International Thread 3

[DireWolfSpirit]

I cannot even fathom why one would suicide bomb a wedding? 

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d58cb46e4b056fafd0d0ac4

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Why are people talking about this now? https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9741738/nuclear-war-us-russia-winter-ten-years/

Quote

Nuclear war between the US and Russia could plunge Earth into a TEN-YEAR winter in total darkness, scientists warn

While DT is in power it seems that's a very remote possibility. The scientists should be talking about the global climate implications of a nuclear stoush between Pakistan and India.

[Raja]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The scientists should be talking about the global climate implications of a nuclear stoush between Pakistan and India.

It'll never happen, same with the US & Russia.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

On 8/16/2019 at 6:54 PM, Raja said:

Yeah - I don't know. I think there's a combination of a lot of things but putting it down to Trump seems a little far fetched. I would put Trump's effect fairly down the list of reasons as to why this has occurred, sure it *may* have had some effect, but it's like the 5-6th thing on the list, imo.

First, I agree with what I deleted and appreciate the link. As to Trump's potential impact, I don't think he caused a change of course in action, but that he sped it up. Everything I've read suggests that India was really taken aback by Trump's announcement, and it's pretty logical to game out that if this was already it the works, Trump's potential interference accelerated India's behavior.  

[The Anti-Targ]

12 hours ago, Raja said:

It'll never happen, same with the US & Russia.

I certainly hope not, because Pakistan won't launch a nuke at any target in Kashmir, since they want Kashmir, so why ruin it? They'll launch a nuke at Mumbai, or New Delhi. And India will launch one at Karachi or Islamabad.

[Raja]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

First, I agree with what I deleted and appreciate the link. As to Trump's potential impact, I don't think he caused a change of course in action, but that he sped it up. Everything I've read suggests that India was really taken aback by Trump's announcement, and it's pretty logical to game out that if this was already it the works, Trump's potential interference accelerated India's behavior.  

Again, I think there is a tendency of people writing about an issue to look at it through the lens of Trump, and I get why it is tempting to do so, even when politics on this side of the world has their own complexities & motivations. I just think there are like 10 different things to consider before Trump even comes to the picture, it just seems a little facile to point towards him as the catalyst and screams of analysis that is being carried out by people who have not been paying attention to either India or Pakistan politically for the last decade.

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I certainly hope not, because Pakistan won't launch a nuke at any target in Kashmir, since they want Kashmir, so why ruin it? They'll launch a nuke at Mumbai, or New Delhi. And India will launch one at Karachi or Islamabad.

Eh - I mean, we'll see, but imo this is some weird scare mongering stuff that we won't even get close to.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 minute ago, Raja said:

.

Eh - I mean, we'll see, but imo this is some weird scare mongering stuff that we won't even get close to.

I think people need to be reminded about the human cost of a single nuke strike to drive home how important it is for politicians and the military to know that they do not have the social license to deploy nukes. Unfortunately when nationalism AND religious conflict combine it becomes too conceivable for people to say "bring it on!" and give the govt and the military permission to do whatever it takes.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

23 hours ago, Raja said:

It'll never happen, same with the US & Russia.

Never is a very long time.  People are frequently less than rational.  As such on a long enough timeline anything that can happen is likely to happen.

 

[Altherion]

On 8/19/2019 at 7:35 AM, Raja said:

It'll never happen, same with the US & Russia.

This is not as reassuring as you make it sound. It's true that mutually assured destruction worked for the US and USSR and you can make the argument that it will work for any other set of states, but keep in mind that there is quite a list of accidents, false alarms and misinterpretations which would have resulted in consequences ranging from a nuclear detonation to all-out thermonuclear war. The Cold War adversaries were lucky in that the chain of people who were responsible for acting on the false alarms and misinterpretations always included at least one sufficiently skeptical individual (usually several of them) and the safeguards build into the system were adequate (if sometimes just barely) to prevent the accidents from turning into catastrophes. The more countries playing these games, the more likely that somebody's luck is going to run out.

