LMAO Everyone get in here stonks go down :stonks-down:

@SeventyTwoTrillion I regret to inform you that your daily digital newspaper effectively makes you into Hexbear's resident trot.

French Socialists, Communists and Greens to ally with Melenchon for a left majority and ‘radical programme’

:sicko-charging: :left-unity-2: :lets-fucking-go:

boomers at work will not fucking stop showing this Piers Morgan clip of him saying Russia is gonna use a mega undersea nuke to drown Britain in a radioactive tsunami. which, based if Putin does, but that's not gonna fucking happen you morons. Putin is not a great guy, but the only ever country to drop a nuclear bomb in war time and on civilians remains the United States of America, and secondly literally us in doing tests near aboriginal peoples in Australia who were literally not considered legally 'people' at the time but fauna. so yeah, I don't think this is real

Anti-Americanism is blinding Chinese policy

You've gotta be kidding me. God, I wish I could make this shit up, I'd be so much funnier.

China’s unhealthy obsession with Americans is putting its goal of overtaking them at risk.

With roughly five times the U.S. population and a powerful manufacturing sector, the world’s second-largest economy aspires to take the top spot. Momentum is in question, however. Although Chinese growth accelerated 4.8% in the first quarter while the United States contracted, President Xi Jinping nevertheless ordered officials to ensure that domestic GDP outpaces the United States in 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported. That would imply he’s worried China might not only miss its 5.5% annual target, but even slow below the 3% or so analysts expect from the United States.

American growth did exceed China’s by over 2 percentage points in the final quarter of last year, but the People’s Republic has consistently outgrown its rival on an annual basis. However, as its ability to boost GDP through investment weakens, the gap has narrowed and official figures look increasingly fluffy. Take the first quarter: the property sector, driving up to a third of output, is stalled, while draconian lockdowns have repressed consumption, yet after adjusting for inflation officials delivered a rosy reading.

Beijing’s assumption of inevitable conflict is producing a vicious cycle, aggravated by Washington’s tariffs and sanctions against China’s corporate champions. Even so, there is an excess of paranoia. The crackdown on New York-listed technology firms like Didi Global (DIDI.N) is driven by concerns that Americans might somehow steal sensitive data. Officials are willing to risk a recession to eliminate Covid-19 within the borders to show up American epidemiological incompetence. Endorsing Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will hurt local companies, but state media justify the sacrifice by arguing Moscow’s support is necessary to prevent Washington from “splitting China into puzzle pieces”.

Infrastructure spending combined with data fudging - artful reweighting of inputs and prices, for example – will prop up China’s stats this year. But that borrows from future growth. The economy needs to expand at around 4.8% per year to meet Xi’s tacit goal of doubling GDP by 2035. A debt crisis or prolonged crackdowns on the private sector would wreck that plan.

At the same time China’s most pressing problems – a sagging birthrate, falling productivity, a wasteful state sector – are not byproducts of American hegemony, nor can they be outgrown. Competition is healthy, but insecurity is a tax.

This has critical levels of copium. How the fuck did this breach containment?

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It's very revealing to read articles and media from the 80's and 90's when Japan was the big threat. The same racist vitriol and saber rattling existed even back then, against a country that had US military bases on it. No wonder they're even more charged about China. They can't control it.

Worst fears confirmed in Solomons.

Warning: based content ahead. I repeat, based content ahead.

The Solomon Islands Prime Minister has launched a tirade in parliament, suggesting Australia and its allies are deliberately trying to undermine his government, criticising the Western response to Russia’s invasion and praising China’s treatment of Christians.

Manasseh Sogavare has also ratcheted up his criticism of civil society groups in Solomon Islands, suggesting that they are being manipulated by foreign countries and declaring they have “fallen prey to the Western world”. The Prime Minister’s furious denunciation of the West — which was delivered to the parliament of Solomon Islands on Tuesday — has consolidated fears in Canberra about the trajectory of Mr Sogavare’s government, with one official telling the ABC the leader is becoming increasingly autocratic and hostile to Australia after signing a security pact with China.

Civil society groups in Solomon Islands have criticised the security pact, and say they are concerned by the prospect of Chinese troops or police entering Solomon Islands to suppress future protests. But Mr Sogavare told parliament those activists were “racists” and “bigots” deeply hostile to China who were being manipulated by “foreign masters”. “What we are concerned with … is the glaring hypocrisy which bleeds through the strategies employed by some of our partners, working with some of their agents on the ground, to give the government a hard time for non-justifiable reasons,” he said.

