Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "William Spaniel" channel.

  1. 1:45 "nor am I an agent of an intelligence organization" That's exactly what an agent would say!
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  2. 9:20 On the other hand, there's another reason why exchanging conscripts can make sense. They can be expected to be on average less effective on the battlefield than volunteering contract soldiers. In theory, the Kremlin could take that into account when negotiating the prisoner exchanges but the political pressures you mentioned might also make them willing to even pay a premium for released conscripts.
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  3. It should be noted that some countries, like France, are also in the Red Sea protecting cargo ships without participating in the Operation Prosperity Guardian. Presumably this is, at least in France's case, because they don't want to subject their ships to American command.
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  4. I think one possible game theoretic reason you missed is dynamic inconsistency. If you're invaded then reaching a negotiated settlement with the invader might the lowest cost option for you once an invasion begins. However, what if you instead take the attitude that when invaded you're going to always fight to the bitter end and cause as much damage as possible to the invader regardless of the cost to yourself? If you take that kind of "irrational" position and credibly signal that to would-be invaders then they might rationally decide that invading you is not worth it after all and thus you avoid invasions entirely. However, if you still get invaded then the only way to really signal your "irrational" intention is to fight to the bitter end even though it seems more costly.
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  5. What if it's just Shoigu wanting his own Bakhmut?
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  6. I think destroying the Iran deal was one the worst things he did.
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  7. When it comes to Austria, they recently had a dispute with Russia and they were not going to get more gas from Russia in any case.
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  8. Or was it an excursion instead of an incursion?
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  9.  @jotfohm4644  In case it wasn't clear, he was just making a Doctor Who reference.
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  10. I'd say "east bank" would be understood correctly at least 99% of the time despite the Dnieper having twists and turns.
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  11. I have some comments: 1) Putin has less reason/justification to invade Finland. Finland doesn't have a large Russian minority nor any separatist regions and it doesn't hold any territory that used to be a part of the Soviet Union. 2) I think to join NATO you need to have no territorial disputes. At the present moment that would hinder Ukraine's, Georgia's, and Moldova's ability to join NATO (and I think Moldova hasn't been interested anyway so far, though that might change at some point).
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  12.  @alexhumble7653  "14000 innocent civilians were killed in Donbass by Ukraine's artillery since 2014." No, that is just incorrect on multiple levels: -This figure includes people killed both by Ukrainian forces and those killed by separatist/Russian forces. -It includes deaths from all sorts of weapons like assault rifles and grenades, not just artillery. -It includes both soldier and civilian deaths. In fact, civilian deaths are a clear minority. They number about 3k, i.e. less than 1/4th of that estimated total. -Almost all of those deaths happened in 2014 & 2015. In recent years the number of deaths before the present invasion were something like 10 per year and that figure includes shelling by both sides as both sides have been doing that. "How long could it continue and who could stop it?" Due to the points listed above, especially the last one, it hardly makes sense to launch a full scale invasion to prevent deaths from cease-fire violations (committed by both sides, mind you). By launching the current invasion Russia has vastly increased the number of people from Donbass dying.
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  13.  @joshadams8761  Not by definition. Celcius and Kelvin are defined based on water's triple point, not boiling point. Boiling point would be a tricky definition because on a temperature-pressure diagram it's not a point but a curve. I guess you can define a single point on the curve by fixing the pressure. However, the triple point is probably still less ambiguous.
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  14. "No my man, we do not see the median-voter-theorem play out in the US. The policy positions of both parties shift to the right for decades now." It's far from obvious that that would be an argument against the median voter theorem. It could possibly be explained simply by the median voter (or the politicians' perception of the median voter) moving to the right.
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  15. I'd say "just as much" is a wild exaggeration.
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  16.  @gloverfox9135  They did rejoin NATO command in 2009, though.
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  17.  @kenirawadi4689  What do you mean "forgets"? China was explicitly mentioned towards the end of the video.
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  18. But he didn't say that directly and it might have been unintentional. Thus, your logic might not apply in this particular case.
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  19. Partition is something that might happen whether it's wanted or not.
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  20. But Spaniel is from the States and likely a significant chunk of his audience is too so it's not too weird for him to describe the difference from his perspective.
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  21.  @hamzamahmood9565  I'm pretty sure some large conventional explosions had also had mushroom clouds before. If you meant that he didn't expect the mushroom could to be as big as it was that's more plausible.
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  22. I forgot to say that conscripts can be even less effective if the Kremlin doesn't want to risk them in combat.
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  23.  @alexhumble7653  "However Russia’s surrounded with NATO’s bases all around and even Ukraine was a candidate for NATO." First I want to say that most of this isn't relevant to my original comment. It was about how it can be beneficial to be "irrationally" stubborn in resistance to make invasions less likely if it can be signalled credibly. This was a general comment and the specifics you mention don't affect the logic that much. However, what you just wrote (in the part I quoted) is just false. Ukraine wasn't a NATO candidate and in practice it wouldn't have been able to join for the foreseeable future anyway because the territorial dispute with Russia would have prevented it. Ukraine has since left an application but that was only about half a year after the current invasion had started and it still seems unlikely that Ukraine could join.
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  24. "I'm not sure Trump could cancel Ukraine aid. It's been signed into law with a 2/3 supermajority." He could (try to) veto any further aid once that package runs out.
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  25. 7:25 I think this is a little bit misleading. The Soviet Union did also claim to be a democracy and held elections, though those elections only had one candidate on the ballot for the voters to choose from. Ideologically, the Communist party's claimed legitimacy came from that it purported to represent the people, or at least the proletariat.
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  26.  @alexhumble7653  "There WAS promise to accept Ukraine in NATO, which was widely announced." No, there wasn't. "Where is your own indignation" What indignation? My (original) comment had nothing to do with indignation. I wasn't talking about who's in the right. I was talking about a game theoretic concept called "time inconsistency" or "dynamic inconsistency" which is relevant to what Spaniel was talking about. Why do you go on this Ukraine rant under my comment which has little to do with what you're talking about?
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  27. "The 2% standard is a blunt tool" But it's not easy to come up with a better criterion.
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  28. I strongly disagree. I think it's good that neither side in the Ukraine War seems to have used e.g. chemical weapons.
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  29. But there are a couple of reasons why Finland might have less to fear when it comes to escalation. Firstly, Finland is a much smaller contributor so Russia can more easily ignore it. Secondly, weapons that Finland has donated aren't to the same degree long-range rockets and missiles so they're less relevant for this purpose anyway. Thirdly, Finland doesn't have scattered possessions around the world nor military presence in numerous countries around the world so there isn't an opportunity for Russia to carry out the kind of retaliation it has been hinting at when it comes to e.g. the UK giving a green light to strikes into Russia-proper using British weapons.
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  30. @Boababa-fn3mr In what way was destroying the Iran nuclear deal a good decision?
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  31. In Finnish the bird is called "kalkkuna" which comes from the city of Calicut (a.k.a. Kozhikode) in India.
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  32.  @alexhumble7653  I don't think Russia needs to conquer a part of Ukraine to survive. However, even if that were the case it doesn't necessarily affect the logic I described. A country wishing to deter invasions by being "irrationally" stubborn in resistance probably has to do it against any invader to be credible, including invaders who wouldn't be deterred by cost.
