"In 2023, former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato said that France downed the plane while targeting a Libyan military jet in an attempt to kill Muammar Gaddafi. Amato said that Italy tipped off Libya about the planned assassination and consequently Gaddafi did not board the Libyan military jet"
To be honest, this theory of mistaken identity sounds much more plausible than anybody shooting down (or bombing) a random passenger plane flying an Italian domestic flight on purpose. Whether the presumably Libyan plane they actually targeted was transporting nuclear material or Gaddafi, I have no idea. Shame on them anyway for covering it up.
That is an old theory that has been largely debunked by the book I suggested and the evidence that has surfaced recently. Not only that, but Israel was the only country in the planet that successfully showed to be able to traverse the mediterranean while avoiding completely radar detection flying thousands of miles at extremely low altitudes in Operation Wooden Leg[1] and some others.
Also Amato's words are quite meaningless as he never had an idea, and he was not prime minister at the time.
This reportage[2], albeit in Italian, aired by Italian state tv last year, starts by interviewing the person you quote Giuliano Amato, and he clearly points out that the government has never had a clear idea on who shoot it down. It goes into huge detail on all the elements behind the Israeli thesis and it's the only credible one for which he have substantial proofs, from the fact that France used civilian airplanes to transport uranium, to the fact that special cargo was indeed used on the very same flight (but in a different date), interviews with Israeli and French officials and Italian civilians that had seen fighter jets above the cost of Calabria and all pointed to Israeli fighters (albeit, not the F15s used in Operation Wooden Leg).
Already quite a while ago I was entertained by a particular British tabloid article, which had been "AI edited". Basically the article was partially correct, but then it went badly wrong because the subject of the article was about recent political events that had happened some years after the point where LLM's training data ended. Because of this, the article contained several AI-generated contextual statements about state of the world that had been true two years ago, but not anymore.
They quietly fixed the article only after I pointed its flaws out to them. I hope more serious journalists don't trust AI so blindly.
Yep. If the Swedish government really cared about children, they would do something to stop the massive underage gang violence problem the country has. 12 year olds being used as hitmen for drug gangs is not normal, yet that's the reality.
You talk as if this is a problem that is easily solved. Of course government wish this could he solved.
A tip is that whenever you reach a ludicrous conclusion "they do nothing to stop underage violence", it's probably your analysis that is ludicrous and not the object being analyzed.
Ignorance is bliss. It literally takes 4 sec to perform a search and find plenty of such cases - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PXZxaKMl9Y (Sky News Investigates: Sweden's deadly gang war)
"How has a peaceful European country ended up the gun murder capital of the EU?"
"Things got so bad that the government called in the army to help the police. And there's a new deadly trend emerging in this battle. Gang members as young as 14 are increasingly using explosives to target rivals as they fight over drug turfs. "
things tend to be relative, hence statistics are a thing. The gun murder capital of Europe without some hard data as to what that means sounds a bit like the radiation poisoning center of Antarctica, gang members as young as 14 can definitely be increasingly doing things if before they started increasing there were zero gang members below 14 using explosives etc.
Another problem is just taking what the police say as being "true", for example the police say there are 62000 people in Stockholm (a city of slightly over 920000) "linked" to criminal gangs - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-has-around-62000...
this article uses the word linked twice, in the title linked to criminal gangs, and later in the article "the authorities have struggled for years to contain violence linked to organised crime." I wonder if they have 62000 people who are violent in their linkage, somehow I doubt it but this seems to be the impression.
Hey, I bet there is a problem, how big of a problem, probably not as big as these news stories imply. Why not? Well because if I had a really big nasty problem I wouldn't just imply it, I would lay it out, plenty of engagement to go around, but if my engagement could benefit from exaggerating the problem then I will imply instead of stating plainly.
At any rate more than 6% of the population of Stockholm is currently not involved in a violent gang war which one might infer from the reportage.
actually in that article from Reuters it says there were 62 deadly shootings in Sweden in the year.
Which is hilarious because it also says there are 62000 gang linked people in Stockholm.
One thing you are always told to watch out for is big round numbers in stats, because it is pretty unlikely it is just 62000 and not 62119 or something (not a big stats guy, just something I've read)
At any rate the article says 62000 linked to gangs, and 62 killings (pretty weird that). So a 0.1% violence among the linked to gangs people (if all the murders were linked to gangs), but out of the full pop of Sweden 10,490,000 this is a 0.000591% rate of murder, the U.S as a whole has 0.0075 murder rate right now.
I love responses like this. Well there is only one way to find out statistically since you love statistics.
If you are not an inmate I will assume that you are a free person living in a western society. Since you are free person you a free to go and live in Stockholm, lets just say for the statistics you are going to live in a slightly not so friendly neighbourhood where the lying police said that it is an area populated with predominantly 14 years old gang members, now since police by your own words cannot be trusted we will assume that their information is not correct and the area is perfectly fine and safe.
Please run the maths and tell me with just 5% probability to get executed by a 14 years old gang member by walking down the street you live in to get to your home lets just say 100 times how likely is this event to occur? Of course the question that follow is are you going to take that chance ? I already know the answer.
Now you can choose to deny reality and look away, but the good thing about reality is, that it is just like gravity it just hits you sometimes.
I don't know if your PM have to call in the army to help with gang related crimes the situation seem pretty bad to me, again you are free to prove me wrong statistically, and take your chances.
These kind of responses (yours, zx10rse) are the absolute worst appeals to anecdote and bias I can think of. Someone actually comes along with a logical argument so you just give up and say "yeah well uhhh I'd like to see you try". Sad.
I know we're supposed to think everybody is being honest here, but I don't think you do love responses like this.
>Well there is only one way to find out statistically since you love statistics.
right, to get the rates of deaths by violence, rates of death by gang related violence, compare that to other parts of the world with gang related violence etc. etc. I mean I agree, everybody knows how to do statistics!
>Since you are free person you a free to go and live in Stockholm,
I stand corrected, not everybody knows how to do statistics.
>again you are free to prove me wrong statistically, and take your chances.
but anyway that is not how statistics works.
>Of course the question that follow is are you going to take that chance ? I already know the answer.
