influence in the south. There was a guy I met who spoke funny Persian but didn’t look neither Persian nor Chinese. What !? Heh

 

I need to read more about it. My information is very limited on the matter. 

[Xerxes]

1 hour ago, sleepydragon said:

ironically that no matter how great a nation China is, it’s always been under the ruling of some very backward system/class.

 

I would add that what is really ironic is that modern unified china was founded, not by Chinese, but by Kublai Khan, the founder of Yunnan dynasty and the last of the great Mongole khakans. 

[Xerxes]

Fascinating how much interia a given military-industrial complex has. Be it Russian or Americans. 
 

It takes a major conflict to reset that inertia and introduces new ways. And then a new set of “best practices”, new doctrines establishes itself and runs for decades with a new interest groups entrenching themselves.  
 

 

 

 

Edited June 21, 2024 by Xerxes

[ValueArb]

The Mongols were the most dominant military power in world history, even more than the Romans. They conquered much of Eurasia in under 40 years. If Ogedei Khan hadn't died in 1241, we might all be speaking Mongolian as large Mongol armies had crushed every European army in open combat that dared oppose it in Russia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgeria, Serbia, Ukraine and Germany.

 

There are two hypothesis for why they stopped short of conquering all of Europe and the north countries. The standard one is that Ogedei's death precipitated a power struggle as the generals rushed back to Mongolia to secure their positions in the new regime. But they also struggled with sieges against the heavily protected European forts and cities, and it appears that in 1242 European climate got colder and wetter, creating grassland and more marsh, making it harder to sustain horse armies in future attacks. 

 

Personally I think in-fighting did them in. They weren't just a bunch of super talented horse archers, since Ghengis Khan they had adopted the best tools of war from their opponents. They had excellent siege engines run by Chinese engineers, and were the first to use Gunpowder weapons in the European theatre, and their leaders were great strategic and tactical generals, Subutai might have been the greatest general in history. They had incredible reconnaissance as well as intelligence networks, and were super smart about adapting weapons to new uses (Subutai's use of seige catapults to clear a river crossing in Hungary for example). I bet if Ogedei had lived longer Batu and Subutai would have stayed focused on Europe and adapted their armies to more effectively deal with European fortifications and taken France and eventually Spain.

 

The steppe tribes had a huge impact on China. For many centuries steppe war hardened tribes from the west would sweep into civilization softened China and conquer, establishing a new dynasty under their charge. The victors would enjoy the fantastic luxuries of Chinese civilization and their successors would grow soft over time, eventually to be invaded by another hard riding tribe from the west, who would replace them, rinse and repeat.

 

Despite how much influence steppe tribes had as historic rulers of China, the Mongols are still hated for their genocidal massacres, and other acts. Geneticists think 8% of todays asian population are descended from Genghis Khan, so you can work out how that happened.

 

Edited June 21, 2024 by ValueArb

[Luke]

Trump is gonna contest Biden in a Song duel in Chinese for this election folks!!! 2024 is getting even crazier!! 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/C8VAURehSLF/

[ValueArb]

Claims of uprisings in southern Russia today.

 

 

[Luke]

https://asiatimes.com/2024/06/whats-the-real-size-of-chinas-economy/

 

In May, the World Bank concluded one of its periodic International Comparison Program (ICP) assessments – the price survey which “officially” determines purchasing power parity GDP. Like college rankings, the league table of the world’s largest economies shifted just enough for the obsessives to notice while springing no real surprises. Harvard will be Harvard and whether Princeton ranks above or below Yale this year is largely irrelevant. For the obsessives, China’s lead versus the US expanded by 5.6%, India inched closer to China, Japan kept its ranking while sliding down a tick, Russia moved ahead of Germany, France ahead of the UK, Indonesia tumbled two places and Brazil rose one spot. The top 10 remained the top 10.

 

The ICP is a massive undertaking. According to The Economist, World Bank researchers visited 16,000 shops in China alone to collect price data. The latest ICP assessment collected data in 2021, four years after the 2017 survey. And the conclusion is that China’s GDP was undervalued by US$1.4 trillion pushing China’s 2022 PPP GDP from 119% of the US to 125%.

 

China’s PPP GDP is only 25% larger than that of the US? Come on people… who are we kidding? Last year, China generated twice as much electricity as the US, produced 12.6 times as much steel and 22 times as much cement. China’s shipyards accounted for over 50% of the world’s output while US production was negligible. In 2023, China produced 30.2 million vehicles, almost three times more than the 10.6 million made in the US.

