As Richard Dawkins recently clarified, "As a biologist, there are 2 sexes. And that's all there is to it." It's binary and there is no exception. People that claim otherwise are confused.
I believe there are cases of people being born with a set of sex chromosomes that are different from XY and XX. This is what your parent commenter is referring to and I fail to see how it's a valid point ("anti-science"), on the particular topic of determining biological sex in people.
If one wants to make a simple statement that encompasses the largest group of people they might say, "There are 2 sexes." If they want to make a more complex statement that encompasses all humans they might add a qualifier such that they instead say, "There are 2 typical sexes." That "typical" adds a whole lot of complexity in order to generalize the statement.
This is an opinion. Clearly there are at least some in Australia who have the opinion that they are indeed additional sexes or their passports wouldn't have more than 2 options. That's not "anti-science"; it is an opinionated interpretation of science.
Certainly the statement, "There are 2 sexes," simplifies the biological understanding we have of sex. To then add, "And that's all there is to it," makes the statement plainly wrong.
> The biological understanding of sex, as Dawkins points out, is that it is a binary of female and male.
It's taken as binary because the biological difference doesn't result in a meaningful physiological difference. That doesn't mean it's "anti-science" to have an alternative take. Consider that "The biological understanding of sex" as used in your comment should logically be understood as "A common interpretation of the biological understanding of sex". It might suddenly become clear that "it is a binary of male and female" as used in your comment is actually an opinion.
Anyway, I'm not deluding myself that this particular legal definition in Australia was not made in response to recent gender politics. It's more likely there for trans people than for a person who is biologically XXY and physiologically male. However, to say that it's "anti-science" to claim there are more than 2 sexes is mistaken. It is, as I said, an opinionated interpretation of a certain understanding of biology. You disagree with this opinion and you are mistaken when you say it is factually incorrect.
A censor convinced you that you were wrong. You weren't necessarily wrong at all. You may have been correct the first time. And what is correct when it comes to art? Who is this person to tell you, the artist, that your art is wrong?
Buck Angel and other trans people often disagree completely with the conclusions of these censors, who motivated by exerting power over others. Why listen to them over other trans people? Don't give censors that power over you and your work. You're the artist. Don't let others tell you your art is "wrong". It's not. Stand up for yourself and your art.
I specifically asked for this person’s opinion and checked it against my own sources and knowledge. We talked for several hours about identity. We compared and contrasted each other perspectives. In the end, I realized I didn’t know enough about body-dysphoria.
So I did more research and revised my story.
In the original story, my character decided to not transition and still have sexual relationships in a female body. In the revised story… that didn’t change. What changed was his feelings and reasons for doing so.
My story got better, not worse with my reader’s feedback. The story was more interesting because the was explanation deeper and more accurate.
My character isn’t trans, he’s a character who happens to be trans. But that fact profoundly affects everything about him. And you get to learn what his experience is. And because it’s his experience, I don’t have to get everything “right”. I just needed to not miss a very important aspect of body-dysphoria.
That’s how this is supposed to work. You want to see what you’re missing and make an informed decision.
> In modern times, what makes authoritarian rule difficult and unstable is the western nations' neo-colonial ruling class (most on HN) who are hell bent on exporting their superior democratic ways.
The attempted colonization of the Spanish language by Westerners who are offended by its gendered terminology is a real-world illustration of this.
I live in a Spanish speaking country where some people take issue with the fact that groups of people are male by default, unless they are all female. Using "e" is preferred to "x" since you can actually pronounce it. Anyway, the clue that this is an American thing is not the fact that they try to make the language inclusive, it's that they don't even think about getting rid of the racist term "Latino" in the first place. A businessman from Ciudad de Mexico and a farmhand from northern Chile have so little in common that it's senseless to lump them together for most purposes, yet as soon as they step into the US they become part of this group labeled "Latino" and treated as as single unit (for "Asians" it's even worse). Most Americans, even many that self-define as "progressive" are so used to this racist framework that they don't see anything wrong with it
I saw Hateful 8 here at home, and was often the only person in the theatre laughing. If one hasn't grown up with the racist framework, how is one supposed to get all of Tarantino's gallows humour references to it?
