#European car policies

[diagnozabam]

Tesla contestă taxele UE pentru mașinile electrice produse în China

Tesla a anunțat că a depus o contestație la Curtea de Justiție a Uniunii Europene (CJUE) împotriva taxelor vamale impuse vehiculelor electrice fabricate în China. Prin această acțiune, Tesla se alătură unor producători auto de renume, inclusiv BMW, care contestă noile tarife impuse de Uniunea Europeană. Taxe vamale de până la 35.5% pentru mașinile electrice din China Uniunea Europeană a introdus…

[3liza]

I don't know how many times we have to say this but this is because the United States of America does not have public transit in any form that a European would recognize as such outside of a few very small, highly-dense municipal locations like NYC and Chicago, and having used both those systems and the U-Bahn i can firmly assert that the U-Bahn blows American subways into smithereens. we especially do not have accessible interstate passenger train service outside of that one commuter Amtrak loop in the northeast. the country is designed to force its citizens to use cars and only cars, and the government has made it policy to incentivize car ownership since the 1940s and punish any other form of transit, including just walking around. do you understand? the vast majority of roads here do not have bike lanes. when we do have bike lanes they are not protected by a curb or divider, they are just white lines painted on the asphalt. you will regularly encounter roads and streets--inside of cities and suburbs, not just in rural areas--that do not have sidewalks

[gwydionmisha]

Before you say no duh, remember that we need studies like this to quantify things for planning, government policy, and court cases, and also to help convince people who's minds aren't already made up.

I know I struggle to breath in heat like this, and hypoxia kills, especially when cars are involved.

[joannerowling]

Funny article about the growing "buy from EU" movement. Don't get me wrong, we love seeing it! But, surprise surprise, it has its limits.

Many American brands have manufacturing facilities in Europe, and European brands have connections with the US. For example, one alternative to buying a Tesla car could be to buy one from Peugeot, a French brand – owned by the Italian-American multinational Stelantis. Boycotting American brands could also hit European companies, such as the factory in eastern France which produces M&Ms for the American confectionery maker Mars.

Well, yeah, that's the problem with a barely regulated global capitalist economy, isn't it? It's almost like the "free market" has actually become a senseless, inescapable, labyrinthesque prison, where the flapping of an American billionaire's wings can cause a family on the other side of the planet to be unable to afford basic groceries.

Not that any of this is news (hello 2008), but it sure would have been nice to hear the left wing parties around the world focus their discourse on that during the past 15 years. Unfortunately they were very busy defending the right of men in skirts to use women's bathrooms instead.

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

How Russian colonialism took the Western anti-imperialist Left for a ride

Blindness to Russian colonialism distorts Westerners’ view of the Ukraine war

"Fucking shit Russian car," my driver spat as a Lada sedan passed us on the highway from Georgia's capital of Tbilisi to Stepantsminda during my trip there in 2019, shortly after our long conversation touched on Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia.

His momentary flash of anger was an eye-opening glimpse at the consequences of Russia's steadfast refusal to let go of the 14 nations whose independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union dictator Vladimir Putin infamously called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century" – not to mention the ethnic minorities still under Moscow's yoke – and its brutal punishment of Georgia and Ukraine for daring to seek a bright future outside of Russia's sunless orbit.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has cast a long-overdue spotlight on Russian imperialism and colonialism, yet many Westerners fail to grapple with how Russia's colonial legacy continues to this day and is part and parcel to its war against Ukraine and descent into fascism. Consequently, many end up whatabouting, excusing and even overtly sympathizing with an empire whose colonial practices mirror those of historical Western European empires in cruelty, chauvinism, thievery, exploitation, cultural erasure, racism and genocide and that is now ruthlessly attempting to conquer one of its neighbors.

Russia displayed that ruthlessness last week when it lobbed missiles at Odesa, damaging port and grain storage facilities as well as its historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

"They're interested in lands and influence and a buffer zone between them and the West, in sea access – but not in people and not in culture," said Ukrainian Parliament adviser Yuliia Shaipova who, together with her husband, Aspen Institute NextGen Transatlantic Initiative member Artem Shaipov, was at home in Odesa after hiding in a nearby bomb shelter.

Yet, Westerners safe from bombardment like long-shot third-party presidential candidate Cornel West continue to accommodate Russia. In a July 13 interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins, West called Russia's invasion "criminal" but insisted it was "provoked by the expansion of NATO" and is a "proxy war between the American Empire and the Russian Federation," adding Neville Chamberlain-esque icing on the appeasement cake by proposing Ukrainian territorial concessions to Russia.

The tell in West's remarks was calling the U.S. an empire but referring to Russia by its de jure name, implicitly erasing its imperial, colonial character. It's a common tendency among the segment of the left to which West belongs, one that Kazakhstan-born Pitzer College sociology professor Azamat Junisbai attributes to ignorance and a myopic, know-nothing focus on American imperialism to the exclusion of imperialism by other nations.

"They're kind of imperial about their anti-imperialism," Junisbai said. "There's something very provincial and strange about it where you literally do not know anything about what's happening beyond this one issue you care about."

While West and other leftists blame "NATO expansion" for provoking Russia, Junisbai compares NATO membership – which, after all, the former Warsaw Pact and Baltic countries all sought voluntarily – to a restraining order against an abusive partner.

"People don't recognize that there was an abusive relationship, that there was colonialism," he said, speculating that blindness to Russian colonialism could be due to a failure of Western education systems as well as Soviet propaganda and leftist valorization of the Soviet Union as a foe of Western imperialism. Another potential culprit is knee-jerk distrust toward American foreign policy popular among some leftists and alternative media that leads to a simplistic "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" worldview.

