BRICS is taking great strides forward. The rapprochement between China and India is necessary for that.

They have a new designation, partner country, allowing countries to take part without full agreement on all BRICS policies. Turkiye is joining as a partner despite its membership in NATO.

A grain exchange is being created, with other commodities exchanges to follow. Discussions on resisting sanctions, guaranteeing food security and energy security.

We are seeing the emergence of the new global organization.

Agreed that it likely depends on the region it was bought in. For most businesses and government services I have found the quality of customer service has dropped through the floor in North America as compared to 20 years ago. I worked in customer service for years and it’s always been a horrible job. But it can be made better or worse by how the department is managed.

Lenovo Canada’s customer service, shipping, and possibly quality control teams appear to be overworked because the result is slipshod work, ignoring the customer, and general incompetence. Again, I worked in the field and don’t blame the individuals.

They are trading on their good name, and eroding it at the same time. Glad to hear it’s better in Europe.

The whole shipping, returns, and reliability experience for Lenovo was rather bad for me (Lenovo Canada). My Legion shipped with a faulty motherboard and faulty power supply. Bought in Canada, but I work in China. International warranty didn’t cover China so I paid for replacement power supply out of pocket. Then multiple usb keys were fried before I figured out it was my laptop. Back in Canada they fixed it, but jerked me around on the turnaround time. Overall bad customer service, shipped a lemon. It was cheap for the specs though.

Is that David Frum, speechwriter to the Bush Jr administration? Writer of speeches about the axis of evil? Writer of speeches to whip up frenzy for an invasion of Iraq? An invasion based on lies? That David Frum?

And to celebrate that fact, Europe is joining the US in imposing massive tariffs on China’s electric vehicles and solar cells. Yay.

ISTG stands for It’s Studio Giblets

You aren’t. There’s more backstory.

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When you heat up your spam casserole the lights of Chicago dim.

As long as you get that feeling, then no need to evaluate the content of things. We have teams of people to do that. Then they tell you what context cues to look for instead of evaluating it yourself.

Since Reuters is writing this up like it’s just the norm for Pakistani PMs to be charged with crimes, rather than giving context, here’s an article explaining that the US pushed Pakistani lawmakers to remove Khan. He was friendly to Russia and visited Putin just at the moment that the Special Military Operation began (aka invasion of Ukraine). He was also on a serious anti corruption campaign which would have threatened the very strings the US pulled to unseat him. He is hugely popular in Pakistan, and when there was an attempted assassination the crowd rallied around him to protect him.

https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cypher-ukraine-russia/

Flowing green faux Japanese characters do not provide a soil rich in what onions crave. Brawndo might. But Matrix code is right out.

EU to Hungary: get on board with the payouts or we break your knees.

I’ve followed the developing belt and road initiative and it works like this: China invests in various countries’ infrastructure to expand trade capacity. So far the only criticism the western media has leveled at it is that it is supposedly a debt trap. And the big evidence for that is Sri Lanka’s port. However, the majority of Sri Lankan debt is held by Western banks. The Chinese loan was not at a higher interest rate. Yet somehow, China is to blame? In what way do you consider the BRI to be a hegemonic project?