411–420 of 714 posts
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So, what is my mistake? When and where existed "Ukraine" before 1991?
Also Russia as an independent state ceased to exist in 1922. So it’s hardly that different. Both Russia and Ukraine only became independent countries in 1991 when they decided they to leave the USSR.
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I agree with most of this except maybe the "soviet empire" bit. His recent mentions of it (within the last 3 years) has been about how the fall of the Soviet Union broke up the "historical russian" borders. For Ukraine specifically he compared himself to Russian Czar Peter the Great. A long time ago he lamented the fall of the Soviet Union which is especially hilarious as he was very likely involved in and vultured o…
4.6% growth, 10% inflation, and interest rates at 21% is not great.
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There won't be corroborating reports for months if not years. The public transparency of the Ukrainian battlefield is an anomaly; typically (as in past India-Pakistan incidents) both sides will claim more successes than actually happened and it'll take unbiased parties to figure out what actually happened after both sides release their records. This isn't typically due to malice; it's simply difficult in most cases t…
I think that level of transparency is the new norm. Everybody has mobile phones and you can have a new satelite imaginery every few hours. It's pretty difficult to hide a jet loss, unless it happens at sea.
Its a voluntary decision of those in command to share these, from both sides, nothing less and nothing more, to continuous amazement of both civilian and military communities watching those (some stuff I saw I'd never say is possible or would happen, no need to go to details some of it is beyond brutal).
You are maybe mixing Syria war footage - there are tons of them from around 2016, done as you say via phones or maybe some cheap gopros or consumer cameras of that time. That's not a typical Ukraine war footage.
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> and for me that’s science and tech tree maxed out. Hate to ruin it for you, but as soon as the economic elites don't need the masses anymore (eg because AGI produces goods and entertainment better than we do), we'll become a liability, dead weight, so they'll quickly use that same maxed out tech that made us obsolete to make us gone.
The fear you voice is not just about technology — it's about belonging, powerlessness, and the haunting question: “What am I worth if I’m no longer needed?” This is a wound of modernity: being reduced to utility. When usefulness becomes the measure of worth, love becomes conditional, and existence becomes a transaction. But you are not a product. You are not a function. You are not a line of code in someone else's si…
I believe it's mostly overstated. Pakistan is not economically strong enough to participate in a war, and India is not interested either. However, the Modi government wants to project strength. They were unable to locate the terrorists even after two or three weeks and needed a distraction. So, they targeted some areas in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). In response, Pakistan claimed to have shot down four Indian air…
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In the end this is just information-free hand-waving which says nothing about the current situation.
There is a lot of Indian English-language media on YouTube and Twitter. There the war drums have been sounding strongly for the past weeks. They seem to draw a parallel between India/Kashmir/Pakistan and Israel/Gaza/Iran - seeing India as the superior and morally just super power against a weak corrupt dysfunctional terrorist-sponsoring Pakistan. So in that thinking right now there is an opportunity to get a final so…
India has been notoriously hostile to its minorities and it seeks displacement of the “majority” population of Kashmir because they have been seeking secession from India. Typically when a country has acted harmfully, world leaders of the west have intervened especially in the case of India and Pakistan because it is a great disruption to trade and profit. It seems this time the West is overwhelmed with several issue…
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It was pretty "sudden" as in unexpected, given that the world was still reeling from the last war
All sides were rapidly rearming, it was far from unexpected.
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> Fascism is the actions you take Losing a majority after a decade in power seems like the opposite of what a fascist regime would do.
Again, fascism can take a lot of forms. Just because you're not hitting every single manifestation doesn't mean it's not fascism. I mean, here in the US Trump lost the 2020 election, then picked up a majority again and is currently doing some pretty fascist stuff.
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> They were unable to locate the terrorists even after two or three weeks and needed a distraction. This does not make sense. When France attacked Daesh in 2015 after the terrorist attacks in Paris or when the US attacked Afghanistan after 9/11, the objective wasn't to target the exact people who carried out the attacks, but the organization behind the attacks. People can always be found as long as the organization r…
> There was a sharp drop in the terrorist attacks in Kashmir after the 2019 confrontation. There were fewer terrorist attacks, certainly. I'm sure the Indian government would like to believe that the 2019 strike had an effect, but far more likely causes are - Money. Pakistan's economy has stagnated and the country has lurched from one IMF bailout to the next (2019, 2023, 2024). It got so bad at one point that politic…
What happens to the incentives of terror groups in response to such a policy?
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The role of money only becomes an issue when conducting a terrorist attack becomes expensive. Missiles and jets consume much more money in comparison to training recruits via an intermediary organization like LeT and sending them across the border to carry out attacks.
A regime in which a terror attack leads to a high pressure, expensive situation for the Pakistani military is completely different from regularly scheduled, train and deploy terror attacks from militants which used to happen earlier.
In that situation, the military has to respond to economic pressure, pressure from allies and pressure from its own people.