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What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
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| 🦋 |
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15 | 3.71% |
| 🦇 |
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115 | 28.47% |
| 🪰 |
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12 | 2.97% |
| 🐦 |
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67 | 16.58% |
| dragonfly |
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94 | 23.27% |
| 🦟 |
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14 | 3.47% |
| 🐝 |
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87 | 21.53% |
| Total: | 404 votes | ||
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I checked the Kherson province/state/oblast map, 70-80% of the land is in the west side of the river. Why wouldn't Putin hold the referendum in Kherson. They need to do it if they plan to hold the west side of the river. Maybe Putin is abondoning majority of the population, that's a different story. I also heard an argument that Russia is lacking working population so making people move to Russia proper will also gain some working force..
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Nov 9, 2022 21:02
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 18:56 |
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Zodium posted:they absolutely are. the point is precisely that it didn't blow up over Taiwan because the process is not random or stochastic such that it could have gone either way. it blew up over Ukraine because the system phase is making inter-capitalist conflict inevitable, but China isn't capitalist and so only indirectly subject to these forces. they already have all the productive forces they need behind national boundaries. what the CPC needs to maintain stability is an uncontested source of energy and raw materials, and it's difficult to imagine a bigger prize in this regard than Russia, while stability for the western bourgeoisie requires them to break either China or Russia. I just want to add that the biggest gain in this war to China is not Russia's going on the China side in next few decades (they were already 80% on China's side ). The biggest win to China IMO are 1) fewer and fewer US military resources flowing to Taiwan for the inevitable showdown, 2) accelerated economic connectivity between China and central asia region because Russia has to loosen her grip 3) acceleraed economic and technology collaboration between China and Germany. Germany is EU's grow engine, the rest of Europe is becoming more irrelevant IMO. At some point the old europe countries will have less weight in reshuffled world geopolitics than the new G20 countries.
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Nov 10, 2022 01:56
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Lostconfused posted:What this shows is that if anyone invades Taiwan they should do it in one go instead of giving them 8 years to fix up all the failures in their army and ability to mobilize the population. Yeah I listen to a politic podcast by a couple unnamed Chinese officials from the intelligence branch and foreign service branch . They have said a few times one lesson the Chinese all agreed on is that there is no scenario of invading the outer islands. The only proper way is start a full scaled war on the main taiwan island.
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Nov 10, 2022 09:51
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Ardennes posted:As far as bombing goes...obviously they were holding back because the attacks on the electrical infrastructure were relatively recent. I think Iranian drones helped keep costs down but I don't think it isn't something the Russians couldn't have done early in the war at least. There was a prestige thing Putin was holding onto. Russia is top 2 weapon suppliers of the world. Using Iranian cheap weapons would damage Russia's future contract of selling big clients (India) high end fighters and helicopters. It's like BMW and Honda selling rebranded $2000 Chinese electric motorcycles. There was a line the Russians crossed around summer when they no longer care about prestige and face and code.
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Nov 10, 2022 10:06
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genericnick posted:Why though? Just blockade it. Because if you do it slowly the deep green fraction has a good chance to become more and more radical and hardcore resistant. The dpp could also force the unwilling civilians to go to total war. You can still start with blockade, but you want to treat it as the final blockade, and there is no on-off blockade and slow negotiation. Personally, I don't see blockade working any better than leaning on the Chinese production capacity advantage from the start. Just fly 10000 Iranian 136 type bombs and take out the entire infrastructure from week one. Rebuilding roads and electrical grid after war are the easiest things for mainland to manage.
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Nov 10, 2022 10:21
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The US think tanks are basically spending half of their time talking about it now (post Pelosi visit), so its easier for me to talk about this subject without getting banned. I got banned so many times on resetera talking about anything China related back in the day. Until one day I realized, okay them English platforms just don't want you to express your Asian rear end opinions.
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Nov 10, 2022 10:56
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V. Illych L. posted:it's a huge river crossing and a major prize for the russians, as well as claimed territory. it's politically a very costly move to abandon it, even if it's militarily more trouble than it's worth Again, I think Putin has come to face the fact that he has to fight a down-to-basic military war instead of political or hybrid war. East side of the river is still a huge area roughly the size of a medium european country. So they can change that narrative machine and advertise that stat instead. Also, seeing the new military command is the third? replacement, I think the army has more voice pushing for defensible goal.
