Wouldn't it have been better if we'd done it the other way - learned to speak mother earth, Gaia's language, perhaps requiring a getting in touch with our softer, mellow side that has a primeval connection to the Earth?

Something must be done about the so-called global economy. — TheMadFool

For starters, not everything important has to do with the economy. The economy is first and foremost a tool, if it works well, then the prosperity should be used to preserve nature and make the environment a better place to live for every living creature.

The simple fact is that economy is important just up to a point, it isn't itself a reason.

I tried to warn people of the housing bubble several years ago and no one would listen. — Athena

Then you are one of the people that understand reality and don't go with the hype as the majority will do.

One reason I guess is that some states could issue mail-in votes until the last day before the election.

A good idea (that won't happen) would be that mail-in voting simply would stop in all states at the same time let's say 1 week before and the counting of those votes would be started even before the election offices close. The second issue is of course that the system isn't designed to be effective as you have things like gerrymandering.

He was fired. — Baden

By the Trump team?

Hope he wasn't banned.

If only soldiers can have an opinion on military matters — Paul Edwards

No, but to one should be aware of the things when talking about everything being possible by air power. There's enough literature, documentaries and information to understand these things. Just as a non-US citizen might comment US politics, even he or she isn't an American.

Unfortunately when people talk about "peace" what they really mean is non-combat. — Paul Edwards

What usually people talk about is deterrence.

he Mullahs of Iran would spread their Islamic "revolution" worldwide if they had the ability to do so. Keeping them in check for eternity is a lousy strategy. — Paul Edwards

What that revolution has come to is to defend Shiite communities and thus meddling in the domestic situation of various countries. It's the ISIS loonies that truly want to spread their view of Islam everywhere.

And I'm not even content with 100% allied governments. 9/11 forced us to deal with NGOs too. I want EVERY INDIVIDUAL on this planet to be allied with the US/Australia/Taiwan.

I want everyone to be willing to risk their own lives to PROTECT America, not giving their lives to HARM America as happened on 9/11.

Or at the very least be neutrals. — Paul Edwards

The moment you are talking about came and went with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then there was a window of opportunity to change things as the ex-Soviet people were then very open to the US ideologically. But we would have needed larger than life politicians, and had only average ones. You could have made Russia an ally of the US and perhaps a member of the European Union. Yet the US simply dismissed Russia as past thing and the "Westerners" in Russia were silenced. The Ex-Warsaw pact countries knew better and opted for NATO. That NATO enlargement is seen in the Russian military doctrine as the biggest threat the nation faces. Terrorism in on fourth place. The present elite see's the US as the biggest threat to them.

That moment was in the end lost during the Kosovo War. The effects can be seen now: even if you have those opposition leaders poisoned and driven to exile in Putin's Russia, those same opposition leaders don't have many nice words about the US, actually.

Your posts don't show much recognition of this reality. Thus I would ask, which of us is really living in the ivory tower? — Hippyhead

What reality are you talking about?

Have you served in the military? Are you an active reservist? Do you have a summer place less than 10 kilometers from a country that people here define to be a dictatorship?

Is, again, your only argument that "What if Saddam and sons moved in next door to your family"?

Answer to your question: No. That is my reality. And I'm not freaking out. Si vis pacem, Para bellum has been a motto for me, really. It works. And I'm happy if I or my children never see war in our country.

Again a question for you: What is wrong in the reasoning that Cheney (in 1994) gave why invading Iraq would have not been a wise decision?

I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I honestly don't believe there is meaningful elections fraud, but I do wonder what makes this process so protracted. Other than in Alaska where they have to dogsled ballots from remote villages, I'm not sure why it takes so long to do things in Atlanta. — Hanover

Uh, well, in a large country holding national elections ought to be a well coordinated collective effort.

But for some reason, some states will get their last votes I guess next week. Then there's the recounts and the lawsuits, so enjoy while it lasts!

Something like this could be anticipated:

CCCP.

Besides, the Russians I've met were very nice and warm people. Judge individuals, not people. And don't relate the people to the problems of their society as if there is something inherently wrong with the people themselves. Not the fault of the present people that earlier generations ended up with Marxism-Leninism.

