I tried signing up with google and the long random subdomain that ended in .supabase in the permissions granted modal was pretty off putting. I said yes bc I know this is a new service but if I was a random signup that would cause me concern and I’d not continue signing up. Hope this helps!
I follow the referenced instagram account and I actually find it depressing.
I've probably visited Beirut 20+ times over the last 7 years. Last visit was summer of 2019, so haven't been since COVID. My company has an office there.
It's one of my favorite cities in the world. It's also one of the most heartbreaking situations in economic and humanitarian terms. The country has experienced one of the worst currency crises in history, did not wether COVID well, and then had one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history go off right in the city center. Two years later, nobody has been prosecuted.
The country is in complete deadlock politically - all of the warlords from the civil war just became politicians and then systematically looted the country. There isn't much optimism that the situation will turn around, and almost everyone I know who lived there has left, accelerating an already problematic brain drain.
Beirut and Lebanon has to be one of the largest missed opportunities or what-could-have-been situations of the last 100 years.
100 years? It was basically a first-world country 50 years ago. The decline in living standards in Lebanon is one of the largest ever (Argentina probably the biggest, Venezuela is the other big one, Lebanon is somewhere around Venezuela).
Countries can come back (the country that was Austro-Hungary, Slovakia has a city with one of the highest GDP per capita in Europe after massive repeated collapses), but there is (at least in the West) a very concerted effort not to call this situation like it is. It is obvious what happened, and now people say it is unsolvable when it has clearly been engineered to happen this way (blaming colonialism, too much diversity, anything but what it is).
Vague insinuations such as this one always harm the discussion. Why not just communicate clearly?
> the country that was Austro-Hungary, Slovakia
No, Slovakia wasn't Austria-Hungary, rather it was just a small part of Austria-Hungary (of Hungary, to be more precise). Wasn't even a successor de jure of Austria-Hungary.
I was referring to Bratislava...I said Slovakia. Pressburg was in Austro-Hungary I believe. Either way, it is irrelevant because that whole area did collapse economically multiple times, Austro-Hungary is one of the only stock markets that went literally to zero. The same story to the Middle East in many ways (war, repeatedly).
Yeah, I assume the city they're referring to is Vienna? Just guessing because of its well known high GDP.
However, the point stands. Many cities were bombed to rubble in WWII and they came back. The same could happen in Beirut if a stable political situation were to emerge. Though there are numerous reasons that will be very difficult.
Let's not forget a hefty investment was made by the West to rebuild those cities that were bombed to rubble that Beirut is not getting. So Beirut may need more than a stable political situation.
Getting quite off-topic, but Vienna is the capital of Austria; while Bratislava and Košice are the only two Slovakian cities with a population greater than 100000, so presumably it's one of those.
Greed existed before 1975. Are you saying Americans aren't greedy? And that is why they are so rich?
To be more specific: Lebanon was a country that had avoided the stuff going on elsewhere in the Middle East. The PLO gets involved, and the country implodes.
1) The cause of all human suffering is desire. The Buddhists have been pointing that out for millennia.
2) Greed is pretty much constant, people have been extremely greedy forever. The cause is the thing that changed to allow that greed to be channelled negatively. We've figured out how to channel greed for positive ends - in the process called a 'modern economy'. Greed is just a fuel, the issue is whether it is burning in an engine or burning uncontrolled.
It is getting into the weeds of philosophy, but they are separate concepts. Entities can be greedy without desire (eg, corporations are extremely greedy, but have no desire) and vice versa (eg, imagine an extreme desire for fresh air - it is hard to call that greed).
But to say greed causes suffering is untrue. The thing to underline in the last 200-300 years is that humans harnessed greed to deliver great results - the successive Asian economic miricles of the last century are not being caused by charity and goodwill! And the techniques that they are using were forged in some of the crucibles of most concentrated greed in human history. And while there was suffering, this was also where progress, peace and comfort came from.
The greed isn't the problem here, it is part of the solution. It just needs to be separated out from the other things going on and properly focused.
Ignorance of what though? How airfoils work? Or how to speak french? Ignorance of how acting on your urge to be greedy results in suffering? Sure. But I think the greed is still the thing causing the bad here.
When someone tells you they're a fan of a culture because of the immigrants and expats they've met from that culture, it's not OK to explain to them why they're wrong by implying that the rest of the culture is unlike them.
Well, I guess those Christian and Persian refugees missed out on all the great things that happened that the majority of the population wanted to have happen. I am sure they are wishing they could have been there for those changes.
The country is in complete deadlock politically - all of the warlords from the civil war just became politicians and then systematically looted the country.
I always wonder why many democracies devolve into politicians just looting the government, whereas others become successful and relatively less corrupt.
Not the best or deepest account, but for the modern reader who can't
spare time on Aristotle and a gamut of old beards [1] Acemoglu and
Robinson's account is clear and interesting reading [2].
In the case of Lebanon, the story is that it's ethnic/religious
diversity is too much for stability, it being constantly open to
interference from its neighbours and super-powers playing proxy war
games.
Plenty of places with high ethnic/religious diversity have thrived: Singapore, Istanbul, New York City, (increasingly) the capitals of Western Europe. Teotihuacan, the largest pyramid complex outside of Egypt, was a multi-cultural city where different religions, languages and ethnicities lived side by side for 1000 years. It can be done.
> Plenty of places with high ethnic/religious diversity have thrived:
What you say is true but besides the point. There's no argument to be
made against ethnic/religious diversity. But there is a problem with
foreign interference that stokes ethnic tension.
My own London is perhaps the most successful multi-cultural population
in the world. We don't have RPG attacks on schools because we don't
have superpowers spending millions on manipulating and arming the
Hoxton Crips against the Hounslow Massive. And there's the important
difference.
Not forgetting the Chelsea Gym Rats, the West End Wide Boys, the Hackney Pirates, the East End Geezahs, the Brixton Yardies, the Camden Punks, the Camberwell Carrots, etc
1. Singapore has an extremely controlling government and lots of accounts of an ethnic non-citizen “underclass” being exploited.
2. Turkey as a whole is questionable. They have rampant ethnic violence even if Istanbul is doing ok.
3. The US and Western Europe arent turkey but again, have various degrees of ethnic tension being played out. Whether that’s trump and all he stands for or France’s burka bans. They’re also generally more powerful so less susceptible to meddling.
> I always wonder why many democracies devolve into politicians just looting
I am very concerned that US/UK appear to be decolving for the last 10 years. The standards of acceptable behaviour from politicians have definately gone down.