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Nov 10, 2022 13:27
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This war is definitely not strengthening the US. It's pulling EU closer to the US but also pushing other regions away from US, particularly the Opec countries. Also another effect is weakening the EU at the same time, kind of like forcing EU countries out of the most expensive poker table and move to the cheaper table. Europe's energy intensive industries have to move out of EU and set up shops in countries near cheap energy and transportation hubs (India, China, etc) Also, in the weapon sales, the US is not selling more weapons to new markets, they are selling more weapons to Germany and Poland, effectively stealing the contracts from France. So, basically, the big MIC killing the small MICs within the same western bloc ("liberal democracy world order")
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Nov 10, 2022 19:18
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Majorian posted:
I think its a wash. The "Pax Americana Order" in 2021 already include 70% of the EU support by default, so you are increasing the support from 70% to maybe 85% of EU but also the whole region is weaker by 15% or something. That's why I don't count Australia and Canada's military support of US that much of an alliance. They already rely on the US MIC to build weapons for them so they are basically only footing the tax payer money for a small portion of the US weapons. Does US MIC really need Australian and Canadian tax money to build more weapons? They can already print more money if they are holding onto the dollar hegemony. The only important stat is how much you are expending the MIC capacity. Keep in mind that when the US export more weapon out of the country, it interferes with the main business of exporting dollar.
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Nov 10, 2022 19:45
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genericnick posted:Yeah, I agree with this. Russia seems to have been looking for the one weird trick that will get it an advantageous political settlement all the way back since they first started massing troops. I like this theory. It explains why Putin's full scale mobilization was so late. So Russia tried to sneak in Ukraine at night and do some special force ninja stuff with *not special force but regular untrained troops*, tried to back out with some face saving political settlement (which would also secure Putin's next election); but mastermind grandpa Biden saw an opportunity "to put Russia down permanently", triggered the financial war nuclear option; 2 months later, the whole world found out financial war nuclear weapon was really not that deadly. LOL what a clown show.
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Nov 11, 2022 13:24
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Al-Saqr posted:I think overall the biggest and most important lesson we all learned from this is not to expect Americas enemies to be any smarter, any more competent or less insane than america is. Art of War already explained it in plain language two thousand years ago, people just pretend they learn it in school but don't practice it in actual geopolitics. stephenthinkpad has issued a correction as of 15:35 on Nov 12, 2022 |
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Nov 12, 2022 15:33
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I wonder how long can the US keep propping Ukraine up at this rate. My guess max 4 years and min 1 more year. But I do think Putin has less runaway to burn than Biden. So maybe China should start more serious support to Russia sometime next year. The more resource US spend in the European theater, the better it is for China. Basically China should roll their own lendlease program. Russia has way more natural resource to pay back to China than Ukraine.
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Nov 16, 2022 20:33
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The US in theory can print money endlessly but they eventually stopped in Afghanistan. Didn't even print that extra plane load of cash to Taliban so they could leave Kabul with the slightest bit of diginty. In the end it comes down to production capacity, how fast can the west, particularly the US MIC make half way decent weapons versus how fast the Russia/Iran/China camp can put together kamikaze 136s. If China take the gloves off, they will have much better drones to sell to Russia, but Xi and Biden are not likely to flip the poker table in the next two years. Not even Kevin McCarhy visiting Taiwan will trigger that. I just don't see this war last longer than the korean war. Even the Russians have much less appetite in paying hunan lives than they did last century.
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Nov 16, 2022 21:44
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We can still have mini G7 summit talk about how to gently caress Putin up inside G20. https://twitter.com/jaxgaymagazine/status/1592697473247547392?s=20&t=DuSEDGKqftdOw21NrLJS5Q
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Nov 17, 2022 15:40
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I randomly clicked on a Tom Friedman ukraine war talk live stream to play in the background while working. A few minutes later, I glanced over and it showed he was blabing in a moving car. I thought that was funny as hell. Just pretend he is in UK and driving the car himself on the run from Putin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtztW_7svZI&t=1339s
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Nov 17, 2022 19:41
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I heard a different theory of Russia not going hard on Ukraine's infrastructure. I listen to a military nerd podcast, they said the Kherson retreat was executed smoothly and barely lost any hardware. Also it was not done secretly with all the zoo and raccoon evacuation. So it was likely the Russia side had an understanding with the US or both the US and Ukraine. Maybe the West was not providing satellite data to Ukraine when the Russians were retreating. As to what the west got in return for this deal, probably condition of Russians not crashing the Ukraine electrical grid for x weeks/months.
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Nov 18, 2022 13:25
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I have some merino wool socks. They are the only ones that have giant holes after 1 years of regular wear. Didn't even wear them on hikes.
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Nov 27, 2022 00:59
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speng31b posted:https://twitter.com/David_Mulroney/status/1596463220847702017 The US don't give a poo poo about end user phone sales, they really want to shut down the Huawei global telecom equiotment sales. What happened is that Huawei spinned off half of their smartphone division, but slightly gained telecom market share since the sanctions.
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Nov 27, 2022 04:58
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Jel Shaker posted:the high value stuff is still being produced by the USA, but china is increasingly reaching parity The Americans thought they figured it out by only keeping the high value portion of the service such as Apple is keeping the software portion high profile and moved everything manufacturing out of the country. Except China is getting so good at manufacturing now they completely copied the know-how in 2 years and outselling the US branded stuff overseas, see the EV industry. However telecom equipment sanction is not about fighting over the profitable portion in the supply chain, it's 100% about NSA losting the back doors.
