RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
The 2008 law merely codifies longstanding US policy. Said policy helped drive Israel's Arab neighbours towards the Soviet Union (who would sell them military equipment).
The sum-total of all U.S. aid to Israel since its founding 75 years ago is about 0.5% of the 2023 US budget spend.
Your own link says that $330 Billion went to Israel. The budget for 2023 was $6 trillion, so the real answer is 5% of the 2023 budget. $330 billion is a lot of money. More was sent to Egypt, Jordan and so on with the purpose of improving Israel's position. Still more was lost as a result of the Arab Oil Embargo, stemming from Arabs angry with US aid to Israel.
There is no reason to give foreign countries grants to buy equipment. The US could have bought equipment itself, or chose allies who actually fight alongside the US in its wars like Britain or Australia. Israel does not fight alongside the US. They are also known for selling US military technology on to China.
for paying regimes on top of major trade and international supply routes
Funnily enough the rivers of gold only opened up when Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, in 1978. And Jordan has no supply routes worth caring about, only proximity to Israel.
This would work if there were 7 million Israelis and maybe 4 million Arabs. But there are about 450 million in the Arab world. Many of them do not particularly like Israel. The 7 million Israelis are not even internally united.
How many people do you have the ability to kill before the flow of Western weapons and support runs out?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
The US has a policy of ensuring that Israel has a qualitative military advantage over any plausible combination of Middle East powers. This includes billions annually in military aid to Israel and refusing to export advanced weapons to other regional powers. The US even gives aid to Israel's neighbours for maintaining good relations with Israel.
Then there are the loan guarantees, the US's tactical ignorance of Israeli non-NPT nukes and the incredibly slavish rhetoric from US leaders: Donald Trump repeatedly expounded his dismay at how Israel no longer controls the US House of Representatives like it used to.
Or we could look at the Biden administration cabinet: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jews-in-the-biden-administration
Homeland Security, Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, Secretary of Treasury and Attorney General are Jewish along with many more.
It's laughable to think that Turks or Iranians have anywhere near the level of influence in Washington that Jews do.
I think the surest path to success is to play dirty. Play the man and not the ball.
Make communism look creepy and weird. Hammer home imagery of some fat, ugly blue-haired woman, or this soyboy: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIbHYhPVoAEIxzs.jpg
Then dive deep into Beria's sex crimes and pedophilia, Mao's sex crimes and venereal diseases, his rotten teeth... Establish that communism is led by losers, it's run for losers and makes winners into losers. Dive into the gruesome crimes of NKVD officials, the torture, the encouragement of children to report on their parents. Focus on how everything was broken, how Soviet televisions exploded from time to time, they couldn't get anything done correctly... Imply that the benefits of communism flow solely to a class of ugly, bald, fat middle-aged men who are the best connivers and plotters. It doesn't need to be coherent that we're casting communists as ineffectual weaklings and dangerous criminals, this isn't a rational argument but an aesthetic one.
Resist at all costs the urge to glamourize it as a mighty dragon that we have slain. No Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 memes. No World in Conflict cutscenes or Soviet military parades. Choke out all evidence of vital energy and coolness.
Amazon's Man in the High Castle was supposed to be anti-Nazi but it made Nazism look cool. They had supersonic jet travel, H-bombs, sick uniforms, big strong men marching in columns, enormous halls, the vigorous and manly Obergruppenfuhrer Smith. Lots of Nazis liked the show (or the 5 minute edits made of it), they skipped the boring bits about how eugenics was so bad and the angst of women and gays. No amount of hamfisted 'oh the Nazis go around destroying American monuments and eventually retreat from America for no good reason' could undo the damage those few minutes showing the Volkshalle did.
Suppose I oppose a Coalition of the Willing style invasion of Venezuela on the basis that it would turn into a massive mess, that resources are needed elsewhere, that the various tools available are ineffective for achieving objectives.