For example, Mexicans are great, their society isn't so. But of course, if you dismantle the justice system and let criminals run amok, any society would be in the end similar.

Make him a martyr?

Likely he will then be one of the most respected Russian leaders, even if "the intelligentsia" might have other ideas about him. You seem not to understand Russians at all.

And even if it's very unlikely, the real issue is that Russia can be a democracy and a functioning justice state even if it's not now. Putin indeed can go to jail. As one Russian opposition leader once said, even his watch that he wears is more expensive than his official annual salary could by.

Well, I've tried to say Paul (and you) just what the US did wrong, but from your 'clear minded moral vision' similar to a view from an ivory tower you simply dismiss any critique. Your 'moral vision' turns into blinders when we talk about the actual stuff of what went wrong. Yes, one has to have a moral vision, but then the part "how to get there" and "do more good than bad" are things to take into consideration. Let's not forget that the invasion and following war cost at least over hundred thousand deaths, but some estimates put the figure to near one milion. That ought to weigh a bit in your moral vision.

So Iraq.

Starting from reality that the argument was a) Saddam Hussein was a threat because of WMD's and b) his alleged links with Al Qaeda and that solely Paul's argument would not have gotten the US to invade one Middle Eastern country without reasons a) and b). Or do you dispute this?

Then for those details. Let's just start from the beginning:

1. The difficulty of invading Iraq and toppling Hussein is explained perfectly by Dick Cheney in 1994 with his argumentation. Cheney gavethe following and understandable reason how Iraq would become a quagmire that would (and did) happen ten years later.

Paul Edwards gave this answer, which doesn't at all even focus on Iraq and doesn't at all respond to what Cheney says:

I listened to it, but I didn't need to. In 1991 the Cold War hadn't been won. Securing Europe was FAR more important than Iraq. We didn't want to do anything to spook the USSR. We wanted the USSR on our side and to not fear anything from us. Western security was and is more *important* than the more *beautiful* goal of liberating Iraq. — Paul Edwards

The USSR was in no condition to respond to this AND Iraq isn't it's "near abroad", so this is simply false. And an answer a neocon would give. The real reasons were given by Cheney.

I'll repost it below.

Now, to start the discussion (again): What is in your view wrong in Cheney's argumentation here?


In fact Saudi Arabia warned older Bush that (as Cheney says) that they and the GCC wouldn't go and invade a fellow Arab country and that this would be highly destabilizing for the region and likely would in the end benefit just Iran (which has happened). Then older Bush listened to his Saudi friends.

Far more better if he would be sentenced to jail for the a) rampant corruption b) the killing innocent Russians to reignite the Chechen war. Yet that's not likely to happen.

But I guess that many Russians are happy that Putin annexed Crimea and South Ossetia to Russia and that he has played with the Americans. And have to say, he is one of the great politicians of our time. Even if I think he is a bit dangerous.

They ARE psychopaths gunning down innocent people you nimrod. I stand with Paul in rejecting all such pseudo intellectual supposedly sophisticated fantasy moral superiority psycho-babble. All of that is childlike nonsense. — Hippyhead

And I'm getting tired of the utter military ignorance and naive thinking especially from Paul Edwards on military matters. I have had to correct his errors in history/military history too many times.

If there's no military understanding, no military history understanding and quaint historical understanding, there's not much to say. Other than Oh, air war is neat, so let's do everything from there. Hardly a starting point to discuss the many aspects of modern interventions, because with you it's just "killing the bad guys". Yeah, just go and kill the bad guys.

Debates regarding tactics for defeating the psychopaths can be reasonable. — Hippyhead

To debate those tactics one needs knowledge about modern warfare, politics and the regional history.

This thread just reminds me how ignorant people were of the Iraqi war when it was in the media focus and how ignorant they still are.

At least on the Republican forums, sure.

Perhaps others will refer to him as ex-president after he leaves office. I'm sure he personally wouldn't like that.

The first thing to do in a war is to dehumanize your enemy and delegitimize him. A typical way is simply start by referring to the enemy as terrorists and unlawful combatants and focus on any unlawful actions that you can find. Way to get out of all those "silly" Geneva conventions. From the wars perhaps only the Falklands - Malvinas conflict was one where both sides respected the laws of war.