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  33.  @broadestsmiler  In principle, the Article 42 of the Lisbon Treaty does provide for collective defense, though it's weaker than the Article 5 of the NATO Charter.
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  34.  @george_m641  At least the current government in Hungary clearly does care about Hungarians in other countries. They have e.g. given them voting rights in Hungarian elections. Also, many nationalists in Hungary don't like the fact that the areas that these Hungarians live in had to be given to Hungary's neighbors as per the Treaty of Trianon. "I care only about Ukrainian citizens" That's one possible attitude to have but not all people are like you. Some may care less about citizenship and more about ethnicity or historical claims to certain lands.
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  35.  @justskip4595  "where did you get the number of 180 000 strong army for Finland?" The website of the Finnish Army (Maavoimat) lists its war-time strength as 180k men. You can easily check this yourself. Of course, the Navy and the Air Force come on top of that but they'd likely wield much smaller numbers. "planned war time strength with total reserve of 870 000" I think that's just the total size of the reserve, i.e. it's the amount of people who have gone through military training and are still military age (and haven't fallen out of the reserve for some other reason). That amount of people couldn't actually called up, at least not very soon, so it's more of a paper figure.
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  36. "Israel has always established its capital as Jerusalem, and sat its government there." I don't think this is quite true. The Provisional State Council after the declaration of independence but before the first elections sat in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.
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  37. Among the "freeriders" Canada is near the top.
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  38.  @JSK010  My understanding is that according to IAEA inspectors they were in compliance with the deal.
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  39. That has more to do with how much and how strongly Israel would choose to target Iran. It might want to pull its punches so that Iran does the same. This video was more about what to strike in Iran, not how strongly to strike Iran.
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  40.  @nenadmitrovic3469  "They have pioeline to china and nkr long ago finished another one." But those come from different gas fields than the fields that were supplying Europe. The gas that was flowing to Europe cannot (mostly) be diverted elsewhere for several years at least.
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  41. "It is especially dangerous for European members to freeload since they’re on the frontline of the main adversary Russia." It's not Russia's neighbors that have been freeloaders.
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  42. "EU sanctioned Russia for no reason." For no reason!? Are you kidding? Russia invaded Ukraine, in case you haven't noticed. That's the reason.
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  43. "A town founded in 1494, saved an entire country from being annexed." You could argue that the existence of that town, or rather the airport in it, is what endangered Kyiv in the first place. If there was no airport there then there wouldn't be a reason for such an airborne assault on it.
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  44.  @killingtimeitself  I think that would be a bit misleading term.
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  45.  @alexhumble7653  "Loss of Alaska or texas would also help deter future American invasions." If that happened as a result of an American invasion somewhere that would indeed be a deterrent. Still, it probably also matters that Alaskans and Texans probably don't want to fall under the rule of some other power.
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  46. "The more available oil will lower crude prices worldwide." It's not that simple. Less refined products in Russia can mean that Russia imports more or exports less of those products. That could increase the demand of crude by non-Russian refineries. The assumption (or one of them) in this video was that Russia's imports/exports of refined products wouldn't change because of barriers to trade (either due to sanctions or other effects).
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  47.  @SweBeach2023  "What could US possible win entering Vietnam?" Possibly a friendly country if the intervention was successful. You can take the two Koreas or the two Chinas as examples.
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  48. 2:45 I don't think the idea of an information war necessarily implies that the underlying truth is known even privately. Both sides might want to shape the public's beliefs about that truth even if they themselves don't know it or are at least not very sure about it.
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  49. Can't wait for him to get the economics Nobel for that insight.
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  50. "I think one of the main issues is that the "median voter" does not exist, talking to people you'll quickly find that many of them have wildly divergent, often confusing opinions." That's a rather weak argument. If one talks to people, as you suggest, how big is your sample size going to be? Probably far to small to make such conclusions.
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  51. "Why would you jump off there?" He's gone over that in earlier videos. No need to rehash the whole chain of events every single time.
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  52.  @stevekillgore9272  Is there evidence of that?
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  53.  @stevekillgore9272  Well, is there any evidence for it?
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  54. That's literally explained in the video itself (though only in text form).
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  55. The title says "Every Other World Conflict" but you didn't say how this affects the conflict in Myanmar.
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  56.  @ZeroNumerous  You got the timeline mixed up. Stuxnet was discovered in 2010. The JCPOA was agreed on in 2015, i.e. several years later. Presumably Iran was refining weapons-grade uranium prior to 2015 but I'm not aware of any evidence that they were doing it in 2015-18. IAEA inspectors not detecting violations of the JCPOA isn't predicated on whether Iran is rational or not.
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  57. But 4 of them have better fertility than Russia (and 3 have worse). In addition, they are more attractive to immigrants and have higher pension ages.
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  58. There's one hypothetical war ending scenario you didn't mention. You could argue that ending US aid pushes the "white line" so much to the west that all of Ukraine ends up occupied by Russia.
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  59. 5:25 Are those changes percent changes or percentage point changes? You say the former but in this context the latter would probably be the more typical metric.
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  60. I have a question about the miscalculation reason. As you said in the video, once this error is revealed in action and a more correct estimate becomes available to both sides then otherwise rational unitary actors should reach a negotiated settlement. However, I'm curious about how common this is in practice. Do leaders often pull out quickly from failed attacks? My intuition would say that leaders might be tempted to "stay the course" even when facing a debacle because admitting defeat is too embarrassing even though it would be less costly materially. On the other hand, continuing an expensive war and throwing away lives just to avoid embarrassment also seems strange behaviour. What kind of behaviour is the most common in that kind of situation?
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  61.  @stirlinggerbic-forsyth3345  The Ukrainian casualties he claims may very well be inflated. I only wanted to say that the (implicit) Russian casualty figures contained in what he said might not necessarily be understated in the same way as an explicit claim about Russian casualties probably would be.
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  62. ​ @IFRYRCE  "I don't think he is right. I know exactly how small foreign aid is in the grand scheme of the US budget" He can still be right. You might be in the minority.
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  63.  @robertstuckey6407  I don't think that makes you a bad person. At least to me, that feels emotionally less uncomfortable than e.g. looking for combat footage where you can see people becoming KIA. However, I have no idea where you could find that kind of information.
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  64.  @neilbarnett3046  They have lately mostly being using contract soldiers, not conscripts (at least when not counting what used to be the forces of the former LPR & DPR).
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  65.  @sfjarhead4062  It's not as widely known.
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  66. If Russia were to attack Sweden the most likely target would be the island of Gotland. Also, Sweden's membership would enhance the safety of the Baltic countries.
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  67. "So if Russia now tries to invade Sweden, they will be forced to do that be sea, which is highly unlikely." Invasion by the sea was always the most likely invasion scenario because the most likely target for a Russian invasion of Sweden would be the island of Gotland.
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  68. What do you mean "bad take"? The MANPADs were just a hypothetical example. You seem to be taking that part too literally.
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  69. Turkey joined 70 years ago, not in the past 30 years.
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  70.  @termintot4645  The problem with F-16s is that Ukrainian pilots need to be trained on them and there's a finite rate at which they can be trained. Huge numbers of F-16s with no one to fly them aren't very useful.
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  71. I think plenty also go to Romania and then leave via the port of Constanța.
