And in Gabon the general has just been elected with more than 90% of the votes(, after the bloodless military coup two years ago, which ended 53 years of ruling by the western-supported Bongo family), nobody talked about it, and when that happens i assume that it's because the winner of the elections favors the western interests.
https://x.com/jasonhickel/status/1909688859157225826

On tariffs, i found that interesting : https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1910512816253263904

As well as this comment : https://x.com/ZhaiXiang5/status/1909985319753036112 :

It was probably never his goal, he just want companies to move outside China in order to hurt it, even if they're still outside the u.s.
They don't care about being united in diversity, so if we(sterners) "lose", i hope that we'll be treated as awfully as we are/'have been' treating others, not that any other country diverse&powerful enough(, able to threaten the u.s.,) will be authorized to emerge again.
When they destroyed the u.s.s.r. they made sure to destroy Yugoslavia, encourage separatism inside the Russian Federation, and support anti-russian forces in ex-USSR countries, after giving "friendly" advices that had the worst economic consequences.
And we(sterners) don't even have a good reason for ruling supreme, there's nothing to compare since we have no public plan for the future, no assumed alternative to offer except an ahistorical&amoral modernity promoting selfishness and a capitalist-owned representative democracy with a varying attachment to freedom(, less concerned about comparing it with Freedom than the alleged situation in "regimes"), to the point that we're even hiding these reasons for desiring hegemony at the expense of a peaceful diversity, and lying about other countries.
The alternative to our attacks would obviously be to work together, but some diversities/differences aren't tolerated and a war for hegemony is the only plan/future for these mindless brutes, i can only pray that the just/virtuous/good side will win. I don't know if they will but they deserve a better world.

Some graphs from https://x.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1909399503821848951 and https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1909404626459541622 :

«20% of China’s GDP is manufactures exports.
65% of that is domestic value-added.
20% of that final demand is from the US.
Total exposure to U.S. demand is 0.2x0.2x0.65=2.5%. »

Here's what domestic value-added means :
If China exports a $100 phone, with a $20 screen imported from Korea, and keep in China the other components, the design, logistic, etc., then the domestic value-added would be 80%

If 20% is manufactures exports, here's a detail of the whole : https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports-by-category (, more here or there if you pay)

Not always ultra-informative to just dump graphics, I first thought it'd have been less pointless, sry 🤷.

Obviously, the People's Republic of China will retaliate, that's what anyone would do and the americans knew that, perhaps that their main strategy is once again to bully other countries into submission since that's unfortunately our main strategy t.b.h. when looking at the past decades(centuries), the stick has been much much more preeminent than the alleged carrot :

Donald Trump also said that he apparently wants to increase the military budget by more than 12%(, from the current $890 billions)

Surprisingly enough though, it gives hope, i saw that yesterday : http://youtube.com/post/UgkxKV5A2xenSTBiUQDWCjY1E1eW2cbKETNV

Edit : more here : https://archive.ph/Jrn5z

Would you like some more pie ? https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2019/us-china-trade-war-tariffs-date-chart

Or here : https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/trump-global-tariffs-charts

These graphs don't add much, but they're not worse than the ones cited above, so why not 🤷

Yeah well, fuck David Ricardo(, it's obvious that we should buy&produce locally, his counter-intuitive results are only valid from a consumer viewpoint, not taking into account the jobs created, the taxes collected by the state, the more secondary enterprises benefiting indirectly from a good economic health, ...), he was only used to justify a neo-colonialist "free trade" locking "poor"(exploited) countries into selling raw materials, as well as selling the ownership of their companies/mines/'natural resources', etc.
Their invaluable ressources were formed over (hundreds of )millions of years and are now sold over a few decades at a very low price set by the market according to the competition(, which isn't the case for the more advanced manufactured products with less competition, such as selling planes instead of t-shirts).
So fuck David Ricardo, and these countries should ABSOLUTELY agree together to form an economic(&military because coups would follow,) alliance to raise in a concerted manner the prices of their raw materials, who should be at the very least 10, if not 100, times higher, and then use that money to manufacture these objects themselves. But they won't, tsk, so w/e.
D.Trump is right in his desire to get back american companies in the u.s.a., even if he only did so once he stopped benefiting from it, the u.s. is too powerful to be oppressed for such decisions, unlike :

• Haiti in the 1980-1990s, who tried to protect its rice, but the unholy trinity forced them to give up on that measure, and Miami's rice quickly took over, assholes ;
• Before the 1980s, Ghana produced its own clothes, but because of the western SAPs, they were forced to buy clothes from Europe and Asia and lost their textile industry ;
• In Argentina during the 2000s, Kirchner also tried some protectionnism like China, but as usual the unholy trinity came to order people around, the US, EU, and Japan added to the criticism of the WHO, and commercial pressures forced them to change their mind ;
• Tanzania also tried to do the same for its agriculture, etc.

