General Politics Discussion (IX) [ARCHIVED] • Page 1152

Yeah in an ideal world where an unbiased government program or something is exploring that option I would agree but realistically we’d be putting our trust in the hands of the plastics industry and that isn’t something I can get behind. It’s like carbon capture, the idea sounds great but then you look at who’s making the promises which is the old oil and gas giants and it pretty easily becomes obvious they’re using these unproven technologies to further entrench fossil fuels. But it sure does sound good if you don’t know the details.

 

Separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine ordered the evacuation of it's citizens to Russia claiming a "Ukrainian invasion is imminent", and hours later the head of Donbass security's car exploded.

Damn is shit really popping off?

 

The San Francisco school board recall mentioned in that Axios piece about how tHe LeFt Is RuInInG tHe DeMs is actually a pretty interesting situation. Spoiler alert: it's not the Squad's fault lol

Editorial: No, San Francisco’s school board recall wasn’t a rejection of progressive politics

 

Should ask him if Brandon is his dog's name

 

“I too love Brandon Boyd of Incubus fame”

 

Do I actually listen to a Rogan podcast now that he brought back on Michael Osterholm? Actually interested to see what kind of trainwreck that is or if Joe even fights back against him.

This kind of goes along with this, color me not surprised.

 

Hang in there. It's rough. I had a similar experience. Military till 23, took a year off, then went to college (thankfully GI Bill covered that). Graduated at 29. We relocated and the impression I had of IT work was I would be able to walk into any number of companies for a job after graduation. It didn't help having an inflated ego at the time from everyone telling me how awesome I was in college (eye roll). Over 200+ applications with cover letters and an MIT-formatted resume led to not even a single interview. Same entry-level jobs with "years of experience" required. Ended up getting a position for way less money than I deserved, but it got my foot in the door and led to my current job (which I heard about and was referred from a friend). I had to learn the hard way that my field is literally all about who you know and building professional connections in order to increase your chances of getting a position. The system is fucked, but once you're in, you should be alright. I hope things turn around for you soon.

 

Kim Potter got 24 months. I think the judge wanted to put her on probation but knew that with the publicity of the case she had to give her *some* time. That’s a really big departure though, like nearly 1/4 of the presumptive guideline sentence

 

fucking ridiculous that a white cop can murder a guy at a traffic stop and get less time than other people get for selling weed.

 

tell him to grow up and just say fuck Joe Biden. It’s very easy to say!

 

wish brandon would just forgive my student loans

 

Latest from FX re: Ukraine (2/17)

UKRAINE
After what seemed like a possible window for deescalation earlier this week, tensions over a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine have spiked again, not coincidentally alongside alarmist rhetoric from Western governments. In fairness, the biggest source of escalation on Thursday was decidedly not rhetorical and came in the form of new artillery fire along the frozen front line in eastern Ukraine’s separatist Donbas region. Full details about whatever actually happened are difficult to ascertain, in part because each side is accusing the other of having been the aggressor. But indications are that Thursday’s activity went beyond the typical isolated ceasefire violations that occur with some regularity in Donbas.

What is known is that artillery fire hit the town of Stanytsia-Luhanska, striking among other things a kindergarten. At least three people (all adults) were wounded in the incident, but that was only one of several alleged attacks. Kyiv says it has evidence of no fewer than 34 ceasefire violations by the rebels, while the rebels claim that pro-government forces have carried out multiple attacks against them over the past day. The British government declared that the kindergarten strike was the long-awaited “false flag” operation that Moscow would use to justify an invasion, though no invasion seems to be forthcoming.

The US government and NATO continue to insist that Russian talk of pulling military units back from the Ukrainian border earlier this week was all a pack of lies, claiming that there’s been no evidence of any actual withdrawal in the two days since said talk hit the media. Joe Biden told reporters on Thursday that he expects Russia to invade Ukraine “in the next several days,” which is vaguer than “next Wednesday at 8 AM local time” but still somewhat specific. He sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken to New York for an unscheduled appearance at the UN Security Council, where Blinken pushed the “false flag” scenario. It’s unclear to me why the Biden administration believes Russia intends to fabricate a justification for invading instead of just invading, or why it seems to believe that telling everyone about that alleged intention at every opportunity is going to stop the Russians from doing it anyway, but this is probably why I don’t make the big bucks.

The Russians, for their part, insist that they have in fact sent some of their forces back to base and say that a full withdrawal will take time to complete. This is reasonable on its face but is also something you’d say if you’d just announced a withdrawal that you had no intention of actually carrying out. So it’s hard to know how much stock to put in it. Me personally, I’d give it a week or so before I started panicking again, but the Biden administration seems to think that this constant state of panic is actually constricting Russia’s military options—it’s also decimating the Ukrainian economy, but I guess that’s a secondary concern—so I don’t expect they’ll be willing to take any time off. Again, this is why I don’t make the big bucks.

 

i'm so sorry to be the one to tell you that Incubus cannot afford to do that

 

The US section from yesterday is also relevant:

UNITED STATES
Finally, at Responsible Statecraft, retired foreign service officer Elisabeth Brocking suggests looking to the past for a solution to the current crisis in Eastern Europe:

This crisis might have been averted via a now-forgotten arms control mechanism: the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. CFE, as I have written previously, was a masterpiece of arms control. Born of Cold War fears of a massive Soviet-led invasion of Western Europe, the treaty addressed both the Warsaw Pact’s advantage in force numbers and NATO’s edge in sophisticated weaponry.

Negotiated as a bloc-to-bloc agreement between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the treaty limited key categories of equipment needed to mount large-scale attacks and established an aggressive inspection regime. CFE survived the collapse of the Pact and the emergence of successor states to the USSR, bringing most of them into the treaty’s structure while reducing weapons, providing extensive transparency regarding both holdings and military exercises, and establishing channels of communication.

However, NATO expansion upset key treaty provisions. Moscow pressed for revisions reflecting new realities, and treaty parties agreed in 1999 to an Adapted CFE, known as ACFE. NATO states, unfortunately, dragged their feet for years on ratifications by raising objections to some Russian military deployments (which Russia either withdrew or had authorized by the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe), continuing to expand the alliance at a rapid rate, and gaining the advantage of loopholes in the original agreement to potentially station forces in the Baltic states much closer to the Russian border.

Moscow withdrew from the CFE in 2007 in response to that dithering by NATO members. Brocking contends that CFE offers a model for structuring European security in a way that could avoid future scenarios like the one playing out right now around Ukraine. Of course if the current situation ends in a shooting war, nobody is going to be in much of a mood to negotiate anything.

 

Kim Potter was only sentenced to 2 years in prison for the murder of Daunte Wright!? Does that not seem extremely low to anyone else?