Why not? Russia never denied the accusations only repeated that the matter of troops from partner nations like the DPRK was an internal matter. After all Ukraine had troops from US, UK, France, Poland, Germany, all kinds of western paid mercenaries, as well as special forces soldiers in or out of uniform but acting under orders operating equipment, etc operating there and that was considered fair by the west and not a sign of them engaging in a direct war against Russia so this is more than fair on the part of Russia and the DPRK.

We know for a fact DPRK troops were in Russia and training with Russians and have for many months. We know Russia and the DPRK signed a mutual defense treaty and the DPRK decided to honor it in the present conflict (a wise move in that it would leave Russia in a tougher spot after the DPRK helped them if Russia were to balk if the US attacked the DPRK in future).

Many of us thought it likely they were likely at least deployed in rear defensive lines to 1) Get them close to the action and get experience and knowledge and 2) free up Russian troops to engage in other operations. The contention from the Ukrainian Nazi propagandists was however that you know some massive number of them were engaged in offensive combat operations and in Ukraine because obviously 90% of the Russian population had been killed by the Ghost of Kiev or whatever.

It’s interesting to get information that they did get involved in the front. Most likely information like how many were deployed isn’t something Russia or the DPRK are eager to reveal, it might be revealed in vague terms in the coming years like someone letting slip it was more than or less than x. However how many casualties is likely to never be revealed though I’d guess given their area of operation in Russia with heavy support they probably didn’t take that many.

Hopefully this knowledge saves lives by further deterring the west from attacking the DPRK, I believe they’re growing domestic drone production as a result of this conflict because of the clear role those will play in future.

Trueanon also did one or two episodes on it.

I think it would be a mistake to view China as isolated in this.

In -ALL- of this? No. In this specific situation where everyone else has already slipped the tariffs? Yes. Absolutely they’re standing on their own basically in the immediate moment.

As to US soft power I think Trump was already the sign that they’ve given up on that. If they hadn’t they wouldn’t be gutting all the soft power operations with DOGE and doing so much damage to image with threats to annex Greenland and Canada. I think the die has been cast there that hard imperialism is the way forward, cold war 1.0 playbook basically. I think Ukraine was a wake-up call because US propaganda didn’t pull in the global south, it just plain failed outside of Europe and US vassals in Asia. What soft power they retain will be aimed at “traditional values” crowd as in the cold war, running up red-scare stuff about Chinese commies gay marrying you against your will and things like that.

America is very much in a do or die situation and we know it, they know it, China knows it. They’re trying to undergo a transformation which will either succeed in prolonging their grip on power or hastening their demise, the way to delay and hedge against either was to continue the old path but that led to certain doom while this they feel gives them a chance.

So many people here who are so uncharitable towards me…

Please point out where I said “this plan is brilliant and guaranteed to succeed and socialism and China are doomed and we’re fucked and Trump and the US are the most masterful planners to ever exist” or anything along those lines which everyone seems to assume I’ve said based on the hostile response.

Not a one of you has pointed out how this is impossible for the US planners to be thinking this or acting along these lines. It’s no more ridiculous than assuming it’s all just Trump throwing a tantrum or doing greedy things which to me is true absurdity when it’s clear there are bipartisan plans. It’s buying into the liberal lie that Trump is some aberration breaking things which were it the case Biden would have reversed a lot of his decisions instead of doubling down.

We shall see won’t we? I wouldn’t discount dollar hegemony and control of things like SWIFT given the replacements are years away still. For that matter I wouldn’t discount how Europeans and a few other vassals may be happy or coerced into offering themselves as firewood for the US empire to keep it going.

Notice to the downvoters: I never said this would work I just said I think this is their thinking. But apparently even the idea that the reactionaries have some sort of cogent thought or plan in their head is anathema to far too many people here. I’m sorry to say there is a certain circle-jerk far too many in the western left adopt in their cheerleading of China to ride in and destroy the west for them that China’s victory is inevitable and that they are invincible.

This is just phase 2.