The way to do it is to portray them as psychopaths gunning down innocent people. And once you have done that, no way then to start treating him as a respectable human being. Clearly the moral justification is an inherent part of war propaganda.

Nobody needed to "stand up" the Taliban. They stood themselves up, and sustained their assault without much assistance from outside powers. The Afghan government needs "standing up" because they don't want freedom as much as the Taliban wants to dominate.

What Vietnam should have taught us is that whoever wants victory the most is usually who wins. — Hippyhead

One of the biggest inabilities of the US and the West in general is to look at the examples of how truly lasting peace has been made in the past. Especially the US is absolutely

Let's take the case of the Second Boer War. That war didn't go so well for the British, but in the end they could get a peace negotiation underway after a three year war. What they could do (after putting the Boer people in concentration camps where 20 000 died) was to get a lasting peace with the Boers. And what was their solution? The Boer peace negotiators, Botha and Smuts, were respected and made part of the new union of South Africa. That you have former guerilla leaders that you fought then made high ranking officers and statesmen in your Commonwealth tells quite how the British could handle these things.

(Winston Churchill with Jan Smuts, a Boer guerilla leader turned statesman who was the second prime minister of South Africa and a field marshal. The two first met as Churchill was a prisoner of war of the Boers and Smuts his interrogator.)


The Americans and the present Western attitudes aren't like this. The hubris and the moralistic ideology simply defines those who oppose the US in conflicts as vile terrorists with dubious morals, hence there is not any way similar peace with the enemy could be found.

You're still disputing what can be done from the air. — Paul Edwards

Yes. Because your simplistic ideas aren't based on the real World. It's more to the level of bar room talk where World problems are solved by just bombing the stupid places into submission. And we could have a talk about the pro's and con's about air power, but I think this isn't something you know very well.

You simply have to understand that an occupying force, be it peacekeepers or a peace enforcement force is very essential to pacify the situation if and when it cannot be done by the former sides. You were talking about spreading democracy and helping other countries, so the discussion ought to be more specific than thinking that everything is solved, if you just kill the dictator. Eyes and boots on the ground simply matter. Even if both sides do control their forces and are willing not to engage the other one, even a small force of military observers on the ground works far better than satellite pictures. That Bosnia, which is still divided to Republika Srpska and to the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is peaceful came about with the large NATO ground force to stop the fighting. And in this case your logic of just assisting one party with air power would lead simply to ethnic cleansing of Serbs out from Bosnia Herzegovina, so your ideas use of air power simply don't work.

The ground forces weren't actually used. The Yugoslav wars were another example of air-alone. — Paul Edwards

Ground forces were still needed. Please inform yourself of actual events. IFOR was a 60 000 strong NATO force deployed into Bosnia.

In the war in Kosovo KFOR went into the troubled small territory with 3500 strong force and actually had a near incident with Russian peacekeepers. In fact the Serbian losses weren't so big from the bombing either in Bosnia and Kosovo: from Kosovo the Serbs withdrew substantial amount of forces (roughly 40 000), hence they were not destroyed altogether. It's totally understandable as the mountainous region makes it harder to find targets even now and especially in the late 1990's.

British NATO troops head to head with Russian paratroopers in Kosovo. So in real life obviously not everything happened just from the air:


The simple fact is that you simply need boots on the ground. In Libya there wasn't any. It doesn't mean that the forces have to fight... the basic objective is not to have them fight, actually. If you are so keen to really build peace and democracy.

You're misreading Libya. In Libya we wanted to topple Gaddafi, and we did, in less than a year, purely from the air. — Paul Edwards

Again wrong. Read the UN articles.

Yes, after some time a civil war occurred, but that's not on us. AND we can end that civil war any time we want simply by providing air support to either side. — Paul Edwards

Oh that's your view? I thought you had in mind bringing peace and democracy, but really seem's that isn't the intent at all. Just kill the bad guy(s). Anything else that happens afterward isn't on us.

Well, you are just promoting the modern day version gunboat diplomacy, literally. Yes, Western ironclads were quite able to lob shells to coastal cities with impunity from the sea without any danger to themselves. If there's a problem, we'll just bomb someone, something and that will take care of everything.

Well, here we have been having deficits for a long time and it hasn't gone into investments, but upholding the welfare state. If taxes don't cover the costs, then the government takes on debt.

