Bulletins and News Discussion from August 12th to August 18th, 2024 - Marshall Plan: Now As Farce - COTW: Ireland

Image is of one of Ireland's only manned navy ships, the Samuel Beckett. Image sourced from this BBC article.

Putler has been HUMILIATED by the Kursk offensive and this proves that Russia's army is in tatters and unable even to defend its own territory. However, it is simultaneously true that Russia poses an existential threat to countries thousands of miles away, as this recent Politico article demonstrates. Ireland - a country that immediately springs to mind as one surrounded by enemies - is being bullied due to its lack of military.

Despite bearing responsibility for 16 percent of the EU’s territorial waters, and the fact that 75 percent of transatlantic undersea cables pass through or near Irish waters, Ireland is totally defenseless. And I mean completely unable to protect critical infrastructure, or even pretend to secure its own borders. [...] Ireland’s “navy” of six patrol vessels is currently operating with one operational ship due to chronic staff shortages. [...] Ireland simply has no undersea capabilities. How could it, when it barely spends 0.2 percent of GDP on security and defense? And it has, in effect, abdicated responsibility for protecting the Europe’s northwestern borders.

For all we know, the dreaded sea-people from the Bronze Age Collapse could soon emerge from the North Atlantic.

Unfortunately, things are even worse up in the skies. Ireland has no combat jets, and it’s the only country in Europe that can’t monitor its own airspace due to the lack of primary radar systems. Instead, the country has outsourced its security to Britain in a technically secret agreement between Dublin and London, which effectively cedes control over Irish air space to the Royal Air Force. This must be the luck of the Irish — smile and get someone else to protect you for free.

While this is very silly, rearmament has long been a part of US imperial strategy on an economic level. Desai, discussing the US imperial strategy in the WW2 period:

By 1947 [...] the domestic postwar consumer boom was nearing its end. While financing exports became more urgent, the 1946 elections returned a Congress unlikely to approve further loans. Now the Truman Administration concocted the ‘red menace’ to ‘scare the hell out of the country’, enunciated the Truman Doctrine of US support for armed resistance to ‘subjugation’ which launched the cold war, and Congress granted $400 million to prevent left-wing triumphs in Greece and Turkey in 1947.

One reading of history states that the US was so intimidated by the USSR that this forced a policy of massive arms production even outside of official wartime. Why this arms production is not occurring today can be puzzling, and (very reasonably) explained by neoliberals exporting industrial production overseas. However, a different historical reading can explain both the first Cold War, and the ongoing situation in which American weaponry is being almost purposefully given in insufficient numbers to give Ukraine a chance of victory and thus only prolonging their suffering (while generating massive profit for the military-industrial complex):

In this sense the Cold War was not the cause of US imperial policy but its effect. It combined financing exports with fighting combined development by national capitalisms as well as communism. When such ‘totalitarian regimes’ threatened ‘free peoples’, ‘America’s world economic responsibilities’ included aid to countries battling them.

By selling massively expensive weapons to Europe, America could simultaneously guarantee export markets for its industries, trap Europe into reliance on American industries at the expense of their own, and divert European funds away from constructing factories which could compete with American ones. Providing a way to defend against Soviet communism (and now Russian "imperialism") is merely a happy side-effect, and so the lack of effectiveness of American weaponry is causing no great panic among the military-industrial complex, nor an urgent plan to quintuple artillery shell production or Patriot missile production - the deals for F-35s and such are still there, and they are what matter.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is Ireland! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

