chimera wrote on May 25^th, 2025 at 1:01pm:


Xi has no interest in conquering Ukraine; and would welcome a change to UNSC rules - provided your hysterical Western condemnation of 'common prosperity' was rejected by the UN, for the 'individual rights' delusions it is based on. 

Under the present system,  the only "rights" which count are Trump's, hence he is conducting an economic war on everyone.

Deplorable;  let's see if he survives the midterms, after disappointing his working-class  MAGA supporters.

'The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) dispatched a detachment to Egypt for joint training with the air force of one of China’s key strategic partners in Africa..The advancement is largely attributed to the indigenously developed BeiDou satellite navigation system, which has enabled the PLAAF to transition toward a strategic air force capable of launching strikes across the globe,'

https://thediplomat.com/2025/05/what-a-china-egypt-military-training-reveals-abo...

Harmony with Beijing's law will bring prosperity not only for China but for Han, CCP, Shanghai and all developing cities of PLA.

Jasin wrote on May 25^th, 2025 at 12:11pm:


The funny thing is, if Biden had said that, Trump would have snatched the gun and shot himself in the head only to prove, even only to himself, that he's better than Biden.

That is how easily manipulated Trump is, as we're seeing on the world stage.

chimera wrote on May 25^th, 2025 at 6:43pm:


So China has friends around the globe, while the US is surrounding China with military bases.

Obviously the largest economy in the world, which China will be in the next decade, needs to be able to  defend itself from the US hegemon bully.

Carry on. 

I maintain today's China is not interested in global hegemony, unlike the US which believes  its version of 'freedom' (based on individual self-interest)  is what eveyone wants.

Everyone doesn't want that kind of "freedom"; in the US itself half the population are living paycheck to paycheck (or worse) - hardly "freedom", while the developing world has observed the fastest rate of poverty reduction in history in China.

First 34% of Russian bombers destroyed and now the bridge is damaged:


https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/03/europe/ukraine-crimea-bridge-russia-underwate...




CNN
—
Ukraine said on Tuesday that it had hit the bridge connecting Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula with explosives planted underwater, in its third attack on the vital supply line for Moscow’s forces since the full-scale war began in 2022.

Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said on Telegram that its agents had mined the piers of the road and rail Crimean Bridge, also called the Kerch Bridge, and detonated the first explosive at 4.44 a.m. Tuesday. The whole operation took several months, it added.

The agency said it had used 1,100 kilograms of explosives which “severely damaged” the underwater pillars supporting the bridge.

Traffic on the bridge was suspended early Tuesday morning, then again mid-afternoon, before resuming shortly before 6 p.m. local time. Although the scale of the damage was not immediately clear, Tuesday’s attack is the latest example of the SBU’s attempts to blindside Moscow and demonstrate that there are costs to continuing its war.


VIDEO

https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/loops/stellar/prod/21673975-cen-1.mp4

Meanwhile, Z is announcing at least another year of meat-grinding carnage. From The Spectator:

The Ukrainian president said this week he hopes the war will end by next June. Not this summer. Not this year. But in 12 months' time. Sanctions, he believes, and four years of gruesome war will finally hit the Russian economy, pushing it into a deep budget deficit. The IMF's latest forecast sort of backs this up. Russia's GDP growth is set to slow to 0.9 per cent next year, down from over 4 per cent in 2024.

So Russia's economy is set to sink to GDP growth of a mere 0.9 per cent? I thought the Russian economy had collapsed three years ago under the weight of what Biden called the toughest sanctions regime ever imposed. If that led to four per cent growth last year, the developed world should be lining up and begging to be given the Putin treatment. Annual GDP growth for 2024:

United States 2.8%

Canada 1.6%;

United Kingdom 1.1%

France 1.07%

Italy 0.7%

Germany -0.2%

So good luck banking on Russian economic collapse. As Christopher Caldwell observes en passant:

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Joe Biden got another lesson in American decline. He attempted to bring the Russian economy to its knees with sanctions and boycotts, only to discover that the United States and Europe, even together, lacked the leverage to compel China and India to join them. 'Backward' Russia has manufactured more shells in the course of the war than the advanced West.

