Zelensky - what possessed you?

[rough diamond]

2 hours ago, stevenl said:

And you won the election. Anything of substance?

Are you really asking for a response/post of substance from @Harrisfan and expecting anything meaningful?

 

[Lacessit]

1 minute ago, captain_shane said:

Tough luck pal. You ingrates are in for a world of hurt and all Trump is asking for is fairness. Don't want tariffs? Take yours off of us. 

America has a positive trade balance with Australia. We have spent our blood and treasure supporting you in many of your wars. Most American goods enter Australia duty free. You are the ingrates.

 

Here's an idea. Why don't you take your spy bases and military bases in Australia, and <deleted> off. We are tired of making ourselves a nuclear target for you. I'm sure your intelligence apparatus won't mind losing half its surveillance capabilities. You want to isolate yourselves, right?

[captain_shane]

Just now, Lacessit said:

America has a positive trade balance with Australia. We have spent our blood and treasure supporting you in many of your wars. Most American goods enter Australia duty free. You are the ingrates.

 

Here's an idea. Why don't you take your spy bases and military bases in Australia, and <deleted> off. We are tired of making ourselves a nuclear target for you. I'm sure your intelligence apparatus won't mind losing half its surveillance capabilities. You want to isolate yourselves, right?

That's fine, you'll be Chinese in 50 years anyway.

[bannork]

Just now, Lacessit said:

America has a positive trade balance with Australia. We have spent our blood and treasure supporting you in many of your wars. Most American goods enter Australia duty free. You are the ingrates.

 

Here's an idea. Why don't you take your spy bases and military bases in Australia, and <deleted> off. We are tired of making ourselves a nuclear target for you. I'm sure your intelligence apparatus won't mind losing half its surveillance capabilities. You want to isolate yourselves, right?

Donald no mates Trump.

[Tidal wave]

16 minutes ago, captain_shane said:

You ivory tower academics are such geniuses that you got conned by your media priests into believing Pee Tapes. 

You sound more like captain Mannering Shane see you found the green stuff ok 

[Lacessit]

Just now, captain_shane said:

That's fine, you'll be Chinese in 50 years anyway.

 

1 minute ago, captain_shane said:

That's fine, you'll be Chinese in 50 years anyway.

With America as an ally, you may be right.

 

FYI, Australia has some of the richest deposits of lithium and rare earths on the planet. Enjoy your trip into irrelevance.

[MicroB]

17 minutes ago, PomPolo said:

Hahaha I just saw your previous post definitely not a Russian AI bot.  Directing all the nukes at them might be a bit extreme but would definitely resolve the problem as long as we don't get fallout in Thailand 🤣

 

 

And if you look at some maps, the US border is much closer to Russia than, say, the UK border. Wars often start because of miscalculation. What if the Russian President think the US President doesn't care for Alaska. Russia is a problem for the US as well. Pick your poison. Does America prefer the frontline to be somewhere east of Warsaw or 12 miles off Baltimore. 

 

That has really been the deal  with NATO the whole time; a mutual defence pact, where in reality, in an actual shooting war, most of the damage will be incurred by the junior partners.  We all knew that. West Germany would have been left a smoking ruin, the Red Army would run out of gas by the time it got to the Dutch border. BAOR (British Army on the Rhine) was assumed to last maybe 3-4 weeks in WW3, its role being mainly stay behind and make sure fuel depots were denied to the Soviets as they advanced (because they wouldn't have been able to bring up supplies quick enough). and buy time before it went full nuclear. The Soviets assumed superior (accurate) Western tactical nuclear weapons would be used early on to interdict supply lines, to effectively cut off advancing units. Its all quite grim for the people in Europe, however it turned out, with the main objective that the US homeland would be left untouched by the ravages of war. That was the deal for 60 years. Europe protected America with its blood and soil.

 

 

[captain_shane]

Just now, Lacessit said:

 

With America as an ally, you may be right.

 

FYI, Australia has some of the richest deposits of lithium and rare earths on the planet. Enjoy your trip into irrelevance.

Lol, the US just found a gigantic deposit of lithium in Arkansas. You aren't needed like you think you are. You have 7 million tons of lithium in Australia, we just found 5-19 million in just ONE state HAHAHAHAHA

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-giant-hidden-source-of-lithium-was-just-discovered-in-arkansas

[captain_shane]

Just now, MicroB said:

 

 

And if you look at some maps, the US border is much closer to Russia than, say, the UK border. Wars often start because of miscalculation. What if the Russian President think the US President doesn't care for Alaska. Russia is a problem for the US as well. Pick your poison. Does America prefer the frontline to be somewhere east of Warsaw or 12 miles off Baltimore. 

