Comprehensive49

This is a much more severe, successful repeat of what the US tried to pull against Lula in Brazil, with Bolsonaro as puppet. The new, US-backed president of Ecuador is now trying to change the constitution to allow US military bases in the country.

It seems that in reaction to the Latin American pink tide in the 2000s, the US pretty much backed and funded the entire conservative wave afterwards.

For more info on how this relates to similar events in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and elsewhere, BadEmpanada made a good recap here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrvEha9C_Js

I'm pretty sure killing the Russian president (and likely his cabinet, which would always be nearby) is plenty of justification for nuclear war.

I'm sure if Russia bombed the White House and the president, nukes wound start flying immediately.

I think Huawei's talking about their new triple-folding phone, the Mate XT. The phone unfolds like a z-fold brochure from a regular phone into an iPad.

This triple folding finally lets folding phones match real tablet sizes, which might make them finally an attractive option for consumers who want to merge their phone and iPad into one.

At this point, Palestine has the right to nuke Israel if they could. Equivalent retaliation for the bombs.

US physicians like the for-profit insurance system because they are paid 2x or more than in single payer systems. For example, I know Canadian physicians who doubled their pay upon moving to the USA. It is a bribe by insurance companies for doctors to be apathetic towards capitalist suffering.

This event is quite a blatant attempt by NATO to pressure Telegram into giving them a backdoor, which is a good sign that they didn't have access previously.

One must ask why Signal, Matrix/Element, Session, and Tor haven't faced such attacks despite being based in Western countries.

For example, Tor is developed by the US government to protect their spies, and was opened to the public to shield spy web traffic.

Are there any true anti-imperialist alternatives? For instance, Wechat is made in China, but doesn't have any mechanisms to protect user info.

This is a huge misconception lots of people have with nuclear bombs. All modern nukes are around 0.5 megatons, so no modern nukes are Tsar Bombas. That means each nuke cannot wipe out more than a ~5 mile radius max.

Humans have already tested more than 2000 nukes and we're still here.

Here's the video from Brian Berletic you mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCCh8-nE7Z0

The key source they both are referencing is the NYT bragging about CIA bases in Ukraine: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html

There is no 'stretch' about this if even the NYT is talking about it in the open.

The Global South cannot get nukes fast enough. The only way to deter the US is to show that it will get glassed by everyone if it tries any shit.

Luckily the US's non-existent industry can't really sustain a prolonged nuclear arms race (e.g. how slow even conventional US munitions are being built). Back in the Cold War, the USA used the nuclear arms race to waste Soviet industrial resources. Now, the Global South can flip the same strategy on the US.

This is a great article. Cross comparisons like these are excellent tools for revealing blatant media bias.

So what if the USA loses 20%? All it does it change the calculus for US capitalists a little bit. It is still a great deal for deleting China.

You are confusing the rather ambiguous definition of a "city" in the USA with the actual distribution of people in said "city". US city populations aren't distributed like Hiroshima/Nagasaki, they're much more spread out (Even then, the US's bombs weren't enough to kill everyone in the municipal city area). Because of US sprawl, it doesn't take just one 0.6 megaton warhead to eliminate a city's inhabitants, it takes 4+. For example, New York City technically has ~8 million residents, but it takes ~5 0.6 megaton nukes to cover the entire city. As cities get smaller populations in the USA, they get much more spread out, making this problem worse. As another example, take Virginia Beach, a "city" that is 100% suburbs. Just to kill all residents, it also takes another 4 nukes. At this rate, China will very quickly run out of nukes in a casualty v. casualty exchange with the USA. If we approximate that each city takes ~5 nukes, China can currently only eliminate 20% of the US population at maximum as you estimate.

The problem is that we can apply the same density-maximization to the US nuking China, in which case everything looks much worse. China's cities are much larger, much denser, and there are way more of them. Because China is denser, the US simply gets more bang-for-the-buck per nuke. In that sense, the US could cripple China much faster than the other way around by killing many more people with way fewer nukes.

In my calculations, I assume that both nations seek full elimination of the other. As I explained in my other post, over time there are diminishing returns per nuke as nations run out of dense population targets and trend toward sparser targets. That is why I calculated using average population density.

I have already addressed the environmental destruction / nuclear winter talking point below. In short, new research, experiences from the Kuwaiti oil well fires and various wildfires, and the switch from flammable wood to nonflammable concrete and steel in city buildings combine to show that nuclear winter simply would be nowhere as severe as initially predicted in the 1980s. Fallout from nuclear bombs only lasts around a week due to short half-lives. Assuming decent amounts of prior preparation of necessary supplies and tech in hardened bunkers (which major Cold War countries did kinda do before), it is survivable, especially if China only kills 20% of the US population in certain centralized cities. At current, there are plenty of Wyoming farmers who would survive unscathed, put up some greenhouses, and weather out the storm.

Previously, China could get away with low nuclear bomb counts because it could depend on Russia and/or court the West. Now they can't do that. Russia has its own worries in Europe, and the USA is hellbent on destroying China. The USSR has shown the number of nukes required to go against the USA alone. China is clearly responding to these concerns by building up to at least 1000 nukes, which should increase the cost to the US to ~30% of its population based on your estimates. I see no downsides with such an act.

I agree. The US and all its vassals and military bases absolutely have to be subdued in the event of nuclear war. In other words, the USSR's 45,000 nuke stockpile should be the goal for China as well, and is even more prescient than we expected.

Russia and North Korea should be encouraged to assist as well, as it increases redundancy and is in their interests also. In the same vein, Iran still desperately needs nukes to defend itself and contribute as well.

As @[email protected] discussed, unlike the USSR, China actually has the industry to rapidly build up and maintain a stockpile of this size. If China can automate electric car production like no other, it should automate nuke production as well. Nuclear warheads are about the size of electric scooters, so should be able to be built on similar production lines. China's rapid buildout of nuclear reactors should help this along, as nuclear reactors are needed to produce the plutonium for nukes.

It seems many of our considerations have been taken into account by Xi already. If western media is to be believed, China's buildup is real. I only hope that production is scaled exponentially to reach the necessary amounts before it is too late.

As a side note, IDK why western journalists on this topic say that China is building up nukes for "ambiguous political reasoning and muddled thinking". Clearly, Chinese thinking isn't muddled if we here are discussing the same things. It's so funny how westerners will warmonger about destroying China, then act surprised when China prepares by strengthening its arms.