yeah, this is exactly it. all the arguments kind of boil down to
"well how about if the government does illegal or evil stuff?"
its very similar to arguments about the second ammendment. But laws and rules shouldnt be structured around expecting a future moment where the government isnt serving the people. At that moment the rules already dont matter
China as the enemy is a fabricated narrative, bc culturally we seem to have a need to have another cold war, we need a "bad guy"
in reality theyre just economic rivals. But then again so are the EU.
in terms of zone of political influence the competition isnt anything crazy (except for the poor taiwanese caught in the middle) and there is no clash of political ideaologies
In my experience Chinese in China don't typically see the US as an enemy. Its a weird framing for them
>"The top uniformed soldier in China, chairman of China's Central Military Commission, stated that war with the United States is inevitable," Coffman said. "That is the first time China has made that statement publicly."
Russia is not an active economic rival. If they weren't actively attacking neighbors and interfere with governments around the world they would be basically irrelevant. I think the situation is radically different from China. Russia seems to have intentionally positioned themselves as enemies b.c it's part of their identity and the government's attempt to retain some relevance on the international stage
I was commenting more on:
>China as the enemy is a fabricated narrative, bc culturally we seem to have a need to have another cold war, we need a "bad guy"
Than the economic rival aspect.
Because that was exactly what the Democratic party narrative was in 2012, with similar views echoed in Europe.
>Romney's claim drew a memorable slam from Obama during a presidential debate: "The 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back," Obama said, seeking to paint Romney as out of touch on a key foreign policy issue.
>Albright, who similarly criticized Romney in 2012, said she'd "underestimated" Russia back then.
>The EU and Russia are not only neighbours but strategic partners who cooperate on a wide range of bilateral and global challenges, based on joint commitments and shared interests.
>In 2014, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its military intervention in eastern Ukraine following Ukraine’s intention to sign an Association Agreement (AA) with the European Union caught the EU by surprise.
Are you trying to say there is a parallel in that the right voices read the tea leaves correctly and knew that Russia was going to be a crazy rogue state? And that similarly, there are signs China is going to get super belligerent in the future?
I would first say that what happened with Russia, at least to me, did not seem inevitable even with hindsight. I don't think Romney had some keen foresight - more like a lucky guess.
I also don't really see the same happening with China, though it's of course possible. A sudden economic downturn could trigger a need for an external enemy and a conflict.
But a military conflict between the US and China just seems like an absurd fantasy. It'd how you end up with a nuclear war and the death of millions. I don't think the Chinese secretly want this in the long run. They want peace and more business and more wealth
I don't think Romney had some keen foresight either, he just saw the tension that existed between Russia and their neighbors and didn't take the rose tinted one world, everything is going to work out view.
What you term 'crazy rogue state' is just countries looking at their own self interests.
India and Pakistan have been fighting. Thailand and Cambodia have been fighting. Which of those are rogue?
China has made large territory claims in the ocean and is in conflict with it's neighbors over that.
Maybe they are closer to being a rogue state than you think.
>> "The top uniformed soldier in China, chairman of China's Central Military Commission, stated that war with the United States is inevitable," Coffman said.
Do we have something better than some English-language hearsay from five years ago? I tried looking for more on this and found nothing.
I did discover that Xu Qiliang died last June. I doubt he's going to have much influence going forward.
5 years ago is not that long ago and we were at the start of the Biden administration then. With Trump back in office are relationships better or more inflamed?
>I did discover that Xu Qiliang died last June. I doubt he's going to have much influence going forward.
Unelected leadership in top positions are generally not just pushing their own agenda, especially in autocratic governments. Any speech or statement is highly considered and controlled, that statement should be taken as policy unless it is retracted.
Just that Express link already contradicts the quote from Coffman:
> General Xu Qiliang, China’s second in command of the armed forces after President Xi Jinping, said an increase in military spending is need[ed] to counter the ‘Thucydides Trap’.
