Stidmatt

In August of 2008 Russia invaded Georgia. Russia had de facto control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia since 1991, but the 2008 war reinforced this already existing reality on the ground. Russia officially recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent. There was significant deterrence still from the United States since we were involved in two wars and it was widely believed that NATO would come to Georgia’s aid, and Sarkozy followed through by brokering a peace agreement after the 8 day war ended.

6 years passed and in 2014 the Euromaidan protest in Ukraine overthrew their pro-Russian president Yanukovich. The more western oriented Petro Poroshenko became president and in retaliation Russia annexed Crimea at gunpoint, falsely claiming their soldiers were locals. Russian backed separatists in Donbas and Luhansk then successfully gained control of the region. NATO did not supply Ukraine sufficiently to block Russia’s annexation, settling for a status quo in a peace agreement, demonstrating that just like in Georgia, Russia could take territory at gunpoint. The United States could have demanded more of Russia, but the Obama administration was still under the delusion Putin could be bargained with.

In August 2021 the United States surrendered to the Taliban and the Taliban took over Afghanistan. There were now serious doubts about whether the United States would uphold its end of defending smaller democracies, so Putin tested this theory with Ukraine in February 2022. Despite a Democratic Trifecta, NATO did not supply Ukraine with sufficient firepower to prevent the Russian invasion, despite months of warning from satellite imagery. This entire war was completely preventable. It could have been prevented in 2014, which could have been prevented in 2008 through less compromising with Russia in both circumstances.

Despite the claims for “rule based world order” and maintaining existing international boundaries, these rules clearly do not apply when Russia wants territory.

There is fear now that we are facing a world without nuclear deterrence and a free for all if Trump is elected President, but I fear we are already living in a world where the deterrence created by NATO as we saw with the intervention in the Kosovo War is no longer the reality of the world today. America’s unwillingness to confront Russia, and the willingness to put the interests of Ukrainians and Georgians to the side has led to a far more dangerous world. The Budapest Memorandum only empowered Russia by reducing Ukraine’s nuclear deterrence, but most importantly, it did not grant Ukraine any protection when they were forced to give up weapons. While on paper it guaranteed Ukrainian protection from Russian invasion, because this was already foreseen as a possibility even in 1994, it did not grant Ukraine any de jure mutual protection pacts but instead stated Ukraine was a “neutral country”. We now know how well that has worked out.

The two main schools of thought in international relations are liberalism and realism. Liberalism sees the power of international treaties like NATO as major deterrences to war. It also views the spread of democracy and trade as reducing, but not eliminating, the probability of war. These theories are good, and explain a lot of behavior between nations very well, but trade does not guarantee there will be no war, it merely reduces the probability of war. The structure of governments also matters as it says with democratic peace theory, and by 2008 Russia no longer met these requirements. Russia also was not sanctioned in response to their invasion of Georgia, and by this they learned they would not suffer economic consequences for military invasions. Sanctions against Russia leading to the removal of Putin in 2008 could have prevented the current war in Ukraine according to Liberalism. Democratizing Russia along with their already existing trade with Europe would further reduce the probability of conflict.

By 2014 it became obvious there would be no economic consequences for Putin and given the promise of President Biden that America would focus on our dire problems here at home despite our treaties, that gave Putin the green flag that the Biden presidency was the perfect time to attack Ukraine. He has suffered sanctions from the EU and US, but enough other countries have continued to trade with Russia in order to keep his economy afloat. Given this lack of military support and international framework to protect Ukraine, liberalism did not predict Ukraine would not be invaded by Russia.

We come to the same conclusion even easier with Realpolitik. Realism also sees the power of alliances in order to prevent war through a balance of power. It is all about Balance of Power. With the United States surrendering in Afghanistan and how we did not give Ukraine enough aid back in 2014 to repel Russia, it was clear the balance of power in Eastern Europe was not balanced, so realpolitik does predict that the situation of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 made it ripe for invasion.

Realpolitik and liberalism agree that a formal alliance with Ukraine as a NATO member would prevent war. A strong Ukrainian military according to Realpolitik would prevent a Russian invasion. Further Russian dependence on trade with countries friendly to Ukraine would prevent war, but there is too much trade with China, India, Israel, and Iran to counteract the sanctions from the US and EU.

There are multiple tools which would prevent more war in Ukraine, but our leaders have not listened to international relations theory and here we are today. We are now paying the price by not listening to experts in international relations.

