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RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to kitarist)
In East Asia the central government in Japan saw the trump issue as a most European countries did in 2017, they assumed the old saying ‘the office makes the man’ would impose a grave sense of responsibility on Trump who would thus become a world leader willing to learn and grow into his office. Of course I laughed first and got turbulently angry when my friends would poke me to see if I would have what they considered a melt down when the topic of Trump arose. They’d bring it up if a new person entered the room just because it was good entertainment to hear me use the F-word and explain why he’s exasperating, finally they they became bored and stopped some time into 2018.
When the orange hippotwatamous won in November the same guys came up to me and said, hey we finally get it and you were correct all along, Trump us s security threat, plus a huge dick. The vindication is cold comfort, but it wasn’t missed by the central government. During the spring / summer of 2024 they stepped up and realized they needed a contingency if the dipstick were to get back in office, so Japan took charge of security alliances with Australia, South Korea and the other Asian countries leaving out China, and started separate talks with China, cutting out the US in these relationships through this security discussion. They understand they need a stronger role in organizing regional order without US input, which will possibly become unreliable.
Japan is preparing for refugee evacuation from various islands in the greater East China Sea area should a war break out if China moved to take Taiwan. All this happens right here where we live. There’s a Japan Defense force F-35 squadron nearby and a crucial military radar monitoring facility 800 meters from where I’m writing this. Military helicopters are flying East /West patterns over us everyday in training tasks and F-35’s have training loop that tracks right our heads a few days a week. My friends believe me now when I say the orange gasbag is not your friend, but a self serving transactional liar. He’s dangerous because he doesn’t care about nor does he understand the nuance of regional security in any part of the globe. He geo politically illiterate.
It surprises me that the EU has done so little as a contingency in the case of Trump being empowered again. It’s maybe a lack of old heads in the mix. The age of Madeline Albright and other diplomats who counseled to keep the U.S. keep tight with the U.S. but don’t take it for granted are gone. In U.S. politics there’s a guy named James Carville who is famous for distilling a campaign message to simple words everyday folks can remember. His most famous is ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ Meaning it’s abundantly obvious that the opposition isn’t addressing the problem, which at that time was the economy. ( when is it not the economy?) Which leads to the abundantly obvious situation we now face to which I form my own Carvillian slogan ‘It’s the misogyny, stupid.’
In 2016 Hillary Clinton explained point by point why and what Donald Trump doesn’t understand about global politics and why he’s unqualified. But of course who would vote for a woman? Apparently more than voted for Trump, but because of our holdover system from the days of slavery we have an eccentric glitch where small and insignificant counties have great voting power, so the good old boys aced in Trump over the smarter woman. It’s nothing more than misogyny in action. They said give Trump a chance, and it turned out poor. They selected him over the most popular and well thought of Sec. of State ever.
And as we remember Sec. Clinton said we need to get Ukraine into NATO, strengthen NATO and also put missile defense system somewhere in Ukraine to create a strong deterrent to Putin from carving out anymore of Ukraine. My acquaintances in the flamenco scene in the Bay Area, not all but enough, mostly leftist men had words about this. “Who does this bitch think she is?” “What does this warmonger **** talking about?” Etc with all the anti woman rhetoric and bloviating that the misogynistic MAGA ‘alpha males’ use. The lefties are woman haters as much as the righties. Clinton who understood profoundly that Putin as she says “Will look for a soft spot and drive a knife into it. Then he will not stop, as long as he finds a soft point he’ll drive the knife.”
And she was absolutely correct. She was correct about everything. Now people say, well she was no gem, but she called the situation accurately. And Putin found his soft underbelly to drive into, its trumps big fat stupid gut.
It’s the misogyny, stupid! Might be a slogan to remember next time, granted there is a next time.
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana)
The new frontier, unless a miracle happens, will be Poland. Thanks to a weak transactional US president who did everything to invite Putin’s unspeakable mercenary forces to mass on the border of Ukraine and march right in. Unfortunately for them Ukrainians are tough stuff. But then Donald Trump was not totally incorrect when he calls Putin a genius, because Putin figured out how to drain Russian prisons of inmates and force recruit them to fight in the Wagner group army. Two problems solved, get rid of prisoners and use them as human meat puppets to wear down the Ukrainian army.
That that’s not bad enough, Elon is raping the federal government’s data collection systems because he wants to feed his AI monster and pursue his wet dreams of creating a techno-imperialist regime. He’s just using Trump like a doormat to get at his hidden agenda, he does not have any conventional beneficial political plan I can discern, he’s opaque. It’s not good. Hopefully the people in the Trump admin will break enough stuff that they will get heavy blowback and chased back, but right now it looks pretty weird.
Posts: 294
Joined: May 3 2017
From: Iraq, living in Germany
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to RobF)
quote:
ORIGINAL: RobF
Don't worry, Jalal, I suspect he'll be sitting right beside us on our one-way flight to the Moon. But that's cool. Once we perfect our sun-focussing giant space mirrors we'll be able to remotely fry objects as small as ants on old Mother Earth. Who'll be laughing then? Bwaaah-hahahahaha!
Anyone else sick of the use of the word "democracy" to justify all sorts of atrocities and misdeeds? I'd prefer if we could settle on freedom from tyranny and state controlled violence. Heck, if we could have that I'd even settle for anarchy, as long as we could figure out how to have it in an orderly fashion.
