Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "CaspianReport" channel.

  1. Shortsighted capitalism in general doesn't want dependents like children or elderly. That's why a "demographic dividend" driven economic boost happens when the bulk of the population is in their 20s to 50s. If traditional elites and corporations had their way, we'd all be single childless migrants that they can move and fire at their convenience (and some countries run on exactly that).
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  2. Americans and Israel can be negotiated with, it’s Iranian citizens that they’re most worried about being surrounded by those whom they committed multigenerational trauma upon
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  3. Although causing catastrophic damage may be easier than expected considering how the dam itself shows signs of cracking itself apart just on its own.
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  4. Right, Pax Romana, Mongolica, and Britannica all rode on a clearly dominant military force who could quickly deploy to terminate trade-blocking disputes
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  5. Zheng He’s militarized treasure fleet sailed through there once. Therefore it is sovereign Chinese internal waters.
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  6. It’s a relief valve, but not a full replacement of deep sea routes; all these projects ultimately only delays the inevitable collapse of affordable food and fuel to the population and industrial centers along the eastern coast, once the missiles start flying and all but the most well-paid (by China’s treasury) civilian ships dare to sail in.
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  7. But if the North reignites the war, were they “subject to an armed attack”? The South is unlikely to fire the first shot because popular sentiment is turning against reunification and the devastating multigenerational costs of reintegrating and redeveloping the North, and that’s without a war where Pyongyang voluntarily accedes into the ROK much like East Germany did.
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  8. "Multipolar" just means multiple fault lines for militarized conflict. The last time we had a functionally multipolar world, it was full of extractive colonialism ending in two world wars. The reason Pax Romana, Pax Mongolica, and Pax Americana are named after a single power is because it provided a common security environment allowing peaceful trade for like a third of humanity at the time.
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  9. Even if missiles do reach their intended strike zone, it still has to quickly determine the difference between valid and civilian targets. Anti-ship missiles with their relatively tiny onboard radars are fairly dumb, and accuracy only diminishes as speed increases. I'd wager a good number of Chinese missiles aimed out to sea are going to mistake a container ship for a flattop, subsequently scaring off the civilian traffic the Mainland relies on for food and fuel at affordable prices.
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  10. Yeah, next thing you know the Azeris and Kurds will be making claim on those ethnic enclaves on the other side of Iran
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  11. Meanwhile Americans: "It only costs you £100 to see a doctor?!"
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  12. It's sad to hear how so many Chinese nationals liken the PRC government to their "parents", defending the Party from outsiders even when they themselves hold the same criticisms. They haven't yet realized that parents can also be a toxic influence, and it could be healthier to estrange yourself from such a "family".
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  13. "In China, the government is not seen as a hindrance to economic prosperity, but a prerequisite", according to the Party narrative anyway. On the ground though the CPC's rule by law approach introduces obstacles to smooth business operations, and creates uncertainty that the entire business model could someday suddenly get declared as illegal.
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  14. It shows the physical vulnerabilities and overall conflict from the Israeli perspective, which is something we don't hear much of as we're flooded with the narrative to have unquestioned sympathy for Palestine.
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  15. Traditional extended families are even more expensive since there needs to be housing for them all, in a locale they agree to and can reliably reach each other within. Nuclear families are an adaptation to an industrialized economy where workers have to be more mobile to reach opportunities as they arise.
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  16. Timor Leste is actually hoping to (re)join, and even gets support from its former colonizer Indonesia. It's Singapore and some other continental states who oppose its inclusion, thinking its accession will drag the economic progress of ASEAN.
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  17. Meanwhile in Běijīng: looks at Táiwān, who have been preparing for their arrival for decades looks at the PLA, inexperienced in fighting true hostilities, field maintenance, and logistics under fire with untested equipment looks at the rest of the world, who would accelerate divestment if not cut ties with China altogether looks at its foreign reserves, which isn't unlimited looks at its grain reserves, which is literally rotten looks at its farmlands and water sources, if there are any unpolluted ones left looks at its people, who have no shortage of complaints against the government and are still very much willing to expatriate fills the Water Cube with profuse sweating ☭🥀
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  18. Ask the host nations. They want America there because they're mortally concerned about what's likely to happen to them afterwards should the Yankees really do go home.