For anyone who understands how NFTs and blockchains work, this is clearly not possible. Apple’s proprietary In-App Purchase system does not support crypto so we couldn’t comply even if we tried.
This is akin to Apple trying to take a cut of fees for every email that gets sent over open Internet protocols.
Since Apple's App Store is the only practical way to distribute apps on Apple devices, there isn't really a difference. The fact is that the owner of an apple devices has no control over their device.
I don't think that's a reasonable interpretation of the current rules, though. Apple doesn't (yet...) demand a 30% cut when you buy stocks via an app on your iphone.
This doesn't make sense because we can buy and sell crypto from Coinbase, Uphold, even Cash app right from our phones. We buy crypto and send crypto, and that has its own fees associated with it. Why does apple allow any app that support buying and selling crypto?
> And I think there’s no law or regulation that would forbid them from doing that.
They're lucky that the US has the particular form of "democracy" that they do, because I suspect the current regulations aren't exactly "the will of the people".
I read their thread before my comment because the title on this submission was pretty inflammatory. Their tendentious argument is exactly what made me think this was a trial balloon.
I think a lot of systems, a lot of them embedded, will fail in odd ways. Y2K was mostly a data format issue. This is much more interesting (and widespread).
BCD could be one of many problems, but ASCII strings would me more common in systems I dealt with. There were a lot of assumptions about two digit years that maybe made sense sometime in the 70s for code that you didn’t think would survive more than a few years.
Also take a look at struct tm. Its tm_year looked like just a 2 digit year and as such people may format it with printf(“19%02d”,…). It is actually the number of years since 1900. In early 2000 I had to fix a broken ftp server that was sending 19100 as the year.
I think it's likely to be better handled, but at the same time people keep citing the non-disaster of Y2K as a reason not to do disaster preparation, so I don't know.
My sense is that it'll be a lot worse, Y2K was only a data format issue, whereas 2038 issue has to do more with underlying hardware. It really all depends, and we'll see. Certainly, many old software will stop working in 2038.
I'd say both are a data format issue, y2k was usually at a higher level and occured in custom data formats of individual software, while 2038 is in the OS and basic libraries, or even in hardware.
I do think though there were some bioses that messed it up too, so that's rather low level too.
For systems running in finance, the problem should have already shown up when calculating dates for 30 year bonds and mortgages. But as another poster said, there's a ton of embedded systems out there running Linux that likely aren't handling it correctly.
In spite of knowing about this issue in 2038, registering a lot of domains to the affect and hoping I can burst out a lot of contracting work that year, make bank and retire.
I’m assuming by EPOC you’re talking about Unix timestamps? There’s nothing wrong with them if they’re 64-bit.
As I understand it, it seems like it’s mostly software using 32-bit integers that will struggle.
So if you’re writing modern code on a modern runtime running on 64-bit platforms you should be fine (easy to verify by changing your dev environment’s clock).
I kid, fixing this will require an even greater amount of effort compared to the Y2K bug considering how many more linux devices have been deployed since then.
Consider how many of those linux devices are difficult or impossible to update, and you start to realize the mess we'll be in. At least Y2K affected systems that by and large could be updated easily.
It all depends. We have more devices and software now, but a lot more critical stuff is centrally hosted by cloud providers that'll be ready long before the deadline.
It's not even accommodation to small minorities, it's accommodation to an ideology. Activists push this conflation to make it appear about minorities and not their ideology. They present it as though minorities all have the same opinion and then weaponize your compassion to get compliance.
"Oh, this is what minorities want. Ok, I'm a good person, I want to respect their wishes."
What you may not realize is that many gay and trans people strongly disagree with gender ideology and do not want this.
Indeed, they don't all have the same opinion!
The loud, aggressive, too online activists do not speak for everyone.
I’m involved with several gay organizations - one professional and one centered around gay athletics.
In both cases there are a small group of activists that are trying to erase gay and lesbian identity, and all mentions of gender, from the org to be more trans- and non-binary-inclusive.
