Relevant XKCD

TIL.

For purposes of this post though, RFC 3339 and ISO8601 are identical. Dates in the format YYYY-MM-DD, so 2024-08-29 is both RFC3339 and ISO8601 compliant.

Not an expert, just spent around 2 minutes looking at https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/

What? Mein Kampf has dislodged Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

Removed by mod

I’ve been half expecting something like this for a bit. I hadn’t realized about redeployment from the Gaza borders, but it’s just one part of this bigger problem that Netanyahu was making.

Hamas was always going to “Hamas” as it were. I don’t believe there ever can be peace with Hamas (as per Hamas’ own constitution and public statements) but Israel absolutely can increase or decrease the amount of support Hamas can generate. Netanyahu has been more focused on his personal political fortunes rather than the long term health of Israel.

I do think normalizing relations with the surrounding Arab countries is necessary, and Netanyahu has made some progress in this regard, but in the meantime he’s been exploiting the retaliation cycle for short term gain back home.

Correct, it is a spending goal, not a requirement. Or at most a soft requirement. Still, my point still stands, every NATO member on the “frontier” with Russia is meeting or exceeding that 2% goal. They are pulling their own weight. At least from what I recall, the three Baltic nations and Poland are all above the 2% GDP target, and I believe Finland, Romania, and Hungary are or will be as well.

The US and Trumps criticism of “freeloaders” could be seen to apply, but to the countries that aren’t anywhere near the frontlines. I think Luxembourg is less than 1% GDP of spending on military, and Canada is around 1.5%. Trumps criticism, if interpreted generously could be taken to mean that the US wouldn’t help Belgium, but if Belgium is invaded, there’s something big going wrong.

Realistically, Trump’s weak assertions would seem to signal that he doesn’t care if Latvia is pulling its weight, because it’s a small country and small countries deserve to be get eaten by bigger countries. This uncertainty is what would seem to have rattled European NATO countries and reignited the effort for a collective EU defence framework.

The other thing that bugs me with Americans whinging about “NATO freeloaders” is that Article 5, the collective defence clause, has been invoked once in the entire history of NATO. By the US after 9/11. And everyone stepped up. The US can complain about Canada’s military spending, but Canadian soldiers that were fighting and dying alongside the Americans in Afghanistan. It’s a bit rich coming from Trump, bone-spurs himself, that other NATO countries aren’t pulling their own weight.

I’m pretty sure that most of the solid anti-war protestors would expect Ukraine to just accept Russian territorial demands, up to and including complete annexation.

It turns into a reductio ad absurdum pretty quickly though. Putin didn’t seem to return Crimea or the occupied regions of Donbass and Luhansk when asked politely. Not even when asked sternly. Indeed, it would seem that when all he faced was stern disapproval he decided to come back for more.

There is no doubt in my mind that supporting Ukraine now is stopping more Russian aggression later. Besides, Putin can end this war any time. Just go back to the original borders. The only reason not to is his yearning for Imperial glory. The irony being that many of these anti-war protestors would probably proclaim themselves anti-colonialists.

It’s diplomacy though. Some things are better said behind closed doors as it were.

Going back to Cold War brinksmanship, the point of NATO was to loudly say that you were ride-or-die, go-to-the-wall with all your NATO homies. It made the risk of messing with NATO countries too high, likewise with the Warsaw Pact.

Now would all NATO allies go all in? 100%, all the way? Who can say with certainty. Still, so far there’s only been one US president who has said… it depends. For the record, Trump walked that back, but it certainly got a lot of NATO countries closer to Russia to quickly point out that they were over the NATO 2% GDP commitment.

Still, Article 5 has been invoked once in NATO’s history, and it was by the US. It’s why Canada was in Kandahar, Netherlands in Helmand, etc. Too my recollection, every single NATO country participated in Afghanistan at the US’s request.