> Maj. Gen. Richard Coffman, director of the US Army's Next Generation Combat Vehicle Cross Functional Team, saw the remarks as a clear admission war was “inevitable”.
> He said: “The top uniformed soldier in China, chairman of China's Central Military Commission, stated that war with the United States is inevitable.
Allow me to suggest that "this a way to counter the Thucydides trap" cannot actually be paraphrased as "war is inevitable".
Here is the Google Translate rendition of the response. I'll reply to myself with the original Chinese LLM response.
There are pointers here toward finding an official transcript, but the LLM summary tends to suggest it wouldn't be worth the effort, barring some indication that Richard Coffman knew what he was talking about.
Anyway:
-----
Comrade Xu Qiliang, as a leader of the Party and the state, has delivered important remarks on international relations and strategic security on multiple occasions. Regarding the "Thucydides Trap" you mentioned, our verification confirms that in 2021, he did address his views on the United States and great power competition in relevant meetings or speeches. The following are the core points compiled from publicly available reports (the specific wording should be based on official releases):
Key points of Comrade Xu Qiliang's remarks on the United States and the "Thucydides Trap" in 2021:
He pointed out that the current international strategic landscape is undergoing profound changes. The United States and other Western countries are clinging to Cold War thinking, pursuing unilateralism and hegemonism, deliberately creating ideological confrontation and geopolitical competition, and attempting to contain and suppress China's development through means such as the "Indo-Pacific Strategy." Essentially, this is imposing the outdated logic of the "Thucydides Trap" on great power relations, which is a misinterpretation of historical laws and a reversal of the trend of the times.
He emphasized that China has always adhered to the path of peaceful development and firmly pursued a defensive national defense policy. China has no intention of engaging in a zero-sum game of "a rising power inevitably challenges the established power" with the United States. As the world's two largest economies and permanent members of the UN Security Council, cooperation between China and the US benefits both sides, while confrontation harms both. They should abandon confrontational thinking, respect each other's core interests and major concerns, manage differences and promote cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit, and jointly safeguard world peace, stability, and prosperity.
He also pointed out that the "Thucydides Trap" is not historically inevitable. The key lies in whether great powers can transcend the logic of "a rising power inevitably challenges the established power," establish correct perceptions, and build a new type of international relations. China is willing to work with the United States to promote the building of a China-US relationship that is non-confrontational, mutually respectful, and mutually beneficial, providing new ideas for resolving the "Thucydides Trap."
Note:
The above content is a summary based on publicly available reports. The specific original text should be based on the full text of the speeches published by official media such as Xinhua News Agency and the People's Liberation Army Daily. To access the complete speech, it is recommended to obtain authoritative information through the following channels:
* Visit the China Military Online website (http://www.81.cn) or the Ministry of National Defense website (http://www.mod.gov.cn) and search for relevant meeting reports from 2021;
* Consult Volume 4 of "Xi Jinping on Governance of China" and news releases from the National People's Congress, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and important military meetings of that year;
* Follow special reports from central media outlets such as Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily.
For further verification, please provide more specific meeting context (such as the National People's Congress PLA delegation meeting, the Central Military Commission enlarged meeting, etc.) to facilitate a more precise search.
FWIW, Xu Qiliang said that war with the United States is inevitable because of the "Thucydides Trap", the theory that an incumbent power is not going to accept the rise of a competing power. In that case, the war would be started by the current ruling power, not by the rising power. I.e., by the US.
In 2014, Xi Jinping had already said "China fully understands that we need a peaceful and stable internal and external environment to develop ourselves. We all need to work together to avoid the Thucydides trap - destructive tensions between an emerging power and established powers … Our aim is to foster a new model of major country relations."
China kind of avoided the Thicydides trap already it looks like. Trump’s national security strategy document has indicated that the US is going to shore up around the Americas instead of doing the global hegemony strategy. And there have been statements made by US military people (Hegseth maybe) indicating that the US can’t militarily take on China near their coast anymore.