You know the answer as to whether I am willing to move to a part of Stockholm the police identify as high crime from "a western society" based on a hacker news argument with someone who evidently doesn't know how statistics work?
Amazing!!
>Please run the maths and tell me with just 5% probability to get executed by a 14 years old gang member by walking down the street you live in to get to your home lets just say 100 times how likely is this event to occur?
If "with just 5% probability to get executed" then the answer to "how likely is this event to occur?" is 5%. However as this is "by walking down the street you live in to get to your home lets just say 100 times" then that would mean 5 out of every 100 times somebody walks home they get executed.
Given the earlier number of people in the article linked with crime was 62000, and assuming that everybody walks home at least once per day and 5% of people walking home get executed by 14 year olds it follows that in your world 3100 people per day are getting executed by 14 year olds in Stockholm, that seems a lot. I mean in 30 days that would be more than the number of people linked with crime!
If that were true I don't think the EU would just be proposing to help inmates in their prisons but might be sending peace keeping forces in to help.
obviously there are a number of points where I've fudged the numbers here, as I don't care much, for example with 3100 being killed the 5% of 62000 would be decreasing as it would no longer be 62000 - but I will leave that to other people to figure out.
also since only 62 people were violently shot in Sweden during the year I guess that also indicates this 5% thing just doesn't add up, unless these people are getting violently exploded I guess.
"Sky News Investigates" is synonomous with Murdoch Press grossly exaggerates small issues to be world threatening edge of the seat click baiting prequels to the coming apocolypse.
At least in Australia and in the UK. Maybe they're a moderate and balanced presenter of truth on the ground in Sweden.
Seems unlikely.
I'm fully aware this reads as "attacking the source" but there's no rabid attack intended here just a frank pragmatic assessment of what "Sky News Investigates" actually means.
I am curious, is the rise of violent crime somehow linked with migration from Asia and Africa or it is a completely unrelated issue and most of the criminals come from families who have lived in Sweden for many generations?
It's largely second generation immigrants (yes, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, since that's where most immigration - in the shape of refugees - comes from).
And take it from someone who actually lives in the area (as opposed to HN speculators): YES it has gotten significantly worse over the last five years (having already been bad for decades), and YES 14 year old hitmen with explosives and automatic weapons are now an actual thing, not just a couple of incidents.
The politics of this is so inflamed, which makes it harder to discuss, much less solve the problems. I am not against immigration per se, from any given country. But right now, it is obviously causing major problems that need to be handled with extreme prejudice.
Sweden is building now new prison for underage and lacks thousands of seats for inmates. Other countries are talking about renting their spare capacities to them.
Unsure why my comment was flagged. If you want to see how much of the newspapers are censored in Sweden you’re free to go live there for a while, and witness the crime that happens and lack of support from police or media attention when the crime is committed by anyone who isn’t white and Swedish.
Since ppl exaggerate individual cases to a generic form, i remain sceptical about "gang of 12 year old". not to say, it doesnt exists. everything is hyperbole on the internet.
It’s quite common for migrant families to takes a few years off their kids age when they arrive, so they’ll adapt more easily, learnt the language and whatnot.
This makes sense to me, to change the birthdate, to get additional support. A lot of young people looking a tad older. But when crimes are reported, where do officials get the birthdates from? Or do they reporting most likelies?
I've always wondered how big of a part Soviet Union / Russia psych ops played in stirring this completely irrational anti-nuclear mentality. The side-effect of getting Germany hooked on Russian gas was extremely convenient to them.
Of course the Chernobyl disaster played some part, but it didn't result in such irrationality in most other surrounding countries. Perhaps the anti-war mentality and guilt from the horrors of WW2 also plays a part?
In any case, what a disaster German energy policies have been for whole Europe.
The argument agains nuclear is not irrational. The true cost of nuclear is not sufficiently priced in. Example from recent history here in Germany the nuclear interim storage mine Asse is leaking and the garbage has to be recovered. Cost estimated to be 3.7 billion tax payer money. There is no solution for safe nuclear garbage storage in sight.
I mean, this sounds like the true cost of being insanely bone-headed. And in some sense nuclear lets you be bone-headed in novel ways, which is a risk, but being this irresponsible is not a necessary condition.
> The mine near Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony is the perfect example of how a final storage facility for nuclear waste should not be built.
> Between 1967 and 1978, around 126,000 metal barrels containing low and medium-level radioactive waste were stored in the former salt mine. They contained contaminated laboratory waste, construction rubble and scrap metal, mainly from nuclear power plant use. Officially, it was an "experimental mine" in which the long-term storage of radioactive material was only to be tested. In fact, many of the barrels were simply dumped into the emptied salt chambers.
> The Asse became a problem in 1988. At that time, the operator at the time discovered that water was penetrating the mine. To date, 350 active and now dry areas have been found. The water is collected and brought to the surface - an average of 12.5 cubic meters per day. Without this work, the mine would flood. Recovering the waste, as decided by the Bundestag in 2013, would be impossible.
Perhaps a minor nit (or maybe not), but when you say
> The true cost of nuclear is not sufficiently priced in.
That's also the case in general for fossil fuels too. Pollution from burning fossils kills. (And this extends of course - be it lithium mining or recycling PV panels or composites in wind turbines.) There are very few, if any, truly priced-in mass-market commodities I can think of.
(Another not so minor nit is fortunately the EU-ETS exists, but it has its own issues/criticisms which might get too long for this comment.)
EU, one of the most successful peace projects of human history, is based on the idea that tight economic integration leads to peace.
Obviously not working out in full with Russia, and I think Germany could've put themselves in a far better situation energy wise. But, it still stands that the core purpose of EU has been fulfilled. And very easy to judge in hindsight.
The anti-nuclear mentality is driven by mid-70s/early-80s Pershing-II, Chernobyl, Wackersdorf, Waldsterben and red terrorism, which created identity for large groups of Germans alongside trauma.
"most other surrounding countries."
Except Austria no other country had as much fallout after Chernobyl (in the West, and it was silenced in Eastern Europe, see GDR) - especially Southern Germany (Chernobyl happened around Wackersdorf riots in Bavaria).