Maybe I'm too soft for this kind of joke, but I'm way too close to the topic and way too concerned about my own skin to laugh about this kind of joke coming from someone just a couple of shades browner than I am (i look pale because there's no sun in germany 😂😂😂) maybe i'll laugh about it when i get deported myself.
anywho... if you want to use a dyson sphere to harness solar energy we'd need to be at least a class 2 civilization according to the kardashev scale. right now humanity is estimated to be a 0.7. AND according to the great filter theory a civilization either unites (and inevitably becomes a space faring civilization + surpasses kardashev class 1) or it destroys itself. right now it rather seems that we're destroying ourselves 😂
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
It’s maybe a lack of old heads in the mix
Dunno if age demographics are a big factor. Personally I think the lack of intra-European solidarity is a major factor. As perhaps one of the most striking examples, consider how Germany, a country who owes some significant chunk of its post-WWII economic recovery to the debt forgiveness granted by the London Debt Agreement, became the most stringent opponent to any assistance to Greece other than imposed austerity politics. Or how Slovenia didn't bat an eye before extraditing German execs of Siemens to the US on trumped-up FCPA charges.
That and the fact that our geopolitical interests are not nearly as aligned as many people tend to think. The most obvious dividing line is East/West. Eastern European countries had very little reason to bother with some of the more egregious econ- and lawfare actions of the US. As long as they provide deterrence against Russia, they're fine with pretty much anything. Western European countries OTOH were more sensitive to it, especially those that actually compete with, and in a few areas outcompete, the US. Attempts to build less dependence on the US often broke down because of that discrepancy in geopolitical priorities. Usually a proposal from France or Germany, which is then ignored by the Eastern "block". But of course, there are many more dividing lines than the crude East vs West.
A last factor worth mentioning is just the sheer magnitude of financial disincentives among decision-makers. Whether you call that corruption or not is up to you (I would, but to each their own), but for example, in more recent news we have the case of von der Leyen's private communications with Pfizer during the pandemic. A bit further back, we have the Alstom affair and the subsequent case of possible campaign funding corruption (Macron authorized the sale of Alstom to GE before he was president, in back-channel deals that bypassed his own political leadership; many of those who profited from the sale, Americans and Europeans alike, then made significant financial contributions to Macron's presidential campaign. The investigation is still ongoing). The quid pro quo's between individual officials and private US financiers is run-of-the-mill over here. The "revolving doors" problem also exists at an international level. It's not an easy topic to discuss, because of its proximity to the simplistic conspiracy narratives out there. E.g. a lot of the antisemitic dog whistles like "global elite". You can't really discuss Alstom and Macron without mentioning the Rothschilds, but the latter are also an antisemitic trope. Point being, there are very real issues in this area, but they've become nearly impossible to discuss rationally, since whenever you do you're immediately categorized as a conspiracy theorist, even if you stick to the facts covered by the most milquetoast, non-partisan news outlets out there.
I will say though that from a European perspective, while Trump is most certainly a catalyst, I'm not sure most would see it as a reversal of trends of US IR vis-a-vis Europe. With Biden we got things like UKAUS, widely perceived as "backstabbish", a unilateral decision to withdraw from Afghanistan without consultation with or even prior notice to its European allies also present there, which left them scrambling to get their own people out, chunks of the Inflation Reduction Act that were very harmful to EU companies operating in the US, etc. With Obama the points of contention were mostly related to econ- and lawfare, especially re: embargo legislation. Because of our spineless political leadership, what we ended up with is a flourishing billion-dollar-worth industry of US legal consultancies that European companies work with to ensure compliance with US law, even when they do no business whatsoever in the US. The issue of "extraterritoriality" of US law has been an increasing problem from Bush Jr. onwards*, and it's in that context that you start to see the first cases of official government reports in Europe explicitly asking whether or not the US should still be considered an ally. None of that minimizes just how bad Trump is. But the point is that there's has been a longer trend of deteriorating relations between the US and its European "allies" for about two decades now. Which makes the EU leadership's inability to come up with contingency plans all the more baffling.
This past week I watched as Macron went to bend the knee over in D.C., only for a few days later Trump to announce new tariffs on European products. They're all just so effing spineless. To me it's very clear at this point that we should stop considering the US as an allied nation. Which isn't to say it's an enemy. Just that we should handle it in the same way we handle any other nation, like China or Iran, who in European politics are only enemies inasmuch as we align with US priorities, but who are otherwise just like any other nation, with some areas of zero-sumness, and others of possible cooperation.