IF Trump was rattled by China’s retaliation he would include them in the pause and pretend it had nothing to do with them, he’d attempt to play it off as a global thing so as to not given undue impression of power on China’s part. That he hasn’t tells you he doesn’t care.

The point of this was never hurting say India. It was always about China, other nations were included to disguise this fact and to shake them down because why not. Also to pressure them to bring them into the fold for the next phase.

But the fact that China’s tariffs were increased, not removed tells you all you need to know. Namely they are absolutely dead serious about decoupling from China.

India is not going to help China, they’re a reactionary/fascist nation actively trying to stab China in the back and take their industry and courting the US for a trade deal which the US will give them in exchange for helping move important (iphone, etc) manufacturing from China to India for the US. China is courting them anyways in public but it won’t work. The only real allies China has in this are likely to be Vietnam (maybe, US is trying to peel them from China and stoke division and these moves were going to badly hurt Vietnam but were pulled back), DPRK, Russia. The US likes those odds. The US feels it can deal with an isolated bloc of those countries and Trump feels he can maybe peel Russia away with time.

China made a call and Trump seized on them trying to stand fast and rally the world to them to fight the US by giving everyone else a reprieve and thus no reason to stand with China while he leaves them isolated and alone. They can’t back down now so in a way I think Trump has them where he wants them. Namely standing alone, with the rest of the world negotiating with the US on terms which will doubtless include measures to pull them into the US orbit and away from China’s orbit in exchange for tariff relief.

I don’t disagree with China’s call but they may have walked right into a trap of certain intent and design by the US. To be fair they didn’t have any great choices. If they just bowed their heads and pleaded on their knees things would also be bad for them. I’ve heard that Trump admin has been refusing meetings with envoys and so Trump and co are lying about China not trying to negotiate, it’s just a lie they’re pushing while they refuse to listen or treat with China so they can justify all of this and cast China as the belligerent aggressor who doesn’t want to be fair.

It’s about isolating China. It’s about creating economic interests and incentives that isolate China and I think its working at least at this stage. The pause will cause most countries to come and negotiate and most will be given relief for token concessions which Trump will trumpet as big deals and big wins.

The US may indeed be intent on devaluing their currency to make exports competitive but as part of this they have to isolate China, they have to smash Chinese industry and competitiveness and look what we have? China standing alone against the US, calling out to other nations who even now slink away from it leaving it alone because no one else wants this fight, they all want to take the out because the US is still too strong.

China needs to use what strength it has to really hit the US.

Though I worry it doesn’t matter. I worry they’ve built into their plans a hope that tariffs can continue to spiral out of control, that Chinese goods become unaffordable, that the economy crashes, that supply chains are forcibly rerouted and there are years of shortages but that they achieve a quick, fast, if painful decoupling from China leaving them free to isolate, sanction, blockade, and attempt to destroy China using their navy, their control of global finances to sanction and make trade with China for third party nations impossibly expensive or painful, and so on and use this to crush Chinese industry and economy, to break up the belt and road, to re-enslave the global south that China was trying to free with better loan and development terms. If that’s the case and capital doesn’t revolt and I think there’s a very good chance it doesn’t as at least tech capital seems to be standing with Trump and can always be bought off with specific exemptions for say Apple to import x amount per year not subject to tariffs then China has a hell of a fight ahead of them.

And no rerouting goods through India for finishing for lower tariffs isn’t a long-term solution as at that point the capitalists begin to ask why they’re paying those higher Chinese wages and then a cut for the Indian finishers when they could just move production itself to India as Apple has been doing to a degree.

The way for China to defeat the US and specifically Trump’s anti-Nixon shock was to rally other countries to it and create their own system based on common interests of resisting US tariffs and they seemed to be making moves to attempt this, but now no other major country on earth (save maybe Russia which is subject to sanctions instead of tariffs) has that common interest, the US quickly peeled them away by offering everyone else a way out but keeping China in the cross-hairs after China had already escalated leaving China alone locked in a loop of escalation with the US with other countries looking on but having no interest in challenging the US while it’s still this strong.