I am somewhat optimistic about the UK situation; in the end, Boris was at least held accountable, and by his own party. It was too late, and he got away with far too much in my opinion, but in the end a line was drawn and was told to bugger off. Incidents with "colourful" PMs are not unheard off, e.g. Churchill was widely criticised for various antics which are not all that dissimilar to Boris' antics. This of course ended up being overshadowed by his status as the war PM.
In the US the situation is quite a bit more dire, and roots of the current situation are also quite a bit deeper and go back longer beyond just "this asshole got elected to office".
I actually think that's a comparatively minor detail, and not all that important here. The biggest issue that has often been discussed is the first past the post constituencies/districts/states both systems share. Neither Trump nor Boris would have become President or PM without that, simply on account of voters having more options to cast a meaningful vote for (UK also does a little bit better than the US in this regard).
True. But the politicians who are scammers (not all are) seem to be much more brazen about it. And I can't help but feel that the public failing to hold them accountable is exacerbating and accelerating the situation.
Perhaps but at least in Australia there's still a sense that politicians can't just get away with whatever they feel works for them. There's a big kerfuffle currently about the fact our previous prime minister secretly had himself sworn into multiple ministerial roles without consulting anyone else in his own party. The curious thing to me is that so far there's no evidence he did so for any personal gain or made improper use of ministerial privileges. But he's still rightfully being grilled over it and there's a decent chance he'll be forced to step down from his role as a member of the opposition. And the various YouTube videos mocking him have been hilarious (for anyone familiar with how he was in office the last 5 years).
Because voting is just a small part of Democracy. Democracies need strong and independent, judicial, law making and executive branches.
Voting itself is an averaging process, and you get the average of what ordinary citizen wants. It is hard to make people want good things for themselves without proactive investments in education and developing a population with scientific temper.
> Democracies need strong and independent, judicial, law making and executive branches.
Yes, absolutely, but they also depend on a strong civil society beyond government. You need a media that's interested in and capable of investigative reporting, a layer of trade unions and professional associations, and a social layer that integrates people. The units larger than extended family and smaller than the country. And they need to be somewhat independent, not all run by the Party, nor all aligned along ethnic or religious lines.
You need people who believe their government is legitimate and that the mechanism of voting is valid.
You don’t see that anymore in America anymore for example, republicans across the nation believe that if there candidate loses, it must be voter fraud by either by one scheme or another. Shit, Trump himself still claims that he won the previous election.
There is likely some illegal voting in every election. The systems in place generally prevent any sort of wholesale vote manipulation though. It's rare when an election is close enough that a handful of votes could make the difference, and the 2020 presidential election certainly wasn't one of those.
Evidence points to it mostly being small-scale and largely accidental (e.g. someone has two residences and forgets they voted in one place earlier in the year, votes in second place later in the year, accidentally commits voter fraud).
When people with the motivation, mandate, and access, plus often full support of an entire state government, to find as much fraud as they can, go looking for it, that's typically all they find. A handful of cases, mostly accidental, not part of a big conspiracy or effort to swing the election.
Like when Kobach, a guy who'd made his entire political identity "voter fraud is rampant and super-serious" got clearance to go on a big crusade in Kansas. 6 convictions, mostly accidental, none part of a coordinated effort, mixed R and D (IIRC the cases actually leaned R, but small sample size, so either way, not that meaningful)
Rhetoric that it's a big deal (that stupid D'Souza "documentary"), but when they have to put up or shut up (i.e. take their evidence to the courts) there's simply nothing (meaningful) there.
It's mind blowing to me that generally intelligent people believe the biggest sore loser in American history. It's a huge danger to the future of our democracy and you all don't care. It seriously makes me want to cry in despair for the future.
I feel your despair, but from the other side. I don't know how anyone could watch the surveillance videos of Fulton county and not conclude their was voter fraud. It's absolutely mind boggling.
I see your graphic posted by someone named jgreene777 on reddit and raise you a 72 page report prepared under the direction of eight prominent conservatives - people like retired federal judges, former senators, a solicitor general, an election lawyer, etc. [0]
This report looked at the 64 court cases and 187 allegations of election fraud in all 6 battleground states and documented the evidence showing that each and every claim of voter fraud by Trump's team was false, consistant with all the court rulings. You can scroll to any case you are interested in and read the details.
They found that there were many republicans who voted a straight party ticket except for their vote against Trump. This is consistent with the recent Wyoming primary results, where some 25-30% of republicans voted for the person in congress who is trying harder than anyone else to put Trump in jail.
The 2020 presidential election was most definitely lost by Trump, not stolen. I acknowledge that there are biased sources claiming otherwise, much to the detriment of our democracy.
Thank you. This is a perfect example of the maxim that it is at least an order of magnitude harder to refute propaganda than it is to create it. Imagine how much time went into the reddit graphic, vs. this report. And on top of that it will hardly change any minds.
> [...] and raise you a 72 page report prepared under the direction of eight prominent conservatives - people like retired federal judges, former senators, a solicitor general, an election lawyer, etc. [0]
Separation between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government appears to be a good practice. However, the UK doesn't really have that: Parliament controls everything. And they seem to have a fairly stable and functional democracy.
In theory Parliament controls everything, but in practice the executive controls everything (because they control Parliament). The separation of powers that does exist is largely because of 'leakage' in Ministers' control of events. They can straightforwardly change the law, for example, but you need to change it before you do the otherwise-unlawful thing, not afterward. If you don't, the courts will nullify your actions. You can dismiss 'independent' quango heads quite straightforwardly, but it's politically expensive (and somewhat time consuming) to do so too frequently. You control the Parliamentary timetable, but there are a few gaps in it for opposition day debates and private members' bills. That sort of thing.
We do have a stable and functional democracy, though it's rather brittle against a bad-faith executive. One prominent theory is the 'good chap' model of government, which holds basically that the system is set up such that 'reasonable chaps like us' can govern well and with few constraints, but the flipside is that Johnson's impact was limited by his government's lack of competence, not by institutional constraints. That might be liberating or terrifying, depending on your views about good government.
So then the question becomes "why do many democracies not develop strong and independent, judicial, law making and executive branches, whereas others do?"
It might be other way round - if there are no independent, judicial, law making and executive branches and all the blah from the start, democracy has much lower chance of success. There will always be attempts to take hold of it and if the start is wrong, chance that someone will succeed is much higher.
We talk a lot about separation of powers, the constitution, etc. in the US, but until pretty recently, we failed to appreciate the fact that democracy is largely a cultural thing. It works because we believe it works.
Go and read the Soviet Constitution of 1936 (Stalin) [1]. It talks about freedom of speech, freedom of press, assembly, demonstrations. It actually goes much further than the US constitution. It talks about the right to rest and leisure. Old age care. Education.