In one case a trans board member didn’t feel represented by the organization name (which includes “gay”) because they now identify as straight with their new gender identity. And for this they demanded the org with thousands of gay members should be renamed.
People were afraid to push back out of fear of being labeled transphobic.
I would think ideological minority is a kind of thing that is worth considering accommodating too, but the problem is the relevant activists actively want to harm people with opposing ideology (the chosen method of enforcement is trying to get people fired and otherwise ruined). So they have no interest in ideological accommodation themselves.
Great point. In other words, we are experiencing the usual failure mode to liberalism: it can be taken advantage of by non liberal actors. Not sure what the restoring force is to prevent this.
The reason that this is considered a failure mode is that these systems are set up so that you can't just ignore activists who speak for, or claim to be speaking for, an approved minority. Just saying "no, I'm going to ignore your demands" gets you hurt, because you are required to take positive action.
True, but in many respects that failure mode is academic, and localized. Normal people who aren't way too online don't sit around and debate whether women have penises or if men can get pregnant.
It's possible that this becomes something that is no longer an academic question.
> True, but in many respects that failure mode is academic, and localized. Normal people who aren't way too online don't sit around and debate...
But for instance, journalists are often "way too online," and people in general seem to have a bad habit of seeing social media activity as some kind of representation of society as a whole (because it's easy). It doesn't matter what "normal people" think or do, if the media as a whole starts saying something different.
Also true, journalists (the people who literally know nothing) have outsized power and influence in controlling what these "normal" people see as, well, normal.
I don't want to get in a flame war, but I guess my comments are meant to convey a perspective that is optimistic that these "normals" will reject and ignore the machinations of the way too online tech people who, again, are the only ones that want to debate basic biology for some reason. About half of my life has been on a farm or in the military, so it's amusing seeing all of this debate about "gender" and "sex". Again, normal people don't think about this.
I find it curious that the dems chose to run this renaming experiment on latinos. They could've tried to push "blax" - at least you wouldn't need to break your tongue to pronounce it. My theory is they wanted to see how much they can bend the public opinion, and an awkward word would better test compliance.
The word "black" does not have a gender connotation. "Latino" is a masculine word, the feminine equivalent being "Latina". That's the problem (if you consider that a problem)
It's also wildly unpopular among many Latinos, because there are hundreds of millions of them and they don't all have the same opinions. On the whole it seems to be a flop. But let's at least credit Latinos as a group with the agency to come up with their own ideas, good or bad, hey?
Do you have any evidence you can share about who invented “Latinx”? I’ve lived in Central America for a few years now, and the only time I’ve heard this term, or related ones, here, is when someone was mocking it. Of course that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t invented by some Latinos. But I only encounter it used with pride when I’m reading NPR articles in English.
Who exactly used it first appears to be lost to history, but the first known published academic appearance seems to have been in the Fall 2004 volume of a bilingual journal called Feministas Unidas. It was used there is passing, without explanation, apparently assuming the readers were already familiar with it. https://people.wku.edu/inma.pertusa/encuentros/FemUn/newslet...
There are reports of online usage of both "Latinx" and "Latin@" going back to the late '90s. There are other references to academic uses that I haven't been able to track to original sources after a brief search.
Mainstream media (in English or Spanish) only appears to have discovered it in the last few years. I do get the impression that a lot of early adoption was from English-speaking Latinos in the US, which might explain the apparent incompatibility with actual Spanish. I don't read Spanish myself, so there's only so far I can pursue this. But it's not a recent invention of clueless white people.
On “Latine”: at a recent gathering of friends I mistakenly said «miembre» for “member” instead of «miembro» (I’m still learning Spanish). This led to a certain amount of hilarity and jokes aimed at the progressive gender-neutralizing crowd, that likes to use «e» endings instead of the correct ones. It’s a small extremist minority, and a general butt of jokes here. So «Latine» would be seen as just as ridiculous as «Latinx».
"Latinx" is a germanic language construction grafted onto a Latin-based word. It makes no sense, and is non-pronounceable in Spanish. "Latine" is, perhaps, pronounceable, but is a confusing suffix. My recommendation is to drop this silliness. Germanic languages (English is one) and Romantic languages (like Spanish, French etc) have rules and trying to bleed rules from one into the other leads to the hilarity that you describe in your comment.
