• Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    It becomes funnier and funnier to me as the US continually goes SANCTIONS! while completely forgetting that there are many other countries the sanctioned countries can trade with. It disrupts things for a bit, they find new trade partners, and the world moves on. The only way the US could sanction Russia would be by forming a blockade but even then good luck, you’d have to blockade China too.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Thing is that this only works when you sanction a few isolated countries. Once you reach a critical mass, then it’s just an alternate global economy. And that’s precisely what we’re seeing now happening with BRICS.

        • pigginz@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          I really admire what China has accomplished. There’s definitely room to debate some of their decisions, but I suspect that if the USSR had managed to make the US economy completely reliant on it for manufacturing, it would still exist today. The EU economies are in the shitter and the US is barely staying afloat even with increasingly brazen imperialist theft, not to mention how the US is running out of munitions trying to supply the first “real” war it’s seen in decades and it hasn’t even deployed its own military (yet?).

          I used to be looking forward to the future where China would completely overtake the US as the dominant world power, but it really looks like that already happened years ago and the decrepit NATO empires just haven’t figured it out yet.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            I think so as well, the problem was that US saw USSR as an ideological threat from the very start so there was no possibility of this sort of cooperation. The main reason US decided to normalize relations with China was to try and prevent China from having good relations with the Soviets. So, perhaps this is the only way things could’ve worked out.

            In the end, US made a huge miscalculation in underestimating China, and completely missed China outpacing them in every regard while being drunk on having defeated USSR which they saw as the only serious threat to their global hegemony.

        • PeeOnYou@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          in the case of China it forced them to make their own microchips which removes one major advantage the US held over them

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            I would even go as far as to say this was the only major remaining tech advantage the west had. China’s been outpacing the west in most areas of science and technology for a few years now. Chips were the one big piece of the puzzle and now China can make their own.

      • Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        While I don’t think we have quite reached that point yet, I do know that the vast majority of all world sanctions are imposed by the United States. It is close to 100% if you include sanctions imposed at the request of the United States.

        Currently large swaths of Asia and Africa and a smattering in the Americas. A lot of those are against individuals rather than the country broadly, but it often has the same effect.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          Right, and this is why dedollarization is taking off like wildfire. Nobody wants to use US financial system, but until recently it’s been the only game in town. Now that people see it’s possible to bypass it, there’s a lot of momentum to create an alternative trading system. I imagine the fact that members can’t sanction one another is what makes BRICS in particular so appealing.

    • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      there are many other countries the sanctioned countries can trade with

      Can’t say for others, but the narrative regarding Russia (from Russian libs) was usually this:

      • all those countries (USA, EU) can get things they get from us elsewhere no problem

      • other countries can’t offer us as much as we get from USA/EU

      • Russia doesn’t produce much useful anyway, just oil and gas

  • pigginz@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Overall, Kusti Salm, a senior Estonian defense ministry official, estimated that Russia’s current ammunition production is seven times greater than that of the West.

    Russia’s production costs are also far lower than the West’s, in part because Moscow is sacrificing safety and quality in its effort to build weapons more cheaply, Mr. Salm said. For instance, it costs a Western country $5,000 to $6,000 to make a 155-millimeter artillery round, whereas it costs Russia about $600 to produce a comparable 152-millimeter artillery shell, he said.

    A US-based media article is claiming that Russia can produce seven times the ammunition at something like one tenth the per-unit cost. That’s insane if true. I knew Russia was putting up big production numbers, but that big? If that’s even close to correct then the idea that the AFU could ever push Russia out by force is utterly delusional now.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      “Safety and quality”

      ah yes, when I think of western weapons manufacturing, I think of these two things. That’s why they can’t compare, because Moscow is cheating at weapons production.

      Complete bullshit, always framing obvious failures of the system as “moral victories” it’s disgusting.

      • sicaniv@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Can’t acknowledge their over profiteering (loot) from war so, it’s cheaper in Russia coz of ignoring safety standards bullshit.

        US is fucked, more because it’s been completely sold to it’s ruling class that will let it bleed to death out of greed and profit if it is ever in a war with Chinese or Russian state.

        So American liberals must try to wage and win a war with their real daddies (ruling class) first, before they should even think of going for the one with Russians or Chinese.

        Probably that’s why they choose proxy wars now. Because historically they have lost each and every single direct war that their daddies waged and now they are setting the precedent in proxy ones too.

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          The quality part is what gets me. The west’s weapons have demonstrably been shown to be worse quality than Russian ones at this point. They’re just living in this fantasy where every sign that they are failing is actually proof that they are winning somehow.

    • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      While I can believe Russian health and safety standards aren’t the best, I doubt very, very much that the $4–5,400 price difference per shell is spent (entirely) on improved working conditions at western factories. That’s potentially the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard and I once spoke to a jellyfish, which did not respond. But if I were to speak to it again, it might say something like this:

      The answer is right there in the prose. The price difference is because the Russians save three millimetres worth of metal for every shell (it’s probably 3mm³ but the text isn’t clear). That metal could even be wrought iron, which doesn’t come cheap.

      The west should make their ammunitions smaller than the Russians’. Maybe start with just a small decrease in size, like 149mm. This would, by my calculations at the correct ratio and taking health and safety into account, reduce the cost of each shell to roughly $5–600.