*also in defence. 2003 is when you get the first partial application of ITAR, as retaliation against France's opposition to the invasion of Iraq. It applied to US-manufactured components for the catapults on aircraft carriers. The utility of a carrier without functional catapults is...erm, yeah... pretty limited ^^. ITAR is one of, perhaps the most crucial aspect of reluctance towards NATO. Key to NATO is the concept of interoperability, which in turn means increased reliance on ITAR, which in turn means increased reliance on alignment with US geostrategy. There have been some efforts in that area. E.g. when Germany wanted to renew its supply of rifles for its police force, the call to tender explicitly excluded products with ITAR components (which then led to a court case of US arms manufacturer who argued it was discriminatory). "ITAR-free" has been a buzzword from the early 2010s onwards. But, too little too late. That's an example of what I mean by "autism of great powers". I've talked to US delegates to NATO meetings who just 20 minutes before had listened to multiple European delegates delineate ITAR-related issues, and it's like it just doesn't compute for them. They hear the words, but they don't register. In turn that leads to skewed coverage of European issues in US press. Ask anyone in Europe who follows military/defence affairs closely and they'll place ITAR in the top 5 issues of the day. It gets no coverage at all in the US, and even US officials who have spent decades in Europe still don't get it. When I worked as an interpreter it made me wonder if part of my job should've been to add injections like "hey doofus, this guy actually means this, so shut off your biases for 10 seconds and actually listen to what he's saying"... ^^
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to Piwin)
That’s a long post about business as usual, countries hash things out. This is different, this is dangerous because there’s a vindictive pair of psychopaths unilaterally attacking programs that are beneficial to society worldwide. Trump cut the U.S. off from World Health Organization the afternoon he was put in office. He hired RFK jr. also a psychopath ( I’m not playing with hyperbole, he’s a sociopathic fool) in charge of The CDC - Center for Disease Control.
That may not sound like much, but it’s very dangerous situation because brother Elon turned off the funding for US emergency medical outreach. He’s disconnected the U.S. doctors and scientists who perform the majority of global coordination to bring countries together to respond to infectious disease outbreaks.
Now from a European perspective you can knit pick and cut the U.S. as the big bully of capitalism, fine, but you can’t cut the U.S. down for applied medical science, research and disaster response programs that keep nasty diseases isolated. Right now Elon, Kennedy Jr. and Gasbag have disabled the response forces of the U.S. ‘medical army’ at a time when there is Ebola, bubonic plague, and HIV prevention and treatment programs happening, just for starters.
Trump had defunded the agencies in the U.S. that direct aid distribution, and he defunded President GW Bush’s HIV prevention program, it’s called PEPFAR. The people in the program will not get HIV treatment medication, and so you say well that’s tough for them. It’s unfair to me, I’m happy that my tax money goes to this. If those patients don’t get the drugs they need the AIDS virus can become resistant to the regimen of drugs used to treat it and we don’t need a new resistant form of AIDS.
Anyway I could go on and on about how F&cked up this is in terms of world medical responders to crisis regions and how Europe will have to pick up the slack. How the U.S. is and maybe will not any longer be the number one destination for research scientists who travel to share information and study. The U.S. gives the most money and research visas in the world, it is the locus country that hosts the most foreign scientists for collective research.
So miss me with the sanctimonious laundry lists of the sins of the evil capitalists until we bash these idiots down. Everyone’s ass is on the line if these goons want to play with the US science and medical establishment.
EBOLA, brought to France, Germany, Canada and USA by dear leader and his band of fools.
I’m really f$cking tired of the petty **** we get accused of and never, never ****ing ever get acknowledged as a leader in trying to solve public health issues. We cannot stop the corporations from doing what they do, but 65% of Americans are world team players every one f$cking ****s off calling us bad people. Don’t talk down to us like that.
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
That’s a long post about business as usual, countries hash things out.
It's not. It's describing a 20-year trend of increasingly deteriorating trans-Atlantic relations. If that hasn't been reported to you, then that's a failure of whichever news outlets you rely on. Unless you want to play the same game of rewriting facts as the fascists currently in charge in the US, then unfortunately the facts are what they are and it's on the basis of those facts that any reasonable discussion should be had.
The concerns that have made me react in this thread are primarily analytical rather than political. Treating Trump et al. as somehow disconnected from the geopolitical environment that birthed them leads to incorrect conclusions, and therefore solutions that are likely to fail. Analyzing current affairs is in that sense the same as analyzing history: if we don't contend with, for example, the many shared values and systems between pre-WWII Europe and Nazism and instead view Nazism as simply some exceptional occurrence that popped out of the void with no connection whatsoever to the world surrounding it, then we will have failed to learn any of the lessons there are to learn there. One should be cautious with the "this is different" line of reasoning... Hence why I've focused on facts, or at least what current scholarly consensus has to say. E.g. I don't begrudge Bill his politics, but I hoped to add much needed nuance on facts regarding the localized economic impact of globalization, as well as the political positions voiced by the French far-right re: NATO and Ukraine. Though probably a moot point now that Trump has cosied up to Putin, I thought the RN's actual position on those issues, or at least, the position that has been covered ad nauseam in the French press, would've been of interest to Bill since there's a slight disconnect between that and what he thought their position was. I also thought that other competing factors that might explain the absence of European contingency measures against Trump, other than just "a lack of old heads", would've been of interest to you. None of that hinges on my own political inclinations, or anyone else's for that matter.
