F.J. Taléns Gallardo

Nascut el 9 de Novembre de 1977 a València.
Enginyer de Camins, Canals i Ports per la UPV.
Tècnic d'estudis.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is extraordinarily rare.

In fact, according to a key figure in the German business community (who is a dear friend of mine), it's unprecedented.

An op-ed, two pages, centerpiece, in Germany’s most important economic newspaper (the Handelsblatt) that begs the German establishment to stop looking at China via the prism of propaganda. And it's by their Shanghai bureau chief - not some outside contributor.

The title is "The China debate cannot continue like this!" and the article makes the case that it's suicidal, from a German and European standpoint, to keep reducing China to false caricatures rather than facts.

In effect it's rubbish in, rubbish out: if you tell people lies about China - whichever direction they go (anti or pro) - then obviously the policies that come out will be rubbish, designed for a mirage of a country that exists only in people's imagination.

Needless to say, this is absolutely music to my ears because it's literally the main point I've been making in my advocacy around China for now almost 10 years. Some are finally seeing the light...

I also believe, as I argued in my article "Are Western media turning China-friendly?" last year (https://t.co/Xg1hoSRtNy) that this type of coverage was bound to happen, and there will be more and more of it.

Why? For a very simple structural reason: China is now too powerful to coerce. The West, and Europe in particular, just don't have the leverage anymore. Which means that if you tell China to do something and they don't want to, they just won't do it. Period.

In this situation, incapable of coercing, your only remaining choice is... convincing. And what do you need if you want to convince someone? Well, you need to understand them: understand how they think, how they behave, what drives them, what they actually want.

In other words: the moment coercion stops being an option, not only does propaganda stop being useful, it begins to be actively harmful as genuine understand becomes a strategic necessity. Reality is finally becoming profitable again.

Which means, if you're a journalist reading this and you're peddling some of your usual lies, describing China as some sort of cartoonish dictatorial dystopia that's simultaneously on the verge of collapse yet a "threat" to the whole world (in short, if you write on China for The Economist or the FT), be on notice: the real threat to your country isn't China. It's you.

[andrés @Andres_Boix]

Com hem passat del Gulliver de finals dels 80 al bodrio aquest 30 anys després és la millor mostra de com han anat a menys, a molt menys, les aspiracions i ambicions de la ciutat... i això per no parlar que tot això ho paga una empresa privada a canvi de més mamandúrries!

[F.J. Taléns Gallardo @FJTalens]

Esteu convertint el turisme en una bandera, igual que tecnologies com el cotxe elèctric, l'energia nuclear o la solar. Abans de fer números, el sentit comú em diu que el turisme ha tingut un impacte molt positiu en els nostres països - ho sent pels que veuen postals de fa cent anys i veuen el paradís perdut en secarrals plens de misèria- però ara exigeix més del que dóna.

[Pedro Torrijos @Pedro_Torrijos]

Me encanta esto: el nuevo superdeportivo eléctrico de Mercedes tiene un sistema de sonido que simula ser un V8 con interrupciones en el ruido para fingir que cambia de marchas.

Jean Baudrillard está celebrando en la tumba.

[F.J. Taléns Gallardo @FJTalens]

@Andres_Boix Mitja Espanya ha descobert ara amb Sánchez que fa trenta anys que les noves generacions de treballadors comencen a treballar a canvi de quatre cacaus... I ahí es queden, contentíssims quan l'experiència els permet compensar l'inflació!

[F.J. Taléns Gallardo @FJTalens]

@vsip_ El poder y la cultura con la que te identificas. Alguien cuya aspiración sea codearse con la clase alta española se va allí.

[F.J. Taléns Gallardo @FJTalens]

@jaavii_023 Només fan coses cutres perquè no tenen cap interés en el territori que se suposa que governen. Això de tindre ambició o resoldre problemes els resulta alienígena.
Si no hi han diners - que no n'hi han- els exigixes de veritat o els busques al sector privat.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

It always astonishes me how there is virtually ZERO public debate - or even public awareness - in Europe about the decisions that will most shape ordinary people's lives.

These days, the EU is drafting a new anti-China legal framework where - quite literally - the more affordable and competitive Chinese products are, the more illegal they'd become.

You'd think EU citizens would want to be informed about such things - as it couldn't be more consequential for their prosperity.

Yet I bet virtually no EU citizen is even aware of it, beyond a vague sense that there is some sort of trade dispute going on.

So what's going on exactly? It all centers around a new legal instrument the EU is drafting called the "overcapacity instrument" (https://t.co/mNpCMudYyS).

First of all, the very notion of "overcapacity" is pretty ridiculous to begin with, especially the way it's being defined by the EU, as it basically means being competitive enough to export.