The true question, which I already mentioned, is if we really can go along the lines of Modern Monetary Theory and assume that it doesn't matter how much debt the government has, that it won't have an effect on creditworthiness or the value of the currency. It's a quite current issue you especially now.

With "surviving" I'm drawing my definition from the experience of our eastern neighbor, which was called Soviet Union one day and then was Russia afterwards. That is "not surviving". I think afterward there will be an United States, however traumatic the 2020's are going to be to the American collective experience.

What's the comparative success of commercial market research? I don't know whether they can reliably predict whether a new brand of apple sauce will fly or not. — Bitter Crank

Here they have been rather close and usually exit polls are quite close to the end result. But you are right (even if we now knew the apple sauce already).

Of course the idea that people don't say who they are going to vote when polled is a genuine factor. For example here there came a surprise on how many voted for communists after the war as obviously it wasn't something many wanted to declare publicly (when the country just had fought a war against the Soviet Union, lost a lot of land and had massive amounts of internal refugees). Populist campaigns and totally new parties or movements can get the pollsters confused as people likely will be likely more pondering about going with a new party or not. And likely new segments of the population can either vote or old one's change their voting habits.

Exceptionally many tight races, like Wisconsin with 20 000 vote in favor Biden when 99% counted. How many recounts are there going to be?

Honestly I can't really see how the US can survive like this. They're incredibly screwed as a nation. — Mr Bee

It will survive.

Except if on Wednesday 20th of January 2021 there are two inauguration ceremonies. Or something similarly utterly crazy.

Oh yes, heated disagreement that is finally solved by a Supreme Court ruling on who is the US President is what the country needs. :sad:

Well, it's close.

Likely so close that even some other politician than Trump might also start arguing about an unfavorable outcome.

There is a high probability that this is made a debacle. At least that I can say.

(Anyone remember the earlier Mexican elections before the last one's, the current President was then also a candidate and simply refused to acknowledge the outcome. )

That's only 26 electoral votes. Pennsylvania + North Carolina + Georgia is 51 votes.

Seems like Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina are going to Trump (at least now).

So how it looks like now I have to admit I was wrong in my forecast that Biden will win. At least I got right that it would be a tight race. Have to learn not to believe that election polling is as accurate or trustworthy in the US as it is here.

Yet what was obvious that there wasn't much enthusiasm for Biden. Even if things would miraculously change, that is one thing apparent.

And a charity shop volunteer isn't contributing, but commercial shop worker is contributing? — unenlightened

It's called voluntary work, if you have not noticed.

Can you just unmuddle this for me? I say that society doesn't need people to work very much because automation. So most employment is people scratching each other's backs and picking each other's nits. And if people do a bit less or a lot less of that, it needn't matter very much to anyone, as long as everyone still gets food and shelter. — unenlightened

I understand your point. My point is that "scratching each other's backs" is important as then the transfer of wealth, the payment, is voluntary. No nail polisher of football player will just come to your house and demand you pay part of their income. Yes, we don't have anymore 12 hour workdays six days a week. Heck, I can write to you in PF and do my work and still my boss is happy. A fitting mix of work & leisure is what we need.

You are saying:
1. society can well tolerate high unemployment - agreed.
2..there is a social stigma to unemployment - yes, but there needn't be.
3. welfare doesn't motivate employment - yes but that doesn't matter because 1.

So what is your argument against a basic income? — unenlightened

Well, I do live in a welfare state where there is a) free education even to the university level, b) assistance to housing, c) perpetual unemployment benefits and d) universal free health care. When you have those, you already have been taken care of what universal basic income is for, especially with the unemployment benefit. Then for those who do have income and pay taxes, it is questionable if this is basic income is necessary as it's basically a payback of the taxes.

Again, this is why we need to do it. Even with the result of air-alone in Afghanistan and Libya, you're still disputing what is possible. — Paul Edwards

What are you talking about?

Afghanistan was never an air-alone war. In fact neither was even the intervention in the Yugoslav war as US forces and NATO ground forces were deployed their. And what success is Libya, a country torn still in civil war with two opposing governments and various countries (some of whom should be US allies) backing their sides? Libya is a case example of how you cannot control everything from the air: you can assist one side, but there stops your influence to what is happening on the ground. End result: you have no control what is happening, or you can get attacked as the US was in Benghazi.