I don't think I've said anything to minimize what is currently going on in the US, nor have I been sanctimonious or attempted to portray Americans as bereft of any positive achievements or somehow uniquely culpable of X or Y, but I'll remand my case to those Americans on here who don't have what seems to be a personal grudge against me. You'd think someone who has put as much effort in learning American English as I have would be safe from accusations of base anti-American hatred, but I suppose not. So goes it.
edit: just to be clear re: the "autism of great powers", that applies to any situation with strong power asymmetries. I see signs of it in US discourse about Europe, but I have also been on the other end of it, contending with the disconnect between what I thought France was doing in West Africa and what West African scholars have to say about it. It's difficult work, and one can easily get emotionally tripped up by the impression that we're being unfairly criticized. I doubt anyone would be surprised if I told them that arguing that France grants many research visas and work opportunities for West African scholars is usually met with factual corrections about the impact of the "brain drain" on their region. The world is complicated that way. Just that, while there's obviously good to it too, an American talking about research opportunities in the US due to the current structure of power shouldn't expect unqualified praise from a European any more than a French person should expect it when saying the same about France and West Africa.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
Posts: 3497
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to Piwin)
quote:
One should be cautious with the "this is different" line of reasoning... Hence why I've focused on facts, or at least what current scholarly consensus has to say. E.g. I don't begrudge Bill his politics, but I hoped to add much needed nuance on facts regarding the localized economic impact of globalization, as well as the political positions voiced by the French far-right re: NATO and Ukraine. Though probably a moot point now that Trump has cosied up to Putin, I thought the RN's actual position on those issues, or at least, the position that has been covered ad nauseam in the French press, would've been of interest to Bill since there's a slight disconnect between that and what he thought their position was.
Piwin, Since you have appropriated [your perception of] my "politics," my position on "globalization," and my understanding of the French far right on "NATO, Ukraine, and Russia," to use as negative leverage in your debate with Stephen, I am compelled to respond. I suppose I should appreciate your statement that you do not "begrudge" me my "politics," for example, but that statement, as well as the others cited above, is so vague that I cannot respond. Thus, having felt free to use [your perception of] my positions in such a vague manner, I request that you respond by being specific in order that I have something concrete to which I can respond. This is a serious request, since if you are going to use my positions negatively in a debate with another member, you owe it to me, your interlocutor, and the Foro readership to lay out your understanding of my positions in order that I can challenge them if necessary and as appropriate.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to BarkellWH)
I'm not sure what you mean by negative leverage, but I can assure you that the intent wasn't to be critical of you. In fact I've done my best to leave politics out of it, and that was rather the point. Stephen told me to spare him the "sanctimonious laundry lists of the sins of the evil capitalists", presumably implying that my posts here were ideological in nature, along with the usual strawman of what he thinks my politics involve. Perhaps "begrudge" wasn't the right word, but I brought up our political differences (in my view our politics are fundamentally at odds with one another) simply to point out that the reason I was posting here wasn't to hash out those political differences, but rather to focus on narrower, factual points of disagreement where I thought I could add some nuance.
For the specific factual points, I can simply refer back to your own words:
quote:
Well, "free trade" gets a bad rap because many mistakenly think it has resulted in the offshoring of American manufacturing and the loss of American jobs.
I argued that this was factually incorrect, at least from the perspective of what economics as a profession has to say about it today. As one example, the paper I mentioned from Autor, Dorn and Hanson is widely cited and seems to be quite respected in the profession. It certainly doesn't rule out automation and other factors as contributing to the loss of American jobs, but as far as I can tell it is factually incorrect to say that people "mistakenly" believe free trade has resulted in the offshoring of American manufacturing. That belief is in fact correct. There can be errors in the weight we assign to different factors, but that doesn't rule out the factors themselves.
quote:
She at least supports Ukraine in its war with Russia, and she supports the NATO alliance. The far right in Germany and France, both gaining strength, supports neither that I can see.
I argued that this should also be nuanced from a factual perspective, at least as far as the French far-right is concerned. But perhaps I misread you. In my book, when a party argues that we should keep arming Ukraine with some qualifications on long-range weaponry and that we should remain in NATO, just not in the Integrated Command, as has been the case for over 4 decades up until 2009, that cannot be accurately described as "support(ing) neither". So I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that you thought the RN was against arming Ukraine and was pushing for leaving NATO, both of which would be factually incorrect at this point in time (or at least at the time I wrote that post).
None of that hinges on our political inclinations, neither mine, yours or Stephen's. The same concern about facts drove my response to Stephen about Europe. Missing the larger trend of deteriorating trans-Atlantic IR over the past two decades and attributing all of it to Trump will only lead to an incorrect analysis, and in turn solutions that won't work. In my view, the facts point to a broader trend, which is that, after a short-lived grace period in the 90s, trans-Atlantic IR have become tenser and tenser ever since, almost consistently. More speculatively, I attribute the seeming ignorance of that trend in the US to the "autism of great powers". None of that hinges on any of our political inclinations either.
So, what I think about your politics and whether or not I have an accurate understanding of them isn't particularly relevant to the point I was making. However, since you asked me to describe what I think your positions are, it's only fair that I do so. So here it is, along with my own for contrast:
From our discussions here over the years, I think your economic assumptions could be broadly qualified as neo-classical. On free trade and globalization, you would align more closely with a Krugman than a Stiglitz, and probably very little with an Amartya Sen. I would align more closely with a Stiglitz, and even more closely with a Sen. A Krugman makes me want to pull my hair out. To use the famous aphorism, I think the rising tide has sunk a lot of ships, whereas you think it lifts all of them.