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Nov 27, 2022 11:49
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Honest Thief posted:huwaei phones being sold without access to google services is crazy, why would anyone buy them now? They sold half of the business, so the Honor branded phones can have google play store now. As for the other half of Huawei phones, do you know every phone inside China use non-google App Store anyway. Like Xiaomi store, or OPPO store. So using a Huawei phone without google inside China is never an issue. It's just that it's very hard to use it outside of China. I have Huawei phones made before the sanction and after the sanction. Big difference in how you use them. Short answer is I just stoped using it. Didn't bother to jump thru the loops. If you are a phone nerd, you can afford to get more phones anyway.
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Nov 27, 2022 15:28
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Obviously Stephen King is not sexist enough to say a woman can't lead a war as well as a man. So the only interpretation is a female Russian president would have mobilized half mil troops from Feb and crashed Kiev in a month. With the battle of Kiev destroying most of the city and reaching a stalemate, the Ukrainian government in Lviv would have to sue for peace by the end of the year.
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Nov 27, 2022 16:53
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Why do you need advisers for something as simple as the 136 drones? It's like "Advisor for ramen cooking". They probably just ran over some Persian looking fellas.
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Nov 27, 2022 21:24
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Cao Ni Ma posted:https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/biden-vowed-consequences-saudi-arabia-oil-production-cut-us-no-plans-f-rcna59799 Because the US really doesn't want petrorenminbi so Biden threw out his DEM value and kissed up to MBS. He could have done it before his visit to Saudi.
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Dec 4, 2022 04:20
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I look through the bot replies, none of them are in English. What language do they use? Some of the bots have Chinese character handles but they replied in something else, spanish?
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Dec 5, 2022 16:12
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sum posted:If I'm connecting the dots right, it seems like Ukraine's new indigenous "attack drone" is a modified Soviet recon drone from the 1970s. lf it's a 40 year old drone, can you rig precision guided GPS hardware on it?
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Dec 5, 2022 20:18
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There it is.
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Dec 7, 2022 14:33
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2B/m damages caused by $10000 suicide drones. Sounds like a good deal. Also business must be booming for whatever country making electrical distribution equipments.
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Dec 16, 2022 11:18
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Does anybody have a problem of US sending 20B to Ukraine every year? i don't. US spending imperial resources to the blake holes in Afghanistan and Ukraine is good for the rest of the world. Privatizing the remaining of the Ukraine public sector is not going to make a dime of difference. It's about as meaningful as privatizing Pakistan's state owned sectors. Obviously the rebuilding is not going to happen, the whole world knows it.
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Dec 16, 2022 12:45
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Is there actually any rebuilding funded by any regional or outside government in Syria?
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Dec 16, 2022 15:12
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Make eastern Ukraine an International Park to reserve it. The UNESCO Violent Free Zone of East Ukraine.
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Dec 16, 2022 15:26
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Sly is still alive. They can make a sequel to Rambo III.
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Dec 16, 2022 16:07
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What's "Ukraine House", sounds like a coffee blend.
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Dec 16, 2022 19:17
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Kiev in spring 22 has a lot more vulnerable weak points than in spring 23. They had what, half a million kids and old people they had no sustainable infrastructure to support. Now all these people have gone to Poland. And I am sure more households have some food rations and ramen stashed in their basement so the city will withstand encirclement a lot longer than 1 year ago. That's why Chinese military planners don't plan for the small war scenario with Taiwan or taking the outer islands, it's show hand or nothing.
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Dec 18, 2022 12:06
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Regarde Aduck posted:I doubt they're gonna go for Kiev when they don't even try to hit the leadership Hypersonic missile
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Dec 18, 2022 13:03
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Has anyone written a novel on how Gorbachev could have saved the Soviet Union with a time machine?
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Dec 22, 2022 18:24
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IMO (with the help of a time machine), the Soviet Union needed to immudiately form OPEC+ with Saudi right after the oil crisis to counter the Carter doctrine. With lower and lower oil price, the Soviet system was unsustainable even before Gorbachev came to power.
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Dec 22, 2022 18:35
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lobotomy molo posted:that depends, can he use that time machine to deliver a nuke No. Only Disney sequels play the established rules fast and loose.
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Dec 22, 2022 18:47
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lobotomy molo posted:fine, fine. are you allowed to infect gorbachev with airborne aids? Yes but I don't think that could have save Soviet Union. Why don't you just poison Yaltsin?
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Dec 22, 2022 19:06
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mila kunis posted:i feel the GCC arabs were sufficiently warned to stay in line and not gently caress with america or else after the last time they used the oil weapon. Or else what though? American influence in GCC depends on whether the Saudis can resist the US military bases.
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Dec 22, 2022 19:10
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 18:56 |
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That's a Saint Seiya elysion arc armor but I prefer proper battle armor to kill orcs.
stephenthinkpad has issued a correction as of 12:31 on Dec 23, 2022 |
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Dec 23, 2022 12:28
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