There were long queues of Iraqis willing to join the new Iraqi security forces. — Paul Edwards

And here one of the biggest errors was made. Paul Bremer decided to abolish the Iraqi Army with his infamous Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2: what better choice than to make hundreds of thousands of military trained men unemployed. Before US general Jay Garner, a professional soldier, had made several plans what to do with the large Iraqi military, yet then this clueless ideologue Bremer comes to the scene and makes one of the worst decisions ever that directly contributed to the insurgency starting.

And we have succeeded in lowering the barrier to war. Instead of having to convince people to pony up the cash for a 500,000-man invasion force like Desert Storm, we can instead point to Libya done purely from the air, or Afghanistan where the initial defeat was done purely from the air, or 2003 Iraq done with a relatively small force. — Paul Edwards

This is totally delusional.

Libya is now totally unstable with the sporadic fighting going on. The Balkans isn't similar. The ex-Yugoslavia is peace and the civil war is thankfully history. That was done both with air AND ground forces and a sound plan with the international community engaging in this. Libya was just an erratic response in which the US didn't take charge leading to the fiasco it is now. The war in Afghanistan is still going on as also there was no good plan.

How you make Libya and Afghanistan a success story while the liberation of Kuwait (a success) is somehow seen as bad I don't understand at all. Rumsfeld was delusional and should have been sacked years earlier.

I respect myself because I contribute to society — unenlightened

And contribution we usually think as work. Rarely we see ourselves contributing if we just get an unemployment check. That sense of contribution is important and that is my point as it seems you haven't understood my point.

You yourself talk about obligatory work — unenlightened

You're the one putting words in my mouth. Naturally if someone really doesn't want to work, that is his or her decision. Yet the vast majority would like to work. And it is very important for many for their self respect as it still is a stigma to be unemployed.

The unfortunate fact is that a society can tolerate high unemployment because of this personal stigma, even if the unemployment is because of an economic depression. There are enough of annoying people that will say "anyone can get a job if they really want to work". Unemployment is seen as a personal failure. If you the welfare state does give protection and you don't find yourself in the street or living in your car as in the US one can find oneself, that doesn't help the motivational side.

And how this is societal attitude one can easily see how then the society totally accepts one idle class of people: the retired. Once you have worked and then retire is seen as good. Yet is the issue about changing people's views on unemployment? Well, then kicks the economy itself into the equation: those nail polishers or football players you judge to be unimportant still get their money because of a totally willing and voluntary transaction of money: somebody is genuinely willing to pay for their services and it's not similar a tax.

The early turnout data has been insane there, surpassing the 2016 numbers already and nearly all being concentrated on the blue counties or trending blue counties. — Mr Bee

Perhaps people don't want to stand in line for hours during a pandemic.

But the real question is how many states can get through the mail in votes.

I'll hope everything goes well. And the election doesn't turn into "the 2020 election dumpster fire / fiasco".

Is making art meaningful work?

I think so.

Besides, I've done a lot of voluntary work, that I've not gotten paid. I think it has been meaningful and I've liked it. I don't know what your problem is with work.

I have to side with unenlightened on this one. I think the goal is full production, not full employment. Meaningful hobbies give meaning to. — Benkei

Who has talked about full employment or obligatory work?

The whole thrust of the development of civilisation has been from the beginning to work less. Work has negative value in the economy and always has had because it tends to be tiring, boring and unpleasant if not dangerous. — unenlightened

I don't think so. Besides, getting rid of meaningless work is a totally different question that getting rid of work altogether.

Meaningful work brings meaning to life. What's so wrong with improving things that are important to oneself through work?

Actually, even Iraq could have been done with US air power alone, but it was never tried (for good reason). — Paul Edwards

Seems that you have no military training, because this is again nonsense.

Even the air campaign of Desert Storm could not give the final blow to a conventional army deployed on an absolutely flat desert that used very traditional strategy and tactics in it's deployment. No, you needed those 100 hours of the spear of the US Cold War army and it's allies to destroy the Iraqi forces.