"People, I think, just get so wedded to their vision of themselves as fighting 'The Man,' fighting the power that they are blinded and taken for a ride by Russia, in this case serving as useful idiots," Junisbai said.

Both Yuliia and Artem Shaipov pointed the finger at academic studies of Russia in the West that view it through Moscow's imperial lens. The two have published articles advocating for a "decolonization" of Russia studies and greater attention to how veneration of the "great Russian culture" – such as the genocide- and conquest-glorifying literature of Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander Pushkin – has provided a conduit for Russian imperialist ideology to sneak into the Western mind.

"Part of the reason is that it's Western academia that kind of perpetuates this imperial understanding of our region that benefits Russia's imperial policies," Shaipov said, pointing to how Western academic institutions place Ukraine and other post-Soviet nations under Russia's geopolitical umbrella of "Eurasia." "It speaks volumes about the reasons why still many people in the West see Ukraine and other independent states as the sphere of influence of Russia."

The resulting sympathy for Russia's imperial worldview finds expression among Western academics, media personalities and activists who deny Ukrainians' agency in repeating the Kremlin conspiracy theory that Ukraine's 2014 Revolution of Dignity was a "U.S.-backed coup" – as if Ukrainians couldn't have removed outrageously corrupt Kremlin stooge Viktor Yanukovych from office after his security forces murdered over 100 peaceful protesters without foreigners pulling the strings – or characterize former communist nations' NATO membership as provoking Russia rather than protecting them from it.

And it's a mindset rooted in over 400 years of imperialism and colonialism that caused atrocities as horrific as those of Spain or Britain.

Russia's conquest of Siberia starting in the 1580s, for instance, included the enslavement of indigenous peoples whom it forced to pay tribute in the form of furs known as yasak on pain of death, resulting in starvation as people struggled to meet yasak quotas instead of feeding themselves in a system some historians have compared to Belgian King Leopold II's enslavement of the Congo. Russian Cossack gangs raped and murdered while Orthodox missionaries stamped out native religions and alcoholism and smallpox decimated local populations. Today, indigenous people in Siberia and the Russian Far East frequently live in poverty while Moscow strips their lands' rich natural resources to line the pockets of oligarchs and fuel the glitz of cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, while their men disproportionately make up the cannon fodder that Russia sends to the Ukrainian front.

"If we take the Russia that is situated behind the Urals – the Central Asian part of Russia, the far East Asian parts of Russia, the [northernmost parts of Russia] – the cities are just being used for extractive purposes, so [the Russians] don't care even about their own people and minorities that are in Russia itself," Shaipova said, noting how nearly all of their enormous wealth goes to the Russian metropole. "So basically, take Norilsk or Irkutsk – those cities look like an atomic bomb has exploded there."

In the Caucasus, where Russia vied with the Ottoman and Persian empires for power, the Muslim Circassians, who had inhabited the area for millennia, resisted Russian domination. So in 1857, Tsar Alexander II ordered their expulsion to the Ottoman Empire under a proposal by Count Dmitri Milyutin, who said it would "cleanse the land of hostile elements" and open their farmland for Christian settlers. The result was the Circassian genocide in which nearly the entire Circassian population was killed or expelled to the Middle East, where most Circassians live today.

Junisbai's own life is a testament to Russia's thorough colonization of his country, which began in earnest in the 18th century after Russia conquered it. His mother tongue is Russian rather than Kazakh thanks to generations of Russification that made learning Russian essential to get ahead while casting indigenous languages by the wayside. That led to him being conditioned to look down on Kazakhs who could not speak Russian properly while growing up in Almaty, whose population during the Soviet era was about four-fifths Russian and had only two Kazakh-language schools in the early 1980s, while Kazakhs largely lived in rural areas. Meanwhile, his great-grandfather was a member of the Kazakh intelligentsia, for which the Soviets executed him at Omsk in 1935 during Stalin's purges. Consistent with Russia's pattern of extractive relationships with its colonies, Moscow picked Kazakhstan as the place to test nuclear weapons, Junisbai's mother growing up only a couple hundred miles from a testing site.

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine brought to the forefront the issues of language and Russian colonialism that Junisbai had been thinking about for a while. Today, he spells Kazakhstan's name as "Qazaqstan," reflecting the native pronunciation, rather than the more common Russian-based spelling.

"This invasion – just the scale of it and how blatantly imperialist it was – was a point of no return," he said, regarding how it got him thinking more about those issues. "Like how strange and horrible it is that I am stuck with Russian, and it's like having something stuck in my body, and I cannot remove it."

In contrast with its terrestrial empire building, Russia didn't have as much luck overseas, as its North American and Hawaiian colonies proved unsuccessful, along with its lesser-known attempt to partake in that most infamous example of European colonialism, the 19th-century Scramble for Africa.

Russia's covetousness toward Ukraine differs somewhat from its other colonization activities, but comes from the same underlying desire to subjugate. It stems from the popular myth that Russia is the legitimate heir to the medieval state of Kyivan Rus, centered on modern-day Kyiv, which Putin cited in a July 2021 pseudohistorical essay denying Ukraine's right to sovereignty, "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians." But as Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy points out in his new book, "The Russo-Ukrainian War," although the Grand Principality of Moscow – later called Muscovy – derived much of its culture from Kyivan Rus, 15th-century ruler Ivan the Great invented the myth of Muscovy's inextricable link to it by declaring himself the sole legitimate heir to the Kyivan princes in order to justify his conquest of the Republic of Novgorod.

"The independent Russian state, born of the struggle between Moscow and Novgorod, resulted from the victory of authoritarianism over democracy," Plokhy writes.

Shaipov said Muscovy inherited its political culture not from Europe, but from the Mongol Empire of which it had long been a vassal.

