No, it is just people who are trying to do something would achieve more in that area than people who are not trying, regardless of conditions. You could change things so that trying is not really required, and it might work wonderfully if the barrier was made up to begin with, but that fails hard when that clashes with reality.
> "German energy policy of the last two decades" and "Let's Invade Ukraine and Blackmail Europe!"
There is a good argument that those two are related. Energy is a weapon of war for russia, and it works best when there is a dependency on it. A lot of money flows towards increasing that dependency, including towards advocacy groups with irrational stance against nuclear.
He does have a point about food animals though. We are perfectly ok with treating them horribly their whole lives to save few cents on the costs (not to mention killing them at all). Yet we pretend to be shocked when something that makes us feel squeamish happens. And then go right back to chewing on that steak...
Just because people eat meat out of a package from the super market does not mean they are okay with their bacon being raised on a farm where the pig was in a 1 square meter cage its whole life. Most people don't have the time, effort, or will to fight against large factory farming practices because they are too busy trying to survive and take care of themselves and their families. You can eat meat and still care about the welfare of the animals being raised. They're not mutually exclusive things.
> Just because people eat meat out of a package from the super market does not mean they are okay with their bacon being raised on a farm where the pig was in a 1 square meter cage its whole life. Most people don't have the time, effort, or will to fight against large factory farming practices because they are too busy trying to survive and take care of themselves and their families.
Unless one is a hunter-gatherer, meat eating isn’t about survival.
Instead, what it means is that they may care; but not enough to give up or work on giving up the pleasure of eating meat daily.
I'd like to introduce you to the concepts of vegetarianism and veganism, with which one can claim to care about the welfare of factory farmed animals without being full of crap.
No one is forcing these people to participate. Being overworked is an absolutely ridiculous excuse for not being able to cut out unethically farmed meat from your diet.
There’s a reason a bunch of states passed laws making it illegal to photograph the warehouses where these animals are raised.
If there was a transparency law, that required an accurate picture of the location where the animals whose meat is being sold was raised to be stuck on the packaging it wouldn’t be very long before the more inhumane (or more accurately, the more inhumane looking) meat sources would become unprofitable.
Because most people are willing to pay a little bit more if they fully understand the ethical consequences. Actually, what is more likely to happen is that many people would eat meat less frequently, opting for more plant based sources of protein and then spend the extra money needed for the more humane meat when they wanted meat itself.
> Because most people are willing to pay a little bit more if they fully understand the ethical consequences. Actually, what is more likely to happen is that many people would eat meat less frequently, opting for more plant based sources of protein and then spend the extra money needed for the more humane meat when they wanted meat itself.
Most people I’ve grown up with are aware but don’t care or just put it out mind.
Willful blindness is a very human condition and a terrifying one.
These people don't care how many children were involved in the production of their iPhone and Nike shoes, they DEFINITELY don't care about the ethics of their meat consumption.
Another option for #4 is supplying enough long range anti-ship rockets to sink whole russian fleet in black sea. They can't bring in more ships, because turkey is blocking the entrance.
Triggering world war 3 would also help reduce the population which could reduce co2 emissions and food requirements. Killing a few birds with one stone.
That's not much different than supplying other kinds of weapons (and anti-ship missiles are on the list anyway, if not from US then from UK).
Also everybody is mostly over nuclear threat I think. When a nuclear country keeps annexing land and threatens you with nukes if you object, you have two options -- keep giving up or call the bluff (or assassinate the leadership I guess).
But there is no spin. There's either global thermonuclear war or there's nothing. If NATO isn't invading Russia, and Russia isn't invading NATO, then nothing has changed.
Does Russia want to start global thermonuclear war because they can argue a technicality that it's not their fault? No, I don't think so. They could start the war and the outcome would be the same at any time they want.
Excusing the edge case of a pathetic attempt of a land invasion of Finland or Poland or something crazy.
He's also very very scared to do anything of consequence. Look, the Ukrainian invasion was the only reckless thing he's ever done and look how it turned out.