(I speak conversational German, a little Spanish, native English)
No actual evidence, but I get the impression that it was invented by the tiny fraction of Latino people who are at liberal arts colleges in the US, or involved in ultra-niche politics.
“Latine” and “Latin@” (and similar constructions for other -o/-a words) are not unheard of in some actual Latin American countries, though. The former has the advantage that it is straightforward to pronounce in Spanish (I assume for “Latin@s” you’d use the cumbersome “Latinas y Latinos”, and “LatinX” is just impossible).
>“Latine” and “Latin@” (and similar constructions for other -o/-a words) are not unheard of in some actual Latin American countries, though.
"Latrine", " Latin@", and "Latinx" are almost entirely unheard of in actual Latin American countries, though.
The Association of Academies of the Spanish Language is the governing body that defines what official Spanish is. If you can find a single academy that lists "Latinx" or "Latin@" as official Spanish, I'll eat my hat.
These neologisms are nothing more than US leftist linguistic imperialism.
It's not something that "the dems" made up. It seems to have started as a self-descriptive term for nonbinary Latinos, although the history's not 100% clear. But as the source article describes, there's a large and influential segment of the populace who believes that in order to be inclusive they should use trans-focused language as much as possible. So people started saying "Latinx" for precisely the same reasons as they stopped saying "pregnant women".
That argument is a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of biological sex, which is connected to the distinct type of gametes (sex cells) that an organism produces. As a broad concept, males are the sex that produce small gametes (sperm) and females produce large gametes (ova). There are no intermediate gametes, which is why there is no spectrum of sex. Biological sex in humans is a binary system.
Regardless, it misses the distinction between biological sex v. a mind's gender identity, and solely by the sheer quantity of neurons and possible interconnects, it's impossible to say that every person's brain strictly aligns with one of two modes of operation. (if anyone who specializes in gender studies knows more on this topic and believes I'm summarizing this—or even stating the problem—incorrectly, please step in; this isn't my specialty)
In fact, it's only appropriate to say that every brain is unique in how it processes the self and the world, and that while for the majority of people it's easy or even innate to identify with certain characteristics, there are minorities for whom this isn't the case.
We need to express inclusive empathy where we can, even if the only reason for doing so is to make sure that when we fall outside societally defined structures, we ourselves can also continue to be respected. Ideally we'd do so because we're trying to be good people, but my point is, even a selfish person should reach the same conclusion.
We should also acknowledge that language more often than not works in approximations and generalizations, and usually everyone still understands what is meant. There needs to be some flexibility on both sides.
This is an important point and it's lost in these debates.
The new cool thing is to pretend context/intent doesn't exist, that words and expressions should always be looked at in isolation. Even though it's a fundamental part of language and how the brain perception systems work to contextualize and loosely categorize everything based on the current set of information in a particular scenario.
Words/language is messy, highly flexible, and rarely strictly defined. For good reason.
Mostly so people can win internet arguments and feel superior/victimized.
If you have no distinguishing organs that produce sexual cell lines via meiosis, and have never ever had such organs, then you are functionally sexless. This seems like a reasonable position to take. Given our understanding of embryology and development we may try to piece together what would have happened had something not gone awry and base our judgement on that. But if we don't know, then it's hardly unreasonable to simply say 'I don't know'. However, we are not being asked to acknowledge that we cannot know for some individuals, we are being asked to accept those with obvious organs and gametes of one sex as individuals of the other.
Hormones help regulate the brain and there are sex differences in the hormones. I have a hard time believing that someone can be in the wrong body, as the brain is a part of the body.
> Hormones help regulate the brain and there are sex differences in the hormones.
Does every cell in every body react to hormones etc. the same way? There are differences between each and every person on the planet in terms of how each cell in their body reacts to things like hormones, neurotransmitters, and other signaling molecules that manifest either subtly or extremely. Anything from a person's height to their temperament to their hunger (literally, or figuratively e.g drive) can vary based on the production of and reception of these transmitters, and every single person's body varies in every facet of the above based on environmental and genetic considerations.
