Yi Peng 3 crossed both cables C-Lion 1 and BSC at times matching when they broke

That of course assumes that Putin stops at Ukraine. The point is that this isn't our war.

After the dust settles on the Ukraine war, if Putin still has the capacity to wage war, he will not likely stop with Ukraine. It is by now obvious that a limited incursion into Poland, for example, will not spark a global thermonuclear war.

Ukrainian suffering is both the litmus test and the vaccination against nuclear escalation that Putin needs to contemplate further expansion.

Political alignments aside, if I were based in Europe I would be very, very concerned.

While the EU may not be at war with Russia, Russia is already at war with the EU.

We might be able to stop it before it becomes a hot war, but the ambition is there, the indicators are there, the opportunity is there. Assume it's a war. (Unless you're German. I guess our national sport is now making excuses for Russia)

False.

Ukraine not only has everything to do with Europe -- it is unequivocally European in culture, language, historical involvement and (to the extent that Russia is also considered to be unequivocally European) geography.

It isn't something one can even have an opinion about. Any more than one can have an "opinion" about India being a part of Asia.

Ukraine's GDP is close to 10x that of Botswana, and in the last year has grown 10 percent over that of 2022.

It makes it pretty real when 7 year old me is wondering if this one has any nukes on board, and if this will be the day that they drop.

Russia is not to be trusted, imho. They do not honor their international commitments in good faith, and they will expand their territorial claims if they are allowed to do so. Europe, like a frog in a pot, is in peril and they need to take steps to make sure that Russian war fighting capabilities are destroyed through exhaustion in Ukraine.

This of course is tragic for Ukraine, because it means that she will be utterly razed in the process. But if Russia prevails or backs down with strength, it will happen again. And again.

Russias ability to project force in a strategic way must be destroyed. They are not trustworthy stewards of coercive force.

Having fighters scramble from Eilison was not unusual at all, and when hunting out in that area with my father we saw a few of those. It was pretty distinct from the training and combat training they did, so it wasn’t that hard to distinguish the intentionality and risk tolerance that was reserved for that kind of urgency.

Anecdotally, I’m pretty darn sure that I saw a bear flying overhead just a few miles east-southeast of Fairbanks. I watched it be turned by 3 F4 phantoms. I was with my father and a few of his friends, as well as my brother that would have been 13 at the time. Everyone there remembers the event, and it was talked about for days in Fairbanks, we even had a subsequent training the next week in my elementary school on survival in the event of a nuclear attack lol.

Perhaps it was some kind of clandestine fuckery, perhaps it was an authorized flight, or perhaps it would have been to embarrassing / inflammatory to make it an event of record? I’m sure the answers are quietly sitting somewhere in a musty filing box.

I for one am in favor of giving Wagenknecht a list of must haves for a ceasefire and peace treaty, which obviously will contain giving back all territory to Ukraine, costly reparation for many years to come, and denazification in Russia. With that list we send her to Russia to negotiate. She is only allowed to return, when the points on that list are achieved. She will be the negotiator, the change she will be the change she wants to see. (If it is not obvious to someone, this is rather a joke, since she cannot be trusted to have meaningful negotiations with her idol.)

She is on a wartime footing, with her very existence as a country once again in jeopardy at the hands of a much more powerful, longtime aggressor.

Realigning political positions in a way that keeps them firmly aligned with the martial interests of the state is expected and required. For better or for worse, Ukraines civil government is, for now, primarily a military organization as the country and its people are fighting for their lives.

This is the one specific case where it is reasonable, just, and needed to require loyalty, focus, and vigor within an otherwise democratic system. There is a reason why martial law grants the president extraordinary powers. If Ukraine survives, she will have to sort out the return to normal democratic rule, but for now the government is at war.

The purpose of this is to unite enough of the domestic population to suppress dissent and keep the current regime in power.

The reality is that it is actually at war with only one small neighbor, which is going so badly that they have had to import troops from North Korea. Embarrassing.

If they actually engaged in war with the EU, more specifically a member of NATO, they would lose quickly. So they stay well back from that line.

To make your discussions easier and less embarrassing in the future, assume that 100 % of the time when someone speaks of GDP, they're speaking of GDP at purchasing power parity per capita.

And you can assume that 100 % of the time when someone speaks of the size of their gas tank, they're really talking about MPG while in cruise mode.

Russia is clearly attempting to annex a neighboring country through military adventurism, and is doing so in contravention with all international law, and also in a way that is intentionally cruel and borderline genocidal.

Russia has lost all legitimacy as a nation worthy of being taken seriously as a global citizen, and has reduced itself to a kleptocratic mad-dog rouge state.

But given the wildly untenable opinion statement of yours that this now long-flagged thread started off with -- and the obvious irrelevance of any economic performance measures to the Russo-Ukraine conflict -- we see that the entire thread has been utterly silly, from the get-go.

" Think about comparing two families: the Smiths have 5 people and earn $100,000 per year, while Jones is just a couple earning $70,000. If you only looked at total household income, you'd think the Smiths were doing better. But when you realize the Smiths have to split that money five ways ($20,000 per person) while the Joneses get $35,000 each, the picture changes completely.

That's exactly what happens when we compare countries by total GDP. China's total GDP might dwarf Denmark's, but China has to spread that wealth across 1.4 billion people, while Denmark only needs to support 6 million. It's like comparing a pizza between a huge family reunion and a dinner date - the total amount of pizza matters less than how many slices each person gets.

This is why economists prefer to use GDP per capita - it's like looking at how much pizza each person at the table gets, rather than just admiring the size of the whole pie. "

I presented some hard to digest (for some) facts in my opening comment here. You'll only need to read European, Ukrainian, and Russian history for 30 minutes to know that. Of course you wouldn't, you're just a parrot repeating propaganda. You have no interest in the truth.

After all I mentioned that corruption has gotten better and you responded with a cookie cutter response about authoritarianism, which is not necessarily the same as corruption.

You've basically eaten Russian talking points and regurgitated them wholesale without even stopping to critically think about context.