Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "CaspianReport" channel.

  1.  @MesoMan77  Iran ditched India because our attempts to needle through the pinhole the US left us with were going nowhere. So they went with a country that would get stuff done. We could've made something there, had either the US stopped undermining Iran or we'd stopped playing by their rules. Neither happened. :|
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  2. You don't even need a tunnel. Just raise the height of the damn bridge. Still a lot cheaper than a tunnel.
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  3.  @hobog  See above. The PRC also has immigration as an option, just one they've not tapped yet (much like Japan stubbornly resists it). And no, your ideological beliefs doesn't mean no one will go there, especially from their poorer neighbours like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, etc. Ultimately immigration follows money, not politics. Canadians, for instance, have a higher opinion of their own country than the US, yet more Canadians emigrate to the US. Why? Cos there's more money to be had.
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  4.  @loanswashere.  The US is far more blessed than India, or indeed any other nation, is. More resources, more geographically secure, plentiful farmland, excellent waterways, a well educated starting population, almost no historical baggage (the indigenous Americans were nearly wiped out), etc. etc. I don't remember who, but I recall seeing a Youtuber once describe America as 'playing on Easy Mode'. And, well, it really is. India isn't easy mode.
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  5. Tldr Global did a fairly unbiased video on another aspect of this conflict that isn't covered in this video - demographics, and its impact on the politics in the region. Pretty nice added info to accompany this video imo.
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  6. Colonialism is hardly necessary to explain the problems of Africa. While it left a terrible legacy, few people seem to note that it hasn't even left in the first place - more money gets siphoned out of Africa each year even today. Even Caspian Report itself has covered a book that explains this phenomenon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRMDMNSsTDU Not to mention all the wrongheaded loan-enforced IMF 'Structural Adjustment Programs' (SAPs) in the latter half of the last century, right as the African nations gained their independence.
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  7.  @karanbhatt9320  Tharoor will never even come close to being PM. He's popular with the liberal elite, but he has no mass grassroots appeal. Plus he's frankly not a very good politician, more an administrator and academic. And like it or not, you need to be a good politician to lead a country - unless of course you're gifted the position like our previous PM, but Tharoor ruffles too many establishment feathers to have that happen either.
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  8. @Al There was no risk. Ukraine literally couldn't use those nukes. They didn't control them and couldn't activate them. Russia also got a promise btw - it was promised that NATO wouldn't expand. A promise that was not kept and which they have spent 30 years protesting to no avail.
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  9.  @MrNeuvel  It is next to impossible to predict climate effects on population in the future. That's a projection based on another projection, which in itself is affected by the former projection. You may as well make the numbers up at that point.
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  10. You only think so because of that one cover photo from National Geographic.
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  11.  @cv4809  India was rich by the standards of the 17th and 18th century. That 23% of the global economy figure is not from antiquity. And its economic fall is also well documented, so it's not simply a matter of the British (NOT "the rest of the world", just western Europe and North America) getting richer.
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  12.  @5INC33  Let it be. He's allowed to try promoting his channel here. Similar interests, similar potential audience.
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  13.  @Lord_Juvens  "Last time that happened was 80 years ago" - lol, the only reason that's true is cos of the "EUROPEAN" part of your preceding sentence. We've seen even bigger wars, even just this century. But no, this one is special cos it hit holy Europa! Which is now taking in white European refugees so compassionately right after screaming to stop an influx of brown Arab refugees. Racism piled atop racism lmao. All the world is fair game, 'cept Europe and North America it seems.
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  14. Err...you aren't speaking for "the people of the Arabian peninsula", you're just representing a family dynasty that imposes its will on "the people of the Arabian peninsula" through arms and scripture. You don't even represent any of the local tribes, or even an amalgamation of them. You're literally just one family ruling over a country with support from the clergy it put into power and the army it paid for with natural wealth.
