Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being an insufferable reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
Dean
Flairless
21hr ago
Young Taiwanese who enthusaistically identify as Taiwanese abroad as opposed to broad Chinese diaspora are nowadays volunteering themselves for PRC targeting. Those overseas police stations aren't just for monitoring 'Chinese of non-rebellious provinces.'
Taiwan's youth unemployment isn't great (about 12%), but it's not exceptional for the region either, and it's considerably better than China (about 20%). There may well be some 'the grass is always greener,' but 'our economy will be so much better if we join China!' would be more of a 'maybe China will hyper-subsidize the populace while installing the police state' as opposed to reverting to a higher median.
Dean
Flairless
21hr ago
No and no, assuming I am reading you asking only two questions.
The difference between law enforcement at sea and piracy is the nature of law enforcement versus theft. It's fine to claim taxation is theft, but most people will recognize there is in fact a difference.
In turn, countries don't attack objects in a political sense. States have relationships with political actors. War is the extension of politics by other means, and all that. There is no country being attacked if a [Country A] gives its sovereign ascent to [Country B] to board a ship that is / claims to be under the sovereign aegis of [Country A].
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
Very publicly. You can google 'issues with American FMS' to get entire thinktank and policy reports on systemic issues that would be moritifying admissions from other states.
Again, the American failure state tends to be 'people go elsewhere rather than sign the deal' rather than 'the deal already signed falls through.' But a potential deal falling through before it is signed is what leads to, say, Turkey buying the Russian S-400 air defense system, because it wasn't getting traction for more NATO-compatible air defense systems, which in turn led to Turkey being suspended from the F-35 system, which is its own saga.
Or the purchase by Middle Eastern american allies of Chinese c-UAS systems, instead of American equivalents, since the US was prioritizing US and European ally orders over Arabs- an understandable choice on both ends, but American critics (when they can be found) will blame the US prioritization rather than the Arab need and urgency.
Or the current-year saga of various European, especially French, lobbying to lock the US out of the European arms market in the European rearmament spending. This is done with the rather popular, and not undeserved, line of argument that Trump-like Americans might suspend agreed-upon weapon deliveries to pressure European states into security concessions... because that is exactly what Trump did to the Ukrainians after the white house summit fracas, and what parts of the DoD tried to do (though that was a rogue administrative power play that got rolled back hard). A lot of Americans, let alone others, will place more blame on the American side than the Europeans, regardless of other arms trade frictions.
Or the displacement of the US by China as Pakistan's military aid patron. A quick google search suggests China now provides something like 80% of Pakistan's military imports. While there is a considerable number of Americans who view this as a 'good riddance' dynamic, when someone wants to criticize that sort of dynamic, it tends to be from the American-hypoagent 'Who Lost Pakistan?' as opposed to 'those Pakistanis are so unreasonable.'
Now, none of these may count as 'extremely embarrassing' to you. But that's a social framing that itself may indicate an implicit bias of sorts. It's not extremely embarrassing for the Americans criticizing other Americans for an arms deal failure, because they tend to come from a position of 'but if it had been us, we would have done differently and succeeded.'
And that can easily include 'well, we would have honored the original contract instead of trying to change it after the initial agreement was publicly signed,' if the non-American side claims that the deal fell through because of back-end meddling to change the contract.
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
Another variation is the kickback schemes to bribe someone to certify that you deserve the aid. So if the state has an inspector or certifying authority to sign off that you qualify, you give them part of the welfare to attest that you actually deserve it. So if the welfare check is 1000, you kick back X00 back to them so that you both profit.
This later form is easier to scale in an organized crime / corrupted institution way, such as with the recent Somali fraud ring in Minnesota. While the typical risk of scaling is a defection risk of someone wanting a bigger cut and bringing down the whole system, if you can use something like familial/social networks to coordinate, you can mitigate the defection risk and increase the scale of the corruption. All the more so if you can leverage political influence to deter local investigators.
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
You and what occupational army?
