tfowler11
1yr ago
Actually you do. A coup existing in the past doesn't inherently make a latter election not free and fair. It could easily create conditions to have an election that is neither, (or to not have any elections at all) but doesn't by itself or automatically make subsequent elections not free or fair.
Also "a foreign backed coup" isn't a very accurate description of what happened in the first place.
tfowler11
1yr ago
That would explain the first problem, I still have an issue with the size of the explosion as well.
OTOH an explosion of that size was hardly needed for sabotage if someone taking it out had direct access to the pipeline they could have cut it open or used a fairly small shaped charge. Even an unshaped charge wouldn't really need to be that big.
Germany has other way to get Russian gas besides Nord Stream. 2 was never brought fully online (it was ready and tested, so it could have been used, but it was decertified and never used). 1 was the biggest pipeline supplying Germany, but not the only one or even the only one that Germany used to buy Russian gas.
tfowler11
1yr ago
The more knowledgeable and wise parts of their leadership knew that a win against the US would be very unlikely. Others understood they were at a serious disadvantage but thought that they could win a decisive battle or three before the US was fully spooled up and that the US would lose its determination and settle. Then you have the racist fools in their leadership who thought that Japanese were so superior in fighting spirit that they could overcome any materiel advantage.
They must not be given any reason to use them.
What would be a reason to use them? The US using its nukes sure, or a drive on Moscow that they find themselves unable to stop conventionally. The US sending some HIMARS and HARMS and Javelins to Ukraine? Not so much. It isn't an existential threat to Russia, but the US nuclear response to a Russian nuclear attack would be.
tfowler11
1yr ago
And even if it was US, and UK personnel doing almost all the work and the Ukrainians "just pulling the triggers" (and I agree with you it isn't). It wouldn't exactly be an unprecedented level of involvement in post WWII wars were one major power was fighting a small power that was receiving a lot of aid from another major power. In Korea, and to a lesser extent Vietnam, Soviet pilots fought the USAF. Also China, while not an open full blown combatant like they were in Korea, had construction and AA units in North Vietnam. In neither of these cases was it considered a reason to go full WWIII on either the USSR or China.
tfowler11
1yr ago
I'm not sure that it works that way so much. If a group is influential and powerful so as to be a risk of taking control and imposing authoritarian control they are less likely to be effectively censored. Its easier to shut up the weak.
If the though is that some day way down the line some toxic authoritarian ideas which are weak now might eventually take hold if we don't nip them in the bud, it seems to me that depriving them of free speech might backfire on more than one level.
1 - That people are trying to shut up claims can be taken by those adjacent to those clams as evidence that there is truth in what they are saying, and that the powerful are trying to suppress the truth.
2 - If you drive people with hateful ideas in to the shadows you don't recognize the people who have those ideas as much.
3 - Also when driven to the sidelines and shadows they face no opposition and contradiction in those shadows.
4 - The move to censor ideas is directly itself a deprivation of rights and and make society less free.
5 - The fact that people can shut up speech that is called authoritarian or that supposedly puts rights at risk creates and incentive to give more and more speech and ideas the label of "authoritarian" or "dangerous to our rights", making problem 4 worse and potentially creating a situation where existing competing political blocks that aren't' on the far fringes, to label each other as falling under those categories.
6 - The general acceptance that people and ideas can reasonably be shut up by force sets a precedent that empowers authoritarians should they take power.
tfowler11
1yr ago
I am not aware of what Meloni thinks or says about the Russia sanctions
She supports sanctions and arming Ukraine.
ROME, July 22 (Reuters) - Italy will keep sending arms to Ukraine and back Kyiv in its war against Russia if the conservative bloc wins a forthcoming national election, the head of the most popular party in the alliance has said.
The far-right Brothers of Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni, has been one of the few Italian parties that has wholeheartedly endorsed Prime Minister Mario Draghi's decision to ship weapons to Ukraine, even though it was in opposition to his government.
both Brothers of Italy and the League have condemned the war, Salvini, who once heaped praise on Vladimir Putin, even signing a cooperation pact with the Russian president’s United Russia party in 2017, said the sanctions were not working and were instead “bringing Europe and Italy to their knees”.
Meloni, meanwhile, argues that the sanctions are working, citing a significant slowdown in Russia’s GDP growth prospects, and since the start of the war she has been resolute in her support for sending arms to Ukraine while reassuring the international community that she is pro-Europe and pro-Atlanticist.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Hasn't the official narrative for the past couple decades been that the reason schools in the U.S. underperform is due to lack of funding?
