they/them

  • 1 Post
  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 12th, 2023

help-circle


  • Never once did I claim that the Russian economy would overtake the United states simply that the 2023 growth projections were higher for Russia than the United States. I will say you are correct regarding the size and cumulative natures of GDP growth, but add the caveat that this Russian economy growth is in spite of sanctions and removal from the SWIFT banking system.

    I’ll quote my original post:

    Russia is not on the verge of collapse, the IMF predicted that Russian GDP would rebound slightly in 2023 to 0.3 percent growth, and in 2024, the Russian economy is predicted to grow by 2.1 percent.

    https://www.newsweek.com/russias-economy-forecast-outperform-us-within-two-years-1777788

    That’s higher than the IMF’s projection for the United States, which it said would see only 1 percent GDP growth that year, and down from a predicted 1.4 percent in 2023, and the 2 percent the U.S. enjoyed in 2022.

    https://tradingeconomics.com

    www.statista.com

    I’ll again ask for any support to your claim that Russia will collapse politically

    MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. The proportion of Russian citizens’ confidence in President Vladimir Putin amounted to over 80%, according to the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center that published the results of a survey conducted between April 10 and 16 among 1,600 respondents aged over 18.

    “When asked about trust in Putin, 80.1% of respondents answered positively (+0.4% over the week), the approval rate of the Russian president’s work was up by 0.4% and stood at 77.5%,” the pollster noted.

    https://tass.com/society/1607641

    I acknowledge the bias with tass

    "Prigozhin has insisted that Putin wasn’t the target of his mutiny. Rather, he wanted to depose the leadership of the Russian defense ministry, with whom he’d been feuding. But Putin came out against Prigozhin’s armed march. And after a daylong revolt, Prigozhin backed down and agreed to go into exile in Belarus to avoid treason charges against him and his Wagner Group mercenary forces.

    Pomeranz noted that, aside from exiled or jailed opposition leaders, there are no serious figures openly styling themselves as alternatives to Putin in Russia right now." https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/30/vladimir-putin-ousted-wagner-group-00104272

    Putin’s ability to secure the support of regional governors and heads of states within the Russian Federation during the PMC Wagner rebellion highlighted his enduring influence in the political realms. This crisis served as a testament to the unity and support that Putin commands from key figures in Russia.

    In the broader post-Soviet context, Putin’s phone conversations with the presidents of Kazakhstan, Armenia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Turkey provided him with a clear understanding of who stood by his side during this tumultuous period.

    https://www.specialeurasia.com/2023/06/24/putin-wagner-crisis-power/





  • Chinese homeownership is 89% compared to the united states 65% under Xi Jinping’s tenure

    Chinese poverty has continued to decrease under Xi Jinping’s tenure

    Chinese literacy rate has continued to increase and is higher than the United States

    Chinese maternal mortality rate has continued to decrease while the Untied States is increasing

    China’s homicide rate has continued to decrease while the United States is increasing

    China’s suicide rate has continued to decrease while the United States is increasing

    https://www.macrotrends.net/

    I feel sorry for those that live in the west, maybe if you vote hard enough your oligarch will grant you a crumb or a low interest morgage



  • Publication: Global Economic Prospects, June 2023

    " In Russia, the contraction this year is envisaged to be milder than initially forecast, partially due to the continued flow of energy exports"

    “In the United States, growth is expected to weaken significantly through 2023 and early 2024, mainly as a result of the lagged effects of the sharp rise in policy rates over the past year”

    “Growth is forecast to strengthen in 2023, to rates higher than projected in January, mainly reflecting developments in the regions’ [second] largest economy—the Russian Federation.”

    " Output in Russia is projected to contract less than anticipated in January mainly due to more resilient-than-expected oil production and higher- than-expected growth momentum from 2022"

    “Increases in U.S. interest rates associated with inflation or reaction shocks should lead to more adverse spillovers because rising interest rates would coincide with weakening U.S. economic activity and dampened investor sentiment.”

    "The recent moderation in U.S. yields since the onset of U.S. banking sector stress appears to reflect negative real shocks amid heightened risk aversion and expectations of slower U.S. growth. "

    https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/6e892b75-2594-4901-a036-46d0dec1e753/content






  • Russia is not on the verge of collapse, the IMF predicted that Russian GDP would rebound slightly in 2023 to 0.3 percent growth, and in 2024, the Russian economy is predicted to grow by 2.1 percent.

    https://www.newsweek.com/russias-economy-forecast-outperform-us-within-two-years-1777788

    That’s higher than the IMF’s projection for the United States, which it said would see only 1 percent GDP growth that year, and down from a predicted 1.4 percent in 2023, and the 2 percent the U.S. enjoyed in 2022.