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1.7K comments

I have started noticing, in the last year or so, a reversal in West^TM in regard to green energy rhetoric (EV and solar in particular) and is becoming worse and worse as time goes by.
This is not the usual global warming denial. In fact you rarely see outright denialist any more (what are they gonna argue about any more anyway, since it is plainly obvious what is happening in the world...).
What you do see from MSM, to YT channels, to everything, is an effort to downplay or even dismiss the potential positive impact EV and solar technology could have and already has in regard to global warming and our way of life in general.
It's quite obvious that this is a result of what is happening in China.
I believe Burgeristan and their puppets thought (10+ years ago) that they would become world leaders in EV, solar and other green technologies.
They thought they could monopolize the industry and sell it to the rest of the world as the only possible solution.
If you didn't subscribe to their, ridiculously overpriced, Greenflix service you would be deemed a barbarian third world nation that leads humanity to catastrophy (which of course we, the West, had nothing to do with...) and you would have many sanctions imposed on you.
So for a time almost everyone went along with green technology in West^TM*.
Green roofs, green roads, green new deals, you name it.=
There was only one problem.
Burgeristan is run by complete idiots.
They thought that we are in the 30s and 40s where US still had semi-competent captains of industry that could compete with the rest of the world or that they had a political elite that was actually capable of multi-year planning and wasn't completely subservient to the economic elite.
Instead what they got was the Cybertruck and Solar Freaking Roadways.
So what now?
I believe the rhetoric against EVs and Solar is gonna get much worse for starters. The "China is spying on you don't buy from them" is not gonna fly for long.
What we are gonna see more and more is a focus on the technologies themselves. "These technologies are not viable/profitable" is what you are gonna hear.
The next step will probably be Burgerland developing their own version of "green technology". Maybe focus on hydrogen, "clean coal", maybe something else who knows**. They will probably give it some asinine name like "Green Freedom" or something...
Then they will try to create a new Edison vs. Tesla, Direct vs Alternative Current situation and will use their military/economic influence to force countries to adopt their inferior technology.
They will fail of course because again they are run by complete idiots (and I'm not even taking politicians into account, they have no say in this anyway...) but what else are they gonna do at this point. They can no longer compete with China. This is their only play.
So when that finally fails (because you know at the end of the day even puppet nation have a survival instinct) all that they will have left will be an empty anti-China rhetoric.
Their barbarian germanic protestant syphilitic brains could not imagine a "non-white" nation surpassing them. But here we are. So instead of taking all the ill gained surplus value they extracted from the rest of the world for 300 years and actually invest it in something sustainable, they just want to go and kill their neighbor's mule.
Judging by what is happening in the last year or so, I would say we might see a complete reversal in 2-4 years with people that previously where telling you to vote insert status-quo party otherwise "X guy comes and it's the end of the world (due to global warming)" now they will call you a China puppet for wanting the most affordable green high-tech in the world made by China.
Sorry for the long thread. I was thinking about making a post about it but I'm not sure people outside the news mega give a damn about these things anyway.
*Fossil fuel industry at that point was playing both sides. They knew that the world moving from fossil fuels was inevitable, but they wanted that transition to happen on their own terms. It had to be gradual so that they kept making superprofits and they had to create and control the new "green" monopoly.
**I wouldn't be surprised at all if lets say someone like Elon Musk does 180 in regard to EVs. Maybe he will pivot to another technology or maybe even he finds an excuse to outright sell Tesla (somehow...) and pivot to another grift altogether. That's if he manages not to go bust until then...
- I don't necessarily disagree with most of what you wrote but I do believe West^TM elites genuinely thought they could monopolize the green industry. They could stifle the development of the South and make a killing selling them their tech at the same time just like I said. There is no reason to give up a potential energy monopoly if you know you are capable of being the leader in it. But now they are realizing they can't. Germany 10 years ago was the leader in solar, now their solar industry is pathetic.
  The point I was trying to make with my post was not that Burgerland is gonna attack China's EV and Solar industry. It goes without saying that they would do that (and are already doing it). The point is that they are starting attacking the technologies themselves. They are shifting the narrative. And I explain the directions this could take.
  PS: Burgerland doesn't have/want industry since Warsaw Pact ended is an exaggeration. They have and they want industry where they feel they have a comparable advantage and they could do without human labour. Human labour means they have to do the fordist thing again, you know building infrastructure, educate worker, keep them healthy...that ain't happening.
  
