Marcus Breen

Academic, research across Internet, Cultural Studies, Political Economy, Media.

[Marcus Breen @MarcusBreen1]

Certainly an unimpressive effort atcdancing.

[Chay Bowes @BowesChay]

Moldovan Prime Minister, Economy Minister, and European Commissioner Mariya Gabriel decided to start dancing at a conference.

Moldova is the poorest state in Europe, lowest income, massive corruption, complete energy reliance and infrastructure and demographic collapse.

[Marcus Breen @MarcusBreen1]

Expect no morally acceptable thought, action or behavior from @Israel
They are a disgrace and a shameful blot on Judaism.

[Gianluca Martino @gianlucamart1]

🧵"Desidero che la Papamobile venga trasformata in una clinica mobile e donata ai bambini di Gaza"
Questa è una delle ultime volontà di Papa Francesco prima di morire.
Ad eseguire la disposizione di Papa Francesco, il Vaticano incarica il cardinale svedese Anders Arborelius che a sua volta incarica la Caritas svedese per la trasformazione del veicolo.

Quando la stampa dà la notizia dell'incarico alla Caritas svedese di trasformare la Papamobile in clinica mobile per i bambini di Gaza, scatta la solidarietà dei cittadini svedesi che in pochi giorni inviano alla Caritas cospicue donazioni.

Grazie alle somme raccolte, la Caritas, non solo riesce a trasformare la Papamobile in una clinica mobile fornita di attrezzature mediche di ultima generazione, ma acquista altre 12 ambulanze da inviare a Gaza.

A novembre dello scorso anno, quando i lavori sulla Papamobile sono ultimati, per celebrare l'evento e assolvere all'ultima volontà di Papa Francesco, il Vaticano sceglie Betlemme, la città simbolo per eccellenza della cristianità, la città dove nacque Cristo.
In Piazza della Mangiatoia, il cardinale Anders Arborelius benedice la Papamobile e le ambulanze in partenza verso Gaza.
La Papamobile viene rinominata "Veicolo della Speranza".

Passano giorni, settimane e poi mesi ma gli occupanti israeliani non consentono alla Caritas di fare entrare il Veicolo della Speranza a Gaza.
I rappresentanti del Vaticano e della Caritas chiedono più volte spiegazioni ma Israele si prende gioco di loro inventando storie assurde.
"Non è pervenuta alcuna richiesta di autorizzazione"
E poi ancora: "I materiali sanitari all'interno della Papamobile potrebbero finire nelle mani di Hamas ed essere usati come armi".

E intanto la Papamobile, trasformata in un gioiello della tecnologia medica, in grado di curare 200 bambini al giorno, è ancora lì, dopo sette mesi, sotto una teca in un parcheggio a pochi metri da Piazza della Mangiatoia in attesa di raggiungere i bambini di Gaza.

In uno stupendo articolo scritto dal cardinale Arborelius su ICN, Independent Catholic News (*link nel primo commento) il cardinale si rivolge alle autorità israeliane, chiede, quasi supplica, di lasciare entrare il Veicolo della Speranza ma non rinuncia a scrivere: "Negare le cure mediche ai bambini significa oltrepassare un limite morale che dovrebbe turbare tutti".

Limite morale che non turba i leader politici occidentali che ostentano senza ritegno la loro fede cristiana ma restano in un vile silenzio mentre la colonia di plastica denominata Israele umilia il Vaticano prendendosi gioco delle ultime volontà di un Papa.
Che schifo!

[Marcus Breen @MarcusBreen1]

A helpful post from @Kathleen_Tyson illustrates the US #IPO Dollar Trap as an extension of US Imperialism.
Good reference to worker owned @Huawei with their refusal to fall for US IPO Dollar Trap.
(It is no small thing to be in global business and reject USD IPO wealth).

[Kathleen Tyson @Kathleen_Tyson_]

UK, EU, Japan, and South Korea are in decades long decline because every time we use our R&D to develop a breakthrough technology we are coerced, sometimes blackmailed, into selling it to US rentier owners by IPO or M&A so the profits of our innovation and R&D flow to US (Nokia, Skype, Alstom, etc). US bleeds its vassals whenever they excel.

John Bolton tried this on Huawei (cooperatively owned by employees) which refused US IPO listing by ordering the 2018 arrest of COO Meng Wanzhou. China stood up to the blackmail. Huawei remains employee owned and has massively expanded its range of operations to eliminate all US dependency in the Chinese tech stack.

It is refusal to be subjugated that distinguishes China’s rise to challenge US primacy and hegemony.

[Ounka @OunkaOnX]

Jimmy Dore: "We preach democracy to China. But we don't have democracy here - the oligarchs run everything. The Princeton study proved 90% of people's wishes never become law. Only the top 10% of wealthy matter.