"This is their political tradition of authoritarianism, oppression and continuous imperial conquest," he said.

Ukrainians learned that the hard way in the mid-1600s when Ukrainian Cossacks rebelled against their Catholic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth rulers and established an independent state, seeking protection from their Orthodox co-religionists in Muscovy. But after helping them achieve victory, their Muscovite allies sought to dominate them, leading to another Ukrainian Cossack rebellion in 1708 that soon allied with Sweden. Muscovy defeated them at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, and in 1721, under Tsar Peter I, Muscovy became the Russian Empire.

In other words, Russian claims of lordship over Ukraine are about as credible as if British leaders called decolonization a "geopolitical catastrophe" and then dredged up medieval manuscripts to make the case against Irish independence.

The Russian Empire collapsed with the 1917 October Revolution, but that tradition of authoritarianism, oppression and imperial conquest persisted as the empire got a new coat of paint, trading tsars for commissars and rebranding as the U.S.S.R.

Numerous nations under Russian rule for centuries declared independence – including Ukraine as well as Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, the Tatar-led Idel-Ural State and others. But the Bolsheviks quickly invaded nearly all of them, forcing them into the newly established Soviet Union, which reoccupied the Baltic nations after World War II, leaving only Finland independent. In Ukraine, Stalin caused the Holodomor, a genocidal famine that depopulated most of the country's east, allowing its resettlement by Russians. In 1944, he accused indigenous Crimeans – for whom even the term "Crimean Tatars," Shaipov noted, is a misnomer with colonialist undertones – of collaborating with the Nazis and deported them all, allowing Russians to become a majority in Crimea too.

Those malign political traditions continued after 1991 as Russia crushed the fledgling Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and Tatarstan and sponsored pro-Russia breakaway states in Moldova's Transnistria region and the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where Russia used false accusations of genocide as a pretext for its 2008 invasion, a tactic it would rehash in Ukraine six years later.

And they live on today in Russia's nationalist, imperialist, bloodthirsty and downright genocidal "Z" propaganda for domestic audiences.

Even Russian liberals remain far from untainted. While Westerners lionize Alexei Navalny as a freedom fighter, Junisbai highlighted his history of racism toward Central Asians.

"Navalny is not really well-liked in Central Asia because he's the person who contributed to hate crimes against Central Asians in Russia," Junisbai explained, lamenting how many Westerners continue to see that part of Navalny's past as marginal.

Navalny also drew scorn for a series of tweets on July 25 in which he called Russian war criminal Igor Girkin a "political prisoner" following his arrest for criticizing Putin.

Shaipov and Shaipova pointed to how Jan Rachinsky, the head of Memorial, rejected the idea of Russian repentance for waging war against Ukraine in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture last year.

"This understanding of themselves as an empire is part of their national identity, and this is also what concerns the so-called Russian liberals," Shaipova said.

At the same time, Junisbai said people inside Russia consistently fail to acknowledge their nation's colonial history.

"The surest way to offend a Russian person is to talk about colonialism or Russians as colonizers," he said

Instead, Russians overwhelmingly view themselves – in true colonialist form – as having civilized Central Asians, believing they were illiterate before Russia introduced Cyrillic, despite Junisbai's grandfather having written in Arabic script, and that if not for Russia they would still be riding horses and living in yurts.

"It's just like, 'we built your schools, we built your hospitals – how dare you be disrespectful, how dare you not appreciate us,'" he said.

This lack of self-awareness stands in stark contrast with European nations that decolonized and, although in fits and starts, today seek to atone for past injustices. In 2021, Germany formally apologized for genocide in Namibia in the early 1900s, while Queen Camilla declined to wear a crown at King Charles' coronation bearing the Kohinoor diamond, which Britain plundered when it ruled India.

Shaipov and Shaipova said Russia must also undergo decolonization, a process the world should not fear.

"In order for them to heal, they need to go through this healing process and repentance so that they can reconcile with neighboring countries and with the peoples that populate the Russian Federation," Shaipov said.

But Russia must first remove the Harry Potter-like invisibility cloak that has long allowed its colonial legacy to go unnoticed.

"Once you tear it off, then people can see the horribleness – like, how could people side with an abuser and against someone who's trying to take out a restraining order against this abuse," Junisbai said.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

WaPo: How car bans and heat pump rules drive voters to the far right

Shannon Osaka at WaPo:

More than a decade ago, the Netherlands embarked on a straightforward plan to cut carbon emissions. Its legislature raised taxes on natural gas, using the money earned to help Dutch households install solar panels. By most measures, the program worked: By 2022, 20 percent of homes in the Netherlands had solar panels, up from about 2 percent in 2013. Natural gas prices, meanwhile, rose by almost 50 percent. But something else happened, according to a new study. The Dutch families who were most vulnerable to the increase in gas prices — renters who paid their own utility bills — drifted to the right. Families facing increased home energy costs became 5 to 6 percent more likely to vote for one of the Netherlands’ far-right parties. A similar backlash is happening all over Europe, as far-right parties position themselves in opposition to green policies. In Germany, a law that would have required homeowners to install heat pumps galvanized the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, giving it a boost. Farmers have rolled tractors into Paris to protest E.U. agricultural rules, and drivers in Italy and Britain have protested attempts to ban gas-guzzling cars from city centers.

That resurgence of the right could slow down the green transition in Europe, which has been less polarized on global warming, and serves as a warning to the United States, where policies around electric vehicles and gas stoves have already sparked a backlash. The shift also shows how, as climate policies increasingly touch citizens’ lives, even countries whose voters are staunchly supportive of clean energy may hit roadblocks. “This has really expanded the coalition of the far right,” said Erik Voeten, a professor of geopolitics at Georgetown University and the author of the new study on the Netherlands.