    China isn’t doing anything of the sort. What they’re doing is fighting religious extremism, the sort of which no western country would ever tolerate. It’s interesting how the same people who purport to support human rights are pretty comfortable with theocracy when it suits their geopolitical interests.

    Tibetean Buddhist Feudalism was responsible for slavery, and brutal torture

    The charges made by the Dalai Lama himself about Chinese mass sterilization and forced deportation of Tibetans have remained unsupported by any evidence. Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that “more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation.” [38]

    No matter how often stated, that figure is puzzling. The official 1953 census—six years before the Chinese crackdown—recorded the entire population of Tibet at 1,274,000. Other estimates varied from one to three million. [39]

    Other census counts put the ethnic Tibetan population within the country at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then whole cities and huge portions of the countryside, indeed almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves—of which we have seen no evidence. The Chinese military force in Tibet was not big enough to round up, hunt down, and exterminate that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.

    1. Tendzin Choegyal, “The Truth about Tibet,” Imprimis (publication of Hillsdale College, Michigan), April 1999.

    2. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 52-53.

    According to preliminary data from the seventh national census in 2020, the total population of Xinjiang was 25.85 million, among which the Han ethnic group numbered 10.92 million, and ethnic minorities 14.93 million. The population of ethnic groups in Xinjiang increased from 4.45 million in 1953 to 14.93 million in 2020

    The Uygur population grew at a compound annual growth rate of 1.67 per cent during the first two decades in the 21st century, which was much higher than that of the country’s ethnic minority population, which stood at 0.83 per cent. The Uygur population grew from 3.61 million in 1953 to more than 11.62 million in 2020 Xinjiang Population Dynamics and Data report

    Here’s an interview with a son of imam killed in Xinjiang which makes it pretty clear that religious people are a target just like everyone else https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-19/Son-of-imam-assassinated-in-Kashgar-s-2014-mosque-attack-speaks-out-RqNiyrcRuo/index.html

    Here’s another interview with Imams https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/on-eid-xinjiang-imams-defend-china-against-u-s-criticism-1.5425967

    A Pakistani journalist who has been all over Xinjiang (which borders Pakistan) claims that western media reports on “atrocities” are lies. https://dailytimes.com.pk/723317/exposing-the-occidents-baseless-lies-about-xinjiang/

    Western reports on Xinjiang don’t support the lurid narrative you’re pushing either

    https://idi-international.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/New-Report.pdf
    https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china
    

    Representatives of Arab majority nations actually wrote a letter to the UN in support of China https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3853509?ln=en

    The reality is that US has been funding and arming extremists in Xinjiang trying to replicate Afghanistan model when they toppled a socialist government there. Don’t take my word for it though, here’s George Bush’s chief of staff openly saying that US wants to destabilize the region, and NED recently admitting to funding Uyghur separatism for the past 16 years on their own official Twitter page. An ex-CIA operative details US operations radicalizing and training terrorists in the region in this book. Here’s an excerpt:

    Throughout the 1990s, hundreds of Uyghurs were transported to Afghanistan by the CIA for training in guerilla warfare by the mujahideen. When they returned to Xinjiang, they formed the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and came under Catli’s expert direction. Graham Fuller, CIA superspy, offered this explanation for radicalizing the Chinese Muslims:
    
    The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them [Muslims] against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan and against the Red Army. The doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter Chinese influence in Central Asia.
    

    US has been stoking terrorism in the region while they’ve been running a propaganda campaign against China in the west.

    And of course, before US started weaponizing terrorists they themselves were fighting these people https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-was-at-war-uyghur-terrorists-now-claims-etim-doesnt-exist/276916/

    While Lula seeks to distance Brazil from the oppressive nature of “Dollar Diplomacy” which funds forever wars and military baes around the world Bolsonaro had ties to the united states far right

    “Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and a family friend of Bolsonaro’s, took to his podcast, ‘Bannon’s War Room’, to raise allegations of electoral fraud. Bannon was joined by Matthew Tyrmand, a board member for Project Veritas – a discredited US group that uses hidden cameras to supposedly ‘expose’ leftist journalists – and Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 after it emerged he had met with white nationalists two years earlier. (Beattie told US media he had said “nothing objectionable” at this meeting.)”

    In closing, you should not toss BRICS into a bin labeled “authoritarians” as I doubt you fully understand the word.

    “The importance of examining BRICS’ challenge to the US dollar’s dominance lies in the group’s collective economic power. BRICS accounts for 24 percent of world GDP and over 16 percent of world trade”

    “To be sure, the US dollar is still the dominant currency in nearly every aspect of the current global financial system, and it is unlikely that another currency will replace the dollar any time soon. However, history reminds us that the US dollar’s dominant status should not be assumed to last forever.”

