xiaohongshu

Not marmite but I’ll answer nonetheless.

Modern air defense systems like S-300s can absolutely hit those aircrafts even at their maximum altitude, however if they have been suppressed or neutralized, the short range air defenses and AAs can still operate but they won’t be able to hit the higher targets.

In Ukraine, the Ukrainian pilots had to fly their planes at barely above ground altitude to avoid radar detection because they could not eliminate the Russian air defense network, but that also meant that those planes have to fly closer to their targets to release their payloads, and made vulnerable to short range/portable air defenses like MANPADS.

So, if Iran wants to hit Israeli jets, or deny air superiority entirely, they need to have a more robust networked long-range air defense systems complemented by a diverse range of medium and short range defenses to maximize coverage. This is how Russia has been able to keep out NATO air forces, not surprising considering that Russia is the global leader in air defense systems.

John “I used to live in Russia so I know a lot about Russia” Helmer came in with the hot sauce yesterday lol:

CW: an inappropriate word insinuating SA censored

“So what you see is obvious,” says a well-informed Moscow source. “This is not a Sino-Russian alignment but a US-Russian alignment with the Chinese claiming to join the troika. The message to Trump is very clear — we [Putin] want to make deal; we want sanctions lifted; we want our airline flights and Boeings back; we are ready for compromises. Look what we have done! We have been good boys, haven’t we, in Syria? We have made no new troubles in Libya. We have not made trouble in Venezuela. We are only focused on fighting in our front yard. We accept that you [Trump] are the hegemon. We’ll complain about it, but we won’t fight to make you weaker. Your strength, dear Uncle Sam, is our economic survival. It’s fine that you r**e a few small boys every once in a while, but we are still being good boys, aren’t we? This is the reality. And the main media are saying this now — Beijing has abandoned Teheran. Moscow has abandoned Teheran. I add that Teheran has abandoned Iran with too little and too late, so what’s left to fight? For us, it’s Ukraine.”

lmao. I usually take Helmer with a grain of salt but if this is true I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

Trump is going to win the Nobel Peace Prize for the next 4 years.

It is illegal but enforcement is very lax, because of the way the revenue structure works in China.

Value-added tax forms the major tax base of both the central and local governments, and so the economy is already predisposed to be reliant on those companies to generate as much revenue as they can. Strict enforcement means lower output, less revenues and less tax revenues for the governments to spend on public utilities. That’s not the only reason though and we can write an entire essay on it.

If China wants to stop this behavior, then a complete revamp of its fiscal and monetary systems will be needed.

Ironically, it is the foreign companies like Apple and Tesla that are most compliant to Chinese regulations and give the best salary and benefits, because they don’t want to infringe on Chinese labor laws and risk having their access to the Chinese market revoked. On the other hand, Huawei, the darling of Hexbear, is well known for giving zero day of annual paid leave. ZERO.

That’s the cost of getting cheap goods.

The US has stopped developing its uranium extraction industry following the Lisbon Protocol because Russia can supply tons of cheap uranium by dismantling their huge stockpile of nuclear warheads.

As a result, even with the Russia-Ukraine war going on and unprecedented Western sanctions against Russia, the US still continues to import uranium from Russia!

Having said that, I don’t think there will ever be a hot war with China. The post-1991 US military industrial complex is all about grifting and profit. The US is not under threat as long as it has nukes.

And the wars it sponsored are more about creating chaos and destabilization to reshape regional politics and economy to its interests rather than conquering land. And having an advanced enemy like during the Soviet times means trillions of dollars more funding for the military industrial complex and completes the loop of perpetual grifting for the defense contractors.

This guy talks a lot about Petrodollar nonsense and how China’s going to create their own dollar-denominated financial system to kill the US dollar lol. I don’t even know how these people can be taken seriously, but apparently it is quite easy to gather a following on Youtube and social media if you say what people want to hear.

The economics, that is, the distribution of material goods, of human societies have always been tied to the tribal, societal and communal aspects, whether it was in primitive hunter-gatherers tribes, early agricultural civilizations, the slave economy of the ancient societies, or the feudal system during the Medieval period. There has always been a human component rooted in the sociopolitical and economic arrangements even among class societies.

The bourgeois revolution of the 18th century was a watershed moment that completely transformed human societies beyond all recognition and severed this crucial link between a society and its economy. Bourgeois capitalism transcends and repudiates the human relationships that have embedded within the societal framework for thousands of years, in pursuit of endless accumulation of capital. A completely new form of societal arrangement emerged following the Industrial Revolution.

Rhetoric is useless. The fact is that Iran gives some of the best maternity benefits in the world. That’s what matters.

Better than the Democrats who told you how much they support women’s rights for sure.

Mofcom says they are currently accelerating the examination process to approve export permits for rare earth materials. I believe that they are exporting for civilian use but not military, but I’m not sure how they can track the usage once they have reached the other end.

China absolutely has the capacity to do that, but they probably won’t though.

Don’t write China off yet. As I have been saying, if China threatens to stop the global economy, the conflict WILL end before Monday. There is nothing the US can do about it except to watch Wall Street stock market crash when it opens, should they refuse to a truce.

I thought about this a lot: even assuming Putin is not a lib and has the political will to do so, is it even achievable without causing more disturbance to the country?

I struggle to think of a single example where liberal influence can be eliminated without doing a Stalin style purge. In fact, even Stalin failed to purge the libs, as they returned to power under Khrushchev immediately after his death.

It is easy to think, hey, why don’t we just purge all the libs and push the socialism button, but these people control many important parts of the country and can easily blow up the economy if you’re not careful. Let us not forget that even Stalin’s purge was extremely turbulent and many innocent people got caught up in it. Putin is not Stalin, far from it. He is too soft to do that kind of purge.

Just look at Xi Jinping - all it took was for one city to sabotage the entire Zero Covid policy, and now he’s forced to bow to the private capital and re-admitted Jack Ma - whom he purged not so long ago - back to the highest echelon of the elite circle. The libs have practically won the battle in China as well (although I’ll admit that Xi himself is far more moderate than many people give him credit for, if you actually look at the history of his entire career. I don’t mention this often because people really don’t like to hear this).