Other studies have found similar results. In one study in Milan, researchers at Bocconi University studied the voting patterns of drivers whose cars were banned from the city center for being too polluting. These drivers, who on average lost the equivalent of $4,000 because of the ban, were significantly more likely to vote for the right-wing Lega party in subsequent elections. In Sweden, researchers found that low-income families facing high electricity prices were also more likely to turn toward the far right. Far-right parties in Europe have started to position themselves against climate action, expanding their platforms from anti-immigration and anti-globalization. A decade ago, the Dutch right-wing Party for Freedom emphasized that it wasn’t against renewable energy — just increasing energy prices. But by 2021, the party’s manifesto had moved to more extreme language. “Energy is a basic need, but climate madness has turned it into a very expensive luxury item,” the manifesto said. “The far right has increasingly started to campaign on opposition to environmental policies and climate change,” Voeten said.

The pushback also reflects, in part, how much Europe has decarbonized. More than 60 percent of the continent’s electricity already comes from renewable sources or nuclear power; so meeting the European Union’s climate goals means tacklingother sectors — transportation, buildings, agriculture.

[...] Some of these voting patterns have also played out in the United States. According to a study by the Princeton political scientist Alexander Gazmararian, historically-Democratic coal communities that lost jobs in the shift to natural gas increased their support for Republican candidates by 5 percent. The shift was larger in areas located farther from new gas power plants — that is, areas where voters couldn’t see that it was natural gas, not environmental regulations, that undercut coal.

Gazmararian says that while climate denial and fossil fuel misinformation have definitely played a role, many voters are motivated simply by their own financial pressures. “They’re in an economic circumstance where they don’t have many options,” he said. The solution, experts say, is todesign policies that avoid putting too much financial burden on individual consumers. In Germany, where the law to install heat pumps would have cost homeowners $7,500 to $8,500 more than installing gas boilers, policymakers quickly retreated. But by that point, far-right party membership had already surged.

The Washington Post explains what may be at least partially causing the rise of far-right extremist parties in Europe, Conservatives in Canada, and the Republicans in some parts of the US: rising energy costs that low-income people are bearing the brunt of.

In the US, right-wing hysteria about gas stove bans and electric vehicles are also playing a role.

[alpaca-clouds]

Public Transport COULD Be Great

Americans visiting Europe, especially those more left-leaning Americans, will always be so impressed when it comes to our public transport. And it does not matter where they visit here. Netherlands? "Amazing Public Transport!" France? "Amazing!" Germany? "Amazing!" Even in the UK they will be impressed.

And I kinda get it. While once upon a time the US made a conserted effort to get people moving via train, that has been almost two centuries ago and by now they just decided that people having cars is making more companies more money, so who needs cheap public transport? And while I personally actually kinda liked the public transport on the east coast while I was visiting the US... Yeah, I am well aware that the east coast (especially the area between New York City and DC) is not quite representative for the US.

However, here is the thing: If you ask most Europeans about their public transport... Well, we'll complain as well.

Because they fucking ruined it!

See, here is the issue, in a lot of parts in Europe, at some point or another the government privatized some or all of the public transport. This hit some countries like the UK especially hard, but Germany was hit also quite a lot.

Because of that a lot of things happened that happened when you try to use capitalist logic onto something that cannot work under capitalism.

For example a lot of rails have been removed in areas where it was not "cost efficient" to run trains. Or if they have not been removed, they are at least no longer used. In Germany you will find that in the area where I am living (North-Rhine-Westfelia) we have somewhat good running public transport. Meanwhile a friend of mine is living in former East Germany. And something you gotta understand about former East Germany: After the reunification a lot of people from East Germany tried to move away from there, thinking they would do better in "West Germany". So you will find a lot of mostly empty villages and towns there. And you know what does not pay under capitalism? Right: Running trains to fairly depopulated villages and towns. So... This friend is forced to use a car all the time. Because the next train station that is actually still in use is 45 minutes by car away.

Sure, technically there is a bus running through her village... It comes 3 times a day mondays to fridays, 2 times a day on Saturday and not at all on Sunday. Also to reach the aforementioned train station, the bus connection would take her almost two hours.

Now mind you: There is a train station about 10 minutes by car from her. But that one has not been in use for almost 20 years. Because, again: It just does not pay. It is not profitable for the company, so it is no longer in use.

And here we get to the issue: Public transport is an amazing thing... But we see again and again, that it really only works in those cases where it is state-run and paid for with taxes. As soon as it is privatized it will just not work. Because, well... In general public transport really is not a thing that will be paying for itself. It is fairly expensive, and to keep it profitable you need to keep raising the prices. (As a German: Believe me, I know!)

Not to mention that company policies will lead to weird stuff happening with the trains. Here in Germany? Well, the biggest train company (that is kinda partly state-owned, but not state-run, so it is run under capitalist ideas) has promised their investors that the trains will not be as delayed as before. But given the piss-poor state in which the rail network is, this is just not feasible. So, what will they do? Simple! If a train gets too delayed they will just cancel it. Will that fuck everyone travelling over way more than letting the train delay for 20 minutes? Yeah. But they do not care. They only care about the investors.

And this is the general issue.

For public transit to work, you need to design the transit network to serve the people - and not to make money. Because it does not matter that there are only some old people left in some depopulated little town in eastern Germany or western England... Those old people deserve to be able to get from their depopulated little town to the next big shopping center and cultural center as well.

As long as you do not design the stuff with those people in mind...

Sure, it is better than no public transport. But it still sucks.

[tomorrowusa]

Boycotts are spring up in other countries against American products.