As most in foreign service (in my experience of it), you see states - at least the democratic ones - as being the expression of the cumulative interests of the people who are part of them, which you are in turn representing on the international stage as a professional working in the foreign service. I would disagree with that assumption about the nature of states. Related to that, you value primacy to an extent that I don't. I.e. in key areas what's important is not just that the US does alright independently of what others do; it's also important that the US maintains a position of leadership. Of course that's quite different from the zero-sum "America first" program and there's plenty of room for cooperation and non-zero-sum games in your approach, but from my perspective, at its core it shares the same fundamental mistake as MAGA's approach to IR, granting far too much importance to primacy as a means of securing national interests, and assuming that "national interests" is even a viable concept to begin with.
And lastly, I would qualify your positions as being in essence technocratic, though you might disagree with that specific term. "Populism" shouldn't be trusted not because politicians lie and scheme, but because, in matters of statecraft, the people don't know what is good for them and they are best governed by experts to whom they should delegate decisionary authority. It remains democratic in the sense that the people get some choice in whom they delegate to, but top-down hierarchy is vital to the functioning of society. If we were talking Plato, you would say that he's right and the ship needs a captain. I would say throw the captain overboard.
If anything in how I characterised your positions is incorrect, then of course I'll stand corrected and apologise for the mistake. I don't think any of that matters to the discussion at hand, and I hope you might charitably chalk it up to a clumsy use of the term "begrudge", since my point was certainly not to deride your political assumptions, but simply to point out that I think they're radically different from my own.
One thing you said where I am 100% in agreement with you is this:
quote:
My concern is, even if federal judges rule against him, who is going to enforce their ruling?
Which is why Stephen's assurance that the US won't invade Canada is probably no solace to our Canadian friends. But there too I'm happy to stand corrected. From my perspective, I'm not even sure that the rapidly declining approval ratings of Trump matter at all for what comes next. Without a show of force, peaceful or otherwise, I'm not sure what could prevent him and his goons from bulldozing their way through the entire democratic architecture of the country, and possibly of other areas of the world. It's both tragic and bewildering to witness, even from half a world away, so presumably much more so up close...
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to BarkellWH)
quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
quote:
One should be cautious with the "this is different" line of reasoning... Hence why I've focused on facts, or at least what current scholarly consensus has to say. E.g. I don't begrudge Bill his politics, but I hoped to add much needed nuance on facts regarding the localized economic impact of globalization, as well as the political positions voiced by the French far-right re: NATO and Ukraine. Though probably a moot point now that Trump has cosied up to Putin, I thought the RN's actual position on those issues, or at least, the position that has been covered ad nauseam in the French press, would've been of interest to Bill since there's a slight disconnect between that and what he thought their position was.
Piwin, Since you have appropriated [your perception of] my "politics," my position on "globalization," and my understanding of the French far right on "NATO, Ukraine, and Russia," to use as negative leverage in your debate with Stephen, I am compelled to respond. I suppose I should appreciate your statement that you do not "begrudge" me my "politics," for example, but that statement, as well as the others cited above, is so vague that I cannot respond. Thus, having felt free to use [your perception of] my positions in such a vague manner, I request that you respond by being specific in order that I have something concrete to which I can respond. This is a serious request, since if you are going to use my positions negatively in a debate with another member, you owe it to me, your interlocutor, and the Foro readership to lay out your understanding of my positions in order that I can challenge them if necessary and as appropriate.
Bill
Ever the statesman, you’re more patient than me.
As much as I want the leftist / whatever Europeans, Global South and non European peace aligned parties to gloat and enjoy the spectacle of a mad idiot shredding the U.S. government, I’d caution them to not wet their lederhosen in anti U.S. euphoria just yet. The disordering of the part of the global health crisis response teams based in the USA are crucial to stemming global pandemics. Whether you like it or not it’s fact. Arguing or heaping guasa on the U.S. because you’re happy to see it being attacked isn’t a strong position. Here’s why, if you see that the U.S. can be ‘hacked’ by a populist politician supporting a malignant tech bro gaining access to the U.S. secure data systems, then rest assured your country is next, because if they can crack open the US almost every other country is open to the same treatment.
If it were me, I wouldn’t talk against the U.S. at the moment, but view it as a large canary in a deep mine.
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana)
You're fighting windmills, Stephen. I don't know whether I accurately described Bill's political assumptions. But I'm quite certain I did a much better job at it than the neurotic caricature you consistently make of any non-American on here. I would add non-white but then you would detach even further from reality than you already have. And I'm not employing the childish tactic of ignoring you and saying what I want to say indirectly in a post directed to someone else. I'm talking straight to you. That is what one does in adult discourse. I describe what's going on in the US as tragic and bewildering, and openly call Trump and his administration fascists. It takes Olympics-grade mental gymnastics to conclude from that that I'm enjoying the spectacle and want to see the US collapse. Peace? Ha. The one thing I don't understand at all - and this I very much mean as criticism - is why the hell nothing significant is happening to stop this madness. Your Congress is cowering in fear. The judiciary is powerless, captured by a stacked Supreme Court. And the people, who at this point are the only ones who could do anything about it, are largely apathetic, confusing Twitter and Facebook rants with activism. If I were American, I would already be in jail for throwing Molotov cocktails at the white house. That's what you do when you care about democracy and see it being ripped apart. In recent history, the South Koreans showed you how it's done. Peace? Give me a break. There's no such thing with fascists in charge.