I won't forget that the People's Republic of China was the only non-western aligned country to ever emerge since the colonization(, South Korea and Japan's rise were only strategic, we helped them at our expense like Israel or Taiwan), and also one of the only ones who refused to follow western advices/orders(, i still consider them protectionnism even if they complied — unwillingly in 1842, 1858, 1860, ... ; willingly in the 1980s — with our demands on tariffs, because they :

• subsidized their economy ;
• 'obtained, through explicit demands of real partnerships unlike the more submissive(trusting?) global South,'&'are now improving upon' western technologies, as well as creating new ones(, they were faster) ;
• had reglementations such as forbidding foreign investments in some sectors past a certain percentage ;
• favored local companies for state projects ;
• ...
  They've demonstrated the unprecedented success of their system/'set of conditions', and should be imitated by the Global South if it's indeed better/'validated by these last decades'. And the chinese civilization has only just started to marvel us if you also like techno-scientific discoveries).

Fuck Ricardo.

More arguments here, among many books.

mass graves

feels like a dissimulation, not only of war crimes but also to prevent the identification of the victims' status(, children, women, elderly, humanitarians, ...), and a body count of the operation.
They wouldn't have been found if Israel didn't communicated the location.
So many bulldozers and yet many more lies, they're even killing patients in hospitals, and have destroyed everything :

If the current territory covered by Israel and Palestine was splitted into three between christians, jews, and muslims, then it'd be more easily accepted(, by the israelis,) if the shares were 33% jews, 16.5%+16.5% christians, and 16.5%+16.5% muslims, the five territories with Jerusalem as their capital(, perhaps with a slightly larger territory than currently). The goal of uniting one day in the future as a common territory with three governments may even be stated along with the redrawing of the borders(, and even end up with only one if the three religions of the Book ever fuse one day, Jerusalem/Israel/Palestine would be even more symbolic).
If Israel ends up with a territory of ~9.500km²(, sharing the rest with the two other religions of the Book), they should ideally also be offered a second country of less than 20.000km² somewhere in the world, accepting the location because of their shared 'presence in'/'ownership of' the Sacred Lands. In that case, no need for the division 33 // 16.5+16.5 // 16.5+16.5, a simple 33//33//33 would do. And if it's spitted 50//50 for jews//muslims, then a second territory of less than 15.000kms² would be enough.

As long as you don't censor us, which a decentralized Lemmy can't do in comparison to Reddit.
The government is way more worrying though.

Hard to imagine that it was only a few years ago(, before E.Musk bought Twitter,) that we were denying the influence of governments on social media censorship, and said that "private companies aren't censoring, because they're not the government, if you don't like this platform just change/leave". It has changed and now we've quickly accepted that states should enforce (more )laws all over the/our internet. And many don't see that our fact-checking is unilaterally biased, etc.

Someone from programming.dev may have heard of the declaration of the independence of cyberspace , among others.

Like hate speech(, e.g. against Israel/Ukraine/.., or in favor of Palestine/Russia/Iran/.., debunking/denying the uyghur/bosnian/.. "genocide", etc.)

Thanks for moving it to a more appropriate community.

If i may insist on the last point, even if it's a bit late to expect an answer from anyone, i believe that this is a very significant shift(, no ?) https://x.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1830872489951662574

Ok, then i don't have much to add to my previous comment, thanks for your answer :) !

Seems like Lemmygrad wasn't such a bad place to get answers then, thanks :) !

However, your argument doesn't seem to hold : can you cite a country which doesn't offer the possibility to subscribe to a private insurance(, on top of the mandatory subscriptions to the public one) ?
The difference here would be that those subscribing to a private insurance plan wouldn't be forced to subscribe to the public one, and wouldn't complain.
They'd still perhaps try to destroy the public one(, or increase the out-of-pocket amount), by force of habit, and perhaps because it's less private profits for them, but they wouldn't be able to complain about being forced by the state to contribute against their will. They wouldn't have a reason to feel concerned anymore.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't see why they wouldn't try to destroy the public system now, and why offering them an alternative would increase their attacks ?