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  72.  @nzs316  I don't think a commercial plane would be able to see a missile. I think civilian radars (for locating vehicles) are mostly so called secondary radars, i.e. they work by receiving a ping from the target vehicle's transponder, and you probably won't receive such a ping from a missile targeting you. Primary radars, which work using reflections from target vehicles' metal parts, are more common in the military but I don't think civilian planes have primary radars (except for weather radars).
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  73. According to Wikipedia, "Chasiv Yar" literally means "Quiet Ravine".
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  74. I think losses in Russia were over 2x higher than those in the Peninsular War (though they were hardly light either).
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  75.  @davidlim5  "Why be busybody ?" Because it's not a good thing if countries can just invade other countries willy-nilly. It's better if such intransigence gets punished and hopefully Ukraine, or at least a significant part, gets saved from falling under Putin's tender mercies. Even if you disagree about how good the reasons are the claim of "no reason" is clearly false.
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  76.  @salahgh3081  He only use the Saudi flag when talking about Saudi Arabia, not in place of the Palestinian flag. Also, it's not appropriate to use the Palestinian flag here because the current fighting (mostly) only involves Hamas and Gaza which is controlled by Hamas.
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  77. He said that hitting the oil infrastructure would hurt USA's strategic goals.
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  78. "Nay-Foe" That would be a fitting name for a military alliance. (For those who don't know, "nay" means "no" and "foe" is a synonym for "enemy".)
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  79. "Crimea was never a Autonomous Republic within Ukraine - Ukraine has no Autonomous Republics" You're mistaken. It was an Autonomous Republic. That was defined in the law "On status of the autonomous Republic of Crimea".
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  80. ​ @Omer1996E.C  "Nobody is asking if these relations [...] were or are approved by most of the arab populace" I don't claim to be all that knowledgeable about these things but to me this would seem to be less relevant in Saudi Arabia than most other Arab countries. Saudi Arabia doesn't have any kind of national elections or even a parliament. Thus, while the government the doesn't have unlimited slack, it seems that there's no obvious strong pathway for popular opinion to force the government to change course short of some kind actual civil unrest.
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  81.  @alexhumble7653  "What would the US do if Russia built a military base in Tijuana?" Well, that certainly wouldn't give them the right to invade Mexico (and I think they wouldn't). "However according to sent. Robert Kennedy 14000 Russian civilians were killed by Ukraine’s artillery in Donbass since 2014. Who could stop that slaughter and how long should’ve Russia tolerated that?" I already told you earlier that that's false on multiple levels. Let me repeat: -This figure includes people killed both by Ukrainian forces and those killed by separatist/Russian forces. -It includes deaths from all sorts of weapons like assault rifles and grenades, not just artillery. -It includes both soldier and civilian deaths. In fact, civilian deaths are a clear minority. They number about 3k, i.e. less than 1/4th of that estimated total. -Almost all of those deaths happened in 2014 & 2015. In recent years the number of deaths before the present invasion were something like 10 per year and that figure includes shelling by both sides as both sides have been doing that.
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  82.  @alexhumble7653  What are you talking about? I don't speak Russian nor Ukrainian and the level of my English skill (whether high or low) is hardly evidence for me getting paid.
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  83.  @kenho5209  "it is european blackmailing russia" Which is perfectly justified to stop an invasion. "consider u are working in the bank, u are receiving salary through the bank account in this bank too. now the bank is telling u they are freezing ur bank account (for salary) permanently, and u still need to work for them." That's not the case for Russia. The forex reserves of the Russia central bank were frozen but not e.g. Gazprom's receipts from energy exports. If those had been frozen Europe would have already stopped receiving gas long ago.
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  84.  @kenho5209  "Russia is no way to transact/receive money in their european" There are exceptions to that such as energy transactions. Those were exempted so that Europe could still receive gas.
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  85. 3:00 I like how the Philippines is its own category.
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  86.  @jounisaari9471  I don't think the 180k refers to any particular subset of the reserve. More likely, it's the amount that could and would be called up in a war, at least in initial rounds of mobilization. The entire reserve can't be mobilized because there probably isn't gear for everybody nor enough staff officers to lead that many units. Also, people would still be needed in the civilian economy too. Thus the planned war time strength of 180k for the Army. Though, I suspect in a protracted war more would be mobilized eventually.
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  87.  @RtaincCo  I thought it was "Constellis" since 2014.
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  88.  @prospect2664  I think Russia did recently announce or extend a gasoline export ban. It's going to last until the end of the summer.
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  89. I'm under the impression that the package would be spread over several years.
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  90. I think "hidden" is a bit of an exaggeration. I remember the Hostomel airport getting a lot of coverage in the early phases of the war.
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  91.  @Rabbitrey Yes, but Russia didn't hold its northeastern and southwestern flanks before the current invasion.
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  92. Not going to happen. Invading Ukraine didn't prompt that. Not selling gas is hardly grounds for an invasion.
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  93. Presumably it still makes Russia better off, or at least that's what the Russians presumably believe or else they wouldn't take the deal.
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  94. "The socialist goverment went to election and won saying we will not join, after the election they did the opposite of what they said before the election." That's because the situation changed massively.
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  95.  @only_fair23  The French have shot Houthi drones down.
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  96. If the assumptions of this video hold, gas prices in Russia should increase.
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  97. But why did Israel strike that Iranian consulate in Syria? It puzzles me as I don't see what the (possible) upshot for Israel was.
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  98. If Ukraine manages to recapture the dam and it's vicinity it should be able to just block the canal again without necessarily lowering the water level in the reservoir too much.
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  99.  @Capitalist_Pig314  "It is not like they will come to our aid if Mexico invades." I'm pretty sure they would. They did come to your aid in Afghanistan after 9/11 which is so far the only instance where the Article 5 has been triggered.
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  100. 2:15 And French politics too, apparently.
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  101.  @altrag  There are still degrees to how much you damage Iran's oil infrastructure (or military assets). OP seemed to imply that a strike on oil infrastructure would be worse. But that could be made small too, like destroying one oil storage tank. Similarly, a strike on military targets can be small (like destruction of one S-300 launcher) or much bigger.
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  102.  @prfwrx2497  "For Hamas, it's logistics. Syria is now free, and that means no more Iranian resupply." It's not obvious that would facilitate a cease-fire because Israel can take that factor into account too and push harder for victory over weaker Hamas.
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  103. Turkey has also been demanding for certain individuals to be extradited from Sweden to Turkey. Sweden can't easily pretend to extradite while actually not doing it.
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  104.  @robertstuckey6407  That might also be true.
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  105. Kamala Harris has been Biden her time.
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  106. Turkey isn't any kind of full-blown Russian ally. They have co-operated but there have been tension too such as when Turkey shot down a Russian jet. Turkey also in many ways co-operates with Western countries. It's e.g. in the EU customs union and buys fighter jets from the US.
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  107. 6:40 Why would you say "circle" instead of the more traditional "horseshoe"?
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  108. Electricity to run a heat pump isn't free either but it's probably better than using gas directly.
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  109. "If Russia were to attack Sweden, they would have to navigate through NATO territory" Not really. If Russia were to attack Sweden the most likely target would be the island of Gotland.
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  110.  @Ukit50  Gotland is more distant from mainland and much, much larger than Snake Island.
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  111.  @Ukit50  The main island is something like 100 km long. To the degree you can run or hide from bombardment you can do it on Gotland. It shouldn't be much more difficult than on mainland.