That doesn't make me pro-Maduro or pro-Venezuela. Both are bad. It's a very poorly run country exporting all kinds of problems. However, the right tools to fix the problem don't exist and using the wrong tools will make the situation worse. Have sanctions on Venezuela made anything better? No. There's good reason to think they've made things worse, driving up oil prices.
Likewise with Russia. We have tools like sanctions and military action. They don't work or require sacrifices that are not justified by the gains on offer. We shouldn't use them. What have we gotten? Economic problems in Europe, a wrecked and diminishing Ukraine, a lot of angry Russians. All of this was procured at considerable expense. Finland and Sweden were already in the Western camp, so having them in NATO is not terribly helpful.
Since everyone loves their WW2 metaphors with this conflict and 1938 can hardly be avoided in these discussions, let's think about the Stresa Front. The Allied Powers of WW1, Britain, France and Italy were working together. All were agreed that Hitler's Germany was a little too dangerous, they shouldn't be allowed to annex Austria and pursue dangerous revanchist tendencies. Then Italy decided to invade Ethiopia. Britain and France decided that they couldn't stand for this and imposed sanctions on Italy. This did nothing to help the Ethiopians who were ground down and annexed. Italy left the Stresa Front. Mussolini joined up with Hitler, giving him the greenlight to annex Austria and make lots more problems for the Allies.
If we're not willing to fight (and we're not because of Russia's H-bombs) then why go out of our way to cause problems for them? Do we want them to help China as much as possible in a future conflict? Do we want them to shovel heaps of weapons into any future invasions we launch? Do we want them to coup random African countries? The policies we've been pursuing are very unhelpful.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
If something requires you to wear a helmet while you do it, then it's hardly safe.
Exercise is nice to have but unnecessary. Obesity is a dietary problem, not an exercise problem.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
You're reducing your risk of death and lowering stress. You're saving a little time.
I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, neither of which require much attention.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Cyber-bullying laws in Australia are strict and getting stricter all the time. I bet YWNBAW will fit under the 'anti-discrimination' part of the legislation. Even random commenters can get publicly funded human rights commissions sicced on them, though they may prevail: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/nov/04/qut-computer-lab-racial-discrimination-lawsuit-thrown-out
Furthermore, the app is all but dead now, due to the litigation. I'm pretty sure they know that there'd be a little too much thoughtcrime on the internal forums, the eSafety Commissioner or someone would eviscerate them so they shut up shop. This is a country that routinely bans the import of doujins and tried to globally censor away images of a terrorist stabbing, they'd find something to charge Giggle with.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Riding a bicycle is dangerous. If you spend much time on the road, you're competing with trucks and cars and buses. Speed is moderate and protection is low. Only motorcycles and helicopters are more dangerous.
Don't do it! Either walk or catch public transport or drive. I understand that North America sucks because the public transport system is full of drug-addled zombies and low-lifes. Fixing this should be the highest priority. It's not the 19th century anymore, engines are most efficient for travel and you can do something else at the same time, recouping some value. Even if it's just fantasizing or pondering, surely our time is worth more.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Germany never sought a global empire until it did. America never sought a global empire until it did. China has global interests due to its size and power. Power and world hegemony is seductive for anyone.
China's backyard is extremely valuable real estate: South Korea and Taiwan are vital for chipmaking. Intel is a laughing stock, knocking out Taiwan would rip out the spinal cord of the US economy. There'd be an instantaneous economic crisis in the USA, China supplies America with enormous amounts of goods. Not just cheap plastic, everything from medical precursors, machinery for ports and microelectronics for missiles comes from China. Everyone keeps going on about the fragility of the Chinese economy, I think it's the complete inverse of reality. In manufacturing they produce about as much as the US, Germany and Japan combined. They have the biggest trade surplus in the world because their economy is productive, not because it is fragile and weak.
And it's the same with demographics. The second most births in the world behind India, more than double the US birth rate? A population as large or larger than all Western civilization combined? Absolute size is what's important, not proportions.