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/can-brics-dedollarize-the-global-financial-system/0AEF98D2F232072409E9556620AE09B0




  • Ironic seeing the human wave of Ukrainians sent into the land mines and open fields to be hit by indirect fire. Russia has no problems supplying this war of attrition and it could be argued that they sought to impose such a war after pivoting from the maneuver based doctrine of the start of the SMO. As I quoted in the rail line the Russian supply chain is limited by the rail and as such would be unable to sustain themselves far from the lines as opposed to the established and new lines they have created to the Donbass region.

    From an old comment of mine: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/569600

    https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/dissecting-west-point-think-tanks

    “The capacity to detect and strike targets at ever-greater distances and with ever-growing precision increases the vulnerability of dense troop concentrations, and therefore limits the ability to conduct large-scale sequenced and concentrated operations. As such, in order to enhance survivability, current battlefield conditions are forcing military units to disperse into smaller formations, dig in, or both, unless these conditions are effectively countered. As a result, the battlefield tends to become more fragmented, offering more independent action to lower tactical formations as the depth of the front is expanding to a considerable extent.”

    “As a survey of decades of history illustrates, Russian military strategy over the past decades has correctly forecasted a number of implications of advancements in weapons, as well as sensor technologies, that are currently affecting the character of warfare in Ukraine.”

    “The operational level of war sits between tactics, which consists of organizing and employing fighting forces on or near the battlefield, and strategy, which involves aspects of long-term and high-level theatre operations, and the government’s leadership. The Soviet Union was the first country to officially distinguish this third level of military thinking, when it was introduced as part of the deep operation military theory that its armed forces developed during the 1920s and 1930s and utilized during the Second World War.”

    “After the failure of the initial invasion, the subsequent period of the fighting in the Donbas was at first marked by Russian dominance in fires. Besides precision munitions, the employment of UAVs for target detection greatly enhanced the effectiveness of Russia’s large numbers of legacy artillery systems. Russian artillery batteries employing UAVs for target detection generally showed themselves capable of engaging Ukrainian positions within minutes after being detected. As a result, Ukrainian infantry companies were forced to disperse and often occupied front lines up to three kilometers wide. Consequently, battalions covered frontages that are traditionally the responsibility of brigades. Russian artillery superiority and sensor density even prevented Ukrainians from concentrating in units above company size, because anything larger would be detected prematurely and effectively targeted from a distance.”

    “Russian forces also rarely employ armor and infantry in concentrated assaults and in the defense occupy dispersed positions, while increasingly drawing on artillery to blunt Ukrainian attacks.”

    “However, current battlefield conditions are adding the related difficulty of achieving the concentration of forces necessary for establishing main efforts during offensive operations. This is reducing large-scale engagements and thereby necessitating a concentration and synchronization of effects, rather than a traditional physical massing of troops. In turn, this places an extra burden on command and control, especially when contested by electronic warfare. Only by disrupting the opponent’s kill chain can larger formations regain the ability to concentrate and engage in maneuver warfare. During the war in Ukraine, superiority in kill-chain effectiveness has become one of the prime objectives for both sides. In this war and any other characterized by the same dynamics, this superiority becomes an essential condition for victory.”

    With a doctrine advantage, western acknowledged electronic warfare, indirect fire, and air support superiority combined with an established, modernized supply line its JOEVER



  • Wrong the rail line is the means by which military support is moved, Russia has a history of utilizing rail as their supply lines.

    “The reason Russia is unique in having railroad brigades is that logistically, Russian forces are tied to railroad from factory to army depot and to combined arms army and, where possible, to the division/brigade level. No other European nation uses railroads to the extent that the Russian army does.”

    “Trying to resupply the Russian army beyond the Russian gauge rail network would force them to rely mostly on their truck force until railroad troops could reconfigure/repair the railroad or build a new one. Russia’s truck logistic support, which would be crucial in an invasion of Eastern Europe, is limited by the number of trucks and range of operations.”

    https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/

    “Russia has to defend in 360°. It is heavily dependent on barge and rail movement. It does not have the manpower of Soviet times. It cannot be strong everywhere at once and has gone to highly mobile brigades so that it can rapidly assemble forces where needed.”

    “The vast majority of personnel and cargo are transported via rail for civil and military purposes. Rail transport is the primary means of logistical support for most military operations (including current operations in and around Eastern Ukraine) and is an absolute necessity for any type of large-scale movement throughout the great expanse that is the Russian Federation”

    “Due to the importance of rail for military operations, the Russian Federation has a separate branch, the Railroad Troops, dedicated to protecting, servicing, and maintaining rail service in combat and austere conditions for the Russian Armed Forces.”

    https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/Hot Spots/Documents/Russia/2017-07-The-Russian-Way-of-War-Grau-Bartles.pdf