  Germany had the advantage that GDR build up its Microelectronic industry in the late 80s-90s, they were already looking for more sustainable energy methods.
- Part of those EV are lithium mines being pushed on developing nations.
  People in Serbia are protesting for the last two years over very poisonous lithim mining project planned in the green, healthy and fertile land.
  While they claim "biggest lithium mine in Europe" and "supplying 90% of EU needs", they forget to say "current needs" and that it will have lithium for maybe 1 milion cars per year. EU has 250 million cars. In 10 years 10 million cars which will all need new battery.
  So they want to destroy beautiful nature, to poison huge part of agricultural land, for 10 million EVs. That will, in bast possibile scenario reduce CO2 by 0.5%. Cars are 20% of CO2 emissions in EU. EV have, at best, 50% less CO2 emissions in 10 years of use. So 50% of 10/250 part of 20%... that's miserable.
  Serbia gets 3% of lithium sales (that would be equally miserable few millions per year). That's not even enough for dealing with accidents that might happen with thousand of tons of sulfuric acid needed for mine.
  Serbia is not part of EU and does not have money to buy EVs, nor has clean energy capacity to make good use of those EVs.
  Here is published scientific report: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-68072-9
  And images and articles about it:
  https://searx.be/search?q=huge+protests+in+serbia+over+lithium+mine&time_range=week&language=all&category_images=on
  
  Not sure if you've seen this update, but it seems that journalists, protest leaders, and others who have questioned the validity of plan are getting a campaign of very serious death threats, being raided by intelligence services, and more. Here's an unrolled thread
  
  I'm aware and I support the people in the developing nations that go against these types of plans.
  But the fact remains that EVs are the future. Whether with lithium batteries or not, whether we should focus more on smaller vehicles (E Scooters etc.) and E Buses for local transit, some type of EV technology is gonna be required. It's still a relatively new technology. There are a lot of things that need optimization.
  The "Gardeners" are trying to do what they always done for the last 300+ years. Build a fortune on the back of poorer nations. That doesn't mean the technology itself is to blame.
- Seems plausible, especially with the us imposing tarrifs on cheap CN solar panels and evs.
- I don't think most of the second half of your post will happen because for the US to do an alternative to solar, EVs, etc. they'd have to have the productive and technical capacity to even think of and make an alternative, which they can't and won't do at the moment. I think they'll either just drag their feet and very slowly adopt expensive versions of what China is doing or on a very outside chance of american EVs powered by heavily deregulated and privately operated micro-nuke reactors scattered across the country. Conservatives seem really fixated on those.
  
  I said they will try, I didn't say they will succeed. I explicitly said they will almost certainty fail. People in here I believe sometimes go overboard with the "US doesn't have industrial/technological capacity etc.".
  Yes they are a shadow of the US of the 30s, 40s and 50s but they still probably have the most advance R&D sector. They might get lucky with something.
  The most probable outcome is that they will try and they will fail and they will end up trying to "kill the neighbor's mule" meaning more sanctions to Chinese technology and like you said adopting a more expensive version of it.
- What we are gonna see more and more is a focus on the technologies themselves. "These technologies are not viable/profitable" is what you are gonna hear.
  More than that, I expect we'll see specific conspiracy theories pushed hard around safety and more when it comes to increasing Chinese dominance of the market.
  When Huawei was being contracted to build a lot of the 5g infrastructure in the UK and Europe, as well as taking an increasing share of the mobile phone market, suddenly anti-5g conspiracies exploded into conspiracy spaces, with a seemingly co-ordinated push from some of the biggest conspiracy figures like David Icke 12 months before legislation banning Huawei and cancelling deals.
  This often happens when US business interests are deemed to be threatened. Just look at the 15 Minute Cities conspiracy protest movement funded by oil companies and car manufacturers. Or the revelation the the US had massive anti-vac conspiracy theory nd disinformation campaign across Asia and the the rest of the world to dissuade countries from using the Chinese developed Covid19 vaccine (even when it was being given for free).

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