In China, the government sits above capital. The economy works for the people. Here, capital sits above government. The economy works for billionaires"

[Marcus Breen @MarcusBreen1]

No War With China, my post on the diplomatic approach adopted by President's Xi and Trump in their May 2026 Meeting.
At Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA). https://t.co/1nE2qpR3Gr

[Communist Party ☭ @CPBritain]

James Connolly was born into the crushing poverty of the Edinburgh slums to Irish parents. He spent his life proving that the working class has no country but the one they build for themselves. He was a trade unionist who did more than talk about solidarity. He organised the Irish Citizen Army to protect workers from the batons of the bosses and the police during the 1913 Lockout.

He understood that a change in the colour of a flag means nothing if the same landlords and capitalists are still pulling the strings. In 1916, he led the Easter Rising to break the back of British imperialism and the systemic greed that sustained it. He knew that national freedom without economic freedom was just a different form of slavery.

The British state showed its true face in his murder. Connolly was so shattered by wounds from the fighting that he could not stand to face the firing squad. They took him to Kilmainham Gaol, tied him to a chair, and shot him.

They killed the man but they could not kill the truth he left us. We do not celebrate him as a statue or a relic of the past. We celebrate him by continuing the fight for a world where the wealth belongs to those who create it. Our demands remain moderate. We only want the earth.

#JamesConnolly

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

The Tank Man image is so powerful that most people believe tanks crushed protesters at Tiananmen.

They didn't. The tanks stopped for Tank Man. He lived.

The Israeli bulldozer did not stop for Rachel Corrie.

She was 23.

She was American.

She was wearing an orange vest.

She died on March 16, 2003.

Marco has never posted about March 16.

[Morgan O'Ciardha @CiardhaMorgan]

There is a large operation ongoing to slander Irish people. Led by US/Israel/Ukraine, supported by Europhiles & the British security services, and facilitated by Twitter algorithms & the Irish political & media establishment. The target is not the compliant state, but the people.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Absolutely hilarious for the FT to argue the West is losing to China because "liberal market democracies operate with greater accountability to voters."

Hilarious and, of course, absurdly wrong. China is winning precisely because it's obsessively focused on delivering for its people: infrastructure, improving living standards, reducing poverty, etc.

"Liberal market democracies" are losing precisely because they forgot who democracies are supposed to be accountable to.

Src: https://t.co/tQjkt6OSg4

[Earth Hippy 🌎🕊️💚 @hippyygoat]

Worthy winners PSG🏆

Paris Saint-Germain fans raise a "Free Palestine" banner in solidarity with Palestine✊🏼🇵🇸

[Carlos @agent_of_change]

The US bullies Cuba while China supports Cuba

Donald Trump tells reporters Cuba is “a failed country”, and says he expects to be “the one” who finally brings down the Cuban government. His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, declares from Florida that “Cuba has consistently posed a threat to the national security of the United States” – the standard preamble before regime-change wars.

The US Southern Command confirms that the USS Nimitz carrier strike group has entered the Caribbean. The Department of Justice unseals a federal indictment against Raúl Castro for events that took place 30 years ago (and which were comfortably within the limits of international law).

Meanwhile in Beijing, Chinese and Cuban officials sit down for vice-ministerial talks on expanding agricultural cooperation, framed around the construction of a Cuba-China community of shared future. On the same day, the first 15,000 tonnes of a 60,000-tonne Chinese rice donation arrive in Havana.

Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez calls the shipment “a new display of solidarity and brotherhood between both nations in the current difficult context for Cuba and the world”. President Díaz-Canel thanks Beijing publicly, writing on social media that the rice had been received “in the spirit of the firm political will to jointly build the Cuba-China Community of Shared Future”. Another 45,000 tonnes are on the way.

That is in addition to the comprehensive Chinese-financed plan to build 92 solar parks across Cuba by 2028, projected to cover roughly half of the island’s daytime electricity demand. Energy sovereignty – the direct dismantling of the central weapon Washington has been using to immiserate the Cuban people – is being built with Chinese investment and Chinese technology, on Cuban soil.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning declared on Wednesday that “China firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding its sovereignty, security and development interests”. Her colleague Guo Jiakun, a week earlier, called for Washington to end “its blockade and all forms of coercion and pressure” against the island, denouncing the US habit of wielding “the big stick” against smaller countries.

This contrast captures the choice the world faces in 2026. A declining hegemon offers threats, blockades, war, sanctions, indictments and aircraft carriers; a rising socialist power offers rice, solar parks, capital, technology and the consistent diplomatic defence of sovereignty.

For the Cuban people, this is not an abstraction. It is the difference between blackouts and electricity, between hunger and food on the table, between a US-installed oligarchy and the right to determine their own future.