[Liffguard]

19 hours ago, Altherion said:

This is not as reassuring as you make it sound. It's true that mutually assured destruction worked for the US and USSR and you can make the argument that it will work for any other set of states, but keep in mind that there is quite a list of accidents, false alarms and misinterpretations which would have resulted in consequences ranging from a nuclear detonation to all-out thermonuclear war. The Cold War adversaries were lucky in that the chain of people who were responsible for acting on the false alarms and misinterpretations always included at least one sufficiently skeptical individual (usually several of them) and the safeguards build into the system were adequate (if sometimes just barely) to prevent the accidents from turning into catastrophes. The more countries playing these games, the more likely that somebody's luck is going to run out.

Yep, I'm always deeply sceptical about anybody's claim that nuclear conflict will "never" happen. Never is a long time, and the only thing standing between us and a nuclear weapon launch is a series of human decisions.

It is indisputably true that there currently exists a handful of people who could, if they felt like it, wipe hundreds of cities and millions of lives off the map in less than an hour. It feels weird and alarmist to say, but human civilisation literally depends, minute to minute, on Donal Trump's ongoing decision not to casually destroy it. Fine, there are procedural safeguards to prevent accident or abuse. Fine, there is the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction. But are we so certain these various safeguards are really impenetrable? They only have to fail once. Will MAD always act as a sufficient deterrent? It only has to fail once. Is it so inconceivable that an irrational actor might one day have access to a nuclear stockpile? Or a sufficiently unlikely chain of accident and miscommunication leads a rational actor to launch a weapon for reasons that make sense at the time but turn out to be false? It only has to happen once.

I strongly recommend everyone read Command and Control by Eric Schlosser and My Journey at the Nuclear Brink by William Perry. Nuclear weapons are far less secure than many people think they are. The idea that they won't be used in any current conflict deserves far less confidence than it typically receives. And as time goes on, the odds that a weapon will be detonated, accidentally or on purpose, approaches one.

[Raja]

3 hours ago, Liffguard said:

Yep, I'm always deeply sceptical about anybody's claim that nuclear conflict will "never" happen. Never is a long time, and the only thing standing between us and a nuclear weapon launch is a series of human decisions.

I meant never more in my life time as opposed to a 100 years into the future or whatever. My original point was more with the India & Pakistan, this is not a new conflict, it's one that has been going on for the last 70 years in one form or another. Based on how the conflict has unfolded, I don't see us or them risking a nuclear war -there's almost a steady state of violence in the Kashmir valley that has been going on for the last 70 years, it is so ordinary that besides the people of Kashmir, both on the Pakistani side & the Indian side, no one particularly even cares about it.

Both countries have fought wars/ skirmishes but they've never been on a particularly large scale ( heck, my father fought in one of these wars). I'm making an assertion based on how the conflict has played out over the last 70 years, and the history of the conflict. There's bluster from both sides, especially right now, but that is nothing new.

Re: US/ Russia, sure, I'm not an expert in US/ Russia relationships so if they're both on a path to nuclear war, that must have been something I've missed!

In both these instances, I'm talking about it being done on purpose by one of the governments as opposed to by accident or someone else taking command of the weapons - I think that is a totally reasonable & important debate, but it's not the point I was making.

Edit: I don't want to downplay the threat of nuclear weapons, but I also think posts like the one anti-targ made, about Pakistan launching nuclear attacks into Mumbai are a little alarmist

[TrueMetis]

So the Amazon is on fire and the Brazilian government is doing jack shit about it. Indeed the fascist piece of shit is accusing NGO's of causing these fires.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

On 8/19/2019 at 8:15 PM, Raja said:

Again, I think there is a tendency of people writing about an issue to look at it through the lens of Trump, and I get why it is tempting to do so, even when politics on this side of the world has their own complexities & motivations. I just think there are like 10 different things to consider before Trump even comes to the picture, it just seems a little facile to point towards him as the catalyst and screams of analysis that is being carried out by people who have not been paying attention to either India or Pakistan politically for the last decade.