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  112.  @Suyogpaudel  AFAIK there isn't any kind of permanent NATO sea patrol blocking entry into Gotland so Russia could try to rush there without attacking any NATO powers. I think I've read in the news that Sweden has beefed up the island's defenses so I'm not claiming it would be easy for Russia but it is still an existing (if not all that likely) risk for Sweden which could be mitigated with full NATO membership.
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  113. That's basically the NAFO option mentioned in this video.
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  114.  @cageybee7221  Just treaties without the NATO command structures etc. would be much weaker.
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  115. Next you can do the same for the earlier EU package together with an explanation on how the process works in the EU. (I might add that it's pretty unbelievable to me that the political process in the EU somehow managed to work more swiftly than in the US.)
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  116. Or surströmming.
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  117. Care to reveal it?
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  118. But having Sweden in would enhance the safety of the Baltic countries.
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  119. Solar energy output is lower in the winter.
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  120. Ukraine: "They misunderestimated me."
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  121.  johnslugger  Putin seems to go for showy assassinations rather than cheap ones. The polonium that was used to poison Litvinenko is estimated to have cost millions.
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  122. However, that term would be both slightly incorrect in StarCraft and not used like in StarCraft.
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  123. Standard economic theory would say that if the price to produce gas decreases the way that can lower the price consumers pay for gas is increase in supply. If the amount of gas supplied doesn't increase then the gas prices consumers face won't decline and refineries get all of the benefit from lower oil prices (assuming that the demand for gas stays the same).
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  124.  @joshuahillerup4290  Supply means how much gas refiners produce for each given price of gas. That can certainly be affected by crude prices (and presumably it usually is) but this is an assumption about how refiners behave. In your original comment you wrote: "even if gas production doesn't go up that will result in some decrease in gas prices" [emphasis added]. That case would imply that a lower crude price doesn't increase gas supply. In that case, there also shouldn't be a decrease in gas prices. A decrease in prices happen through the mechanism of increased supply (or decreased demand).
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  125.  @joshuahillerup4290  I know supply is a curve (and notice that did also talk about "amount supplied" in my earlier comments). If the supply curve moves to the right (i.e. supply increases) that will also increase the amount supplied if the demand curve doesn't change and isn't completely elastic. Conversely, the price going down while the demand curve stays the same is only possible if the amount demanded (and thus also the amount supplied) goes up assuming the demand curve is downward sloping. You could get a lower price without a lower amount if you assume completely inelastic demand (i.e. a vertical demand curve). However, that's not realistic. "Changing the costs will lower the price for a given amount produced, at least in a competitive market, even with supply constraints" No, quite the opposite. In a standard model lower price can only with larger amounts if you assume demand stays the same and isn't completely inelastic. That's very easy to see. Just draw a demand curve. You don't even need to draw a supply curve. If the demand curve is downward sloping a lower price always corresponds to a higher amount (and a completely vertical demand curve is unrealistic).
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  126.  @joshuahillerup4290  If the supply curve intersects with the demand curve in the part where the supply curve is upward sloping (rather than vertical) and the demand curve is downward sloping, then moving the supply curve down both reduce the price and increase the amount supplied.
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  127.  @joshuahillerup4290  But I didn't talk about a downward sloping supply curve. I talked about upward sloping supply curve as well as downward sloping demand curve. Did you perhaps misread my comment?
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  128. "Turkish people like to add "-stan"" The -stan suffix comes from Farsi, I believe.
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  129. In which part did he assign blame? I only see him discussing what affects Israel's strategic choices, not how ethical they are.
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  130. Probably because the Soviet Union stashed so many of them.
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  131. RIP forests (unless there are e-book versions).
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  132. The '70s oil embargo was done by OAPEC, not OPEC.
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  133. But having Sweden in would enhance the safety of the Baltic countries.
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  134.  @pocarski  Cyprus in not in NATO. If in the case of Turkey you mean the disputes over Aegean islands, I think those came only after Turkey had joined.
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  135.  @pocarski  "which might not be considered a dispute since Turkey isn't actually claiming it" Yeah, that might not prevent Turkey from joining but even if it did Turkey joined like 2 decades prior.
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  136.  @jonroberts8396  But that was a longer time ago so it's a weaker motivation. It could theoretically have some weight but I would personally guess not much.
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  137.  @StoicSymphony  The war is a reason even if it could have been avoided. Also, Russia still bears the primary responsibility for the war because it was the one who invaded.
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  138. In most African countries, the government is actually in control of the country, or at least most of it.
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  139.  @EightAcreLake  I don't think electrification needs to be taken into account here. How would it affect the conclusion? One possibility is that it just (slowly) reduces demand for gas regardless of what Ukraine does. In that case it doesn't affect the conclusion. Ukraine's attacks may still either increase or decrease gas prices. Electrification doesn't change that effect; it merely has a separate (decreasing) effect on gas prices. Another possibility is to say that the pace of electrification is affected by gas prices (higher prices = faster electrification, lower prices = slower electrification). This would make the demand for gas more elastic. That would dampen the effect of Ukraine's actions on gas prices (to either direction) but it wouldn't nullify it entirely nor flip it to the opposite direction. (Remember that we're talking about the short term here. In the short term the effect from electrification can't be that big.)
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  140.  @justskip4595  In this case differentiating the colors isn't that important. Even if the lines were all the same color the point should come across almost as well since they're separate lines and their placement should tell what they represent.
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  141. I think there's one more scenario that could be considered. If France sends troops into Ukraine and they attack Russian troops, Russia might see that as an attack by NATO even if only French troops are participating and that was decided only by France and not e.g. the North Atlantic Council. Now, what if Russia retaliates by attacking some easier-to-reach NATO members such as the Baltic countries? How likely would that be to trigger Article 5?
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  142. 6:00 "cost that Russia can never recover" I think you're exaggerating here (and similarly with the wording of one time cost). An attack on the bridge will likely not destroy the whole bridge and fixing it will likely be a lot cheaper than building it was in the first place. Therefore, even after an attack on the bridge it can act as leverage because Ukraine still potentially has the option of trying to attack it again and this is still a potential cost because the whole bridge has not been destroyed (and Ukraine could also potentially try to disrupt the repair operation). The actual attack that happened also demonstrates this. Two spans of one carriageway of the road bridge collapsed. I'm sure it can be repaired eventually so further attacks can still carry a potential cost for Russia (and would even in the case the bridge had been severed completely at one location).
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  143.  @cliveengel5744  "please look up some history - the Crimean was a special Region in the Soviet System - it was downgraded to Oblast in the 1950’s." What does that have to do with what I said or what you said in your original comment? You claimed that Crimea wasn't an Autonomous Republic in Ukraine rather than in the Soviet Union. The law I mentioned (On status of the autonomous Republic of Crimea) was from 1992, I think (and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in any case).
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  144.  @cliveengel5744  It was legally called "Autonomous Republic of Crimea". It wasn't formally called and oblast and it also had more autonomy than regular oblasts.
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  145. The biggest reason is probably because Turkey didn't either.
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  146. They should have switched to Comic Sans instead.
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  147.  @kilerik  "Turkish breucracy still remember that they have been tricked into allowing Greece to join" Based on short googling, Turkey and Greece joined at the same time. That would seem to mean that Turkey couldn't have vetoed Greece joining because it wasn't a member before Greece.