Yes. And that despite the fact that a massive increase in school spending in staffing per pupil, failed to do anything noticeably in terms of increasing educational achievement. - https://www.cato.org/blog/obama-vs-romney-public-school-jobs (old data now but it shows a decades long trend).
Later that spending increase slowed, and in some places even had short term reversals, but still generally kept an upward trend (and again I'm talking about real per pupil spending so ts not inflation or more students causing the increase).
tfowler11
1yr ago
Its greater then their headline spending numbers. If you adjust for purchasing power there is even a bigger difference then their official numbers. But its still less than the US's spending (although something like 85 or 90 percent instead of a much smaller fraction. Perhaps the numbers should be adjusted by a bit less than purchasing power parity (the difference between costs for high tech, or even more mundane military items isn't likely to be the same as it is for civilian production, and at least for the more advanced items is likely to be less), but even then you still get well over half, and China's spending is growing faster, and at least at the moment (and probably at least for the next couple of decades) any conflict would likely happen nearer to China, where China has almost all its forces while American forces are spread across the world with the largest portion in the relatively distant North America.
The main counterbalancing advantages for the US are
1 - The US has more built up capability from previous spending. (But military equipment is a depreciating asset, not a productive investment so the importance of this declines over time).
2 - The US is more likely to have allies on its side.
3 - The US has some geographical advantages. China has to get past potentially hostile countries in the first (and depending on the scenario 2nd) island chains. Also its easier to interdict shipping to China (at least with a distant blockade, a close blockade would be too costly) than it is to the US.
4 - (This one is weaker and less certain) China would probably be seen as the aggressor and get a more hostile world reaction then the US would. The US isn't going to invade China, or just start lobbing missiles at if for the lols. A war with China would most likely start over a Chinese attack of Taiwan, and the other scenarios mostly involve China grabbing disputed territory as well. If China doesn't make such an attack there won't be any war.
tfowler11
1yr ago
China's economy is growing faster than the economy of the US, but the difference between the two has been decreasing as China's growth slows. I'd expect that slowing growth to continue for a number of reasons.
1 - The middle income trap and more generally the fact that catch-up growth is easier than innovative growth.
2 - Increasing centralized statist control in China, as opposed to the relaxation of such control in the past which allowed for tremendous growth (it is very unlikely to get anywhere near as bad as Mao, but it still been getting worse to a much lesser extent than that disaster).
3 - Demographics.
4 - The US and to a lesser extent a number of other rich countries becoming more hostile and less open to the US, while China itself is doing a bit of the same from the other side. Many countries are seeking to source outside of China. For things that don't need very low wages to be successful there is some attempt to bring the production home. For things that do, purchases will be more from places like Vietnam (and many other countries, I"m not saying Vietnam is going to grab everything from China). Not just from more hostility and less open trade to/from China but also as China's economy grows it will be less and less a low wage place.
5 - The extent of wealth and income in China that's related to a large real-estate bubble.
I still think that China's economy will pass the US's as the world's largest. But I don't see "at least twice as large" soon. Also China has a lot more people. That is the main reason it will become the largest economy. But OTOH that economy is spread among more people. As Chinese living standards improve (and if they don't that we'll create its own problems, but its very likely they will) a huge amount of national income will be needed to cover those living standards. 50% greater economy with over 4 times the people, doesn't give you 50% greater surplus to spend on military adventures or whatever.
tfowler11
1yr ago
"The Opposition Bloc - For Life (OPZZh) was lead by Yuriy Boyko and had 25 members in the Verkhovna Rada. In order to comply with sanctions against Russia after the invasion, OPZZh had to dissolve itself and immediately reform as a new party with a different funding structure. The party is now called Platform for Life and Peace (PLP) and has the same members in the Verkhovna Rada as before, including Yuriy Boyko. The opposition politicians all still have their seats, nobody was banned."
https://old.reddit.com/r/NAFO/comments/101c3rw/how_to_respond_to_claims_that_zelensky_banned/
Yes that's a source with a clear anti-Russian bias, but you ban parties with funding from Russia but allow the same people in a formally different organization to have the same ideas, same structure, same leadership, same people in office, ext, and don't block then from running for office, you still can have free and fair elections, and the ideas and groups that were "banned" still get to participate in that election.
No FTL travel, does not imply not getting a vast a mount of resources from space. It doesn't even imply no expansion to other star systems (although obviously it makes such expansion slower and more difficult, and any colonies set up in other star systems will be more isolated and have to be more self-sufficient).
