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Elerond
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Posts posted by Elerond
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1 minute ago, kanisatha said:
The scorched earth approach Russia has taken means that even the pro-Russian people of those areas will never return to live there while the areas are under Russian occupation, because there will be very minimal rebuilding. Even after the war somehow "ends," nobody will be investing in Russia itself let alone these devastated areas. They will simply be areas of minefields, barbed wire, and defensive fortifications occupied by Russian reservists.
And Western sanctions on Russia will not end.
As example how fast Russians rebuild area they occupy, Karelia which Soviets took from Finland in second world war has only seen minimal rebuilding and most of that is done by Finnish Karelians who have tried to rebuild it for nostalgic reasons
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26 minutes ago, teknoman2 said:
What i mean is that the media (at least here in Greece) are making a big deal about the spread of this dangerous infectious disease, they say no factual thing about it (like symptoms, how it spreads, how its treated and so on) and at the same time nobody seems to be taking any measures for it. This is the problem with sensationalist journalism.
On the other hand, the "experts" they have on tv are giving conflicting reports. On one hand they say "long covid" to describe problems that may appear on other organs after someone got it, on the other when asked about other viruses and if their altered behavior is related to covid's effects on the body they reply with "no, covid is strictly a respiratory disease and doesn't affect other parts of the body". Both these statements can't be true at the same time.
Virus mainly targets respiratory organs, but it can infect and damage heart’s muscle tissue like other respiratory viruses
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29 minutes ago, rjshae said:
The CDC does recommend that people diagnosed with monkeypox wear a mask because it can be communicated through airborne droplets. But you need to be in very close proximity for it to be passed.
Mask recommendation is probably because virus can spread through saliva in cause person has infection in their mouth
How does monkeypox spread from person to person?
People with monkeypox are infectious while they have symptoms (normally for between two and four weeks). You can catch monkeypox through close physical contact with someone who has symptoms. The rash, bodily fluids (such as fluid, pus or blood from skin lesions) and scabs are particularly infectious. Clothing, bedding, towels or objects like eating utensils/dishes that have been contaminated with the virus from contact with an infected person can also infect others.Ulcers, lesions or sores in the mouth can also be infectious, meaning the virus can spread through saliva. People who closely interact with someone who is infectious, including health workers, household members and sexual partners are therefore at greater risk for infection.
The virus can also spread from someone who is pregnant to the foetus from the placenta, or from an infected parent to child during or after birth through skin-to-skin contact.
It is not clear whether people who do not have symptoms can spread the disease.
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What I have understood, situation with Germany's nuclear power plants is such that it is cheaper and faster build new ones than trying to repair current ones back in use.
This is because many of them have old and in efficient reactors meaning that new ones will outperform them and there is need for new ones in decade or two max anyway
Many reactors have suffered from cannibalization where parts from already closed reactor has been used to maintain still running reactors.
Also in many cases heat from reactor cooling has not been used for district heating or otherwise utilized. Which means that massive amount of energy those plants produced was not utilized. And means that Germany would still need lots of energy from other source in which they currently have two options natural gas and coal.
In case of future there are some needs that needs to be addressed at least
Adjustment power: Renewable energy sources like wind and solar don't have solid production rates, but produce some days more and some days less energy, so there is needs to be way to adjust how much electricity is put in electric grid.
Ways to do that is constant over production where wind and solar plants always produce more than needed and over production is just wasted.
Storing over production: in batteries or some other form of energy storage, which can used as energy source in day when there is underproduction
Adjustment power plants (current solution where there are power plants which production levels can be easily controlled based on how much fuel is used)
Heating and cooling: In big cities there is usually need for district heating solutions and as there is already existing district heating solutions where waste energy from power plants is used to warm houses in the cities there is need to replace them.
One solution could be use massive ground-source heat pumps to turn electricity to heat efficiently and feed it in current district heating systems. An other solution could be build small modular nuclear rectors that are only meant to produce heat in district heating systems.
And of course there is also transportation that brings its own issues
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Eco-sustainability is for first time possibility in EU as natural gas is not anymore considered as 'eco' option
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9 minutes ago, Malcador said:
And why does it have nothing to do with that ? The humour is in any of the P5 saying something like that, as well.