The US is desperate to bring about regime change in Cuba. Indeed it has been trying to crush Cuba for over 60 years, but it has only succeeded in making the Cuban people more resilient and more determined to resist. And Cuba is not alone.

[Carlos @agent_of_change]

So far, China has effectively rehabilitated 53 percent of its treatable desertified land.

It is the first country in the world to achieve zero growth in land degradation, and the first to reduce the area of desertified and sandy lands.

The country has become the largest contributor to global greening and a global model for desertification control.

[Li Zexin 李泽欣 @XH_Lee23]

🇨🇳🇷🇸Serbian President Vučić addressed at China’s Tsinghua University:

Don’t take today’s peace, stability and good life better than ever here in China for granted.

You are very lucky to have a leader very much down to the earth, very experienced, that knows how to defend Chinese national interests.

[Marcus Breen @MarcusBreen1]

Challenges created by progressive cultural claims from LGBTQI @Israel (are they all genociders?) is an excellent dialectic.
Given almost universal support by the Israel population for @gaza genocide Italians took the correct action.
(This is soft power studies).

[RT @RT_com]

Italy's LEADING LGBT group BANS Jewish LGBT organizations from participating in pride event due to 'ongoing genocide' in Gaza

The Jewish LGBT group responded: 'there is no pride where minorities are excluded'

[Carlos @agent_of_change]

“We have no chance against this”: the Chinese EV revolution and the failure of the West’s tech war

“We have no chance against this”. That was the reported verdict of Honda’s chief executive Toshihiro Mibe after touring a highly automated factory in Shanghai. Ford’s Jim Farley, surveying the same landscape, says Western carmakers are now “in a fight for our lives”.

A new BBC report from the floor of Auto China 2026 documents the scene the executives are reacting to: a Xiaomi plant outside Beijing rolling out a finished electric vehicle every 76 seconds; BYD’s ultra-fast chargers adding 400 kilometres of range in five minutes; Nio’s near-fully automated lines in Hefei; Huawei’s Maextro luxury sedan now outselling the Porsche Panamera and the BMW 7-Series put together. Foreign brands’ share of the Chinese car market has collapsed from 64 percent in 2020 to just 32 percent today.

This is the world the West’s tech war was supposed to prevent.

For the best part of a decade, Washington and its allies have waged an escalating campaign of tariffs, sanctions, export controls and investment blocks, all designed to keep China stuck at the lower end of the value chain. The Biden administration’s semiconductor war was meant to throttle Chinese AI; Trump’s tariffs were meant to reverse the trade balance; EU duties of up to 45 percent on Chinese EVs are supposed to protect the European industry; US tariffs of over 100 percent are supposed to keep Chinese cars out of the US altogether.

The result, plain to see, is the opposite of what was intended. Far from collapsing, China now dominates more than a few of the world’s most strategically important emerging industries.

The reason is not particularly mysterious. China’s success in EVs, batteries, solar, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence is the product of precisely the things that neoliberalism has systematically dismantled in the West: long-term state planning, patient public investment, vertically integrated industrial ecosystems, and a coherent national strategy linking research, manufacturing and infrastructure.

Rhodium Group estimates that China has channelled tens of billions of dollars into EV and battery manufacturing in recent years; the International Energy Agency reports that producing a small electric SUV in China is at least 30 percent cheaper than in any advanced capitalist economy. State support, far from being a “distortion”, is the very thing that has made these breakthroughs possible – exactly as it underwrote Britain’s railways in the nineteenth century and the US’s interstate highways and semiconductors in the twentieth.

For the rest of the world, China’s progress is an immense opportunity. Cheaper, better electric cars; ultra-fast charging; affordable batteries; vast solar capacity – these are public goods on a planetary scale, indispensable to any serious response to the climate emergency.

The Global South in particular stands to benefit enormously from access to Chinese finance, infrastructure, innovations and economies of scale. In Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa, Chinese renewable energy and EVs are accelerating decarbonisation at a remarkable pace, whilst stimulating modernisation and improving living standards.

As the BBC report tellingly notes, even Western capital is starting to figure out where the centre of gravity has shifted. Stellantis has just signed a €1bn deal with Dongfeng to produce Peugeots and Jeeps in China, is bringing Dongfeng’s Voyah electric brand into Europe, and is exploring building Chinese-designed cars at a plant in France. Volkswagen is paying $700m for access to XPeng’s software, having admitted it cannot develop the equivalent fast enough at home. Toyota, Hyundai, Ford and Nissan are quietly expanding R&D in China rather than away from it. As XPeng’s He Xiaopeng puts it: “We study each other, so we trust each other, so we help each other.”