I do not believe the Ukraine war is 100% the fault of NATO. Putin is the penultimate cause of the war. He chose to invade Ukraine. He chose to see it as an integral part of Russia, which it clearly is not. I believe the refusal to quickly grant Ukraine and Georgia membership in NATO in 2008 substantially contributed to the wars in each though, by preventing a clear consequence to Putin if he invaded, so we are not blameless. Ukraine and Georgia should be members of NATO, and they should have become members in 2008. I also believe that joining NATO increases the security of member states, and I will believe this until NATO is attacked.

What we are seeing now in Ukraine is where there is not enough deterrence to prevent Russia from invading. Russia is suffering a demographic crisis due to severe poverty which is felt by most Russians. The invasion of Ukraine is a way for Russia to temporarily solve its demographic crisis and make Putin look like a strong leader, given his belief that the West is weak and does not want to get involved in another war. So far he has been proven right. Despite there being a Democratic trifecta in the United States when the war began, we did not provide sufficient aid to Ukraine to prevent the Russian invasion, so Putin is correct in his belief that NATO protection ends at NATO’s borders.

It is not the 1990s anymore.

As long as Biden or Trump is President, we are living in a world without sufficient deterrence. The willingness of Obama and Bush to stand up for Ukraine and Georgia during those conflicts is absent in the administrations of Biden and Trump. If it wasn’t for evangelical support for Israel, they wouldn’t care about Israel either. Israel is currently switching alliances anyways to Russia due to these two men.

Nuclear bombs do not matter nearly as much as the willingness to use conventional weapons to counter invasions on the borders of democracies. Everyone knows that using a nuclear bomb today would bring global condemnation to the launching party which would effectively end that government’s standing in the global order. Conventional weapons are effective at containing dictatorships, but without that military support, we are truly in the anarchic world as portrayed by realpolitik.

The anarchic world is a world of war and danger, and until we rebuild our military support of countries like Ukraine and give them official membership in NATO, we are already living in a world without sufficient deterrence, nuclear weapons be damned, and we will only see more war.

This is brilliant. Bullets are the equivalent of food stamps and rent assistance. It allows people to improve quickly, but simply getting a bullet does not mean you will win, especially in the third lap.

Blue shells are the equivalent of tax rates of 40-50%, which we used to have. You are thrown back a little bit, but you are not totally ruined. You can still win the game after getting a blue shell.

Love it.

This video from over a month ago shows us exactly where Hamas is. The American and Israeli governments know their precise addresses.

They haven’t moved in 12 years; they are a short drive from a major US military base, and everybody knows it.

The entire Gaza War has as much to do with “eliminating Hamas” as invading Iraq was about “weapons of mass destruction” and defeating the Taliban.

So when are we going to see the Israeli government invade Doha and kill civilians at point-blank range in an operation that actually could “kill Hamas”? They could bankrupt and utterly destroy the despotic Taliban government of Afghanistan at the same time. It is an indisputably good thing that would save thousands of lives and free a country with more people than Canada from a foreign regime that terrorizes their country.

Because Likud created Hamas, and they are codependent on each other. It is as clear as day. Netanyahu has every incentive to keep the status quo, and his actions prove it. He will never stop the war because if he stops the war, he will get a one-way ticket to Belgium.

Supplying Israel with weapons is entirely counterproductive to the national security interests of the United States and every democracy in the world. Those weapons need to be sent to Ukraine instead.

There is far more reason to firebomb Doha to dust than there was to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Qatar is a destabilizing force spreading its violent ideology around the world by being the banking center for terrorist organizations, and everybody knows it.

It is far past time to turn Doha into a pile of dust.

Natural gas prices will go up as a result, pushing people towards sustainable energy. This would temporarily increase global LNG prices but be a stabilizing force in the long term.

Qatar is one of many cases which clearly shows how dependence on fossil fuels builds dictatorship. The environmental consequences of fossil fuels are enough to reduce their consumption significantly, and by itself is enough to justify full decarbonization. But when you add on Dutch disease and how dependence on fossil fuels harms women’s rights and builds dictatorships like Qatar, which, although small, are lifelines for terrorist organizations like Hamas, al Qaeda, and the Taliban, it becomes a moral imperative.

Boycott, sanction, and divest from the Taliban’s ATM.

It is indefensible to do business with a country that is such a critical state sponsor of terrorism. It makes a mockery of the list the US government maintains.

Other countries that we know fund, or willfully act as intermediaries for the Taliban include Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which either explicitly or implicitly (by not prosecuting citizens who actively fundraise for terrorist organizations, or effectively criminalizing money laundering) fund terrorism.

