Miscellaneous News

FairAndUnbiased said:

This should be required reading for everyone in this forum, translated into Chinese, and reposted as required reading too.

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Today, that adage is increasingly only true for the wrong reasons: M1A1 tank production ended all the way back in 1992, but the image of the high tech, cutting edge, materially superior U.S. military has carried on for decades. In 2025, nineteen-year-old mechanics are trying to keep thirty- or forty-year-old tanks running for yet another “show of force” deployment overseas, but the American political class is very obviously still stuck in their own timeless Neverland, still imagining that what was new in 1992 or 1978 is just as new and groundbreaking today.

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Golden line for the day. And apparently, it doesn't only apply to politicians, it also fits a lot of no-brainer Reddit trolls when they talk shit about things like F-22 and Burke.
Not saying they are bad, but bros talk about them as if they are alien technology.

siegecrossbow said:

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Whore, whore never changes.

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It's reverse genghis khan where instead of having 1000s of offspring, she has only 1, but it's not known which man out of 1000s is the father

Serb said:

Most of those minerals are in Russian annexed territory today actually. So no way there is $500B worth of minerals just in today's Ukraine. I think that if it was the plan, that would've actually caused global nuclear war. Even the US forces in the rest of Ukraine would actually be a sufficient catalyst. The simple truth is that the US and the West have been beaten and outproduced by Russia. The truth is that the US is broke and about to go bankrupt now. There is no way that Trump has any magic "plans" besides giving Putin whatever the hell he wanted in the first place, in return of them not having to be bleed dry in Ukraine anymore, and as a domestic political victory for Trump and as a leeway to now focus on China more. Trump's supporters actually support Putin. Also, Russia will give them those minerals rights, but on their own terms as winners, to get even more concessions, and save Trump's face.

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“$500B” is just a big enough story for Trump to sell his audiences. I never under-estimate American IQ when it comes to big money. When people here proclaimed American stupid this and stupid that ... most likely those Americans in power chose to be so, not that there was no smart people who could see it coming. My post was all about a bigly story Trump wanted to sell to the world but somehow for some reason Zelenskyy didn't want to cooperate.

MortyandRick said:

Isn't the new regulations just another version of the Jones Act?
How did that go for US goals and shipbuilding?

I suspect all this will do is increase cost of shipping to US, by increasing cost of Korean and Japanese ship buildings.

But then again the US wants to increase shipping costs cause they want to reshore manufacturing. So to them, it does both, but it will make US products completely even more uncompetitive outside of the US.

I suspect it will just worsen US manufacturing since the US cannot make everything them selves.

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The point of the proposed regulation is like other Hegemon policies: to damage Chinese manufacturing sector. Ship building will not go back to the US. The Hegemon wants to use the new rules to force the ship orders to go to South Korean and Japanese shipyards instead of Chinese ones.

4Runner said:

I think I figured out why Trump has been escalating assault on Zelenskyy.

Trump's plan was:
(1) Sing an agreement between US and Ukraine on $500B minerals. Not free because US would have to invest first.
(2) US will send troops to protect the mineral areas as DMZs.
(3) The result would make de facto US military presence in Ukraine.
(4) Russia would have to come to the negotiation table with something they want/need: US withdrawal.
(5) US would have a better bargain than as-is on the ground today.

Trump sent Vance and Bessent to meet or call Zelenskyy. Vance was at MSC and thinking he had a deal with Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy openly contradicted US narrative, which means he would not buy into Trump's "art of deal" on Ukraine peace process. Trump needs a bigly win and thought he would have one with this Ukraine plan, which Zelenskyy refused to cooperate. Trump is done with Zelenskyy.

Joke or conspiracy aside, there is one factor on the ground: I am fairly certain Trump lacks big bargaining chips vis-a-vis Putin. Any agreement that makes Putin an obvious winner will produce very bad optics for Trump in the eyes of the west. There was one legitimate crack and Zelenskyy trashed it because he could not afford that agreement domestically.

A dilema. A quagmire. A conundrum ...... That was the number one reason Trump wanted to meet Xi ASAP ......

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I don't think the is actually any plan of investing in Ukraine post war or putting NATO troops there to defend the investment. I think what's happening here is Trump has determined that US needs to get out of this war and he needs a face saving way to get out. So instead of just withdraw support and make it seem US lost the war he's trying to twist the narrative into "No Biden lost the war, I got us a deal for $500B so America is still ahead in the books thanks to my genius".

He doesn't actually care about weather or not US gets any of that $500B because it's fairly certain they will get nearly none of it, he just want a piece of paper to wave around and say he won.

