Ubesh comments

I am expecting that Sunak will join the left-wing in boycotting this racist world cup. In fact England should pull out of this world cup - racism and slavery is not worth anything.

Japan also has a major issue with conventional bullying.

I am hoping that this would allow for more right-wing discussion on the internet. Reddit has gotten even worse in recent weeks with the mid-term elections coming up and the collapse of the UK economy to the point that the middle class are getting discriminated out.

The latest report in the US is that savings rates have halved since 2019 and have fallen by a third since the pandemic, with inflation being the main issue. Considering the inflation and upcoming recession, it is unlikely that there will be big spending tourists.

It's clear that the strength of the USD has been destroying economies worldwide and destroying purchasing power of the middle class worldwide, and yet people seem to be more inclined to divert blame to others like the Japanese government or the Russia-Ukraine war. Even if either of the two have had a dubious impact on the world economy, it is still the case that the USD is causing huge turmoil and that there needs to be serious effort to stop the USD from causing widespread economic damage globally. Even news outlets such as the NYT and WSJ realise the situation and are calling the USD a problem for the world.

I think racism does play a role in how the markets viewed the economic strategy. It's still common for casual racism to be present in middle class circles, and I imagine that a new experiment put forward by a black person would be less trusted than a experiment by a white person or indian person. Furthermore it is also somewhat clear that the reasons for Kwasi getting the position of Chancellor aren't based on merit and so there is a crisis of confidence.

The only way to prevent further damage is for Kwasi to resign. But I think there is no real alternative for Truss because someone needs to take the blame for the US Fed-led recession and gas war this winter that no prime minster will have any control over.

This entire operation has been run by leaders in high ivory towers somewhere far away like Washington DC. Anyone in Asia or in the area close to Russia would have been able to easily understand how ridiculous the western response to Russia was.

A bigger problem than the Ukraine War is the strength of the US dollar and yet there is no concerted effort to prevent the US dollar causing a global disaster...

Green for negative makes no sense. It's like green for a stop light.

It is culture to associate colours with emotions. Pink is used by males traditionally in many European countries for example.

＠Laguna　

It's a strech for many to consider Pakistan to be a South Asian country, let along Afghanistan. It is culturally and socially part of the Middle East, racially who knows.

@redmanticore

While I agree that immigrants who do not learn the local language can expect to be sidelined, I feel concerned that you assume immigrants can learn a new language to a high degree within a short period of time with little money, something that affects the majority of immigrants to Japan.

I agree that a lot of refugees seem unwilling to integrate though and that the current liberal immigration policy of Western European governments is untenable.

The Russian sanctions are such a silly obsession by western governments and seems to hurt the west more. The majority of the world still trades with Russia.

The support for a independent Scotland under King Charles III is higher than for republicans either independent or united.

Is this really a major news story? Fires happen everywhere.

Rishi Sunak got just about half of the Tory party member vote, but I agree that a sizable percentage of that other half were probably against the idea that he wasn't white. We are talking about the most conservative people in the UK remember, not average voters or even average Tory voters.

Truss is widely regarded as being told to captain the Titanic whilst everyone else is readying the lifeboats. And there is a lot of speculation that the UK will face sky-high inflation, a recession and even mass riots by next year. She is viewed as a "wicker woman" for the Tories.

I agree with having gun regulations to ensure safe usage, but the US will never be able to solve its gun culture through gun regulations because the black market is just so large thanks to the porous border with Latin America.

The bigger issue is with GPs, which are private and compensated per service in a similar manner to Japan, who will need to deal with increased energy costs without the financial tools available for NHS hospitals.

The United States and the European Union have plenty of money to help the refugees though.

unspoken nod to the potential for a recession

I think everyone in the financial world knows that the Federal Reserve is causing a recession in order to defalte the economy.

Japanese children tend to have less "fear" than Western children since their are given far more independence and socialise a lot more. I have also been surprised at how social some Japanese children can be, though obviously they are taught to be scared of foreigners so foreigners get the wrong impression.

In Western Europe there is a lot of peer pressure to segregate your work life and home life (making friends in the workplace if often frowned upon) so I brought the same way-of-living to Japan since smartphone checking isn't established in Japan yet.

You can see all the old salarymen drinking their evening (and health) away every night instead of wanting to return to broken homes.

I think most of the world has a soft fear/dislike of China, and there is a lot of racism against Chinese people everywhere right now, but recently there has been significant support in Asia for China being a "rebalancing act" in global geopolitics.

Japan is not food secure. Over 30 years reduced from about 60% to 40%. 60% of our food is imported.

I read somewhere that Japan considered rice security to be very important, and that was where I probably got the idea that Japan did not need wheat from. I personally rarely have a use for a wheat based product except for breadcrumbs.

We are big consumers of wheat noodles, bread, and beer. There are no real substitutes for wheat.

I actually forgot about wheat noodles so the premise about food security in Japan is incorrect, but still applicable to most of South East Asia and South Asia. I have only ever met one Japanese people who eats bread for breakfast despite living here for around ten years - usually is raw egg and 2 balls of rice.