Also even without resources from space, you could have fusion, and other new sources or improved sources of energy.
And in terms of population, projections in to the future can and often have been wrong, but we may be facing more of a problem going forward from declining population (mostly from people choosing not to have children, or to have fewer children, or to put off having children until later and then not having as many child bearing years left), rather than overpopulation for the world. Its possible the world won't hit 10 billion. Its reasonably likely it won't hit 20bil. Such numbers should be quite supportable with technological advances and continued economic growth.
tfowler11
1yr ago
They didn't thoroughly control politics even at the time. And assuming the counterfactual that they did, such control rarely lasts, esp. in cases that aren't openly obvious puppet states. Control for a moment, is not control forever. The US didn't run the polling places in Ukraine, didn't set the election rules, didn't count the votes, etc. Once someone was elected, US opinion had some influence, because Ukraine seriously wanted support. But that's a separate issue than the elections.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Ukraine had several free and fair elections post Maidan, and those elections actually determined who got to run the government.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Sure it can. In fact there is a good chance it was. Having no liberty ship in service really doesn't matter. The fog and friction of war is enough to cover such mistakes. Had it been a huge and highly distinctive ship like a carrier or battleship then you would have a better point (of course then it would have been much better defended).
Confusion and mistakes are rampant in war. Iraq didn't have any M1 tanks, Warrior armored vehicles, Scorpions, Panavia Tornadoes, Challenger 2s, F/A-18 Hornets, Bradleys, M113s, or Spartans, yet all of those were taken out in either the Gulf War or the 2003 Iraq war, despite it all being forces that train with each other (US taking out US weapons systems, US taking out British weapon systems, and the UK taking out their own equipment). That's on the ground or the air, not the sea, but the basic ideas is the same and there is nothing about a Liberty Ship that screams "US war ship" or "couldn't possibly be Egyptian". A Liberty ship is just an old (even at the time it was 22 years old), small (by modern standards) that have been owned by numerous countries and companies around the world.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Some sort of argument can be made about the US. I don't think its as strong as the people normally making the argument would claim, but on respecting sovereignty it isn't nonsense, there is a real argument there. Less so on the democracy question.
Ukraine? Maybe its just because they haven't had a lot of time or a lot of power as an independent country but they haven't done much in the way of infringing on anyone's sovereignty. As for democracy they are far more democratic than Russia, corrupt maybe but a solid democracy, at least until after they were invaded and large sections of their country occupied by a foreign power (when they outlawed pro-Russian parties as traitorous)
tfowler11
1yr ago
The Soviets talked about joining NATO as early as around the time of its foundation. Their idea though was to either exclude the US from NATO or to require unanimous agreement for any NATO action, either way gutting NATO.
Putin did indeed at one point talk about joining NATO. He asked when they would be invited to NATO. Was told that it didn't work that way that countries applied to join. Then Putin said "Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”
In addition to not wanting to follow the process, I'm not sure Russia would really want to be in an alliance where another country was the dominate member (Russia would be 2nd in population, and military strength, 3rd in PPP GDP, and 7th in nominal GDP).
And I'm not so sure it would have qualified for membership -
While there is no membership checklist for interested nations, NATO has made clear that candidates for membership must meet the following criteria. Interested nations must:
Uphold democracy, including tolerance for diversity;
Be progressing toward a market economy;
Have their military forces under firm civilian control;
Be good neighbors and respect the sovereignty of other nations; and
Work toward interoperability with NATO forces.
https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/eur/fs_970815members.html
The first and 2nd to last points have been questionable at best for years and has become more so lately. And I'm not sure Russian leadership would care to change the way their military operates to fit with the last point.
tfowler11
1yr ago
And generally you can just keep reading their articles if your delete your NYT's cookies.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Boomers were born as early as 1946. Its more GenX that came of age in the 80s
tfowler11
1yr ago
Using percentage of GDP makes sense in certain circumstances, such as when your trying to analyze the burden the spending puts on the economy but I agree it makes less sense when your comparing national education spending to see who spends more, or when you considering whether spending is increasing over time and how rapid the increase is.
When your calmly looking at them with no thought of risk or pressure for immediate action, its rather unlikely. In war under certain circumstances is quite possible. Also that isn't even necessarily what happened. The person actually seeing the ship could report it as an enemy ship, and then others could think it was a destroyer.
Egypt might not have owned any liberty ships but they did own small merchant ships and likely enough converted merchants ships or ships similar enough that a flyby might not notice the difference.
More options
Context Copy link