You may be quite right, but I do think it's smart to view a lot of international affairs through the Trump lens. He's simply too much of a vacuum to ignore.

[Loge]

3 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

So the Amazon is on fire and the Brazilian government is doing jack shit about it. Indeed the fascist piece of shit is accusing NGO's of causing these fires.

There also have been extensive wildfires in Russia. For some reason they haven't got much attention by Western media.

 

[Karneol]

11 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

So the Amazon is on fire and the Brazilian government is doing jack shit about it. Indeed the fascist piece of shit is accusing NGO's of causing these fires.

This would fit in with this article I found:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-amazon-germany/germany-to-cut-35-million-euros-in-funds-to-brazil-for-amazon-preservation-newspapers-idUSKCN1V00RZ

How can the world really improve the current situation in the Amazon?

[Mindwalker]

23 hours ago, Karneol said:

This would fit in with this article I found:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-amazon-germany/germany-to-cut-35-million-euros-in-funds-to-brazil-for-amazon-preservation-newspapers-idUSKCN1V00RZ

How can the world really improve the current situation in the Amazon?

It should be noted that at the same time that Germany is cutting these funds, they made some economic deal with Brazil that will make these funds look like peanuts. I cannot find the source right now; but, in other words: just cosmetics  to appease environmentalists on the home front. Brazil will get more money while happily destroying the world's lungs and, if I may add, the home of the last tribes not contacted by so-called civilization.

[Loge]

Looks like the trade deal between the EU and Mercosur is in danger because of Brazil's stance on deforestation: https://www.yahoo.com/news/macron-pulls-support-mercosur-trade-120623096.html

[drawkcabi]

On 8/21/2019 at 6:22 PM, TrueMetis said:

So the Amazon is on fire and the Brazilian government is doing jack shit about it. Indeed the fascist piece of shit is accusing NGO's of causing these fires.

Welp...breathing was fun...

[DireWolfSpirit]

On 8/22/2019 at 4:48 AM, Karneol said:

How can the world really improve the current situation in the Amazon?

I wonder whether dropping the militarization and interdiction aspect of the so called war on drugs wouldn't benefit S.American countries. The jungled regions of Brazil would be under less threat of exploitation if there were more lucrative export crops for the agricultural industry down there. If rancheros were making billions exporting marajuana , maybe they could afford to preserve more of the Amazon. I'm pretty sure weed cash crops would outperform harvesting timber, and they could employ a sizeable industry for workers and families to benefit from such employment.

I take the position that the U.S. needs to worry about the responsibilities of its users, it's not the S.American countries responsibility, if they have a fantastic cash crop that can benefit them and slow down the Amazon destruction, I'm for it in theory.

Keeping all this activity illegal only gives us the Narco Cartels, if it were all legal, S. American countries would all benefit it seems.

Eta: This from the G7 summit-

https://news.yahoo.com/pope-urging-prayers-says-amazon-103336458.html

[Larry of the Lawn]

15 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I wonder whether dropping the militarization and interdiction aspect of the so called war on drugs wouldn't benefit S.American countries. The jungled regions of Brazil would be under less threat of exploitation if there were more lucrative export crops for the agricultural industry down there. If rancheros were making billions exporting marajuana , maybe they could afford to preserve more of the Amazon. I'm pretty sure weed cash crops would outperform harvesting timber, and they could employ a sizeable industry for workers and families to benefit from such employment.

I take the position that the U.S. needs to worry about the responsibilities of its users, it's not the S.American countries responsibility, if they have a fantastic cash crop that can benefit them and slow down the Amazon destruction, I'm for it in theory.

Keeping all this activity illegal only gives us the Narco Cartels, if it were all legal, S. American countries would all benefit it seems.

Eta: This from the G7 summit-

https://news.yahoo.com/pope-urging-prayers-says-amazon-103336458.html

Yeah would be interesting to see what that would do land use wise, I've heard that a lot of the cleared Amazon land though is used for beef production and other ag stuff beyond the initial timber harvest.