I got some flack giving a presentation that mentioned civilian participation in my organisations business by Chinese companies. The US Admiral that I was talking to (the topic was innovation - so no secrets) railed about us collaborating with entities that were alien to our core values. I could not reply - without unemployment - but all the time I thought about US support for Saudi - where the Admiral undoubtedly had served, and what kind of core values does that demonstrate?
And that is to say nothing about all the dictatorships the US sponsored in South America. The US was more than happy to train torturers in modern torture techniques.
Certainly. I think this is, to me, the clearest case for why the US has a moral imperative to contribute to mitigating the ensuing problems in that region (just as western Europe has one for much of the MENA region, ...), including hosting refugees and asylum seekers seeking protection in the US, providing aid when it is done accountably and constructively, etc.
Considering past history, I’d strongly recommend the US to not attempt to help, with the possible exception of the removal and prosecution of their puppets.
Western Europe has some things to make up for, but the US isn't involved in MENA? Remember Iran? I would blame Libya on Europe, but not the other wars.
I didn't say, and wouldn't say, that the US wasn't involved in MENA. I can understand how my previous comment may have implied that, for which I apologize, so it's worth clarifying. There's simply a difference in scale of involvement, as far as I can tell. Since you mentioned Iran, it looks even worse for the British than it does for the US by my reading. The coup in 1953, for instance, was spearheaded by the British who solicited US assistance, and was only the end of a long line of British exploitation of Iranian leadership (and oil) and the start of a slightly-shorter line of American exploitation of Iranian leaders.
Most of North Africa would probably be shared by the British and the French, Afghanistan seems to be shared by most of the "Global North" at this point, and so on. I definitely wouldn't say that the US doesn't have any responsibility here.
Without taking a side, most realpolitiks of the era will tell you (with a straight face)
those dictatorships were aligned to America's "core values" - specifically anti-Communist.
Oh yes. The US tends to conflate capitalism with democracy when we all know capitalism works a lot more efficiently without a democracy to hold it back.
Nope, the whole point of oil is that is has a VERY low value. Even "very expensive" oil at 140$ per barrel (that was the peak I think) makes $0.875 dollar per liter of crude oil, about 30 MJ worth of energy. Additionally you can make plastic, and ... out of it.
But it's far cheaper than the cheapest brand of bottled water, which apparently comes in at about $1.4 per liter, a little under double the price of the most expensive oil we've ever had.
The normal price say $60-80 per barrel these days, is 0.4$, or about 1/4th to 1/3rd of the price of bottled water.
How about you compare the bulk price of untreated water to barrels of oil? I've no idea which will come out on top but at least the comparison will be fairer.
Unless soldiers carry solar panels as suggested by VP Kamala Harris into the field. I guess night combat will be called on account of no sun ;) Gas still has a high energy density, so it will be important for the foreseeable future, military applications or otherwise.
The commercially available panels with the highest specific power are about 700 W/kg (with an estimated upper bound of 1.2 W/kg) [1], in comparison to gasoline which is 12.5kWh/kg. Solar exposure can be about 5-6 hours of full sun equivalent per day. So the breakeven point would be about two to three days of charging!
Answer: most countries need dollars, because they need to import oil. If oil was not sold in dollars, the demand for dollars would be much lower.
Therefore, the US needs to control oil producers. If one producer gets out of line and decides to sell oil in another currency, the US will attack them.
I do sympathize with how it must have felt during that presentation, but I do wonder why anyone would take the words of any high ranking US military official serious at all, at anything they say. After all, they are just representatives of an ideologically warped criminal enterprise, perpetually serving the interests of a questionable industry that rose to prominence during WW1 and WW2.
War is a racket and so is the industry that feeds on the perceived threat of one. The humongous US military budget ends up (at least a substantial of it) in private pockets somehow. The US is of course not the only country playing that racket, but it certainly is the undisputed biggest player. Speaking truth to principles and morals is simply out of the question for anyone involved, with that amount of capital changing hands.
Core values being US/G7/NATO geopolitical strategy in the Middle East.
It's Realpolitik. If we refused to work with anyone who didn't mirror Western values, do you think that would be possible? I mean, do we just refuse to even engage most of Africa, the Middle East and Asia? That doesn't seem realistic.
Unassumed realism is not the mark of adulthood. If you sincerely agree then the stance you should hold is "I support atrocities if they benefit me and I don't care if other countries violate human rights".
From then on we can have a good discussion. But the above is using realism as an excuse instead of fully assuming it and taking it to its conclusion.
If you care about ethics, then you would try to improve the situation in Saudi Arabia, which is much more fragile and more subject to US influence, instead of trying to do so in China which is a superpower you will only ever antagonize.
The comment above wasn't about prioritizing the best targets to pursue your ethical goals. It's about ignoring them but pretending they still matter. They don't matter. If we care about ethics at all we wouldn't orchestrate coups instead of forgoing a bit of oil revenue.
Yeah, there are very few countries so far/further from core western values than Saudi Arabia. Which isn't outlandish considering how diverse world is, but the very strong and friendly relationships and military support from US is frikkin' crazy and amoral.
The country is run by psychopath cutting journalists to pieces at foreign embassies. I mean we're talking about the same level of primitive evil as some African dictators that ended with pretty harsh sentences at International Court of Justice.
And Trump basically pardoned the guy in the media from what I recall. I am curious if Biden's administration will change the US approach to him/SA or they keep quiet for enjoying their military bases there.
Media outrage means next to nothing for these people, tomorrow the world will be outraged about the next topic. Imagine people like Putin living in their own world, outside situation has very little effect on their luxurious lives.
