MoA - Yellen's Visit To China Has Failed by chakokat in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat[S] 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That's a devastating insult.

Imo it’s a relatively mild insult compared to what Biden et al dish out. Calling a head of state ( Xi and/or Putin ) a dictator, thug, killer, butcher, and immoral is downright shocking considering that Russia and China are nuclear and military powers.

MoA - Yellen's Visit To China Has Failed by chakokat in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat[S] 11 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I think their patience is wearing thin. They sent Ursula von der Leyen off like a common tourist. They told Josep Borrell not to come. They made Blinken meet with quite a few “lesser” officials before they allowed him a couple hours with Xi and they told Yellen to enjoy her evening instead of inviting her to dinner. All indications that they don’t really care if they offend their visitors.

MoA - Yellen's Visit To China Has Failed by chakokat in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen visited China. There she tried to press the worlds biggest economy on several issues.

Yellen, in Beijing, Criticizes China’s Treatment of U.S. Companies - NY Times, July 7, 2023

Yellen Urges China to Step Up Climate Finance Investments - NY Times, July 7, 2023

U.S. Raises Pressure on China to Combat Global Fentanyl Crisis - NY Times, July 7, 2023

None of these points are in China's interest. In the U.S. Chinese companies are treated badly. U.S. financed climate investments in foreign countries, which are small, usually come with additional extraordinary demands that benefit the donating country rather than the receiving one. China does this differently. Fentanyl is not a global problem rather a specific U.S. one the causes of which are general social problems China and other have avoided to have.

The last demand Yellen made was even more crazy. She called for a full turn of China towards neoliberal policies:

"I pressed them on our concerns about China's unfair economic practices," [Yellen] said, citing barriers to access for foreign firms and problems involving intellectual property. She added that a more market-oriented system in China "would not only be in the interests of the U.S. and other countries. It would be better for the Chinese economy, as well.”

Would China be where it is today if it had privatized its banking system and state owned companies? Would China be richer if it had let U.S. vulture funds buy up and bankrupt Chinese companies? Would it have managed to lift 800 million of its citizens from poverty if it had followed the economic advice of the U.S., the IMF or World Bank?

The answer to these questions is of course an emphatic "No".

Why Yellen thinks she can impress China with advice for a 'more market-oriented system', even as the U.S. blocks Chinese investments, sanctions Chinese companies and limits sales of certain products to China, is beyond me.

Yellen's visit failed to achieve anything. She had some talks with Chinese officials but achieved nothing. She lectured and made demands that no one in China will be willing to fulfill.

McCarthy becomes first speaker in history ousted by Blackhalo in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

If only the Justice Democrats or the Squad had those kind of stones

They also don’t have spines or brains.

Instead, we get Bowman pulling the fire alarm.

LOL. See above statement!

Biden is not up for re-election. by Crazyjanecreepyjeff in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

even if Howie shoves West aside...

Proving that he’s a fake Green and a tool of the state providing a false option for voters whose votes will be stolen by the unDemocratic Party when then aren’t able to suppress the Green Party through other means.

"The Dam's About To Break On The Establishment Control Of The Party" by Blackhalo in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 7 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

😄

@SnowHimbo: "This is the worst thing I've seen all day holy buckfalls" by Maniak in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The reason I chose Clobert is because I consider him the most (??)/more intelligent of the bunch therefore I hold him in more contempt because he knows better or should.

Krystal’s mask has come all the way off. by [deleted] in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The last honest thing Krystal said was when she enumerated why Hillary should not run for president.

https://www.msnbc.com/the-cycle/dont-run-hillary-dont-run-msna265436

Video in article.

Wagner Titular Head Prigozhin - Dead or Alive? by chakokat in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Interesting discussion in comments.

MoA - Who Can Give Security Guarantees To Ukraine? by chakokat in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A main question for Ukraine since it became an independent state was who or what could potentially guarantee its security.

In the first years after 1991 the Ukrainian government thought that it could secure itself. It had inherited some Soviet nuclear weapons and it tried to bring those to use. But it failed to circumvent the security locks the Russian engineers had integrated into the nuclear warheads. ( bold mine)

There was also pressure from the U.S. to get rid of those devices as the Ukraine at that time was prolific in selling its Soviet era weapons to various shady actors around the world.

Ukraine, together with Belarus and Kazakhstan, was pressed to enter the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In exchange it got the Budapest Memorandum, a weak promise of non-interference:

The memoranda, signed in Patria Hall at the Budapest Convention Center with US Ambassador Donald M. Blinken amongst others in attendance, prohibited the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, "except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations." As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.

Two side notes are of interest:

*Ambassador Donald M. Blinken is the father of the current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

*Formally Russia has not broken the Budapest Memorandum. It recognized the People's Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states. It signed security agreements with them and then entered the war in Ukraine, which had been ongoing since 2014, under Article 51 - common self defense - of the Charter of the United Nations. Jurists will debate that argument for years but it is not dissimilar to the argument NATO used to justify the violent break-up Yugoslavia. After the Budapest Memorandum was signed the Soviet nuclear weapons weapons Ukraine and others still had were sent back to Russia.