 

That has really been the deal  with NATO the whole time; a mutual defence pact, where in reality, in an actual shooting war, most of the damage will be incurred by the junior partners.  We all knew that. West Germany would have been left a smoking ruin, the Red Army would run out of gas by the time it got to the Dutch border. BAOR (British Army on the Rhine) was assumed to last maybe 3-4 weeks in WW3, its role being mainly stay behind and make sure fuel depots were denied to the Soviets as they advanced (because they wouldn't have been able to bring up supplies quick enough). and buy time before it went full nuclear. The Soviets assumed superior (accurate) Western tactical nuclear weapons would be used early on to interdict supply lines, to effectively cut off advancing units. Its all quite grim for the people in Europe, however it turned out, with the main objective that the US homeland would be left untouched by the ravages of war. That was the deal for 60 years. Europe protected America with its blood and soil.

 

 

Imagine thinking Russia can sail ships through solid blocks of ice. Lol, keep pretending we need each other.

[Harrisfan]

10 minutes ago, captain_shane said:

Is this the level of quality output for the vast majority of your 24.5K posts on this forum? 

Yes 20,000 no facts.

[Harrisfan]

17 minutes ago, captain_shane said:

Euros and Canadians are delusional. They think they're somehow going to double their militaries while keeping their welfare states while continuously importing mass immigrants. Literally delusional. They all think they're apart of the avengers and they're gonna go fight big bad Voldemort putler. Hilarious in my opinion.

Euros 5 to 10% unemployment. 

[Lacessit]

1 minute ago, captain_shane said:

Lol, the US just found a gigantic deposit of lithium in Arkansas. You aren't needed like you think you are. You have 7 million tons of lithium in Australia, we just found 5-19 million in just ONE state HAHAHAHAHA

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-giant-hidden-source-of-lithium-was-just-discovered-in-arkansas

It takes 5-7 years on average to develop a mine. After another 4 years of Trump and Musk, Americans will have many other things to think about, such as how they are going to feed themselves.

[captain_shane]

Just now, Lacessit said:

It takes 5-7 years on average to develop a mine. After another 4 years of Trump and Musk, Americans will have many other things to think about, such as how they are going to feed themselves.

Keep coping and pretending you mean anything to the US.

[Harrisfan]

1 minute ago, Lacessit said:

It takes 5-7 years on average to develop a mine. After another 4 years of Trump and Musk, Americans will have many other things to think about, such as how they are going to feed themselves.

Albanese is losing in the polls. Gone soon. 

[Lacessit]

4 minutes ago, captain_shane said:

Imagine thinking Russia can sail ships through solid blocks of ice. Lol, keep pretending we need each other.

They'll have clear water to sail through quite soon. Trump's environmental policies will see to that.

[steven100]

6 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

America has a positive trade balance with Australia. We have spent our blood and treasure supporting you in many of your wars. Most American goods enter Australia duty free. You are the ingrates.

 

Here's an idea. Why don't you take your spy bases and military bases in Australia, and <deleted> off. We are tired of making ourselves a nuclear target for you. I'm sure your intelligence apparatus won't mind losing half its surveillance capabilities. You want to isolate yourselves, right?

 

yes, this is where Australia & the US should tread very lightly,   I think Trump trash doesn't care about bases in Australia or anywhere else , or anything like that,  he want's to stop the bleeding,  and rightly so,   but it has to be in non critical areas,   certainly not military bases,   Albanese better high tail over to Trump trash and do some explaining.

 

This is a critical bad situation for Australia,  and I hope that they all understand that ......    if China decides to bomb Darwin ... Australia wouldn't last 2 days maybe ...     

 

This really is a sad turning point if the US does not support Australia.    It will only escalate...    imo

[captain_shane]

Just now, Lacessit said:

They'll have clear water to sail through quite soon. Trump's environmental policies will see to that.

So why do you want the Ukrainian war to continue? Do you realize how many carbon emissions are released in war? Which is more important to you lefties? Defeating climate change, or defeating Putler?

[thaibeachlovers]

49 minutes ago, MicroB said:

 

To sell him "Raw Earth" (sic)? Literally, the US President thinks he is buying dirt. I think you missed the pun.

I wasn't aware that you are hanging around with Trump. Are you best buds and does he tell you things the rest of us don't know about?

[Lacessit]

1 minute ago, captain_shane said:

So why do you want the Ukrainian war to continue? Do you realize how many carbon emissions are released in war? Which is more important to you lefties? Defeating climate change, or defeating Putler?

