I don't have a lot to say about this particular incident, but the ongoing conflict over second thomas shoal truly is some waterworld / mad Max shit. If the inciting incident for us-China war is fighting over the rights to what is literally a derelict ship on a reef, I'll be very disappointed.
a few things on this:
-don't underestimate Normal Whites - they will vote for biden over trump. they are not as loud as MTG chuds but there are more of them than the most rabid chuds. Normal Whites do not really give a shit about trans bathrooms, child sacrifice and retvrning to tradition. those are things for internet people with brain poisoning.
-the american electorate literally does not give a flying fuck about foreign policy or the rest of the world. biden's failures in project ukraine, genocide in gaza, the humiliation of the fall of kabul in 2021 - none of that means literally anything to the electorate at large. people like to think that maybe dubya was voted out over iraq, but that absolutely is not true, his problem was the economy (stupid). do not make the mistake of thinking that american voters give even the slightest bit of a shit about foreign policy. it is a distant number 15 on priority lists compared to the economy, immigration, etc.
-related to the above, for corporate interests, homeowners, people who own stocks the economy is doing fine. the line has gone up a lot under biden, especially recently. yes these gains are not evenly shared among the populace, but the people who gain them are far more likely to vote than poors anyway.
as though being adjacent to catastrophe is some kind of protection from catastrophe.
Extremely correct comrade. Like it or not, we live in a very interconnected planet, even if you only look at some parts of it via your phone.
I also invented the term hallucinate
I'm sure you could find information on his foreign visits if that's what you mean. He visited China in May of this year and Iran sometime in 2022
I'm not sure, I'd doubt anyone being too confident in a number like that. I think it's generally accepted though that russia bought some single digit number of millions of shells from dprk previously.
My mistake, you're right. This is the other episode I was thinking of https://pca.st/episode/8517b6fc-7872-4e6c-b3d7-38efb340ab31
They’re only doing this because they have been forced to do that, not because they have any natural affinity or ideological compatibility with the DPRK.
This seems a bit odd to say considering that dprk will be one of the major players in any war in the South China sea. It'll be US, Japan, RoK, Taiwan, Philippines vs China, DPRK. The natural affinity is being enemies with the US, setting aside any other economic ties, potential or otherwise.
RF does have a significant advantage over the west in terms of munitions production, but nevertheless large scale Russian style advances take an absolutely tremendous amount of munitions. Firing 50-60,000 shells per day during an offensive outstrips even Russia's production rate of 10-12000 per day. The west collectively makes a third of that give or take.
All four of these episodes are really good, I learned a lot. There is also a 5th one about the boxer rebellion specifically with the same guest
I think it's 60/40 in favour of Biden. Trump isn't new anymore and he's proven to be a loser. I don't feel strongly about this prediction though. I don't spend time looking at polls anymore.