Is US gun policy idiotic? Yes, but large groups of Americans have tied their identity to it, and can't give it up. Look at anti-nuclear opinion in Germany the same way.
I'm doubtful it can be ruled out with a handwavy gesture. Given just how much Russia has invested into Elite capture you know they will set everything in their power to make the west suck up their Gas deliveries.
I'm doubtful it can be ruled out with a handwavy gesture.
That's not how things work.
You need to have some actual evidence for your pet theory of what happened. You don't just get to believe it (or assign it high likelihood of being true) because it sounds like a nifty narrative, and seems to connect some dots for you.
Meanwhile while the commenter above you is saying, being far from "handwavy", is entirely obvious to anyone with knowledge with knowledge of that country at the time. Anti-nuclear sentiment was everywhere, and it wasn't irrational, just misinformed against the backdrop of what we know today.
Soviet influence operations were ridiculously ineffective at the time (the movement goes back to the 70s-80s) and there's scant evidence of them having been able to influence much of anything in the West (even on issues they were greatly interested in and put out tons of propaganda about, the set of which never included nuclear power as a topic).
Both were certainly there – a guilt made psyops far more easier for Russians. But this energy related psyops have been everywhere. I've experienced it almost first hand. After decision to decommission Ignalina Nuclear Power Station in Lithuania there have been joint attempts to build a new one with Estonia, Latvia and Poland. Russian "No need! Dangerous! Russian gas is cheap!" influence during these talks was very prominent. This was also very much there during 2012 Lithuanian nuclear power referendum.
The leading anti-nuclear force in the 1980s and 1990s was the Green Party, which wasn't pro natural gas at all.
Furthermore, it is now one of the most anti-Russian parties, so any conjectured FSB operation could be considered to have failed spectacularly.
The former East Germany supported left wing terrorism and some hard left student revolts, but the anti-nuclear sentiment goes through many parties and simply does not need any external stimulus.
On one hand, Russia can do "green-washing" psyops to create German anti-nuclear sentiment. On the other, Russia creates the implied threat that in some future war a Russian missile will hit a German nuclear powerplant. Well played, Mr. Putin.
They are revolutionary for use cases where hallucinated / wrong / unreliable output is easy and cheap to detect & fix, and where there's enough training data. That's why it fits programming so well - if you get bad code, you just throw it away, or modify it until it works. That's why it work for generic stock images too - if you get bad image, you modify the prompt, generate another one and see if it's better.
But many jobs are not like that. Imagine an AI nurse giving bad health advice on phone. Somebody might die. Or AI salesman making promises that are against company policy? Company is likely to be held legally liable, and may lose significant money.
Due to legal reasons, my company couldn't enable full LLM generative capabilities on chatbot we use, because we would be legally responsible for anything it generates. Instead, LLM is simply used to determine which of the pre-determined answers may fit the query the best, which it indeed does well when more traditional technologies fail. But that's not revolutionary, just an improvement. I suspect there are many barriers like that, which hinder its usage in many fields, even if it could work most of the time.
So, nearly all use cases I can think of now will still require a human in the loop, simply because of the unreliability. That way it can be a productivity booster, but not a replacement.
Human medical errors have been one of the leading causes of death[0] since we started tracking it (at least decades).
The healthcare system has always killed plenty of people because humans are notoriously unreliable, fallible, etc.
It is such a stubborn, critical, and well-known issue in healthcare I welcome AI to be deployed slowly and responsibly to see what happens because the situation hasn’t been significantly improved with everything else we’ve thrown at it.
> But many jobs are not like that. Imagine an AI nurse giving bad health advice on phone. Somebody might die.
This problem is not unique to AI and you see this problem with human medical professionals. Regularly people are misdiagnosed or aren’t diagnosed at all. At least with AI you could compare the results of different models pretty instantly and get confirmation. An AI Dr also wouldn’t miss information on a chart like a human can.
> So, nearly all use cases I can think of now will still require a human in the loop, simply because of the unreliability. That way it can be a productivity booster, but not a replacement.
This is exactly what your parent said, but yet you replied seemingly disagreeing. AI tools are here to stay and they do increase productivity. Be it coding, writing papers, strategizing. Those that continue to think of AI as not useful will be left behind.
To me those usecases are already revolutionary. And human in the loop doesn't mean it is not revolutionary. I see it multiplying human productivity rather than as immediate replacement. And it can take some time before it is properly iterated and integrated everywhere in a seamless manner.
If you adjust your standard to the level of human performance in most roles, including nursing, you’ll find that AI is reasonably similar to most people in that in makes errors, sometimes convincing ones, and that recovering from those errors is something all social/org systems must do & don’t always get right.
Human in the loop can add reliability, but the most common use cases I’m seeing with AI are helping people see the errors they are making/their lack of sufficient effort to solve the problem.
Well, it should be noted that the helicopter in question was designed to be used by an organization that couldn't care less about loss of life, as we have again seen in recent years. So I guess this aspect of human life wasn't a big concern to the designers, the military can always get new human resources from Siberia or whatever poor part of the country.
Yes, NATO countries have hollowed out their military-industrial complexes. Everyone is aware now that was a mistake but it will take time to rebuild the industrial capacity necessary to fight wars of attrition. And of course it's cheaper to manufacture artillery shells in Russia since the country has lower wages and is now running a partially mobilized command economy. But once you normalize for quality of the shells, the difference isn't quite as bad as it first looks.
> The research on artillery rounds by Bain & Company, which drew on publicly available information, found that Russian factories were forecast to manufacture or refurbish about 4.5 million artillery shells this year compared with a combined production of about 1.3 million rounds across European nations and the US.
Rheinmetall intends to increase their annual production to 750k by 2025 and the US is aiming for 1 million annually by 2025. That's still much less than Russia and that's before considering they have access to the significant reserves and the factories in North Korea.
> Since August, Pyongyang has shipped about 6,700 containers to Russia, which could accommodate more than 3 million rounds of artillery shells or more than 500,000 rounds for multiple rocket launchers, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry.
