Ukraine Invasion

[exploited]

[exploited]

[Saz]

[Saz]

[Saz]

[Saz]

Resolved: Canada is the Belarus of North America. Exploited - you will have the first response.

[Kane]

It's pretty obvious to me that the West is increasingly at a very serious inflection point with China. Biden is set to hold a call with Xi tomorrow. The implications are huge and I get the impression Xi still thinks he holds all the cards. Maybe he thinks that because so many western MNCs depend on China for most of their profits that they will serve as the large counterweight against any hefty action should China decide to support Russia? I don't know...but Putin's miscalculation might just be the beginning of a series of issues that lead us down a darker path. If the reports are true then Putin needs assistance asap and China will have decide very soon.

This is it.

[John Galt]

the west likes cheap stuff. of course we like cheap stuff. we like how china has to buy our debt in order to keep selling us cheap stuff. we like all these things. but outside of cheap knock-offs, Xi holds no cards. we don't actually need cheap shit, we can find others. and frankly, with the supply chain issues, there's no time like the present anyway

putin nuremburg-vibing today with a rally in moscow while wearing a turtle neck and a puffy coat like your basic karen and it's just astounding what is going on there. yesterday he was lashing out at traitors who leave the country -- the brain drain is going to set back russia for decades. in fact, the brain drain is the most dangerous part, not for Putin, but for Russia. once Putin is removed (and he has to be for this to be concluded), for Russia to be accepted back into the global community, and have any hope of joining its neighbors in the west, it needs to make serious reforms to its government structure. with the brain drain, they are at high risk of relapse to typical Russian behavior. this cycle will just go on and on.

[Kane]

[John Galt]

it's fair to say war ain't good and then I'm going to follow that up with a however in some circumstances your enemy will make fatal unforced errors by initiating unwinnable wars while the war itself helps you consolidate your allies. this is what is going on here, and yeah Xi might make the same stupid calculation as Putin. all the chinese trolls on the internet might actually believe their china-is-best crap. they all believe this stuff. and it's also this faux-revanchism about Formosa and "their" sea and everything like this, that they are constantly wronged by the rest of the world, that drives all of this. they are simultaneously an up-and-coming nation with a chip on their shoulder, and also the greatest nation that ever was or ever will be. add in an authoritarian state that has no dissent and sends people to concentration camps regularly and we have a recipe for doing something exceedingly dumb like trying to invade taiwan

I mean just think about D-Day or Okinawa. you think they are going to be hauling a port across 100 miles to set it up on the other side like Mulberry? you think they are going to have any form of surprise? taiwan will blot out the sky with missiles when the invasion gets close enough to their shores. i'm not sure they will even get ashore, let alone establish a beachhead, let alone establish a working harbor, let alone make any sort of drive inland. and I mean that