They’re a cabal of pedophiles. And also what you said and they took Anakin because of that but usually take all kinds of kids under the guise of training them. CTH talked about this on and off throughout their 3 riff tracks for the movies.

John Birch society perhaps. They were pushing it by the 60s and Kubrick made fun of them in Dr Strangelove.

Nuclear umbrella’s are interesting to talk about but I think they’re a bluff against any kind of peer power. Washington is not going to get LA, NYC, Dallas, Denver, San Diego, Boston, Washington DC and a hundred other American cities wiped off the map to avenge say Seoul getting nuked or Berlin getting nuked by the DPRK or Russia respectively.

Because nuclear war is hard to do in a limited way between nuclear powers. A nuclear power can nuke a non-nuclear power in a limited way because the non-nuclear power cannot respond with any nukes let alone a full barrage that completely destroys them. But once you hit back at a nuclear power that can wipe you off the map the doctrine states any limited strike is only an attempt to blind you and suppress your response before a full strike, you can’t know what is or isn’t coming in terms of more so protocol is launch a full response and at that point both parties are destroyed and those do no good to the umbrella party which previously was still intact and spared and could undertake other choices against the attacking party.

Likewise I’d have doubts if China extended a nuclear umbrella to say Iran that they’d be willing to hit the US with a nuke because the US hit Iran.

Certainly the US has a lot more to lose as does France in hitting back a big nuclear power than say China who is still a rising power, still does not have any kind of vassals, whose only interests in security are immediate neighbors like Vietnam/DPRK that they’ve assisted in the past militarily. But even there I think it would be a hard choice to make watching say the DPRK in flames but knowing if you hit the Americans back that Beijing and every other city in China will be in flames as well.

The US might buy such an umbrella for the DPRK and say Vietnam from China and not hit them but they wouldn’t buy it for say Pakistan I think because of the dissimilarities there. Likewise the US probably buys Russia’s threats to defend Belarus because well they’ve backed them into a corner, they know they’ve backed them into a corner and they have almost nothing left. The US on the other hand and France can stand to lose a lot, they have a lot of countries and/or ocean between them and enemy states like Russia/China.

I think it’s easier to turn the other cheek unless you really think you can suppress the enemy’s response.

I’m worried that they arrested this guy and his wife and disappeared them to a torture facility under the notion that they’re spies because they chatted with colleagues about work topics while in China thus giving away valuable 'murican knowledge and advantage to the dastardly Chinese. Either that or they got lucky and skipped the country first, hope it’s that one but I’d expect they’d be saying something.

Well in a way they would be but the US wants to be the one to actually field the weapons. The zionists have been saying they might resort to using their nukes and Trump and the US given the strategic situation are saying, “no, if they’re used, we’ll use them to assert our power and dominance and deterrence and enhance our credibility as an empire that can still fuck you up if you don’t obey us”. Plus the US doing it vs the zionist entity means less blow-back for the zionist entity directly. If the zionists do it, with the current climate against them through much of the world a BDS movement might build to a fever-pitch amid calls to completely isolate the outlaw state which would be a headache at least for the US requiring them to pour more resources in. But if the US does it, well the US is vital to world trade and though they’re pissing people off with tariffs presently it’s not practical to attempt to strangle them from a consumer point of view via buying choices and pressure campaigns given their size, reach, financial, economic, cultural, etc power.

And best of all with the US they have Trump in power who has been sold as an aberration. They can simply push him out or he’ll die and then they paint his actions as too far, as being those of a dictator and that the US has changed™ and was like that then but has learned and is now better and a perfect angel.

Mostly the US fears its vassals nuclearizing and gaining independence from them that way. Very few strategic enemy countries to the US don’t already have nuclear weapons already so the risk of proliferation is not really seen as a problem in using nukes. Vietnam still isn’t likely to pursue a nuclear weapons program but even if they were they’re important enough to China that the US couldn’t invade without Chinese retaliation anyways. Other than that who is there? The AES alliance in Africa might have the raw uranium to make nuclear weapons possible but they lack the industry, the science, the knowledge, and the base to put them together and build ICBMs anywhere near fast enough to be able to create a credible deterrent (though they are close enough to Europe they could get by with shorter range missiles able to hit 2500miles away in say Berlin or Paris and use that to threaten the US into backing off, still even that would take a lot of work).