NATO war doctrine doesn't use nearly as much artillery as Soviet (Russian)- preferring air superiority and bombs/missiles instead. While it isn't clear this is really better (and I hope we never find out), it does mean that having less production ability may not be an issue. Which is why the US Air force is the largest air force in the world, followed by US army, then US navy at 4, and US Marines at 7.
Where the problem is, is Ukraine is trained on the Soviet war doctrine but are getting backing from NATO - but without all the airplanes NATO would use (and it isn't clear if they could train pilots/crew fast enough if given, but they haven't been given much) they need something to fight with.
That's the point, no? Ukraine isn't NATO. Ukraine can't do NATO doctrine. So Ukraine also can't win against Russia if they're this behind on artillery supply. This is an issue for Ukraine. It's not for NATO. But we aren't talking about NATO, we're talking about Ukraine's ability to fight back.
[I get most of my information from Ukraine: The Latest] It seems to be that when Ukraine has even the below-necessary arms (be that artillery or air support or smarter, longer range weapons), Russia is unable to make significant gains.
Whether this is due to the impotence/utter incompetence of the Russian military or the inherent advantages of defensive fighting, I'm not sure Ukraine _can lose_ this war as long as NATO continues to the supply them with the tools.
You cannot seriously think that you need 1:1 parity missile-to-shell in that paradigm. The overall result from the conflict is that the soviet doctrine underperfomed, with especially abysmal results for the IADS part of it.
Ukraine is doing well using mostly the soviet doctrine so long as they are 1:5 ratio of artillery with Russia, when they are worse than they they start to lose ground, when more they gain ground.
> You cannot seriously think that you need 1:1 parity missile-to-shell in that paradigm.
this argument would work if we could produce missiles in 1:1 parity with shells. However, for any reasonable ratio (say 1 missile for 10 shells) the situations with missiles is even worse! British government has ordered more NLAWs, and they will take 2 years to deliver.
> soviet doctrine underperfomed
That's exactly the scary part - Russian military is a mess, and even in these conditions our military industrial complex is barely holding it together. Mind you we spend 10x what Russia spends. NLAW costs more than a Tesla, takes longer to produce than a Tesla, and uses 90's technology. There is huge graft in the military complex!
Now what will happen if there is a conflict with an opponent that is competent, and is able to outproduce Russia 5 to 1? It will end in massive humiliation.
You can turn the frontline to dust with artillery, but actually advancing when anything from a guy on a push bike to a modern tank is disabled by a quad-copter with an anti-tank explosive cable tied to it makes taking territory difficult.
Hence why Russia has advanced very little since the initial invasion, even with the number of men they are willing to send to their death.
Ukraine has a problem taking their territory back as well, but for different reasons. They don't want to/can't send so many to their death, and have to rely on a large coalition of allies giving them weapons -- who have their own things to worry about domestically, so half-arse or delay support.
Though my impression is that shell production is still a "meh, I guess we probably should do something..." priority in the great majority of NATO countries.
Russia actually has a pretty strong tradition of pilot safety in the military. For example, the Ka-50 attack helicopter is one of very few such helicopters to be fitted with an ejection seat.
Pilots costs many years to train, the OC is commenting about the mobiks, the soldiers used for their meat not brains. There is evidence to support that Russia or better said the Putin regime still gives less almost zero value to human live.
What government that has an active military cares about the lives of their soldiers beyond their utility value? I don't see how the US is different in that regard.
Generally the US does a pretty good job training and keeping their grunt soldiers alive, and evacuating them if wounded. Russia really hasn't done well in these aspects if we look at the Ukraine war, or any earlier wars for that matter. Their tactics tend to prefer quantity over quality.
But yes, as pointed out I'm sure Russia places some more value on lives of skilled, well trained personnel than the average poorly trained grunt soldier, simply due to higher utility value.
It just amazes me that Russian soldiers are able to fight against one of the most Western-armed countries in Europe [0] using ... shovels [1] ... and zombie-like meat waves [2] ?
Does it amazes you that they gain less then 1 square kilometers even with their Chinese bikes and turtle tanks?
not sure why everyone shits on Russian shovels, the RuZZian special forces recorded themselves how they train to fight close combat with shovels, a shovel is a weapon. Anyway the real quote was something like "weapons and shovels" but the Ruscists could only read the last part. The Zeds also claim they fight NATO, I say to all the Zeds please attack a NATO country then you can claim you fight NATO - because now you fight just your little brother that gas some old Western weapons and better intel, the difference is that Ukraine is not Chechnya so is harder to invade them, the drunk bear found a big enough adversary to break it's mouth.
Why does this remind me of that time the USA got defeated by some guerillas in the Vietnamese jungle? They succeeded in plucking some feathers from the arrogant eagle's tail. Perhaps those guerillas had some help?
"what about USA/Israel"
I am not a supporter of USA military operations so I did not study them,
but if youget reminded how USA lost then it means you know Ruzzia has no chance to actually really win (NATO is already larger, many Ruzzian fascists are dead, Ruzzia is getting demilitarized ... )
I think no party to the war has a chance to really win. The biggest tragedy though is that whatever happens and regardless if anyone wins militarily, for many years (decades) after the war people living in Ukraine will not feel like they won anything. You can be sure of that
Chechnya is/was very much a part of Russia and was not contested territory. Yes, it was acquired through conquest, a long time ago. If you are going to bring that up, then USA should give California back to Mexico.
I am concerned about people not lands or what empire has right to what land. The people wanted freedom and Putin created some false flag operations to start a second war, today those people instead of having their children live in peace are forced to see them fighting for the criminal that killed their parents.
Only imperialists bring historical claims to the discussion, for people in civilized countries is not a good argument that you claim you conquered and genocided some lands sometimes in the past, all the empires have fallen except the Russian one and there will be a time when the opressed people should get their freedom.
So dear comrade if Californians want to fight for their independence from an opressor I will support the people aand not the imperialistic coward old man that would want to genocide them again.
> The people wanted freedom and Putin created some false flag operations to start a second war, today those people instead of having their children live in peace are forced to see them fighting for the criminal that killed their parents.
A lot of those people that fought for freedom in Chechnya later went on to do great things, such as join ISIS or become drug dealers in Austria.
> I am concerned about people not lands or what empire has right to what land.