Scandinavian countries and Canada are at the forefront of a growing international trend, in which some consumers are shunning US goods because of President Donald Trump's decision to place tariffs on a range of products from all over the world. Several Facebook groups have been set up in recent weeks aimed at organizing boycotts and campaigns. A Swedish group called "Bojkotta varor fran USA" in Swedish, meaning "Boycott goods from the US," had almost 80,000 members at the time of writing. It describes its purpose as to "protect democracy, self-determination and security," and says it hopes boycotts will put pressure on the Trump administration. The use of the American platform Facebook is justified as it is "the best weapon," it added. Several similar Canadian groups have started on Facebook, while a French group called "BOYCOTT USA: Achetez Francais et Europeen!" — BOYCOTT USA: Buy French and European! — has over 20,000 members. There also appears to be support for a similar stance in Germany. A survey by the research group Civey for the business newspaper Handelsblatt found that 64% of Germans would prefer to avoid US products, if possible. A slim majority said Trump's policies are already influencing their choices when shopping.

Apartheid Elon's Tesla has been the most obvious target.

There is limited data available so far to show if such campaigns are having an impact. However, one of the US products with an especially tangible link to the Trump administration is Tesla. The electric car brand is run by Elon Musk, a senior adviser to Trump currently tasked with running the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Canada, which just got a new prime minister, has some public officials encouraging people to buy Canadian instead of US products.

Rising anti-Trump sentiment has seen the Liberal Party, previously run by Trudeau and now by incoming prime minister Mark Carney, stage a dramatic recovery in polls. In early 2025, it trailed the Conservative Party by 25% but a stunning turnaround now sees it leading many polls. That mood is increasingly reflected among consumers. Dylan Lobo runs a website called "Made in CA," which aims to provide an online directory of Canadian-made goods. He told Business Insider magazine that his website had recently seen a major surge in traffic. "There's a lot of patriotism right now in this country," he told the magazine. "There's a huge sense that Canadians want to support other Canadians." Several apps have even emerged, such as Buy Beaver and Maple Scan, that help shoppers identify US products when shopping.

Donald Trump is wrecking the US economy and seriously damaging our reputation abroad.

Republicans on Capitol Hill need to quit lining up to kiss his orange ass and instead impeach that ass brfore we're even more screwed.

[grntre23]

modern day things jsmn characters would love:

segundus: excruciatingly detailed tea ceremonies, wearing his pjs till they have holes in the sleeve hems, afternoon baking television specials, subscribing to science magazine periodicals, indoor plant gardening, trader joe’s, (being a teacher) and decorating his classroom, weekly (gossipy) neighborhood book clubs, keeping a physical journal on him at all times, independent booksellers

childermass: not being on social media, niche tarot draw youtube videos, the concept of irish goodbyes, using the oldest working phone model possible, bed on the floor no frame, wearing sunglasses indoors, depressing british rock, guessing jeopardy/who’s going to be a millionaire answers before anyone else can, never picking up phone calls, being a horse girl, having a masochistically loud alarm, being a political centrist, being a coffee purist

vinculus: drink vouchers marketing people hand out on the street, public transport, tinder, watching a game at the pub, rentable public scooters, selling fake fortunes/conducting seances online for believing middle-aged clientele, mobile gambling apps, action movies, spending inordinate amounts of money on his tattoos

norrell: instacart grocery delivery, obsessively stalking subreddits, ebay, sending whatsapp threads of fake infographics, eating a whole foods diet with no seasoning, directing people to his PA (lascelles), obscure netflix documentaries he quotes for two weeks after watching, keeping up with the british royal family, vitamins, remote work policies, twitter conspiracy theorists

strange: starting a podcast, apple pay, getting really into running, getting really into bitcoin, being a ‘wife guy’, using his veteran’s discount for overconsumption, truth or dare and he only ever picks dare, backpacking in xyz european country, picking up his work phone during date night, making ‘am i the asshole’ reddit posts which norrell secretly and unknowingly follows, eating ‘superfoods’, ensemble cast movies

gentleman: tiktok trends, shitty reality television, amazon prime next day delivery, owning a motorcycle, going on resort vacations 6x/year, brand name clothing with ostentatious logos, biweekly hair appointments, sliding into DMs, caffeinated energy drinks you can overdose on, orange theory classes, having a miniature designer dog, acting ‘woke’, getting scammed by phishing, dentist appointments

stephen: interior design, considering veganism, high thread count bedsheets, having a cat, going to therapy and actually improving, high quality european butter, 10 step self-care routine, homemade laminated pastries, sustainability, notion

emma pole: advanced embroidery kits, spiked morning drinks, doc martens, girls’ night, having a private instagram, clubbing, cat instagram reels, 9-5 work hours, racket sports, going with bell to expensive dessert cafes, classical music

arabella: pinterest boarding, girls’ night, knowing wine pairings, being really into running (influenced by strange, she keeps going after he quits), jellycats, diverse milk options at coffee shops, watching ootds, bon appetite recipes, meal prepping, having a well-loved dog whose lifestyle needs she researches with academic detail, expensive dessert cafes, radio pop playlist

drawlight: excessive instagram posting, watching tiktok fashion critiques, weekend brunch, ‘i know a guy’, bespoke clothing, 34 hour screentime, influencer events, house parties, half off convenience store wine, being employee of the month, forgetting his wallet at group dinners/not paying back venmo requests, keeping up with celebrity drama

lascelles: group projects he can monopolize, stock market trading, expensive branded clothes without logos, being a coffee purist, driving a ridiculously loud sports car, not caring about politics, getting valet service, searching his own name up on google, winning employee of the month over drawlight, scrolling his linkedin feed

[regina-bithyniae]

Finished The Wages of Destruction.

Solid 9/10.

