Miscellaneous News

plawolf said:

CAI is dead and buried along with any remaining Chinese goodwill and hopes towards the EU. I think China now sees the EU as an American appendage, and as such will be proactively working to undermine and weaken it. So no more deals with the EU, instead China will strike bilateral deals with individual EU member states and leave it to the EU member states themselves to square the circle with the EU. If they can find a way, they reap the benefits of those deals, if not, they can blame the EU and turn their populations against the EU.

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pmc said:

This second time Iran ambassador to India has raise issue of oil sales. what he does not understand is India relationship with wider Middle East .
now India is signing migration and mobility pacts with various european countries. those people will need to travel back and forth so they will either use Russia airspace or Arabic airspace. It is very logical that Arabs will prefer Indians running the show in Europa as it will boost local consumption back in India and ultimately bend Turkey to the hegemony of Arabs. The same reason Ukraine war will grind until the demographic change happen. whether its Covid/flu or Ukraine conflict it is accelerating Europe demographic decline.
I am sure those S500 can close Caspian airspace if there is need.

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supersnoop said:

It's not about discounting talent, it's just quite obvious that there is some kind of "special sauce" missing.

If we look at the former Yugoslavia, there is a very steady trickle of NBA-quality (ie getting regular minutes) players, and occasionally Hall of Fame-level players. How can China not produce any players of even just the former-type in decades with the enormous talent pool it has? As I said, it somewhat defies statistics...

I imagine the same such issue exists for soccer/football.

In the Sports thread it was discussed that parents are wary of the Sports academies having a bad academic reputation, so if things don't work out athletically, they are afraid of handicapping them for university. To alleviate this concern, more after-school clubs are being established, but it is a fairly recent phenomenon. Even then, parents are concern with spending so much time "playing games". I am not familiar enough to elaborate further on this topic though.

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Nor has the Biden team been able to formulate an effective counter to China’s growing economic influence in the Indo-Pacific. Biden’s not to blame for Trump’s ill-considered decision to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017, but the administration’s substitute—the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which it finally rolled out last year—is widely and correctly seen as small potatoes by most of Asia.

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We will probably never know if the war could have been avoided had the United States and its European allies made a more serious and creative attempt to address Russia’s security concerns, and dropped their stubborn insistence that Ukraine would one day join NATO. I’m not letting Russia off the hook for starting a preventive war (an illegal act under international law) or for the way it has waged it. But when one thinks about the consequences of the war for the world—and for Ukraine most of all—the United States’ failure to do everything within reason to head it off deserves more critical scrutiny than it has received to date.

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To be fair, the disappointing performance of the United States’ diplomats isn’t entirely their fault. Because America’s global ambitions are so vast, many problems won’t receive adequate attention, let alone command the time, energy, and commitment of the people at the very top. And the bigger and broader Washington’s goals, the harder it is to reconcile tradeoffs between them and maintain a clear and consistent set of priorities.

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As near as I can tell, the democracy summits will fall well short of even those modest achievements. Democracy’s future is not going to be helped by more talkfests; it will depend on whether the world’s democracies can deliver better results for their citizens at home and abroad.

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FriedButter said:

The Australian Intel Chief is now pounding about this lmao.

He has given 2 potential solutions.

1) US must pool resources with UK/AUS to defeat China in Tech.

2) Start mass hiring of Chinese and Russian scientists to stifle China.

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BoraTas said:

A good foreign policy article

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To be fair, the disappointing performance of the United States’ diplomats isn’t entirely their fault. Because America’s global ambitions are so vast, many problems won’t receive adequate attention, let alone command the time, energy, and commitment of the people at the very top. And the bigger and broader Washington’s goals, the harder it is to reconcile tradeoffs between them and maintain a clear and consistent set of priorities.

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Air Force Will Allow More Body Fat for Recruits as Service Struggles to Find New Airmen​

Male recruits are now allowed to have up to 26% body fat, and women are allowed 36%, Air Force Recruiting Service spokesperson Leslie Brown confirmed to Military.com on Tuesday. That's up from the previous requirement of 20% for men and 28% for women.

The change comes at a time when an increasing number of Americans are overweight, with that weight serving to bar many from service.

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FriedButter said:

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