      The Russians aren’t silly and they do like an arms race with the west. By Christmas they are likely to go even smaller. Maybe down to 146mm @ $60. Now we see there’s a predictable trend and what the Russians won’t know is that the west has already started to produce 143mm shells at the same price!

      Eventually, the west will be able to fit two shells into one artillery-thing, which is bound to have some advantages. For a start it will solve the problem of not having enough weapons because every weapon will now be twice as effective.

      Eventually, if the west keeps going with this winning strategy, the cost of it’s shells will become $0. Some time after that, the size will become 0mm, too. Like a good game of Connect Jelly 4, if the west drops it’s pieces right, the Russians will get to zero first and then won’t be able to fight at all.

      Personally, I would not take advice from a jellyfish even if it was sentient. It would probably just spook me, tbh, and they have the right shape to dress up as a ghost, too.

    • jlyws123@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      The weakness and corruption in western countries shock me every day. They can’t even provide Ukraine with enough shells.

      • pigginz@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        The extent to which the industry part of the military industrial complex has been hollowed out and replaced with nothing but grift is pretty astounding. I can’t imagine the US could hope to fight a real multi-year war like Vietnam or Korea ever again. It kind of seems like if your military could survive the initial “shock and awe” campaign now, then you could just kind of hold the line while the US helplessly bleeds out.

        • WayeeCool [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          For real. The majority of the price difference isn’t materials or workplace safety but privatized vs state enterprise. A sizeable chunk of the $5000 price difference is the cut that goes to the shareholders of General Dynamics. It’s the same reason the Chinese J20 costs so much less than the F35 and had dramatically less production issues.

          Russia only had a privatized defense industry from the early 1990s until in 2007 they decided privatization of certain industries was a mistake. They undid the privatization of their aerospace, defense, high tech manufacturing, and key heavy industries. It’s taken almost a decade to repair the damage of privatization and rebuild capacity but we are now seeing the fruits of those efforts.

          In Russia their 155mm artillery shells are currently manufactured by KBP Instrument Design Bureau, a wholey owned subsidiary of the Russia state owned Rostec holding corporation.

          In the US all their 155mm artillery shells are manufactured at the US government owned Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, which is operated by the private sector defense contractor General Dynamics. That same facility used to be able to produce over a million 155mm field artillery shells per month back in the 1940s before modern factory automation and even today claims to have the ability to ramp back to that capacity (at a cost) with only a couple months notice. As part of the US propaganda blitz, BusinessInsider recently did a PR and tour video of the plant.

      • COMHASH@lemmygrad.mlOP
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        1 year ago

        Vijay Prashad told this in its very early stage. Russia has immense military power, west cannot defeat Russia obviously they can slow them down.

    • Seryph (She/Her)@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Nah you don’t get it, that extra 3mm is actually the source of the cost since it’s made out of solid gold, and obviously if it costs more it must be better. So it’s actually very normal for an artillery round to cost that much.

      Please ignore the fact that gold wouldn’t even be close to that price because it ruins my joke.

      • COMHASH@lemmygrad.mlOP
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        1 year ago

        Russian military industrial complex is highly centralized and nationalized. We buy weapons from Russia regularly. Though Russian aircrafts need some work.

        • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          We buy weapons from Russia regularly.

          Huh, I thought those deals got kind of quietly rolled back, and India went on to produce homemade weapons? At least I think that was the case with assault rifles

          • COMHASH@lemmygrad.mlOP
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            1 year ago

            We don’t manufacture much and even if we do some its not a big scale production, we are buying newer weapons like S400 and we love BrahMos type missiles which was a joint venture between India and Russia (although it will be mostly Russia’s contribution) .

    • COMHASH@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      I watched a video in which Medvedev told the private and public MIC managers of Russia that if they don’t fulfill the quota of the government then they will face what Stalin did in 1941-45. I mean there were reports that high ranking executives of several companies were committing suicide in Russia by jumping out of the window.

  • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Interesting how in western media i see that market strike scene EVERYWHERE to ilustrate that war but never once i seen one of the hundreds of scenes of bombed Donetsk.

      • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Every Russia/Ukraine related post attracts automatic downvotes nowadays from the handful of obsessive lib lurkers we have here. And even more so when the posts make their way onto main lemmy.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          I have 5~6 libs follow me around and downvote my every post on lemmy.ml, I find it absolutely hilarious. Can you imagine anything sadder than people spending their whole day following my account just to rage.

          • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            Haha, apparently i have a fan now as well, all of my comments i made going back about 5 days or so have just gotten one downvote on them since a few hours ago. It’s funny to think they sit there and go through your post/comment history and obsessively downvote every one, like this achieves anything whatsoever.

            • COMHASH@lemmygrad.mlOP
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              1 year ago

              Yeah , I think if Russia goes into Kiev western libs will cry in their closet hard for months to come.

              • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                No, they will switch the narrative. They will just claim that Zelensky abandoned his ideals and sold out to Putin

  • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Unfortunately his enablers and handlers are alive and well, and likely will continue to be so. Think about it, when was the last time you’ve heard from Poroshenko? Yatsenyuk? At least Kolomoysky got locked up, although I expect him to “mysteriously disappear” from prison, as such types do