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  15. "both EU and NATO states have been very wary about provoking a nuclear armed Russia" - Russia doesn't believe this, as both have expanded despite its protestations. It stopped believing they were wary all the way back when NATO admitted the Baltic trio (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) into its ranks despite strong protestations by Russia. And without it having invaded them mind, which is why it doesn't sound convincing to claim it has grown NATO by invading Ukraine. As far as Russia is concerned, NATO growing is an inevitability if they don't have a say on it. After the Baltic trio were admitted, they likely stopped believing diplomacy could ever work and hence more forceful options would have to be employed. Ukraine's pivot in 2014 likely looked to them like just the first domino falling in a chain that would inevitably result in it joining NATO, just as the Baltic trio did, if it didn't respond hard.
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  16. ASEAN is nothing like the EU. It's a talking shop that wastes time, nothing more. None of the members really cooperate.
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  17. Whenever you hear the phrase "rules-based order", you should roll your eyes. The only rules that count are that of the dominant power. Australia isn't even the worst offender in this regard - at least they didn't straight out invade nations for not playing ball (unlike a certain superpower...). The rest of the world isn't gonna be fooled by sanctimonious moralism from storied imperialists.
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  18. I mean, Prussia was the original "army with a state" and they seemed to have done pretty well for it. Germany, the establishment of which was a significantly Prussian project, is one of the most developed nations and competitive economies in the world. So much so that they even were capable of taking on that world not once, but twice! (and bouncing back thrice!)
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  19. ​ @megauberduber  There's already a ridiculous amount of media coverage of Russia and Ukraine, plus he's already covered it in prior videos and the present situation is still developing. Best to leave it to the regular media for now and do other stuff. He can assess the Ukraine situation later when things are more settled and clearer. Remember Caspian Report is NOT a news channel. Never has been.
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  20.  @MX-Vette  "99% of the Venezuelan population have already left the country" - LMAO! I love it when people just pull numbers out of their ass. xD If that were true, that'd make the country more empty than the ends of the Sahara.
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  21.  @shawnmilum6233  Has anyone said it's okay here? Pointing out blatant hypocrisy is not saying anything is okay, it's just pointing out blatant hypocrisy. And Russia's death toll so far this century is nowhere close to 900,000 but the US' death toll in the same period is.
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  22. Just wait until the us armtwists nato into setting up a base in japan. THEN look at who you're going to have on your doorstep. The Ru will be only too happy to oblige them. There's plenty of reason to be pessimistic, but not for the reasons you think. All of you keep defining yourselves by the grand moral narratives of ww2, and hence following a thought process that only makes a big war more, not less, likely. You're actively turning away pathways to peace in favor of ever more confrontation and hostility.
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  23. As the video mentioned, the colonial heritage also included quite different forms of administration and treatment, not simply cultural differences. And its falling apart now also because of quite different forms of administration and treatment, for the same reasons too - preservation of power.
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  24.  @ericzhou-y4t  No one's looking to occupy anything lol. Even in Ukr they were fine with it until 2014, when it turned to the west. Even when this mess started there was a peace proposal almost immediately, as well as one months before it. Did you know over 3 million died in the vietnam war? But was the us there cos it wanted land? No, it just wanted a 'friendly govt.' in charge. That's what modern war is about, land is passe. Same thing elsewhere - just get the govt. you like in charge, and you get almost all the benefits without most of the costs. In other words hegemony, not conquest.
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  25. He never said "the Chinese government is about to collapse", tho. China is still growing, even if a bit slower. And boosting domestic consumption has always been on the Chinese agenda - they don't like being too dependent on exports (especially to America) either. All this does is force them to expedite that shift. Meanwhile, the US isn't doing itself any favors with these tariffs - even the companies are just going to relocate to SE Asia rather than America, and the US leader responsible for pushing this agenda the hardest is likely to run out of time far sooner than Beijing will.
