never in a million years would i have guessed that cotton is needed in artillery shells lmao
Same to me. TIL
I think it was Ben Norton that the US wants to find a reason to get away with banning all Chinese imports… but their capitalism is holding them back as “just pay more to make it at home” or “deal with the consequences of an embargo” is not an option for the fragile American economy.
Exactly, we're kind of in a unique situation here as far as I can tell. Never before have we had a global empire that managed to deindustrialize its core to such an extent. US now recognizes the problem, but they have no idea how to tackle it.
I'm glad that the head of capitalism is bleeding itself out, but its truly bizarre the decisions that they made. They should've hugged Russia and built them up like Japan after the collapse and they would've had a stalwart ally in the region with a shitton of oil and natural gas. And they really did drink the Kool-Aid that the PRC would inevitably become liberal if the economy kept growing.
I truly believe that the elites ACTUALLY believe the propaganda is poisoning the American Empire.
I think so as well, these people drink their own kool aid.
Of course the elites believe in their own propaganda. They actually consume more of it than the poor. They are more likely to get polsci degrees, "higher quality" education in history. They can watch more movies, read more news.
Propaganda exists to teach not just the subjects how to be good citizens, but also the elites as to how to manage and persuade class society.
I assume/d the purpose of the ban is/was to further destabilize of Xinjiang, just as with the US-backed terrorist attacks, which are now being used as the pretext for the ban.
Yup, they wanted to destabilize Xinjiang economically which would help create a fertile ground for extremism.
US try to not hurt itself in it's confusion challenge.
US used RISC-V BAN!
US became confused!
It hurt itself in its confusion!
It's super effective!
No no no this is the plan ... the PRC is going to suffer just you see...
Taking out China's GDP by reducing it's US dollar holdings to worthless.
China is banned from exporting clothing with XJ cotton to the US & US-subjugated vassals, it must import even more from other countries.
I don't get this point. If china can't export cotton or cotton clothes why does it need to import more?
Also, I imagine that fast fashion is also contributing to this cotton shortage. It would be funny if this is what causes western governments to finally do something about fast fashion.
I made this second comment when I dove into the article, and I'm not sure what the adjective is when they say "it". Maybe they meant to suggest that because China can't sell its cotton to the United States, that the United States must import more cotton from abroad, which means the military industrial complex can't take as much cotton from those places as well.
It said there are 80 other countries that export cotton. So maybe the clothing industry in the United States had to import more cotton from those sources... And those sources raised prices or something, may be leading to military industrial partners choosing not to buy as much cotton, therefore reducing how much cotton they had.
But I'm just taking a guess because that was kind of a weird grammar thing they did there.
Nah, they'll just ban all fast fashion coming out of China alone, and then call it good.
NATOPedia claims that cellulose is used now, not cotton
Guncotton was originally made from cotton (as the source of cellulose) but contemporary methods use highly processed cellulose from wood pulp.
still might be more harmful if this "highly processed cellulose" is more expensive than cotton coming from China at the current moment. natopedia isnt very clear on that regard, or how much guncotton is produced vs this wood pulp variant.
Jesus christ the west really really likes kicking its own ass when it comes to china
they're desperately trying everything to break china but its just magnified *10 on themselves and in the long run makes china even stronger
It's really incredible, similar dynamic with Russia. It's becoming clear that Europe is the biggest victim of sanction on Russia now.
this is amazing. the writing style is also funny.
The overwhelmingly high demand is already stretching the world's supply thin so this is no shock to me.
In the past i used to wonder how and why empires fall. Now we are witnessing it, and it is not one thing but an accumulation of contradictions and self sabotage.
Same, and turns out the reasons tend to be rather banal in the end.