Posted on 03/24/2023 11:48:45 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Did the fat little runt give himself another medal?
Russia the US and Canada are #1 #2 #3 in that order as the top 3 countries rank in terms of their oil % gas natural resources. The natural resources of Russia is equivalent to Canada’s and the US’s combined. And Russia’s resources are much cheaper to deliver to its customers. That’s why they have used this proxy war to weaken them so they can’t develop into an economic powerhouse from selling their cheaper energy to Europe via pipeline.
“Iran has been working at it for 25 years and has not been successful. I’m convinced.”
Thanks to Israel.
So, Obama’s airplane of $100 bills didn’t work. What a surprise!
Here comes Ezekiel 38 and we have idiots in charge concerned about pronouns and “transgender”
✝️🙏🛐
He did that!!
Gen. Benedict Milley is just making noise ... nobody has been paying attention to him since the bailed on Afghanistan.
What proxy war?
Iran has remained untouched by the US and will continue to do so.
I seem to remember SOMEONE sent the Mullahs PALLETS of US TAXPAYER CASH. It may be the bloodiest money in history.
Indeed guess what they bought from China with the money he gave them.
Well General Patton, uh I mean Milley, 🦨 should know. He helped weaken America despite supposedly serving President Trump.
Israel can destroy it within a week.
if only trump had a chance to nominate the JCS we would have had a real man in the position. Oh wait.
I can’t believe after over 30 years that the Iranians are still struggling with uranium 235 enrichment. Why didn’t they go with creating plutonium 239 in reactors, via reprocessing of spent fuel? Like Israel did?
I can’t believe after over 30 years that the Iranians are still struggling with uranium 235 enrichment. Why didn’t they go with creating plutonium 239 in reactors, via reprocessing of spent fuel? Like Israel did?
Haven’t we been hearing this for about 10 years now? They probably have it already.
Well, gee, Thoroughly Modern, What’cha gonna do?
The Israelis are more concerned about judicial reform.
Explosions in facilities and top engineers getting offed on a semi-regular basis will slow any program.
OTOH, it’s also hard to completely stop such development, short of either very effective “diplomatic” pressure, or large attacks (ie., aircraft with serious bombs.)
A couple hours or more of reading on Israel’s acquisition of nukes despite US efforts to deny them such, is most interesting...
(Wikipedia is actually not a bad place to start.)
Production cost of US oil is (2022 figures) $43 - $44. In its more hospitable areas Russia’s oil is cheaper to produce, but when you start talking about Siberia and so on, they jump up around $45 or so. Plus most of the production expertise has fled the country.
Prices in the past were set pretty much globally anyway, so, Russia’s advantage was, and with no Ukraine war would be, profit, mostly from those lower cost / cheap transport regions. But, over the last 2 to 2-1/2 decades they have shown very little ability to put that profit to work to become an economic powerhouse, and there’s nothing to suggest they’d suddenly learn. Autocracy with high levels of corruption / oligarchs skimming off the profits, while spending big money on defense, is not a formula for success.
The US spends big money on defense too, but our corruption problem is nowhere near as extreme in terms of wealth stolen from the economy, and, most that is, is spent here. A lot of the Russian oligarchs’ rubles tend to get spent other than in Russia.
Russia also has a serious demographic problem & declining population. Pooty pretty much pulled out all the stops to get the birth rate up to 1.5, and then it started going down again anyway. (USA has a low rate too, 1.68, IIRC, but, we have lots of immigration — too much, in fact.)
Without this war, Europe’s transition to green energy would have still occurred, just not quite as quickly. And without Russia screwing around with Ukraine in the 1st place, UKRAINE would have in the next decade become a very serious competitor to Russia as a low price energy supplier. (IMO this was a much more important factor in Russia’s decision to first take Crimea, and then invade Ukraine, than some sort of fear of NATO, although in turn IMO Russian leadership’s fear of the overall socio-economic influence on Russia of an increasingly Westernized Ukraine is a larger factor yet.)
In any event, cheap & “next door” Ukrainian energy would have likely seriously competed with Russia until around 2050, and by then Europe’s dependence on fossil fuels really would be much reduced.
Russia has always had spectacular resources. It’s just spectacularly badly run, too much of the time.
Ditto that for Brazil, just not quite as badly, and lacking the demographic problem.
India is likely the most promising of the BRICS, but has not even 1/7th of the US GDP (which itself is smaller than the EU’s GDP.)
China is presently the strongest of the BRICS, but its turn toward increasing authoritarianism is not likely to go well, plus it has huge demographic and economic headwinds.
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