Core ideas to take away:

work creation was a minor element of Nazi economic policy, a distant secondary concern after rearmament

rearmament had widespread public support in germany

shifting to autarky took extremely hacky and likely long-run unsustainable export controls, and even *export subsidies* because imports were still an inescapably vital input to industrial production in

controlling big business was largely a "soft co-opting" project while the agriculturalists were insane morons who were much more staunchly pro-nazi

once at war, Germany was going for broke from the very beginning and there was near-zero slack they could've squeezed out more war production from

truly pitiful productivity rate from Germany's conquered continental empire - the workers were far far more productive if deported to Germany than working in home countries

German surface navy seems useless, they didn't even have the oil to run the ships, and metal would've been better used elsewhere

Speer was a shit, Tooze hates hates him

bombing campaign actually was successful! specifically taking out the Ruhr

"blitzkrieg" doctrine was developed as they went; original 1940 invasion of France battleplan was to go "right up the center" not through the Ardennes and pre-battle production focused on heavy artillery ammunition

Bigger points: German "Strategy"

Germany escalated from diplomatic crisis to war with Poland/UK/France, and to war with the Soviet Union, and then America, out of a series of perceived closing windows of opportunity. First one was seeing UK/French production overtaking them in rates and catching up on stocks. In 1940 the US fully commits to aiding Britain, creating sense of "the bombers are coming eventually" and need to gain immediate advantage by conquering the Soviet Union.

Bizarrely, German production was focused on the Luftwaffe in preparation for fighting US/UK air war as Germany was getting ready for Barbarossa!

Declaration of war on US pitched as confirming alliance with Japan, but still feels stupid. Germany could just stay quiet and force US to either engineer entry to European conflict another way or stay out. Still seems less stupid, considering this is at a time when Barbarossa is coming apart.

But overall, a sound if massively risky plan assuming you accept the insane basic assumptions. Hitler's strategic vision often gets assumed to be terrible out of disgust for the consequences of his actions and their failure.

I really do wonder what the vibe was among German economic elite from 1942 onwards, it's obvious the war is not winnable, that you're very fucked, and that everyone is coming to kill you.

Anyways, good book and worth reading/listening to. Tooze could've slimmed down on the pre-war stuff. I find him vaguely irritating with how he brings up irrelevant things just to show how smart he is but that's probably just envy.

P.S.

The original Volkswagen was just a massive scam with no actual civilian cars being produced despite taking all the payments for the vehicles. Possibly suggests two dominant strains of conservatism? Former is old aristocratic conservatism of the nobility or classic US elite; latter is the populist oppositional culture right-wingism which is about 64% scam artists.

[bighermie]

European Consumers Reject Electric Vehicles - Sales in Germany Collapse by 70% - Manufacturers Warn Against EU’s Insane Petrol Car Ban in 2035 | The Gateway Pundit | by Paul Serran

[3liza]

a looooooooooot of American leftist perspective on what is good or possible with basic policy about land use, recycling, public transit etc is so fucked up purely because we are completely unaware that much of Europe has been doing stuff we consider pie in the sky laughable dreamerism (like effectively and safely going home from shift work or from a nightclub at 3am on the subway, or recycling anything instead of strip mining a mountain every time we need to bottle beer, or turning vacant office buildings into apartments, etc) for decades or centuries.

you do not find out about it unless you're fortunate enough to visit and stay long enough to actually interact with the infrastructure, not just as a tourist, because likewise the Europeans just assume we can take buses everywhere or get 25¢ for a beer bottle and simply choose to live in suffering and profligacy out of simple American degenerate preference for driving cars and smashing bottles until an American tells them exactly how bad everything is here, which they can hardly believe

[darkmaga-returns]

Effective March 20, 2025, China will place massive tariffs on Canadian goods. Aquatic products and pork will face a 25% tariff, while other items like rapeseed oil (canola), peas, and oil cakes will see a 100% tax. China is also implementing a 100% tariff on any imported electric vehicles and a 25%  tariff on Chinese aluminum and steel.

“Canada does not accept the premise of China’s investigation, nor its findings,” a statement from the Canadian government read. “China’s non-market policies and practices that artificially lower production costs and distort markets. Canada remains open to engaging in constructive dialogue with Chinese officials to address our respective trade concerns.”

Canada first slapped a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs in October 2024, as no one can compete with Chinese EV manufacturers. A few days later, Canada hit China with a 25% tariff on aluminum and steel. All of this happened around the same time that the European Union and the US also placed tariffs on Chinese goods as the West collectively felt that China had an unfair trade advantage due to cheap goods and labor, as well as government subsidies.

Canadian exports to China totaled $$31.1 billion in 2023, with exports from Canada coming in at $59.9 billion. Exports to China have increased by over 6% in the last five years. Gold, petroleum, and rapeseed are Canada’s main exports to China, while China primarily sends Canada cars, computers, and broadcasting equipment. Rapeseed is Canada’s second-largest acreage crop by acreage and China is the largest market for Canadian rapeseed.

The Canola Council of Canada believes canola seed oil and meal exports to China reached C$4.9 billion last year. Canola meal exports came in at 2 million metric tonnes, valued at C$920.9 million, while canola oil exports hit 15,351 metric tonnes with a C$20.6 million value. Pea exports to China reached C$303.6 million last year, fish and seafood came in at C$1.3 billion, and pork at C$486.6 million.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Nation of Change:

China’s largest automaker, BYD, is selling its Dolphin hatchback EV for a low-low $15,000, complete with a 13-inch rotating screen, ventilated front seats, and a 260-mile range. Here in the U.S., you have to pay more than twice that price for the Tesla Model 3 EV ($39,000) with lower tech and only 10 more miles of driving range. In case $15K beats your budget, the Dolphin has a plug-in hybrid version with an industry-leading 74-mile range on a single charge for only $11,000 and an upgrade with an unbeatable combined gas-electric range of 1,300 miles. Not surprisingly, EVs surged to 52% of all auto sales in China last year. And with such a strong domestic springboard into the world market, Chinese companies accounted for more than 70% of global EV sales.