German howitzers on the field, Melnyk is probably going to call them the 4th Reich if they don't hand over every Leopard, still.
Hopefully that is stock photo and not Ukraine actually using their new weaponry in stupid way
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2 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:
Its purpose is to have anti Russian news that sounds like it comes from Russia
Which is why you found it from every hotel lobby, air plane, train coffee house etc. aimed for tourists for decades so that tourists get anti Russian news when they were in Russia, so that they would not think that things they see are too good.
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The Moscow Times is not pro-western media, as its main purpose is to market Russia to foreign people
It isn't just enough pro Putin in order to allowed to publish articles in Russia these days.
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2 hours ago, pmp10 said:
If memory serves the average European owns a car and will definitely be hit by rising fuel prices.
And consider rising food prices in poorer eastern European countries.
Your median Estonian household was already spending 20% of income getting fed and now is now seeing 20% price hikes in foodstuffs.
It's little consolation that if we match them up with unaffected Irish the average looks fine.Estonia's seeing 14.1% increase in food and beverages.
63.2% increase in electricity and gas.
Overall HICP 19.1%. Wage increase in Estonia is higher than euro are average 7.8%.
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7 hours ago, Zoraptor said:
Everything is pretty simplified- so is saying that the US spent 100bn p/a on Afghanistan so they can spend 100bn on Ukraine when the vast majority of spending in Afghanistan wasn't actually on Afghanistan, it was on the US. Hence US military spending not reducing by 100bn on withdrawal (it's increased, of course).
The average projected wage loss is 4%. Much as they'd like to they can't wave a hand and pretend it isn't, that's pure feel good sophistry.
Projected wage increase is 4.2% and projected HICP is 6.8% (projected peak 7.5%) (in comparison projected HICP without energy is 4.1%).
So in 'average' wage loss is 2.6% even if we pretend that energy price spike effects everyone same and that people use all their money in products and pretend that average people don't use big sunk of their income in rents, maintenance charges etc. that aren't projected to increase, so that we can pretend people's effective income decrease full HICP percentage.
And in 2023 predicted wage increase is 4.3% and predicted HICP is 3.5%. And in 2024 predicted wage increase is 3.7% and predicted HICP is 2.2%. So projected 'average' wage loss with above standard in next 3 years is 0.3%.
Even downside scenario that assumes following
The scenario assumes a complete cut in Russian energy exports to the euro area starting from the third quarter of 2022, leading to a rationing of gas supplies, significantly higher commodity prices, lower trade and intensified global value chain problems.
Predicted HICP is 8.0%, in that scenario 'average' wage loss in with above standard would be close to that your 4% (3.8%). In this scenario projected HICP in 2023 is 6.4% and in 2024 1.9%. There is no estimates if this scenario would effect in predicted wage increases. This scenario predicts also full collapse of Russian economy.
US spending in Ukraine is same as their spending in Afghanistan, so almost all the money goes to US companies, even more so than in case of Afghanistan as they don't need to pay to their troops, translators, local suppliers etc.. So US spending is not increasing 40 billion dollars when they give 40 billion dollars aid to Ukraine.
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8 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:
Everyone in the EU will have a practical average ~4% pay cut once inflation is taken into account.
That is pretty simplified reality.
As it is energy and imported goods that are causing most of the inflation. So it effects will not be evenly distributed among citizens.
HICP increase without energy is predicted to be 4.1%. So people who live in cities and use mass transits as their main form of transportation will not actually see any change in their living standard, which is majority of population in EU.
It is the minority population that live in countryside that will see their living standard drop.
So prediction is that average person/median person will not see any major change in their PP
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1 hour ago, rjshae said:
It depends on what you mean by relatively little. I wouldn't say ~$100 million per day is relatively little. The US likely won't spent as much on supporting a foreign war as they do on their own military activities.
Question was about ability to continue to fund the war. In perspective that US was able to run two wars that cost more, increase its spending in new warfare outside of those wars, do countless military and intelligence operations around globe for two decades and still grow its economy significantly.