Okay they have a small limited amount of border disputes that are wrapped up in their nationalism. But they're not instigating coupe-detats is other countries to get favorable regimes, or significantly militarily meddling in other regions of the world to get favorable outcomes.
I'd say on the whole, given their size, military strength and economic connections, they've been remarkably restrained - borderline isolationist - when it comes to international interference. I don't see how they're a danger to democracy outside of their own borders - with the exception of maybe troll farms that are trying to shape cultural narratives
It doesn't matter what your experience with ordinary Chinese are. China is not a democracy, they are a fascist dictatorship. Only the senior party officials' opinion matters and they clearly behave as though they see the US as an adversary.
Just from reading the abstract, it feels like the authors didn't even attempt at trying to be objective. It hard to take what they're saying seriously when the language is so loaded and full of judgments. The kind of language you'd expect in an Op-Ed and not a research paper
I think you may be confused.
This is not a research paper, it's an op-ed in a law journal.
SSRN is where most draft law review/journal articles are published, which may be the source of confusion.
For most other fields, it is a source of draft/published science papers, but for law, it's pretty much any kind of article that is going to show up in a law review/journal.
Ah okay, thanks for explaining it! Just based on the name, journal and metadata it seemed like a research paper.. and I was honestly a bit surprised. But I obviously don't publish law research :))
From what you're saying it seems that for an insider this is clear. I guess that makes more sense then
It's also an submission to UC hastings law journal, as it also says right before that?
The automated tagging with a BUSL ID is just how BUSL's system for papers of any sort works.
For reference: I did my first year of law school at BUSL so i'm very familiar with how it all works there :)
This is also very common elsewhere - everything that IBM used to release got tagged with a technical report number too, for example, whether it was or not.
In any case - it is clearly a piece meant to be persuasive writing, rather than deep research.
Law journals contain a mix of essentially op-eds and deeper research papers or factual expositories/kind of thing. They are mostly not like scientific journals. Though some exist that are basically all op-ed or zero op-ed.
Which is a piece in UC law journal meant as an informative piece cataloguing how california courts adjudicate false advertising law. It does not really take a position.
Which is a piece in UC hastings law journal meant as, essentially an op ed, arguing that dog sniff tests are bullshit.
I picked both of these at random from stuff in UC hastings law journal that had been cited by the Supreme Court of California. There are things that are even more factual/take zero positions, and things that are even more persuasive writing/less researchy, than either of these, but they are reasonable representatives, i think
That's simply not true. People are compensated generously for land that is seized. I have friends that have had it happen, and you get a lot more money than if you were to sell the property - so it's a bit like winning the lottery. The amount of room for appeal is dictated by the nature of the seizure and the government "level". (ie if it's a national interest project you have little recourse, but if it's the city government then it's likely different)
i feel the fact coal is so often considered separately from oil and gas to be very suspicious. Cant help but feel demonizing coal is plays into the interests of petro states.
Obviously we should be moving to green energy, but coal provides energy independence and doesnt fund horrid regimes..
a Coal plant seems way better for world peace than LNG plant
the cost savings could be put to developing green energy faster
There is evidence that coal has worse environmental impact than other fossil fuels. For one, burning gas produces CO2 and water, whereas burning coal results in just CO2 (+ soot and other pollutants). Another is that (open) coal mines have devastating effects on large land areas.
So yes, best leave all fossil fuels where they are, but coal is especially bad.
I have a personal vendetta against coal in particular because of the way it destroys the entire communities and towns. Coal got an early head start in environmentalism villainy because it has immediate and very visible environmental impacts in the process of getting it out of the ground.
Most of my "wtf is going on" moments on Linux have to do with permissions. I loath the industry move to even more security. I want a more Emacs-like experience. Multiuser systems have become the exception and most people have a personal computer with one user. Dealing with evil apps is a loosing battle b/c the attack surface is too large.
I think the counter argument to more security is Distro Repos. When was the last time you apt-get'ed some software and had your documents stolen?
