?Aren’t they one and the same.
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A 10-minute propaganda video from Chinese TV showing missiles being launched from trucks, ships, and planes. The interesting part is the view of the automated factory capable of producing up to 1,000 missile engines per day.
The level of automation is comparable to that seen in videos of Chinese factories for products such as automobiles and housing. With such high levels of automation, it may be that China’s demographic decline will have no impact on its manufacturing output.
When we recognize that US/NATO are falling behind with the manufacturing demands of the proxy war in the Ukraine against mere Russia, cool heads might decide that picking a fight with order-of-magnitude larger China would be a losing proposition. Maybe it really is time for Our Betters to Give Peace a Chance?
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China’s current population is roughly 1.4 billion. If they lost 71% of their population today, they’d be at 400 million and they’d still have 20% more people than the current population of the United States. How many smart, educated, industrious and motivated people (combined with high levels of automation) do you really need to kick our weak collective a*s? 200 million? 100 million? 50 million?
This is one of the things I just don’t get when people compare China to Russia or Japan…we’re talking one to two orders of magnitude in difference. The fact that the US has a quarter of a trillion+ dollar trade deficit with China (not to mention the fact that they make most of our sh*t) also seems to have no significance for them. Utter madness.
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This aged poorly.
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If you get over the propaganda, the effective capacity of this line is around 100 missiles/year.
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Let’s see about that (that the Ukrainian frontline is cracking).
(click through the photo to get reports from the battlefield)
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We’re definitely living in a new and incredibly scary era…this is the stuff of dystopian science fiction. For just a couple thousand dollars anyone and their dog can create an assassination drone.
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I’m not sure what lesson we’re supposed to take from this picture…that tanks are an obsolete weapon system?
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No, that the frontline is largely holding. I added some context to the post.
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I have no idea what’s going on in Ukraine, but I suspect that Russia is “running out the clock” in this conflict and (for whatever reason) does not want to go scorched earth on Ukraine. If Ukraine’s front line is still holding, I wouldn’t take that as some kind of deficit on the Russian side.
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Putin’s alienating his top commanders
It looks like a mess.
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Who really knows what’s going on here…and as far as messes are concerned, we need look no further than our own country.
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As the captain of the Titanic was heard to say – The ship is still largely floating.
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Yeah, I find it hard to take anything I hear (read or watch) seriously these days—regardless of the source—as I have no way of verifying whether it’s true or false. All I know is that I’ve been burned too many times.
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None of us here in the US have any idea what reality is any longer. We read and believe - if we lack sufficient skepticism - the reports which we prefer to be the case. In trying to avoid being swayed by my biases stemming from my opinion that Russia has the better historical and geopolitical argument here; that Ukraine is being cynically used by NATO (= the US, in reality).
If principles mattered and applied to all - beyond the one asserting Washington is somehow special and can coerce nations the way our bully-government coerces us - this was exactly analogous to the Soviets making Cuba a de facto member of the Warsaw Pact by placing nuclear-armed IRBM’s there in 1962. The US clearly demonstrated back then how it would use a NATO member Ukraine. It would be precisely how it used Turkey in 1961 - when the US placed Jupiter and Thor IRBM’s in Turkey. The Soviets responded by placing theirs in CUBA. This was a casus belli to the US in 1963, as is Ukraine NATO membership today, which plan was announced in 2014 and continuously advanced ever since. It was good for the goose back then. There is no coherent argument that Russia ought not see IRBM’s in Ukraine as the exact same war act by the US as was Soviet IRBM’s in Cuba in 1962. Double standards may work on Republicans in the US. Don’t expect such double standards to fly with Russia.
As to who is winning or will win? I ask myself what hasn’t happened which could have. I think it is fair to say that Russia has had the conventional capacity all along to flatten all the cities in Ukraine. Yet, they haven’t done so. I wonder why that is.
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The lesson you’re supposed to take from the Ukrainian propaganda source on X is that the Russkies are being wiped out by the brave Ukrainian freedom fighters. Of course, no Ukrainian tanks are ever destroyed or disabled by he Russian devils commanded by the evil Putler.
It would take a heart of stone to not find this clown show amusing.
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Putin goal has been eastern Ukraine which is more Russian friendly. He needs a bigger buffer zone against Ukraine especially since they are lobbying for NATO membership.
The other goal is to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine.
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I ask myself the same question. One obvious theory is that when Russia ultimately wins, Russia wants to have good relations with Ukraine and not be seen as the enemy. If this theory is correct, I’m not sure how I’d feel about it as a Russian soldier…asked to continue to put my life on the line when there was a way to swiftly end the war with fewer Russian casualties. It has been said that the US wants to draw out this conflict (including all the sanctions) in order to weaken Russia and to force the Russian people to get rid of Putin. Given the facts that Russia is still fighting in Ukraine (and seems to have no shortage of weapons or personnel) and that Putin won the presidential election a couple months ago in a landslide (but, of course, their elections are probably rigged, unlike our own) and given the facts that our super expensive, super sophisticated weapons seem to have had little effect on the battlefield and that we’re the ones with weapon shortage issues, I guess it’s a case of check and checkmate. Again, who knows what’s actually going on…this could all be just theatre for the masses…choose your team…blue shirts or red shirts.
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The problem is – My team is not on the field.
My team is the one that wants peace & prosperity for everyone, but especially for US citizens:
- that recognizes Russia has understandable concerns about the past aggressiveness of US/NATO (eg Libya, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan) and clearly asked US/NATO not to expand into the Ukraine;
- that acknowledges the decades of peace between Finland & Russia that allowed Finland to be effectively part of the West while at the same time having good cross-border trade with Russia in a de-militarized environment;
- that recognizes the US has crushing economic, social, and illegal immigration problems at home and makes dealing with those problems the priority.
That is my team – but I can’t find them anywhere.
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