The Americans were worn out by a decade trying to occupy a country of 30 million when they had the ability to walk in from friendly buildup areas at the outset. Occupying a country of 1,300 million is just a wee bit beyond the capacity of the modern United States, even without the literal and figurative fallout of a nuclear war.
You're more reversed the direction than not. If you want a mental model, think more status quo bias that is both anti-reunification and anti-independence.
In Taiwan, it's the older people who are more open to reunification in the sense of 'there might be a deal they'd accept without the threat of death and oppression as the alternative,' and the younger generation who have less familial/emotional attachment to the continent. This is why the KMT, the party descended from the nationalists opposed to the CCP, have increasingly become the 'pro-China' party- they still identify themselves as 'Chinese', whereas the rise of self-identification as 'Taiwanese' is coming from the youth cohort. This is also the cohort who have have had their formative exposure to China being things like the Hong Kong crackdown on what remained of the democracy there, and recognize that they would be on a similar receiving end if they joined the sinosphere. The two-system system was the potential compromise, and the CCP renenged on it.
The age dynamic, it's a similar dynamic to the Korean views of reunification. It's the older Koreans (and increasingly dead) who fought against the North who also had the memory of families on the other side of the partition. Younger Koreans have no such familial sentiment, and are more concerned with the bad effects a reunification could have on them, even if it was from the top.
The relevance of this back for Taiwan is that the youth aren't necessarily 'pro-independence.' Formal independence would credibly mean a war which would be bad for them. The status quo preference bias that works against reunification also works against formal independence. The status quo- which is neither independent or unified- is preferable, and they are open to politicians who maintain that.
Even as I sympathize with that general line of argument, Ghost of Kyiv is a poor example to use for that argument. It had about as much relevance in the Ukrainian media sphere of the time as the Iranian AI-claim of shooting down a skyscraper-sized F-35 had in the Iranian sphere during the 12 day war. It existed, people cheered (or jeered), but it wasn't the reason people involved felt the way they did, as opposed to the many other things going on at the time.
The reason it makes a bad example is because the presentation presents as if it was the cause of the Ukrainian faith. The opening days of the Russian invasion weren't exactly lacking in verifiable, faith-building reasons for the Ukrainians to believe 'Ukraine can do it' when the 'it' at the time was 'meaningfully fight back.' The Ukrainians crushed the Hostomel Airport air assault, the Bayraktar TB2 drones hunted Russian air defenses, Ukrainian volunteers were hunting Russian armor with anti-tank weapons in the forests, Ukrainian farmers dragging mud-dragged Russian equipment, and of course the many shoot-downs that did happen away were all much more influential in the Ukrainian media-sphere. The Russian and a fair deal of the global expectation at the time was that Ukraine was days from collapsing, the Ukrainians disagreed, and nearly four years later one side's belief that meaningful resistance was possible was vindicated.
I fully agree that such media stories helped motivate Ukrainians to believe that resistance was not futile and that others had their back and would risk alongside them. But that social perspective was far more because of things like the mixing of molotovs in the streets of kyiv, something that a large part of the country's political and social centers had direct visibility of, than the Ghost of Kyiv propaganda. Ghost of Kyiv was never load-bearing on the Ukrainian willingness to fight on the ground, and it wasn't exactly long before the video game origin was recognized and circulating.
Ghost of Kyiv's cultural impact was more of a western obsession. First in the 'we want it to be true' sort of the pro-Ukraine camp, but over time in the 'Ukraine is lying liars and we can't believe anything they say' anti-Ukraine camp, where it regularly emerges as a reason to dismiss Ukrainian success (they claimed the Ghost of Kyiv, and it was fake!) and to believe pro-Russian framings.
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
It may be better to say the accusation of racism, and thus its ability to decide arguments over things like micro-aggressions which had to be defined below the level of 'typical' racism in the first place.
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
The Europeans did not merely shoot themselves in the foot. The Europeans shot each other in the foot, femur, stomach, gut, chest, arms, hands, necks, and face, while some Europeans made a point of double-tapping the survivors. Some of the Europeans may have done so with often American ammunition, but that was ammunition they were desperately willing to buy to fight the Europeans who were doing so to them and who would also steal any salvagable organs and giblets if they won.