I wonder, does the same right of self determination of nations apply to people wanting self determination in NATO-allied countries? To Ukraine? Or is there fine-print included in your concern?
>I wonder, does the same right of self determination of nations apply to people wanting self determination in NATO-allied countries? To Ukraine? Or is there fine-print included in your concern?
I personally am for self determination, my country though is for respecting the UN laws and borders, Ruzzia is a GIANT hypocrite , when it is in their favor they want to split countries and grab lands like in Ukraine , when others want to split like Kosovo or Checnya then they apply the reverse and for some reason Kremlin and some Ruzzians are very invested in what Moldova is doing and they want to ensure that their self determination is exactly what Kremlin desires.
Actually when Western countries began recognizing the independence of Kosovo (independently of the UN) they warned that it will open up a pandora's box that will come back to bite them. But once again no one listened and kept studying Kremlinology. When Russia said that color revolutions on their borders are a concern no one listened and Nuland dealt free baked cookies in Kiev to Maidan protesters. These, by the way, turned out to be most expensive cookies in the world for Ukraine. Which is an important lesson: do not trust the US when it gives away things for free, even baked cookies
Don ot be extremly stupid like Ukraine and trust Ruzzia, if they would have entered EU and NATO with Poland and Romania they would be safe and rich, but they were too stupid to think Ruzzians are their brothers. This is 100% facts and no independent country should give a shit about some retarded old man wishes of imperialism, what a joke of a nation and you joke of an individual, we the Eastern Europe should give a shit of who we elect or what alliances we enter so we do not upset that nazis future invasion plans.
You never explain why no slavic country is sending help to Ruzzia? Serbia sells weapons to Ukraine and Belarus is a dictatorship so expaln please ? why slavs hate Ruzzia?
In the sense that Ukrainians then get to invade Kazakhstan around 2040 on behalf of Russia, and film Tik Tok videos about how nasty of fighters they are?
>Russia is fighting against the combined military intelligence apparatus of 40 countries
And is Russia's fault they are some assholes that only N Korea and Iran supports them, all their brothers slavic countries in Europe are supporting Ukraine, except the dictator in Belarus who is sitting and spectating.
Think about how much Netherlands is helping Ukraine, all because of MH17, some half competent non drunk Ruzzian diplomat would have done a better job in handeling this issue, probably they would have had to do something impossible for a Ruzzian , admit the truth that an incompetent drunk Ruzzian destroyed the airplane and send the guilty to be judged and punished.
So incompetent diplomacy, garbage external politics makes Ruzzia to have Zero supporters, this is an achivement and the credit goes to Putin and his gang.
You aren't seeing this from the perspective of the Russians at all.
In the 1990s Russia was weak and was promised by NATO that the military alliance would not encroach further east. This was a bold lie just like the Minsk agreements. There has always been a persistent effort by the West to subvert Russia and make it another colony of the US and UK intelligence apparatus. Everything you are seeing is a reaction to fighting against the pressure of 40+ western nations simulateneously trying to crush it and choke it to death.
You're too focused on the little things and you aren't seeing the big picture. In the grand scheme of sovereign state operations a few thousand dead is utterly insignificant. I don't think I need to remind you of the number of casualties in all recent wars started by all sides of the conflicts in the past twenty years.
There is no evidence NATO pro missed Ruzzia that they will not expand/
And why would the fallen USSR would have to barggen for that promise?
You Riussians have the mental inability to understand the Eastern Europe , why did your brothers slavs enter NATO, why is Seriba wanting in EU and not CSI, why Ukraine wanted in EU and Puttler started the conflict to stop them.
We explained this many time but it is impossible for Ruzzian to understand, I think is projection , you can't understand that we do not want your lands or resources, we the East entered NATO to ensure our children will not be killed not he front lines when Ruzzians will invade, opr be deported to Siberia again and replaced with Ruzzian colonists.
Compare Ukraine, Eastern Europe and Ruzzia, only Ruzzia was involved in many conflicts.
Not sure if repetition can help you guys, but let me try
"we do not give a shit about your land, resources or internal politics. We want to be safe so we entered NATO, the invasion in Ukraine is the proof that everyone except Ukraine was the smart ones to enter NATO, and Ukraine shows us that it was zetarded to trust Ruzzia"
Only Putin and his gangs of oligarchs are at fault you are a poor country with no perspective for a future, if you have followed Poland example and reform and bring democracy and stop getting involved in conflicts you would be an economic power and a trusty partner.
In the same clip, USSR's minister of defense says the same when journalists ask about it: don't know anything about it. Other people from USSR's top leadership have said the same and I've never seen anyone of equal weight dispute them.
The hoax doesn't even make sense, because not even American presidents can promise what their successors will do or will not do. It's up to the electorate to decide who will be the next president and what policies they will pursue. Gorbachev briefly touches upon this too by mentioning sovereignty.
While it's generally true that presidents can't promise what their successors will do, there might be rare exceptions or situations where a president could influence future actions through long-term policies or agreements.
Your statement implies that presidents have complete control over their policies. In reality, the implementation of policies often involves complex interactions with Congress, the judiciary, and other factors. It also suggests that the electorate has full control over who becomes president and what policies they pursue. This overlooks factors like the Electoral College system, party nominations, and the influence of various interest groups on policy-making. There's a slight tension between saying presidents can't promise future actions and then stating it's up to the electorate to decide future policies. This could imply that the electorate has more power to determine future actions than sitting presidents do.
Your question touches on the balance between governmental continuity and the potential for change that comes with each new administration. This is indeed a challenge in democratic systems.
While presidents have significant power, they are constrained by various factors like constitutional limits, legislative processes, judicial oversight, international agreements, bureaucratic inertia
Undoing everything is often not practical or desirable. Some policies become deeply entrenched and difficult to reverse. Rapid, wholesale changes can lead to instability, which is generally unpopular. Many policies have broad bipartisan support.
Drastic reversals of popular policies can lead to political backlash. Some policies and decisions have long-lasting effects that are difficult to reverse quickly. The system of checks and balances in many democracies is designed to prevent rapid, extreme changes. You're right that this potential for change can create challenges for long-term governance. However, it's also what allows democracies to adapt and respond to changing circumstances and voter preferences. The key is finding a balance between stability and the flexibility to implement new policies.
