Oddbean new post about login | logout I'm sure there are people in war rooms thinking about that, but the american public is tired, and europe hasn't been producing weapons of war for 60 years.
Yeah, if NATO really wants World War 3, they don't seem to be preparing for it. If Russia and China solidified a military alliance, I don't like NATO's odds in such a scenario, since they lack troops and equipment and the ability to rapidly produce either. If they wanted to just use the nukes, they could have done that in February 2022.
i don't know if this can be trusted: https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/07/12/rheinmetall-ukraine-tank-factory/ but the west Chronically overproduces weapons and has to look for ways to dump them somewhere. remember how we "forgot" $40 billion worth of weapons in Afghanistan while pulling out ? i remember reading US Military pleading with government to stop making weapons all the time but the government is like no you need more weapons ! because Blackrock and Vanguard own all of the defense contractors as well as all of the mainstream media and the military does what they are told
Rheinmetall? The company that built those Leopard tanks that were all blown up in like a month? 😂 A billion dollars just doesn't buy as many guns and bombs as it used to!
Tanks aren't very relevant in modern warfare ( Drones are ) but this is just an example of how serious ( if the article is to be believed ) NATO are about re-arming.
I'd move that tank factory back just a bit. The land might get overrun by the Russians before the plant is completed! 😂
Also RE: drones, isn't it a bit odd that the USA isn't giving Ukraine Predators and/or Reapers? I wonder what the story is there.
Just a guess, but they might not want to give anything with IP russia could steal when ukraine Inevitably fucks up and gives them some of it
Possibly. But lots of drones were shot down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Surely some of those are already in Russian/Chinese research labs.
MQ-1s and 9s are easily destroyed by SAMs and MANPADS, both of which your average goat fucker terrorist org doesn't have access to.
This is probably the answer.
my guess is they want the war to drag on. they don't want to give Ukraine so much power that it will make Russia pull out.
you may remember Russia almost lost when Prigozhin marched on Moscow. it was only Prigozhin's mistake in believing Putin's promises that saved Moscow. Putin promised Prigozhin will be safe then almost instantly assassinated him.
There's 2 main problems at work here, one is that there's no peacetime heavy industry left so if you want weapons, you need to keep those lines running - you can't switch a bike factory over to churning out STENs when your bike factory is in China. The other is that valuing things in USD is pretty much meaningless when the industry is basically a mechanism to transfer freshly printed cash to Jews. $2000 toilet seats, etc.
Yeah, even with infinite Federal Reserve Notes, you can't just plop down heavy industry. Regarding China, when you confront Serious Foreign Policy Wonks(c)(R)(TM) about this, they'll say with a straight face that China will keep selling us steel while we're bombing Beijing.
Germany still has heavy industry.
Producing weapons shown to fail against World War 2 vintage Russian trash.
in my opinion America + Germany versus Russia + China is a close fight but China will not enter the war ...
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I think you're overrating the military and economic relevance of Germany. You are entitled to your opinion, of course!
Lmao https://mugicha.club/media/980c0161ef4f356b768757073a1f59bbf789f4f10986b0df7aca8600a9203b6e.png
I was in that thread! 😅
German's GDP is 2.5 times that of Russia and unlike America their GDP is based mainly on engineering and manufacturing things out of steel. my father had a LADA when we lived in Ukraine and i had a BMW made in Germany here in America and let me tell you it isn't close LOL
All GDP is based on people giving each other handjobs for cash.
I don't think you can really do an apples-to-apples comparison of economies when one of them (Russia, in this case) has essentially decoupled from the international financial system.
You say international financial system, I say handjobs for cash. Same thing.
while GDP is indeed fake, having lived in USSR, Ukraine and America there is a real difference as well. perhaps a real measure of wealth and power of a nation is how many cars it has on its roads. Russia - 57 million cars Germany - 48 million cars USA - 290 million China - 415 million cars
or let's pretend EU and NATO is the same thing for car counting purposes Ukraine = 9 mil cars EU = 250 mil cars US = 290 mil cars Total = 549 mil cars versus Russia = 57 mil cars China = 415 mil cars Total = 472 mil cars and yes in fact our cars are NOT made in China there are very few cars sold in US that are made in China such as Polestar 2 and those are getting hit with not quite sanctions, but they do lose federal tax incentives that made in America electric cars get ...
I'm not sure that's a great gauge since most people agree that mass transit is a good thing and countries with good mass transit (Like Germany and Japan) have less need for cars. It's still way better than GDP though, I think!
most people also agree that vaccines are safe and effective and eating bugs prevents weather. here, i have some writings ( my own ) for you on the subject: https://dissidentsound.discoursehosting.net/c/urbanism/urbanism-explained/88
I'm glad I typed "most people" instead of "everybody"! You don't like trains? I thought it was pretty neat to not have to park, unpark and fight traffic when I visited Tokyo. Just swipe your suica card at the turnstile and ride!
so like i already wrote about a hundred pages on that subject: https://dissidentsound.discoursehosting.net/c/urbanism/73 and in fact i also encourage people to read it.
my writings are a result of years of debating professional city planners on Twitter before getting banned ...
although you all should still read the hundreds of pages of my writings explaining all this i will give you a hint here so that you don't think i'm being rude and dismissive. the hint is this: all the traffic and parking issues are ENGINEERED by city planners. this isn't a "theory" this is from actually talking to them. they don't deny this. they now admit creating traffic and destroying parking is the GOAL of their profession. what do you think lockdowns were about ? read my writings on my site to learn more ...
Thank you for the summary. I appreciate it!
Urbanism is the single greatest victory of the WEF against the dissident right. most on the right have swallowed it hook line and sinker. i specifically address the infiltration of the right by Urbanist agents like Wrath of Gnon here: https://dissidentsound.discoursehosting.net/t/wrath-of-gnon/579
Cars are also a retarded metric.
come up with a better one and let us know.
Just a quibble that while entire Chinese cars are not sold in the U.S. most (all?) cars will have some raft of subcomponents sourced from China
Isn't Volvo a Chinese-owned company now?
yes it is. i drive a Volvo currently.
that is true. for electric car to get full federal tax incentive not only the car has to be made in US ( or partner countries ) but the same for the battery and minerals used to manufacture the battery. this is all designed to punish Chinese manufacturers and support American ones. the point is our leaders aren't as dumb as you think. they thought of this stuff.
As people have mentioned, GDP is an extremely bad metric for pretty much anything expect politicians lying. What is it drastically poor for is a war-time comparison. German is a) massively dependent on oil from Russia. b) Germany has knee-capped itself by going all in on "green" energy. They had no ability to scale energy usage for wartime, and in fact are already facing major issues just running factories right now.
Putting economics aside, surely Germans realize at this point that their country doesn't have a great track record when it comes to wars against Russia. Will they agree to turn all of those BMW factories into tank factories? Will they happily sign up for a draft? Their Supreme Commander would be Joe Biden, who isn't exactly an inspirational leader. Are German politicians even ALLOWED to be inspirational?
quite simply China has offered zero support to Russia in this war. all China has done is give Putin reassurance that they will not side with NATO.
China will not go to war in any scenario. The Chinese only care about money. They will not take sanctions like Russia did.
the Chinese are by their nature non-expansionist, much like Russia. both Chinese and Russians only seek to control what they believe is rightfully part of them already. Russia believes Ukraine is part of Russia. China believes Taiwan is part of China. But China will not go to war with US unless US starts shit in Taiwan just like Russia would never go to war if US didn't start shit in Ukraine.
