Wow, published in 1909. Amazing how old (and wrong) this "economic mutually assured destruction" argument is.
I think it's popular today as a distraction from the fact that the American Empire is really held together by military occupations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America etc. and not economic ties. Obviously "we just want to make you rich" is much nicer sounding than "we will bomb you if you resist US hegemony".
There are a lot of unsettling parallels between the era before WW I and today:
A major rising power that feels it is being denied its "rightful place" in the world order by the existing power brokers (Germany vs the UK/ China vs the USA) lead by a hardline leader that isn't interested in compromise (Kaiser Wilhelm II/Xi Jinping)
A series of interlocking mutual defensive pacts that will automatically draw nations into war (The alliance of the UK, France and Russia vs Germany and the Austria-Hungary Empire/NATO vs China and Russia)
Regional fighting that is close to leading to direct confrontation between said power blocks (The Balkans/Turkey and Syria)
Rising Globalism and trade interdependance, along with rising nationalistic rhetoric and jingoism, and intense competition for influence in 3rd party states (The scramble for africa/Africa and south east asia and former CIS states).
The major powers slept walked into a horrible war because the rising tensions made it inevitable, and nobody took heroic steps to stop it, sadly it looks like it might be happening again.
Nobody wanted a ruinous war, and most people thought that there was no way a war could really occur or at the very least be sustained due to the need for trade. (Germany at the start of WWI was critically short on stuff like gasoline, fertilizer and the raw materials for gunpowder)
Many interesting points, but the "mutual defensive pacts that will automatically draw nations into war" part seems to not apply today.
For NATO, the key part is Article 5 that specifies "armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all", and is intentionally drafted so as to not apply to "Cold war turning hot" in Asia (e.g. the Korean war or Vietnam war or Afghanistan or Iraq) and to any "non-core territories" e.g. French or British overseas territories or pacific islands like Guam. Heck, a literal repeat of Pearl Harbor and invasion of Hawaii would not trigger Article 5 (though NATO could and would likely take action despite not being required to do so) - the NATO treaty is explicitly designed to not draw nations automatically into war unless USSR or someone else starts WW3 in Europe or attacks mainland USA. It's hard to imagine any Chinese actions regarding their ambitions (e.g. South China Sea, Taiwan, Hong Kong) that could trigger the NATO Article 5 which would automatically draw nations into war, anything in Asia would give each nation a choice whether to get involved and if so, how much.
I'm not informed about the Russia-China treaties much, but IMHO they also don't have any strong mutual defence pacts, they have some limited military cooperation and sharing but that's it; they had a mutual defence pact in 1950s but that's long gone now. For example, there's the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Sino-Russian_Treaty_of_Fr... where the strongest relevant obligation in Article 9 would require each party, if it's attacked, to.... immediately contact the other and consult about the situation; it does not include any agreement or obligation to actually do anything about it.
Interesting. The McDonald's thing is sort of like saying that no two Soviet Socialist Republics have ever gone to war. It just means they aren't really sovereign independent countries acting on their own behalf.
Exactly. Once the occupying force was removed from those countries the underlying ethnic conflict resumed openly. Similar things will happen elsewhere as US military power wanes.
The saying was at least trying to claim something different. The claim was, more or less, that democracy/capitalism (people making this claim didn't distinguish them, mostly) brings peace through freedom and prosperity.
It was more a claim about Western European countries, which, propaganda aside, were not puppet-states of the US.
Cold-war era US puppet-states were different, and at the time mostly didn't tend to have Macdonald's, at least outside of a capitol. We were busy subverting their democracies, and civil unrest doesn't go well with Big Macs.
Yes, and that claim is wrong. Germany has had 50,000 US troops stationed in it for 75 years and the most rebellious thing they've done is politely ask for their gold back (US said no). No need to subvert a country you already have firm control over.
For comparison, the death rate across all age groups of flu is 0.1%. Extrapolating out, a failure to contain the virus will still mean tens of thousands of young healthy people dying in every country. That's why governments are finally admitting "Herd Immunity/Flatten the Curve" without total containment is not an option.
> For comparison, the death rate across all age groups of flu is 0.1%. Extrapolating out, a failure to contain the virus will still mean tens of thousands of young healthy people dying in every country.
I’m not sure why you’re comparing the all-age mortality of flu to the age-specific mortality of COVID-19.
Ah, I wasn't sure what point you were trying to make, but I thought the all-age figure understates how much more deadly COVID-19 is compared to influenza.
Flat statements about what strategies are or aren't options don't seem helpful. It's not a good option, ideally we'll have total containment, but it's important that we not see it as a betrayal if it's decided in a couple weeks that total containment isn't feasible.
It absolutely would be a betrayal of the people you'd be giving up on to not do everything we can to help them while we still can. You can advocate for or against taking strong action but you can't tell people you're allowing to die to not be upset about it.
You certainly can't tell people not to be upset! Every death is tragedy; people have a right to be upset even about rarer causes of death that are harder to mitigate. (From personal experience, I can tell you that anyone who's seen an alcoholic family member die learns to sympathize with the Prohibitionists.)
But it's not a betrayal to acknowledge their pain while recognizing nothing feasible can be done.
Google, Microsoft, Apple and even Firefox have an incentive to reduce competition by making the web as complex as possible. If the web is to be free, it must be radically simplified. To call that a lost cause is just a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I don't disagree (although I'd be curious to hear your rationale on Mozilla; their incentives are... curious). I suppose what's hard to not view as a lost cause is the idea that accessibility to non-JS/Lynx/etc is best-practice or the default. But there are counter-examples of less-is-more good citizens (Craigslist and HN itself come to mind).