If you add blocks then you need to somehow communicate to the use when it's failing and that's hard... You see the shitshow that is Android security where apps have mysterious access to some directories and not others and it's impossible to understand what's going on. Maybe capabilities will work better, it's unclear to me.
I wonder if any exist on the internet and if the camera is still functional.
Edit: it's very likely that no photos exist because the tapes were being reused and there are many reasons why the camera has been nonfunctional for a long time now.
Yeah, the camera probably hasn't been in functioning condition for decades and people at Kodak likely didn't see much historical value in archiving those tapes.
I don't doubt this description of what happened, but the sad irony in a company whose product was producing tools to generate archival copies of images, not recognising the value of retaining archival copies of images... facepalm.
Austria is the only European country I've been to that doesn't have cheap affordable intercity buses. Seemingly none at all. It was kind of strange... Does anyone know why?
The only options to get around was the expensive train system - and anyone I asked was bewildered why I would want to take a bus.. Maybe next time I should look in to carpooling or some other options. How do low income people get around typically? I need to go to attend a conference, but it's not cheap coming from Asia
EDIT: Seems I was wrong! Sorry. There are buses, (maybe fewer than other countries?)
Flixbus definitely exists in Austria, but people generally take the train, which is much faster and more comfortable.
There are various discount membership plans available that sometimes pay for themselves after just one round-trip or even one-way ride, and on the most popular connections there's now a private operator competing with the state-owned railway.
A yearly flat-rate ticket for intercity trains is also relatively affordable for EUR 1400 per year.
Oh really? I took the Flixbus from the Czech Republic and is stopped near the border and then after that it was train only. Maybe I ended up in a weird spot then! I just checked and there are indeed buses in-country. Strange that I somehow couldn't find any then
Doesn't Flixbus cap their fleet to 100 km/h? I'd be surprised if that's higher than the average speed of most intercity trains.
Graz–Vienna is admittedly a bit of a special case, since the railway tunnel there isn't finished yet, so I could see cars/buses being faster. (The train makes up for that in views, though ;)
And the train is even slower than that. Let that sink in.
>Graz–Vienna is admittedly a bit of a special case
Special case at being ripped off when flights from London, Paris or Berlin across the continent are cheaper than trains from Graz to Vienna.
>The train makes up for that in views, though ;)
It really doesn't when you factor in the ticket prices. Some people who are not tourists use transportation out of necessity to get from A to B as quickly and cheaply as possible, not to do sightseeing and die of old age, so speed and value for money is more critical than what you see out the window. And a significant part of the trip is through tunnels anyway.
And there's only so many times you can see the same hills and houses before it gets repetitive and you go back to your phone. Not to mention if you travel second class, trains on that route are typically full of loud obnoxious people talking on their phone on speaker mode, who don't have courtesy for others so it ruins any enjoyment of sightseeing unless you have good noise cancelling headphones.
I remember the last time I took the train in Austria, between Wien and Linz there was a section where the odometer on the train was showing 220 km/h.
A large part of Austria is the Alps, that poses special challenges for trains. That's why these base tunnels are so important. Funny you ignored the comment about the Semmering tunnel being built, and how it will help with the travel time on that section.
Flights are so cheap because they are subsidized (primarily the fuel), and their CO2 emissions are just swept under the rug. There is also this problem of not having enough high speed cross-country trains, and even if they exist, you usually have to change trains and book tickets separately for each country. The EU has a plan to improve on this in the next 20 years.
> trains on that route are typically full of loud obnoxious people talking on their phone on speaker mode, who don't have courtesy for others so it ruins any enjoyment of sightseeing unless you have good noise cancelling headphones.
Yes, because Ryanair or Wizzair flights never have loud obnoxious people...
> Special case at being ripped off when flights from London, Paris or Berlin across the continent are cheaper than trains from Graz to Vienna.
A "Sparschiene" ticket from Vienna to Graz typically costs between 10€ and 25€. With the Vorteilscard, a regular ticket costs 22€. (I believe the full regular price only exists to rip off tourists :)
"Reverse discrimination" is generally legal under EU law.
