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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • Oligarchs. You’re missing oligarchs. The issue with Ukrainian agricultire is that a lot of it is a big, concentrated business with ties to Western capital on top of the traditional post-soviet oligarchy. This influences actions of both Ukrainian and EU politicians. The matters of imports or transit from Ukraine could be very well sorted out for the short term, but no one in power is really willing to do so.

    In the long term Polish agriculture faces a serious challenge from Ukraine when it gets more and more integrated with the west but it’s also not so binary in terms of who floods whom with produce.


  • I recommend everyone who hasn’t to look up the idea of “Potiomkin villages” (and subsequently Potiomkin anything eg. Potiomkin AI). In short: back in the tzarist days lower ranks put up mock villages which looked clean, modern and prosperous for higher ranks (and tzars) to see during visits. These mockups were essentially theatre decorations which hid the real state of the matters - dilapidated, dirty, poor and corrupt. For at least the last decade everything we saw of Russia was Potiomkin in nature - either to show off before the West or to hide corruption before own superiors.






  • Musky and Bezos are probably well aware of this so they happily pour billions into these systems. Whoever gets them up first is essentially taking up space others may want to use later on. The endgame is probably “make the world dependent on MY sat system and hike rates”. And if the countries wanted to lay cable? Force the world to bail me when the overblown constellations collapse financially - basically make the kessler the future authorities’ problem. Privatise profits, socialise losses, fuck everyone else because I got mine. If things go well the men in charge won’t even be alive anymore when shit hits the fan.





  • Solidifying control over the Suez Canal - note that Saudis and Iran are (at least for now) not at their throats so some or other kind of cooperation for mutual trade profits may be in order. Their agreement was brokered by China, and the Chinese are very much interested in keeping Suez open. For the local powers the best case scenario is to make westerners GTFO. But the westerners won’t gtfo as long as their ships are under fire. It’s not unlikely that Houthi got “off the leash”, in such case the Iranian warship would paradixically sail there to discipline the attackers and reduce tensions. Howevwr obviously no one would admit it openly.

    A more conspirational take is that the heat in the ME, from Hamas to Houthi, is a bid to pressure the US into unpopular moves (stubborn support to Israel, actual violence on the seas, maybe some diplomatic fuckups) and produce an electoral advantage for Trump.





  • Correct with the caveat that the Polish truckers have to comply with the EU regulations (laws designed to make sure drivers aren’t forced to drive 12 hours straight and their trucks are not falling apart) while the Ukrainian ones don’t. Polish and Ukrainian govts are slowly getting to work on the issue but that’s just the beginning. When Poland and others accessed the EU the German truckers, farmers… were also quite dissatisfied. It’s a complicated matter and while I wholeheartedly support Ukraine and agree that all measures should be taken to make grain exports smoother I should also acknowledge, that this time the conflict is not just mere pettiness from the Polish side.