Concrete steps that would financially hurt those holding power, ie sanctions for their foreign accounts/investments means at least something.
The difference is that one of these regimes exists only because of US support. And the other has proven it's willing to infringe on intellectual property rights and steal technology when it's convenient to do so.
Those (in this case, the general) who implicitly consent to doing wrong, should not preach others. If this said general had resigned to protest the USA's support for Saudi, yes, one can listen to his 'sayings'.
Maybe the GP has a job that means that they can't comfortably give some specifics. However, literally every GCP and AWS customer engineer that I have been on a call with says "you can use these models out of the box for any application and they will just work". Also, all of my competitors are saying "ML is democratized you just plug the models in, the cost of your project will be 3 engineers for eight weeks from India/Ukraine/Brazil". The problem is that this is leading to unnecessary failures of the technology both because it means that many projects that should not be attempted are being attempted and are doomed to fail, and on the other hand it means that projects that could work if done right are failing unnecessarily. This is burning investment capital and good will all over the place. In my opinion educating the market is essential : any dolt can wire together a demo that does 80% of what's needed, sales people can use that to convince the customer that the outcome will be a project that costs in at 30% of the value and delivers 110% (they are sales, so maths is not important to them) but delivering that project requires technical insight, competence, structure and professionalism. All of which are in short supply.
The UK's weakness was exposed by the 2011 veto and subsequent upending of the EU treaties to suit everyone apart from the UK. We had been floundering in that club since 2009, despite bailing out other members (ie. Ireland) - and when push came to shove Germany and France made it clear that the UK could shove off. The UK is no weaker now than it was then - it's just that it's clear where we stand. The great powers of the world (China, US, Germany) act in their own interests, the UK must act as if that is true and attempt to navigate around them - or we must simply be subjugated to one of them. I believe that Germany in particular will regret this situation in the future, with a pretense of a triumvirate of powers and associated allies (ie. France, Italy, Spain etc; UK, Poland, etc; Germany and everyone else) there was a chance of a very different EU. That's gone now and Germany must take the reigns - and it will be in a very different strategic context.
Despite all that, the real undeniable facts are that no country has prospered inside the EU sad much as the UK has. And that the UK was stinking it up big time before it joined the EU.
The UK has traded limited political power as a member of the EU for no political power at all. And in return it has gotten a much worse economic position, where it will be stuck between pleasing the US, EU and China in turn for the foreseeable future, while losing the economic benefits it got from being the default English speaking gateway to Europe.
Ok - the EU was founded 1st November 1993; I remember the UK as a centre for world finance and one of the most prosperous and settled nations in the world at that time. I could have been very drunk and made a mistake however.
But - I think you are referring to the state of the UK when it joined the EEC in 1973. The UK was in fact in a big mess at that point - which promptly got a lot bigger. This led to IMF intervention in 1976 [1]. This was not a big win for the EEC at that point in my book. The UK was in a big hole because it had spent all its money on unwinding its empire and failed to either properly retool its industries or pay down its second world war debt. The EEC and Europe in general did not help or bail out the UK - in fact they continued to expect payments from the UK in the midst of all this, a pattern that I fear Italy and Spain are about to encounter in the way that sentances encounter full stops.
What turned this round - the discovery of North Sea Oil. This enabled Thatcher to restructure the UK economy, recapitalize the City of London and hey presto off the UK went to the races. The big buggeration was the collapse of the Soviet Union which meant a restructuring of Europe in order to prevent the East from falling into anarchy and exposing the German state to abject collapse. Thus we all got swept up into the EU.
Anyway, if you want to argue about "prospered inside the EU sad much as the UK has" I ask you to look at the economic performance of Germany.
We had a huge influence right up until push came to shove and then we had none. I agree we can't become great - isolation or not; I believe that isolation isn't on the table either - next few weeks excluded. The reality is that France and Germany shafted the UK publicly and conclusively during the euro crisis, they also shafted the Greeks - but I'm not Greek so that's less of a problem for me. Remember also that they removed an Italian government and installed a technocrat. Yet lots of people seem to have forgotten that and either don't care or can't bring themselves to see the reality of the situation.
> although also screwed up with medical supplies to Spain
The "screwing up" of medical supplies in Spain is due to the incompetence and corruption of the Spanish government. They tried to arrange directly for the buying of supplies, bypassing the common importation route used by health officials. Unfortunately, and despite the repeated warnings of the Chinese embassy and many hospital managers, they ended up buying the supplies to a non-homologated Chinese startup, so the supplies cannot be used.
Well, I think it's along the lines of "The US has behaved recklessly for the last 20 years, and any personal or corporate preferment for a US entity has been supported at the cost of the national interest of its allies. We have discovered all sorts of theft and malpractice by US companies and intelligence agencies and yet any complaint made to the US government is met with a smirk and a shrug. Not only does the US ignore our national interest, but US officials are openly contemptuous of it. The Chinese are evil and their values are alien to us, but the US is increasingly more similar to Saudi Arabia in it's values, system of government and international outlook than it is to us. We don't trust the USA and we need to have options."
If the UK goes all in with the USA we will end up looking like Mexico. If we go all in on Europe we will end up looking like Italy, or Greece (as was made clear in the aftermath of the 2011 veto). Many people who are not from the UK seem really keen that the UK is smashed up and humbled, we are supposed to be poor, sardonic and to provide cutting edge humor. This is not a great direction of travel for everyone who lives here though. Fundamentally the UK is alone in the world and needs to grow up and act like it - so we need to make some sort of bargain with the Chinese, and the Russians (which is much harder as they are acting as the perfect irrational player in the game of international relations right now).
