western propaganda isn’t exactly subtle nowadays

Basically, China is strengthening ties with their neighbours here. It also suggests that China isn’t really worried about oil shortages going forward. So, if the US was trying to use the war on Iran as an attack against China’s energy supplies, looks like that turned out to be a massive miscalculation.

I don’t really agree with the attention to detail part from my experience. AI agents love to take shortcuts from what I’ve seen, and you have to pay a lot of attention to what they’re doing to make sure they do the right thing.

?

The US is very obviously going to be impacted when the economies of their vassals start crashing because the US economy is highly dependent on trade. Furthermore, everybody knows this was an unprovoked war of aggression by the US, and that’s already souring relations between the US and the rest of the world.

Welcome to another market manipulation Friday

turns out fascists aren’t very good at logistics

Yes? We’re in agreement here. The neighbors are happy to get their oil at a discount. They would not be getting this discount were it not for the sanctions, since there would be more competition in the buyer’s market.

You’ve never seen a company offer a discount price initially to get people to sign up? This is the same approach. Once trade relations are established, and these countries build up infrastructure around buying Russian energy, Russia will start raising prices. The key part is that it’s already more profitable for Russia than selling pipeline gas to Europe on fixed contracts ever was.

If Russian leadership was under the illusion that NATO was secretly an offensive alliance, and thus needed to preemptively invade Ukraine, it should be clear with this Hormuz straight business that it really is a defensive alliance. Trump tried to get the NATO members to help and they all told him to pound sand.

NATO has literally been invading one country after another ever since Yugoslavia. One has to lack even a shred of intellectual integrity to claim that it is s defensive alliance. The Hormuz business simply exposes the fact that even Europe isn’t imbecilic enough to follow the US into this debacle directly. However, NATO members are currently actively participating in the war by providing the US military bases to stage attacks on Iran. This is in fact direct proof that NATO is not a defensive alliance. Try to put at least a bit of effort into your trolling here.

They’re down year-over-year, with the biggest hit coming in the first year. The sanctions did what they could (forced Russia to offer big discounts) and now they’re stable in their effect.

They’re not down year over year in any meaningful sense. It’s pretty clear that they are in fact quite steady. What’s down is economic activity all across Europe with energy prices being three times that of US and six times higher compared to China. The European industry is no longer competitive on the global stage. Europe cutting itself from Russian energy was the equivalent of cutting off your own feet to spite your cobbler.

I mean, this is an argument fraught with “nuh-uh” and hand-waving on all sides. “Worth it” is very subjective, especially when the harm to both sides is relatively minor, in the grand scheme of things. Both sides have adjusted to the new reality.

LMFAO no it’s not. Every single economic indicator from Europe shows shrinking economic activity and growing inflation. There’s a reason there’s no major European leader polling above 20% right now.

The European oil sources are super diverse, there’s no need to make this a false East vs West thing. I’m literally just here to explain that Russia is selling oil at a discount because it has to, not because it wants to.

If by super diverse you mean that you buy Russian oil at a markup from Kazakhstan, India and Turkey then sure.

It’s not, it is a terminal emulator application for Android that creates a Linux-like environment.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that public sector controls the commanding heights of the economy in China. While these are not run as cooperatives, the purpose of work is the key difference. The goal of a private corporation is to produce capital for the owners. Meanwhile, public enterprise exists to produce things the society needs. The workers in public enterprises are the primary beneficiaries of their labor. Additionally, the state owns the golden share in all major corporations, and thus makes final decisions on how they operate. So, even private sector in China exists on a tight leash. I can highly recommend this video from Ben Norton explaining how Chinese economy actually works for people who are interested.

I would imagine so.

rookie mistake 🤣

yeah the whole thing is obviously a hare brained scheme

Are you suggesting they wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that?

relatable :)

Yup, watch the video, Postol discusses exactly how they would do it.

Oh I think it’s still a very real possibility, but it would be a truly desperate move on the part of the US.

The strategic reality of Russia’s neighbours is obviously that they can’t change their geography and have to find a way to live with Russia. That should be obvious to anybody with even a minimally functioning brain. The war in Ukraine is a direct result of Europe acting in the American interest and participating in expansion of NATO. It’s incredible to me that people still can’t understand this basic fact.

Meanwhile, the report you yourself linked clearly shows that Russian energy exports have remained stable overall. The harm that’s been done to Europe is far greater than any profits Russia has lost over the past 4 years. Not only that, but with Russian supplies cut off and now the Gulf, Europe finds itself entirely dependent on the US which is a predatory power.