People are getting fed up with all the useless tech in their cars — For the first time in 28 years of JD Power’s car owner survey, there is a consecutive year-over-year decline in satisfaction, with most of the ire directed toward in-car infotainment by Inuma in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

People are fed up with infotainment? And the fact that ‘big brother’ can listen to all your conversations? and that your vehicle can be stopped remotely anytime ‘big brother’ decides? How can that be?/s

@SocialistMMA – RFK jr: “Israel doesn’t deliberately target civilians” / Israel: *bombs hospital by Maniak in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

RFK Jr has only one independent policy position. Vaccines in general and Covid in particular. Every other policy position is mainstream Democrat. Russia and now Israel has exposed him as a one trick pony.

Soldiers asking for donations to help with housing, food costs, memo says (Canada) by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No money for Canadian ( or US ) soldiers but plenty of money for Ukraine.

UN enters the fascism game with digital propaganda army by Super_Soviet_Gundam in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We know that the “blue” UN helmets are only a shade different than the “white” helmets used in Syria to spread lies and disinformation.

This was the scene after Mitch McConnel was escorted behind closed doors. by rundown9 in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Mini stroke as u/Caelian said down thread.

Seems the global liberal class is done playing with him now. by rundown9 in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 6 insightful - 4 fun6 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

Can you blame "the elite”? He doesn’t know what proper cocktail attire is! Even his wife is pretending that she doesn’t know him. 😄

BREAKING NEWS: THE HAGUE - The Rutte IV cabinet has fallen. by penelopepnortney in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good news. The dominos will continue to fall. Hopefully.

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman has died at 82 by chakokat in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Former Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman has died, his family announced in a statement Wednesday. He was 82.

Lieberman died Wednesday afternoon in New York with his wife Hadassah and loved ones at his side after he suffered complications from a fall, his family said in the statement.

Thanks be to god, he didn’t live to 99.

The Billionaire Who Wants To Live Forever Has Long Covid by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

he admitted a mild infection [Covid] in November 2022

So he takes 100 supplements/day, he’s done plasma/blood transfusions, all kinds of other treatments to enhance his physical well being but we don’t know if he got a Covid vaccine or any boosters??

Did he have the vaxx and booster and then got Covid? Do people who took the vaxx have a higher or lower incidence of “long Covid” than people who got Covid without ever getting the vaxx?

The fact that drug trials for the vaccine don’t have control groups (to my knowledge ) makes the claims of efficacy and safety of the vaccines unreliable ( not believable).

It’s a problem.

But aside from that who the hell cares about this narcissist?

The Ukraine Charade, Revisited - Pepe Escobar by chakokat in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Selected players scattered around the Beltway silos of power, diligently working as messengers for the people who really run the show in the Hegemon, have concluded that a no holds barred confrontation with Russia would lead to the collapse of all of NATO; undo decades of US iron grip on Europe; and ultimately cause the Empire’s downfall.

Playing brinkmanship games sooner or later would meet the indestructible red lines inbuilt in the unmovable Russian object.

US elites are smarter than that. They may excel on calculated risk. But when the stakes are this high, they know when to hedge and when to fold.

The “loss” of Ukraine – now a graphic imperative – is not worth risking the loss of the whole Hegemonic ride. That would be too much for the Empire to lose.

So even as they get increasingly desperate with the accelerated imperial plunge into a geopolitical and geoeconomic abyss, they’re frantically changing the narrative – a domain in which they excel.

snip

The elites in charge are way more clinical than the whole Team Biden. They know they will not win in what will soon be country 404. But the tactical victory, so far, is massive: enormous profits out of the frantic weaponizing; totally gutting European industry and sovereignty; reducing the EU to the sub-status of a lowly vassal; and from now on plenty of time to find new proxy warriors against Russia – from Polish and Baltic fanatics to the whole Takfiri-neo ISIS galaxy.

From Plato to NATO, it may be too early to state it’s all over for the West. What is nearly over is the current battle, centered on country 404. As Andrei Martyanov himself stresses, it was up to Russia, once again, “to start dismantling what today has become the house of demons and horror in the West and by the West, and she is doing it again in a Russian way – by defeating it on the battlefield.”

That complements the detailed analysis expressed on the new hand grenade of a book by French historian Emmanuel Todd.

Yet the war is far from over. As Davos once again made it quite clear, they will not give up.

snip

NATO’s cosmic humiliation in Ukraine notwithstanding, this proxy war against Russia, against Europe and against China remains the fuse that could light up a WWIII before the end of this decade. Who will decide it is an extremely rarefied plutocracy. No, not Davos: these are only their clownish mouthpieces.

Russia has reactivated a military factory system at lightning speed – now standing at about 15 times the capacity of January 2022. Along the front line there are about 300,000 troops, plus in the back two pincer armies of hundreds of thousands of mobile troops in each pincer being prepared to create a double envelopment of the Ukrainian Army and annihilate it.

Even if country 404 is utterly defeated in 2024, once again it’s imperative to stress it: this is far from over. The leadership in Beijing fully understands that the Hegemon is such a disintegrating wreck, on the way to secession, that the only way to hold it together would be a world war. It’s time to re-read T.S. Eliot in more ways than one: “We had the experience but missed the meaning, / and approach to the meaning restores the experience.”

@RobertKennedyJr: Bravo @BillAckman. It’s time to hold college administrations responsible for the epidemic of campus antisemitism by insisting on zero-tolerance policies. by Maniak in WayOfTheBern

[–]chakokat 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Well at least Bobby Junior is showing us his true colors. He’s as 'true blue' as it comes. The only thing holding the unDemocratic Party from fully supporting him is his anti-vaxx position. Want to bet that he’ll start moderating his anti-vaxx position soon??