Elerond
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Posts posted by Elerond
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2 hours ago, kanisatha said:
Not so. Gasoline prices here in the US have gone up by 22% in the past two weeks. But I for one do not buy the claim this is all because of the war and the sanctions, which I see as playing only a small role in the price increases. The cost of gas was already going up sharply before the invasion happened, so the real drivers are certain other factors which our government doesn't want to admit to for domestic politics reasons.
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11 hours ago, Gorth said:
That must be why the Saudi and Chinese national debts are outstripping the US and EU countries national debts by so much
of course, debt only matters if you intend to pay your creditors some day
How much money average Chinese person has compared to average US person?
Natural resources have habit to produce money to selected few who own them, where rest of the country benefits only little about them.
Meaning if you take all money that there is to be have from natural resource, that amount needs to be less than the amount of that people get from products that are made from those natural resources because otherwise those products would make loss and their production would end. And then there is capitalistic death wheel, where country that sell natural resources buys the products that were made of those resources, which leads situation where they need to sell amount of natural resources needed for multiple products in order to buy one product.
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35 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:
Because MBS will not do anything that would help Biden, and this action is last ditch effort by UK/US to try and stabiize situation on the Oil markets with now Iran deal dead in the water and Russia situation
But is UK that is suffering because of oil price not USA. And MBS and BoJo have increased UK - Saudi Arabia trade in past couple years, even so much that BoJo intervened in mentioned trade of Newcastle United
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Didn't BoJo help Saudis to take over Newcastle United when Premier League blocked them buying it? So I don't see why he now would have issues with Saudis.
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5 minutes ago, Sarex said:
There is also intentionally supporting corruption and forcing that lower layer to stay low.
yes that increases profit of higher layer
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17 minutes ago, Sarex said:
Can't make this **** up.
Reason is heart of capitalism, every time you add layer in production chain you add layer that makes more money than lower layer.
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2 hours ago, Darkpriest said:
Then why Germany did not stop buying oil and gas from Russia immediatelly, if it is purely consumer driven?
Or maybe ask people, if given a choice, would they prefer a loaf of bread or a 100 USD bill if they are hungry?
Germany is heavily invested on producing their energy with gas and they have driven down their alternatives, like they are still continuing their plan to shut down their nuclear reactors during this year, even though their energy prices have been in increasing several years now.
Building power plants take some time and it cost money, which is why Germany does not want immediately change source of their energy as they have option not to do so. Germany could reverse it decision to shut down nuclear plants and increase production in its coal plants. Remove all limitations from its coal mines, but it does not want because they think they can still do their move to renewable energy in next three decades and use their natural gas as transition time strategy. So they are willing to buy gas from Russia just so that they don't need to do immediate actions that cost money and go against their past decision about their energy production.
But question on who Russian will sell their gas if Germany (and other European countries don't buy it). As they don't have infrastructure to deliver it anywhere else and they ability to build such infrastructure is heavily hindered by hits their economy has taken from sanctions and they don't have domestic production for necessary parts to build such infrastructure.
And if we don't count in struggles they have in delivering gas and oil to elsewhere, there is question of where to sell it. China is willing to buy it but cheaper price than what Europe is currently paying and there is same situation with India. As both of them are looking new sources to make their energy cheaper.
So if Europe doesn't buy gas and oil from Russia, then Russia is in situation where they need to spend billions to build new delivery infrastructure just to get less money they are currently getting.
Considering that EU is producing almost twice as much wheat than it uses, it can easily keep bread and other agricultural foods in reasonable prices, even if they need to move from artificial fertilizers back to natural fertilizers and more sustainable cultivation, and still produce more than needed from current fields. Of course such jumps aren't easy and cost money when done in short order, which is why it looks like that many farmers will not sow all their fields this year, causing jump to crop futures, but that is temporal even in scenario in which EU can't buy any fertilizers from Russia.
Bigger problem about food prices hit to countries that don't produce enough themselves to feed their population and have relied on buying food from Ukraine and Russia. If trade sanctions against Russia last for long time it there will be problems with Russian wheat exports even if they don't have any issue with production, because so much world transport capacity is in hands of countries that have put sanctions on Russia. As wheat in Russian silos does not help people in Africa if there is very limited capacity to transport it to Africa.