We all know that the reality of life under Stalin didn't quite live up to this. A constitution is just a piece of paper. It doesn't mean anything unless it is enforced. That's why I think we focus too much on things like originalism vs living constitution... the reality is that we should be focused on maintaining our democratic institutions which no longer look as secure as they used to.
I think this fact is more well recognized outside the west than inside it. Fareed Zakaria predicted the failure of the democracy experiments in iraq and afghanistan back in 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom. Those predictions were widely shared among the Muslim diaspora in the U.S.
The british sent their criminals to Australia (a harsh island continent) and they turned it into a thriving liberal democracy. Meanwhile most democracies in the developing world struggle. Culture is destiny: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045923
> The british sent their criminals to Australia (a harsh island continent) and they turned it into a thriving liberal democracy.
A misconception. Most people who moved to Australia were not criminals. Contrast that with Germany, which turned itself into a genocide state through the influence of European culture.
Most developing countries would be lucky to have the order and competency even of the Trump administration. We aren’t even talking about the same planet here in terms of what’s a functioning democracy.
In some countries they call that Tuesday... And the coups often succeed too, and also have military involvement, and aren't embarrassingly poorly executed.
I'm not even talking failed states here, I'm talking about respectable developing countries like Thailand and Turkey. The United States, despite its numerous obvious shortcomings, has it pretty good when it comes to political stability and democracy.
We left Bangladesh when it was ruled by a military leader that came to power in a coup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Bangladesh_coup_d%27état. January 6 bears no resemblance to the coups I'm familiar with. More like a failed peasant rebellion.
> It actually goes much further than the US constitution.
The US constitution is specifically designed not to have an exhaustive enumeration of rights. Its terseness is its primary asset as it's solely a restriction on government authority with supreme power wielded by the populace. Every worker's paradise that tries to list all freedoms operates from the opposite principle that they are granted by government authority.
Go and read the Soviet Constitution of 1936 (Stalin) [1].
That would be a waste of time. Stalin had no intention to do anything of that and everybody knew where dissension would send them: jail, gulags, torture and death.
That's not "a cultural thing", that's just cynism and propaganda. A cultural thing is when everybody wants to make it work but it never really works as intended. But that's more like the government with its full coercion power is against it!
> A cultural thing is when everybody wants to make it work but it never really works as intended.
That is sometimes the difference between stated preferences and revealed preferences.
A lot of people say they want democracy but when they’re faced with a democratic outcome they find repugnant they’re willing to look the other way when anti-democratic forces try to make changes.
Government is part of culture, as there's a feedback loop where culture shapes it, and is shaped by it.
It can absolutely happen here, too, if we elect clowns who explicitly want to break the working parts of the system. The ones that have no intentions of making it work (Except in a way that serves them).
Laws and constitutions are indeed just pieces of paper, and carry no power in themselves. It's culture that ultimately decides whether or not they actually apply, and to whom.
The Stalin was in power, because of party victory in war. Not much to do with culture, they won and a lot to do with who wins the fight. The winner of war then driven the culture, sure, but the deciding thing was about power.
This is a topic I find interesting. Out of any society in the world, in some form or another there always emerges some de facto leaders. And in some places in the modern world they will adopt democracy only so much as they know they can "win" elections and harness goodwill from other democracies. In some places being directly involved with the government is the only way to live with some luxury.
Main thing is I think there has to be some sort of cultivation of democracy (and some associated values), or it's just a facade or mob rule. It seems easier if the citizens are already middle-upper class for instance. We underestimate how much people need to be "primed" for democracy for it to flourish, it's also a more active process ideally that requires engagement, which isn't always so viable.
Main thing is I think there has to be some sort of cultivation of democracy (and some associated values)
Indeed. Also that cultivation must be stronger than the forces that try to sabotage democracy and freedom. Now, most parties say they want democracy and freedom, but in many cases, it's a lie.
Million dollar question. I don’t think it’s as clear cut as just these two very distinct groups.
It’s a spectrum and different countries sit somewhere within this spectrum. In addition, modern democracies are relatively young and we have yet to fully figure it out.
For example in Germany, consider Weimer Repulic. It was a democracy and it failed and Nazis replaced it but now it’s Federal Republic and a relatively successful democracy. Such a wild ride. It’s hard to formulate. Now put it Next to Iran or China or US or Russia. Each have different conditions.
Some of these democracies have been caught in proxy wars and super powers. Some fell to bigots and despots. Some have oil and are targets of bigger players. Some are falling and others rising. It’s too soon to draw a clear conclusion I believe.
I believe it arises from an interaction between individuals and the surrounding culture and institutions.
Let's assume, a priori, that everyone is trying to maximize their "success". This doesn't necessarily mean purely selfish greed, but more an observation that there's a natural incentive to take care of ourselves and our own and that we will naturally try to figure out how to get there.
The "get there" part means navigating the social environment and institutions that surround us. We aren't living alone on a desert island where our options for survival are purely physical. Most of our interactions and choices are around other people and social systems. So when we seek success, we are pathfinding through the rules, norms, and ethics of the culture we're embedded in.
What kind of path do you take? In a culture with low corruption and high institutional trust, the most efficient way to acquire resources and stability is by playing the game honestly and cooperating in good faith with others. If we all do the right thing, we all win. Overall efficiency goes up and that benefits all of us.
In institutions with low trust and high corruption, playing by the rules and attempting to cooperate leaves you open to exploitation because your peers aren't doing that. You'll get screwed.
Now the fun part is the feedback loop between individuals and institutions. A culture is just the collective choices of all of the individuals in it, so every move we make in the game is also an act of defining the rules of that game.
The greater trust we have in each other, the more efficient the system gets and the better it is for everyone. But by that exact same token, the easier the system becomes to exploit and the more attractive it becomes to bad actors. The optimally efficient society is also the perfect honeypot. So as we seek greater trust and efficiency, we also directly incentivize deceipt and corruption.
Going in the other way, as a society gets more corrupt, it becomes less and less efficient. It's hard to get anything done when every single action requires several rounds of negotiation at gunpoint because everyone is presumed to be an adversary. So as a society becomes less trusting, it loses the ability to compete against other more efficient, trustworthy societies.
What I think you see is that as a larger society's institutional trust falls, within that society new pockets of trusted cooperating subcultures arise. Since those are more efficient than the larger society, they tend to grow and outcompete. But people in those pockets don't trust outside of that subculture, so you end up with the inefficiencies of mistrust and adversarial interactions at the boundaries between these groups.
Eventually a group might win and continue to grow, but the bigger it gets, the harder it is to maintain cohesion and trust across all of it. So eventually its overall trust fades but then new pockets of trust appear inside it.