What it boils down to is that in this context of extreme tension, "speaking against the US" to you quite simply means voicing any opinion that isn't exclusively unqualified praise of whichever country you happen to hail from. Nationalism at its worst. Do we need to bring out the "city on the hill" trope again to stroke your ego and pass your nationalistic shibboleth? Let's hope not.
But like I said, I have no interest in hashing out political differences. I have far less antipathy to your or Bill's politics than you have towards my own. If you don't want to discuss the facts (so far you haven't addressed a single point I brought up...) and insist on making this about an ideological pissing match, then you'll have to proceed without me. There's nothing interesting to gain there. All we will achieve is a repeat of the German left in the late 30s, who managed to bicker their way straight into concentration camps. But proceeding without me is of course what your bully tactics were trying to achieve in the first place, as per usual.
Moving on.
edit: FWIW, I do view what is happening in the US as a canary in the coal mine. But not at all for the reasons you suggest, which in my view are again factually incorrect. Like I said when speaking of the AfD, what's notable in the rise of the far-right almost everywhere in the West is just how localized the primary triggers are. If we do succumb to the far right in France (and at this rate we probably will), it won't be because a cabal of tech billionaires hacked the system or because the religious far-right was influential in electoral politics. It's the more distant contributing factors that are the same across countries, specifically the effect that automation and ageing demographics have had on liberal democracies. I would recommend Michael Beckley's article "Why this could be an illiberal American century" in Foreign Affairs for an analysis close to my own re: what the main drivers of this situation are. He's American so you might listen, and he's from the American Enterprise Institute, hardly a leftist venue, so that should you help you bypass these silly ideological purity tests and focus on the actual arguments.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to Arash)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Arash
You spent 200 hours writing and reading all this but don't have 2 hours to watch a video about your initial question? Hmm.....
I went to the MIT website and read all the pertinent information in 20 minutes and didn’t have to suffer some dumb ass bro asking questions about a topic I studied 30 years ago when I read Freeman Dyson’s and his sons books about space architecture. I’ve been interested in modular space architecture since I was a grade school student and only need periodic updates on how it’s going.
The media lab at MIT is the primary source for the work of the woman who is being interviewed. It’s more dense with information and more efficient. You should also note that Ricardo thinks he can load me up with work assignments as if I’m his slave grad student lab assistant and by ignoring his video for two weeks I disabused him of his ridiculous notion. If he wants to school me on renaissance music theory on another thread I’ll take it, but not in aerospace topics. If Jernigan wants to school me in aerospace that’s a different matter.
But thanks for bringing the topic back to the thing I love to hate, which is journey to Mars. There’s nothing on Mars we realistically need. Change my mind.
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana)
Without suggesting any other parallel than the superficial level of form, today's obscene events at the White House are a quite timely reminder of why Americans saying "you should be grateful for our leadership" will never be received in the way you think it should. It has always been a dog whistle for the basest forms of imperialism.
Anyway, good luck to our American friends on here. You're going to need it. As probably will we.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
Posts: 3497
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to Piwin)
Regarding your take on my statement that free trade is mistakenly believed by many to be the primary reason for the loss of American jobs, you only quoted part of my statement. My full statement follows: "Well, "free trade" gets a bad rap because many mistakenly think it has resulted in the offshoring of American manufacturing and the loss of American jobs. This is a fiction perpetuated by both Republicans and Democrats. There is plenty of evidence that demonstrates the loss of American jobs has been primarily the result of technology and automation, not offshoring." I said technology and automation was the primary cause, not the sole cause. Most economists and business consultants would agree. As usual, in economics there will be differences of opinion, but the vast majority of those who study the phenomenon conclude that automation has resulted in far more job losses than free-market offshoring, particularly in the manufacturing sector.
I definitely think the historical record demonstrates that Capitalism and the free market (regulated to the extent necessary to keep it viable, as Roosevelt did) is the most productive economic system. I have never said, as you insinuate, that it "lifts all boats," but it lifts a vast number of them, if unequally, which in my opinion is better than everyone being equally marginal economically. All you have to do to see the transformation from a state-imposed Socialist economy to a relatively free-market, Capitalist economy is observe China from 1980 and Deng Xiao Peng's economic reforms; as well as India over the last 20 years that has gone from a Soviet style state-imposed Socialism with five-year plans to a free market economy. The transformation of both is evidence of the value of the free market.
And while we're at it, let's define terms. "Socialism" has come to mean anything its advocates want it to mean. But just because many Americans and others lack precision in language and thought doesn't mean there is not a valid definition of Socialism. Socialism still means the public (i.e., government) ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. The Soviet Union and its Eastern European Satellites were all Socialist economies, although the Communist Party ruled. On the other hand, Sweden and the Scandinavian countries, often called "Socialist" by those using sloppy, imprecise language and thinking, are not Socialist. Their economies are 80 to 90 percent in private hands and are market-based. They are Capitalist, although they have a strong welfare state that exists alongside a Capitalist economy. Capitalism and a welfare safety net are not mutually exclusive.