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  148.  @kilerik  At least Wikipedia says that Greece didn't withdraw from NATO entirely but only from the NATO command structure (similarly to France).
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  149.  @Omer1996E.C  Thanks for the info. I have to say I'm a bit surprised that he has directly said that he personally doesn't care about the Palestinian issue.
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  150. That's an exaggeration. Lukashenko has been rather brazenly rigging elections. Orbán, on the other hand, has been winning free elections (though he has bent the system in his favor in various ways) and still has the support of a majority of the electorate.
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  151. 1:40 As a small nitpick, that isn't entirely accurate. While there wasn't much land action there was at least some naval action like the Battle of the River Plate.
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  152. 4:15 Thunderf00t once did something similar.
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  153.  @alexhumble7653  "actually annexed by the US" It's not annexed by the US. "Even if Alaskans and Texans probably don't want to fall under the rule of some other power, but they could aspire for independence" At least currently a majority of them don't.
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  154.  @wayando  I partially use that phrase to sound poetic. It may not be necessary to go that far. If you're willing to persist in a fight significantly after what would seem to be rational (when you only consider that particular fight after it has already started) you may be able to deter attackers if you can credibly signal that willingness.
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  155.  @alexhumble7653  Are you talking about me? No one is paying me to write YouTube comments. Also, I think we've only talked in this thread and nowhere else. I don't think you could in any case determine that I'm being paid just based on this conversation. If you really think I'm paid it seems like a kneejerk reaction to someone having a different opinion from yours. Or did you mean someone other than me?
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  156.  @alexhumble7653  I don't agree that I'm ignoring facts but even if I were that hardly means that someone's paying me to do it.
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  157.  @moestietabarnak  I don't see any evidence of that.
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  158.  @johnnybrown689  Hmm, did you mean to tag someone other than me?
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  159. But what about Canadian or Australian football?
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  160.  @kenho5209  "the russian including gazprom cannot exhange /transact in euro/USD, how is gazprom's bank a/c getting receipts?" No, energy transactions were excluded from sanctions. Gazprom was able to receive payments.
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  161.  @kenho5209  The SWIFT ban has exceptions for energy transactions. Those have not been prevented because Europe still wanted to receive gas, oil, etc. Also, SWIFT ban doesn't prevent you from accessing your bank account. SWIFT is just a messaging system that banks use for announcing and confirming transactions. If that wasn't the case Europe would have already stopped receiving gas long ago.
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  162.  @kenho5209  "so because i want gas, i allow the transaction of gas, but all ur other sales are banned?" Kind of (and same for oil etc.). Whether you like it or not it's the reality. Any claim that the money used to pay for gas was frozen is just false. "do i need to say it again and again? RUSSIA IS REMOVED FROM SWIFT can u read??????" Do I need to say it again and again? Energy transactions have exemptions carved out for them. They can be processed through SWIFT even if many other transactions can't. Can you read?
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  163. 8:10 Out of curiosity, does that text say something about immortality?
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  164. 6:00 A creative solution? You could say it was creative...about 10k years ago that is. Now it's pretty much the oldest trick in the book.
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  165. I think previously they were able to transit through Moldova. Not sure if that's the case anymore.
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  166. But that's not very much. According to Statista, the US had 124 operating refineries at the start of last year.
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  167. Give him a break. It's not always easy pronounce sounds that one's own language doesn't have. Many English dialects only have the vowel [o] only as a part of the diphthong [oʊ], not as a standalone vowel. There are surely a plenty of other Ukrainian and Russian phonemes that he isn't pronouncing correctly and it doesn't make sense to complain about every mispronunciation every time. He's not a linguist.
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  168.  @baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714  "Which one? Ive never seen such a dialect." At least according Wikipedia, General American has the diphthong [oʊ] but it doesn't have [o] and also [ɔ] is given in parentheses with the note that many speakers don't distinguish between [ɔ] and [ɑ] (this is called cot-caught merger). "One shouldnt be a linguist to know how to read." You're not just expecting him to know how to read. You're expecting him to know how to read a language he has (probably) never studied.
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  169.  @baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714  "Ser, the sounds /o/ /ɔ/ /ɑ/ are all reprisented as "o" in the latin alphabet." According to Wikipedia, the letter 'O' has been used to represent the following sounds: [o], [o̞], [ɔ], [oʊ], [uː], [ʌ], [ɒ], [ø], [a], [ʕ], [w], [◌ʷ], [ʊ], & [ə]. You can't expect him to know which one of these to pick in the case of a language he hasn't studied (and some of these might also be difficult for him to pronounce). "To read phonetically means to turn written symbols in to sound, and that is largely independant of knowing what that sound means." The correspondence between letters and phonemes is language specific. It's not enough to learn the Latin alphabet to sound out any language using it (or a transliteration from a language using another script). You can't expect him to know what the sound is in another language he hasn't studied and even if he knows it it's not necessarily easy to pronounce for him if he's monolingual.
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  170.  @answerman9933  If Russia were to attack Sweden the most likely target would be the island of Gotland. In any case, it would be good to have the Swedish airforce provide air support to the Baltic countries if they're ever attacked.
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  171. At least Wiktionary lists both [æk.ˈsɛ.ʃən] and [əˈsɛ.ʃən] as pronunciations for that word.
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  172.  @krakhedd  Merriam-Webster also gives e.g. only one pronunciation for "bath" even though it has multiple (often it's pronounced with a front vowel in American dialects and a back vowel in British dialects). Clearly it doesn't try to include all variation in pronunciation so if one pronunciation being left out of it isn't a claim by Merriam-Webster that it doesn't exist.
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  173.  @krakhedd  I just gave that example to show that Merriam-Webster doesn't list everything. That Merriam-Webster doesn't list it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Variation is pronunciation can be either dialectal or another type of variation. I don't know if this difference in the pronunciation "accession" is dialectal or something else.
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  174. "And yesterday, Ukraine have blown up the biggest oil refinary in Russia, things are so bad that they stopped exporting oil" I don't see how blowing up a refinery would stop oil exports. I would expect it to stop the export of some products refined from oil such as gasoline or diesel.
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  175.  @wrayday7149  Everyone gets hurt. There's no need to rethink that.
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  176.  @dunkelsteinen1747  "What exactly prevents Iran from using the same rockets it used to hit Israel, from hitting Saudi's oil infrastructure?" Well, for one, there's less obvious justification now as Saudi Arabia isn't bombing Yemen like it used to. Also, they probably care about not antagonizing the Saudis too much since they now have diplomatic relations.
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  177.  @dunkelsteinen1747  It might be more likely in such a case but the risk of a direct retaliatory strike by the Saudis probably would make Iran hesitate.
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  178.  @alex_zetsu  "Businesses only conduct trade when it is profitable for them, so if an American business buys something from Russia, it must be profitable" But when an European business buys gas from Russia, that maybe worse for the US than Europe buying American gas. That could even be a bigger effect than the benefits from trade between the US and Russia. Of course, this is just theoretical as I don't have data on this.
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  179. Only if that enemy stops attacking non-members.
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  180.  @anappropriatehandle  They might get attacked by Russia which is the reason they want to join. If Russia hadn't invaded Ukraine Finland and Sweden wouldn't have applied to join, at least not any time soon. If Russia wants that more countries don't join NATO then it should show that it's not a threat. Instead, Russia has been doing the opposite.
