The escalating U.S.-China conflict is nothing short of a major crisis
for global capitalism. With negotiations having all but collapsed there
seems to be no “exit ramp” from the trade war that began in July 2018.
This crisis points to a prolonged and increasingly rancorous struggle
with potentially serious global effects economically, politically, and
even militarily.
The month of May saw a dramatic escalation with President Trump
initiating a new round of tariff increases on Chinese goods and then
broadening the conflict into a tech war, the costs of which could dwarf
those flowing from his trade measures. Xi Jinping’s regime responded
with retaliatory tariffs against the U.S., but its reaction has been
cautious and measured, showing that for the time being it still hopes to
avoid further escalation.
The executive order signed by Trump that bans U.S. companies from
supplying Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies is nothing less than
a state-led campaign by the U.S. to drive the company out of business
and prevent Huawei, which has close links to the Chinese state, from
achieving global dominance over 5G (fifth generation) wireless
technology, the roll out of which is imminent. Trump’s decision puts
Huawei on what is informally called a “kill list.” Currently Huawei, the
global leader in 5G networks, sources half its microchips from U.S.
companies.
This opens a new and potentially much more serious front in the
superpower conflict. If the planned meeting between presidents Trump and
Xi goes ahead on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan in late June
it could still possibly produce some form of truce or cosmetic trade
agreement. But with the gap between the two sides widening such an
outcome looks increasingly unlikely.
These events confirm our assessment that the start of this conflict
last year marked a key turning point in world relations. It is the
beginning of a new era of sharpening imperialist conflict between the
U.S. and China, which are “contesting every domain” as the Economist
recently put it. In a different historical epoch these processes would
probably lead to war, but in the age of nuclear weapons and mutual
assured annihilation, with governments’ and the ruling classes’ lack of
stable support and fear of mass unrest, thankfully this scenario is not
posed.
It is vital, however, that the workers’ movement in both countries
and globally develops an independent political position towards the
Trump administration’s measures based on working class internationalism,
opposing in equal measure the protectionism of nationalist politicians
like Trump and Xi Jinping, but also the capitalist alternative of
neo-liberal globalization. Under capitalism, both trade wars and trade
deals are pursued in the interests of big companies and the financial
elite, based on a never-ending race to the bottom in terms of workers’
livelihoods, democratic rights and the environment.
The escalation of the conflict has unsurprisingly sent shockwaves
through global financial markets, which had “priced in” a U.S.-China
trade deal. This false optimism was based mainly on the propaganda of
Trump officials and the president himself. Like global capitalism as a
whole, the Chinese “Communist” Party (CCP) dictatorship has once again
been thrown off balance by Trump’s abrupt shifts. With the latest
increases, almost half of China’s imports to the U.S. (worth $250
billion) are covered by 25% tariffs. In addition, Trump is threatening
to extend the tariffs to all Chinese goods unless a deal acceptable to
his government is reached.
One of the largest panoramic images ever taken with our Hubble Space Telescope’s cameras, this image features a stunning 50-light-year-wide view of the intense central region of the Carina Nebula - a strange stellar nursery. The nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. The Carina Nebula lies within our own galaxy, about 7,500 light-years away.
At the heart of the nebula is Eta Carinae — a system of two stars. The larger star, Eta Car A, is around 100 times as massive as the Sun and 5 million times as luminous! Stars of this size are extremely rare; our galaxy is home to hundreds of billions of stars, but only tens of them are as massive as Eta Car A.
This view of the Carina Nebula provided astronomers the opportunity to explore the process of star birth at a new level of detail. The hurricane-strength blast of stellar winds and blistering ultraviolet radiation within the cavity are now compressing the surrounding walls of cold hydrogen. This is triggering a second stage of new star formation. Hubble has also enabled scientists to generate 3-D models that reveal never-before-seen features of the interactions between the Eta Carinae star system.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
Capitalism is getting very much more dystopian very quickly
It’s a matter of time before companies start their own Pod-communities and ‘strongly encourage’ workers to live there and set up rules like no alcohol and no defamation of the company in the Pods.
As nightmarish as this is (and it is), this is only new for documented white people. From seasonal archiculture workers to construction workers to sweatshops, ‘sleep where you work and live your whole life controlled by your boss and coworkers pressured to spy on you’, has been very much a thing for a looooooooong time.
This is one of many things capitalism has always done to workers and now they’re going “hhmmmm.. if I can do this to some workers, why not all of them? if I present it as a hip new way of urban living people for the ‘freelancers’ that I exploit, I might even be able to do it without the armed guards that run my sweatshops and plantations.”
I don’t really get the issue with the “sex is banned” part tho
I don’t want to hyperfocus on that part because ‘live without privacy, convert your bed into a desk by day and just work work work’ is distopian enough as it is and I don’t really want to distract from a conversation about the new fuedalism to just talk about sex.
But can you not understand how that monotomous soulless life defined by work becomes even more soulless when you are not permitted to engage in (what is for most allosexuals) one of the most intimate moments of recreational joy and interpersonal connection? & how much it says about our lack of power when we live in places that control our sexual and reproductive lives?
well yeah, but it’s communal living. I mean you’re spot on with the rest but idk, a ban on sex when you share your living quarters with like two dozen other people? it doesn’t seem that deep tbh.
You know, I’ve spend time in socialist and anarchist self-organized communal living spaces where lots of people shared bedrooms because they liked it and all these spaces had a place for sex. They all acknowledged that that was a thing many humans loved and valued and so they organized to make that good thing possible. Some had a spare room with a lock on the inside that couples could use, others had dorms where sex was okay and dorms where it was not so people could choose where to sleep. It is not difficult to have communal living for those that like sharing bedrooms and also organize a place for sex.
This, however, is not communal living. This is crammed, dehumanized corporate living. This is squeezing as many people as possible into a space defined by work. The inhabitants own nothing in this space and have no control over their environment, they can’t even paint the walls let along organize the space to meet their needs. In such a space, sex is made impossible on purpose:
“We built the pods facing each other so the community polices itself”
The people that made this could have organized privacy and opportunities for sex. They deliberately did not do this, they dilerabetely designed the space for minimum privacy. The purposeful banning of sex from this space is just one part, but one very obvious part, of the way these spaces are not build for humans, they are build for employees whose whole identity should be limited to their productivity.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, mining communities and factory towns encouraged workers to join their ranks by offering company housing and company stores, where workers and their families wouldn’t have to worry about money, because their rent and whatever they wanted from the store would simply be deducted from their paychecks.
Didn’t take long for workers to realize they were spending over 100% of their paychecks, and would have to work the rest of their lives in soul-crushing poverty to pay the company back.
“I sold my soul to the company store” isn’t just a line in a song, it’s about Miner’s Scrip. When coal mines forced their employees to live in company housing, paid them in company credit usable only in the literal company store, and they charged astronomical rates for rent and food.
Most miners ended up in multi-generational debt because their wages were so low they could not afford the basic necessities of food, clothing and shelter and ended up owing so much to the company store their grandchildren would essentially be enslaved to the company to pay off the debt.
This becomes especially chilling when you realize Cheeto Supremo ran on a policy of “bring back coal jobs”.
This is just deadass feudalism 2 Electric Boogaloo
Waiting for Google and Facebook to implement this crap.
March 21 2019 - After declaring victory in Baghouz, the last remaining IS enclave, the antifascist YPJ fighters took down the last black Daesh flag of cloth that still waved in the village and replaced it with their own.
The YPJ fighters devoted their victory to “all women in the world, but especially to the Yazidi women”, wishing them a happy Newroz. [video]
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