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  19. Defending its sovereign space is kind of important in developing the economy that grows from it. This is why America used to be terribly anxious about Soviet-backed Cuba during the Cold War, and why Běijīng is so butthurt about a democratized Táiwān who offers an Chinese ethnostate alternative to the one-Party PRC.
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  20. ​ @ThatBasedGuy Right, the US and Pakistan have long held a formal security agreement. India cannot afford for America to stop casually ignoring it by siding against the US.
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  21. Long in objectives, but not comprehensive in planning. The CPC's tunnel-visioned policies and projects are why Mainland China irreversibly old, polluted, and indebted.
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  22. The US is a relatively distant power whose bases are often wanted there to subsidize their national security and/or provide a convenient lightning rod to deflect domestic political anger at. Often there's more concern about the subsequent costs and consequences should the Americans leave. Ask the Philippines or Iraq or Afghanistan how secure they felt after US forces departed like they had asked. Meanwhile China is viewed with significantly more suspicion especially as Chinese locals throughout history don't readily intermingle and integrate with the local majority. Chinese division and exclusion (and sometimes literal invasion) was seen akin to colonization, a sentiment that simmers at various strengths within ASEAN to this day. "Don't you realize what it means if the Chinese remain? Don't you remember your history? The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years... As for me, I prefer to sniff French shit for five years than to eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life." -- Ho Chi Minh, in reference to asking China to help liberate SE Asia
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  23. @威克 Yet the PRC still fails to clear such a low bar. Anti-Mainlander and anticommunist sentiments are rising all throughout East Asia, especially in Maritime ASEAN where China is seen as a rising threat to territorial integrity and their own economic rise. Despite America's "warmongering", its disinterest in forcing its own uninvited space (i.e. anything more than scattered military bases the host nation can ask for back at their own risk) ironically makes the US a desirable counterweight.
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  24. No, radios of any sort are far less efficient to move information compared to dedicated physical pipes. They're best used as a stopgap until local cell service (itself uplinked by highly focused microwaves if not terrestrial fiber) and ultimately hardwiring makes it to those inland demand points.
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  25. Yeah usually they tend to relocate more towards the center of the territory to improve control over the entire nation
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  26. The various levels of irredentism Kosovo into Albania: Yes, please! Koreas: Of course (if on my terms) Samoa and American Samoa: Meh Crimea back into Ukraine: Uh, why? Taiwan into Mainland China: You're high.
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  27. True, I recently finished a first aid course taught by the US government, who is a major customer of Israeli materiel including battlefield medicine. I remember my instructor mentioning how when they teach similar courses in Muslim countries, they often have a hard time not calling it an "Israeli bandage" out of habit -- "Israeli" anything has to be avoided because those students shut down if they realize they're potentially putting something Israeli into their bodies.
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  28. ​ @chaoticdanor Problem is they will try to overlord, inventing new "enemies" as necessary. Have you seen how they run their own countries?
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  29. Caspian Report is made by an Azeri, and though Azerbaijan is majority Muslim it’s even more moderate and secular than Türkiye. There’d be a bias towards the EU and against its former colonizers like Iran and Russia.
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  30. Nuclear plants are extremely expensive, rising in lifetime operational costs, and slow to come online and generate a profit. And if you think Thorium is the savior, it is more expensive to process and its byproducts can still be weaponized into a nuclear warhead ☢️
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  31.  @masoodjalal1152  And security for practically all the world’s oceans, granting the majority of humanity free access to each other on and over international waters even if they’re solidly hostile to the Americans. It’s a more ideal scenario than peace for a tiny fraction of humanity in isolated pockets of the world, while billions of even more people than now suffer wars and genocides because of the local elite’s much more limited and exclusive prescription of how the world ought to be.
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  32. French saltiness could have implications for Europe and other places in their realm of influence, like parts of Africa and nearly all the South Pacific.
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  33. Winner-take-all voting makes the result naturally converge on two sides: the one victor, and the collection of all losers. Unless this is altered to allow alternatives to naturally arise, the choices will always return to picking the lesser of two disappointments.
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  34. It's ironic that the Communist China's idea of its territory involves every land that it once held through imperial conquest. It's an open secret that China also wants Russia's southeastern corner too (i.e. Vladivostok), and there's serious discussion of what other lands that China could target for seizure or at least political subjugation much like how things were during their imperial glory days.