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  181. Being a reserve currency doesn't matter that much.
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  182. Both terms are in use.
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  183. 42:15 What is it that Americans understand about this picture but others don't?
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  184.  @Devil_Dog_98  The choice between candidate A and candidate B is binary. You can't easily determine a distribution (and thus whether there's a clear median) from just that. Also, consider that voters may change their opinions between elections.
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  185. 7:20 Did the Soviets really destroy that dam to slow German troops? The impression I got from watching the series on World War Two channel is that the Soviets mostly destroyed the dam so that it wouldn't fall into German hands and destroying the dam actually washed away some Soviet troops downriver.
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  186. If Russia is the culprit they could have also sent the explosives inside the pipe onboard a maintenance robot.
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  187.  @charlesbeaudry3263  To my knowledge, gas fields can be closed and restarted without much trouble but oil fields are a different story and can't necessarily be reopened after closure.
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  188.  @charlesbeaudry3263  I don't have a proper source. I've just seen it mentioned in many places that gas extraction is easier to restart than oil extraction. One possible difference is that colder oil can more easily block the well and the porous rock whereas natural gas doesn't even liquefy at a naturally occurring temperature.
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  189.  @banto1  "Many wars have been fought to gain access to vital resources." Mostly not since WWII. "When you have millions of Europeans freezing to death and Russia trying to destroy the world economy, that is more than a good reason to go to war." It's not a good reason at all. "If NATO isn't ready to confront Russia, why does it exist at all?" It would be ready to confront Russia if Russia attacked a NATO member.
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  190.  @banto1  Dictatorships might sometimes try to steal resources through military means but there is no reason to expect the West to do something like that in this day and age. No resources were gained from the wars against Iraq. Your option 5 is so unlikely that there's no reason to consider it. If NATO were to directly intervene militarily (unlikely) it would almost certainly be limited to within Ukraine. Invasion of Russia is not going to happen.
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  191.  @banto1  "Don't be naive. When the West gets hungry enough, cold enough and fed up enough with Putin destroying the world economy they will act." Don't be ridiculous. The West will not go hungry. Some parts may be a little bit cold for this winter and the next but that's still far cry from going to war directly, with a nuclear power no less. "And you're a fool if you think everything the US ans UK did in the middle east over the last 100 years wasn't 100% about oil." If the wars against Iraq (which you mentioned) were about oil then the US and UK did a really bad job as they didn't get any oil from those wars despite winning.
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  192.  @animationcity8178  I'm at least 85% sure that the NAFO in this video was also a reference to that NAFO.
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  193. Maybe Denmark could demand Skåne, Halland, and Blekinge as a price for not vetoing Sweden's entry.
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  194.  @fematrailer  Switzerland has 4 official languages and choosing one of them to be the basis for the abbreviation would be problematic because the speakers of the other languages wouldn't like it. CH is a more neutral choice.
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  195. Isn't the well-foundedness a bit of a red herring here? Like mentioned in the video, this paradox is basically the same as Russel's paradox. That paradox is not present in ZF but it's not the axiom of regularity (which guarantees well-foundedness) but rather the lack of unrestricted comprehension, as opposed to naive set theory, which does away with the paradox in ZF.
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  196. 16:45 It shouldn't be impossible to undo seizing. Western countries could simply pay Russia out of their own pockets, if that means that Russia agrees to end the conflict on sufficiently favorable terms.
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  197. I think it might be pertinent to add that demographics may increase the risk of ethnic separatism, even though that may seem a distant prospect that this moment. My understanding is that in many ethnic minority republics the local ethnicities tend to have higher birth rates than ethnic Russians and ethnic Russians have been moving to more Russian parts of Russia (or in some cases abroad). That may somewhat increase the risk of them wanting to break away from Russia at some point, though that depends on many factors.
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  198. 9:20 In game theory that concept is called "time inconsistency" or "dynamic inconsistency".
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  199. I would guess no since he's a professor in the University of Pittsburgh.
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  200. I'm not sure Turkey is an autocracy.
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  201.  @Dommifax  He has concentrated a lot (probably too much) power in the office of the president. However, he hasn't resorted to e.g. election fraud so he does still have a democratic mandate (even if his popularity has been waning).
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  202. 8:55 Even if that was a factorial, it would only make the number worse since 1.09!≈1.04.
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  203. It seems that the full report has come out a few days ago. Time for an update on the subject?
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  204. I'm sure China is perfectly willing to buy gas. It just doesn't want to commit to it for a long time nor pay for the pipeline.
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  205. South Africa has elections that seem to be non-fraudulent and a military coup also seems unlikely. Thus, it isn't as easy to influence as some other countries in Africa.
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  206.  @steviechubbs5238  Far more severe basket cases have been couped in the past. I don't think SA's economic troubles protect it from coups. It's something else.
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  207.  @lukaselem7892  Any decline starting in 2030 would probably take a very long time to reach zero. Like davidebic alluded to above, if we manage to decrease our oil consumption for environmental reasons, Saudi Arabia has an incentive to pump out its oil before that happens. Also, predictions of peak oil have so far seemed to always be too early. "So compensating Russia AND Iran output could be a bit of a stretch" Not in the short term (which is what matters for the current war). Saudi Arabia currently has untapped capacity, is undergoing some economic troubles, and needs cash for its projects like Neom. It's not certain to happen but Saudi Arabia has already said that it's abandoning the $100/barrel oil price target and thus accepting lower prices which I would guess is going to imply a modest increase in oil output for at least a couple of years.
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  208. As long as he gets the money...
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  209.  @UnfollowYourDreams  "If it's the actual median voter shifting to the right, it isn't the result of the median-voter-theorem but the result of cultural change." I'm not sure what you mean by "result of the median-voter-theorem" here, but my point was that this kind of scenario is compatible with the median voter theorem. Thus your claim "we do not see the median-voter-theorem play out in the US" might not be justfied.
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  210.  @UnfollowYourDreams  "it doesn't explain how the entire overton window within a nation shifts to one side consistently over decades" Well, the theorem isn't even about explaining such things. It just means, among other things, that if the electorate shifts into one direction of another, you'd expect policy to shift with it. Then why the electorate might shift is another matter entirely and doesn't say anything about how true the theorem is.
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  211. It can make sense if the goal is e.g. to make crossing the Dnieper more difficult downstream (or if they wanted to destroy it because they think it would eventually fall into Ukrainian hands, though I think this is a less likely explanation).
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  212. 10:30 Did you mean "percentage point" rather than "percent" here?
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  213. I strongly disagree with Sherman. We have successfully reformed war such that e.g. chemical weapons are rarely used. Also, the use them by e.g. Germany in WWI didn't end the war sooner so Sherman is wrong there as well.
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  214.  @stevekillgore9272  Where?
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  215.  @seanburke997  Give a reference then. Otherwise, I remain skeptical.
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  216.  @hedgehog3180  I didn't manage to find a mention of unlit white phosphorus being used in Mariupol nor any mention that it would be considered a chemical weapon under the Chemical Weapon Convetion. To me, it still seems that at least some established norms of warfare, such as the one against the use of chemical weapons, have been successful including in Ukraine. Thus I still (at least partially) disagree with the quote in the original comment of this thread.
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  217. For some reason, Russia has, until fairly recently, mostly not opposed Ukraine joining the EU. I'm not sure why.