This sort of slow boiling foam of fading trust and growing bubbles of cohesion is, I think, fundamental to human sociology.
As a Lebanese, I find what you're saying both slightly offensive and slightly true. Lebanon, as a culture distinct from other middle easterners has existed for a very long time. Lebanon as an independent state has been invented in 1920, however there were multiple previous attempts historically to get independance.
Some historical figures have reached levels of influence that would qualify as "independent lebanon" (if people were so good at administrative bookkeeping back in the 1600s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakhr_al-Din_II
The modern state of Lebanon fails in part because it's a "contrieved post colonial state", you're right. But claiming it has no historical foundations is misguided. It's wrong. Colonials hijacked a very legit idea, and turned it into a failed state. It's different.
The resource curse is probably part of it. But another part is that the Ottoman Empire conquered all of these middle eastern societies at varying levels of development, and the european powers that inherited those colonies were faced with complex sectarian conflict that didn't exist in asia. With the separation of British India into Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India, you've solved 90% of the sectarian conflict that exists in the region. In Lebanon, by contrast, history has left you with Christians, Shia, and Sunni all living in the same place, such that you have a constitutional structure where christians and muslims are each guaranteed half the seats in the legislature, and other roles such as president and prime minister are divided by religion.
They had centralized fully functional states that maintained economy that could supply cities as large or larger than Europe.
Japan was not made by Meiji, it was transformed but foundation of the "miracle" was there. During sengoku it created and armed with locally built firearms armies that dwarfed that of any European state of the time in one generation.. from bows to hundred thousands of muskets
Culture >> everything. In 1945 Beirut was a paradise compared to burned to the ground Tokyo and every other major city. In few decades it had built dams like Kurobe, challenged and beat American car manufacturers.. resources, colonialism.. right. Whoever was running the place knew how to do it, they do not know now and very unlikely to learn in the next 100 years.
This point is often made for the middle east but a lot of the borders and ideals put in place that caused these disasters were put in place before oil really even mattered.
Sovereignty is different if you have U.S. bases on your soil. Any country with a U.S. base is a vassal state, independent and therefore sovereign in name only.
Those prosperous states in South Asia, outside mainland China, do seem to have lots of American troops stationed in them.
One could make the same argument for a country like India. There is no "India" in the sense of an ethno-linguisic grouping. India is more akin to the European Union but even more diverse. The Indian state has survived for seventy five years now.
Just as the French and British dismembered the Ottoman empire to create modern Lebanon, so too did the British dismember the Indian empire to create India and Pakistan.
I don't think that is especially accurate. India has a lot of ethno-linguistic diversity, but has hundreds of years of centralized administrative rule even before the British: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire. That's longer than Germany or Italy have had centralized governance.
Funnily enough, the Mughals were initially foreign conquerors, just like the British with their Raj. But then ancient Germania was also somewhat unified by the foreign Romans, so perhaps it's same as it ever was.
I always wonder why the Maurya Empire doesn't get brought up as a pan-Indian empire, it was local to the area and conquered almost the entirety of the subcontinent.
Human history is a story of repeated conquest, population admixture and/or replacement. Almost all “indigenous people” in present or past are just descendants of the most recent conquerors. Hardly any peoples have legitimate claim to land on the virtue of being there first, it’s almost universally on the basis of conquest instead. It always has been thus.
Yes, but it's interesting to note the difference between when a large region is united through conquest by locals, or an outside power further away. Italy, in comparison to the above two examples, was united by the local Romans. (Though of course, "local" is incredibly relative. The difference between northern and southern Italy has been vast even unto modernity, never mind during antiquity.)
Now, I'm not sure what the difference of living under Maurya vs. Mughal vs. British rule was for its inhabitants, these are widely different polities from completely different time periods, but it's still a distinction. Though I suppose more of a retroactive one imposed by our modern bias, when we can point at India, Italy, and Germany and say, "ah, that patch of land is naturally meant to be united by someone."
But there is a difference between conquerors that intermarried (European colonists to Latin america) and ones that didn’t (Mughals and British). Modern Indians have very little Mughal ancestry.
It’s the other way around - Mughals gained Indian ancestry. Canonical example is Babur to Akbar losing epicanthic folds. I guess “Ganga-jamni tahzeeb” and culture of Awadh don’t count here according to you.
- Signed, one of your mythical people with “very little Mughal ancestry” whose family founded Shahjahanpur.
India and Pakistan didn't split up because of the British, they split up because Jinnah and the Muslim League wanted it. Pakistan was born out of a sustained bottom-up movement.
The reason the British get blamed for a lot of the Indo-Pak issues is that, absent an indigenous Indian/Pakistani civil service bureaucracy, the British were tasked with executing the plan originally conceived by the Two-Nation Theorists, and they totally botched that execution.
This argument can be made for any country on earth.
Pick up a globe, close your eyes and randomly put your finger anywhere and you will see the point under question was under different (political)boundaries every 300 years or so.
Boundaries of any country are just limits to which a certain political administration extends its powers to. They keep changing for various reasons, every few decades.
Sadly it is pretty much the story of the world with a few rare exceptions.
Far right movements ethnic/religion/political have engulfed almost every place , amplified by social media and re-amplified by media.
Note that Hindus get shot in their homes in Indian state of Kashmir too , the latest being 1 day ago.This eye for an eye will take anyone anywhere.
'Dismembered the carcass of the Ottoman Empire' surely? Maybe my sense of history in this regard is flawed, but the Ottoman Empire was much to blame for its own demise.
All systems will have a tendency toward corruption. Democracy is really a facade and a political tool and not what runs a country. The bureaucrats in the government are what run a country; and they hold most of the cards. (and they are also very difficult to change or replace).
> Beirut and Lebanon has to be one of the largest missed opportunities or what-could-have-been situations of the last 100 years.
I think what makes the potential of the city is also what makes it get into severe conflict. Beirut is a cross-road of global interests. I think it still is. It also has huge and wealthy diaspora.
Beirut will certainly come back, and most likely (unluckily) will come bursting again.
It is also being ripped apart by external actors - Iran, Israel, France, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United States and I am probably missing others.
External actors, hmmm... I believe you mixed that up with internal actors like Hezbolla and others, who have a tight grip on the countries political system.
This is what happens, when the goal of politicians is to acquire wealth for ten generations, and the welfare of people becomes secondary. This leads to "brain drain". The only people are left: the old, the weak, those who can't migrate to other countries.
Last time I checked the leader of Hezbolla, which is part of the government of Lebanon said: "There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel."