In theory Zelensky could just give it to him and sign the deal, what does Zelensky care about future financial health of Ukraine he's sending 18 year old into the trenches to eat FPV drones. But alas Zelensky can't do it because if he did their own nationalist will hang him by lamp post.

I saw someone run the numbers already, consider the $500B price tag, the current value of gold and the remaining Ukrainian population. This deal would force each and every Ukrainian to take on reparation far heavier than what was in the Boxer Protocol (1 tael of silver per Chinese person, works out to a total of about 12.5 billion USD today including inflation in a nation of 450 million). Does Zelensky look like someone who had a more secure seat of power than Cixi?

4Runner said:

“$500B” is just a big enough story for Trump to sell his audiences. I never under-estimate American IQ when it comes to big money. When people here proclaimed American stupid this and stupid that ... most likely those Americans in power chose to be so, not that there was no smart people who could see it coming. My post was all about a bigly story Trump wanted to sell to the world but somehow for some reason Zelenskyy didn't want to cooperate.

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I just commented on the part about US troops guarding those minerals, that would be impossible or catastrophic because those deposits are in Russian-annexed territory now. Even the US troops officially stationed in the rest of Ukraine, where there are fewer natural resources, is similarly a very bad idea - basically inviting nuclear war.

As for why Zelensky rejected this idea because that would make Ukraine a slave colony in the minds of their people and piss on all the previous war efforts, not to mention that Ukrainian own oligarchs actually would not want their business to be taken away like that by Americans.

I told you, Putin will likely allow them to sign such a symbolic paper (getting minerals from Russian territory + the rest of Ukraine), but on his own terms, and for the rest of Ukraine to become a Russian proxy on top of what they already annexed recognized . So, Zelensky and his cabinet will have to go anyway even if they agreed.

dingyibvs said:

IMO it's necessary to think outside of the box. If someone is attacking you via one axis, they must believe that they have an advantage along that axis. Even if that's not true, it's probably still one of their best axes of attack. The best counter then would probably be along a different axis, one that perhaps you have a better advantage, along with simply some defensive measures along the opponent's axis of attack. For example, in this situation, the defensive and offensive operations could be as following (not very well fleshed out, but something like it).

Defensive: What the American action does is raising cost for owners of Chinese ships. Rather than totally barring companies without Chinese ships, simply raise the cost for them so the effects are balanced out. This can be done a variety of ways.

Offensive: Promote Chinese shipbuilding components, modules even, plus equipment, labor, IP, etc. overseas, infiltrate SK and Japanese shipyards so that they can be shut down without Chinese support.

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The answer is simple, any Boeing aircraft landing in China or flying over Chinese airspace pays an additional landing fee.

vincent said:

The point of the proposed regulation is like other Hegemon policies: to damage Chinese manufacturing sector. Ship building will not go back to the US. The Hegemon wants to use the new rules to force the ship orders to go to South Korean and Japanese shipyards instead of Chinese ones.

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Also seems like a SKorean Company has taken over a US shipbuilder, then not long ago, unions there are calling to sanction CN shipbuilders..
......

"Tokyo fund buys China bonds for first time on Japanification bet"​

"The deflation-fueled outperformance of Chinese bonds has lured in a Tokyo-based investor for the first time.
A team that oversees investment in foreign government bonds at Asset Management One started buying China’s debt in October and has since boosted exposure to the country’s interest-rate risk, Hikaru Tanaka, fund manager at the Tokyo-based company, said in an interview on Friday.[...]

Tanaka isn’t alone. Japanese investors are estimated to have increased holdings of Chinese bonds by 53% last year, the most among the markets that make up the World Government Bond Index, according to Bloomberg analysis of Japanese balance-of-payments data.[...]"

Iron Man said:

No, the point is (coming back to reality instead of hypotheticals), NATO will never go in formally because Russia has 6,000 nukes and Putin has threatened to use them multiple times. You DON'T need to threaten to use nukes if you are talking from a position of strength, you threaten nukes from a position of weakness. Putin already knows he cannot wthstand both NATO and Ukraine and is therefore telling NATO preemptively that nukes are absolutely on the table. If he could smoke NATO he wouldn't have to resort to saber rattling about nukes, he would just say "come, then".

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I remember hearing Putin himself saying Russia doesn't stand a chance against NATO, anybody who thinks Russia can take on the entire NATO is fooling themselves.

Africablack said:

I remember hearing Putin himself saying Russia doesn't stand a chance against NATO, anybody who thinks Russia can take on the entire NATO is fooling themselves.

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Then how come that "entire NATO" experienced a failed military campaign against Houthis in 2024?

Why do you assume that they will be able to do anything to Russia successfully then?

I'm not saying Russia can march to Portugal, but they are more than enough to repel NATO attacks.