> and lose the very thing that keeps the US top dog. You're implying that political shifts could happen to shift _anything_.
It was the USD as reserve currency that enabled the US to fund it's military to a point that should have bankrupted the US. The US military hasn't won a war outside the Americas since WW2.
With a budget half or a quarter of the current, the US would remain secure behind two oceans. I do agree that politically the military budget will remain high due to the relationship between the MIC and US government.
> The US military hasn't won a war outside the Americas since WW2.
The Gulf War and the war with ISIS. But yes, lots of bad results in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
> With a budget half or a quarter of the current, the US would remain secure behind two oceans. I do agree that politically the military budget will remain high due to the relationship between the MIC and US government.
The US can't be a self-sufficient island. It's not even close to plausible. Also, people do care about freedom for others everywhere; it's not just Americans who deserve it.
I didn't consider dimension collapsing bombs realistic either. It is the objects sped up to a fraction of light speed which were more scary. The cylons carpet bombed the planet with nuclear bombs which was plausible.
Nuclear carpet bombing is only sensible for short-range attacks. On longer ranges, fast projectiles are the way to go, because you need to accelerate your weapon anyways. And by just putting all the energy and resources into acceleration, you do recycle the motion energy as destructive energy.
In 2010 nothing noteworthy (politically) happened in Cambodia. The most democratic elections were run by UNTAC in 1991. There were a few USAID projects that did try to help defeat CPP since then.
By default it re-renders on each event. This isn't often on mobile apps, but moving a mouse across a desktop app triggers multiple vents. There is a function call to request a re-render if you want not to wait for an event.
So if it's just an idle visible application, does it not render at all because there are no events? Or am I right that there's some idle redrawing going on
With eframe, it does not re-render when idle, no. You need to have another thread that forces it to redraw on your own schedule. It will also redraw when an event occurs (mouse movement, keyboard presses, interacting with the application in general.)
Almost all of US debt is internal. Social security and the federal reserve are the two biggest holders. Only 25% is in other countries, and the largest single other country is Japan at 3%.
If there is a secret Trump plan to devalue the dollar and force us treasury holders to accept cheaper longer term debt, the biggest plenary will be to social security.
(Though on the last numbers I saw had the UK and China with far more similar amounts of holdings.$
Calling T-bills debt is only half the picture. They function more like dollars, whose value can be deflated or increased after issuance merely by changing interest rates.
From the Russian perspective, the US promised not to expand NATO eastwards in return for allowing German unification. While Russia was weak, NATO ignored the promise, but miscalculated after Russia strengthened.
Ultimately, you need to understand the Russia reasons, and they had been threatening war since 2008 when Bush announced Ukraine could become a NATO member.
If you rely on Western sources to interpreted Eastern motives, you end up with rubbish like "they hate us for our freedoms".
It is a willful distortion of the so-called 2+4 Treaty from 1990, in which the two German states and the four occupying powers negotiated the terms of reunification. Ultimately, they agreed that only West German military forces would enter East Germany until the withdrawal of Soviet troops, which was to be completed by the end of 1994 at the latest. This is stipulated in Article 4 and Article 5 of the treaty: https://web.archive.org/web/20050222182358/https://usa.usemb...
Great point. Also "because of our love of jesus christ" has been thrown at me a few times when I'm trying to provide more nuanced arguments for why people in other countries might not favor us.
Which countries are you referring to? I know from personal experience everyone in Cambodia and Afghanistan owns a mobile phone with internet access. They might not have a computer or reliable power, but they have Facebook accounts. Rest of ASEAN has excellent coverage as well, and I've heard Africa is similar
I saw many projects while working in Cambodia, including One-Laptop-Per-Child, projects designed to share market information with farmers, etc and none made an impact like mobile phones.
One project that was semi-successful were USAID sponsored internet cafes that were supposed to enable access to political information just before an election. The USAID staff were annoyed to find most Cambodians used them for international VoIP calls.
Never assume you know better than the end users what they want from the internet. Now mobile companies move in so fast to conflict countries (from my experience in Afghanistan and Iraq), internet access is up there with electricity on the list of requirements.
Nail on the head! Glad to hear this in between the technical tangents here in the comments. Also, what is the OLPC XO image doing on that page? Is this project related?
It was the USD as reserve currency that enabled the US to fund it's military to a point that should have bankrupted the US. The US military hasn't won a war outside the Americas since WW2.
With a budget half or a quarter of the current, the US would remain secure behind two oceans. I do agree that politically the military budget will remain high due to the relationship between the MIC and US government.