Mr Sogavare also appeared to mock Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who referred to Solomon Islands as a “little Cuba” after news of the draft security treaty broke. That seemed to be a reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the United States put up a naval blockade to prevent the Soviet Union from building nuclear missile silos in Cuba, close to US shores.

Yeah, and the USSR definitely did that completely unprovoked. Literally nothing was going on in Europe, or Turkey, at that time. Just, out of the blue, they put nukes in Cuba.

Mr Sogavare said the USSR was “not the aggressor” during the 1962 crisis and drew a comparison to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. “There [are] two sides to every situation we see happening in the world today, including the Ukraine crisis, where the Western world is trying to get every nation to condemn,” he said. “There [are] two sides to every story.”

He also defended China, saying there were “no beggars” on the streets of its major cities, unlike in the West. Some Solomon Islands MPs and civil society groups have criticised the Chinese government’s intensifying and repeated crackdowns on Christians under President Xi Jinping.

Banned bibles, burnt crosses, and re-education camps — denomination aside, religion is a dangerous pursuit in Xi Jinping’s China in 2018. But Mr Sogavare said the faith was “thriving” in China because believers followed the rules set by government. “I don’t know where these people are coming from, but talking about Christian values … there are more than 120 million real practising Christians in China. Our own churches? 500,000. Half a million,” he said. “This is more serious practising Christians in China than the entire population of the Pacific Island nations including Australia and New Zealand put together. Yes, there are rules. There are restrictions. But Christianity is thriving because they obey the authorities.”

Mr Sogavare also seemed to latch onto a piece written by an Australian analyst which suggested that the federal government might need to launch an invasion of Solomon Islands if China moved to set up a military base in the country. No government figure in Australia has publicly raised the prospect of invasion.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has described a Chinese military base as a “red line” for Australia and the United States. However, he declined to lay out exactly what he meant by that when pressed by journalists. Mr Sogavare seemed to suggest that option was being contemplated in Australia, saying Solomon Islands had received a “touching warning of military intervention. In other words, we are threatened with invasion. Now that’s serious,” he said. A spokesperson for the Foreign Minister Marise Payne responded to Mr Sogavare’s attack by saying Australia was “deeply committed” to the Pacific. “We respond in times of need, whether that is to natural disasters, economic and health shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic, or to civil unrest of the kind that took place in Solomon Islands late last year,” they said. “We support our Pacific family and always will.”

Imagine if literally any western nation had an article written about them by a serious politician from a very powerful country, very close to them - say, Russia, or China - that suggested that they should be invaded. And that the leader of that country said that a "red line" had been cross-- y'know what, just imagine Russia and Ukraine, that's what I'm trying to say. This is what it looks like from the opposite side, if the aggressor country and their capitalists had a firm grip on every media outlet and could dictate popular opinion throughout the world, or at least the western world. Anybody who supports Ukraine but is also like "hmmm, well, perhaps the Solomon Islands shouldn't have a potential Chinese base, it's not great, they need to think about the security of other nations bordering them" is an actual fucking circus clown.

I watched the TV news for the first-time in ages. The only mention of the war was a few seconds mentioning how Russia expelled some diplomats in retaliation to their diplomats being expelled.

Liberals are bored of the war.

Culturally: Ukrainian nationalists have totally ruined my enjoyment of Lord of the Rings. I knew "orcs" were based on some sort of racial stareotype, but I assumed the fear of an "Asiatic horde" died with the mongol empire. The term being used to instill racial hatred in the 21st century is crazy to me

China’s Communist Youth League the latest state-backed group to embrace NFTs, with tokens marking its centennial

:cringe:

Advisor to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Viktor Andrusiv expressed regret that Kiev cannot invade Transnistria without the permission of the Moldovan authorities. "Unfortunately, we cannot invade Transnistria ... We cannot do this without the permission of Moldova," he said on the air of the Ukraine 24 TV channel.

trying to educate libs about the origins of the phrase Slava Ukraini, they get defensive and start talking about Russian disinformation.

"Well it's widely used for general support of Ukrainians , I'd think only a minority uses it to commemorate Banderas".

well, how can we tell the difference?

The Economist: Why long-term economic growth often disappoints

Finally, somebody has found an answer to this completely unsolved question that has beguiled us for a century or more.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/05/israeli-court-evict-1000-palestinians-west-bank-area Land to be repurposed for military use in one of the biggest expulsion decisions since 1967 occupation