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  35. Russia's underperformance certainly gives the PRC pause when looking at their similarly equipped and administered PLA, but that doesn't mean they're no longer a military threat to its neighbors. With the "success" of battling COVID influencing a 3rd term for Xi, I wouldn't be surprised if "success" in absorbing Taiwan drives his push for a 4th. They're definitely analyzing the mistakes and shortfalls of Putin's adventures to see if they can correct their own issues in time for the invasion, which is looking more inevitable as China circles the drain of aging, debt, and pollution that the unchallenged Party has no effective solution for.
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  36. Though that was when they had bodies to spare. Now the military-age males are only-sons and shrinking in number rapidly.
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  37. Right, those calls to unconditionally "Free Palestine" pose a very real threat for millions of Jews there who could quickly end up as a second-class jizya-taxed dhimmi minority in a (likely still conflict-filled) Islamist state.
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  38. Beidou is Chinese GPS, supposedly a bit more accurate (mostly important for drones) and features limited two-way messaging capabilities. Baidu is Chinese Google. It's actually not that good outside of Mainland websites, so a lot of Chinese will use their VPNs just to use real Google for whatever they're searching for.
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  39.  @Rishi123456789  NATO requires its members to be democracies with transparent civilian control over its militaries, which didn't exist in either Ukraine or Russia. Hence why neither were admitted in.
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  40. Ironically staying in our borders causes even bigger problems. The last times America tried to disengage, it got dragged into WW1, WW2, and 9/11. Forward deployment allows faster containment if not total deterrence of local conflicts before they grow into truly devastating industrialized warfare. Isolationism would be akin to firefighting for a whole county but all the firefighters are in one downtown station.
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  41.  @ivanjokovic  "Obeyed" in that the PRC's expansion, condescension, and overselling promises of prosperity forced the Philippines to reconsider its security posture after kicking out US forces the first time.
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  42. A lot of it comes from the CPC itself, whose authoritarian practices of vaguely enforcing broadly-defined rules breeds mistrust between people. Had the Mainland gone more the way of democratized Táiwān, the Chinese people would likely turn out much more open and trusting, and China's post-imperial rise could have been better founded, while also more tolerated if not authentically welcomed by the rest of the world. However, delegating power to the people is a concept that is very novel to classically top-down Chinese culture, and a constant competition for attractiveness that the CPC would be terrified to play.
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  43. All of Korea is in nuke range though. The bigger concern was always conventional artillery, but most of that devastation would stay north of the Han River which Seoul straddles unless NK forces can make their way south with ammo to spare.
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  44. Kids can take it themselves as soon as they can walk and navigate on their own, which is a lot earlier than the age permitted to drive. It’s not like America where we’re culturally pressured by fearmongering media into having certain adults be physically with our kids at all times during the day. That ability to move about town solo is real independence, and an important part of growing up. Delaying this mobility well into the teenage years might actually be contributing to the rise in mental health issues.
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  45. There are active independence movements, but it's a fringe minority. The departure of US military activity alone would crush their economies, right as they also need to set up new diplomatic and trade relationships... and their biggest international market advantage isn't something those islands can export, compared to their simple existence as dry land in the middle of the sea.
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  46. ​ @huh3404 Anti-Israelis already hold all Israelis responsible. That's why they've been indiscriminately rocketing if not raiding Israeli population centers the entire time.
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  47. Speed is life for aircraft carriers just like they are for fighter planes. It allows for safer flight operations as well as maneuvering options under fire. The longer a carrier can maintain speed, the more its benefits stack up. America's supercarriers are surprisingly fast (the true top speed being classified) -- so fast it's the escorts who have trouble keeping up.
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  48. They are encrypted, but they can still be collected and cracked later.
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  49. Losing Taiwan could mean India and probably Japan and South Korea arm up on nukes to prevent their own encirclement by China (the "String of Pearls"), while ASEAN gets starved into submission from having their fish and freshwater stolen. A Taiwan not under a terminally belligerent CPC is the key from preventing a greater disaster coming for half of humanity.
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  50. That's just human nature, nothing gets people to unite faster than a common enemy. Communities are tightest when they identify as something they're not (barbarians, sinners, some other race/tribe/nation, etc), and sadly when one doesn't exist people will gradually find or create a new "other" because we're constantly trying to form a hierarchy with somebody beneath us.
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