To quote the 9/11 commission report:

It does not appear that any government other than the Taliban financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11, although some governments may have contained al Qaeda sympathizers who turned a blind eye to al Qaeda’s fundraising activities. Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization. (This conclusion does not exclude the likelihood that charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to al Qaeda.)

I don’t know about you, but a government consistently turning a blind eye to their citizens for so long that they become the primary source for funding terrorist activities is beyond suspicious. Governments must block money transfers to terrorist organizations and monitor such transactions to prevent money laundering. It is absurd how the United States has this line in an official government document and then turns around and says that Saudi Arabia is not a fundraiser. George W. Bush then turned around the same year the 9/11 commission report clearly stated Saudi Arabia was the primary source of funds for the Taliban and erroneously claimed Iran was the major source, despite his administration presenting evidence to the contrary. Their government deliberately chooses not to monitor money transfers or arrest individuals who personally fund terrorist groups worldwide. The lack of oversight of Saudi banks in their operations as a vector for substantial funding of terrorist organizations is itself evidence that the Saudi government is not serious about its counterterrorism efforts. Counterterrorism starts by preventing the flow of resources into terrorist hands. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates continuously act as “neutral” banking centers to launder money to terrorist organizations, and everybody knows it. Those governments know it. You cannot be neutral as a government. When your financial institutions are acting as a primary vector for funding terrorist groups like Hamas, al Qaeda, and the Taliban, the domestic government remains the only organization with sufficient power to stop the flow of resources to terrorist groups.

On top of this are the heavily documented links between the House of Bush and the House of Saud; this American Prospect article is a good summary of their corrupt relationship.

One only has to look at the tiny nation of Bahrain to see how all of these states need to act. In 2020, Bahrain arrested five officials at The Future Bank who were fundraising money for Iran. Every country in the Middle East needs to do this active monitoring and harsh arrests when people are found to be directly linked to funding terrorism.

This is still a winning issue for the Democrats, just as much as it was 20 years ago. My God, we have had this evidence for over two decades and we still fail to deal with this problem.

I do not think there is any effective method to fight international terrorism without dealing with the money laundering behind their sprawling empires first.

This is the only way to defeat Hamas.

1. The northern tip of Brazil is closer to every country in the Americas than the southernmost point of Brazil.
2. The eastern tip of Brazil is closer to Portugal than the Pacific Ocean. Brazil is HUGE.
3. Key West is closer to every other country in the Americas than it is to Nuvuk (Point Barrow), Alaska.
4. Attu Island is closer to the Shetland Islands, the northern tip of Australia, and all of Norway, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia, China, Thailand, and Samoa than it is to Washington, DC.
5. The Northern tip of Africa is closer to Nordkapp (northern most point of Norway, excluding Svalbard and Jan Mayen) than it is to Addis Ababa. Africa is HUGE.
6. The Northernmost point of India (as claimed by India) is closer to Russia than the southernmost point of India.
7. The Westernmost point of India is closer to Africa than the Easternmost point of India.
8. The Westernmoset point of Kazakhstan is closer to France than Mongolia.
9. New York City is closer to Venezuela than Nevada.
10. Stewart, Alaska is closer to Chicago than Attu Island.
11. Venezuela is closer to the US than it is to Mexico.
12. Iceland is closer to Australia than Antarctica.
13. The Earth has a radius of about 40,000 km. France, the United Kingdom, Norway, and the United States have territories more than 10,000 km from their capital, meaning those territories are closer to their capital’s antipode than their capital.
14. American Samoa is closer to Washington, DC than Guam.
15. The furthest point from the westernmost point of Russia in undisputed Russian territory is 7667 kilometers away, in Kamchatka.
16. Berlin is closer to China than the United States.
17. The Westernmost point of Africa is closer to the Philippines than Dakar, Senegal.
18. The Southernmost point of Africa is closer to all of Antarctica and the Southern tip of continental Greece than the Northernmost point of Africa.
19. Panama City, Panama is closer to Antarctica than Nuvuk, Alaska.

In response to https://captainstack.medium.com/washington-legislature-kills-universal-healthcare-bill-2ae7b804da34

“SJM.8006 is not a long bill. It is not complicated. It costs no money. It has no risk of legal challenge.”

In other words, it was not a universal health care bill. So whether it passed or failed, everything would stay the same. They need to try again with a bill that will do something and not waste our time with these trivial items. Resolutions are cheap and unimportant, bills are challenging and meaningful.

I volunteered as a lobbyist for many environmental issues in Washington state for the better part of a decade. My parents and all 4 of my grandparents live there. I am deeply invested in the outcome of these proposals.