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46 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:
I'll ask again, who has more economic power, one who has natural resources and means of production or the one who has capital and relies on imports for its consumption?
'Money' hold value as long as someone else believes they can be exchanged for something material or other value.
But i guess smartest guys in the big banks might be losing some of that perspective. Maybe you should reach out to Zoltan or Jaimie or James and tell them all the information they are missing?
Consumer. They can change their economy much easier than the producer.
There is reason why USA is rich where countries that produce goods and natural resources it use are poor
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3 hours ago, Darkpriest said:
If Morgan is putting pieces like this in their note, you bet the outlook is more grim than that.
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Reserve diversification still likely: Our long-standing view has been that there will be reserve diversification, and we continue to believe that the share of the Chinese yuan in global FX reserves could reach 5-10% by 2030 at the expense of other reserve currencies.
To the extent that SWIFT and reserve asset sanctions levied by other authorities around the world encourage some states to explore alternative payment systems such as China’s CIPS or pursue greater bilateral trade in domestic currencies, recent events are likely to act as an accelerator of a shift to a 'multipolar world.'
But it is not clear that recent actions have undermined the idea of USD as the safest global reserve asset and it may well remain the dominant global currency for some time to come, albeit at slightly lower levels than before.
CIPS has big dollar problem
Largest Chinese export partners
- United States: US$452.6 billion (17.5% of China’s total exports)
- Hong Kong: $272.7 billion (10.5%) (Which largest trading partner after China is USA)
- Japan: $142.6 billion (5.5%) (Which largest trading partner after China is USA)
- Vietnam: $113.8 billion (4.4%) (Which largest trading partner is USA)
- South Korea: $112.5 billion (4.3%) (Which largest trading partner is USA)
- Germany: $86.8 billion (3.4%) (Which largest trading partner is USA)
- Netherlands: $79 billion (3%) (Which largest trading partner is USA)
- United Kingdom: $72.6 billion (2.8%) (Which largest trading partner is USA)
- India: $66.7 billion (2.6%) (Which largest trading partner is USA)
- Taiwan: $60.1 billion (2.3%) (Which largest trading partner after China is USA)
- Singapore: $57.5 billion (2.2%) (Which largest trading partner after China and Hong Kong is USA)
- Malaysia: $56.4 billion (2.2%) (Which largest trading partner after China and Singapore is USA)
- Australia: $53.5 billion (2.1%) (USA is forth largest trading partner)
- Russia: $50.6 billion (2%)
- Thailand: $50.5 billion (2%) (Which largest trading partner is USA)
But luckily USA is not vindictive against countries that try to avoid its rules
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14 hours ago, Zoraptor said:
Under the Elerond Doctrine you can have a great argument for banning Ursula von der Leyen instead for violating the human right to free information. Remember this next time people think I'm anti EU, that suggestion would be the best thing to happen to the organisation since the CDU decided she wasn't a suitable successor to Merkel but knew too much to simply dump.
It is just realism what is current state of affairs, not some ideological pipe dream that people forget as soon as it goes against their own opinions how things should be.
And it is not really EU, but it member states together deciding sanctions as EU does not have such powers even though people/countries always want to credit it for decisions that they made but don't want darken their name with them. Meaning it is not Ursula von der Leyen people should be mad about the RT/Sputnik bans even though she told about them to public. Shooting messenger usually don't lead better policies.
And people now waking up reality that human rights are very conditional when they have voted for anti-human rights politicians in past decade because they don't want refugees in Europe. And politician that oppose sanctions against Russia and Turkey when they censor media and prevent ECHR giving them any sanctions. And politician that who make laws that prevent forbid religious apparel. Politician who for 'economic' reasons oppose building alternates for oil and gas in energy production. And politicians that oppose billionaires hiding their assets, founding shell companies that are owned by fictional people and are part of larger shell company that is also owned by fictional people which is owned even larger shell company and thousands of these shell companies somehow have their addresses in same building. And politician that prevent all regulations for buying and owning estate leading housing prices go sky high so that investors can make money and people be dammed and can always sleep under bridge at least until even that is too expensive for them.