We also eat or use a lot of wheat too.

Japan imports 5.8-5.9 million tonnes of wheat each year and imports contribute roughly 90% of total food wheat consumption. Japan buys over 95% of its total wheat requirements from only three markets.

Yes but this is what I mean by essential goods. Japanese people as a whole do not need a significant amount of wheat and it is readily replaceable with substitute foods in Japanese cuisine. Russia is capable of feeding itself and heating itself so will not be severely hurt by the sanctions at a basic level. Bread is almost a luxury/novelty cuisine in Japan. If wheat prices were to rise that Japanese people will stop buying wheat, which they are because of a lack of fertilizer and wheat globally, but if rice were to rise then Japanese people will still want to continue buying rice. But wheat is an essential good for the West and a lack of wheat would cause widespread suffering in western countries.

Only 1% of Japanese wheat imports come from Ukraine and non from Russia. Japan imports zero fertilizer from Ukraine or Russia. Canada provides the majority of Japan's potash fertilizer supply.

Asia eats rice and not wheat. The main issue is access to fertilizer and that was one of the reasons that Sri Lanka went disastrously 100% organic. Any wheat reduction in the global markets primarily affects the bread-eating West.

@rainyday @Redstorm

This is highly unlikely. Producing system critical parts (as opposed to seats, bathroom doors, etc) for Boeing or Airbus aircraft aircraft isn’t something Russia, or other countries for that matter, can just start doing on their own. Its not just a matter of having engineers on hand, these things require incredibly complex supply chains and high tech components that Russia just can’t produce on its own.

Russia is not self-sufficient in everything it needs. The national air carrier is stripping parts off its planes to keep a fleet flying. The war has taken out many of its armories and now looking to use Soviet stocks.

Russia is one of the few countries that are capable of manufacturing said parts on a mid-term basis since it has a strong aircraft industry that even China is trying to copy. The majority of the world does not have native aircraft building knowledge so buys from the West or Russia.

The West isn’t dependent on Russia for food, and its only a few countries like Germany that are dependent on it for energy, something they are quickly moving to permanently end. Russia’s leverage in energy is quickly dissipating as a result. It’s also irrelevant that sanctions on Russia give it an excuse to put sanctions on these things anyway, it doesn’t need an excuse to do that.

The West needs the fertilizer from Russia, and Ukraine/Russia is the wheat basket of the world, and most of the West IS dependent on Russia for gas except for a handful of countries with natural resources such as Canada, USA and Australia who cannot export to Europe for biological/technical reasons on gas transport. The high cost of transport is also affecting the import of food from overseas - most western countries are not self-sufficient in food or energy so cannot artificially lower the price of everyday goods through currency devaluation etc...

Russia has been doing tit-for-tat stuff since the Soviet era so not sure how you came to that conclusion.

No, the main threat is still from Russia. Saudi Arabia’s armies aren’t running amock attacking European countries. Saudi Arabia isn’t issuing veiled threats to use nuclear weapons against Europe. Nor is it or any other country in that region ever going to be in a position to do these things.

The Middle East is still the main threat in terms of petroleum sanctions and threats to national energy security - the previous sanctions were a result of the Israel conflict which is widely considered to be part of the Eurosphere. Russia is part of the OPEC+ you know.

@Laguna The point was that the generic sanctions against Russia are primarily affecting non-essential goods because the country is self-sufficient in agriculture and natural resources, and it has the expertise to replace most of the technical knowledge affected by the sanctions in the mid-term future.

The West is being more severely impacted because it is not self-sufficient in essential goods such as agriculture or natural resources.

The West seems to have gotten itself into a massive reddit-like echochamber devoid of views educated on the reality in the East.

Russia is capable of being self-sufficient in virtually all essential goods (food and energy) and has the mid-term expertise to manufacture the random parts from the west that is does not currently have (for example most of the domestic aviation operations are done using Russian-made planes, and only flights to countries that have not approved Russian planes are operated using Western-made planes, so Russia will be able to self-manufacture the parts required to operate Western-made planes in the mid-term future). The generic sanctions will have the effect of giving Russia a valid excuse to place tit-for-tat generic sanctions on the West where there are vast issues with food and energy independence. Those who say that it's Europe's fault for not becoming more independent from Russia forget that the main threat for petroleum sanctions was and still is from OPEC and the Middle East, so where exactly is the gas supposed to come form?

Furthermore the majority of Asia has maintained a plethora of ties with Russia (including South Korea and Japan), and all to the major Asian geopolitical powers (except South Korea and Japan) have expressed willingness to maintain cordial relations with Russia. The US has been unable to win a cold war with China in the past, and when was the last time the US won a war in Asia? The idea that the US will be able to win such a non-interventionist war with Russia so easily is silly and all this war will achieve is a stronger China.

The nepotism in the ruling class (which in Pakistan is basically the upper caste) is something that is common throughout South Asia, which we saw in Sri Lanka as well with the Rajapaskas. In India this is associated with the main left wing party (Nehru-Gandhi) whereas the right wing is led by non upper caste educated leaders.