Maybe the real Operation Prosperity Guardian is the friends we made along the way
All imperialists are paper tigers. In appearance, the imperialists are terrifying, but in reality, they are not so powerful. From a long term point of view, it is not the imperialists but the people who are powerful.
@carpoftruth@hexbear.net, in relation to your comment on rare earth extraction and how it's not necessary that complicated as it's mainly know-how about chemical engineering, there's this article from this September. Not sure if you have any thoughts
Chinese scientists make key breakthroughs in rare earth mining
A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences reveled major breakthroughs in rare earth mining on a meeting on Sunday. The discoveries will helpshorten mining time by about 70 percent, reduce the impurity content by 70 percent and increases the recovery rate of rare earths by about 30 percent.
The findings were made by He Hongping's team from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. They presented the research results at a scientific evaluation meeting in Meizhou City, South China's Guangdong Province.
This new mining technology is mainly applied to the mining of weathered crust rare earth ores, a characteristic resource in China. It aims to solve the problems of present in-situ leaching technology in ecology, resource efficiency, and to promote efficient and green utilization of rare earth resources in China.
Professor He's team creatively developed a new way of using electric currents to extract rare earth elements (REEs), compared to traditional methods which uses ammonium chloride as leaching agents to extract REEs. The new technology is more environmental friendly as it avoids soil contamination caused by leaching agents, which responded to Chinese government's demand for environmental protection and green and efficient mining.
With a 5,000-ton earth-moving scale demonstration area, professor He's team was able to test his findings on soil and achieved design outcomes on the ground. This key technology and its results have helped He's team publish 11 high-level papers in journals such as Nature Sustainability, and to obtain 7 patents for inventions. Citing a report from Nature Sustainability, Anouk Borst, a geologist at KU Leuven called the strategy "A game changer, providing that it is feasible on a large scale."
At the evaluation meeting, experts of the Evaluation Committee listened to the report of the He's team, reviewed the relevant information and visited the demonstration site. After discussion and deliberation, the Evaluation Committee unanimously agreed that He's finding is a World-Class technology.
Testimony by 2 released prisoners from Gaza:
The resistance allowed us to play sports and taught children new games, including "Warq Al-Shadah" (playing cards). They nicknamed one of us "Salsabeel," and women are considered sacred queens among them.
One person even placed a towel on his hands so as not to touch me when we played "hand-to-hand combat."
Mental image of a Hamas fighter hoverhanding a woman hostage
Also, there was a reason why America deindustrialized in the first place - fleeing the rising tide of high wages in America to go where labour is cheaper. Is state intervention really going to be enough to reverse this flow? What happens if the Republicans achieve power and don't care for industrialization, with lobbyists telling them to keep the financial profits flowing instead?
I think it'll work to some extent - we're seeing the American chip industry slowly, haltingly come online, but IIRC the factory being built in Arizona is just one step in the process of making chips. And what if the mighty potential of Chinese chipmaking is brought online considerably sooner than the pessimistic estimates of 2030? Big strides have already been made in that field. And given America's warmongering, what happens if Taiwan pops off?
Competing with China in state capacity doesn't seem like a winning strategy for America. They can inflate their GDP as much as they want - in concrete terms, they're behind China in several fields as various foundations keep worryingly reporting, and I don't think they can catch up.
This didn't happen. The US and Israel are playing a routine in which Israel asks the US to beg them to stop so that they can do so without seeming weak. The Israeli government is perfectly aware of the existential danger Hezbollah poses to them, which is why they are refusing to escalate.
Hezbollah has dismantled hundreds of millions of dollars of border security and has been killing many troops and hitting barracks and Iron Dome batteries. They have pushed tens of thousands of settlers away from the border. These are all the same acts that Hamas has committed. Only one area is meaningfully being bombarded for these acts, and it isn't Lebanon.
If Israel thought it could turn Beirut to Gaza without being destroyed themselves, they would obviously do so. Zionists are not warm-hearted people who are wary about seeming bad in the region or on the world stage. The UN is a toothless organization and half the leaders in the region are pro-Zionists who will never betray Israel. They have almost nothing to directly fear outside of the Resistance itself, who are already effectively at war with them. They are genocidal fascists who will commit any number of atrocities so long as the consequences aren't too materially dire for themselves.