Meaning that west has ability to fund Ukraine for indefinitely with current level and it will have only minor impact in their economy in long run. More meaningful question would be is current level enough to give Ukraine actual fighting change or does it prolong inevitable result?
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33 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
But I agree the idea of the West of funding the Ukrainians indefinitely is not realistic which is why we all want to find a way to end this war
Currently West has given relatively little to Ukraine.
With current speed amount of aid to Ukraine would be about half what USA spend in Afghanistan if they would continue to give aid in same speed for next 20 years
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4 hours ago, BruceVC said:
Elerond this scoring seems racist, its putting lots of African and ME countries as the most corrupt...are you sure its not racist ?
That is difficult question to give truthful answer .
As to answer if scoring is racist you need to determine if their methodology or data sources they use have any racial/regional bias that could cause data prefer or discriminate one or more country/population group/region
So you need to determine does their criteria of selecting data sources have any racial/regional biases
Is there something that causes racial/regional bias in their method of standardize data sources
And does their aggregation of rescaled data cause any biases towards regions/races
And how well their measure of uncertainty takes account possible biases in the data sources
You can find their methodology from https://images.transparencycdn.org/images/CPI-2021-Methodology.zip
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2 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
Mamie are countries like Slovakia and Hungary consider more corrupt generally than other East European countries like Poland, Romania and Czech?
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9 hours ago, Darkpriest said:
After bombing it, and stealing assets, which would allow to invest in proper infrastructure? (Not that it would help as it seems no business wants to go there after such a great retreat of US from that country and no deals securing assets on site)
Lets look at other great places of US interventions in ME and Africa in the last 30 years and how well they are doing after those.
So western countries aren't using famine as weapon of war in Afghanistan like you claimed
With Afghanistan you somehow forgot that its infrastructure was bombed down by Soviet Union and then civil war that lead Taliban to take control it in 90s. There was quite little infrastructure left for US to bomb in 2001 or assets to steal. In 2000 Afghanistan's GDP was $3.5 billion (). 2020 it was $20 billion.
In 2001 Afghanistan was suffering for famine for third year in row. WFP estimated that millions would die because of lack of food and carried out emergency programs during summer 2001 to deliver 0.5 million tons of food to Afghanistan. 2002 threat of famine ended in Afghanistan according to WFP.
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3 hours ago, Darkpriest said:
Afghanistan
After Taliban took control in Afghanistan Western Countries have given it 2 billion dollars worth humanitarian aid (food, water, medicine and other basic need products)
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1 minute ago, Lexx said:
Food prices here are already spiking. Today I've paid about 10€ more than last month same time.
Mostly food price spikes because producers are moving future prices in product prices, meaning that many of them are currently increasing their profit margins not because their production expenses have increased.
Reasoning behind it is to prepare harder times by building companies funds.
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1 hour ago, BruceVC said:
https://www.enca.com/shows/judge-yourself-dennis-davis-02-june-2022
Unfortunately exactly as I predicted based on the reality of how many aspects of US society and culture wars end up influencing SA in both positive ways and negative ways CRT has found its way into our debates. This link is a discussion about " should CRT be taught in SA schools "
What are we going to do about this because both of you have said I must stop being a zealot and crusader and worrying about things like BLM extremism and CRT ...and I took your advice. I thought " BruceVC your friends on the forum are right, these things will never happen in SA " ....and now look?
So the question is " what is our next step "....Im thinking we get outraged obviously and then protest?
'CRT' probably needs different version if you want to taught it in SA. As it is very specific to USA history, laws and culture
It is similar situation like trying to use other US civic classes outright in SA schools.
CRT = "Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race, society, and law in the United States and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice."
CRT itself is academic way to look things and challenge general academic narrative, so as it is it can't really be taught as it is way to do and argue academic research. I am not sure why academically solid results of CRT research is such boogie man for people that they feel that people hearing about them is much worse than censoring teachers, media, books etc.. And make people protest even idea of looking if there is any value in the results.
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1 hour ago, Gfted1 said:
Why do you guys keep regurgitating that line? He was punished as would any other person.
It depends how you look at it.