> I have a hard time believing that someone can be in the wrong body, as the brain is a part of the body.
That doesn't mean that those other considerations are stronger than the hormonal differences due to sex. The sex differences for testosterone are large.
> That's an empathy thing.
You're welcome to empathize with my inability to believe that someone can be in the wrong body.
My understanding is that "differences in sex development" or "disorders of sex development" is now the preferred terminology. See for instance:
"Disorders of sex development, or DSD (previously called intersex), includes a range of conditions that lead to abnormal development of the sex organs and atypical genitalia ..."
Stop using intersex people (who have extremely rare physiological diseases) as a political tool to justify transsexual ideology, when >99% of transsexuals do not have any such disease.
While you're right that there's no connection between being trans and being intersex (except that intersex people are probably more likely to be misgendered at birth), it's not the case that intersex people are 'extremely rare'. Depending on definition, we are talking about ~1% of people. For comparison, that is e.g. around the percentage of men who are 6'4 or taller (in the US).
This is not an endorsement of any particular take in the thread, but this seemed like an appropriate place to correct a mistake regarding the frequency of intersex births and link out to some articles for the curious.
That 1% number comes from the Fausto-Sterling survey which incorrectly lumps in Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. Eliminating those diseases yields a rate no higher than 0.018%, 2 orders of magnitude lower as the upper bound[1]. Only a small portion have cells for producing both types of gametes, only about 5% of all intersex people[2][3].
The controversy about what counts as 'intersex' is mostly pointless, as far as I can tell, as the term neither has (nor requires) a precise definition. I think in this context it makes sense to include any condition that blurs the edges of the gender binary as traditionally understood in society. If you look at the details of e.g. Klinefelter syndrome from this perspective, it's not difficult to see why it might be seen as part of the intersex spectrum:
>broad hips, poor muscle tone and slower than usual muscle growth, reduced facial and body hair that starts growing later than usual, a small penis and testicles, and enlarged breasts (gynaecomastia)
It's by no means a settled matter what does or doesn't count as 'intersex'. I suspect that few reputable researchers would waste time engaging in such a pointless debate over terminology. Some relevant points in this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5808814/
All that said, one can, if one wishes, cherry pick the smallest available estimate of the number of 'intersex' people and thereby dismiss the issues raised by these people on the grounds that they're small in number. I'm not sure how much scrutiny the logic of that rhetorical move would withstand.
I’m not trying to make any claims about the broader issue or cherry-pick here, but a lot of experts do not include Klinefelter syndrome so I think that’s worth at least noting. Moreover I think pointing out that 95% of the people in question clearly have cells to produce a single type of gamete and are often fertile is instructive.
My only point in responding is to add useful scientific/medical context. People can make what they want of that information.
Fundamentally I agree with what you seem to be getting at, taxonomy is hard.
> Moreover I think pointing out that 95% of the people in question clearly have cells to produce a single type of gamete AND ARE OFTEN FERTILE is instructive.
It’s only informative if it’s true. With regard to the second conjunct, people with Klinefelter syndrome and Turner syndrome are typically functionally infertile.
I’m not convinced that ‘a lot of experts’ are even working on defining what counts as ‘interesex’. It would make more sense to listen to intersex people, who as far as I can see, tend to think that a fairly broad definition is useful.
Note that .13% was not what I rounded up. That .13% is a subset of people who are gender minorities (eg trans or non-binary) and there are several academic estimates that put the number higher than 1%.
My intuition, reading through the studies and talking a conservative estimate, is that something like 0.6 to 0.8% is a defensible estimate. I rounded that to 1%. Other scholars pick higher or lower numbers, but it's not 10%, and I firmly believe that it's not 0.1% based on studies, which makes 1% the correct order of magnitude, imo.
> I'd rather make sure that the language I use includes them where possible.
Man/Woman does. As do Male/Female. Disorders of Sexual Development are disorders, not new sexes. A woman without breasts or with an extra X chromosome is a much a woman as a man without arms or with an extra toe is still a man.
