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Global Spring?


Immaculate Vibes

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52 minutes ago, NorthLoop said:

Envisioning that scene in Blood Diamond where the helos destroy the mining camp

If you do a deep dive on the Russians/Wagner Group stuff in Africa, it's fucking insane - it's another massive revenue stream for Russia that has been going on for a long time, just exploiting the absolutely shit out of African countries, but now that everybody is hyper focused on Russia, it's starting to come to the surface as the OSINT folks pour over satellite photos, etc.

We obviously knew Russia wasn't in those areas just for shits and giggles, but they are just straight up stealing the shit out of their gold, apparently using involuntary labor, etc.

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3 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Would be nice if it fucked with the Russians and spread them out some more.

Don't think they will take on the Russians or Syria, instead go for the Kurds. Will be interesting to see where along the border they actually move. 

And what does Russia still have their? Seriously asking. Outside of the port, which cannot support their Black Sea fleet, I have not seen them doing much. 

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https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/china-will-not-hesitate-to-start-war-over-taiwan-beijing-tells-us/ar-AAYisrt

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Beijing will "not hesitate to start a war" if Taiwan declares independence, China's defence minister warned his US counterpart Friday, the latest salvo between the superpowers over the island. 

The warning from Wei Fenghe came as he held his first face-to-face meeting with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore.

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Beijing views democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as its territory and has vowed to one day seize the island, by force if necessary, and US-China tensions over the issue have soared in recent months. 

Wei warned Austin that "if anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost", defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian quoted the minister as saying during the meeting. 

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The Chinese minister vowed that Beijing would "smash to smithereens any 'Taiwan independence' plot and resolutely uphold the unification of the motherland", according to the Chinese defence ministry.

He "stressed that Taiwan is China's Taiwan... Using Taiwan to contain China will never prevail", the ministry said. 

Counterpoint:  If China actually believed that they could take Taiwan without any major harm to their military, economy, leadership, etc., they would.

But at the end of the day, Taiwan has better/newer systems than Ukraine, and basically has a big fucking moat around it, while China would have to resort to cruise ships to move troops there.

And trying to take Taiwan would absolutely gut China's tech industry, which relies on Taiwan - Foxconn is China's largest private employer and feeds a lot of parts into Chinese tech companies.  Gut that industry, kiss your middle-class goodbye, and put a 100 million or more unemployed people in the streets and see how that works out.

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After seeing how this is turning out for Putin you'd have to be a complete idiot to fly off the handle and invade another country right now. 

China's leadership are criminal assholes but I don't think they're that stupid. Sounds more like they're bored 

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2 hours ago, Schulz2.0 said:

 

Call I was on today elevated that number. Forecast is an additional 40M people are in trouble in S Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan. It is about to get really bad. 

Two issues. Ukraine provided a lot of food aid. Second is COVID. A lot of expats running these operations pulled out and funding halted. So we have to start over in a lot of places. 

Good post. Thanks for tracking. 

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Well, I found the thread to bring me down if I ever have any positive thought about the near, mid, or long term future. Reckon I’ll mosy on over to the cancer thread for a pick me up before slumber. 

Edited by bluto
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2 hours ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

This is a big deal, not really discussed that I’ve seen.  
 

So it said UP blames dropping deliveries on staffing issues. Looks like they are having trouble meeting volumes. 

Good internet rabbit hole on Urea being issue as it’s a major piece of the exhaust fluid. Urea also used in fertilizer as well as a bunch of other shit. 
 

Shortage of Urea goes back to last fall/winter. Doesn’t sound like getting any better. 

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21 minutes ago, BrazilHorn said:

Good internet rabbit hole on Urea being issue as it’s a major piece of the exhaust fluid. Urea also used in fertilizer as well as a bunch of other shit. 
 

Shortage of Urea goes back to last fall/winter. Doesn’t sound like getting any better. 