What's important is showing a kleptomaniac murderer like Putin he can't win, and needs to back off.

 

You don't seem too worried about carbon emissions, going by your number of posts on this thread.

[Harrisfan]

7 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

They'll have clear water to sail through quite soon. Trump's environmental policies will see to that.

Post a link to explain your reasoning. On my numbers its going to be 0.02 to 0.06c of warming.

[jts-khorat]

8 hours ago, Patong2021 said:

If Zelenskyy has the connections, now is the time he should enter into an agreement with China to develop his mineral wealth. Linked up with China, there would be a near monopoly on rare earth metals.

 

The Ukrainians have spoken about this before, so I personally think it is imminent: the US guaranteed their safety if they give up their nukes, but they will try to get new ones if the US fails to fulfill their obligation. If the technology does not come from France or the UK (unlikely), the logical other partner would be China. I think we will see diplomatic overtures start soon, and the Ukraine having a functioning nuke within the year.
 

Usually, the more difficult part than the nuke itself is the delivery vehicle. But as we have seen with the Crimean Bridge, a truck driven with a bomb on it would suffice. Lots of roads go to Moscow or St Petersburg or maybe just Kursk.

 

So Zelenskyy was right, the Americans will feel the repercussions of their betrayal. It was not a threat, it was a clear statement of fact, that Trump just toppled 80 years of national security doctrine of the US, possibly in a not repairable way.

[steven100]

I think give it 3-6 months and Trump trash will get a bit of a shock from everywhere ....   he'll come to realize what damage he's done,  hopefully.  

 

Unfortunately, I love America and Americans,   it's sad to see this happen. 

[captain_shane]

Just now, jts-khorat said:

 

The Ukrainians have spoken about this before, so I personally think it is imminent: the US guaranteed their safety if they give up their nukes, but they will try to get new ones if the US fails to fulfill their obligation. If the technology does not come from France or the UK (unlikely), the logical other partner would be China. I think we will see diplomatic overtures start soon, and the Ukraine having a functioning nuke within the year.
 

Usually, the more difficult part than the nuke itself is the delivery vehicle. But as we have seen with the Crimean Bridge, a truck driven with a bomb on it would suffice. Lots of roads go to Moscow or St Petersburg or maybe just Kursk.

 

So Zelenskyy was right, the Americans will feel the repercussions of their betrayal. It was not a threat, it was a clear statement of fact, that Trump just toppled 80 years of national security doctrine of the US, possibly in a not repairable way.

Ukraine has zero chance of acquiring nukes lol. The fact that you believe it's even remotely possible, let alone one year just goes to show the level of ignorance Zelensky supporters have.

[stevenl]

29 minutes ago, rough diamond said:

Are you really asking for a response/post of substance from @Harrisfan and expecting anything meaningful?

 

I'm an optimist, you never know.

But as usual nothing meaningful from him/her/it.

[Yagoda]

21 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

America has a positive trade balance with Australia. We have spent our blood and treasure supporting you in many of your wars. Most American goods enter Australia duty free. You are the ingrates.

 

Here's an idea. Why don't you take your spy bases and military bases in Australia, and <deleted> off. We are tired of making ourselves a nuclear target for you. I'm sure your intelligence apparatus won't mind losing half its surveillance capabilities. You want to isolate yourselves, right?

You will do what we say. We are your Master.

 

Or Learn Mandarin but until then we will use you or abandon you for our needs, not yours.

 

 

[MicroB]

23 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

Oh yes it would. Europe makes many of the high-end processors at the cutting edge of AI. The Large Hadron Collider is located near Geneva.

 

If you had a CAT scan for any cancers or other ailments, the odds are pretty good the scanner was made in Europe, most notably by Siemens and Philips.

 

America embracing isolationism is nothing new. However, Chinese advances such as DeepSeek and in nuclear fusion illustrate taking that path leads to irrelevance.

 

IMO Trump's policies are going to put the US into deep recession, and he will probably take the rest of the world with him.

 

Not that he will care, empathy is not in the skill set of sociopaths.

 

Run that past me again, didn't Trump say he would end the war in Ukraine in a day?