Public opinion is a big deal in democratic countries, which makes them very much averse to loss of soldiers lives. Much less so in a dictatorship like Russia. They are losing more in a month than the US lost in years or decades in active campaigns.
That is the point, if you sacrifice the soldiers lives you should do it for something valuable, even using pro-Rus maps Russia is gaining at best something less then 1 square kilometer a day and has 1000+ dead or wooded, I am sorry for you disillusions with USA but in civilized countries nobody would think that 1 soldiers live is worth 5000 square netters of field. Sure probably they are sacrificed not for that land but for buying time for Putin, maybe Trump or other miracle move will save him. So from Putin's POV 1000 soldiers for 1 more day on the throne is a price he can pay, in a democracy this would have ended a long time ago.
By default, from now on Russia just retains the (formerly) Ukrainian lands it controls and integrates them in Russia. There's no deadline to that process, even if Russia stops gaining any land at all while still having to lose some number of people on the front line, basically indefinitely.
I can see that assertion in the Western media that Ukraine has an option to "not agree" to unfavorable terms, such as the ones voiced by Putin. The underlying assumption is that Putin has to disengage eventually, so the Ukraine can just wait it out. But unless some miracle saves the day for Ukraine, Russia is not getting out of these lands at all. After all, Russia is busy paving roads and issuing Russian citizenship in these areas.
I tend to agree with you. If what Putin has done so far doesn't cause a massive internal revolt, then selling what they've gained by now as a victory shouldn't be too hard either.
Attitudes (and apathy) of the Russian population is the most astonishing thing about this whole conflict, and something that should be remembered when dealing with the country in the future, even after Putin.
Russian people begin to realize that 1991 and the following decade was very unfair to their nation and (the current) country, and the amount of humiliation and loss during that period dwarfs the losses of Russo-Ukrainian war so far.
I don't say that fighting this war in the current state was a good decision, far from it. It is also kind of throwing out good money after the bad. Still, I don't see Russians parting with whatever paltry gains they just had in exchange for a lot of their spilled blood.
>Russian people begin to realize that 1991 and the following decade was very unfair to their nation and (the current) country
Post communism was hard for everyone else too, but we (Eastern Europe) do not invent conspiracies about Israel and CIA to explain the corruption and incompetence of our leaders. For our case the politicians could blame the previous guys but in a dictatorship it is hard to blame the previous guys since it means blaming yourself so dictators have no choice then blame soem external force like Israel, CIA,LGBTQ, Satan.
The only country in Eastern Europe in Russia-comparable situation is Hungary, and the humiliation in question is when it had lands with Hungarian people in them taken away from it in Treaty of Trianon. And as you can see it's the least happy camper right now.
That and, outside the EU, another troublemaker that is Serbia.
Russians do not see the existing borders and existing ex-Sovier political layout as fair or in any way beneficial to them.
>Russians do not see the existing borders and existing ex-Sovier political layout as fair or in any way beneficial to them.
And you agree with this Rusky? They do not like that other nations are not longer part of their empire ? Or that the countries East of Berlin are not under their evil influence ?
If yes, then I am sorry for you, maybe the next generation can find peace in the fact that empires and colonialism are history and could focus on their own country, they have resources they only need competent leaders and a better mentality.
Ukraines were dumb to not enter in NATO in EU with Poland, they were too pro Ruzzians now the stupidy costs them, look at Poland and look at Ukraine economy.
Russians do not think that fellow Russians stuck on the other side of a newly drawn state borders are "other nations".
Just as Hungarians do not consider Hungarians from Uzhgorod an other nation; ditto Serbs do not consider Serbs from Respublika Srpska another different nation.
Russians actually care very little about what all of the remaining Eastern Europeans are up to. They aren't of much interest. Why do you need Warsaw if you can fly to Paris non-stop.
Ah, I see . But they had some voting when USSR exploded and they signed some treaties about respecting borders. They changed their minds it seems and laws would not stop a Ruzzian.
Ruzzians are stuck in the past, we no longer start wars to grab lands where some people that speak same language as us live. Not all people that spek Russian are Zeds and want to be part of Ruzzia.
The hypocricy is strong with Zeds since they are doing the opposite in Moldova, they promote a Zetarded idea that Moldova is a different language, that Moldovans are a different nation and that they need to keep their independence and borders (until Putin can invade).
As you can see Romania, Poland or Hungary are not even considering invading Ukraine to grab lands or people, we are living in a different age , we can help our nationals in Ukraine without killing.
But i bet you are aware that the Russian speaking Ukrainians are not the reason Putin grabbed Crimea or the other lands, it is all geo politics and inteligent Zeds admit it.
"Some voting" is not good enough. "Signing some treaties" is also not good enough.
The only way people are going to respect some arrangement is if they believe it's good for them. Russians now believe "some voting" they had forced on them was catastrophic and "some treaties" are fundamentally unfair to them.
The geopolitics of Crimea are questionable. Black Sea Fleet turned out to be glass cannon of questionable utility. It's mostly about popular wishes and not about pragmatics. Before 2014, Putin was swimming in cash yet his approval ratings were Bidenesque.
I bet that Ruscist that controls all your media is the cause Ruzzians blame everyone else then a Putin and Ruzzian oligarchs for the hell in Ruzzia, replace the leadership , fight corruption and I guarantee that people will change, they will become more civilized and more optimists, I seen it in Romania. In regime like in Ruzzia where you can't blame the leader you are brainwashed to find others to blame.
Sure Moscow or St Parkersburg and nice to live if you are a Zed or apolitical and maybe is great if you are an violent abuser since now is almost legal to beat your family if you ensure you do not break their bones. Just ensure your kids do not say soemthing bad about the army or KGB then you might have to pay.
Did you do your mandatory military service or you bribed you way out of it ?
That information is 20 years out of date now, a random small town will be quite livable and often rich in culture and history.
Of course it is not comfortable to live in a country if you oppose the core value of its people. Just go to Ukraine if Zed makes you throw a fit. What holds you.
