thanks! reading that now.

for those of you not aware of these things, china has repeatedly pushed the envelope on air space (or say approaches to taiwan) re: taiwan. having said that i want to be sure we are all kept on our toes when providing links

some blurb ( i accept some of you dont click links, or like to report people that do ):

Taiwan's air force scrambled on Friday to warn away 18 Chinese aircraft that entered its air defense zone, Taiwan's defense ministry said, part of what is a regular pattern of incursions that has angered the government in Taipei. Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, has complained of repeated such missions by Chinese aircraft, which have become a common occurrence over the past two years or so.

This post was edited by ferdia on May 6 2022 06:04am

It's an edited clip. However kids in 80's were already making fun of the song singing "Nuclear strike, yes, yes, yes" instead of "Sunny world yes, yes, yes".

yes ok thanks!

"Before it's too late"

That was then, what about now? Germany is a unified economic powerhouse and Russia is not strong enough to dominate Western Europe.
Are you sure the current interests still align is it that residue from cold war beliefs.



It would dominate Eurasia and thus the world. There is great synergy between the two, the gas pipelines we hear about are the tip of the iceberg.
Don't underestimate how much of America's power comes from patronage relationships.

Germany and other wealthier EU countries should have created a common EU army long ago instead of relying on US dominated NATO. I think this mess would have been avoided if Europe wasn't so dependent on America. Because they are they have to follow US geopolitical desires and goals.

I think in the future Europe will have an army which will allow them to increasingly be independent of Washington. Germany isn't always going to sheepishly fuck itself economically just because the US wants max pain for Russia and wants the EU to be an acceptable economic sacrifice.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on May 6 2022 07:06am

Russian saying. A war for many, while loving mother for few.

For any one that understands Ukrainian or German (subtitles) here is a video of what reality on the front in Donbas looks like for many Ukrainians.

https://twitter.com/DerHaidWachst/status/1522503896844931072

In essence, remnants of the 785th battalion, 3rd company are speaking up about their condition I think the speaker says this is as of May 4th. Basically deployed with minimal gear, an AK, 1-2 grenades, very poor protective gear, etc having to go against much more devastating arms (artillery, tanks, bombers, machine guns, etc).

Sad stuff really. Basically throwing warm bodies to surely get wiped out by heavier weapons. Not entirely sure if this video was made for a reason to surrender or desert but i would guess one of the 2.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on May 6 2022 07:44am

What exactly do you mean by that?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-2020?time=1920..2018
GDP per capita (crude but quite effective measure of wealth) over time, adjusted for inflation and exchange rates:


The "Western Offshoots"-category is 80+% the United States. As you can see, the development in the US and Western Europe was largely identical. Europe took a couple more years after 1945 to get going and lags, on average, by 5 years, but the curves are largely in lockstep.

Another thing that immediately stands out is the brutal decline for Eastern Europe during the 90s. I think we in the West underestimate how traumatic this period was for the Russian people, how much the decline of their power in the fields of military and foreign policy coincided with a dramatic worsening of the material conditions of wide swaths of the Russian population. I think this period is key in understanding why so many Russians are receptive to jingoism and crude propaganda. In their minds, weakness of the Russian state is associated with economic misery.

German subtitles are not correct though. Commander using obscene trying to show how poor armour plates are. Video was made on May, 3rd and that's what's left from their brigade since April, 26th when they were deployed to Donbass.
I wonder where are those billions of aid and where's actually humanitarian aid.

This post was edited by Norlander on May 6 2022 08:54am