 

 

 

The medical devices supply chain is quite complex. I'm working with the FDA to identify risks in the US supply chain; COVID revealed that they don't really know where stuff comes from (the EU is also doing the same kind of study). About 5% of US branded products, from US companies are made wholly in the US, and thats really in quite niche, specialist areas.  A lot is assembled in the US, but that's not the same as made in the US. For instance, an American compay sells a test system for respiratory viruses. They do some manufacturing in the US, some work in their Chinese factory. Some electronics they have outsourced to a US contract manufacturer who has an electronics design capabilirty in Singapore, but who then has the electronics part assembled in Malaysia. Critical to the whole test is viral antigen; this company can't make the right antigen (killed lethal virus), and you need that antigen to prove the test works. They outsource it to a tiny Dutch company who has a class 4 biosafety lab and the knowhow not only to know how to inactivate the virus, but also inactivate it in such a way it can be used in the test.

 

Onshoring all of that is not straightforward. Electronics manufacture could be onshored, but they don't own the IP, so there is a cost there. Maybe they can build their own class 4 lab in the US, but getting those things built these days is really hard; who wants an anthrax lab next door. And if they do all that, can they sell the system anymore for $10,000 for the hardware, $50 per test. Probably not. More like $200 per test, which translated into a $400 bill to the payer.

 

There are about a million and a half different medical device products on sale in the US.

 

Putin tried to see if his boffins could onshore Russian medical supplies. Remember, this is a nuclear power, with lots of clever, able and well trained people, with access to lots of raw materials. They couldn't do it. One, they lacked the know how.  Two, the doctors were telling them there was no way they would treat their patients with something shonky just because it was Russian made.

 

The same in the US. It will take years for the US to decouple from the ROTW. When it comes to CDMOs influencing the US, most of them are EU; that means contract manufacturers with know how (ie you can't make what you want to make without their IP and know how). In the meantime, doctors will be guided by medical liability legislation, and certainly not risking their patients, and their liberty, on half baked nationalist-driven products. This was the failure of the ventilator projects during COVID; the doctors wanted more ventilators of the type  they were already using , not something dreamt of by a vacuum salesman or a carmaker.

 

Of course it cuts both ways, and there is interdependance between economies. Though trade deficits show Americans want European goods more than Europeans want American goods. Partly you could say thats because American goods are more expensive in Europe. But for cars, that is literally not true; things like Mustangs and Corvettes are actually pretty cheap. But they are crap. They don't handle that well, they are thirsty, they are not all that comfortable, and the quality is a bit crude. Dealer support ain't great. American companies like Ford, build Rangers for Europe in Thailand. The profits don't go back to Thailand. They go back to Dearborn, and back into American pockets.

 

[Lacessit]

Just now, captain_shane said:

Why would I? You lot actively hate on us any chance you get. You and Euros have got off on calling Americans uneducated retards for a long time. The second we want reciprocal trade deals you screech and knock over the table instead of understanding that big daddy America is in 36.5T of debt and that doesn't last forever. The US brings in 4.9T of revenue, that's a 785% debt to income level and you people want us blowing more and more money. Ingrates.

Your debt is created by you.

 

We had a reciprocal trade deal with you, you have a positive balance of trade with Australia.

 

Stop trying to revise history

 

 

[captain_shane]

Just now, Lacessit said:

Your debt is created by you.

 

 

Yeah, a significant amount of that was spent defending EURO countries that refused to hold their end of the deal. Germany has averaged 1.1% defense spending for the last 20 years. They haven't been above 2% since 1990. You probably won't even get tariffed in Australia, our beef is more with Europe/Canada/Mexico at the moment. ASEAN nations like Thailand should prepare for large tariffs unless they drop theirs. Fair is fair. Australia is mostly fair, so I repeat that I doubt you get tariffed, only unfair countries will have it done to them.

[captain_shane]

Just now, steven100 said:

I've just set up a track on you and it's confirmed your a Russian propaganda pusher located outside Thailand. You have been reported. Expect a visit from Cybercrime agent.  

Lol how paranoid are you? Would you like me to walk outside and take a picture of Koh Chang for you?

[Lacessit]

1 minute ago, captain_shane said:

Yeah, a significant amount of that was spent defending EURO countries that refused to hold their end of the deal. Germany has averaged 1.1% defense spending for the last 20 years. They haven't been above 2% since 1990. You probably won't even get tariffed in Australia, our beef is more with Europe/Canada/Mexico at the moment. ASEAN nations like Thailand should prepare for large tariffs unless they drop theirs. Fair is fair. Australia is mostly fair, so I repeat that I doubt you get tariffed, only unfair countries will have it done to them.

Trump is putting 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium, both of which we export to you.

 

Only fair if we put 25% tariffs on American goods, right?

 

We make our steel from 60% plus iron ore. America makes its steel from 30% taconite mined at the Mesabi range. It makes us twice as efficient in producing steel.

 

Which just shows how dumb tariffs are in trying to protect inefficient industries, right?