> The only way people are going to respect some arrangement is if they believe it's good for them. Russians now believe "some voting" they had forced on them was catastrophic and "some treaties" are fundamentally unfair to them.
That is deeply delusional. The Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe were held together only by force. 50 years of Russian domination only led to severe economic stagnation, lack of freedom and prosperity. Half a century of lost progress. Russia does not have an unfairly lost empire. Europeans are not your slaves. You can't even run your own country properly, yet you somehow believe that the Americans should hand you on a silver platter an empire to run. How does that make any sense?
Nothing is going to get better before you get rid of this imperialist delusion.
Even USSR as it existed after WWII was not of your own making, but an unfortunate side-effect of massive American military aid provided under the lend-lease agreement, which allowed to roll over European nations after Nazis had been defeated, and keep them hostage for half a century.
Germans managed to snap out of their delusions. 30 years after Nazis brought them to a similar total collapse, Germans did not have a Gestapo officer as their president, did not decorate official events with swastikas, did not reurgitate Nazi propaganda, did not complain how the entire world as wronged them, did not demand the US to cut ties with the UK and France, and did not wage genocidal wars against neighbors in an attempt to reach the 1942 extent of Germany. Instead, 30 years later, they had become the cornerstone of pan-European cooperation towards peace, liberty and prosperity.
If anything, the mistake made in 1990s was not making Russians face the consequences of their actions to the same extent Germans were forced to and thus Russians have not internalized that the 1990s were the result of their own actions. Are you not old enough to remember the depth of Soviet mismanagement and the ножки Буша that saved the country from starvation? But KGB and CPSU leaders were not hanged, apprachiks were not banned from public life, nuclear weapons were not taken away and the country was not demilitarized, Russian imperialism and Soviet ideology were not rooted out in favor of universal humanist values.
Ironically, it looks like those who do not learn from history are indeed doomed to repeat it. Putin has put the country on the path of reliving the 1990s, this time with much less international sympathy. Do they grow chicken in North Korea?
Russians genuinely do not care about Eastern Europeans. Last time I've checked, the only Eastern Europeans living in Crimea were Russians, with some Crimean Tatars and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Ditto for the "new territories" including the Donbass.
Actually, same for Kiev (add some Jewish minority in Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk). So you do not have anything to do with it.
The rest of advise is unwanted. It looks like Russia is not going to collapse in any of the modes you have described, and it's going to hold whatever lands it is holding, and that is how it's going to be.
Dude, read Ruzzian media. Kremlin always threatens us, those idiots are expert linguists, historians and they want us to do whatever they want. Not sure why they hate we entered NATO to defend ourselves if they do not plan to attack, the nukes still work so there is no chance Eastern Europe invades Ruzzia to liberate your from Putin, you are stuck with him.
> Russians genuinely do not care about Eastern Europeans.
That's not what actions say. Constant economic, political and social sabotage since the end of USSR, combined with hostile rhetorics from popular slogans like "The masters will be back!" to official demands to kick Eastern Europe out of NATO, leave little doubt. There is nothing people in Eastern Europe wouldn't like more than the luxury to focus on domestic issues and pretend that Russia doesn't exist at all, but Russian actions force us to divert considerable amount of resources towards ensuring that you stay where you are. Russia is the only reason why we need to have an army at all. Were Russia a normal country like Germany or Spain, we could disband the army tomorrow.
> It looks like Russia is not going to collapse in any of the modes you have described, and it's going to hold whatever lands it is holding, and that is how it's going to be.
Total delusion. Russian economy is already a dead man walking. The financial blockade keeps getting worse, and even the people from your central bank are saying: "Потому что [если] не будет нормальных расчетов за продукцию по внешнеэкономической деятельности, для нашей и экспортно, и импортно зависимой страны это просто все, это погибель". You can't run a modern country on Dogecoin or "import substitutions" hammered together by some Vanyas, that much is clear to everyone. This won't end in any other way than the previous time.
Likewise, Crimea is already lost. Every air defense system you set up there gets blown up by Ukrainians using weapons that cost a tiny fraction of their target. Without air defense, the remaining forces are sitting ducks. Russian ground forces will eventually either get destroyed, or pull out like they did from Kherson to save what's left. This is purely a matter of time. The navy has already abandoned Crimea.
Not to mention Eastern Ukraine. 10 000 Russians die every month just to keep the frontline where it is, and twice as many get wounded or crippled for life. It will only get worse as Soviet era stocks deplete and get replaced with older and older junk with every passing month while Ukraine keeps getting better and better new production as western arms factories gear up. At the start of the war, European factories were producing large caliber artillery ammo in batches of tens of thousands. This year they will produce over a million units, up to three million next year, going as far as it needs to go.
I wonder when will you finally wake up to the reality that Putin blundered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sell oil and gas while it still has any value, and use that flow of money to bring Russia to European level of prosperity. Gazprom is now in the red while Germany has produced 2/3 of all electricity this year from renewables. The window of opportunity is closing. Every Kinzhal blown up by Patriots somewhere in the skies over Ukraine costs as much as a modern schoolhouse, but instead of engaging in international trade and investing in schools that produce value for decades to come, you only get a loud bang. Putin is destroying your opportunity for a better life. Why do you choose to accept that?
> Russians don't care and don't think in such terms.
That's a lie and you know it. Variations of it like "We can show it again!" (that is, rape our way to Berlin) are in very widespread use among the Russian public and represent exactly the way most Russians think. Revanchism is the cornerstone of Putin's Russia, and that is also clearly present in your constant complaining how Russia has been humiliated and unfairly treated, and how it is entitled to anything more than it currently has, while the truth is that western nations spent a lot of money to relieve the humanitarian disaster that came from your own long-term mismanagement that you now try to pin on the Americans. You are - without any shame - biting the hand that fed you.
As you can see, I am polite to you and you use that opportunity to invoke the most grave insults you can think of.
Russians did indeed win World War Two as a part of victorious Allied coalition. The "raped their way to Berlin" is represents a completely undeserved slur. The German army did not consist of fertile women but of seasoned and well-armed German males who invaded Russia previously (under Meth as we've just learned) and they had to be killed first.