A much sounder argument for American agency and responsibility for destroying European industry primarily rests in providing the British and Soviets the ammo supplies more generally to shoot the Germans and Italians, rather than letting the British and Soviet war economies grind to a halt and be unable to fight for as long as they did. In turn, and especially for the Soviets, a Nazi victory over continental Europe would have meant... industrial-scale looting (and demographic slaughter) of the continental economies and industries through the typical state-looting policies, and an incompetent grand plan for German future prosperity that would have run the long-term industry into the ground as surely as communism did.
That the Americans took advantage of the European actions that destroyed the European states and empires does not mean the Americans had the agency, responsibility, or even the ability to stop them. Attributing their loss of industry to the Americans is a wrong claim of history.
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
Immigrants are taking our jobs, except when they're mooching off welfare. (You can make this not-doublethink by phrasing it as "either immigrants are taking our jobs, or they're mooching off welfare". But at that point the fig leaf has wilted and you might as well just admit that you don't have principled economic reasons to oppose immigration.)
...are you familiar with various techniques on how to conduct welfare fraud?
I would like to know what makes this different than piracy, if anything.
Piracy is illegal under international law; sanction enforcement with the ascent of the flagged country is not.
The US says it had a "seizure warrant" for it. What does that mean?
It means it went through the procedural process to receive a warrant for seizure, the exact jurisdictions of which apply depends on the case- but which often includes the country under whose flag the vessel was under.
Was the vessel subject to US laws at any point, violated them, and this is the result?
Not just US laws, but the laws of other states- such as those it is seeking the flag protection of. Who, themselves, have interests that are subject to US law, which is why US sanctions have so much international influence.
The US says that the tanker is sanctioned. What does this mean? Economic sanctions usually mean, "I won't do business with you," can a sanction mean, "I won't let you do business with someone else, and if you do I'll seize your vessel in your waters?" At what point is a sanction a war with fancier language?
Not here, since your analogy breaks down in two places- 'your waters,' which gets into the degrees of territoriality at sea which do not prohibit various actions, and 'your vessel,' which goes to the country of flagging, not the nation of proximity or travel.
The most relevant factor in play, and most common in cases of of sanction enforcement against ships that try to seek protection of the sovereignty of other states, is if / when the nation whose flag a vessel is sailing under agrees to rescind protection / allow a seizure. This can be the formal permission of a seizure warrant, and can happen when the flag-state whose sovereignty would be infringed is provided with evidence / reason to rescind protection.
This is where sanctions law comes into play. International law not only recognizes the sovereign right of states to say 'I won't do business with you,' but also 'I won't do business with people who do business with you.' Many states, in contexts where their own significant interests are not on the line, will happily give their own sovereign ascent to sanction enforcement at sea rather than fall afoul of the sanctioner's sanctions.
"Guyana's maritime authority said Skipper was falsely flying the country's flag." Does this impact the legal calculation?
Massively. Ships don't have legal rights to sail the seas unmolested under international law, states have legal rights to sail ships unmolested at sea. This distinction has two effects.
First, if a ship is falsely flying under a country's flag, it has no actual legal protection. The legal protection derives from the sovereignty of the flagged nation, not the ship itself. There is no sovereign infringement to Guyana if Guyana never extended its sovereignty to the ship.
Second, if a ship is recognized as falsely flying the flag of a country, that country is far less likely to try and to provide political cover to it, and far more likely to agree to the political actions of a requesting power. Such as acceding to a request to support seizure, whether through supporting a warrant or otherwise.
Outside of the numerous questions, I'm getting Iraq war vibes from this. "They support terrorism! They have weapons of mass intoxication! The people will thank us, the leader is a dictator, etc etc."
'Trump is being a neocon' is the latest Trump Bad take, and Jon Steward recently spread it further (although he didn't start it- that's been the Venezuelan and associated angle since this started).