My thinking is that Hamas wants to engineer the internal collapse of the Israeli state in order to minimize the possibility of a nuclear strike.
In order to do this, they need to specifically not create an existential war for Israel, which would occur if Hezbollah began raining missiles down across the country. The conflict needs to be kept at a relatively low level, and pressure steadily applied via the use of the escalation ladder. The effect of northen border skirmishes, attacks in Iraq and Syria, losses in Gaza, and a blockade of the Red Sea are designed to be cumulative effects.
An extremely important point is that this is a ladder. The Israeli state must always feel like it can back down and it will be met with a lessened response. I hate to bring up Sun Tzu, but he was right when he said that cornered men fight harder than those with no routes of escape. When the Israelis agreed to a temporary ceasefire, ALL of the Resistance stopped. This was critical - it meant that the Israelis know that they can stop the pressure at any time if they stop in Gaza, and the rest of the Resistance will honor the terms. If the Resistance had not done this, then the state and capitalists would be in total lockstep. Now, the capitalists can be separated from the state in their interests because the capitalists will have seen that the pressure on them can stop if a peace deal is made.
An additional factor here is the people of Israel. Obviously, few of them are fans of Hamas or Palestinians in general. But they also know now that the conflict, the harm to their families and their livelihoods and their homes, can be stopped if the state makes peace - this doesn't HAVE to be existential. They are not cornered, they have an escape route. Hamas has been using the hostages very cleverly - obviously, Hamas wouldn't torture and kill them anyway if they could avoid it so it's not totally cynical, but treating them as well as possible has injected confusion into the Israelis and the West generally, and Israeli propganda has been in overdrive to stop this image of well-cared-for hostages from spreading. Additionally, they recently upped the requirement for Israel to get their hostages back, now also asking for a total ceasefire. This shows that Hamas has seen that they have the advantage and initiative here, and believe that they can tie the movement inside Israel to free the hostages to ending the war. It gives both sides a "easy" out, as Israeli brigades get mauled in Gaza but the government does not wish to admit it. They can now say that they haven't been beaten, but instead are giving up for the sake of the hostages. It will probably take more weeks and months of fighting for the state to reach this point, though.
Where exactly this leads in terms of achieiving a free Palestine isn't totally clear to me yet, though I expect Sinwar has post-war plans. But the loss of legitimacy and prestige for Netanyahu and his government for failing to beat Hamas - and Netanyahu is already disliked by many - will be very significant.
No, this is absurd. Ukraine is actually killing 135% of Russian recruits monthly and Ukraine has already won the war by installing a clone of Putin as president. The real Putin is in prison in the Hague.
Russia uses drones to deliver supplies, ammunition to frontlines
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are used to deliver supplies and ammunition to the special military operation zone, the press service of the Russian Ministry of Defense reported on Friday.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian forces actively use drones not only to conduct reconnaissance and destroy enemy, but to deliver water, food, communication equipment and ammunition to troops on frontlines of Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The department noted that drones are used to deliver supplies only when ground transport is at serious risk or when roads are under enemy fire. A fleet of drones can perform dozens of flights a day and deliver all the necessary items to the front line.
drones really will replace everything
Those bombs were meant for civilians!
We detonated a complex field of anti-personnel and anti-armor mines, crushing the force, resulting in the death of all its members. Additionally, an IOF tank rushed to the scene, we also destroyed with a Yasin-105 rocket.
The rescue & evacuation forces in the operation area were targeted with the "Rajoom" rockets and heavy-caliber mortars.
Zionist ambulances & vehicles were observed transporting the casualties from the site.
Would be pretty cool if they could get Algeria on board. They're a militarily strong regional power, and a blockade of Gibraltar or the seas adjacent to it would turn this whole thing from "concerning" to "oh shit"
A different thing they could possibly try is Hezbollah striking Israeli ships as they dock, they probably have the capability but it would be a large escalation. Would be more significant too as cargo could still move between Europe and Israel without needing to go through either strait even if Gilbraltar or the Alboran Sea is blockaded