That is the choice the West now faces. It can carry on raising tariff walls and sanction regimes, and pay the geopolitical and ecological costs of trying to “stop China’s rise”. Or it can do what the more clear-sighted of its own companies are already starting to do: cooperate, learn and build. China’s success need not come at anyone else’s expense. The model on offer is partnership; it is the West’s containment strategy, not China’s rise, that is making the world poorer.

[Mrs Kensington @Londonlife44]

@ChrisVanHollen @hahellyer If not a two state solution; equal rights and dignity for all the citizens in the region an end to apartheid.

Ebrahim Rasool South African Ambassador to the USA 2025

[Marcus Breen @MarcusBreen1]

Help us demand The Guardian to stop publishing misleading articles that incite war and violence! @theguardian @chinanotenemy @codepink https://t.co/OAhpmtWWWE @MAPA

[Senator Chris Van Hollen @ChrisVanHollen]

Democrats have provided reflexive & unconditional support to Netanyahu & Israeli governments, even as they undermined the values we claimed to stand for.

It's time to end taxpayer-funded support & condition arms sales to end the occupation & salvage a 2-state solution.

https://t.co/u0670ATFRE

[Marcus Breen @MarcusBreen1]

An excellent report on US imperial efforts in the #Phillipines and popular people's resistance.
It is part of a piece, including the outrageous colonial #AUKUS @evil92gsr being resisted by many in @AustralianLabor

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is pretty insane: the U.S. just tried to literally re-colonize part of the Philippines.

They did so under the so-called "Pax Silica" initiative, the brainchild of - surprise, surprise - an ex-Palantir guy named Jacob Helberg who now runs U.S. economic "diplomacy" from the State Department.

It's causing a big outcry in the Philippines, which is quite a feat given this is by far the most US-friendly country in Southeast Asia.

If you're the US and you're getting the Marcos administration - of all governments - to push back on sovereignty, you've really overplayed your hand.

What is the "Pax Silica" initiative? In a nutshell it's about the US getting other countries to commit to restructuring their AI tech infrastructure around a US-led stack. It's basically vendor lock-in: you hand over your critical minerals, align your export controls with Washington's, regulate AI the way America wants, and in return you get to be a US "trusted partner," whatever that means these days.

In essence, let's not kid ourselves, it's all about China: this is the US's initiative to "win the AI race" by getting other countries to contractually commit to keeping China out of their tech supply chains. When you can't preserve your lead through innovation, you seek to lock countries in contractually.

For instance as a country, this would mean telling Huawei they can't sell you AI chips, and telling Chinese firms they can't invest in your data centers - even if they're better and cheaper. It's not about choosing the best technology, it's about choosing the right flag.

But in this instance, the US went much further still: they literally tried to carve out 4,000 acres of Philippine territory (in New Clark City, 60 miles north of Manila) to be governed under US common law with diplomatic immunity - the first arrangement of its kind anywhere in the modern world.

This is according to the WSJ who ran the story last month (https://t.co/kydhIQfo2A) as if it was a done deal (it wasn't).

Heard about the "French concession" or "British concession" in China during the century of humiliation? Same thing: the US basically asked for an "American concession" in the Philippines.

Unsurprisingly, there was quite a bit of backlash in the country with for instance the Peasant Movement of the Philippines (KMP) calling it a “massive sellout” of the country’s land, minerals, and sovereignty (https://t.co/nkXSajH2Q7).

So much so that the Philippines' government - namely Joshua Bingcang, president and chief executive of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) - issued a statement saying that the Philippines had rejected US proposals that would place the project beyond local jurisdiction (https://t.co/ZmNWJB03eH).

Note, by the way, this delicious irony: the BCDA is the government agency that was created in 1992 specifically to convert former US military bases at Clark and Subic Bay after the Philippines spent decades negotiating their closure. New Clark City - where the Pax Silica's hub would go - is built on the old Clark Air Base.

So the agency whose entire reason for existing is to turn former American colonial territory (i.e. US military bases) into sovereign Philippine land is the one now being asked to hand part of that very same land back under US jurisdiction (and, apparently, declined).

Of course though, blocking this specific jurisdiction grab doesn't change the bigger picture. The Philippines is still a Pax Silica signatory, and Pax Silica itself is structurally neocolonial: you supply the cheap labor and raw materials, align your export controls and regulations with Washington's, cut yourself off from the world's rising technological powerhouse - and in exchange you get assembly jobs and the privilege of getting a pat on the head and being called a "trusted partner."

They dropped the most cartoonishly colonial demand - governing Philippine soil under US law - but the underlying architecture is the same: you serve America's supply chain, on America's terms, and you relinquish your sovereign right to trade with whoever offers the best deal.

[Medea Benjamin @medeabenjamin]

Taking medical supplies to pediatric hospitals in Cuba is now a crime? Saving the lives of babies is a crime? This administration is beyond grotesque.