> are you willing to write off the [people] that doesn't cover
Those are weird made-up scare words. Nobody is writing them off. What does what even mean? We just don't recognize their identity or their identity terminology as being meaningful, in the same way an atheist feels about their religion.
They're just as welcome, or not, as they were without it.
Clarifying question: are you saying that 1% of humans don't produce either "small mobile gametes or large, immobile ones"? In that case what do they produce?
I've noticed that in the debate around 'binary' (on Twitter, I confess), some people claim that no human has ever been observed who didn't produce either sperm or ova (and never both). I'd like to know whether that's true. If it's true, then the GP's claim covers 100% of cases, not 99%.
Yes — discussing a bimodal distribution as a bimodal distribution is useful, even in the presence of outliers and data points bridging the two peaks.
“Man” and “woman” are names for those nodes in the bimodal distribution of traits, as correlated with sex. Same as “cow” and “bull”, or “hen” and “cock”, or “doe” and “stag”, or “female” and “male”.
I’d rather my language be able to discuss the experience of the 99%+ than become incapable of discussing basic facts (like apes being sexually dimorphic) because reality might offend outliers.
And the field where that prominence matters, astrophysics, refers to anything that isn't hydrogen or helium as a "metal". Definitions are fluid. Insisting that everyone tediously say "people who may possibly become pregnant" rather than the simple "women" (with the more precise existentially quantified, more and less inclusive intent being clear from context) is itself extremely intolerant.
> I think 80 million people is a lot of people ...
and thus, unasked by intersex people and without a clear theory of how this would help, you would destroy the concept of sex-based-rights which keep four billion people and the world's children safe?
NS2 was already dead in the water at that point and Russia had already turned off the tap on NS1.
Also only one of the two NS2 pipes were destroyed, while both NS1 pipes were destroyed.
I think that pretty much rules out the US as a culprit.
And Russia has something to gain by blowing up NS1: Possibly getting out of some long-term contracts that would involve some hefty fines for non-delivery (without just voiding contracts outright which would look bad for potential new customers).
The ostensible motivation of a possible US/UK/Polish operation, as I understand it, was poisoning the well on peace negotiations. By removing the optionality of turning the lines back on, there is less for the Germans and Russians to work with, and therefore less to motivate diplomatic talks in the first place. The Germans may be committed to getting off Russian gas permanently, but they still have to get there from here without losing their economy.
The UK would create unnecessary pressure on its own gas market by taking it down, so no. If the US did it, then it was most likely a CIA op done through third parties and they won't get caught, not anytime soon anyway. But the US does things professionally and they would have blown up all the pipes as opposed to 3 out of 4, so it's probably not them. Poland? Possibly, but it takes a lot of guts. If they did it, na zdrowie to them. I'd say that it's most probably Russia who did it in order to blackmail Western Europe during the winter
and be able to declare force majeure on the contracts and also blame the UK/anglo saxons. Also how it was done, sloppy, with lots of explosives is typically Russian.
Interesting take— have you seen what the US has done in the Middle East lately?
At the end of the day, if Russia were involved, no one would be holding their tongues about the results of their investigations. The only reason the results are being kept secret is because the European vassal states are afraid of publicly accusing the US. Which, given that the US was at least complicit in an attack on Germany, I can’t really blame them.
I think they were speaking in terms of operational proficiency, not strategic wisdom. Whether or not you think assassinating Qasem Soleimani was a good idea, we inarguably did a very good job of it.
Illegally assassinating a foreign official on another country’s territory, in a place where any military activity is prohibited, is not only ill-advised, it’s extremely unimpressive. And we all know very well whose help was involved.
> But the US does things professionally and they would have blown up all the pipes as opposed to 3 out of 4
That's a shakey presumption. 3 out of 4 may have been a compromise between the arguments for taking out the pipelines and the arguments against it. We cannot know for certain how many pipelines the attacker, whoever it was, intended to destroy.
What do you mean it was dead in the water? It was ready to go. Only reason it wasn’t operational was because Germany didn’t certify the project yet— under pressure from the US. Germany and Russia were secretly negotiating and so the US had the pipeline taken care of permanently.