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My guess is that fire prevention is only part of the problem. Wouldn't burying the lines mean that their infrastructure is also not destroyed by wild fires? Things just burn above, and everything keeps on working?
I am working on a LEGO sorter project, and getting access to labeled data to train my neural network is a real pain. Would love to see if your dataset could be of use!
Not to be too critical, but this blog post is a (in my opinion, poor) rehash of Steve Yegge's infamous Google+ post which he accidentally posted online. It's entertaining and one of the most influential memos I've read in the last twenty years.
And the cargo-culting of "everything should be API no exception" was due to Yegge's colorful writing which endorsed it (relative to how things were done at Google at the time he was there) in his original piece. I sometime wonder if this development philosophy drove the microtizing of services, and then AWS went to sell that philosophy all over the world. There is such a thing as TOO MUCH atomizing of services.
I moved to Europe (Scotland) about 10 years ago, and prior to that lived most of my life in China and the USA. One thing that struck me is that in both China and the USA, the idea of a war close to home is not a thing. Nobody considers it to be a remote possibility, and it isn't. There is simply no entity who can project enough power to mess with either of those countries for a sustained period of time on their home turf.
It's different in Europe - the UK seems to be the least conscious of the possibility of war but the farther east you go, the more it's on people's minds.
I've been to Poland a few times now, and each visit through chatting with randoms in a bar or pub (and through chatting with a number of Polish friends here in the UK) I had a similar experience: there would be a point where someone would casually remark that they're just spending time concentrating on keeping fit (aerobic and weight lifting) because "the next war is coming."
Poland of course has particularly horrible geographical luck and an extremely war-torn past to reckon with, but I was really struck with this idea that anecdotally many folks seemed to be living under the perception that the next war is coming, and we all need to be prepared. I've had similar but less extreme and consistent conversations with folks in Romania, for example.
I'm not really sure what there is to learn here, apart from the fact that the EU has been a phenomenal success in its real purpose - keeping the peace in Europe. Just look at this list of wars in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
Is the world getting safer? I think so. Is the risk of large scale war like France is planning for decreasing? I hope so. But we are on very new footing in terms of this being the new normal, despite what it might feel like, and this perception certainly differs based on how close to perceived threats you might live.
I live in Lithuania (eastern europe, neighbour to Poland). Can confirm. War on home turf is something that is in the back of my mind. It's also a business risk that we take seriously at the company I work at.
I spent most of the 80's somewhat close to the front of a war (Israel) as a child, but I was in the US for the events of 1989, and one of the things I saw was how in the US, people learned all the wrong lessons from those events.
In Europe and in the US, there was no more denying that communism was a fail. But in the US, people got the idea that they won the Cold War by showcasing a consumer lifestyle, and that therefore it's unpatriotic to sacrifice any convenience or comfort for any national purpose. Which is how we've come to be unable to mobilize against the pandemic.
I've upvoted as I think it's unfair you were greyed out @ -1 or 0. However I slightly disagree that this was the main reason the US did not respond well to the pandemic. Might be a little off-topic to reopen that wound here though :)
Homefront mobilization is pretty much the same for disasters, wars, or a pandemic. If you can't do well with one, you probably can't do well with any other.
I seriously doubt the willingness of upper class suburbanites to put up with gasoline and rubber rationing in the event of a war. Home front mobilization in the US has become anathema.
> Is the world getting safer? I think so. Is the risk of large scale war like France is planning for decreasing? I hope s
This is very much the feeling people had before World War I. The thought was that the web of alliances Bismarck had built would prevent war, similar to your comment about the EU.
It seems that this sort of interdependence acts more like a buffer to prevents small-scale conflicts, but results in large-scale conflict once it does actually come due to a cascading effect of allies being pulled over the brink.
We may not see another real major war in our life-times, if we're lucky, but there's a very real chance our children or grandchildren will see the largest war in history.
If anyone is feeling relaxed about the prospect of war, I recommend reading The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, which is about exactly this moment. it describes the build-up to WWI in Vienna, where the feeling was very much "nobody is stupid enough to start, or be taken in by the idea of, a large-scale war", which was only true until it wasn't. The most chilling aspect of it for me was the way that people who Zwieg had previously considered calm and sensible became rabidly pro-war in a very short space of time.
I really worried about the US response to a war. Your population never went through it, they don’t know what that really mean.
It’s terrifying honestly.
Americans fixate on our civil war, not on our international wars.
"Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide."
~ An American president who was shot by an American citizen on 1865-04-14
The American Civil War was incredibly deadly and leveled massive portions of the US. The stereotypical backwardness of the southern states is a product of the damage done. The war was almost 200 years ago and they are still playing catchup due to the structural damage that was done. If the US populace is naive about the prospect of war, it`s not because of lack of exposure.
Yeah, but most of those with living memory of ww2 are dead now. I'm sure having huge graveyards around everywhere plus unexploded ordnance may keep it in the national psyche, but idk I'm just an American.
We have the largest quantity of immigrants in our country than anywhere else in the world. 50+ million immigrants that all bring their varied experiences and war is a part of many of their stories.
The large scale war of today must include the nuclear scenario, and i do believe that rationally, nobody would want that. Unless there's some aspect for which a nation would sacrifice for - like religious zealotry.
Over the last 200 years, at least, how many major conflicts have started for secular politics vs religious politics. I feel there is a heavy skew towards the former.
I think the point was that secular wars are generally for resources. Nuclear war practically eliminates the possibility of gaining resources, because you're likely to lose more than you gain as your cities get vaporized. So the drive to start one is significantly lessened. Religious wars on the other hand, all bets are off. You're doing it for salvation, so even if the victor ends up poorer for it materially, it's still worthwhile to start.
If globalization has one benefit, it's that it makes any war extremely costly for everyone involved, so with how entangled the world's economies are today, it's much more likely that tensions would be solved by means other than large scale all-out war. Though of course there's always a non-zero chance.
You may want to read up on the state of preparation these countries are going through to reestablish their perceived ancient kingdoms.
It is a constant debate in Military forums about the scale of ambitions these countries possess, but the indisputable fact remains that a) The administrations there have incorporated ideologies of grandeur into their legitimacy and b) Their military postures are targeted toward establishing specific, stated, highly provocative goals of expansionism / wiping out old foes.
Iran is less expansionist, more "Everyone around us hates us and America hates us, so we can only preserve ourselves only by preemptively making them 'friendly'". Even Safavid Persia stopped expanding after its peak, following which the only time it went expansionist was under Nadir Shah. The "us vs the world" mentality grants the theocratic regime legitimacy. The Iran-Iraq war (Saddam's mad campaign in other words) did not help in soothing this mentality either - it still remains in recent memory for many Iranians.