If China wins a convincing victory in Asia, they can brain-drain the remnants of TSMC, subordinate South Korean industry and secure first place in high technology. The world would be their oyster. I agree that we have much to learn from China but their competence is precisely why they are threatening.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
The Russians have a lot more heavy weapons. If they expend more munitions, they should be inflicting more damage. Most casualties in conventional war come from artillery and the Russians have a lot more guns and shells than Ukraine. They also have more drones.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/23/ukraine-war-artillery-shortage-production-military-aid-bill/
Consider the state of long range bombing - Ukraine has damaged some Russian oil refineries and occasionally damages some buildings in Moscow. Russia routinely fires massive volleys of missiles at Ukrainian power generation, causing rolling blackouts and large-scale destruction of grid infrastructure. There are no such blackouts in Russia.
Ukraine has been drafting intensively, there are many, many videos of Ukrainian men being dragged struggling into vans for the front. One man, Ruslan Kubay, was drafted despite having no hands, which was subsequently reversed. People are drowning as they try to flee the country. People have been fleeing Russia too but not to such a great extent, more for business reasons and (legitimate) fear of conscription. However, Russia has mostly been filling its front line by promising generous bonus, they have not been forcibly conscripting. A much larger proportion of the country has fled Ukraine than Russia, I suspect that they have made a logical decision.
I was probably wrong to say that there were more prisoners held by Russia, I can't find any independent proof of that. Nevertheless, the Russians have demonstrated more capacity to inflict damage than Ukraine has, while Ukraine seems much more desperate than Russia. Furthermore, I think it's unwise to trust Western military estimates or any military estimates for that matter - they lied all the way through Afghanistan and Iraq.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
I hope that made you feel better.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Because, three years after a three day special military operation, there may be some less-than-maximally-desirable ceasefire conditions for a country that demonstrated the military advantage of American aid against far stronger parties?
I don't know how you can complain about weasel words and deliver this whopper in the same post... Less than maximally desirable ceasefire conditions? Has the war situation developed not necessarily to Ukraine's advantage? I recall you saying things like 'oh the April '22 ceasefire talks were a dead end since the Ukrainians couldn't accept the demilitarization/no NATO terms'.
What kind of ceasefire terms are they looking at now, compared to then? How much more lost land are they looking at? How much of the country has left, never to return?
The military advantage of American aid is that you lose hundreds of thousands of men in a meatgrinder, get your whole country intensively bombed and depopulated and finally lose more land than you would've without it? And the biggest gamechanger, the most important weapon in Ukraine's arsenal is the DJI Mavic and other Chinese drones/electronic parts?
The sanctions on Russia have had no significant impact on military capacity or state stability. In fact Russia, Iran and North Korea have somehow managed to outproduce the West in munitions while China has both a qualitative and quantitative lead in drones. US ISR has been pretty effective but that's about it.
The US goal has been clear, to restore Ukraine's pre-2014 borders and prop up the old world order by bringing Ukraine into NATO. This clearly hasn't worked. Ukraine's borders and territorial control are looking pretty patchy. The mirage of NATO membership is as distant as ever. The war situation is not reassuring for not-quite-treaty allies of the US. Reframing the goal to 'at least things haven't yet gotten catastrophically worse' is not sufficient, especially since the disasters are nearly all self-inflicted.
The DMZ was fairly calm before the whole Axis of Evil/pre-emptive strike idea which was rooted in misplaced conceptions of American strength. Iran's influence was limited and there were opportunities to work with them before the US started hacking away at MENA, rooted in misplaced conceptions of American strength. Now there are a host of Iraqi militias fighting for Iran, they've achieved something close to Sun Tzu's ideal of perfection in turning a major enemy into an ally without fighting. We did that for them, at great expense.
How could ISIS have emerged if Saddam wasn't dethroned and Syria wasn't destabilized?
Russia's military threat was minimal before the 'all of Russia's neighbours should be brought into NATO' policy, rooted in misplaced conceptions of American strength. There was a moment where Russia was cooperating with us on anti-terrorism and energy but that was thrown away.
