Last time US fighter pilots had to deal with people firing anti aircraft missiles at them in volume was during the opening days of the first gulf war.
Anyone remember the flight recorder video from an F16 over Baghdad being chased by six surface to air missiles? During the chase sustained an average of 3.6G with peak acceleration at points reaching 6.4G. Does seem like the stuff of nightmares.
The US kill-death ratio is also telling.
During the Global War on Terror less than ten thousand US citizens killed in the conflict but around a million Afghans and Iraqis directly killed along with around 4 million people across the region indirectedly killed. Even the Vietnam war was something like 40,000 US citizens killed in exchange for around 3 million killed on the Vietnamese side. Hell… the US kill-death ratio in the World War 2 Pacific theater, some of the most brutal fighting the US has engaged in, was only 70,000 US citizens killed in exchange for 2.5 million Japanese soliders and somewhere around 1 million Japanese civilians killed.
The US has amazing kill-death ratios across all its wars excluding its civil war when busy fighting among itself. It’s disgusting really. The US will lose a few thousand while killing millions on the other side. Even in total war engagements the US loses thousands while the other combatants lose many millions. Since 1775 the US has only lost around 650,000 even when including both the US civil war and World War 2.
People always make the mistake of assuming during colonial adventures the US is doing anything other than smashing everything up (immediately wiping out the opposing military) then sitting back and milking any insurgency for as long as it is profitable to maintain a low intensity conflict. The US has really only ever fought two conflicts on a total-war footing (Civil War, World War 2) but managed to have hundreds of colonial adventures and so-called police actions throughout its entire history. For most of its history the US has been fighting one or more military actions somewhere, starting with westward expansion across North American then the so-called banana-wars advancing US corporate interests across Latin America and various colonial or cold war adventures across the entirety of the eastern hemisphere.
The Washington Post is whatever its owner Jeff Bezos wants it to be.
Yeah. You build undersea HVDC lines. HVDC was pioneered for undersea cables because it allows smaller cables with lower transmission loss (greater distance) than AC transmission. The other reason is that HVDC is the only realistic way to import/export power between regional AC transmission systems that are not synchronized.
Infact the majority of undersea transmission lines are HVDC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_power_cable#Direct_current_cables
I hope this means the Chinese plan to create a High Voltage DC transmission super-grid connecting across over a dozen time zones moves closer to reality. It’s a development project needed for the renewable transition but a major issue is everyone believes both South Korea and Japan will never meaningfully get on board.
I laughed reading this because it reminded me about how bad the US was at building anything in Iraq and Afghanistan. At one point US contractors charged almost 50 million dollars to build a single gas station and it never actually got completed. To be fair, US contractors are just as bad when hired to build infrastructure in the US.
Everyone always forgets that modern warships are mobile missile shield systems. They provide a few hundred miles of interceptor coverage. China has assets in the region and over the past week there are multiple groups staging missile or rocket attacks on everything from infrastructure to military bases in a half dozen countries.
China undoubtedly remembers how the US dropped five JDAM guided bombs through the roof of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.. Unlike decades ago, China has a modern navy and can position ships to prevent such US antics.
They also are at a geographical point for global south trade that will see their importance grow. Same geography is why they end up as a fiber optic hub for projects like the BRICS Cable.
Not really news. Central banks of the US, China, and EU do this constantly as a way to keep their currency stable relative to each other. At this point it’s all algorithmic. Only really works well for the central banks of nations that have a currency making up a significant share of the global foreign currency reserves.
“Family members and friends were also told that without electricity they had been reduced to eat dry food.”
UN rights chief Volker Turk said Bazoum’s reported detention conditions “could amount to inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of international human rights law”.
ECOWAS is determined to stop the sixth military takeover in the region in just three years and has severed financial transactions and electricity supplies and closed borders with landlocked Niger, blocking much-needed imports to one of the world’s poorest countries.
No electricity for the the homes of the former president and his family when the entire nation has been cut off from electricity imports? Before this coup only 18% of Nigers population had access to electricity, so how is this inhumane for them but not the other 82% of Nigeriens?
I immediately went to the sections on these two topics and was not disappointed.
Rampant US Theft of Intellectual Property and Data
The U.S. frequently accuses other members of stealing its intellectual property. However, in fact, the U.S. has been stealing other members’ trade secrets, data and undisclosed information through various means for a long time, seriously violating TRIPS Agreement’s basic principles on intellectual property protection, failing to fulfill its obligations under Article 39 of the TRIPS Agreement on the protection of undisclosed information, and posing a serious threat to the national or regional security of the victim members.
With a wide range of targets and high frequency of attacking, cyber attacks and telephone surveillance are major methods for the U.S. to steal other members’ secrets, data and information. According to statistics results from National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China, in the first half of 2021, the center captured about 23.07 million malicious program samples, with daily average transmission exceeding 5.82 million times, involving about 208,000 malicious program families, about half of which originated from the U.S. In September 2022, Northwestern Polytechnical University of China was attacked by the U.S. National Security Agency. The university’s core technical data, including critical network device configuration, network management data and operation and maintenance data, were stolen during the attack. Investigations have unveiled that the U.S. used 41 special cyber attack weapons for the attack. What’s more, the Tailored Access Operations under the U.S. National Security Agency has carried out tens of thousands of malicious cyber attacks on cyber targets in China over the years, taking control of relevant network equipment and obtaining large amounts of data. According to reports, the U.S. has also conducted monitoring and information theft of global broadcasting, telecommunications, and the Internet through related intelligence-gathering projects.
Rampant US Biopiracy
American biotechnology companies are notorious for their rampant engagement in “biopiracy”. Relying on its economic and technological advantages, American biotechnology companies commercially exploit genetic resources obtained at low cost from developing countries and apply for patent protection, so as to gain huge profits. In 1997, an agriculture enterprise in the U.S. applied for 20 patents after hybridizing basmati rice with an American long indica rice, which severely restricted the export of basmati rice from India. The top agriculture enterprises of the U.S. took advantage of the ineffective enforcement of international intellectual property rules and the weakness of developing members in the protection and utilization of intellectual property rights, wantonly stealing biological genetic resources, appropriating a large number of local excellent crop trait genes of developing members. For example, the U.S. applied a large number of patents around the world on the genes for high-yield traits of soybeans originating from China, and then monopolized the market by abusing its technology and market advantages. After the completion of patent registration, the U.S. agriculture enterprises in turn charged high patent fees from many members, including the members where the patented genetic resources originating from. Such biopiracy conduct seriously damages the intellectual property rights and food security of the developing members.
Up side is central African countries are extremely good at containing outbreaks once identified. It’s the reason most of those countries handled COVID better than any European or American countries. Outbreaks of hemorrhagic fevers like ebola (horrific way to die, traumatic to witness) have a way of causing the type of mass psychological trauma that teaches entire generations to take shit seriously.