It’s piss

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1 hour ago, BrazilHorn said:

Good internet rabbit hole on Urea being issue as it’s a major piece of the exhaust fluid. Urea also used in fertilizer as well as a bunch of other shit. 
 

Shortage of Urea goes back to last fall/winter. Doesn’t sound like getting any better. 

Urea prices at the gulf are down about 60% in the last 6 weeks. 

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1 hour ago, Royalfan5 said:

Urea prices at the gulf are down about 60% in the last 6 weeks. 

Yep - just saw that - big drop from record highs at start of May. This is an interesting rabbit hole though. I had never looked at this type of stuff before as I have zero to do with ag (outside of buying finished product at store).

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11 minutes ago, BrazilHorn said:

Yep - just saw that - big drop from record highs at start of May. This is an interesting rabbit hole though. I had never looked at this type of stuff before as I have zero to do with ag (outside of buying finished product at store).

My fertilizer selling clients are being told from up the chain that they don't expect early prices to be worse than spring, and there are a lot of moving parts on this years production and forward demand still. 

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13 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Chinese figured out how to squash dissent, and it's a very 2022 way of doing things, with an app.  Show up and protest, they flip your COVID status to positive.

Also, if you test positive, they can stop a train and test everybody.

 

 

This is why vaccine passports had to be stopped at all costs in a free society. Perfect back doors for creeping government control of daily lives. Of course that’s typically dismissed as conspiracy theory on these forums. 

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1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

@InkaUtexas You might find this interesting/rage-inducing.  This is just one area of the ME.  If Russia can continue to fuck with food supplies, I'd imagine that a shitload more Syrians will flee for Europe/etc., because there's no way the NGOs on the ground there can do much.

 

Absolutely. Pre-Covid we were supposed to put food security teams into Northern Syria to monitor. The shit we learned from our on the ground experts was crazy. 

1- Systematic destruction of the irrigation system

2- wholesale slaughter of animals

3- Destruction (straight targeting) of markets, technical colleges, and food storage locations. 

I wonder sometimes if that is what the Russians learned from. That said, it was the same in Bosnia so maybe this is Soviet doctrine they export along with their systems. 

Thanks @atomheartbevo  

Did you get a chance to look up Colonel Hieneman and his documents on Burma? 

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25 minutes ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

The timing of the cuts is pretty clear. Just after European leaders visit Kyiv.
 

Throw in the Freeport LNG plant accident and European supplies are under severe strain  

And after that meeting, Zelensky or somebody in the Ukrainian government said yesterday there would be a major positive announcement in the next day or two.  Guessing Russia got wind of it.

This is actually dumb as fuck.  It’s reinforcing the EU needing to get off of Russian gas, so that they aren’t at the mercy of Russia’s whims.  

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15 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

And after that meeting, Zelensky or somebody in the Ukrainian government said yesterday there would be a major positive announcement in the next day or two.  Guessing Russia got wind of it.

This is actually dumb as fuck.  It’s reinforcing the EU needing to get off of Russian gas, so that they aren’t at the mercy of Russia’s whims.  

Ok. But unfortunately they are currently literally at the mercy of Russia. It sucks, but true. 
 

I hope they come up with a plan before next winter. Until they have a better plan it’s going to cause societal stress in Europe. 

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12 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

And after that meeting, Zelensky or somebody in the Ukrainian government said yesterday there would be a major positive announcement in the next day or two.  Guessing Russia got wind of it.

This is actually dumb as fuck.  It’s reinforcing the EU needing to get off of Russian gas, so that they aren’t at the mercy of Russia’s whims.  

Putin is fucking up Russia's future as an energy supplier. 

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14 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

 

Doomberg is a next level follow.  But he’s a contrarian, so most people here won’t get him. 
 

The key points are, there’s no way to “cancel” 11% of the world’s fossil fuel production. It’s going to get sold somewhere. 
 

Also, moves that increase fossil fuel prices such as sanctions actually help Putin near term. Moves that lower prices, such as increasing supply, hurt Putin. 

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