China would be vastly easier to deal with if it weren't for all the other crises and about 15 years where naval modernization was on the backburner compared to fooling around in MENA and now Europe. And it's still happening. China may well orchestrate some disaster in the Middle East before they move, knowing the US will pull carrier groups away to defend their highest priority, Israel.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Ukraine seems to be more and more desperate for peace. They seem to have given up on making gains in the primary theatre in the east and gone after Kursk instead, looking to use it as a bargaining tool for the short-term.
However it takes two to tango and the Russians have repeatedly indicated they're not interesting in negotiating until the goals of the SMO are achieved. Presumably this means annexing all of their claimed provinces, demilitarizing the country and installing some kind of new government in Ukraine for the 'denazification' angle. I expect this to happen. When a great power is fully committed to defeating a middle power, there's not going to be a ceasefire, they'll win. Everyone agrees the Russians have more POWs than Ukraine, presumably they must have inflicted more casualties. They do have more firepower and more manpower.
Possibly there's some kind of contingency where NATO troops enter should the Ukrainian army disintegrate, as Macron has threatened. At that point, everything is up in the air. Then this war would truly become like Korea, where we have two great powers at war.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
I blame the whole concept of gender. We didn't always have gender, it's a recent invention. We used to have sex and civilization ran pretty well with that alone.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
If you can convince the police and the judge, you can already have someone whisked off to prison or shot dead.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Well if human wisdom is so hard to find, why don't we torch the whole legal system? It has been misused by bad actors from time to time, I think we could both find examples of this.
The cost of not having a legal system (anarchy) is greater than the cost of having a legal system. I suspect that the cost of introducing more rigour to high-impact academic research would be much less than the anarchy we have today and its associated megadeaths.
There are systems in place that prevent politicians from calling each other foreign traitors, paedophiles and fraudsters and then having everyone credulously believe them, guaranteeing their victory. Human wisdom is first and foremost amongst them.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
In corrupt countries that's how the police works. You get expropriated and imprisoned but can't complain since the courts will side against you.
That's bad but it doesn't follow that we should abolish the police. We should abolish corruption and policing is a useful tool for that, in principle.
Reminds me a bit of the UK, how they just elected Labour. After 14 years of the Tory clownshow, people wanted something new. Starmer seemed normal enough.
And what did they get? The same as before. The Tories were flailing around pretending to send asylum seekers to Rwanda and not actually doing it. Starmer cut the Rwanda facade. Mass immigration continues either way, regardless of Brexit or anything else.
The Tories were perceived as pursuing relentless austerity cuts. Lo and behold, Starmer is continuing in their footsteps, announcing a 22 billion pound black hole that needs to be fixed up with tax hikes. There are starting to be these wailing posts from Labour hopefuls who credulously expected hope and change, only to get yet another serving of decline: https://x.com/D_Blanchflower/status/1827688405632761960
British steel industry under the Tories? Dying. Under Labour? Dead. Tories soft on crime? Labour will be as soft or softer: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/26/violent-offenders-increasingly-let-off-with-apology/
More than 147,000 people accused of offences including sex crimes, violence and weapons possession were given community resolutions in the year to March instead of being prosecuted. Such resolutions do not result in a criminal record.
The surge comes amid a deepening crisis in the criminal justice system. Prisons are so full that the Government is releasing thousands of criminals early next month in the wake of the riots, while police have raised concerns that any worsening of jail overcrowding could limit their ability to make arrests.
I suspect that if Kamala is elected, people are going to quickly sour as the impressions they absorbed prove ethereal. It'll be more of the same. Just like Trump in 2017, a lot of people were really fired up about draining the swamp but it never actually happened. A lot of people wanted something more than tax cuts and didn't get it. The machinery is already in place, the ship steers very slowly if you can even find the controls.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Regarding #1, they already do this.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Human wisdom is surely capable of distinguishing between imperfection, negligence and fraud.