It was never gonna get certified after the invasion, which is what I meant with dead in the water.
And Germany and Russia negotiating over opening NS2?
That makes no sense whatsoever.
If Russia wanted to deliver gas it could have just continued with NS1 or one of the other three alternative pipelines that were available.
It would most certainly have been certified without US strong-arm tactics. And why on earth would it want to just continue with NS1 given that it traverses Ukraine? Ukraine extracted rent from NS1, siphoned gas from it, and could (further) sabotage it.
Got any evidence for the first statement? Germany stopped the certification process of NS2 the second Russia invaded Ukraine in February of this year.
The rest is also complete nonsense - NS1 doesn't go anywhere near Ukraine. It's a subsea pipeline in the Baltic sea.
Ukraine borders the Black sea and not the Baltic sea.
Also NS2 is right next to NS1..
Sorry, I misspoke— NS1 doesn’t go through Ukraine. I was alluding to the pipelines that do carry Russian gas through Ukraine, from which it extracts billions of dollars— all the more reason for US/UK/Ukrainian sabotage of Nordstream pipelines. As for Germany not certifying the pipeline, that’s all political theater.
Restarting the NS2 certification process was nowhere to be seen on the horizon, so there is no real point to blow it up from the standpoint of the US (nevermind that actually blowing it up would be insane for the US.. the reality would be diplomatic and soft-power options, of which the US has plenty).
It was dead already.
Also all signs were pointing towards NS1 and NS2 being dead in the water for the future too, since the gas storage was filling up despite no more imports at all from Russia, the new LNG terminals making good progress, existing LNG import terminals running at capacity.
And would still like to see any kind of evidence from you that Germany would have certified NS2 if the US hadn't said anything.
It was the threat that it would be turned back on that is the reason that rules in US as a culprit. It was already not being used! Russia would blow it up to get out of some contract? Does that sound like a serious idea to you? Do any contracts even matter between Russia and Europe at this point.
Then explain to me why the US would not blow up both pipes of NS2? And instead blew up NS1 completely?
That makes no sense for anyone but Russia (leave the option slightly ajar for selling gas later on).
And the contracts would not quite be irrelevant since they could then try to seize more assets from Russia.
Also a Norway-Poland gas pipeline was opened up just one day before the NS attacks, so could also be sending a message.
Seems unlikely. The US has successfully engaged in much more difficult, intricate operations successfully in the past. Here the attacker didn't even have to worry about collateral damage.
A former Navy SEAL was interviewed and stated pipelines are what they called (IIRC) "friendly targets" — it doesn't take much explosive to take them out (I imagine their pressurization helps, but I don't have subject matter knowledge).
> Do any contracts even matter between Russia and Europe at this point.
Doubtful. I think the most rational reason Russia might have done it was to remove a bargaining chip from any Russian challengers to Putin. But this seems like a stretch; if Putin thought some gazprom executive was going to use the pipeline to negotiate a peace with Europe, he'd probably just order that executive and his family murdered. That seems to be the way he operates.
Self-sabotage to preempt coups is not unheard of though. The organizational dysfunction and poorly trained state of several militaries around the world is probably attributable in part to self-sabotage, by politicians who fear military coups.
Any serious opposition to Putin is actually more hawkish than he is. Not quite something that is covered often in our press. There is no neo Yeltsin lurking in the shadows.
The idea here is that the (NATO) drone on the second pipeline had the wires cut and so failed to detonate, and Sweden recovered it and defused it. Therefore Sweden has the physical evidence and immediately shut down the investigation. The same thing happened in 2015, a NATO explosive drone was found under NS1, Sweden recovered and defused it. Both Sweden and Germany have said they know who the culprit is, but they can't reveal the name for reasons of "national security". Germany said that even speculating about who might have done it in public is a threat to national security, so that public debates about this are also banned there.