Even Rumsfeld didn't believe that US air power alone would do it, even if he had widely erroneous ideas of how little troops you need to invade and occupy a country. (Or how cheap it would be.)

And if the US follows my playbook, they will prove that it can be done purely by air, purely supporting revolutionaries. — Paul Edwards

Well, I hope that Australian politicians will not listen to your politico-military strategy, because it's a disaster waiting to happen. Your reasoning is perhaps a direct result of assuming war being as the one sided as it has been with the US engaging dirt poor Third World countries in it's war on terror.

What is needed for freedom in Iran is an external military invasion, to make their revolution a success. — Paul Edwards

You mean to turn their Islamic revolution into a success or breath new air into it?

Yes, likely an external military invasion will indeed unify the Iranian people to fight a holy war alongside their Mullahs just as it did with Iraqi invasion.

The Iranians are surely used to sacrifices.

It's the way democracy SHOULD spread. These people shouldn't have to fight alone, to be mowed down by automatic weapons. The only thing that is standing in the way of success is YOUR BRAIN. It's literally that simple. Western brains are the ONLY thing preventing worldwide democracy. — Paul Edwards

Yes, we can help. Yet that is a delicate issue just how to do it.. In the end it's your job in Australia to either to cherish uphold democracy. No foreigners can do it, it's only you and your society can do it. And no bombing of Australians will make things better.

I do understand that we have to dismiss the stereotypes we have of people. If the Korean War would have been lost, we would now treat all Koreans as we treat North Korea and we couldn't imagine a Korean culture and prosperity that now exists in South Korea. The idea of K-pop would be absurd. So democracy can take root anywhere. But for starters, there ought to be building blocks like a people and a nation, for starters.

Now to answer your actual point - why did 87% of Afghans support the US military intervention if foreign forces are so bad? Why did 50% of Iraqis support the US military intervention if foreign forces are so bad? What percentage of Australians do you think would support a US military intervention if we had a military coup and a cruel dictator? I would hope 99%, but I don't know. Whatever percentage it is, those are the only ones I actually care about. I don't care if my ideological enemy opposes my intervention. I will arm my ideological allies and they will take care of the rest. — Paul Edwards

And both of these are failures. You don't look at the real examples of success.

Bill Clinton was successful in getting finally peace in ex-Yugoslavia. It hasn't flared up. But it wasn't NATO fighterbombers that brought down Milosevic. It was the Serbs themselves along some little support from the State Department. Yet now democratic Serbia is an ally of Russia: they do remember who bombed them.

Serbs having enough of Milosevic:


Namibia was a success. That country didn't go the way as Angola or DRC once it finally got it's independence.


And so on. Don't dwell on the epic failures.

The Shah didn't mow the protesters down with automatic weapons. — Paul Edwards

Again wrong.

They actually did do that. Here's a picture from "Black Friday" of the Iranian Revolution when that exactly happened:



The inept Shah then condemned the officers that followed orders (and did not have any riot gear or training), yet the massacre of some 100 people lead to a point of no return for the Shah. What was more hated was the Iranian secret police SAVAK that did torturte Iranians and had killed thousands of political opponents of the Shah. The Federation of American Scientist list the torture methods of the SAVAK with "SAVAK torture methods included "electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails". Imperial Iran was far from a justice state or a democracy. And when the Shah finally agreed to implement reforms in 1979, it was far too late.

The President still has power, he or she isn't a decorative official. The President is elected every six years and can be re-elected once. (We learned that after President Kekkonen, president from 1956 to 1982, when he was forced out because of ailing health. But hey, he was the favorite of the Soviets!)

(Notice how drunk they all look.)


Usually the Prime Minister is the leader party that wins the elections and is able to form a coalition of political parties to the administrations. It's very rare that the prime minister would be from a party that isn't the largest one.

But you were American? Or are you dual citizen?

Very diplomatically put. A bit more thorough investigation would show how the situation is worse as Trump is totally fine when it his family getting the money.

But of course, this was a thing Trump was surprised how it got wind from his supporters. That should tell everything. Yet many believe this, as if Trump really would be for fighting corruption and the power of lobbyists and special interest groups.

I think what the US needs is a different voting system. — Benkei

We had earlier a similar system as in the US. Boy, did it suck.