We went into rather more detail about this a year ago, via some perceptive remarks by Viktor Orbán on the reality that the Ukraine war had revealed. Three years ago, we were told that the world was united against Putin's aggression. In fact, the world is united against the west, and very much on Putin's side. The Kremlin body-double is wanted by the "International" Criminal Court, but, when he hosts a summit on Russian soil, China, India, Brazil, Iran, the Arabs, South Africa et al are happy to fly in for the group photo. So the Ukraine war has accelerated what Mr Caldwell calls "American decline", and the rise of the post-western world: The rest of the planet concluded over three years ago that it was not in their interest to permit Putin to lose. If Lindsey Graham, Ms Nuland and the others panting for World War Three actually get it, China, India and the rest will likewise conclude that it is not in their interest to permit America to win.

Ukraine cannot win this war for reasons that have nothing to do with Russian troops, Nato weapons, Victoria Nuland's blood lust or Macron's Pullman-car cocaine. Ukraine cannot win because there are now too few Ukrainians either to triumph on the battlefield or to rebuild the country after victory - and not just because all the fighting-age male models would rather firebomb Keir Starmer's homes than Russian tanks. Ukraine's existential crisis is not a sudden influx of Russians but a huge lack of Ukrainians.

In the three decades between the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the start of the war, Ukraine's population declined from 52 million to 35 million: that's a third smaller. A total fertility rate of 2.1 births per couple is necessary to keep your population not growing but merely stable. A TFR of 1.3 births is what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility, from which no society has ever recovered: a lot of European nations have crossed that line in recent years. Yet, according to a report from the Ministry of Justice, Ukraine has halved that "lowest-low" threshold, with a fertility rate of 0.7 in 2023 headed for 0.6 in 2024.

This war is a disguised massive storewide-clearance sale of a dying country's remaining human capital. It will be the last war Ukraine ever fights. Other than Russia, which has demographic challenges not quite as severe, Ukraine is the largest country in Europe. Poland is half the size but with a bigger population; France is a little smaller but with more than twice as many people.

War till next June? What for? Even if Putin were to surrender everything he's taken, they have no Ukrainians to put in those towns. In the end, it's all demography.

https://www.steynonline.com/15360/war-what-for

SerialBrain9 wrote on Jun 6^th, 2025 at 12:43pm:



It's bad:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/05/europe/russia-launches-retaliatory-strike-on-...




By Victoria Butenko and Michael Rios, CNN

3 minute read

Updated 9:43 PM EDT, Thu June 5, 2025


Russia launched drones and ballistic missiles at multiple targets across Ukraine, Kyiv authorities said on Friday, with officials reporting residential areas of the capital had been hit and at least three people wounded.

Fires caused by falling debris and drone strikes were reported in buildings across Kyiv, as Ukraine attempted to repel the Russian attack, the Head of Kyiv City Military Administration Tymur Tkachenko said. A CNN producer in the Kyiv region reported hearing at least two explosions.

Tkachenko accused Russia of hitting residential areas with the drone attack, saying a high-rise building the the Solomyansky district of Kyiv was damaged.

Ukraine is hit by nightly barrages of Russian drones and missiles. It was unclear whether the nighttime assault was the retaliatory strike promised by President Vladimir Putin following Ukraine’s daring raids on airfields deep inside Russia.

Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko also reported fires in the districts of Holosiivskyi and Darnytskyi of the Ukrainian capital and said that three people had been wounded.

Ukrainian air defense units have been activated in the Obolon area of Kyiv, Klitschko said on Telegram early Friday morning local time.

“The attack on the capital continues. Stay in shelters!” the mayor said.