thethirdgracchi

But like, what's Russia going to do with that information that they wouldn't already do? There's no magic they can do here to make Ukraine fold faster.

I think the problem with this line of thinking is that Putin can just "plan" to steamroll Ukraine in 2024, and that the only thing preventing Russia from already doing so is Putin's "plan." If Russia could steamroll Ukraine they would've done so already; geopolitics does not revolve around US election cycles. The war in Ukraine may end in 2024, maybe Ukraine's military will collapse thanks to all the pressure on it and their dwindling supplies, but it won't go according to anybody's "plan," as it's not up to Putin to decide when the war ends in a Russian victory outside of committing far more troops than they already have, which I don't see on the horizon given their current strategy seems to be working, albeit very slowly.

I agree that Trump's victory seems likely though, and if the situation in Ukraine wraps up in 2024 it's almost a sure thing.

I think you're being a little uncharitable to Don Quixote/Cervantes, because there's an aspect of the novel that's actually pretty progressive. In a roundabout way it's a critique of society, as it was written in a world that espoused chivalry and a glorious past, but the exposes that chivalry as impossible, as something that if you actually carried out you'd look like a complete fool. It's a bit like somebody today writing a novel about a dude who took Economics 101 seriously and operated as if its conclusions were correct, and the attempted to operate in the real world. He'd be looked at like an absolute fool, and that says something about the supposed ethos our society pretends it's based on.

Yeah it's been a long time coming. There's been rumblings of this since what, 2020 when Evergrande had that liquidity scare? Sooner or later there's got to be a long term plan to deflate the bubble that involves drastic action, something the Party as of late seems loth to do.

I think they're focusing on the "let's make sure our largest property developers don't collapse and take down the rest of the economy with them" part first, then trying to reform later. China has too much of its assets tied up in real estate, where a massive drop in the value of the real estate market would bring down a lot of unrelated firms who have many of their assets tied up in teal estate.

I agree this in the long run might make things worse, but I imagine it's a short term measure to buy time more than anything else. Highly recommend the translation of Wen Tiejun (great Chinese economist) one of our comrades made in the last news mega to go over this: https://hexbear.net/comment/3867398

China dropped the mortgage down payment minimum (usually 40% to 30%) to 20% and caused a huge uptick in home sales in Shanghai and Beijing.

Home sales in two of China’s biggest cities soared in the past two days following mortgage relaxations, an early sign that government efforts to cushion a record housing slowdown is helping.

From here: https://archive.ph/3kCoZ

Not sure if this will be repeated in the Teir 2 and below cities, and it doesn't do anything to unwind much of the mess created by China's property market, where a significant amount of wealth is tied up in real estate rather than "real" sectors of the economy, but I guess it's a start.

For real?! Fucking amazing.

Rumors of an ebola outbreak as well, but I'm 80% sure they're fake.

Thank you so much for translating this. Wen Tiejun's Ten Crises was such an amazing book, glad to read more by him.

What a wonderful woodcut print. Never heard of Gordon Mortensen before, but their colors are so striking!

Wonderful article; thanks for posting this here. Fits well within the Gothic Marxist tradition.