I didn’t make the title. I just put the headline of the article as it was written.

Turns out it’s legal

Why would that be relevant?

The actual unique part about it is that China seems to be turning around the logic of encirclement on its head.

US allied forces periodically conduct similar exercises near the coast of China (with build up of weapons as well), using the justification that they can do whatever they want in international waters.

Even Australia sends helicopters and other military equipment off the Chinese coast. The Chinese have decided to give Australia a taste of its own medicine.

The German army’s battle-readiness is less than when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, military officials, lawmakers and defence experts told Reuters.

:)

If I was a lib and had to take this many Ls as they have taken starting 2022 I would also loose my mind.

Sending weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine, as well as accelerating Germany’s own drills, took a toll on the available equipment, he said.

No shit sherlock. You choose to expend equipment now you have low equipment stocks. I’m flabbergasted.

a lack of a sense of urgency

Because there is no urgency. Nobody in the leaderships of any of the countries involved with Ukraine were under any illusion that Russia would invade and conquer Europe or some shit. This is further proof.

Defence ranks third after immigration and the state of the economy in what Germans see as the most pressing problems for the new government, according to a survey by public broadcaster ARD published in January.

Fuck this shithole libbed up population of loosers. Yeah I know that’s overly harsh and generalised, but the overwhelming spinelessness of the Europeans has completely worn my patience thin.

This would enable Germany to swiftly expand its troops to around 460,000 in the event of war - nearly double what it could muster today. “Given the casualty rates we are calculating with, the Bundeswehr will be bled out within months,” said CDU lawmaker Roderich Kiesewetter, who was a colonel in the German forces before turning to politics.

Openly calling for hundreds of thousands of Germans will die. Will the Germans resist in any way? No.

Smaller, radical parties AfD and BSW could potentially form a blocking minority of one third of the seats in parliament, and prevent agreement on new special funds to bankroll higher investment into the Bundeswehr.

If the AfD ends up doing harm reduction, it will definitely prove Stalin wrong. Social democracy is not the moderate wing of fascism, fascism is the moderate wing of social democracy.

The only Europmeans who have been taking this seriously are Poland and the Baltics, as they know the horrors of being under Russian occupation.

Ah the horrors of being freed from fascism and given actual social security nets with industrialization! How terrible! We noble westerners should increase our military spending to make sure these things never happen again.

We will defend the rising tide of fascism, genocide in the middle east, and crippling austerity to the last man standing!

China’s aerospace sector is advancing, and it’s not clear the recruitment has been specifically prompted by the discovery of the asteroid. SASTIND did not respond to requests for comment.

Absolute clickbait article

“No one wants to create trouble, but BRICS countries also don’t want to abandon the idea of exploring this possibility,” said another source, adding that no member countries intend to eliminate their dollar reserves.

Big oof. It’s one thing to tip toe around causing WW3 with the US (I don’t want that shit either), it’s another to act blissfully ignorant of just how unstable the US is.

The reason why transactions are denominated and settled in US dollars is because of the perceived stability of its value and the openness of the US financial system to international trade.

No, it’s because the oil trade is conducted in dollars (the point of America’s adventures in the middle east are ultimately to enforce this). This creates a demand for dollars, despite the US having the largest trade deficits in human history (which for any other country, would have made their currency worth less than the paper it was printed on).

Tbh, I’m not a big fan of attempts to create a BRICS currency either. The economic conditions across the BRICS countries are too different for a common currency to be adopted for domestic transactions. And if this common currency was only limited to international transactions, you would still recreate the problems of the gold standard (a hard limit on the availability of money for transactions).

I think the correct approach is to facilitate both easier transactions in local currencies and cross-border bartering of commodities. The former allows countries to take on a level of “debt” through net imports according to their needs, the latter allows material production to dominate financial constraints.

10s of millions of people dead at the altars of US capitalism

Is this the “period of peace”?

The comments in this thread are prime examples of why Democrats lost the election.

Why the heck would the US government do a 180 on our stance of helping Ukraine after President Trump was elected.

There hasn’t been a 180 degree shift. Under the Biden admin, the Ukrainian government was mass privatising state assets to raise funds for the war. In fact, you can still go to the privatisation website and loot Ukraine with your own hands.

Furthermore, a not insignificant part of the aid is loans (the eu has for instance provided at least one 18 billion loan package, leading to a dramatic increase in ukraine’s external debt. The policy towards Ukraine was never generous.

I don’t think we need to listen to the political opinions of a party (or its base) so incompetent they lost to trump twice.