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  26.  @rm7097  The flu is already established. It can't be eradicated, so we simple learn to live (and in some cases die) with it via improving our healthcare systems. The Wuhan virus is new and not established, so we react fast and hard to ensure it doesn't become so. If a disease can be eradicated, it's worth putting in the extra effort to do so, else you condemn a lot of future victims to die who might have needed to had you taken action. And that has nothing to do with current death tolls, but rather making use of opportunities before they slip away.
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  27. The war is unpopular, Putin is not. He had about a 70% approval rating in January, and that's down from its peak a few years ago. But that's different from the war, which does seem to be unpopular. If it's unpopular enough to actually matter is another question. By contrast, Biden's approval rating is around 40%.
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  28. Man Caspian is really milking this war for all he can. People wanted coverage on the Ukraine war, and now it's practically all he covers. Also an ironic narrative to choose for this video considering that the Russian economy is holding up (with the central bank even bringing interest rates back down), Ukraine itself saying Russia can continue the war for another year and, most pertinently, CR itself having misjudged how events would play out in its pre-war video on how this war would play out. At this point CR is just telling his western viewers what they want to hear.
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  29. The parts of the world that have had issues with China for decades have usually had even worse experiences with the West. I think you'll find your little crusade is a pretty lonely one, which serves ya'll right for all the decades of self-serving 'realpolitik'.
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  30. "Selling themselves out to China" - most of their debt isn't to China bhai. Even the video explained that. This is important for the same reason it's important to recognize that in the case of Sri Lanka - in both cases their largest creditors are PRIVATE. While ppl focus on state and institutional creditors, be it China or the IMF (another favorite target), those faceless and nameless billionaires get away with crippling nations and don't ever face the consequences for their predatory loans. It's THEM who should have to take debt haircuts, but they never do. Instead govts. and development institutions, entities that spend on common people, who lose out.
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  31.  @rioluna6058  Why is everything about you people about the CCP and your giant geopolitical contest? Malaysia wants no part of that, and isn't going to pick sides if it comes to that. They're quite resolute in their neutrality.
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  32.  @daddy_1453  Actually Japan still has a fairly strong military. They just call it the 'Self-Defense Forces', but an army by any other name is still an army.
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  33. Those allies depend on America for protection, not the other way around. They are well within Chinese firing range already, so they aren't going to pick a fight unnecessarily. They'll fight if China attacks them, but the last thing they want is to paint a giant target on their back by allowing themselves to be dragged into an American operation for which it's them, not the Americans, who'll pay the price. The only allies America can really depend on are the UK and Australia - the former cos it dutifully follows the US' policies, and the latter cos it's far enough away to not have to worry about reprisals. The rest of the NATO members would rather not go to war.
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  34. ​ @kingofprussia17  It's not a simple task to just 'upgrade' an existing city. Starting from scratch has its advantages, especially that you don't have to bulldoze any of the existing stuff (often necessary, and both causes lots of disruption and builds resentment). The reason many opt for fresh projects is because it often actually IS the easier option. There's also more design options available with a new city that you don't have with existing ones.
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  35. @John Grigg And George Bush and Dick Cheney are liable for HUNDREDS of thousands of dead men, women and children.
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  36. Lol what a confident prediction. Pretty sure Russia ain't gonna collapse anytime soon, but keep indulging those fever dreams. :)
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  37.  @johnr797  Prigozhin is an old friend of Lukashenko. If he were to kick the bucket, he may actually like Prigozhin to replace him lol.
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  38.  @1themaster1  The Afghan war has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and achieved next to nothing for it. The Taliban may be oppressive, but the country's death toll was never that high before the war.
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  39. He provides a lot of the additional stuff (including even longer written reports) only to his patrons, not regular viewers, unfortunately. I can understand why he does that - there's not much else he can offer them as rewards - but it does mean you're out of luck unless you pitch in.