We are talking about a country that can’t even supply proper boots to its troops. Why believe that the nuclear weapons they inherited from USSR still work?
>"those other people choose to, as they would rather vaporize than give an inch of their land to russia"
If that was the case we would have active war in Crimea in 2014.
>"if you expect them to surrender or accept less, well, you'll have to make your case to them"
Why would I make any case? I do not expect anything. It is their choice. Also I do not think the talking was about Ukraine in particular. The statement was generic.
> If that was the case we would have active war in Crimea in 2014.
Nobody believed it was happening, i.e. Ukrainians never expected having to fight Russians. Now it's completely different; Ukraine has been preparing for an escalation of the war for 8 years.
Nobody in Crimea believed it was being taken, until it was.
By that time, the Ukranian government was beheaded, whatever left of the army was demoralized. There was literally a few thousand dollars in the state's coffers. Insurgency in the east was ramping up; a few volunteer battalions were formed overnight, financed by neighborhood donations, and sent off to fight the (covert) invasion in the east. It's actually a miracle Ukraine survived in 2014, so fighting the Russian regular army (with a big Naval base) in Crimea was not on top of the list.
It's been 8 years since and no fight for Crimea. This still contradicts the original statement: "as they would rather vaporize than give an inch of their land to russia".
And I am far from blaming Ukrainians. Their government luckily had enough brain cells and had voted not to attack what Russia considers their territory and not to vaporize their nation for the sake of some hot heads's stance.
Had they decided to do so on their own before Russia's invasion then there would be no support from the West. The chance of them succeeding militarily in Crimea in that case I think would have been big fat zero.
So no, in general I do not think want people to get vaporized en masse just because somebody believes they should.
Also we might just have a case of keyboard warriors here. It is easy to be brave / stupid sitting in a safe place in front of computer screen.
>It's been 8 years since and no fight for Crimea. This still contradicts the original statement: "as they would rather vaporize than give an inch of their land to russia".
only if you believe that viewpoints and opinions and attitudes of humans never change, a ridiculous notion
>It is easy to be brave / stupid sitting in a safe place in front of computer screen.
if you don't like that that's their attitude, feel free to complain to them about it, don't attack me, the messenger, telling you how it is. after all, it is easy for you to doubt their resolve in a safe place in front of a computer screen
Ukraine doesn't have much of a merchant fleet. Most of their exports travel on foreign bottoms. And foreign ship owners are unwilling to risk entering an active conflict zone, especially because they can't obtain affordable insurance.
we can play this game all day long, but the past 2 months have clearly shown that russian conventional forces are not even close to a match for NATO combined forces*
* as long as the goal isn't to slaughter as many civilians as possible, which for russia is a strong assumption
They are aircraft that is cheaper than anti-aircraft rockets normally used. One shot from anti-aircraft system cost 50-200k depending. This is great when the target costs 50 million, but drones costs start from 1k.
You're right, but it can become significant, actually. And the target needn't try to kill you directly, it's enough that it can relay your position to a competent artillery unit.
The Israeli Iron Dome is intercepting unguided ("dumb") rockets and shells that cost $500-$1500 each using missiles that cost ~$100k or more each. Had Hamas decided to launch 100 per day for a month it would exhaust the capacity fairly quickly. Ofc this kind of an action would reignite the war, but points at the problem with air defense systems.
In fact I don't think there's a practical solution against an enemy that has cheap, non jammable drones with a very high density, like 1 per soldier or more. There's just no way to counter that, and cheap military drones start at $5k-$10k, so it is feasible to achieve this level of density.
It seems the practical solution that both Isreal and ukraine have thankfully found themselves with is to get someone else to foot the bill. That might not even be an unusual solution in a world of proxy wars
I'm no fan of the invasion, but "the war had already been planned and decided months ago" is not an argument you might think it is -- NATO stuff was going on pretty much since USSR dissolution, and 2014 stuff with Crimea was first act in the same war, in response to regime change on Ukraine and some progress in shelf oil development there that threatened Russia's hold on EU markets.