I do not like populism of the left or the right, as populist leaders appeal to the basest instincts of the people they wish to lead. Trump is off the political chart, but he is essentially a populist of the far right. Marine le Pen is a far right populist as well, as is the AFD in Germany. Lula is an example of a left wing populist in Brazil, aligning himself with the BRICS crowd. I would even call Joe Biden a populist, not of the far left, but of the left nevertheless. Biden's little gambit of walking the UAW picket line with strikers was unbecoming of a president, who should be getting both sides to the negotiating table, not taking one side's position only. In my opinion, populists of the left and right have never considered the true national interest to be paramount; they always appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Finally, regarding the French far right. Marine le Pen is as good an example as any, as its leader. Le Pen has praised Putin, even after he took the Crimea from Ukraine. She has stated clearly should would take France out of NATO's integrated military command. In a 2022 Washington Post article she was quoted 0nly days before the Russian invasion, attacking NATO’s founding principles. And on several occasions, she has stated that there should be a "rapprochement" between NATO and Russia after the war on Ukraine is settled. She clearly does not understand Putin's vision for a future Russia. That is not what I would call support for NATO.
In any case, that is enough.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to BarkellWH)
I hope whatever misunderstandings you feel I have pushed about your positions have now been clarified and I apologize for any mistake. Like I said, in my view most of it is orthogonal to what I was saying, none of which hinged on the content of your political beliefs, and the purpose of which was never to criticize your political beliefs or promote my own.
For the factual points, fair enough on offshoring, though with the full quote I feel that we now have a problem of consistency between the first part and the second, but fair enough. I'll chalk it up to pragmatics.
As for the RN and NATO, we can disagree on what "support" means. Le Pen et al certainly don't share the same degree of support as Macron. But my point is that they are not in favor of leaving NATO and they are in favor of arming Ukraine. This is relevant because it is very much a matter of electoral politics and part of the RN's longer term strategy of normalizing its status in the Overton window as an acceptable political party. Leaving NATO and dropping Ukraine aren't popular positions at all among the French electorate, and so they've walked back some of the more extreme positions their predecessors used to have. The same is true re: EU membership. They've walked back the more extreme positions they used to have in order to ensure they have a broader electoral base to draw from.
And that illustrates the broader process through which the far right could come into power in France, and later on possibly also in Germany. The bad news is that it is drawing the larger, more centrist right-wing blocks further to the right, as they end up seeking partnership with the far-right (already happened in France, and I predict it will eventually happen in Germany). The good news is that it draws the far-right closer to the center. That is the process we should be worried about in Europe. A billionaire "hacking" the system is not a realistic concern at this time, because overall the institutions are still robust, having been spared the decades of right-wing assaults on them that weakened the institutions so much in the US.
Rapprochement with Russia will remain an alluring prospect for European leaders, beyond the far-right, as it looks like the only path towards forming an independent third pole in what is otherwise shaping up to become a bipolar world. That path has been closed with Putin's invasion of Ukraine, possibly indefinitely, but many still hope that path will open again after the war there has been settled, or when Putin inevitably leaves office.
FWIW, in my view the French historical position re: NATO, belonging to it while also pushing for less reliance on it, has proven correct. At this point in time, we are the only EU power with a fully functioning military. The only ones who won't be caught with our pants down if Putin pushes further West and the US is out of the picture. Everyone else is screwed, scrambling to build systems and processes that take decades to properly develop.
I will leave the implied misunderstandings about my own political beliefs in both your and Stephen's posts unclarified, as I consider it beside the point.
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana)
Ok this video is only 46 seconds so I’m not a hypocrite giving watching assignments as long as it takes to read War and Peace.
The idea in this video serves as a discussion point. If you could terraform Mars and make it habitable, what did you do to Earth to make it so that we had to terraform Mars? Because changing Martian regolith into a nice garden, even ‘vertical garden’ in a nice space architecture compound is realistically beyond our capabilities.
Then if we did have that capability, why wouldn’t Earth be the priority in terms of ecological sustainability/conservation rather than a place where only a relatively few humans will ever go?
My added thought on this discussion point is, if we spend the human lives and the resources and the funds to organize a Mars colony without first disciplining ourselves to keep our first home maintained, what’s going to stop us from using Mars as a disposable resource? What’s to prevent us from trashing Mars without learning how to maintain our first planet? It’s unrealistic to think that human nature will change simply because we venture off planet. We have a long human track record of taking our psychological baggage with us. If you move to a new city, you still have your own past, it doesn’t change. Distance from your origin point does not erase your imprinted past.
Lastly, as far as Elon, he’s a con man in the guise of a technologist. He’s interested in the exploitation of a political moment. The hypothetical scenario is a reiteration of what led to the moon landings by NASA. This was a downsized experiment in relation to a Mars colony project. It was probably good for humanity to go to the moon because it gave us perspective on how we fit into our own solar system. We have a concept of space distance based on our legs to the moon. However Elon waits for the same scenario to come to pass. A country like China or the U.S. says, let’s get our Mars mission going, but this motivates another country to do the same not because of the meaning and wonder of scientific research, but because it fears another country gaining a strategic edge militarily. Then Elon steps in and sells a technology platform to the highest bidder. Then the losing country says “Oh snap, we were just kidding about going to Mars, meanwhile coercing one country to spend enormous amounts of money and resources.
Rinse, repeat. Because that’s the cycle of the advancement of technology for the whole history of human civilization. An Elon always steps forth and says, I have invented a faster chariot, and I will supply your king with the best chariots. Then what the Musk figure withholds because he always has a hidden agenda, is that only he knows the proprietary secrets of how to do maintenance on the wheels.