Will the US have boots on the ground in Venezuela in a year?
Maybe. I wouldn't advise betting one way or the other.
It seems so contrary to Trump's MO, what is going on here?
Did you read the US national security strategy that released last week? That is the second Trump Administration setting out it's MO.
While most of the media has fixated on the European dynamic, one of the more significant parts is the strategy's elevating of the Western Hemisphere in the order of administration priorities. There's a fair deal of subtext and background context as to why and what purpose and how Venezuela stands in there.
The more relevant point for your question is that Venezuela is one of the personal priorities of Marco Rubio, who is not only the Secretary of State but also Trump's National Security Advisor. He is the first person to hold both positions in the Presidential cabinet since Kissinger, and both positions give him substantial influence over American strategy such as the NSS. They also give him substantial influence over American policy, since Trump prefers the pageantry of being President to actually managing the bureaucracy, and Rubio is able to present his desires as aligning with Trump's stated goals (which Rubio helps write into stated policy).
There's some messy legal philosophy stuff involved, here; the actual behaviors are not new.
'It's not illegal is a lawful president does it; it is illegal if Trump does it' would be a take on how it's being presented. Here is a 2020 Biden administration seizure of an Iranian vessel, and Obama administration naval seizures, also Iranian related.
The novelty here is the Iranian connection in the context of the ongoing US military buildup / gunboat diplomacy off of Venezuela. The seizure is quite plausibly pretextual, even if it turns out to be informationally accurate / procedurally legal under US law.
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
Should an asylum be run by its inmates?
Why not? There's nothing pejorative about an asylum institution, unless you're trying to smuggle in the connotation of an insane asylum in particular. But if you have to have insane inmates as analogous to the citizenry of a country for that analogy to hold as a pejorative, it can be trivially dismissed as a false analogy, or just as trivially inverted to say that the government officials are the incompetent crazy people who really shouldn't be in charge of things.
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
In so much that the world was the United State's oyster, it was because the Europeans destroyed themselves and had ruined much of the world via imperialist squabblings, not because the Americans destroyed the Europeans or their spheres of interests.
This is a hyperagency versus hypoagency point of the allocation of agency and responsibility. Just because the Americans benefited from being the last economy standing does not make the Americans responsible for the various european decisions that destroyed each others economies.
Dean
Flairless
2d ago
It indeed was written to go both ways. The number of alliances that have died after a suppressive elite supported from afar was overthrown is uncountable, as are the number of alliances that are stillborn because one party excepts assistance / pardon for suppressing domestic opposition.
It does not help the European Union that it is not actually a treaty ally of the United States, but rather that its elites tried to transfer the benefits of alliances with various national members to the EU itself.
Dean
Flairless
2d ago
The American strategic bombing campaigns in WW2 were not what destroyed the infrastructure of Russia, Britain, France, Italy, Romania, Czechoslavakia, Austria, or the Netherlands.
The American strategic bombing campaigns in WW2 didn't even destroy the German war industry, even if you ignore the British and Russian strategic bombing campaigns. Germany as a European competitor was destroyed by occupation and post-war partition, during which it was still a relatively rich and industrialized portion of both super power camps both relative to the rest of Europe and much of the world.
The vast majority of infrastructure damage in Europe during WW2 was done via land-based artillery, urban fighting, and deliberate sabotage to deny infrastructure to the enemy. Plus occupational plundering of heavy industry, which was a signature of both the Nazi and Soviet occupational forces and centralized economic planning.
This is without addressing that the US was hardly the party that finished the European war, given the roles of not only the British but particularly the Soviet Union.
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
There are entire volumes of 'self'-critiques of the problems in American foreign military sales practices that undercut American competitiveness below what it 'could' be. The American arms deal failures tend to be in the form of 'the other party went elsewhere rather than sign a deal' rather than 'the deal fell apart after being signed,' but there's no shortage of Americans placing the blame on the American side for partners making arms deals with countries like China.
