Just fyi Nigeria has the 11th largest oil reserves in the worl.

You got to hand it to Infantino. I thought that going lower then the “I feel a migrant worker” speech was impossible, but the cut off hands dooming earth award for Trump might just do it.

The war is currently seeing a very very slow Russian advance, but Ukraine seems to finally be able to strike the Russian economy. The drone attacks against the Russian oil industry are certainly new and increase the cost of war for Russia. Germany lost WW1 without a hostile soldier on its original territory for example.

There is another option, which is Putin is couped out of office. The new Russian government wants to get rid of Putin and sending him to the Hague would mean he is locked up for life and all the problems Russia has can be blamed on him. It also creates some good will with the Ukrainians for peace negotiations. The Wagner revolt shows that this is certainly possible.

The regions Russia has invaded have large unexploited oil and more importantly gas reserves. Not only that, but some of the gas pipeline, which supply Russian gas to the EU run through that region. So if Ukraine holds them, it is fairly easy to them to replace Russian gas.

For the US the war is extremely usefull. Russia gave the EU a somewhat independent energy supply. But the war against Ukraine is just too dangerous. Especially with Russia threatening EU countries on a regular bases. So they turned to other suppliers and the biggest oil and gas exporter is currently the US. Due to the war a third of fossil gas used by the EU is from the US right now. That is a huge dependence.

As for oil, Ukraine is obviosuly very willing to attack Russian oil infrastructure. So the US is litterally taking out a competitor fairly long term here.

Something similar was happening with Iran. Israel actually attacked some oil and gas infrastructure in Iran as well. Obviously the entire region is always close to explode again.

This is also a good move against China. They import a lot of oil from Russia, Venezuela and Iran. So if the US can control Venezuela and take out Russia and Iran, then it is able to really punish China in a war. That is why China is going for EVs, renewables and coal. They can have those inside China. Something similar is happening inside the EU as well, but less strategic.

Also back to Ukraine. It is more complex then that. Ukraine is culturally close to Russia, so them removing a dictator might well be a bad example to the Russian people, from Putins point of view. It also acted as a buffer between Russia and EU/NATO, has a lot of farm land and due to Soviet legacy an economy, which integrates well into Russia, as well as a lot of Russian speakers. The war also helps Putin internally, as an excuse to strengthen the hold over the country and remove competition.

Me looking up the project: At least they figured out that they need a metro, given they plan the Nusantara Autonomous Rail Transit. Turns out it is a bus.

In this conflict it is only a matter of time until the ceasefire is broken. Anything could be used as a cause.

Milei wants to dollarize Argentina. Ones you do that, it is very hard to move to your own currency again and it would give the US massive influence over Argentina. The good news is that Argentina has a much more functional democracy then the US and their parliament is stopping Milei from doing too much bs. So probably this is going to fail.

Actually thanks to US money, Argentina was able to support its farmers by lower export tariffs for soy beans. They then sold a hell of a lot of those to China. Soy beans used to be the biggest US export to China…

Health care somewhat pays for itself. Not the really sick people, but making sure workers are healthy to actually work properly has a massive return on investment.

The other part is taking care of general health. Things like cars, bad food, all sorts of pollution and so forth really are bad for health. If you have public health care it is often cheaper to fix the underlying issue then to treat the problems coming from it.

France, UK, Canada, Spain and a lot of other Western countries recognized Palestine as a country. That is a pretty clear sign of the reputational hit Israel has gotten due to the Gaza genocide. Politicans in the West understand that supporting Israel is no longer free, but comes with a massive price tag.

Egypt was and is very happy to blockade Gaza. The Saudis, UAE and a bunch more blockaded Yemen for ages. The Islamic State which commited a few genocides in the region was funded by the Golf States. Iran is financing a shit ton of genocidal groups around the region.

They really do not care about genocide. The population cares about Gaza, but the leadership does not.

Egypt helped blockading Gaza. Hell many were happy to blockade Yemen. The UAE currently finances a massive genocide in Sudan, which is certainly on a similar scale to Gaza.

The simple bloody truth is that similar to the West in MENA the governments do not care about genocide, but the people largely do.

It is the military taking away a financing source for rebels. They mostly are not able to deal with problems like these though. Myanmar has turned into the biggest source of drugs in the world due to the civil war.

Germany has a 3.7% unemployment rate, which is going up a bit, but that is quite far away from mass unemployment Germany faced when Hitler took over.

This is just the combination of EV taking over and general lower car sales hitting the industry hard. It has to happen and is honestly a good thing long term. Other sectors of the economy are doing okay and baby boomers are retiring, so the work force is shrinking anyway. The situation is not even close to what happened in Germany when Hitler took over.

That is why I call for Israel to be sanctioned like Russia or North Korea. So heavy sanctions for commiting large scale crimes against humanity. Cuba does not commit those on a large scale, so I do not support Cuba style sanctions against any country including Cuba, because the key feature of them is that they are injust.

Israel should be sanctioned like Cuba and Cubas sanctions should be lifted, because they are ridiculous. You probably can see the problem in making that comparison.

There is a vote in the UN general assembly every year in which all UN members besides the US and Israel condemn the US blockade against Cuba. Kind of shows how horrible of a comparison it is.

Brazil and South Korea both have been dictatorships in living memory.

The force is not large enough to invade Venezuela. This is more of a force you position if you want to do some larger scale regime change operation. You know some mercenaries combined with Venezuelans who hate the government. Remove Maduro and US puppet. The flyover is meant as as sign that the Venezuelan military is behind Maduro.

Also just to say it, this can backfire badly. Venezula has a shit ton of gangs, is a massive country and to a large part covered in rainforest. Not a good combination.