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  218. Prosperous compared to the following period of low oil prices.
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  219.  @fatihersayn7877  The Altaic hypothesis is rejected by most linguists and some kind of even larger proposed family like Ural-Altaic one would be even more speculative.
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  220.  @АлександрСоловьев-п5р  I don't think that's a good translation as it doesn't refer to the act of blackmailing but rather certain kind of information that could be used for blackmailing.
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  221.  @АлександрСоловьев-п5р  I don't think that's a good translation as it doesn't refer to the act of doing that.
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  222.  @SoftwareEngineer3  "That wasn't really a diplomatic building" You're mistaken. It was a diplomatic building. It was a part of the Iranian embassy in Damascus. But, in any case, my question was about what Israel could gain from the strike. I don't see this affecting the rocket strikes on Israel.
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  223.  @sinabarzyar5766  The previous commenter didn't say anything about protection. He said that it "wasn't really a diplomatic building" which is incorrect. In any case, that's not really all that relevant to my question.
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  224.  @TheRatOnFire_  "After Trump left many sanctions were pulled from Iran and consequently they had more cash to fund Hamas, among others." No, that's completely incorrect. The JCPOA wasn't reinstated during Biden's term and none of the sanctions were lifted (and, in fact, some new sanctions were instated, though they were fairly minor). None of this seems to have restricted funding for Hamas as they were still able to attack Israel. As a consequence of the US withdrawing from the JCPOA, Iran now has much less incentive to not develop nuclear weapons and the current conflict with Israel makes it more likely. Also, now the threat of sanctions can't be used to discourage Iran from attacking Israel directly nor from helping Russia because they're already sanctioned.
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  225. @Boababa-fn3mr I searched the Brookings Institution webpage for JCPOA. It has several articles on it including one from 2016 titled "The JCPOA should be maintained and reinforced with a broad regional strategy" and another one from 2022 "Reviving the JCPOA is the better alternative — but can it be made sustainable?". For context, the US withdrawal from the JCPOA happened in 2018. Based on these, it seems the Brookings Institution against, not in favor, of the US withdrawing from the JCPOA.
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  226.  @EcclesiastesLiker-py5ts  As far as I know, Iran was complying with the deal according to IAEA inspectors.
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  227.  @gerri577  Is it OK to shoot people? Usually it's not but this is war.
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  228.  @rogerphelps9939  They just have to get to the canal. It's on the Right Bank of the Dnieper which makes it a little bit more complicated but it might still be doable.
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  229.  @goldenfloof5469  "Even if the russians manage to take away all the water and force the reactor cores to be exposed to air, then the convection with the air would still probably be enough to prevent a meltdown." Are you sure that's enough? Isn't even spent fuel stored in pools of water for several years?
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  230. The hardliners might have one disincentive to a coup that you didn't mention. An attempted coup may cause chaos which could weaken Russia's military effort in Ukraine, at least temporarily. If the coup is either a resounding success or a resounding failure then that might not happen but if it's something in-between and the result is unclear for an extended amount of time then problems can ensue. This can also apply to the moderates to lesser degree. Even they probably don't wish for an outright failure even though they might favor concessions and a retreat from (a part of) Ukraine.
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  231. Does immigration affect Taiwan's demographics to a significant extent?
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  232.  @dufftheduff7335  Falklands isn't covered by the NATO treaty.
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  233. ?
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  234. Wagner losses, at least when it comes to recent recruits from prisons, might be a fiscal positive for Russia since they should do away with the cost of incarceration.
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  235. 10:30 One YouTube commenter has told me that this etymology, which e.g. Wikipedia tells, isn't correct, though I've forgotten what the actual etymology was according to him. (More specifically, the "ravine" part is still correct but the "quiet" part isn't, according to that commenter.)
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  236. I think I might mention that I saw an example mentioned elsewhere. Specifically, it was the Communist China's invasion of Vietnam. Apparently, the invasion wasn't that successful and China pulled out fairly quickly. It seems to them pulling out either wasn't embarrassing or the embarrassment was small enough that persisting to avoid it wasn't worth it. However, I'm not very familiar with this conflict so this description could be wrong.
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  237.  @altrag  It might look bigger but that's not really relevant to why I don't agree with your earlier statement "Those are in large part the same thing" in response to what I said about what to target in Iran vs. how strongly to target it. Let me be more explicit what I meant, as perhaps my earlier comment was too vague. What I mean by what to target would e.g. be whether to blow up oil tanks or SAM launchers. By how strongly to target them meant whether to blow up e.g. 1 or 100 oil tanks / SAM launchers. I would guess the latter would have a bigger impact on how strongly Iran would respond, at least if the difference is as big as 1 vs. 100.
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  238.  @gae_wead_dad_6914  Did you mean to tag someone else? Your comment doesn't seem to have anything to do with mine.
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  239.  @gae_wead_dad_6914  Are you accidentally replying to the wrong thread? I don't see any mentions of Admiral Kuznetsov in this thread.
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  240. It's not a low risk to Russia. Something like half of Russia's federal budget come from the export of hydrocarbons. The loss of revenue is a significant risk for Putin.
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  241.  @Ifyoucanreadthisgooglebroke  You could argue that in the context of StarCraft the term "Zerg rush" would be incorrect. In StarCraft a "zergling rush" is one strategy that's used but the name of the unit is indeed "zergling" and just using "Zerg" (which is the name of a whole faction) would be woefully inspecific. Secondly, the "rush" part isn't even used as it's used in StarCraft (or RTSs in general). A "zergling rush" would be making a very early attack with a small (not large) number of zerglings. More generally, "rushing" something in RTS is building/using something as early as possible or at least much earlier than a "standard" strategy would call for.
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  242. "the piples are quite deep" How deep are they in the locations of the punctures? I'd assume that e.g. the waters near Bornholm are shallower than the Baltic Sea on average.
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  243. "hungary is 10x more democratic than sweden" How so?
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  244.  americanchristiannationalist12  "Orban [...] and his regime, is indeed democratic." I didn't claim he wasn't democratic. What I questioned was Hungary being 10x more democratic than Sweden.
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  245. Btw, have you ever considered doing a collab with James Ker-Lindsay?
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  246.  @5metoo  He's another YouTuber (and I believe a political science professor) who also makes videos on international politics.
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  247.  @5metoo  "Seems like a garden variety internationalist." If you complaint that you disagree with him politically? I don't see how that should be much of a problem since most of his content is describing situations rather than offering opinions (though he does sometimes give opinions too, especially in Q&A videos).
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  248.  @5metoo  "If I identify a major missing view..." Well, did you identify such missing views?
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  249.  @5metoo  I still don't see how his opinions like internationalist leanings would really affect his videos (in a detrimental way). To me, it doesn't really seem relevant. I was wondering if you would actually be able to point out how it would matter (rather than merely stating that it does).
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  250.  @5metoo  "I think it is fair to say he took a position of assuming the truth of an internationalist view that there is a universal right of return that is a fundamental human right" I have trouble believing that assertion. It doesn't sound something like he would claim. Also, I wasn't able to find a claim like that from him despite searching for it. At least for now, I believe you're completely wrong here.