By this definition of "overcapacity," pretty much every European industry that's ever run a trade surplus - German cars, French wine, Italian fashion - has been guilty of "overcapacity."

I'm not even exaggerating: if you read this study by the EU Parliament on "Industrial overcapacities, with a focus on China" (https://t.co/TcwEBoL8mD), they define "overcapacity" as building more capacity than your domestic market can absorb. So the moment you build capacity to export abroad, you're in "overcapacity."

Utterly ridiculous.

And what this "overcapacity instrument" is about is creating a permanent legal mechanism for the EU to block Chinese competition across whole sectors of the economy, if they happen to be in "overcapacity."

In effect, this means that if China is competitive globally in a given sector in such a way that it exports a lot, that's proof of overcapacity, and legally it'd mean that the entire sector can be restricted from the EU market.

Which means it really, factually, is a legal framework where the more affordable and competitive your products are, the more illegal they become.

Which is a CRAZY economic concept! 🤦‍♂️

Please note that it's different from the anti-subsidy legal instrument, which the EU has already put in place in 2023 (the "Foreign Subsidies Regulation": https://t.co/SvPKFyN0zo).

This "overcapacity instrument" would be above and beyond this: it wouldn't even matter if a particular sector was subsidized by the Chinese government or not, the mere fact of its competitiveness in exports would be grounds for restrictions in the EU.

It doesn't take a genius to understand how badly this could impact everyday people: this is European consumers being forced to pay more for worse products by law, so that uncompetitive European firms don't have to improve.

Politicians frame it as avoiding a "China shock 2.0" but really this is choosing an even steeper self-inflicted decline than is already the case, where EU citizens would subsidize mediocre EU companies that would have even less pressure to catch up. It's a hidden tax: subsidies for uncompetitive firms paid by consumers instead of governments, which in turn makes them less incentivized to become competitive.

The first "China shock" did de-industrialize Europe somewhat, but at least it made things cheaper for European consumers. If this becomes Europe's response to a second "China shock" not only it'd make everything more expensive but it'd do nothing for EU industry: you don't become competitive by banning the competition...

Look at China itself: the way it industrialized was NOT by banning Western firms but on the contrary by welcoming them strategically and learning from them. You learn to compete by... competing, duh!

What I find most shocking in all of this isn't even the policy itself - you can make arguments for and against protectionism, and reasonable people can disagree.

What's shocking is that virtually no European media outlet is explaining any of this to the public. This is unarguably one of the single most consequential economic decisions the EU will make this decade, affecting the price of everything, and it's being drafted in near-total silence.

No newspaper is running the headline "EU plans to make Chinese goods illegal if they're too affordable" - even though that's essentially what's happening.

But that's what you call a "democracy" with "freedom of expression" these days apparently...

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

Sociologists will surely celebrate the 1960s, when boomers sought to replace chauvinism with rock ’n’ roll. But economists will judge them less kindly https://t.co/GNmKM1tq9g

Illustration: Peter Schrank

[Adam Grant @AdamMGrant]

Not knowing what to do is as stressful as having too much to do.

515 studies, 787k people: Role ambiguity and role conflict are at least as detrimental to well-being and performance as role overload.

Setting clear, consistent expectations is a foundation of good leadership.

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

I wonder if there's anything in the Bible about golden idols and stuff

[Hugo Pérez Ayán @hp_ayan]

El cambio hace unos meses del color institucional de la Generalitat Valenciana es una muy mala señal de la idea del poder del @ppcv

En su momento de mayor debilidad institucional, patrimonializan las instituciones y lanzan un mensaje muy claro: "este es nuestro cortijo"

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

LEBANESE UNIQUE PLURALISM
I was invited to a private dinner on campus. 11 pple

One Catholic (host) married to a Shia Muslim.
One Lebanese Jew married to a Maronite.
One Shia Muslim married to a Sunni who converted to Christianity because all her children (from prev. husb) married Christians.
One Greek Orth married to a Shia
One Shia married to a Greek Catholic
Not one was married within the group. No Israeli can comprehend such pluralism, which increases at the upper echelons.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

The EU today: "A genocide is ok but we draw the line at buying grain from Russia"

[sarah @sahouraxo]

Israel destroyed the statue of Jesus Christ in the Christian village of Debel, South Lebanon.

Now they’re bulldozing the solar panels that provide electricity and water.

Not military targets.

Critical infrastructure.

This is the deliberate targeting of civilian life.

[Emma Zafón @EmmaZafon]

Quan jo vivia a Vall-de-roures, l'institut comarcal, l'IES Matarraña, oferia català només com a optativa i fora de l'horari lectiu (de vesprada). L'alumnat que volia cursar-lo s'havia de quedar a dinar pel seu compte i necessitava dels pares per a tornar cadascú al seu poble.