For example, EU law grants the non-EU spouses of EU citizens living in an EU country other than the EU citizen's home country much broader right than the EU citizen's home country otherwise might.
When the tracks allow it, the Railjet goes over 200 km/h. Vienna-Linz only takes 1 hour, which is about twice as fast as by car. Same for the new Koralm track.
I agree that regional trains are often painfully slow. But that's also because there are so many stops.
Vienna-Graz is mainly slow because it has to cross the Semmering mountains and the tracks date back to the K&K days. This will change with the Semmering tunnel.
That part of Europe has historically loved its trains. The train is more than transportation there. It’s an institution and part of the culture. Have you been to a toy store and looked at the precision and cost of the train sets? They don’t just ride the train, the train is part of who they are and what they love, starting when they’re small children. The trains run on-time, they’re clean, and overall they tend to be more modern. In addition, people walk.
Trains are also just more comfortable. More space, more comfortable seats, more space for luggage, you can walk around, better bathrooms, easier to work from especially in the 4 seat configuration, … Personally I would always prefer the train even if it is a bit slower. Once you account for traffic a bus that is scheduled to be faster ends up slower anyway, especially when you really needed it to be on time
I would blame how Austria, a very small country, is organized into 9 provinces that actually have their own budget and can pass their own laws on some topics.
Rail service is funded at the federal level, so there's less arguing about who pays for what. Bus service, however, is managed by regional transport associations funded by the provinces. This creates disincentives for cross-province bus routes because no single province wants to pay more than its 'fair' share for a service that primarily benefits voters in another province.
Similar dynamics play out at the city/province level. Take Linz, the provincial capital of Upper Austria: the city has had a social democratic (SPÖ) mayor continuously since 1945, while the province has had a conservative (ÖVP) governor for exactly the same period of 80 years. This disincentivizes the province government from helping to fund public transport within or into the city, because it's a win for social democratic city voters, while the more conservative rural voters would rather take the car anyway since they often can't do the whole trip by public transport.
Arguably the reason for the excellent public transport in the city of Vienna is that they are also their own province. Their mayor/governor, who has been a social democrat as well for the last 80 years, always controls both levels of funding.
To tell you the truth I was shocked how expensive trains are in whole Europe. Like arent railroads the cheapest and easiest type of road to be built. For real, to get a fair price you would need to book the train like 2 months before the trip.
Almost noone in Austria pays the full price. You either use "Sparschiene" (cheap tickets you book in advance), the Vorteilscard (membership card which gives a 50% discount on every regular ticket) or the various annual or monthly flatrate tickets (e.g. "Klimaticket").
yes, we do, e.g. flixbus. and some others I think. Haven't been traveling for a while by bus around Austria. Apples/Oranges probably, but I do know vienna<->bratislava has like 3-4 different companies operating the same route with similar busses at similar times with different prices.
And talking about apples/oranges, let me add apples/bananas: Vienna to Budapest by train cost a lot when booking via öbb. And not a lot when booking via Regiojet.
The problem is the offers are all scattered around imho.
Yep, single tickets on Austrian ÖBB is not cheap at all without subscriptions or discounts.
Prices are good only if you use it regularly as a commuter via a yearly subscription (Klimaticket), but for one off trips, prices are more expensive than flying.
That is the point! Austria is on the verge of overtourism, it's a conscious political decision in this case to tax transport of tourists highly and allow the population cheap subscription plans.
Small county with small market monopolized by few politically connected local players in every major sector of the economy who sometimes enjoy regulatory protectionism from the government to keep foreign competitors out and turn a blind eye on racketeering practices.
That's how everything, including stuff made in Austria is more expensive than the same stuff sold in Germany even though wages are lower.
Same issues like in other small markets like New Zeeland except Austria being an EU member should have more pressure from free trade competition but that doesn't always work in favor of the consumers.
theyre usually published with a response by the authors
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