It’s time to face reality in the world of cars and light trucks. Let’s admit it, China’s visionary industrial policy is the source of its growing dominance over global EV production. Back in 2009-2010, three years before Elon Musk sold his first mass-production Tesla, Beijing decided to accelerate the growth of its domestic auto industry, including cheap, all-electric vehicles with short ranges for its city drivers. Realizing that an EV is just a steel box with a battery, and battery quality determines car quality, Beijing set about systematically creating a vertical monopoly for those batteries — from raw materials like lithium and cobalt from the Congo all the way to cutting-edge factories for the final product. With its chokehold on refining all the essential raw materials for EV batteries (cobalt, graphite, lithium, and nickel), by 2023-2024 China accounted for well over 80% of global sales of battery components and nearly two-thirds of all finished EV batteries.

Clearly, new technology is driving our automotive future, and it’s increasingly clear that China is in the driver’s seat, ready to run over the auto industries of the U.S. and the European Union like so much roadkill. Indeed, Beijing switched to the export of autos, particularly EVs, to kick-start its slumbering economy in the aftermath of the Covid lockdown.

Given that it was already the world’s industrial powerhouse, China’s auto industry was more than ready for the challenge. After robotic factories there assemble complete cars, hands-free, from metal stamping to spray painting for less than the cost of a top-end refrigerator in the U.S., Chinese companies pop in their low-cost batteries and head to one of the country’s fully automated shipping ports. There, instead of relying on commercial carriers, leading automaker BYD cut costs to the bone by launching its own fleet of eight enormous ocean-going freighters. It started in January 2024 with the BYD Explorer No. 1, capable of carrying 7,000 vehicles anywhere in the world, custom-designed for speedy drive-on, drive-off delivery. That same month, another major Chinese company you’ve undoubtedly never heard of, SAIC Motor, launched an even larger freighter, which regularly transports 7,600 cars to global markets.

Those cars are already heading for Europe, where BYD’s Dolphin has won a “5-Star Euro Safety Rating” and its dealerships are popping up like mushrooms in a mine shaft. In a matter of months, Chinese cars had captured 11% of the European market. Last year, BYD began planning its first factory in Mexico as an “export hub” for the American market and is already building billion-dollar factories in Turkey, Thailand, and Indonesia. Realizing that “20% to 30%” of his company’s revenue is at risk, Ford CEO Jim Farley says his plants are switching to low-cost EVs to keep up. After the looming competition led GM to bring back its low-cost Chevy Bolt EV, company Vice President Kurt Kelty said that GM will “drive the cost of E.V.s to lower than internal combustion engine vehicles.”

So, what does all this mean for America? In the past four years, the Biden administration made real strides in protecting the future of the country’s auto industry, which is headed toward ensuring that American motorists will be driving $10,000 EVs with a 1,000-mile range, a 10-year warranty, a running cost of 10 cents a mile, and 0 (yes zero!) climate-killing carbon emissions.

Not only did President Biden extend the critical $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of an American-made EV, but his 2021 Infrastructure Act helped raise the number of public-charging ports to a reasonable 192,000, with 1,000 more still being added weekly, reducing the range anxiety that troubles half of all American car owners. To cut the cost of the electricity needed to drive those car chargers, his 2022 Inflation Reduction Act allocated $370 billion to accelerate the transition to low-cost green energy. With such support, U.S. EV sales jumped 7% to a record 1.3 million units in 2024.

Most important of all, that funding stimulated research for a next-generation solid-state battery that could break China’s present stranglehold over most of the components needed to produce the current lithium-ion EV batteries. The solution: a blindingly simple bit of all-American innovation — don’t use any of those made-in-China components. With investment help from Volkswagen, the U.S. firm QuantumScape has recently developed a prototype for a solid-state battery that can reach “80% state of charge in less than 15 minutes,” while ensuring “improved safety,” extended battery life, and a driving range of 500 miles. Already, investment advisors are touting the company as the next Nvidia.

But wait a grim moment! If we take President Donald Trump at his word, his policies will slam the brakes on any such gains for the next four years — just long enough to potentially send the Detroit auto industry into a death spiral. On the campaign trail last year, Trump asked oil industry executives for a billion dollars in “campaign cash,” and told the Republican convention that he would “end the electrical vehicle mandate on day one” and thereby save “the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration.” And in his victory speech last November, he celebrated the country’s oil reserves, saying, “We have more liquid gold than anyone else in the world.”

[odinsblog]

[re: this this post and this post]

Let’s keep it 💯: Joe Biden did a terrible fucking job of managing post-COVID healthcare. And before I anger all of the but-he-was-better-than-the-alternative liberals, yeah, sure, he is better than Trump, but that is a laughably low bar. Aim higher, demand fucking better from our elected leaders.

So a while back I agreed that today I would take someone to get their latest COVID shot, but I got a frantic phone call from them saying that they don’t have the money to pay for their shot and they are uninsured and don’t qualify for Obamacare. And I was like, “No dude, you can get your shot for free at CVS or Walgreens or someplace like that,” and just to reassure them, I called CVS (with them on the phone), and unfortunately we learned that CVS is now charging $166 per vaccination shot.

After a little digging, I did find some places that offer free vacations, but they have long ass lines and limited hours of availability that don’t match up with my friend’s work schedule … so I’m gonna bite the bullet and just pay for their shot myself.