Importantly using nuclear weapons in defense of a vassal would the US may think re-assure other vassals like occupied Korea who have been murmuring about acquiring their own nukes, would re-assure them not to try and do that but that the US will use nukes in their favor if the time comes (hint: it won’t as long as the DPRK can hit numerous cities in the US mainland in retaliation which it should be able to soon). So it would be a credibility building maneuver after Ukraine’s humiliation.

I’ve often wondered and worried about this.

It’s easy to be anti using nukes against another nuclear power that can completely destroy your country in retaliation (e.g. Russia), it’s not so common when the enemy is a non-nuclear power who your simulations show would defeat you in a conventional war leaving you humiliated, weakened, and looking both for the whole world.

In such a situation it’s obvious the option there if you’d lose in a conventional war is to deploy nuclear weapons. When you’re the US you already have far too many of them for deterrence needs, they’re decaying, after Ukraine your credibility is in question and nuking a smaller power that can’t do the same back would send a message to the whole world: it doesn’t matter if we can’t defeat you conventionally, if our interests demand it we will obliterate you using nuclear weapons to maintain our empire and hegemony.

It won’t cow China or Russia, it will cause them to build up even more capabilities and become alarmed but both already are to some degree by US saber rattling and actions in Ukraine as well as talk of actions in the SCS. But it doesn’t have to, the point then is it cows smaller regional powers to not dare to challenge the US, to know there is ZERO HOPE, (hope has been killed so to speak) of resisting if the US deems there to be a strong enough imperative. That you either bend over and submit at our sanctions or you pray you’re not important enough to war over because if the US goes to war and you’re important enough and you start defeating them, they’ll just nuke you. That’s the message it sends. That you cannot win against the US unless you’re a nuclear power and to nuclear powers it signals the US may be run by mad men who would even use nukes against them knowing they might be destroyed in the counter-attack.

For some countries becoming a nuclear power is possible but not for most. It’s a time-consuming and expensive process to not only develop multiple, dozens of nuclear warheads but the capability to deliver them as payback intercontinentally to the US via ICBMs. It’s also a process you cannot hide and once the US knows they might be tempted to nuke you to stop you from getting any further to say nothing of sanctioning and blockading you as they have done with the DPRK.

The thing is, what was stopping this from being done before was the US image, the propaganda narrative of this liberal/progressive shining city on a hill type place contrasted against “authoritarian” “dictatorships” of bad-places™, that it would look incredibly bad. But with Trump they’ve made a turn, no more of that, no more DEI, traditional values, traditional values and so on. Naked strength. And this I think is tied back to Ukraine, which was the moment they learned all that work, all that propaganda wasn’t enough to get the global south on their side at which point some faction (which I believe has power now) said basically well we need to revert to the old ways of hard power and intimidation and open gangsterism then, hence allowing Musk to tear down the edifices of this old way of trying to shape the world, to bulldoze them in favor of this new policy, this new naked oppression and power.

More than that I’m afraid that Russia’s constant threats of having to use their nuclear weapons against the west if they got directly involved, of outlining a policy where if a defeat is imminent they reserve the right to use them IF such a defeat was in a war of strategic importance necessary to the survival of the nation. I’m afraid their successful usage of this has only emboldened US planners to think and plan along similar lines and logic, the precedent is there so to speak for them. For the US defeat in any war against an important regional power like Iran would be a danger to the survival of their nation-empire so under this rational they could easily justify it using this kind of thinking. The west will never miss a beat to weaponize the desperation of a weaker country (Russia compared to US+NATO) to advance the conversation, the window of the acceptable in their interests.

