It took him far too long to realise that the western leadership is not interested whatsoever in peace or equality.

I’m not even sure he has fully realized it though.

I’m pretty sure US companies can still sell to some extent, or at least could, it’s mostly their puppets that can’t. But even then the second part of the comment is very much right.

Not so much “wasted” as transfered to billionaries and politicians (massive profits on weapon sales) with some loss (actually having to pay to build the items bought and sold).

It’s likely, specially as from what I hear China was able to sell steel in Brazil cheaper than the local production too, so something likely changed/improved in China recently. It could be, at least in part, due to less internal demand, but cutting off the middlemen might have helped too.

The 2.5% in this case comes from all the international trade from Russia in 2023-2024, where 42% use Yuan to 39.5% the dollar.

So not globally passing the dollar yet, but it’s nice that there are examples for others to see the new opportunities.

Probably something like the smaller producers sold locally, governing their prices in part by what bigger producers set. Meanwhile, large producers could likely pay for the price discovery, individually or in a group, or they had many contacts which allowed them to have an idea of what would be fair. But it was likely the US was stealing quite a lot as middlemen, which can now be at least atenuated somewhat by having many people trading directly and perhaps even more “state help” to figure out good prices long term.

I would be interested in understanding this better as well, and nice to see that the new system is already being used. Whoever is not using the new system yet will likely do the math to see how good it will be for them.

Edit to add another point: Large producers would likely buy smaller local producers’ production as well in case the export price was good, so the smaller producers would increase their prices when they knew the bigger producers were buying a lot.

Even just a country existing independently by themselves is already enough for them to do whatever they can to demonize and attack them as such an independent country will be a symbol of hope for other countrries wanting the same.

That’s my thinking as well. I am actually kinda expecting them to do something as they had been responding to attacks on their refineries and looking at the ammount of refinneries, air bases and other things that have been hit recently toghether with the whole Kursk incursion and the west giving green light for the use of their weapons inside Russia, they kinda of are pressed to do what could be the biggest attack since the war started, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they just pretend nothing of this happened too and just continue pushing in the east as they may think they will win soon.

But if they do actually do something perhaps they could take the opportunity to do it at the same time as Iran and Yemen, and even others as well, to really show that a red line has been crossed.

If that’s the case I’d say not only him but anyone in the world is a viable candidate.

I guess there might have been some confusion from what I said to here.

I never said the Ukrainian puppet regime would never do something like irradiating Russia and Europe by blowing up a nuclear power plant, I just said that if they were going to bomb a nuclear power plant, releasing a lot of nuclear materials, there was no reason for them to go out of their way to get more nuclear materials to throw at it as just blowing it up conventionally would already be spreading a lot of radiation and adding more would likely not even make a difference.

So, either they would be attacking the nuclear power plant with conventional weapons or they would get nuclear materials to attack a city with a dirty bomb, but there is no need to attack a nuclear power plant with a dirty bomb as it is redundant and counter productive, so it might be that the news is either really bad propaganda or mistranslated/misreported.

The attack is intended to use radioactive warheads to target spent fuel storage sites at a nuclear power plant, and the ammunition has already been delivered to Zhovti Vody.

Where do I even begin to talk about how dumb this is?

It’s like saying you will make nerve agent just so you can bomb a nerve agent plant. It doesn’t make sense. Not even for the Ukrainian regime.

I guess you could add extra radioatice stuff to make sure it to gets mixed with everything else at the target site, but if you just use normal shells/bombs you can at least claim it was a mistake, so I really don’t see how this makes sense as is.

If they want to bomb a nuclear power plant normal bombs, perhaps bunker busters, sufice. There is no need to do any more than that.

The only reason I can see for them to be searching for “radioactive materials” to target the plant it would be if they wanted spent uranium rounds, but that wouldn’t be used because it is radioactive but because it is “harder”.

So, either this is some dumb propaganda piece, some even dumber plan, or some dumb reporting or translation on what should be really serious.

Nice to see them doing something like this.

Now it would be nice if they could coodinate with the next two biggest producers, Russia and Tajikistan, the three of whom toghether have almsot 90% of the world’s production, to also do something similar in exchange for investment. Or perhaps it might be better to just do the same restriction to another important resource.

There were also some very uncofirmed talks about China stopping drone parts exports too, which if they really did could have a massive impact on west.

Id argue its a sign of Ukraine trying to come to the table with a deal for peace that involves returning the contested border regions in the north (Russia recently pushed in further east, the trade will be for these two regions) and then likely peace on the current lines on the east.

I really doubt it as Russia is simply unlikely to accept a peace deal right after this attack, as they have already said, and specially if you also take into account that they had already said they would only accept a cease fire if Ukraine moved out of the oblasts that Russia is occupying partially in Ukraine.

As for what happens now, it seems Ukraine has already been mostly stopped so once things stabilize Russia will either push back as they have elsewhere or they will just hold favourable ground and let Ukraine pour as much resources there as they have, as they have been shown to pursue “PR victories” to try to prove their worth to the west so they will give Ukraine more resources to continue fighting.

Russia may also decide that with this incursion on their land it’s worth it to further attack Ukraine’s rear, like finishing off their non-nuclear power plants and perhaps might make Russia decide that they want more land out of this as well due to increased public support for the operation following the attack in Russia.

AI is great. Even if the tech stagnated for a few years a lot of improvements could still happen to what is available now and toghether with proper implementation of what’s available could lead to quite a few good to amazing things. Too bad capitalism is trying to move its progress　towards what is bad for workers.

Death to capitalism and let’s do what we can to see the US balkanize as soon as possible.

If they finally can get this done hopefully this also blocks the US from remaining in Syria as well, as I doubt Turkey will allow the US to remain in Syria using Turkish territory to maintain their bases.

That’s where the economic advantage in the west actually came from.

Don’t forget the massive exploitation of the Global South for cheap resources and labour that allowed them to advance themselves at the cost of massively empoverishing the vast majority of the chain of production they relied on. Or in other words, they stole everyones futures for advancing only themselves.

And this could be a good oportunity for China to pass some big reforms to the benefit of their people and to maintain trade with non western countries as western production likely falls even more.

Always nice to have pictures of workers doing their jobs well while not working to make some rich persong even richer.

Also, any specs on the rocket or the launcher?

They look really nice.

I’m more optimistic about France in the near term actually.

Don’t know how exactly that would work out but I agree that this seems possible.

It’s going to take an economic collapse for the Germans to get their heads out of their asses though.

If the war in Ukraine ends wihin the next year or so they might escape that, if Russia doesn’t continue puting pressure on Europe (by helping Yemen/Palestine and the decolonization of Africa, for example) that is.

But if Germany and Europe continue feeling the pressure then things might happen within the next couple of elections, perhaps even before a hard collapse although likely through fascism, so we need to be vigilant.

Just the other day I joked about Japan joining BRICS and this could be one step in that direction.

Now I’m wondering what would be the first ex-US state to join. lol

Either way, it will be interesting to see what happens with Taiwan as the US is turning its focus on China. Although unlikely I guess we can’t rule out conflict starting not because of Taiwan being used against China but due to Taiwan going back to China and the US not liking it, even if it takes a decade.

It’s really hard to predict the future when things are so “chaotic”.