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  251.  @5metoo  "Oh I'll bet you looked real hard." How hard should I look? You can't expect me to sift through everyone of his videos. Usually it's expected that someone who makes a claim (such as the claim that Ker-Lindsay assumes a universally accepted right of return) would also provide evidence for it. It's not reasonable to just state such claims without evidence and expect the other person to look for evidence in favor or against it. "You keep changing your story [...] in this case it isn't what is said that is the problem. It's what isn't said" I don't think I've changed my story. It's you who in your previous comment claimed that he assumes a universally accepted right of return. You don't seem to have pointed to an actual problem with his content. This seemed to be the closest so naturally I asked if you can support your claim in any way. If you say the problem is what isn't said, do you mean he often omits something important? At least to me, his videos seem comprehensive enough but feel free to point out important omissions by him if there are any. "and the assumptions –usually unstated– that are implied in so doing" Can you actually point out some problems in his videos caused by such unstated assumptions? If you can't, it would seem that he manages to keep his assumptions from affecting his content in a deleterious way.
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  252.  @5metoo  "I thought you'd at least look at the last 3" Well, your earlier comment didn't give a clear indication that the right of return stuff was specifically in one of those. Your previous mention of them was "But I've give the nod to Spaniel for fair presentations based only on JKL's last 3 videos" and it wasn't clear to me what you were trying to say with that since you were talking about giving a nod to Spaniel rather than the right of return. The phrase "right of return" led me to think that you were referring to Israel/Palestine so I checked videos related to that and didn't find anything. But OK, apparently you were referring to the Chagos Islands video. I don't see an obvious flaw in that video and I don't see how it would justify making the claim that he assumes a universally accepted right of return. In his video he mentions a 2019 UN General Assembly resolution calling for the UK to, among other things, let the Chagossians return to the Chagos Islands. It's entirely correct that this kind of resolution (about Chagos Islands specifically, not of the right to return more broadly) was passed. It's not a claim that any such right is universally accepted in other cases (and I would guess this resolution didn't pass unanimously, though I haven't checked). He also mentions some court cases the UK lost but doesn't mention a right to return being included in the judgments in them. Can you point out an actual problem with this video (or some other one)? It doesn't seem that could infer based on this video that he assumes a universally accepted right of return. Even if he assumes something like that, it doesn't appear to have seeped into the video so it shouldn't be a problem for his content.
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  253.  @5metoo  "But the 2019 UN General Assembly resolution at bottom was about those that were expelled would be able to "exercising their right to return". This is the most fundamental assumption, without which the 2019 resolution would make no sense." That resolution was about the Chagossians' right to return to the Chagos Islands. That doesn't necessarily imply a more broad right to return which would apply in other cases. I don't know what was the reasoning or motivation for the delegations that voted in favor or this resolution but it's far from clear to me that it would have to be a universal right to return. They might have e.g. thought that the expulsions were wrong in this particular case because Britain had no right to split the colony or some other reason specific to this particular case. And even if they (or some of them) believe in a universal right of return, that doesn't mean that Ker-Lindsay does and him not discussing the motivations behind each country's vote doesn't seem to be evidence that he has such a belief. "Lindsay didn't state this or discuss it at all" There's a bazillion things he didn't discuss, like the reasons for the outcomes of the court cases, why the UK or the US might want a base in this particular locations, etc. He probably could've made a 10x longer video, but his style requires that a lot of things have to be cut due to time. I don't see why this one thing would be more important than the other things left out. I guess if you would be interested in that particular thing, a video that included a discussion of it would've been better for you. That's fine as such, but it's mostly a feature of your particular interests.
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  254.  @5metoo  "Dude, the resolution says the people that were expelled from Diego Garcia have a right to return." Well, not quite. But first I want to say that my point was that this isn't necessarily about some kind of universal right of return but it might be something that only applies to this particular case. At least in your earlier comments about universally accepted right of return and it's not clear to me that this resolution was based on such notion (or that Ker-Lindsay believes in such notion). Also, the resolution doesn't strictly even say that those people have the right to return. Rather, it says that the Chagos Archipelago is an integral part of Mauritius. It also urges the UK to cooperate with Mauritius wrt. the resettlement of the islands but doesn't mention this kind right of return. Additionally, here you speak about Diego Garcia specifically, but the resolution doesn't single that island out but only talks about the whole archipelago. The current deal also seems to rule out resettlement of Diego Garcia for the time being, though I guess that's to come eventually. "But it is well known, and always was acknowledged in the philosophy of law that though consistency is good whenever reasonably possible, it isn't the highest good since it isn't always possible while conforming to the purpose of the law." Is there some kind of countervailing consideration in this case?
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  255.  @5metoo  "You refuse to say what you think would ground this judgment if not that." The most prominent alternative that comes to my mind would be the opinion that Chagos rightfully belongs to Mauritius and for that reason Britain had no right to remove the Chagossian population. Of course, it's difficult for me to know what the people who voted in the General Assembly were thinking at the time. "I just watched Kerr-Lindsay's video "RUSSIA | Why Ukraine Really Changes Everything"..." In that video he gives more opinions than usual. I personally think it's fine, though I understand why others might prefer having less of that. However, most of his videos less opinion than that one (except e.g. Brexit ones). Whether you like his opinions (internationalist or otherwise), I don't they seep into his content most of the time, at least not in a way that would make his content worse.
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  256.  @5metoo  "What makes something rightful right?" Well, I can't read the minds of those that voted for the 2019 resolution talked about earlier, but I can say that it can be (in their minds) something other than a universal right to return. This resolution was based on an earlier ICJ ruling that stated, among other things, that the decolonization of Mauritius wasn't done properly and that Britain had no right to split Chagos from Mauritius and therefore it has to be returned to Mauritius. That in practice is probably going to result in the Chagossians being able to return eventually, but that conclusion doesn't require positing any kind of universal right of return. In theory, Mauritius could itself prevent civilians from returning to Chagos once it takes over the territory, but it seems that's not going to happen. "Instead of recognizing as does Spaniel, the obvious truth about why it is that some aspects of international law are so commonly breached, Kerr-Lindsay merely stares into the screen with those dead eyes and intones that such breaches are a problem for their inconsistency alone, as if geopolitics is little more than a list of sacred rules or a dogma." I don't think there's any good reason to believe that about him. I'm sure he understands why international law might get either followed or breached even though his content mostly isn't about what kind of incentives decision makers face. Also, a reasonable person can believe that international laws and norms being followed can have a lot of utility instead of them being terminal values by themselves. Surely, most his viewers can be assumed to realize that, whether they agree or not, without him having to explain why he thinks it's bad if international laws get broken. "He notes in the Russia video that it is "violating every one of the principles that underpin this system" that has "existed for 70 years". Every one? If one state can violate every principle of a system that is 70 years old at a stroke with such impunity, what does that say about the realism of this 70 year old system?" The rule that a state cannot acquire territory from another state through war has mostly held very well after WWII until very recently. That has been very good for mankind since it has reduced the incentive for war significantly. That's one of the reasons (though not the only one) why the Ukraine war is so worrying. And that "every one" is probably just a turn of the phrase and not intended 100% literally.
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  257.  @5metoo  At least that particular resolution didn't use a universal right of return as justification (and I suspect the ICJ judgment it was based on didn't either but I haven't read the judgment).
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  258.  @ChairmanMeow1  They have already got the turbine back. This is not because of that. Russia now says that the shutdown is due to an oil leak at the turbine but Siemens says that such oil leaks are common and shouldn't prevent operation.
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