I agree that the best protection against such attacks would be to have a high subscription rate to the public insurance plan. Even better, to avoid having the state control that insurance, as well as capitalists obviously, there's probably a way to make each subscriber take important decisions by vote, and really owning the insurance funds.
That's what the ~french "mutuelles" were originally if i'm not mistaken.

Or just let the citizen choose between both systems ?

In France, or China, ..., you can have a private insurance plan, but you still need to contribute to the public system, and i don't clearly see why it should be necessary.

In the u.s.a., with the exception of Medicare and Medicaid if you're too old or poor, you can't contribute to a public system of insurance even if you want to. I mean, even South Korea has a public healthcare system, universal since 1989, even if it's far from free though, the u.s.a. is one of the few exceptions.

In both cases, the pro//anti capitalist sides could be satisfied if given the freedom of choice, but i'm probably missing something though.
Germany and Switzerland seem kinda close to such "proposal", not sure that i'll have an answer here though :)

Or, better yet, watch the full video instead(, it starts at the 14th minute) : https://www.youtube.com/live/hzkCsIv365c

I don't believe in the 25 infringements to the ceasefire(, but i don't know his arguments, only that the OSCE recorded more attacks from the ukrainian side in their ~millions of infringements recorded), and there's the risk, from the russian side, of giving them time to rebuild an army, so here's an idea among others :

Ukraine is demilitarized, and promise not to join NATO(, promises are cheap). But NATO troops, and/or from the UN, will be tasked with protecting the border.
However, for Russia to accept losing Ukraine, referendums could/should be held in the border lands to ask if they prefer to rejoin their old russian side or the new western side. And these referendums should be held again every ~5-10 years after that, with a total acceptance of russian medias in these regions. There would then be debates between pro&anti russians, and about the modalities(, e.g. the forms of autonomy, outside//inside the Russian federation).
And whatever the results of these referendums ends up being, the anti-russian part of Ukraine should be left with an access to the sea(, unlike Bolivia).
They don't want to be forced to choose a side against their will, but also want to force others like Odessa to follow Lviv, even in the case of their inhabitants refusing the same NATO that bombed Serbia, Lybia, etc. Ukrainians are more russians than europeans, there's the possibility of creating something else.
There's also the expectations of Transnistria, which could become a part of Russia.

It's just some thoughts.

JD Vance shouldn't have talked like he did(, at least not publicly, even if i like transparency), V.Zelensky could have reacted in a better way, just a temporary moment of anger while trying to express a 'point of view'/desire 🤷

Material conditions enforces coercion(, bargaining power). His decision upon the Washington Post, and admittance that only Internet criticizes the capitalist viewpoints/mistakes, is also an illustration of how capitalism enforces its decisions upon its possessions, long live democracy in the workplace instead. No master except God(, by definition one can't escape its/our determinism, and shouldn't reject Idea(l)s).
State-driven innovation is obviously more efficient than a company driven by profits instead of goals/vision/values(, who'll choose planned obsolescence, monopolies, stealing from other companies, ..., over genuine progress). Their theory states that the price would end up so low that they wouldn't waste profits in dividends and huge salary gap, but that's only one of the discrepancies between their theory and reality.

That countries should selfishly think about themselves, and not serve the common good instead by helping each other, is the exact same trash "ideology"(, and certainly a consequence of the mindset of individuals,) than encouraging citizens' selfishness instead of altruism/empathy, even if it's at their own expenses.
They said that (the religious )empathy/goodness failed, and that selfishness/individuality would end up producing the same results in every single case.
I don't care if westerners fail as long as we don't bring the rest of the world with us, but i'm not the one deciding, the strong do what it can and the weak suffer what it must.

Huh. I didn't take a look at your links and kinda expected to have problems with the mods for that comment anyway.
Seems like we have the same opinion and lemmy.ml is indeed not Reddit.