As flawed as browsers (and their vendors) may be, I come at it from the other direction: from the perspective of end-user adoption, the open web and federated email are our last two bastions of open computing ecosystems of any kind, holding back the tide of walled-garden apps and clouds and such from taking over completely. While radically-simple "good citizens" of the open web may not be the norm, at least they're possible, which can't exactly be said for the computer-as-appliance model.
The difference is that a person with some flaw can compensate by having other qualities and still be popular. But if there is a hard rule, then that's not possible.
I'm really tired of being called a fascist for wanting to live in a country with boarders.
You certainly didn't misapprehend the narrative this article is trying to push. I don't think immigration enforcement should stop as a result of the pandemic, if anything we should be even more determined to discourage illegal entry.
>You certainly didn't misapprehend the narrative this article is trying to push. //
Were the arrests made in any way affected by the state of emergency?
One photo says "David A. Marin, a director of enforcement and removal operations with ICE. ICE officers are being joined by U.S. Customs & Border Protection agents in the last few weeks, as more resources are deployed in sanctuary cities. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)".
Was this normal operation, or have the activities against "sanctuary cities" been stepped up; and is that related to State of Emergency powers?
See the reply by masonic. The article makes no mention of this being different other than the added protection for the officers, but like I said the tone is clearly attempting to give that impression without actually saying it.
That article says 50,000 accounts were "linked to Russia". Do you know who linked them to Russia and by what criteria? They weren't actually controlled by the Russian government because the article cites that figure at only 3,000.
The hysteria over Russia as an excuse to ignore the concerns of Americans who support populist positions is pretty transparent at this point.
>The hysteria over Russia as an excuse to ignore the concerns of Americans who support populist positions is pretty transparent at this point.
You're calling it "hysteria" to dismiss facts you don't like. "The Russian Hoax!", where have I heard that before?
But, to your second point, I completely agree that many on the left want to pretend it was _mostly_ because of foreign interference. I tend to think that had a pretty small impact, and the fact you pointed out is probably much more consequential: Americans are more receptive to a populist message than people think.
I 'like' it so much (not really) when people from the USA say/write "left" when they have absolutely no idea what left/communism is, apart from what they HEAR. I don't think that more than 1mil people in the USA have lived in the USSR block or the countries of their influence, or have studied communism thoroughly.
And you can recognize the trolls when one says/writes "Left" in the most capitalistic country on this planet. And by "Left" they mean the very minimal/basic social services, such as don't let people lose two legs but only one because the $1k insurance per month doesn't cover that. I wonder how failed is the USA when countries in EU have achieved that with $100 contributions per month. Miracle!!!
Americans live with the dream that they are all billionaire but somebody is blocking them (the commies, the socialists, the left, the Cubans, the anarchists, and in general "they" some without ID).
Russia always plays the looooong game, they try and succeed to sabotage a little bit every step of the way (antivaxers, interference with elections, oil price), you name it, they are in it.
I think I vented/ranted enough. I sometimes feel sorry for the 30-40% of USA citizens, they are confused and haven't read more than 10 books in their lives.. it's a potty for such a prosperous coubtry to suffer like this.
>And by "Left" they mean the very minimal/basic social services, such as don't let people lose two legs but only one because the $1k insurance per month doesn't cover that. I wonder how failed is the USA when countries in EU have achieved that with $100 contributions per month. Miracle!!!
This isn't really true. You're going to get medical help with an urgent medical issue in any developed country, even if you don't have a penny to your name. Doctors/hospitals cannot turn you away for not having money.
There are also very few countries in the EU where insurance payments are $100. The only country I could think of would be Bulgaria and that's because they're the poorest EU country. Virtually everywhere else you're going to pay more than that and everybody has to pay it, including the poor. Depending on the country, if you don't pay that then you won't get medical care (other than the urgent kind) in those countries either.
The US has a lousy health insurance system. The cost is too high, insurance paperwork is ridiculous, and insurance doesn't always even cover you. But healthcare really isn't as amazing in most EU countries as you want to think. Many of them have similar problems.
In the EU, free (at point of use) healthcare is available to all residents, including the unemployed. In several countries, you can get free treatment immediately even if you are not a resident.
That's a lot different from the USA, where tens of thousands of people die from lack of health insurance, and probably hundreds of thousands are bankrupted by the healthcare they get.
A quarter or more Americans put off seeking medical treatment because of the cost. By the time they seek treatment, it may be too late. I'm reminded of a carpenter who won $1 million and said he could finally go to see a doctor. He died a few weeks later from cancer.
A lot of Americans are one accident or illness away from financial ruin and poverty.
For all their problems, Europeans are a lot better off than this.
I purposely left spaces between the different "sections" of my semi-long post, just to separate the items/topics. The post I was replying was too 'thick' (imho) and I was just disentangling that spaghetti. (Russia, Left, caring for the fellow human/social reforms, illiteracy).
Not to be too pedantic, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think "The Russian Hoax" more specifically refers to the beliefs/claims by some that Trump or his campaign was colluding with Russia directly to interfere with the election rather than simply the belief/claim/fact that Russia (or Russians) interfered in the election of their own volition.
By unambiguously taking this side of a highly partisan political issue, I fear TBL has lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of many of the people he needs to fix the actual problems that have befallen the web.
I don't read anything in the article which I would consider political, or taking a "side" other than admitting the issues mentioned exist. Nowhere is any specific political party or ideology mentioned or blamed.
I don't know why TBL would lose credibility, or what he would lose credibility in, specifically.
Yeah, there may be some situations where C is necessary as a wrapper for assembly if you're _extremely_ memory constrained or something like that. But I wouldn't have any confidence in it working as intended unless it's dead simple.
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/03/fed-announces-program...
I'll take the disinterested algorithm please.