Then they changed it to a system that if on the first vote nobody gets a majority of the votes, the candidate wins. If not, then there is a second round (and voting) with the two candidates that got the most votes. I think it works well in a multi-party system.

Then one improvement is could be that the early votes would be already counted. Here it goes that once the voting stations close, then at eight o'clock PM they declare the results of the pre-election votes and then start dropping the votes from the election day results.

Now it seems that it's quite a mess in the US.

The extreme polarization in the US leads to a lot of screaming and yelling, but no difference day to day. — Hanover

At least it has been successful in driving out those small capitalist shops from downtown Seattle and Portland, but yes, a lot of places in the US are totally OK even with the pandemic.



Anyway, if it's going to be a Biden administration, they have experience in putting down similar protests with the Occupy Movement. Kamala will get things under control behind the curtains sometime in the spring. Or at least in the autumn 2021.

If we were all planning on liberating the rest of the world — Paul Edwards

Stop right there.

This is your fundamental problem. You perhaps cannot even see it. It's that YOU are going with YOUR plan to LIBERATE somebody, free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression. The objective, the people you liberate are like a damsel in distress, a totally helpless entity, which then YOU then give a plan forwards they have to do. This is simply not the way democracy spreads: the model of Germany and Japan just go that far.

Perhaps it's difficult for you to understand how offensive the idea of a foreign military forces taking over your country and implementing changes to your society as you as an American never have had the threat of it (at least after the 1812 war). Reminds me how the Soviets wanted to liberate us in 1939 using quite the same rhetoric. Lucky that both of my grandfathers came back alive from the war.

For starters, how about not thinking immediately of using military force to liberate / attack a country?

Or you think that would be somehow immoral thing to do?

Expecting Iraqis to be as intelligent and sensible as Americans is the opposite of condescending. — Paul Edwards

That's not what I was saying.

If Americans have difficulties with racial relations when slavery has been abolished a long time ago and segragation laws some 60 years ago, what about countries where those relations have been worse yesterday? You simply cannot assume there aren't huge problems in these societies, which have ended up with dictatorships. It's not as if before everything was just fine until somehow an evil dictator got himself into power and once you have taken away the dictator, democracy could flourish.

This is especially true in Iraq, as we have already seen. The only place where I could see a rather peaceful transition to a democracy and a justice state would be Belarus, if the present dictator would be toppled.

Planning to use military force to oust Lukashenka in Belarus would be playing with the possibility of WW3.

Which reminds me, the best of luck to the Belarussians in ousting their dictator!

Why have none of the VERY rich gulf oil states developed nukes in response to Israel, who has had nukes for a long time now? They're not afraid of Israel, that's why. They have rationally concluded Israel is not a threat to them. They're making peace with Israel. — Hippyhead

And why have those countries that Israel has annexed territory from and/or been in war with Israel have made efforts to gain a nuclear deterrent?

And it's easy to make peach WHEN YOU HAVEN'T BEEN IN AN ACTUAL WAR. The first war that several Gulf States participated was in the liberation of Kuwait. And now some are fighting in Yemen. None have sent troops to fight Israel in any of the Arab-Israeli wars.

I think that the furthest contributer of troops to fight Israel has been Morocco. Yet people don't describe the two countries being in war. They simply haven't yet gotten to normal diplomatic relations. And that's btw what the Gulf "peace deal" is about. Great, but perhaps not so astonishing as Trump wants to picture it.

Are you aware that North Korea has a bunch of nukes, built out of an economy about the size of a house cat? — Hippyhead

The massive conventional army of North Korea already prohibited Clinton to strike North Korea when it was obvious they went on with their nuclear program. Same conclusion came younger Bush too.

Iraq was defeated in 1991 and a no-fly zone was installed back then. The US could with impunity attack it in 1998 destroying the remnants. And likely could have done similar strikes.

Just like with the Syrian nuclear arms program, these things are difficult to hide and once destroyed, you have to start again.

Are you aware that without Mid East oil supplies the global economy goes in to an immediate drastic nose dive and that such circumstances have always been ripe grounds for conflict among the major powers? — Hippyhead

Now you are making arguments for my case that just why a nuclear exchange between let's say Iran and Israel would not escalate bringing other powers to launch their nuclear arsenal.