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
Except of course that there aren't many subcontinentals coming here
There are. 'Many' is a wiggle-word, but there are enough coming that their presence is notable, even if more recent arrivals are just more proximal / visible examples of the broader trend of other migrants coming in and replacing cultural symbols rather than adopting them.
EU institutions and bureaucrats are unironically proud of EU being regulatory superpower, some of them really believe in how they are essential for regulating the whole world.
It's practically dark humor that EU efforts to be a regulatory superpower abroad are fuel to the EU-US divorce, which in turn justifies further strengthening the EU institutions. It may be all according to keikaku to some EU advocates, but I've heard many express incredulity about how various US political leaders might take issues with attempts to fine American companies with great political influence into compliance with European Union political interests.
The sort of default Atlanticism that might view continental political propaganda as unobjectionable but Russian political propaganda as toxic is passing away with the Boomers. The emerging generations filling the bureaucracies are increasingly likely to see it either from a neutral principle lens, in which case either European propaganda is just as bad or Russian propaganda is just as harmless as the other, or through a partisan friend-foe lens. The later case is just as bad in its own way, as it means the European-Russian axis only matters in so much that it provides a stick to beat the opponent with, regardless of from which direction.
Geopolitical alliances crack when one party is seen as the partisan partner of one's own domestic political opponents. Sometimes that crack can be overcome by sufficient time, see the South Korean left's political evolution regarding views on the US following the dictatorship period. But actively pursuing it unprompted is somewhere between feckless, malpractice, or a deliberate tradeoff for shorter-term priorities considered more important.
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
Have you ever heard of a major French arms deal that fell through that the French admitted to being the cause of its failure?
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
Also, there are tons of groups that caused very limited friction when they immigrated and it has limited correlation with how "familiar" the group is.
Which, in turn, is sidestepping the point of 'critical mass' and 'displacing local culture with their own.'
The uncanny valley effect applies as much to cultural trappings as human faces. An english-speaker in a city full of english-language signs can feel comfortable, even if there are the occasional oddities of atypical roofings or words. An english-speaker in a city of completely unfamiliar languages may not feel completely at home, but accept it as categorically foreign. It is when the city is in the process of the halfway transition between one or the other, and particularly when moving from the familiar to the alien, that unease rises.
In Sweden, in 1980 7% of the population was foreign-born. In 2000, it was about 11%. In 2020, it is roughly 20%. It is historical circumstance that that later growth was more from sub-continentals than less familiar continentals. Unease and opposition to the foreigner would still be on the rise if it was Russians or French driving that demographic change.
You don't even have to reach into alternate history to find examples of dislike of French or Russian culture following from the French or Russian leaving their borders into others and their new hosts having to deal with it.
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
I think most here would be fine with reading slightly worse grammar and spelling along with the certainly that they aren't reading AI stuff.
Tank heaven for that.
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
I have heard variations of '[X group] is the worst, and the more people are exposed the more they agree' of just about every variation of [X group] that has been a critical mass growing minority elsewhere.
The process of being distinct and displacing the familiar is itself what is unpleasant and unadmirable to many host nations, regardless of what continent the arrival comes from.
There is no special legal immunity / inviolability for planes either. The reason states don't board planes in mid-air is because it's dangerous and murder / reckless endangerment is bad. If you could do so without killing everyone aboard or putting people at great risk, there is no special legal obstacle. This is seen most often when planes are directed to land so that law enforcement can get to someone identified in the plane.
Like ships, planes are subject to the national / sovereign jurisdictions of both [sovereign state they are in] and [the sovereign state of the owner]. When in the territorial space (air or on the ground) of a nation, they are subject to national authorities, which does include things like 'following air traffic controls' but also 'you can be inspected for smuggling or committing crimes.' They are also subject to the national regulations that apply to their owning interest, which also includes things like 'you will pay taxes for business you do elsewhere in the world' but also 'you are not allowed to smuggle or commit crimes.'
Let's call the [sovereign state of the owner] the first country. Let's call the [sovereign state they are in] the second country.