The Germany after the atrocities that they have done was at complete mercy of winners, who in their wisdom and kindness has chosen to spare it. We didn't have to.
The only way Russians may care about Eastern Europe is extinguishing the sources of such unpleasant noises.
> The "raped their way to Berlin" is represents a completely undeserved slur.
It does not. The war memorial that Russians erected in central Berlin is still colloquially known as "the tomb of the unknown rapist". The number of people raped by Soviet forces is estimated between 1 and 2 million, among them many well-known people, such as the wife of Helmut Kohl, raped when she was 12. At least 100 000 people were raped in Berlin alone, aged "from 8 to 80", as one Russian war correspondent put it, and often died in the process due to blood loss, were murdered or committed suicide thereafter. Victims were not only German civilians, but also from Polish, Belarussian, Ukrainian and other nationalities who had been brought to Germany as slave labor. War correspondents like Vasily Grossman have recorded vivid descriptions of the gang rapes and other depravity; I believe it was Grossman who described a German village - whatever house he looked into, each had women on beds, dead, with dried pools of blood between legs.
And the typical response from Russians is that of yours: how they should be thankful that you didn't rape even more. You have the audacity to call it kindness.
And of course, anyone who dares to remind of this is making "unpleasant noises" and should be "extinguished". We can all see in Ukraine what that means. Murder, torture and systematic rape once again. A lot of elderly people in Europe are disturbed more than the rest by reports of Russian conduct in Ukraine because they remember it from their own youth. Despite their limited income, they are some of the most generous sponsors of aid to Ukraine.
Hey, can you point to some live instances for these fun quotes ("The masters will be back!", "We can show it again!")? Particularly from anyone public and notable? Original Russian is fine; no need to translate.
It is not free for Putin to keep this land, drones will fly and kill his men , destroy his refineries, infrastructure etc. Gazprom has giant loses for the first time, Putin also needs to protect himself from the oligarchs that he screwed over with his imperialistic dreams. Ruzzia's economy is not doing well, if you notice in all the demands for peace Putin includes "please, please remove the sanctions". From what I see onlyne Zeds fray to God that Trump will save their SMO from failure, hopefully there are still soem repuplicans with brains around to prevent any truly zetarded decision.
Well, the conclusion of this study appears to be that it doesn't. Or rather, if I'm reading this right, they're saying the increase in deaths due to skin cancer is just a statistical artifact: more women in the sun exposure group died of skin cancer, not necessarily because the sun caused the skin cancer, but because the women who stayed indoors died of cardiovascular disease instead.
My favorite quip regarding this statistical effect is the observation that the cyanide diet is very effective at reducing deaths due to cardiovascular disease (cyanide kills you much faster, so winds up hogging all the credit).
To avoid the mistake, insist on seeing all cause mortality numbers.
except the reality for the vast number of people isn't about needing to moderate, it's about getting outside period, instead of glued to their devices inside
you can look at the epidemic of myopia as a related indicator that kids especially are not outside enough
so this whole safetyism nagging about melanoma is ridiculous when they can just go to regular dermatologist screenings and avoid sunburns
Nuclear has its role to play when the weather isn't windy or sunny, at least until storage technology gets good enough. Especially in Northern parts of the world it's a big deal, because during winters solar is pretty useless.
Getting rid of coal (and natural gas, to lesser extent) should happen ASAP, and nuclear can be a part of the solution for the transition period.
Russians do plenty of jamming that expands beyond their borders in the Baltic, either on purpose or just as a spillover as they don't care. Before Finland joined NATO they used to also violate our airspace on frequent basis, but since then that has stopped.
> Before Finland joined NATO they used to also violate our airspace on frequent basis, but since then that has stopped.
Probably temporarily. They violate the Estonian airspace on a regular basis with military planes, with their responders turned off. The NATO planes stationed in Estonia then take off and go see them off.
They violated NATO airspace a lot with their "Bear" nuclear-capable bombers until very recently. Not sure if it's still happening. It was so frequent that it didn't make the news every time.
The idea that russians are doing these things 'by accident' ain't even funny, just dangerously naive and nobody from intelligence community thinks so. They know damn well what they do and its well planned and even heroic in some childish fashion in their f*cked up mindset.
They are at war with west (more Europe than US though) for solid 2 decades straight, just that they started to use military only in last decade, but were subverting public opinions in usual command & conquer strategy for much longer (riling western and former soviet populations against EU and Nato, supporting ultra-right groups, spreading false rumors ie on covid in us vs them psi-ops).
Whatever politicians on their side say is meaningless or diversion and definitely just wasted time, just look at actions alone.
Have there actually been advances in robotics that could make them mainstream, or is the progress still painfully slow? I think robotics would be the next logical step after AI hype, but I'm having hard time figuring out which company will be the next Nvidia there.
We have made enormous jumps with transformer models (language models being integrated in the stack, and vision language models (VLM), and even vision language action models (VLA)). Pair this with recent advances in reinforcement learning and we can do things we couldn't do a few years ago; the whole space is fascinating!
...but we're nowhere near usable robotics in complex human environments for complex multistage tasks yet. It's an incredibly difficult problem where we still don't have the hardware, the software, or the sensors for it. The other thing to keep in mind is that since it's so expensive and difficult to do, there's no marketplace yet driving significant advances like we had with phones to hone in on such efficient amazing pieces of tech across the industry.
I wrote a bit about where we're at with the research last year; it's a bit out of date with even cooler advancements, which is why I'm working on another article in the same vein now.
I also did a project (Master's thesis) integrating an LLM into a ROS2 stack as a high level action planner, specifically to prove that LLMs have contextual understanding of the real world that can benefit planning missions.
"In 2023, former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato said that France downed the plane while targeting a Libyan military jet in an attempt to kill Muammar Gaddafi. Amato said that Italy tipped off Libya about the planned assassination and consequently Gaddafi did not board the Libyan military jet"
To be honest, this theory of mistaken identity sounds much more plausible than anybody shooting down (or bombing) a random passenger plane flying an Italian domestic flight on purpose. Whether the presumably Libyan plane they actually targeted was transporting nuclear material or Gaddafi, I have no idea. Shame on them anyway for covering it up.