For instance - software is released that's buggy = imperfection. Crowdstrike bricks tens of millions of computers = negligence.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Short summary (a scientist erred/falsified results in heart disease treatments, up to 800,000 died):
I find the Vox article somewhat disturbing. They spend most of the article talking about whether criminalization is the answer. 800,000 dead, or some number in the high thousands and they feel it's necessary to spend so much time justifying and proposing? Why should they be carefully peeping their heads over the parapet, wary of sniper fire? If ever there was someone to cancel and demonize, it's this guy.
I have an internal feeling of justice that calls for extremely severe penalties for these people. I guess I'm in the minority, since it doesn't happen. The EcoHealth gang, Daszak and the Bat Lady of Wuhan are still living the high life. Meanwhile, scientists who dare to have sex with coworkers get their lives derailed.
I suppose that most people have their feelings of justice heavily weighted towards direct things like killing with knives, selling faulty goods or being mean. That makes sense, we didn't evolve to care about the probabilistic harms caused by institutional malpractice over many years. This is why I think we should have extra-strong prohibitions on this kind of non-obvious harm. Even a hardened EcoHealth researcher might have qualms about massacring 10-20 million people with guns and blades. It's a lot easier to do exciting, fun research and be a little slack on all those tedious safety checks. It doesn't feel so wrong, which is why they need to feel fear to counter it.
In the past I've made this sort of argument and been rebuffed by some people on the grounds that if we imposed very severe punishments then people would just double down on lying and blaming others to escape liability. Plus it would disincentivize people from taking up important roles.
However, when it comes to mechanical engineering, we've learned to build bridges that stay up. We appreciate that some kind of consequence should fall upon you if you adulterate food with plastic or replace the concrete with cardboard (or cardboard derivatives). Back in the early Industrial Revolution nobody particularly cared about safety, there were plenty of bridge failures. We slowly had to evolve systems that corrected these problems but we got there in the end.
Indeed, negligence is a big part of law. Mostly it works on the assumption that the harm-causing party is a big corporation or someone with lots of money. From a broad evolutionary point of view, that makes a lot of sense. Proving guilt and getting to the bottom of things takes a lot of effort, you want to be sure that there will be a pay-off. It's like how creatures might evolve fangs to pierce flesh and get at that juicy meat. Entities that can cause lots of harm tend to have lots of resources.
However, academia gives us cases where there are no clear, direct, short-term links between the cause of harm and the victims. The cause of harm might be a few moderately well off scientists. The harm itself might be hazy, there might be no ironclad proof of the magnitude and exact nature. Think how long it took to prove that cigarettes caused cancer. We had the statistical proof long before the exact causal mechanism was ironed out and the costs of delay were phenomenal. Biology is the most obvious case where this happens. There was another case where Alzheimer's research was thought to be fraudulent, wasting many years and billions of dollars. I say slash and burn, take their money away, give them humiliating tattoos and make them work at McDonalds somewhere far away from all their friends, or worse. Normal criminals couldn't do that much harm in a lifetime.
AI likely falls into the same category, though it can probably be dealt with via more traditional negligence systems since it's mostly advanced by big companies. I am worried that it will take far too long for people to realize the danger posed by AI or those who wield them, there isn't enough time to develop seriousness.
Anyway, I think it would be wise to develop ways to target and severely punish biologists who fraudulently or negligently allow harm (perhaps also praising and granting boons to those who uncover their fraud). This would be a positive incentive for singularitarian scenarios and virtuous in itself. We need to get out of the mindset of waiting for our market-Darwinist-legal system to fix things and attack problems pre-emptively. Or at least with a minimum of megadeaths.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
I'm not really a US politics expert but I can give you some political disinfo stuff: https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1620195663580626945
The stuff about Republican fundraising emails going to spam in gmail is pretty blatant (though interestingly Outlook and Yahoo prefer Republican emails, to a much lesser extent than gmail's 77 - 10% split!)
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
What's more important than the life or death of the nation? I said nation, not state. There are more important things in this world than raising the GDP figures and subsidizing the senescent.
I guess you have to smash the safety glass to get to the fire extinguisher... but that's included in the fire-extinguishing process.
E/acc version: https://x.com/yasser_elsaid_/status/1827755425443328139
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