 

On the demand side, 26 million vehicles were sold in China last year, 68% more than the 15.5 million sold in the US. Chinese consumers bought 434 million smartphones, three times the 144 million sold in the US. As a country, China consumes twice as much meat and eight times as much seafood as the US. Chinese shoppers spent twice as much on luxury goods as American shoppers.

 

It is prima facie ridiculous that China’s production and consumption, at multiples of US levels, can be realistically discounted for lower quality/features to arrive at a mere 125% of US PPP GDP.

 

The United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA) provides voluntary guidelines and specifically states that nations should base their national accounts on local conditions. What that has meant in the West is to adopt all UNSNA “innovations” introduced over the years. Items like imputed rent, legal fees and R&D are now all included in GDP. The UK went hog wild with both illegal drugs and prostitution as now part of their GDP because… hey, why not? UNSNA’s 2008 guidelines explicitly recommend that illegal market activity should be included in GDP.

 

China’s NBS stood its ground on a conceptual level. Rightly or wrongly, the Leninist MPS considers services necessary costs of material production rather than real value creation. In China’s first attempt at converting MPS to SNA in 1985, it tacked on a ludicrously low 13% to the MPS number and called it China’s services GDP.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The affordability crisis in Western economies, the US in particular, is largely driven by inflation of necessary services – rent, healthcare, education and childcare – not by manufactured goods. While these costs have also gone up in China, they have increased less and much are left out of GDP anyway.

 

Also not captured by the ICP survey conducted in 2021 are the price and service wars that have broken out across industries and products – a bane on businesses but a boon for consumers.

 

This is most visible in China’s car market with OEMs either cutting prices to the bone (Hyundai Sonatas down to $17,000 from $42,000) or offering cutting-edge technology for peanuts (a 2,000-kilometer range BYD Q plug-in hybrid electric vehicle for $14,000). The price of solar panels fell 50% in 2023 and continues to trend down in 2024. CATL has announced plans to cut lithium-ion battery prices in half by the end of 2024. Restaurants are offering white glove perks like hot towels, lotion by the sink and snazzy remodeled decors. Hairdressers hand out bottled water and fruit plates. Tech companies have slashed large language model (LLM) prices to basically free. Service quality in China, impossible to quantify, is now head and shoulders above the West and probably even Japan.

 

Adherence to UNSNA has caused a breakdown in the meaning of GDP. As necessary services become an ever larger share of Western economies, their growth does not appear to result in discernable improvements in living standards.

 

Are US healthcare and universities twice as good as they were in the year 2000?

 

If US households have not gotten vastly improved healthcare, education, housing and childcare over the past two decades, then inflation has been systematically underreported and GDP growth may have, in fact, been less than 1% per annum (instead of 2%), which equals STAGNATION given 0.8% per annum population growth.

 

This may go a long way in explaining popular anger and the meltdown of American politics. China’s material-focused GDP may be a better measure of the economy as it relates to living standards, especially since UNSNA has obviously lost its mind by now officially recommending drugs, prostitution, illegal gambling and theft be included in GDP. Western defense analysts are onto something when they come up with wildly inflated estimates for China’s defense spending. But it’s not China’s defense spending that is lowballed – it is Western defense spending, especially by the Pentagon, which needs to be reassessed.

 

Somehow the $1 trillion a year the US devotes to defense (including intelligence and Energy Department programs) has caused the US Navy to shrink while China’s $236 billion budget has built the world’s largest navy by ship count.

 

Similarly, analysts who lament that China accounts for 30% of the world’s manufacturing output but only 13% of household consumption are far off the mark. China accounts for 20-40% of global demand for just about every consumer product but much of the services it consumes have been left out of national accounts.

 

So how much is it? How big is China’s economy really? About six months ago, this writer estimated that China’s GDP needed to be grossed up by 25-40% to be on a UNSNA basis.

 

But after shopping for cars, buying a domestic brand carbon fiber road bike with all the bells and whistles for $2,600 (equivalent to a $15,000 Trek), paying $7.65 for Bluetooth earphones (much better than the $250 PowerBeats Pro they replaced), renting cars for $20 a day, staying at boutique hotels for $30 a night, buying an extremely solid heavy duty umbrella for $2.20 (and losing it right away) and undergoing an unfortunate series of medical interventions (both major and minor) for less than the deductible on expat health insurance and getting white glove customer service for the smallest of purchases, Han Feizi’s mental map of price and value has crumbled.

[Luke]

The author writes really good articles, highly recommended