Where third countries come in is that other countries can have their own lists of crimes that people violate. And when someone does commit a crime against that third state, that state can seek access to the criminal party (or ship, or plane) through either the first country, or the second country.
Second countries have sovereign rights too, and that includes the right to cooperate with other states.
Why would it be an act of theft or war if it is in compliance with Brazilian and American law with the consent of the Brazilian authorities? Is Brazil declaring a war against itself if it receives the American request, considers its various interests, and then goes 'okay, sure?'
Now replace [boat/plane] with [person]. Kidnapping is a crime. Human trafficking is even a crime under international law. But does that mean an extradition for an arrest warrant in another country in accordance with an extradition treaty 'actually' a kidnapping and that extradition is illegal under international law?
[Theft] is not merely 'taking something'- it if it was, then giving gifts would be theft on the part of the recipient because they are taking something being offered. But [theft] is not merely 'involuntary taking of something'- that would allow anyone with an objection to object, whether they were the owner or not. It would also mean that a state is engaging in theft if it recovers stolen goods, or seizes contraband, or collects taxes over the objection of the dispossessed.
You need a bounded concept of [crime] in order to understand what would be a [not-crime].
Under whose legal jurisdiction would it be illegal?
Jurisdiction in international law requires one of three things: territoriality (it has to happen in your national territory), nationality (such as the victim being subject to your sovereignty), or the nature of the crime itself (such as your country being the victim).
Now apply this to the context of a ship at sea.
If the vessel is outside of territorial waters, there is no territoriality jurisdiction. International waters are owned by no one. There are degrees of territoriality for ships, such as economic zones versus territorial waters, but this is no different than nations having air defense identification zones that go beyond territorial airspace.
Nationality of the ship derives from the flagging of the ship, not the crew. When a ship takes on the flag of a nation, it is subject to the laws of that nation for not only tax and wage purposes (the part most companies care about), but also law enforcement purposes (the things that the flagging state can do / agree to let others do).
The nature of the crime generally requires you to be the victim. In international law, the primary victim of a ship boarding is the sovereign of the ship, and to a different degree the nationalities of the crew, but cargo is cargo. States can take their merchant disputes up in their own courts or other channels, but they have no sovereign standing over the sovereignty of the flagging nation of the ship carrying the cargo.
Now apply this to any given at-sea boarding.
Is it done in the territorial waters of a sovereign state that refuses?
Is it done against the sovereign assent of the nation that flagged the vessel?
Is any other sovereign right being unduly violated?
If the answer too all of these is 'no,' there's little legal obstacle to a boarding. And even if the answer to some of these is 'yes,' it may still be a legal boarding, if there is other international law enabling it- see UN resolution law when the UN bans various exports like weapons proliferation and authorizes members to take actions to stop it.
International law is a weird conceptual space in and of itself. The anarchic nature of the international order means international law is very much 'if it is not forbidden, it is permitted,' when significant parts of the national legal order in most nations is 'if it is not permitted, it is forbidden.'
Unlike most legal contexts, there is no higher appeal authority or source of [international law]. The fundamental legal basis for all international law is the principle of national sovereignty allowing states to enter into agreements with other nations, including the international laws that restrain their own actions. Everything else- including international courts- derives from 'this is international law because a bunch of countries said it should apply to themselves.'
The flip side is that if the states themselves do not agree to establish a limit, there is no other authority establishing the limits. Even when they do agree, it generally does not apply to states that did not agree in some form. Even UN-law ultimately derives from the fact that the sovereign states agreed to join the UN, and in doing so conceded to letting the Security Council do things under the UN charter that says the Security Council can do things.
Again, you have to have a legal concept of what [theft] is, distinct from [non-theft].
Stealing is taking someone's property without permission or legal right. The authority who has that legal right depends on the sovereign legal jurisdiction. Sovereign jurisdiction at sea depends on the national flag on the ship. The national flag of the ship brings with it the national and international agreements of the state of that flag.
There is nothing legally special about [national crown jewels] where, if you placed them in the sovereign jurisdiction of another country, that other country could not handle them in accordance with its own laws and international agreements.
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