I am so mf mad rn.

This is what happens when you elect conservative ass “Democrats” who side with big pharmaceutical companies like Gilead and value cAPitALism over people’s health.

Vaccines should be fucking free. All vaccines. Every fucking one of them. And I mean free to anyone who wants them. Periodt.

And just because I know how annoyingly asinine sycophantic liberals can get if you aren’t constantly and profusely praising whoever the democratic president is, lemme remind you that not only did Biden declare, “The pandemic is over - Back to normal, back to work!” while walking around without a mask at an international car show, but in capitulating to conservatives, Biden also made an unprecedented change to America’s immigration policy by forcing asylum seekers to wait in other countries until we get around to processing their paperwork, and Biden also deported a shit ton of non-European asylum seekers (especially Haitians; see also: Title 42).

And Biden proudly and repeatedly announcing that he is a “proud Zionist” as he allowed funded Israel’s genocide against Palestinians was probably not too helpful for Harris defeating Trump. And now that I think about it, waiting so damn long to step aside for Kamala to run wasn’t very helpful either—she had about 100 days to run a campaign against Trump (and I’m not saying her campaign was perfect, but Biden’s waiting so damn long absolutely hobbled her).

And speaking of waiting too long, Biden constantly waiting to arm Ukraine wasn’t thee most helpful thing either—like damn, what’s the difference between arming them with long range weapons now (when you have only 2 months left in your term), versus arming Ukrainians 2 fucking years ago when it would have made a bigger difference, and would have saved more Ukrainians?? If it’s safe to arm them now, then it was probably safe to arm them at the beginning of Putin’s colonialist war of aggression.

I’m sorry, yes, I voted for him (and Kamala), but Joe Biden was a shitty ass president. I do not want another Republican-lite, cop loving “Democrat” who values chasing conservative white voters more than trying to listen to and at least pretend to placate the Democratic base.

At the end of the day, Joe Biden will have helped move the Democratic Party further right, just as Bill Clinton did in the 90s.

Oh, and remember when Biden promised to waive copyright patents so that other countries could make their own COVID vaccines? He never did that, did he?? But many of y’all insisted on giving him credit just for saying that he would. But he didn’t.

If Biden had any damn nads, and if he wasn’t sO addicted to following all the rules that Republicans have and will continue breaking, he would go buck wild in his last two months and forgive all student debt, pardon people, and just do whatever good he can while he still has the power to do so.

Anyway, I said what tf I said.

If you don’t like it, you know where the block button is.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

S.V. Dáte at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday gave America its largest tax increase in at least three decades — more than $2 trillion over 10 years — by imposing an across-the-board 10% levy on all imports, with higher rates on dozens more countries and a further 25% tax on all foreign cars. “Foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream,” Trump said at a chilly, overcast ceremony in the White House Rose Garden attended by most of his Cabinet and hundreds of invited guests. “Our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” he said. The 10% rate is half of the 20% Trump had spoken about on the campaign trail, but nevertheless will cost American importers about $2.1 trillion in additional taxes over the next decade, costs that are passed along to consumers, according to a Tax Foundation estimate. Erica York, the group’s vice president of federal tax policy, said the total will be greater than that because of the higher tariffs charged to some countries.

That would make Trump’s tax hikes larger than the three that have been perennial targets of Republican wrath through the years: Republican George H.W. Bush’s increases of 1990, Democrat Bill Clinton’s in 1993, and Democrat Barack Obama’s in 2010 to pay for the Affordable Care Act. Trump, by invoking emergency powers, is going around Congress to impose the tariffs. He has created a base 10% tariff but is taxing imports from many countries more, based on how those countries tax American imports. For example, imports from European Union nations will be taxed at a 20% rate because Trump’s advisers claim its tariffs and “currency manipulation and trade barriers” amount to a 39% tax on American goods going into the EU. But while Trump and his aides claimed these tariffs were “reciprocal” ― merely matching the tariffs charged on U.S. imports by the country in question ― in reality, the rates were an arbitrary calculation of a country’s balance of trade with the United States. “The trade deficit that we have with any given country is the sum of all trade practices, the sum of all cheating,” a Trump aide told reporters on condition of anonymity on a conference call just before Trump’s speech. It’s unclear how precisely imports from Canada and Mexico — the two other signatories in the United States’ biggest free trade agreement — will be treated. Trump had imposed 25% tariffs on goods from those nations, supposedly to punish them for allowing fentanyl to be smuggled into the U.S., but then delayed implementation for a month. The order Trump signed Wednesday says that it excludes products “compliant” with the trade agreement but did not offer definitions.

[...] In reality, tariffs are merely taxes imposed on imported products. When goods arrive at a U.S. port of entry, the importer — sometimes a private individual but more often a manufacturer, a wholesaler or a retailer — is required to pay to U.S. Customs the import tax due before the goods are released into the country. That expense is then added into the production cost of the goods, which is ultimately paid by the American consumer in the form of higher prices. Whether Trump understands how this works is unclear, even though his businesses often purchased both raw material and finished goods from other countries, including China.

Wednesday afternoon on "Liberation Day", Donald Trump imposes an economy-crushing tax hike by declaring a 10% tariff rate minimum for all nations besides Mexico and Canada (with several countries getting slapped with much higher rates).

See Also:

PoliticusUSA: Complete And Total Incompetence As Trump Slaps Tariffs On Penguins

The Left Hook (Wajahat Ali): Everyone Gets Tariffs, Trade Wars, and Turmoil on Bizarro Trump’s “Liberation Day.”

Daily Kos: Trump marks ‘Liberation Day’ with bizarre rant, conspiracies—and lame props

The Guardian: Trump announces sweeping new tariffs, upending decades of US trade policy