Sorry for such a bad comment, i'm french and our president, but far from only him, said a few annoying things that made me want to vent out, honestly i don't know why, just that it's one of these times when everything i'm hearing from the radio or t.v. or some twitter accounts of politicians just annoy me, it was a pointless comment in that sense, probably the equivalent of seeking a (verbal )fight in a pub, i was just getting ready to be angry at a poor pro-ukrainian as if it was productive, 🤷

So Ukraine wasn't building up an army to recover Crimea and fight against anti-n.a.t.o. separatism in its south-east ? Zelensky was elected as an alternative to anti-russians(, without the vote of south-eastern ukrainians under an economic blocus among other things), and did the opposite.
It's just like saying that Russia will invade the rest of Europe or other lies(, probably the russian interferences as well since Russiagate was debunked and we have a strong history of lying, Georgia was the aggressor during the Beijing olympics), we just can't tell the truth and our population is even ignoring the talking points of the opponent. The non-westerners know our point of view, never difficult to understand, we're the ones systematically ignoring theirs, and lying with biases visible even to those agreeing with us.
Netanyahu is also a liar but that's what we(sterners) do, the end justifies the means our leaders/representatives don't speak from/with their heart, there's an assumed propaganda of talking points, e.g. unprovoked for Russia or terrorists for Palestine, what are palestinians supposed to do to stop the ongoing colonization and live peacefully together ? What is Russia supposed to do if it's rejected by the west because of their desire to be independent and in favor of multipolarity, supporting the declared enemies of the "policemen of the world" ? Iran wouldn't be considered authoritarian if it was zionist.
What matters here is that there are solutions for each problem, we have a strong tendency to consider our opponents crazy/incomprehensible, without explaining/justifying in order to seek a national unity.
Now we're censoring people for their opinions even more than before, it comes from the state and not platforms, with jail time and fees, but since we're not killing people for posting unapproved opinions it could be worse. JD Vance was right to criticize the censorship wave of these last years in Europe(, and the US as well in a lesser measure), liberty is our only answer for a lack of egality 🤷(, in some forms, « poverty is slavery » though)

I wonder if Russia should accept this proposal of exchanging territories, because they're too emotionally attached to their west, so giving up in their far east on an equal number of square kilometers(, minus Transnistria which would/could join Ukraine,) could give them company in their demographic balancing toward the East.
One condition should be to ensure that such territory wouldn't become a thorn in Russia's side ; so what remains of Ukraine, as well as their new territory, wouldn't be able to be with anti-russians anymore.
It's too late to be nice to each other, but on the other side Ukraine and Russia have a very long history together. If they can side together in their eastern expansion, they could perhaps end up brothers and sisters again, especially with Odessa and Transnistria, but perhaps even eastern Galicia one day.
There'd have to be conditions, in exchange, towards Ukraine's friendliness after the war though.

(And if Russia wants more children then women have to stop working, it doesn't come from anywhere else, and fathers could stay at home instead(, a 50-50 between fathers//mothers at home in the population could easily be done with propaganda, it'd be a difference from the past), but it's a full-time job past 3-4 children, the desire wouldn't be there)

Thank you Mr.Trump

Edit :
I did some rough calculations, and with a fertility higher than Nigeria, around ~8.5, they could reach the billion people before 2100.
Encouraging strongly couples to have more than 10 children means that these women will lose their current role in companies/industries(, and there's an incompatibility of so many pregnancies with a career, except if artificial incubators are used from the fifth month, could be a cultural practice if there's no noticeable downsides), such policies would also be criticized(, although less than producing children in vitro).
That's the kind of decision that should be decided democratically, like all important long-term decisions. It could give a purpose for this century, i.d.k., just that 150M isn't enough to become a center, i think, but they have the potential/territory/history for that, and now they're even less numerous than during the 80s. I.d.k. if increasing their population is necessary to be a center but it seems a part of it.

He obtained a very high result in the first round compared with the last elections :

And even if she won, she won't be able to launch a communist revolution if she wanted to, for internal and external reasons, the examples of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, ..., are known by all.
Also, she's not an indigenous and i'd very much like to see South&Central America given back to (a revival of )their culture.
I very much like Rafael Correa, Andrés Arauz, and her as well of course, and can't understand how Lenín Moreno managed to accomplish such a betrayal, and then subsequent presidents had bad ratings, i may be falsely oversimplifying by accusing the narrative/'capitalist-owned medias', w/e 🤷

Yeah, because of droughts and an over-reliance on hydroelectricity(, ~75%,) apparently, which sometimes lead to 14h/day of power cuts.
Red also produced a 3mn video on this subject which stated that Ecuador will have the lowest growth of all south american countries while Venezuela will have the highest(, 9%!), which is very nice for them, finally.