This is a fascinating topic. If you're interested you should read Khor's book on it, "The Breakdown of Nations". Lots of surprises and food-for-thought. The youtube I linked to is a fair introduction.
I guess I threw my above reply out there because I think globalism was meant to extend the power and wealth the elites already have, and that is its one benefit, not preventing wars. A lot of wars have been fought to construct and preserve this global order.
Khor makes a great case that the problems of staying small are less than the problems of bigness. There will still be wars, but small wars are better than big wars. Small countries can still gang up on large threats. He talks a lot how bigness always eventually leads to tyranny and aggression, just look at the history of every large country.
Khor speaks highly of federations, and what works and what doesn't. For example, he says it's great that the U.S. is made up of many states without being dominated by any one state. But I think he would be concerned if he saw a federal government grow so powerful that it can dominate all the states, not to mention the rest of the planet!
I share your scepticism about how to get from here to there. I think Khor does, also.
The biggest reason that I do not fear any kind of significant European war is that European militaries are so incredibly weak and disorganized. There isn't a single non-US NATO power that has as many men under arms as Belgium did in 1914, and unlike 1914, there are no deep pools of reservists that can be called up and mobilized if those small professional militaries expend themselves.
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I think "getting safer" or "decreased risk" do not mean "being safe" or "no risk". Black swans do appear and something less probable but with catastrophic implications is totally worth preparing for.
I grew up in Slovenia. There actually was war when I was 5 years old and I have several faint memories of those events. Luckily the war lasted 10 days and was mild.
The Bosnian war next door raged for several years and much of my early childhood was steeped in news reports from the war, the aftermath, etc. As late as 2001, the USA was bombing the hometown of folks I later became friends with.
I always joked that my focus on being in shape is because you never know when a zombie apocalypse might come ... but maybe those faint memories of war got embedded in my subconscious somehow.
Either way, rule 1 of zombieland is cardio. Zombies are scary because theyre the only threat with more stamina than humans.
> One thing that struck me is that in both China and the USA, the idea of a war close to home is not a thing. Nobody considers it to be a remote possibility, and it isn't.
It's a bit surprising that Chinese citizens would have that attitude at the same time as PRC leadership engages in brinksmanship over the status of Taiwan. Taiwan is one of the world's most significant potential "flashpoints", and it factors heavily in the military planning of the US, Japan, and South Korea.
Inland provinces might be very far removed from potential danger, but I wouldn't be so confident if I lived in Fujian or elsewhere on the coast.
I’ll add my own observation as someone in Taiwan. The vast majority of people here also don’t really believe a war with the Mainland will happen any time soon.
Yes, people will casually talk about it, our politicians will occasionally bring it up, and our media will sometimes cover it, but more local events take precedence.
For example, for the past week, the train crash that claimed 49 lives has been the main focus, despite the increase in fighter jets flying near our ADIZ.
If you ask people what their future plans are, the idea of a possible war doesn’t really factor into their planning.
Now there was a time it did. In 1996, before the first democratic election and again in 2000 when former President Chen was elected.
Back then there was a genuine fear and people were preparing for the worst. Maybe everyone is just used to it now.
My Taiwanese friends seem to have the same attitude. I think it's a combination of either naivety or fatalism. The PLAN is clearly making a massive investment in amphibious warfare vessels. The odds of a cross-straight invasion are certainly not 100%, but they are definitely not low enough to discount.
It's people from elswehere actually wishing for Taiwan and China to go to war. They like to fantasize about them going to war until the last Taiwanese and Chinese. Pretty disgusting.
Indeed. And the Japanese invasion that lasted 8 years including WW2 isn’t that long ago. Nor the border skirmishes with the USSR, the war with Vietnam in 1979.
I agree that China has enough force to make any invasion difficult but it’s certainly a risk of being attacked at home.
When I lived in Edinburgh a couple of Polish guys I knew would, whenever they got drunk, corner you and seriously interrogate you on whether you are “ready to fight and die for your country” (my answer was always “no” which really frustrated them). I thought it was just them being peculiar, I never thought it could be more widespread.
I wouldn't say all Poles are keen for-your-country-diers, but there's a sense that it's foolish to count on any system (political etc.) going on indefinitely. Everywhere you go, people were being rounded up and killed during WW2. Property you may have owned, often evaporated. Or, as there's a growing awareness, grabbed by other people. Such things are possible.
Aside from obvious nationalism that plays a role with some folks, I'd say total defiance may be a sound strategy for dealing with sociopathic bad actors (international or otherwise): better than going down a slippery slope to complete submission everywhere. This is the kind of situation that people tend to think of when talking about "dying for the country" in Poland.
It could be. To be honest I think there are many similar demonstrations of the same toxic masculinity in other forms by other Scottish or British guys, so it's maybe just that every country has its own form. Just ours was not so much "I will gladly die for my country"
I don't think I was very clear, this was not two guys level-headedly stating their intentions to defend their countrymen from a very real and imminent threat. It was a couple of guys who had a bit too much to drink who would - out of the blue - repeatedly bring this up to out-bro the guys at the table.
In the case of a conflict we'll all see what where we stand, but I think drunken, grandiose declarations of loyalty made during peacetime should be taken with a pinch of salt. Hopefully we never need to find out how sincere anyone was.
> Polish culture is quite conservative and suffers from a lot of toxic masculinity. I would see this mostly as simply a manifestation of that. It's so weird and sad that "dying for your country" is still viewed as some kind of essential "manliness" by many.
The comfort of being able to sit around and complain about "toxic masculinity" is provided by men and women willing to die to protect it.
I’m French, my family has a lot of military members .
In the 80´s the threat was Russian tanks marching to Paris from East Germany. 12h away.
France is really aware of its place military speaking.
We know we can’t sustain a serious conflict with country armed like Russia for instance.
At the time the official plan was to sustain a Russian offensive for 3 days.
And then either use nuke, or hope for allies /NATO force to be in a position to do something.
( those plan were for « USSR surprise attack » )
Right now, I have no idea .
But you make a good point. People in Europe still remember wars. It’s not a movie thing.
Growing up in Germany in the 80s had a similar effect. Every one was, at least to a degree, aware to be living in the main battle ground of the next big war. Also the reason Germany had such a large peace movement.
The effect of the Cold War extended over much of Europe. I grew up in a small town in the north of Scotland which had an airport that could support Vulcan bombers. There was the widespread feeling we were on the list of places that would get nuked if hostilities broke out with the Soviet Union.