That - plus basic cui bono logic - rules Russia out, and it certainly points to another NATO member. Primarily UK with assistance from Poland and coordination and tech gear provided by the US. But it's easy to sheep dip a soldier, you swear them in and they officially become members of the Polish army, they maneover the drone, and then they revert to being British. Then the UK can legally say none of their soldiers did anything, and Poland can say they don't have the technical means, etc. In this way, you can deny everything to the press while not technically lying, even though everyone knows who is responsible.
In a German poll, 95% of the public believed the US was responsible. It's shocking how uninformed Americans are about the actions of their own government, and how differently the US is perceived by the rest of the world vis-a-vis its own people. A similar principle applies to perceptions of NATO (which has only ever fought offensive wars) by people within NATO countries vis-a-vis those without.
In this battle of perceptions, there is a split between the 1 billion in the West and the 7 billion in the rest of the world, with the latter having positive views of Russia and negative views of NATO, while the former have it reversed. This is studied in a Cambridge report entitled "A World Divided" [pdf warning]: https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/20...
Page 12 and 13 have some striking graphs on how these two groups, which used to have approximately the same opinions about Russia and the US, are now moving very far apart, basically living in opposite realities. This is why people can say with a straight face that Russia chose to blow up its own pipeline, whereas the US, which threatened to stop the pipeline and has blown up pipelines twice in the past, and was caught planting explosives under the very same pipeline in 2015, is "ruled out" by some in the West. To anyone outside the West, it's absolutely clear who is responsible. And also to 95% of Germans.
> In a German poll, 95% of the public believed the US was responsible.
Citation needed. That doesn't square my personal perception.
And the only nordstream related polls I managed to find where in regards to opening NS2 post-invasion, where > 50% where against it [1].
I heard this on the Duran podcast, which is a good source of geopolitics from a realist perspective, as they follow official readouts fairly diligently (so I don't have to).
They got this from a German government press conference about the investigation being closed. I emailed them if there is an online link to a transcript (it will be in German, but that's fine). If I get a response, I will update. You can search german transcripts of press conferences from Oct 16-17 on the subject of ending the investigation.
>the Duran podcast, which is a good source of geopolitics from a realist perspective
The Duran is a heavily pro-Kremlin source:
>Founded in 2016, The Duran is a strongly right-leaning news and opinion website with ties to Russian state media. Based in Cyprus, the website’s editor is Alexander Mercouris, who in 2012 was disbarred as an attorney in London. According to the Telegraph, he then went on to become a “pro-Russian commentator on world affairs for Russian TV news outlets and websites.”
>In review, The Duran publishes news and opinions with a conservative and pro-Russian perspective
I can't find any statement of the German government anywhere declaring this "closed", much less that they "know who did it". (It'd also be a pretty weird statement to make, given the Swedes, who are leading the investigation since its their territory, only a few days ago formally confirmed that they could prove that explosives were used)
17th October (EDIT: or the days before, slightly conflicting info) apparently the German ships that took part in the first official inspection came back, but ... that's not "ending the investigation"!
I think by that he meant something along the lines of:
“You can’t use American banks or the dollar to pay for this gas, and if you use Euros we’ll not allow our banks to use it as a currency” or something. Far, far more powerful than trying to go and physically blow them up.
Obviously. There was some mild deflection attempts, but they were risible at best.
They don't want to advertise their capabilities in an official manner, even though they were the ones threatening all the internet cables around. Not sure if Sweden's investigation proved it was from outside or inside, but of course, if it's from inside then it really limits who could have done it.
"I see zero reasons why Russia would attack its own infrastructure" only points at one's lack of imagination or intellectual honesty really.
> "I see zero reasons why Russia would attack its own infrastructure" only points at one's lack of imagination or intellectual honesty really.
Imagination can help one paint any kind of picture in their head indeed, but maybe lets keep it in check at least to the point of basic sanity and reason?
Gender identity is frequently visible. I don't think many people are going to fraudulently represent their gender identity for a misguided chance at a job.
Well, I can imagine that people who aren't “proper” trans but are comfortable with, say, crossdressing start doing it in order to get benefits. Can't say I'm against that (more femboys IRL :^) and also this is on the queer-ish side so they probably still should get some preference if hiring process does take gender identity into account already.
