International events

[BigFatCoward]

Tsunami warning in Japan after earthquake. Waves 5m high possible. Fuck. 

[The Anti-Targ]

looks like the quake was on the west side, wonder if any tsunami are headed to China or the Korean Penninsula?

[williamjm]

6 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Tsunami warning in Japan after earthquake. Waves 5m high possible. Fuck. 

Fortunately, the tsunami warnings now seem to have been downgraded so they are not expecting such high waves. However, it's still not clear the full extent of the damage cause by the earthquake.

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

looks like the quake was on the west side, wonder if any tsunami are headed to China or the Korean Penninsula?

One of the news reports mentioned waves of 40cm being recorded in Korea so there is something but it's not likely to be damaging.

[kissdbyfire]

@williamjm, 40cm? 

[Larry of the Lawn]

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

This is an enlightening view of the WW2 timeline in this ingenious V-graph.

 

Edited January 2 by DireWolfSpirit

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Israeli Supreme Court strikes down law limiting Israeli Supreme Court’s authority?  Where does this end up?

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/1/1/israels-supreme-court-strikes-down-judicial-overhaul-law

[kissdbyfire]

21 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Israeli Supreme Court strikes down law limiting Israeli Supreme Court’s authority?  Where does this end up?

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/1/1/israels-supreme-court-strikes-down-judicial-overhaul-law

Bibi won't be happy, so I am.

[The Anti-Targ]

The power ultimately rests in the legislature not the Supreme Court. The SC can't change a country's constitutional law but the legislative body(ies) can. And if the people vote to give the legislature the power to change the constitutional law in the manner necessary to neuter the SC there will be nothing the SC can do about it.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

18 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Bibi won't be happy, so I am.

I always say I don't believe in god, but if there is one she made sharks and volcanos for a reason. Feed this fucker to one of them. 

Though he probably deserves to be overrun by a horde of rats. 

[Fragile Bird]

On 1/1/2024 at 12:16 PM, DireWolfSpirit said:

This is an enlightening view of the WW2 timeline in this ingenious V-graph.

 

That is a fascinating graph. I see it took a full two years for the Russians to pass Polish fatalities, although, of course, the loss of life in Russia was staggering in the end. And almost four years for the Germans to suffer as many deaths as Poland. 

But I guess I’ve never seen the numbers in that format, and I had to look at populations. I always knew the Chinese suffered terribly under the Japanese, but their population in 1939 was 267 M and the Russians had a population of 108 M/170 M for the Soviet Union as a whole (20 M deaths versus 24 M). Poland with 34.8 M people lost 5.6 M, while Germany with double the population, 69 M, lost 8.8 M. I want to say “only”. But most stunning to me was Japan, with a population of 71.9 M, lost “only” 3.1 M people. I grew up with stories about the devastating bombing of Japan, and I’m sure I imagined losses similar to Germany’s, if not greater. I think that actually gives me more insight as to why President Truman decided to drop the bombs.

Even more astonishing to me is the fact that the populations of Poland and Canada are roughly the same today, about 40 M, in 1939 it was 34.8 versus 11.2. Canada is the land of immigrants.

And apropos of nothing, I saw the population of Nigeria was 19.7 M in 1939, and today it’s 213 M. At the start of the Israeli/Hamas war we talked about the young population in Gaza and someone pointed out the population of Africa as a whole was even younger, but Nigeria going from under 20 M to over 200 M in about 80 years is astonishing. I think the number just caught my eye because I’ve read a number of stories about the new Agatha Christie production changing the white detective to a Nigerian immigrant and the controversy over that decision. That and the fact I’ve seen several stories about Nigerians flying to South America and then walking the thousands of kilometers through the continent and through Central America and Mexico to try to get into the US.

Now, I haven’t gone to any other sources to confirm those WW 2 death numbers, I hope they’re correct.

Edited January 5 by Fragile Bird
Added Soviet total population

[polishgenius]

44 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Now, I haven’t gone to any other sources to confirm those WW 2 death numbers, I hope they’re correct.

 

 

It lines up with wikipedia's numbers, yeah.

 

The graph they have at the top of the page there visualises the percentage of population that you were thinking about, and also divides the numbers into civilian and military casualties. Notable how much greater a percentage of the allies deaths were civilian, of course, although India's is a bit misleading in that respect because most of that was a famine only indirectly caused by the war and exacerbated by British choices (to take all the food for their armies and Greece). 

Although I'm not sure quite where the tables' numbers for India come from - they're much lower if you count only military casualties, and much higher (as in the youtube video, and indeed in the article itself if you scroll down to the by-country table) if you include civilian deaths via famine. 

[Zorral]

I was particularly struck by the numbers from the Dutch East Indies and the British Raj -- way up there from the start.