To be fair I go for walks in the park in a Chicago neighborhood that used to house nuclear rocket launch sites. This is near the lake in a really nice park. The Cold War was weird that way. And as someone who was still in school near the tail end of it, I’d say I’m not really worried about a large scale invasion because I always presumed I’d die very early in either a first strike or second strike scenario.
I’d love to know what scenarios the French military think are likely that don’t involve large scale nuclear weapon deployments.
I think nobody will go nuclear over Ukraine or Syria. At least not intentionally. That might be different for NATO members, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan the Himalayas (India, China and Pakistan are nuclear powers). But before that, you have a conventional warfare phase. Being decisive enough could be a scenario in which the other side prefers to fight another day instead of using nukes. At least worth war games and maneuvers. Especially when you want to send a message to the Russians.
Putin seems to be testing the waters with Nato and the west, as is China. Putin got away with a lot lately. He is smart, so I just hope that doesn't overplay his hand. Because this kind of stuff can easily escalate. And today we aren't at our toes anymore the same way we were during the cold war, being aware of the risk goves pause sometimes.
I think you are overestimating Putin's abilities. I'm not sure it was such a smart move with the war in the Ukraine.
Ukraine used to be divided in perception of Russia and it never had strong national identity. Eastern half of country was very pro-Russian. People spoke Russian, watched Russian tv and longed for Soviet times.
Now it is very different, see [0] on how perception has changed and lot more people identify as Ukrainian.
Side effect of the war in the east of Ukraine is that their defense budget more than tripled and its army is much more experienced and bigger than before.
Lost their hearts and made them much better in defending themselves in the process.
I live less than 8 miles from a major oil refinery in the US, and that fact is always in the back of my mind. I would much prefer to live at least 15 miles from anything worth nuking.
(I do not consider the end of the Cold War to have been the end of the risk of nuclear war.)
I grew up next to an US listening post, NSA back then and German BND for a couple of years now. Same thing! That lakes one wonder how many such places exist on the other side of what used to be the iron curtain.
Not the type of "conventional warfare" that's common today, but I thought a lot about total nuclear annihilation as East German teenager in the middle to late 80's. And if war had happened around that time, it probably wouldn't be the cliche of Soviet tanks flooding the Fulda Gap, but instead Germany would have been a nuclear wasteland within half an hour of the start of the war. Movies like "The Day After" (US 1983) and "Briefe eines Toten" (SU 1986, don't know the official Russian or English title) didn't exactly help to settle the overwhelming anxiety ;)
Yes, definitely. My proper awareness of these things doesn't really start before the 1990s, a golden age in terms of European expectations for peace, I guess.
I've noticed the same preparedness for war amongst Europeans and while Mainland Chinese don't think there will be a war on Mainland China, they speak very freely about scenarios where Chine regains its rightful place in the world.
For example, Taiwan, Singapore and the islands around, the Chinese friends i have in the region candidly admit that they see holding a mix of the US Dollar among other assets in their savings mix as a hedge against any conflict in the region because "If there is one, these islands are so small that they would be wiped out almost instantly"
These conversations are usually in the context of saving for their childrens future and they're typically the biggest thing most Chinese families treasure, so their actions to protect and provide for them do speak loudly.
I also moved to Europe after a life in the USA, Australia, and Japan .. and have also noticed that Europeans have a much more keen sense of wars - in general - than the Australians or Americans .. and I attribute it to victor bias, mostly.
Australians have no clue what real war is, but they celebrate it in their most sacred parks. Americans believe they will never be defeated in war, but don't consider conditions on Skid Row to be a sign of defeat.
Its a terrible thing to understand that, in general, people do believe there will be more war and social upheaval on the horizon - but its even worse to realize there are entire continents of people who will suffer mightily, when it happens.
Many Australians became such after migrating from war-torn countries or - like myself - are children of such immigrants (my mother and her grandparents are Estonian, and left Estonia during the Russian invasion of Estonia during WWII). You are correct that Australia hasn't suffered an 'invasion' (putting aside, yes, the invasion of Aboriginal Australia), but I do believe there are many current-day Australians who have a very good idea what a 'real war' can do to you, your loved ones and society in general.
On the other hand, there is definitely a situation in Australia with regard to the perceived infallibility of its Imperial forces.
Australia is participating in the criminal wars of the US with degrees of impunity (i.e. accountability to the citizens of Australia) envied by most of the other participants.
> (putting aside, yes, the invasion of Aboriginal Australia)
This is all-too easily leaned on by Australians as a means of avoiding the uncomfortable truths of Australia's real history with imperial slaughter and social engineering. Current-day Australians are in serious danger of believing their righteous forces can do no wrong "except for all that genocide we've been doing as a nation since the beginning" ..
> someone would casually remark that they're just spending time concentrating on keeping fit (aerobic and weight lifting) because "the next war is coming."
I don't understand this mentality. Are those people young enough that they expect to get drafted, or do they think their CrossFit Bod will help them take down a professional soldier armed to the teeth.
Lol have a little read of Polish history. Statistically, they're expecting to fight a drawn out urban guerilla resistance campaign that eventually devolves into long periods of "camping" in the countryside. You'd wanna be fit for that.
They expect to be recruited to army and good physical training will make them better soldier and increase their chances to survive. If full-scale war will happen, it's likely that every man of appropriate age will be recruited except for very important workers. That's why many countries have mandatory military training for its citizens.
Depends on the country. Some countries have (similar to the US or Germany) just suspended the draft. Undoing this is not tricky at all.
Some countries (like Austria) draft their citizen and reserve the option to mobilize them in case of crisis. In Switzerland, every draftee remains part of the armed forces up to retirement and participates in yearly exercises.
Even if you don't get drafted, you might want to be able to protect your loved ones or simply be able to flee to safer areas. During a war, enemy soldiers are not the only threat. Societal collapse in the face of supply shortages or the frontlines closing in will make many people desperate and willing to take advantage of the situation.
Some countries let their citizens keep weapons. Sure, they won't be able to prevail in open battle against a professional army, but they might be able to wage asymmetric warfare. There is always the option of yielding to the attacker, but there are clear risks to that as well!
> I'm not really sure what there is to learn here, apart from the fact that the EU has been a phenomenal success in its real purpose - keeping the peace in Europe.
Given how ridiculously anti-EU the current Polish government is, it makes one wonder whether they share this view.
France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg were invaded in May 1940. Only then did the allies really start to fight back. Polish allies did nothing until France was invaded.
I agree there was not really a great solution after WW2 for Poland, the Iron Curtain was basically inevitable given how shaky the alliance between the USSR and the West was.
France and Britain's response was to promptly declare war on Germany, which is a little more than doing nothing given that just 21 years earlier they had taken most of the casualties in the defeat of Germany in the world's largest war.