And it makes sense from a cold calculating point of view. Most countries are not nuclear powers, those that are will not intervene and get in a direct war with the US to protect non-nuclear power countries who are not immediate neighbors and vital to security and interests (e.g. Vietnam and Korea for China, Ukraine, Georgia for Russia).

I honestly worry about Yemen, compared to Iran that at least has some strategic importance to Russia and some economic importance to China in the B&R, who would be outraged on any grounds but moral ones if Yemen was nuked by the US or the zionists? Not many major powers and it would be awfully tempting to make an example of them, perhaps even to use it to send a message to Iran before hitting them with nuclear weapons that they’re serious and will use them.

Fact is also the US and the zionist entity smell blood in the water. Iran has been routed, they are on the back foot and have suffered major strategic defeats. Their influence and power is at a multi-decade low. They’ve lost Syria and Assad, Hezbollah is dazed and somewhat weakened with Lebanon pounded and their supply lines through Syria now cut meaning Hezbollah is weakened after being decapitated. Hamas can’t be in a great position, there’s a question I’d say of how much ammunition and weaponry they may still have for a prolonged war and sad as it is to say the zionist entity has basically won the battle, they’ve won US support to take and colonize parts of Gaza, they’ve destroyed large parts of it, they’re trying to squeeze out the remaining Palestinians and I have doubts the Sunni Muslims in the region actually would do anything but some protests and flag burnings, nothing to topple the US regimes that rule them or cause the US to think twice in other words.

So the US wants to inflict the final blow on Iran and lock down hegemony and control of west Asia as part of an ability to cut off the belt and road, to encircle and blockade China as well as control that vital crossroads. Trump would accept their fealty, their subjugation to the US, their renunciation of ties with China, their pledge of obedience to the zionist entity, their in other words removal from the chessboard as an impediment to US control of the region.

Hmmm. Will we see the US invade to claim the canal anyways? Or perhaps just lean on Panama to invalidate the contracts and seize the ports to sell to the US? Guess we’ll find out how much bite the US has left.

There’s also this:

The person added the development does not mean the deal has been called off, and April 2 is not a hard deadline. The second source, who also declined to be identified for similar reasons, said talks are still very much underway.

Also apparently these are only 2 of 5 ports around the canal. It’s interesting, the way the US propaganda rags phrase it China has exclusive control of both ends of the canal because of these ports.

Probably the company tries to do something to ease the pressure at home and give the US something but what that might be I don’t know. I could see them trying to do something like selling some sort of stake but not outright control to Blackrock, something that can be presented as not capitulating in China but as a successful raid and seizing of value and a veto over port use by the US or something. I don’t see the US backing down on this and when push comes to shove they can just use sanctions to pressure the company.

This is just the usual Russia pokes and prods the zionist entity’s local ambassador and they issue a condemnation because they want good relations with Russia. Meanwhile the main entity itself, its government with the borders of its colonization is silent. This has been going on for several years now. The main entity refuses to condemn because well they like Nazis and there’s no benefit to them.

It’s definitely a little upsetting in that I’d like such things preserved for evidence for any eventual proceedings long down the line in the far future but not surprising I suppose and part of me assumed most such evidence would indeed be destroyed. Funny how the USSR didn’t destroy its records nor did GDR when they fell. Even the Nazis failed to destroy most of their documentation. The reasons being I suppose bureaucratic insulation, layers and layers of it foiling most normal attempts and completeness but they’re being I assume quite thorough here by just bulldozing the whole structure down.

Lol he’s really trying to go there. I doubt they (SCOTUS) let him do it though because Biden was senile and there might be genuine argument his staffers and family were making these calls there is a chance they try and do a one-time only exemption just so Trump can be petty.

American farmers are going to get screwed.

I keep on wondering if this is all part of some grander plan rather than just haphazard ill management and ignorance. I have to assume the bourgeoisie have a plan. It’s all good and fun to imagine they’re all fail-sons running around like chickens with their heads cut off but I think there has to be something. It might be ridiculous but I’m going to be subject to it.