If you want to pass a bill in the legislature, it must have substance. According to OP‘s article, this bill did not set up a universal health care system. Creating universal insurance plans is hard work; it requires a lot of consideration about how such a system will be designed, and there are many ways to do it.

The United States also needs to bring down the cost of health care, and reduce the number of uninsured people to zero as soon as possible. This bill would have done neither. It is good that the legislature will focus on bills that will impact people’s lives instead of trivial nonsense like this. A real single-payer healthcare bill (which seems to be the only thing we talk about in the United States) that is thought out and will probably be at least 1000 pages long will be proposed or, at minimum, address the issues Washington State faces realistically. Washington is the most advanced state in the nation on this issue because it has a public option for health insurance, similar to Germany and Austria’s universal healthcare systems. The easy, realistic way for Washington state to get to Universal health insurance is to close the Medicaid gap by using their existing public option. At that point, Washington state will have universal healthcare because everyone will be insured. It might not be the British model, but the British model is not the only system of universal healthcare.

Focus on SB.5335, as OP mentions, or build a bill that gives free access to the already existing public option to people who don’t have health insurance through their employers or Medicare or Medicaid. That will achieve universal health care.

Relationships

There are several major players in this convoluted mess, and each of them has a complex relationship with the other:

• • ISIS
  • Hamas
  • Palestinian Authority
  • Russia
  • Israel
  • Ukraine
  • United States
  • the rest of NATO

ISIS doesn’t have any state allies, and they have complex relations with Hamas. While both Hamas and ISIS are Sunni, ISIS is Salafi, and Hamas is nationalist. Hamas is not a major threat globally, ISIS and al Qaeda are.

But where ISIS and Hamas agree is hostility towards the Israeli state. This is where ISIS’ latest attack on Russia is very revealing. Why is ISIS attacking Russia and not a NATO member or candidate?

First of all, we must establish how ISIS does not attack countries randomly. They are methodical. If they wanted to attack countries randomly, they would reliably attack least developed countries outside the Arab world with marginally functional governments, but they don’t.

The ISIS attack on Russia is simply because Russia continues to prop up the Syrian regime. It has little to nothing to do with Ukraine or with the war Israel is waging with Hamas.

That’s all there is to this. Sometimes it really is just that simple.

References:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/21/hamas-isis-are-not-the-same-00128107

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-restore-syria-ties-after-10-years-dispute-sources-say-2022-06-21/

It’s exhausting.

On a per-vehicle basis, buses are cheaper to run than trains. On a passenger km basis, if both vehicles are full, the train is cheaper to run than the bus, keeping capacity constant.

Buses are great for low-demand routes. Great transit systems use buses extensively for local routes, solving that last mile problem at a reasonable cost, cheaper than taxis can.

Trains are great for high-demand routes. If you have a dense urban core with lots of demand for mobility, trolleys often provide a lot of service for relatively fast speeds which is faster than walking. Trains are great when you have long distances with few stops where lots of people are going to be traveling between two places. There are always going to be fixed routes with predictable high demand in larger cities. Even smaller cities of around 100,000 people can often have routes with higher demand where a modern trolley can be the most optimal option. Likewise, using a trolley for a long distance high demand route is generally foolish, and you would be better off with a faster, higher capacity train like the NYC Subway or BART.

It’s all about what is most optimal for that route in order to build a network where trains and buses work together seemlessly.

The most useful transit systems typically use a combination of trains, trolleys, and buses. Trains serve the high demand predictable fixed routes, buses provide local connectivity, and trolleys in dense urban cores provide faster high capacity transportation for those short high demand routes.

That is how you build a modern transit system which people love to use.

It is obvious to anyone with a passive interest in foreign relations at this point that the Gaza war is a massive humanitarian crisis given how Israel is killing civilians and denying food to enter the region.

That by itself should be enough for every democracy to stop providing aid to that rogue nation.

But it clearly is not enough to convince the American government to stop sending weapons to that rogue nation.

The other big reason is because the treatment of Palestinians has been used by terrorists for decades as a rallying cry to recruit members to their cause. By continuing to support Israel’s ruthless assault on Palestinian civilians, not only does it reduce the possibility of a real peace agreement in the area, but it will be used by terrorist groups across the Muslim world.

The countries which support Israel with the most military aid will be the one who are attacked first.

Supplying Israel with endless weapons is not just fueling a humanitarian disaster but it is bad for American domestic security and against the interests of the American people.

I-93 will now start in Woburn.

The I-93 tunnel will be turned into a rail tunnel connecting the North and South stations.

The rest of I-93 south of Woburn will be reclaimed urban space.

Problem solved.