> Polish allies did nothing until France was invaded.
On the contrary [0] - "Germany had started low-intensity undeclared war on Czechoslovakia on 17 September 1938. In reaction, the United Kingdom and France on 20 September formally asked Czechoslovakia to cede its territory to Germany, which was followed by Polish territorial demands brought on 21 September and Hungarian on 22 September."
> Polish allies did nothing until France was invaded
You know what, just draw us a battle plan in which the WAllies beat Germany in 1939, that would revolutionize the academic understanding of early WWII.
I don't know what the right action would be, but the action taken -- essentially do nothing -- was clearly the wrong move and led to Germany taking over Western Europe for several years.
> but the action taken -- essentially do nothing -- was clearly the wrong move
What was the right move then? Please detail. Would it be an “attaque à outrance” with an unready French army and an embryonic BEF against fortified German positions, with neatly inferior air forces, not enough siege artillery to break the Siegried line, a flimsy logistic branch, and following a totally hurried plan due to an uncooperative Belgium which screwed up all pre-war planning? And all that within a nation which already suffered humongous and material human losses barely 20 years before and could not really afford the same thing again, neither from a political nor a practical perspective if it was to handle a long war.
No, I argue that even with hindsight, globally, the right call was made: there was absolutely no way to save a Poland which happily sacrificed every opportunity to get military allies less than 1,500km away during the whole interwar period; the only playable hand was to bet on a long, tracted war where the French and the British could economically strangle Germany like they did in 1918 and free Poland afterwards – implicating, on the ground, turtling behind the border defenses long enough for the blockade to do its job. Problem: (i) Belgium royally screwing up the plan, (ii) USSR joining the waltz, (iii) the incredibly lucky strike of the Germans in the Ardennes.
AFAIK, they just didn't want to get dragged into another war by the Germans, and perceived the joint UK/FR/BE war plan as provocative towards Germany, and left it to proclaim their neutrality. Unfortunately for them, proclaiming their neutrality didn't save them in 1914, and it didn't save them in 1939 either.
Now I totally understand why they were not fond of FR/UK deliberately planning to sacrifice half their country to establish strong defensive lines on their rivers, but sometimes you can't have it all and just have to go with the less shitty plan.
I’d imagine that the literal millions of dead under Belgian soil, and the total destruction wrought by WWI made them hesitant to take any sides in potential conflict. You don’t position yourself in the middle a fight between two heavyweight boxers when you are a flyweight.
Perhaps doing nothing was the best move. Perhaps making a move would have resulted in Germany focusing more on the Western front and maintaining good relations with Russia. Very different conflict at that point. Without the losses on the Eastern front, perhaps Germany is able to fend off a French and British offensive, and end up invading both France and Britain.
I think they meant Poland was promised support in case of an attack and ended up getting screwed over by all their supposed allies, who after the war didn't even have the decency of trying to help them regain their independency.
the Phoney period began with the declaration of war by the United Kingdom and France against Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939, after which little actual warfare occurred, and ended with the German invasion of France and the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. Although there was no large-scale military action by Britain and France, they did begin some economic warfare, especially with the naval blockade, and shut down German surface raiders. They created elaborate plans for numerous large-scale operations designed to cripple the German war effort. These included opening an Anglo-French front in the Balkans, invading Norway to seize control of Germany's main source of iron ore and a strike against the Soviet Union, to cut off its supply of oil to Germany. Only the Norway plan came to fruition, and by April 1940, it was too little, too late.
Patton was a fan of doing exactly that: he was probably right. If the USSR had been aborted early on, look at all the suffering that would have been avoided (Holodrome, etc.)
> Patton was a fan of doing exactly that: he was probably right
Yeah, sure, good luck beating the RKKA in 1945. No A-bombs ready, industry centers are behind the Urals and untouchable by the allied air power; absolutely 0 support from the civilian populations in the West, whereas the Soviet civilian population would be galvanized by the backstabbing; the UK is already at the end of its manpower; the US would be fighting an ocean behind its logistic base; the RKKA is in full swing in Europe and overwhelming the WAllies in the ETO in men and material; best case is the WAllies get thrown to the Atlantic and a white peace is signed, worst case ends in a nuclear apocalypse.
Operation Unthinkable is very fun in wargaming, but it doesn't hold water in practice.
> look at all the suffering that would have been avoided (Holodrome, etc.)
The Holodomor that happened 10 years BEFORE 1945? Do you even have any idea what you're talking about?
Also 'Holodomor' is somewhat of a political creation. Recent authoritative biography of Stalin by Stephen Kotkin, for example states that the early 1930s famine was a pan-soviet famine, not restricted to Ukraine or any specific ethnic region.
> I'm not really sure what there is to learn here, apart from the fact that the EU has been a phenomenal success in its real purpose - keeping the peace in Europe.
This seems to have very little to do with the EU.
European countries that have experienced peace since 1945 did so because they were militarily occupied by a nuclear-armed hegemon—either the US or Soviet Union—and hence had their borders secured via mutually assured destruction.
France is clearly positioning itself to be the new nuclear-armed hegemon of Western Europe as the US pivots towards either greater isolationism or focus on Asia and the Pacific.
Administrate’s vision is to be the platform for education. We provide an EdTech solution that helps training departments and training companies manage their entire operation and plug into the rest of their corporate tech stack. We’re looking for smart engineers who get things done with Javascript, React, Python, and our GraphQL API.
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Administrate’s vision is to be the platform for education. We provide an EdTech solution that helps training departments and training companies manage their entire operation and plug into the rest of their corporate tech stack. We’re looking for smart engineers who get things done with Javascript, React, Python, and our GraphQL API.
We’re one of the UK’s fastest growing B2B SaaS companies.
I was lucky enough to hear Kathy Sierra speak in what I believe is one of her last public appearances. I had never heard of her before. It remains one of the best talks I’ve ever heard, not only because of the content, which was excellent, but her delivery was incredible. She had something like 150 slides that she bulldozed through flawlessly and she was really funny. After that I learned about the harassment and I find it so disappointing That people can be so cruel and that we have missed out on more contributions from her. I really hope one day she’ll return but I completely understand if she doesn’t.
BoS 2012? I was there and that presentation changed my way on how to (re)think about users interactions with products. I don’t exaggerate if I say that the ROI of attending that event (if only for her session) has been well over 1000x
Yes! I feel the same way re: ROI of that talk. I consistently say it was worth the entire price of admission. There were some other really good speakers that year, but she was incredible.
I spoke with her after her talk at the Future of Web Apps in London in 2008. She even agreed to give a talk at a conference I was planning for the next year, but soon afterwards the world started falling apart and it never happened. :(