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  40. The US has literally intimidated India with its navy (1971 Bangladesh independence, when they sided with Pakistan) and even sanctioned India already (after we declared ourselves a nuclear power). They made this relationship combative, not us. We've learned over the years that the US can be useful, but can never be trusted.
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  41.  @ktg5241  I like how you ignore the numbers. How many people is China known to have 'cleansed' i.e. killed again, post-Mao? Now go look up how many people have died in the US' many wars over the same time period. Oh, look - it's just a war, not called some scary thing like 'ethnic cleansing', so it's okay! Go ahead, get some real numbers from a reputable global institution about China's deaths in the last few decades, and show that they exceed the US' war casualty figures (not of just American soldiers btw - unless you want reveal yourself as racist) in the same time frame. And if you have to reach as far back as Mao, literally half a century ago, you've already conceded.
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  42. That is more because Britain has ceased to be an industrial power than anything else. Power generation and cars are the only things that it still CAN pollute as much as before with. It has gutted its manufacturing, and doesn't grow as much either. It does import a lot of things still, but the emissions from that is often not included in its figures but rather that of the producer nations.
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  43. Lol right. The US has thrown its own democratic supposed 'allies' under the bus when it needs to. Look up the Plaza Accords for an example. Or how it abandoned the Kurds for a recent example. It's always about geopolitics. There's a reason Churchill described the Americans the way he did. And that's from a dude they were supporting in a war even...
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  44.  @LukeMosse You think flooding tunnels is a new idea? We've known about that tactic for literally millennia, and we still built tunnels. We also build tunnels for handling floodwaters. Put those two together and take a guess why it's stupid.
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  45.  @BluffyMoo  They can try ye olde siege tactic with the Malacca Strait, but that'd hurt EVERY nation in the region and do nothing to save Taiwan. Not to mention the nations who actually surround the Malacca Strait would be strongly opposed to having the war foisted on them like that as it hurts their economies severely and all of them have China as their majority trade partner. Meanwhile China has other trade routes and literally one of the worlds' largest oil and food producers just to its north as an ally. While Taiwan is an island just off their coast...
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  46.  @esanahka9284  Officially yeah, they can leave. Unofficially they know they'll ruined if they do.
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  47.  @Arya_amsha  That dumb "debt trap" rhetoric is an overblown meme. It's a gross oversimplification of Chinese loans, and even the economic situation of the nations you mentioned i.e. Pakistan and Sri Lanka. There are academic analyses (not from China) that show up how unhinged from reality the debt trap idea is. But anyway, while the BRI isn't exactly going great, even mediocre results would outshine the project this video talks about. The reason being that the BRI is a massive project, so even modest results are huge, while the last Indian project talked about in this video is far more modest right from the outset. So even if it's totally successful, it'll only make a small difference compared to the BRI.
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  48. Another difference between the US and Japan is that their public CAN support all that debt, because they save like crazy. The US is the opposite - its people are as deep in debt as their govt. is, and hence can't prop it up.
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  49.  @minoan438  "avoids china like the plague" - bruh, in the last month he's made 3 videos concerning China. That's 3 out of 7 videos made in that period, or almost half of them. But idiots like you will spout whatever suits your biases at that moment, and the wider internet will lap it up without even spending a couple seconds checking its veracity.
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  50.  @Homer-OJ-Simpson  Bailout loans aren't the only western loans that come with strings attached. Hell even this very project covered in the video has already decided what it's going to do without consulting with the local administrations at all. This is a recurring pattern when it comes to western engagement with the rest of the world (something Gyude Moore mentions in his talk on China in Africa here on YT) - the Chinese send senior functionaries (including the premier himself) to these nations to negotiate deals, or welcome their leaders with similar respect, while the west typically send some junior executive to talk to them or more often to receive them when they come calling. Whether the Chinese are genuine or not in this, they still negotiate with Africans from a more equitable position than the west has ever done, even now. The West has always talked down to the developing world, so obviously it makes working with China a lot more palatable.
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