He was fined only once where his subordinates were fined 8 times. Even though there were pictures that he participated in multiple of the events which participants police fined.
1 hour ago, BruceVC said:But we shouldnt force anyone to wear things that support any minority unless they want to, my view is the same as bending the knee in sports. Allow people to bend the knee if they want and we shouldnt make assumptions around those that dont want to
So I do agree with you about the reality of homophobia but you can unintentionally make things worse for LGBT if you try to force or use guilt to get people to wear LGBT symbols
So you support that employees can refuse using uniform/logos/ads/etc which their employer ask them to wear?
I didn't know that you were such avid worker rights advocate and socialist
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1 hour ago, BruceVC said:
Thats a good question and I am familiar with the whole Kay Burley story because I watch Sky News and I like her
In my opinion she was unfairly treated, she should have publicly apologized and agreed to never do it again. And if she did it again then she should have been fired. But during the lockdowns everyone should be allowed to make 1 mistake
But as you are aware Sky News is a private sector company and not Public sector company so Sky News is not funded by tax payers money. I would leave it up to the Sky News board to decide these things because we dont want any government to start interfering in how private sector companies pay their staff and how much money they earn because its not governments business or money
Or 12
Considering that whole thing was caused by government interfering how people can act... But at least people in private sector are hold in higher standard than prime minister
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30 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
Okay thanks for all the views, I think I have said everything I can say about Partygate
I hope I have changed peoples mind if they believed Johnson lied and it not then we can agree to disagree
Question should Kay Burley be paid 6 month salary because she was suspended for 6 months for participating in party that broke covid rules?
As we now know that such rule breaking was not big deal, as members of government were allowed to do so
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19 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
I have explained this before, Johnson didnt consider the event you quoting as a party on the 13 November. So he didnt lie. He was wrong about what transpired and he was given misinformation as the link I posted clarifies
And he apologized from the quote below, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/boris-johnson-lockdown-party-partygate-1.6416773
""I understand the anger that many will feel that I, myself, fell short when it came to observing the very rules which the government I lead had introduced to protect the public. And I accept in all sincerity that people had the right to expect better," Johnson said late Tuesday. "And now I feel an even greater sense of obligation to deliver on the priorities of the British people."
Thats why it is possible he can apologize for breaking Covid rules and its not the same thing as him admitting he lied
And my point has been same from the beginning, their is a media accusation that he lied. He didnt lie as I keep explaining
But rules he admitted to broke are ones that he previously insisted that he didn't break.
In case he actually does not know what rules he himself applied for people and what kind event he run in his own house, then people should trust him being prime minister even less than case he lied about the event and breaking rules he himself imposed for people.
I mean it isn't great defense to say that I didn't lie I just didn't understand what was happening around me, when you are the prime minister and person who lead creating of the rules you broke.
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1 hour ago, BruceVC said:
Where in that link does it say Johnson admitted to lying?
No one is disputing if parties were held, the question I am asking is when did Johnson admit he lied? Because the criticism is that he lied and he has maintained he didnt lie
An allegation of lying is not the same as lying and he was fined for breaching of Covid regulations, not lying
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/boris-johnson-lockdown-party-partygate-1.6416773
People don't lie if they don't admit doing so and there is no other ways to prove that person lied?
"he was fined for breaching of Covid regulations, not lying "
There is no fines for lying for parliament so I am not sure what your point is, especially when lies are about other parties he participated but were not fined even though other people who participated same events were fined
but also:
"Johnson has previously insisted repeatedly that “the guidelines were followed at all times” in Downing Street, before being forced to apologise for the first time in January after it emerged he had attended a “bring your own booze” event in the No 10 garden.
Johnson was asked in December last year by the MP Catherine West: “Can the prime minister tell the house whether there was a party in Downing Street on 13 November.” Johnson replied at the time: “Mr Speaker, no. But I’m sure that whatever happened, the guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times.”"
But maybe claiming not doing something multiple times and then apologizing doing the thing isn't admission of lying
Ukraine Conflict - "History never looks like history when you are living through it."
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
You can ask from Iran when western sanctions are lifted when you let them stabilize as status quo