ITT: real, mundane photographs appearing in the news (so newsworthy people) with "kino" value i.e. with enough aesthetic value to look like movie stills or paintings.
I just love these. The silhouettes of these poorly lit men strike and contrast against the background of the dark blue sky and the shining glare of the city far below. At the center lies a mad man, overflowing with spirit, clearly making an inspired speech to his followers, one of which plays a horn in the background. In the second picture the contrast is emphasized further in a clever game of black silhouettes. In the third, once again there are only silhouettes but the background is simpler and the sole lightning is the glare of the leader's cellphone through the fog. It's brilliant.

I think the Irish are good people.

Let's have a pro-Ireland thread /kc/.

Say something nice about Ireland. Share some nice stories about visiting or meeting Irish people. Share Irish recipes ITT if you want

Erdogan has met Putin and ironed out the partition of northeastern Syria. He gets to keep everything he conquered and the rest stays with Assad. YPG retreats from a 30km strip along the border, leaving the bulk of Kurdish-populated areas. Russo-Turkish patrols guard the safe zone. The deal shows two things:
By inviting Assad the SDF have completely relinquished their sovereignty. This was why they were so relutanct to receive aid during Olive Branch. As long as Erdogan maintains good relations with Assad and Putin, YPG will no longer bother him. If, however, relations sour then he can even expect a repeat of the 90s, when Hafez sheltered Ocalan and allowed PKK to use Syria as its base of operations.
The deal was discussed with Putin, not Assad. It's also clear who calls the shots.

For locals conquered by Peace Spring, the problem is not Turkey itself but its Syrian rebel puppets, who are thugs and mistreat the population, as has already been the case in Afrin. For the war as a whole, peace is now closer. Once Idlib is sorted out, a simple deal with Turkey can grant Assad the whole country except for al-Tanf.

I'm not an expert on China at all, so half of statements here are assumptions, but I'll try to start.

First the official story about how China became economic powerhouse and pretended to world leadership.

After Mao period with hardcore stalinism and local craziness like Cultural Revolution with destruction of everything or killing sparrows because they are pests, China was in pretty bad economical condition. Government even had no proper statistics about economics, local government official were corrupted and selfish as always, there were food shortage and overall goods deficit - typical for planned economies.

Deng Xiaoping and his political group took control of Communist party, replacing old Mao faction, and started to do economic reforms, program called "reforms and openness". First they took agricultural sector. In 1978-1984 government replaced communes and brigades in agriculture with formally private plots of lands for families and local collectives.

In all parts of economics there was process of decentralization, local management got more freedom, private-like enterprises were allowed in some form. There still was a planned process with mix of fixed and market prices, different types of control from state and other thing, but overall economy moved from planned socialism to state capitalism. Foreign investment was supported, free economic zones were created.

Economy became more market in 1990, when system slowly transformed from plan-market mix to market with heavy government control, without noticeable plan part. Even typical capitalist traits are emerged, like income inequality and liquidation of inefficient, but important factories (that is always a heavy hit to local population).

Yet growth was tremendous. China transformed from mostly agrarian state with ruined economy to industrial and scientific leader. While in 80-90s it was just an outsourcing that was loved by everyone by cheap labor and low bureaucratic restrictions, now it is independent and self-sufficient country that actually competes with "old leaders" even in innovation. And even considering income inequality and some social problems, average Chinese now lives much better than in past. It is hard to compare average numbers like GDP per capita or wage, because China is too large, but there are plenty of places where average wage is already about 1000$. Different sources say that population already have income comparable with EU periphery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform

Actually, it would be better to see someone with Chinese background to discuss this, because China is pretty "closed" to outsiders, but has large amount of historical materials and cultural things that we don't know.

The previous thread is at 499 posts, on the brink of autosage. So I open up a new one, because I have a thing to discuss as well with Bernd. But first thing first.

Finally I wanna watch these in their entirety, a series of Japanese films from the 70s The Yakuza Papers or Battles Without Honor And Humanity - which is also the title of the very first one.
I think the first five (what I'm planning on consuming) cover one full story, based on an OG yak's memoirs, published in a newspaper first. Then they made another three in the 70s, all standalone, and three more, two of them in this millennia.
They are in a certain subgenre of yakuza movies, which were fresh breeze at that time with their more realistic narrative and breakup with the "honorable samurai" romanticism of the previous era. They are also filmed in a documentary style, with handheld shaky cameras, and sometimes they even timestamp certain events as the movie plays - as far as I can tell based on the first one which I seen (but will rewatch).