And now people are so surprised that politicians aren't hold back by watered down human rights and principals that they themselves wanted to water down because they protected people they didn't like. People seem to have naive thinking that politicians are guided by higher principalities and morality, and there is no need for people's rights until it is too late.
Bold part is just fact, there is no need to hide your feelings about EU.
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28 minutes ago, 213374U said:
Again, no. "Speech in support for breaking other people's human rights" isn't grounds for censorship. Otherwise they could have banned any number of outlets and voices over the past 20 years that peddled bull**** (actual bull****) in support of frivolous wars all over the world. Also Chinese-affiliated media, Persian Gulf state-affiliated media, not to mention all the voices claiming for suspension of basic rights during the pandemic.
A fundamental principle stops having any use or being meaningful if you just claim "exceptional circumstances!" to ignore it whenever it suits you. Doing that while denying opponents the same is textbook hypocrisy. Either we have a free, open and mature democratic society that can not be seriously confused, contaminated and disrupted by propaganda and fake news, or we do and all the authoritarian garbage pushed by the likes of Xi Jinping and Putin is actually on point. You can't just have both simply because you claim to have the moral high ground.
But it is, which is why Russia and Turkey are able to censor their people so effectively even though they are under European court of human rights. EU has avoided using it ability to censor outlets so far, but now they decided to use tactics perfected by Russia in past two decades against Russia.
Of course it is slippery slope and easily lead more censorship in future, but as now it is accordance of European human right principalities and EU laws.
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5 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:
I know, especially the guy with NLAW should have been at least 1km away from the target
It is quite difficult to shot tank 0.5 km away with NLAW or some other light anti tank weapon.
NLAW's maximum range is 1km and it is effective from 20m-800m.
And it is not like Ukraine has NLAW's to waste, so they most likely take high risk in order to make sure that they destroy their targets instead of waste shots.
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3 hours ago, 213374U said:
No. That may be some edge interpretation of the American 1st Amendment, but not really what free speech is about. Free speech is a guiding principle that applies to everyone who is committed to an open society. You don't have a protected right while on that platform, but that doesn't immediately invalidate the principle itself. It is on the private entity running the platform to decide whether they want to uphold that principle and assume the costs and consequences.
I fully support YouTube's right to nuke RT, but I find the decision unfortunate, the execution ham-fisted, and the reasoning given laughable. They have chosen to remove the entire RT channel, but not everything in there was Russian gov't propaganda. Unless you somehow figure that documentaries about the life in deep Siberia of some 30-something guy that looks like a teenager is pro-war Kremlin tripe. All the while claiming to do so under the "violent content" protection guidelines.
What I don't support is ****ing Ursula von der Leyen deciding for some 450 million people what they can and cannot watch in the privacy of their homes. That is censorship, but after what we've been seeing lately, I'm not at all surprised that seldom anyone seems to have a problem with this.
Considering that message which I answered was "All you "Give me liberty give me death!1" people should be outraged. " , American 1st amendment is the we should look for guidance.
But my interpretation is based on on European and universal human rights.
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights: Freedom of expression
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes
freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.About EU's decision to ban RT and Sputnik, it is one of those difficult questions where multitude human rights are in conflict with each other. EU banned RT and Sputnik for pro war propaganda, as it is seen that people's right for free speech can be limited when said speech is in support for breaking other people human rights in fundamental way (in this case Ukraine people rights given in article 3 in UDoHR and article 2 in ECoHR ).
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1 hour ago, Gorth said:
I do not doubt for a moment YouTube is doing out of the goodness of their heart or anything resembling ethics. It’s a business decision based on what gives the most shareholder value and dividends in the long term. I stand by, that it’s not not the governments job to censor things based on likes and dislikes. If the government is in a state of war, actively participating in a war, maybe different rules apply (seems reasonable), but last time I checked, only Ukraine and Russia are part of the armed conflict
RT is not only medium that youtube doesn't allow on their site. They have moderate their content from beginning based on what they think is good for their platform.