Also, every NATO country on the frontier (as it were) is well over the NATO 2% GDP minimum. The three Baltic countries, Poland, the UK and the US have been over the 2% GDP minimum for a while. Finland is already well past that before joining, and I believe several more countries will hit the goal in 2023.

Trump’s presidency certainly showed that the US is one election away from balking. I’m pretty sure that’s Putin’s plan in Ukraine now.

Trump just wanted everyone to spend more on the military. He wasn’t a threat to nato.

Not US-ian, so I’m going to have to disagree hard. Back in 2016 and 2017 he called NATO “obsolete”, although he later changed his mind and said it was “no longer obsolete”, as well as taking a while to affirm US support for Article 5, and even saying “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes,” when asked if the US would defend the Baltic NATO countries.

Now you could argue that he was using this to push the NATO defence spending requirements, which is a fair critique, but it sent a pretty clear message that under his presidency, the US honouring article 5 was conditional. This wasn’t just a message to the other NATO members; it was a message to Putin as well whether intentional or not.

I believe that the silver lining of Trump’s presidency is now being felt as Europe is seriously taking it’s ability to autonomously defend itself seriously. This is probably why Petr Pavl is musing that it may be necessary to go beyond NATO’s 2% spending targets, because Trump could get elected again, or someone like Trump, and there could always be more conditions added to US NATO commitments.

My understanding is that a reporter was going to break the story. The evidence wasn’t just from Canadian intelligence either.

I understood it as coal was phased in as nuclear was phased out. The thing that astounds me still though is how recent the last 3 were shut down.

If only there was some means of replacing all that coal with a non-carbon intensive source of energy that isn’t dependant on the weather…

Has anyone heard of such a technology?

Sarcasm aside, that Germany shut down their last two nuclear reactors so recently and carried through is astounding. The excuses are mind-boggling. They’re old? Refurbishing is cheaper and faster than new built. They need re-certification? Then do it.

This was my impression. This was a rushed propaganda mission for prestige using existing material.

Still, I’m sure there would have been some useful science done, but the main point of the mission was that Putin’s regime would have been able to crow about how great Russia is doing.

Of course, if it had succeeded, it might have spurred some competitive spirit in other space powers.

Pretty much. At this stage, I don’t want anyone to feel left out, but after a certain point, trying to define more points on the spectrum of human gender expression and sexuality gets into diminishing returns. Even with the traditional colours of the rainbow, where does blue end and indigo begin? The labels exist to make it easier for people to talk about things and describe the world around us. Unless there is some specific nuance someone is trying to capture, LGBTQ+ should get the point across with the Q and the +. Technically, I think you could get the point across in most use cases with something more succinct than that, but that seems to be what has been established.

Still, I can totally get that someone can feel left out being lumped into the +, so individual use will and should vary. I still rail against the inefficiencies of common language though. The concept is simple, people who aren’t in the big main hetero & cis sections of the spectrum.

Well, if Her Majesty Roman Dildo Romana Didulo I, Queen of Canada, isn’t endorsing it, must be fake gnus.

The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in the nineties. But we had lots of time then, so no rush…

Back when I was young and naive I figured the Kyoto Protocol would work. We had lots of time then. The climate change is a hoax thing didn’t really take off until the early aughts as I recall.

I will do cluster munitions. I used to, but I will, too.

Just need to image-meme up a picture of Master-Stragetarian Putin.

This is the quality post that I love getting these discussions. Thanks for the info!

I think there has to be separate security guarantees before a successful NATO application process could resolve. Finland and now Sweden^1 took over a year to become full NATO members. A lot can happen in a year.

Depending on the eventual outcome of the Russian invasion, I have trouble imagining a Russia that wouldn’t engage in any shenanigans during the application process.

I mostly agree with you, but I think this is a problem that might have a solution. Maybe as a precursor, seperate bilateral mutual defense pacts. It’s a mess, but I can’t imagine Ukraine leaving itself for Russian invasion 2, Electric Boogaloo in another 10 years. Smarter diplomats than me are probably already coming up with plans, contingency plans, and counter plans.