What if it’s a good thing that they get screwed in eyes of the bourgeoisie? Just means more assets that can be bought up by the bourgeoisie to have more direct control and levers over things like food to manipulate prices, availability, to wield power of punishment and reward, to starve or flood an area with abundance. Any of the larger companies can either weather the storm or demand government bail-outs.

Trump and his backers may think they can starve the world as a form of soft power, that they can just inflict famine on those uppity Arabs and kill them off or cull their numbers at least. Bill Gates is obsessed with population control. The climate change hell is coming and with it lots of refugees, what if you were a bourgeoisie and therefore amoral and wanted to thin out the herd of refugees that would soon hit your borders or those of your outposts and climate fortress partners? You might try starving them, cutting medical supplies, hoping for plagues to ravage them and thin their numbers and discipline them to agree to whatever you want in exchange for resumption of aid conditioned on doing exactly what the US demands in writing.

I think it’s just part of a shifting to a strategy of hard imperialism and as usual this kind of transition will hit the domestic proletariat of the imperial core hard as well but the fact is the world was slipping from their grasp.

Here’s a big lesson that the imperialists and bourgeoisie may have learned and we don’t realize they learned it: their propaganda apparatus wasn’t all powerful, it failed in Ukraine when it comes to those in the global south and this may be a re-assessment that it’s therefore not fit to task and must be completely restructured and how better to do so than with their move to no longer appeal as this beacon of “progressive values” to speak to minorities that broadly speaking had consensus for decades but instead to sell themselves as Russia does as a bastion of “traditional values” against “woke” which will be cast as China. China is woke, woke is China, communism, communism, communism! China wants to take your “traditional values”. China wants to gay marry you, China has trans rights, etc, etc, etc. This plays pretty well in parts of the world the US is competing against Russia in such as Africa and well much of the developing world including religious Latin America. All these places full of people who can be whipped up with propaganda against gay and trans people and appealed to embrace a kind of traditional values. Hilariously this could be just imitation of Russia rather than some well-thought out restructuring as part of a grander ideological project I suppose but the effect is basically the same either way.

But they have been speaking in media for some time too as China and the US being in a “grand battle of civilizations” with the US cast by these reactionaries like Thiel and others as this “traditional values Christian civilization which created the modern world and all is good within it” against the “woke” (stand-in for communist and will be used interchangeably) China. They hope to use this I think to get people whose material interests are not with the US to align with it anyways against China, to legitimize strong-men and dictators they plan to place to disrupt and displace Chinese influence and trade.

Woke war criminal

Woke

WTF. At this point it doesn’t even mean anything, woke is just an angry slur divorced even from the culture war pro-bigotry resentment that spurred them to use it hatefully in the first place in a forced appropriation of progressive terminology.

I expect Trump will try and get concessions on at least one of those from Putin and I would not be surprised if Putin ultimately agrees on something in exchange for US support in doing regime change in Ukraine so Russia doesn’t have to push its military force all the way to the far west of the country and try and deal with dismantling the whole thing itself. No NATO is too important to give up. No NATO peacekeepers the same (at least in any meaningful number). That leaves the options of Trump demanding and getting something like denazification not being completed though they are demilitarized in exchange Russia gets the 4 Donbass regions and Crimea recognized and the rest of Ukraine becomes a rump state of extremely angry nationalists possibly under patrol by a UN mandate peacekeeping force instead of NATO which the west will spin as them stopping Russia from taking all of Ukraine.

I admit it’s possible that Russia gets all its objectives but I have the feeling Putin would rather not fight Ukraine fall of Berlin style where the west supplies them to fight to the last Ukrainian and keeps the sanctions on and in order to get sanctions relief and international recognition for the territorial reality I expect Putin will be flexible in some way to allow the west some amount of cope-laden face-saving. Ukraine is going to get fucked over hard by western capitalists of course and I expect that any deal will include respecting their grabs of resources and possibly striking discount deals on minerals and such from the new Russian regions under decade+ contracts at very favorable terms for the west or something like that.