So I am not sure why people now think that youtube censor some media outlet when they have censored millions and millions users and outlets for decades. Is it because they don't publish videos from outlet that has multiple tv channels, web pages and had for some reason been censored by YouTube even though they have broken YouTube rules multiple times which would have lead permanent ban for your normal user
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1 hour ago, ComradeYellow said:
RT has been completely nuked from Youtube. Can't have people consuming to wrong information now, can we?
All you "Give me liberty give me death!1" people should be outraged. Even though YT is a private company, free speech isn't in the agenda of large corporations and are fully in compliance with government agencies. RT is just less hypocritical and doesn't hide the fact that it's government news.
Free speech is about government preventing people expressing their opinions, which includes not publishing messages from the government. So in this case freedom of speech is on side of YT and against RT, which is government owned media and government that owns it prevents people expressing their opinions in multitude of ways.
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11 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
Sarex is right, Belarus would attack if Putin asked and how does Russia attacking them going to change their mind ?
Because they are told that Ukraine attacked them, it is not like they are getting any real information what happened
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50 minutes ago, pmp10 said:
I'm sorry but you are saying that peace talks would lose him face but bankruptcy of the country and resulting military collapse won't.
And another thing while we are on the subject of economy:Ideological wars have tendency to go on even when it would have been reasonable to end them years earlier.
Like for example Vietnam war, Soviet-Afghanistan war.
Super powers continue losing wars for decades even though they have little to nothing to gain.
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57 minutes ago, Gorth said:
Edit3: Tl;dr; Europeans don't necessarily have a "European Identify"
Just bring some refugees from middle east or africa and you find that people very much have "European Identity"
European may treat people from some areas of Europe as ****, but during crisis we see that even worst Europeans are much more preferred than people from elsewhere.
Even the thousands and thousands Russians that currently leave their country and pour in EU don't cause any short demands to close borders like couple thousand refugees from Syria in Belarus caused.
But in Europe it is important to know that people identify first by their nationality and then by their bloc/s and then as European.
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36 minutes ago, Gorth said:
Whichever one, Crimea was never part of Ukraine post 1991. Only because it got invaded and direct Ukrainian military control imposed.
On 6 May 1992 Parliament of Republic of Crimea former Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic changed constitution of Crimea so that it says that Crimea is part of Ukraine.
In 1994 Russia, UK and USA and recognized Crimea legally part of Ukraine in Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances which they signed.
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Things have changed from 60s, in way that both USA and Russia have strategic nuclear weapons that can be shot from anywhere in world to anywhere in world. So close proximity of military bases and nuclear weapons has quite little impact to MAD
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3 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:
That's why you have a negotiation table. You see the opening hand, now you have to work out the deals for give and take... and land somewhere in the middle with some parts and capitulate on the others.
I fear that Russian offer doesn't have room for negotiations, but if Ukraine refuses they increase amount they bomb civilian targets until Ukraine submits to their demands, as Russia knows that no one is coming to help Ukraine.
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12 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:
Do we know what it means exactly? The devil is in the details. If it is like the current Finland 'neutral' status or it will end up like one or Japan's defense force, I do not thinknUA would have to worry too much, and again, in case of sucha build up again, I would expect NATO in the Europe to be more ready with more equipment at the ready to be passed on to Ukraine
It means that there can't be any armed forces in the country. Similar situation as in Finland's autonomic territory Åland/Ahvenanmaa, which Russia still supervises
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1 minute ago, Darkpriest said:
That part I have not seen, if so, then this would be a condition to have russians remove and give them all else.
Also, why it is important for EU and food production, which utlizies gas for heating on sheltered food production
Russia needs to agree all deals Ukraine makes to ensure that they don't join any bloc
Ukraine Conflict - Drei Kameraden
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
Oil price dropping like stone because Chinese economy is predicted to crash because of Ukraine war (@Darkpriest style reading of news
)
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/mar/14/uk-petrol-prices-diesel-experts-tell-mps-russia-ukraine