Others' numbers shot way up suddenly in the last year or two of the war, like Yugoslavia. Also suddenly at the end Vietnam joins the list. I shamefully confess I don't know why this is the case for either of those countries.

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Also suddenly at the end Vietnam joins the list.

 

Vietnam's joining is just a name change from French Indiochina- the makers acknowledging Vietnam's declaration of independence in September 1945. 

[SeanF]

18 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

That is a fascinating graph. I see it took a full two years for the Russians to pass Polish fatalities, although, of course, the loss of life in Russia was staggering in the end. And almost four years for the Germans to suffer as many deaths as Poland. 

But I guess I’ve never seen the numbers in that format, and I had to look at populations. I always knew the Chinese suffered terribly under the Japanese, but their population in 1939 was 267 M and the Russians had a population of 108 M. (20 M deaths versus 24 M). Poland with 34.8 M people lost 5.6 M, while Germany with double the population, 69 M, lost 8.8 M. I want to say “only”. But most stunning to me was Japan, with a population of 71.9 M, lost “only” 3.1 M people. I grew up with stories about the devastating bombing of Japan, and I’m sure I imagined losses similar to Germany’s, if not greater. I think that actually gives me more insight as to why President Truman decided to drop the bombs.

Even more astonishing to me is the fact that the populations of Poland and Canada are roughly the same today, about 40 M, in 1939 it was 34.8 versus 11.2. Canada is the land of immigrants.

And apropos of nothing, I saw the population of Nigeria was 19.7 M in 1939, and today it’s 213 M. At the start of the Israeli/Hamas war we talked about the young population in Gaza and someone pointed out the population of Africa as a whole was even younger, but Nigeria going from under 20 M to over 200 M in about 80 years is astonishing. I think the number just caught my eye because I’ve read a number of stories about the new Agatha Christie production changing the white detective to a Nigerian immigrant and the controversy over that decision. That and the fact I’ve seen several stories about Nigerians flying to South America and then walking the thousands of kilometers through the continent and through Central America and Mexico to try to get into the US.

Now, I haven’t gone to any other sources to confirm those WW 2 death numbers, I hope they’re correct.

I think Russian losses are actually for the whole of the Soviet Union.

Belarus, for example, lost one third of its population.

And the killing didn’t stop in 1945.  Greece, Poland/Ukraine, Indochina, China, and the East Indies rapidly saw war break out again.

[SeanF]

17 hours ago, Zorral said:

I was particularly struck by the numbers from the Dutch East Indies and the British Raj -- way up there from the start.

Others' numbers shot way up suddenly in the last year or two of the war, like Yugoslavia. Also suddenly at the end Vietnam joins the list. I shamefully confess I don't know why this is the case for either of those countries.

The last two years is when deaths from famine, caused by war, really rocketed.  As the Axis forces retreated, they took livestock, and pursued scorched earth policies.  Much of Europe and Asia was starving, in the closing months.

Edited January 5 by SeanF

[Zorral]

4 minutes ago, SeanF said:

deaths from famine, caused by war, really rocketed.

That's what I suspected -- as was the same with China before and after the war, and Russia too, of course, whether from bone head agricultural and economic policies or from the war's contribution to lack of food.

[SeanF]

3 minutes ago, Zorral said:

That's what I suspected -- as was the same with China before and after the war, and Russia too, of course, whether from bone head agricultural and economic policies or from the war's contribution to lack of food.

Mostly in this case, due to armies seizing food supplies in occupied territory, governments prioritising the feeding of their armed forces, and munitions workers, at the expense of “useless mouths”, and the general disruption to trade.

I don’t think that (in this case), famine can really be blamed on the Soviet or Chinese governments.  It was down to the Germans and Japanese respectively.

[Fragile Bird]

9 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think Russian losses are actually for the whole of the Soviet Union.

Belarus, for example, lost one third of its population.

And the killing didn’t stop in 1945.  Greece, Poland/Ukraine, Indochina, China, and the East Indies rapidly saw war break out again.

Yes, of course, and I realized I had put in the population for Russia and not the Soviet Union. Wikipedia says Belarus lost about 1/4 of its population. Figures from the Soviet Union change radically because some places quote numbers that include lands they seized after 1939, so the population goes from 168.5 M in 1939 to 196.7 M in 1941 to 170.5 M in 1946.

[Zorral]

28 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Mostly in this case, due to armies seizing food supplies in occupied territory, governments prioritising the feeding of their armed forces, and munitions workers, at the expense of “useless mouths”, and the general disruption to trade.

I don’t think that (in this case), famine can really be blamed on the Soviet or Chinese governments.  It was down to the Germans and Japanese respectively.

I wasn't speaking to this 'moment' but to the periods before and after the war.