[Pere Antoni Pons @PonsPereAntoni]

Aquest article de Daniel Vázquez Sallés sobre els intel·lectuals castellanistes del Foro de Babel i iniciatives colonials similars és un article SENSACIONAL. Si fos editor, li faria una oferta perquè el convertís en llibre.
https://t.co/6qOCLNgtiC

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

If governments were actually doing their job, this Palantir document 👇 wouldn't be a manifesto they proudly boast about, but a clear sign of the urgent need to purge its software from the public institutions it has infiltrated.

What are they saying, essentially?

They basically promote a clash of civilization worldview in which there exists a "they" - the supposed enemies of Western civilization, whose cultures the document codes as inferior - and a "we" who must stop indulging in decadent restraint and invest massively in AI weapons and defense software (which conveniently makes Palantir's product catalog the civilizational cure).

Look at point 4 for instance. They write that "the limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software."

It all rests on a pretty massive assumption: that coexistence is impossible. Why would "free and democratic societies" (by which they obviously mean Western-style liberal-democracies) need to "prevail"? Why can't they simply coexist with other civilizations or political systems out there?

Nowhere in the document do they defend this assumption: it's simply asserted as the starting condition of the argument.

But it's the entire ballgame: if civilizations and political systems can coexist - as they largely have, imperfectly but recognizably, throughout history - then the entire case they make in the document evaporates.

In fact one can argue that, studying history, the big problem was not that civilizations couldn't coexist: it was that, from time to time, one of them decided that others were inferior, threatening, or standing in the way of its rightful expansion - and acted accordingly.

So many catastrophes and so much human suffering in history trace back not to the fact of plural civilizations, but to one of them deciding it could no longer tolerate the others.

The problem, in other words, has almost always been exactly the worldview Palantir is now selling. Their manifesto isn't warning against the cause of some of the worst periods in history: it's arguing for reviving them!

Or take point 15: they explicitly call for the re-armament of Germany and Japan, and an end to "Japanese pacifism". Basically undoing one of the foundational settlements of the post-WW2 order.

I mean, think about the insanity of this for a second: a private company - unelected, answerable only to its shareholders - is casually proposing to overturn the security architecture of two continents. A settlement that took a world war, and tens of millions of dead to establish.

Why do they propose this? There is obviously a commercial motivation: a remilitarized Germany and Japan are massive new defense-software markets.

But the more troubling answer is that point 15 fits into the ideological project the rest of the manifesto lays out - a civilizational contest requires a consolidated Western bloc, and pacifist members are a liability in such a contest.

So taking a step back we now have what's the most influential defense-software company in the world, with its code deeply embedded in all the machinery of Western states - intelligence agencies, militaries, police forces, welfare systems, border controls - openly outing itself as an ideological project.

They're effectively saying "our tools aren't meant to serve your foreign policy. They're meant to enforce ours."

Because, worryingly, that's what they CAN do. Palantir software is all about basically telling states: "these are your threats, these are the people and groups to watch, these are the patterns that matter, these are the targets that warrant action."

For instance the DGSI - the French intelligence services - use Palantir (see: https://t.co/3YJk88k4QY): do you honestly think the software is warning them about, say, the NSA tapping the phones of French government officials? About the weaponization of US extraterritorial law against French companies? Did it warn them about the AUKUS ambush that cost France a sixty-billion-euro submarine contract? Obviously not.

And that's exactly what the manifesto is saying. They've positioned themselves as advocates of Western civilizational unity, so their software can't undermine it. The ideological position and the product roadmap have to align, or the whole project falls apart.

This makes their software not only deeply dangerous for the world as a whole but also, almost by definition, for any country using it. When it comes to your security as a state, it is primordial you base yourself on truth as opposed to ideology. The entire point of an intelligence agency is to tell its government what is true, not what your so-called "allies'" defense contractors would like you to see.

A state that outsources its threat assessment to a company with an explicit ideological agenda is not gathering intelligence, it is essentially subscribing to propaganda.

The conclusion couldn't be more obvious. Every government still running Palantir software in its intelligence, security, or public-service infrastructure needs to start ripping it out, now! Lest they want to be embarked on the delusional and deeply destructive clash-of-civilizations crusade Palantir has now openly committed itself to.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Kallas long ago forfeited her right to start any sentence by "under international law."

And unsurprisingly, in this instance she's wrong: the international law she's referring to is UNCLOS which Iran didn't ratify. So actually, if she really cared about international law, she should say: "under international law, invoking a treaty against a non-party is wrong so we won't do that."

[Jose Tomás @josertomasro]

À Punt, a banda de promocionar la tauromàquia, hui emet bous des de Sevilla. Maltractament animal en directe, importat de Canal Sur i amb un reporter parlant en castellà.

Este és el servei públic valencià que mereixem?

Estan de nou desbocats. Vergonya absoluta.