Just when you think the wheels are reliable and you go confidently to a battle, he says oh I control the timeline on when the wheels need to be changed. And he already did this with Starlink. He will always write himself into the control via a ‘fuse-able link’ in the system.
So you want go to Mars, fix Earth first, then create a world coalition after we learn not to massacre one another over real estate.
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to RobF)
It’s a shame Elon is not on board heading out into interstellar space.
BTW, sorry about the tariffs, but ride it out, it shouldn’t take long for the U.S. economy to go into the toilet and for Wall Street to get angry at the buffoons at the Trump admin. Our economy will tank because no man is an island, and these dildos in the GOP haven’t learned yet that Reaganomics + high tariffs + tax cuts on the upper tier earner shreds economies.
It’s criminally stupid at this point to think tax cuts and tariffs are good for people, but it’s apparently good for billionaires. So just ride it out and when they are crashing like a flaming wheelbarrow of rancid camel dung, the bumbling democrats will steer us back to being all lovey dovey with our old pals like Canada. 🇨🇦
Geddy Lee, Back Bacon, Tim Hortons, poutine, Alex Lifeson, and drug addled mayors of Toronto we salute you!
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana)
Perhaps I spoke too soon on behalf of the Canadian community and how good a people they are. I’ve never seen such disregard and disrespect for talent. The great Alex Lifeson is roughed up by some fan who needs a restraining order.
Posts: 15725
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
The idea in this video serves as a discussion point. If you could terraform Mars and make it habitable, what did you do to Earth to make it so that we had to terraform Mars? Because changing Martian regolith into a nice garden, even ‘vertical garden’ in a nice space architecture compound is realistically beyond our capabilities.
Then if we did have that capability, why wouldn’t Earth be the priority in terms of ecological sustainability/conservation rather than a place where only a relatively few humans will ever go?
Colonization is a "good" or "bad" thing? we go extinct here is the bottom line, if we don't. And not only humanity, but all life that we know of. Letting it just happen is easy. What is difficult is to not only "think big", but doing something. Fixing problems at home? Well that is everybody's story, easier said than done. As said before, that is NOT every person's responsibility, and show respect please to people doing their best in that field rather than pointing fingers at people doing other projects or realizing other visions. Priority does not mean give up on everything in life. "How dare you enjoy that guitar when we have elderly family members to care for and kids to feed!". There is plenty of room to entertain interesting concepts...if nothing else than for INSPIRATION to continue living.
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
quote:
The idea in this video serves as a discussion point. If you could terraform Mars and make it habitable, what did you do to Earth to make it so that we had to terraform Mars? Because changing Martian regolith into a nice garden, even ‘vertical garden’ in a nice space architecture compound is realistically beyond our capabilities.
Then if we did have that capability, why wouldn’t Earth be the priority in terms of ecological sustainability/conservation rather than a place where only a relatively few humans will ever go?
Colonization is a "good" or "bad" thing? we go extinct here is the bottom line, if we don't. And not only humanity, but all life that we know of. Letting it just happen is easy. What is difficult is to not only "think big", but doing something. Fixing problems at home? Well that is everybody's story, easier said than done. As said before, that is NOT every person's responsibility, and show respect please to people doing their best in that field rather than pointing fingers at people doing other projects or realizing other visions. Priority does not mean give up on everything in life. "How dare you enjoy that guitar when we have elderly family members to care for and kids to feed!". There is plenty of room to entertain interesting concepts...if nothing else than for INSPIRATION to continue living.
Ok Noah. 😂
Dude we cannot transplant the bio diversity of Earth onto Mars.
I’m talking about habitability, not colonization. Habitability must precede colonization, or a better term altruistic occupation.
My philosophical trajectory is into the discourse of ethics of occupation and why we are led to an exodus of earth. Your post enables me to make the next argument: If we can’t save our own biodiversity by action on our own planet, what ethically justifies us reaching into space to repeat the same mistakes on Mars? Is not Mars a sacrosanct environment of its own? Do we pollute our own Moon? Ok we’ve left a few lunar rovers there I can understand that. But we will eventually conquer our Moon like we conquered Mt. Everest or in the local language Sagamatha ‘forehead of the sky’. And we will leave bodies and trash on the moon as we leave metric tons of trash at the base camps of the highest mountain.
We are a stupid species and we should have the self awareness to understand that the universe does not care whether we succeed or perish as a phenomenon. We are nothing to the vastness of space and when we contemplate this maybe the reality will set in that we can transform ourselves right where we stand and our home will work.
The other angle is that our home, The Earth, will continue after humans are gone, and we should respect the fact that earth will be a living beating, beautiful entity whether we are in it or not. Earth existed without us, it will in the future exist without us. That’s a profound beauty.
Death is the ornament of life. And when we look at our own non existence as situation that will happen, it places us in the natural order of birth and death in our universe.
I forgot to say that my post must be read aloud in the Werner Herzog voice.
RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana)
*channeling Cliff Claven*
Errrm...it's a little known fact that the highest charting single Alex Lifeson's bandmate Geddy Lee ever sang on was Bob and Doug MacKenzie's hit "Take Off".
Cheers!
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