The little green men with the Russian flags taken off their uniforms had been fighting Ukraine through all that intervening period since 2014 though whereas Germany and France hadn’t been actively shooting each other during all that intervening time.

I wouldn’t call Erdogan a buddy of Putin per se unless you’re meaning in purely the economic sense. Turkish foreign policy has been acting contrary to the Russian one in many instances. They recognize and aid and sell weapons to Ukraine on a pretty large scale, to the point of building a drone factory in Kyiv (that was bombed by Russia about a year ago). They protected dissident Chechens fighting as jihadists in Syria from destruction in Idlib and backed groups like HTS there which ultimately destroyed Russian backed Assad forces and lost Russia a ton of bases in Syria, and they’ve also been backing opposite sides elsewhere in other recently active conflicts (notably Libya). They shot down a Russian jet back some years back when it flew over their territory. Refused to allow warships to travel inside or outside the Black Sea which was more damaging to Russia than anyone else.

Economically however they are pretty strongly linked and the Turkish economy is not looking amazing so Turkey has very little appetite for the sanctions so in an economic sense sure. Even so, some economic moves like the recent signing of Turkish-supported TRIPP are problematic for Russia; that one sets up another east-west route from Turkey to Central Asia. That route bypasses Russia so if that doesn’t wind up being vaporware (which is very possible) then that’s more dings at Russia’s economy and international leverage.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said today (Wednesday) that Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon have reached a point where they also threaten his country, and he warned against further action, saying, “We see comprehensive initiatives led by Israel in the Mediterranean, and no one should pursue adventures there.”

Erdoğan warned against continued Israeli steps in the region and said, “Israel’s aggression threatens the entire world.” He added, “If the rights of Turks or Turkish-Cypriots are harmed in the Middle East - our response will be unequivocal and strong.”

The Turkish president went on to say, “Turkey’s security does not begin in Hatay, but also in Aleppo, Damascus and Beirut. We will not tolerate any ‘fait accompli’ in our brotherly nations, and we will not turn a blind eye to aggression against them.” He also referred to statements in Israel about a “Greater Land of Israel” and declared, “If Allah wills, we will never allow that.”

The quoted text does not look like a threat but rather a warning, so the headline of the article reads as kinda misleading to me.

Anyway no particular surprise, Turkey and Israel are in competing emerging blocks with different visions for the Middle East. Turkey is aligning with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar and Egypt. That block has various states and factions relying on one or more members like North Cyprus, Syria, Eritrea, and the recognized governments of Sudan and Somalia and Yemen. Whereas Israel is in an emerging block with the UAE, India, Greece and Ethiopia. They have states/factions relying on them like the recognized government of Cyprus, the RSF in Sudan, Hijri’s National Guard in Suwayda (southeast of Syria), Somaliland (and to a lesser extent also Puntland) in Somalia. Also formerly the South Yemen separatists before they got canceled by Saudi Arabia following their offensive in Yemen. Some other regional states are split like one faction in Libya is backed by Turkey but another by like both Egypt and the UAE (they used to be on the same side).

This former emerging block is very concerning for Israel because the Turkish and Egyptian conventional militaries are quite large and Pakistan while distant has pre-existing nuclear weapons, which are in range to hit Israel anyway and could be moved quite close to give less reaction time if the other countries did some sort of nuke sharing. The foundation of it is the SMDA signed between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the immediate aftermath of the Qatar bombing which made it clear that American protection has its limits when Israel is the one striking you, even over something America told you to do. (Namely Qatar’s hosting of Hamas leadership, which although blasted by Israel was requested by the US because previously the Hamas leaders were based in Iran and that’s a hostile place for American and Israeli diplomats to travel for peace talks considering the history there so Qatar was desired as a comfier neutral site.)

Want to emphasize again that alignment doesn’t mean the groups are in total lockstep with each other on everything they do. For instance while Israel jumped to recognize Somaliland since it could be a base against Ansar Allah (Houthis) in Yemen, and Ethiopia wanted to do a port-for-recognition deal with Somaliland but was forced to reject the idea due to international pressure, India actually issued a public statement against it. And the UAE doesn’t usually make many waves publically while sending huge money behind the scenes. And North Cyprus is more of a Turkey project than everyone else in its faction plus it’s at odds with some others on who it supports in Libya.

But anyway if you look for it you’ll see increasing cooperation among intra-block relations I mentioned and generally more negative statements from the countries involved about ones in the other block and their dependencies. For instance Greece is actually having a small uptick in public sentiment towards Israel (though still net negative) at a time when much of the rest of Europe is disliking Israel more strongly.

What kind of busywork were they doing for almost a decade when they couldn’t even agree on a foundational issue like can we use it on a carrier or not?

Buildings in the UK are designed to keep heat in to defeat the winter cold and up until recently A/C has generally been deemed an unnecessary luxury so it’s not terribly common.

At the industrial site I worked at in in MS, A/C was considered crucial in the offices and if it broke they would generally start sending all people normally stationed in them who were not working on something absolutely crucial that had to be done there home as the temperature drifted up past like the low 80s or something (even in the winter all the computers could heat the office up to the 90s without A/C and in summer going outside was like walking into a mouth so you can imagine how unpleasant that was). They had certain actions and relief that they had to provide by procedure to people with long stay times at high temperature to comply with company and federal rules and it was prohibitive to do that for literally everyone so it was better to call it a WFH day for most people while the A/C got fixed.

For some jobs in super toasty areas it was unavoidable though and they’d have countermeasures like ice vests, nearby break rooms with refrigerated water and fans that they were mandated to use with more breaks for hotter and/or longer stays, etc.

For reference the main groups left standing at this point are the Iranian-backed Ansar Allah rebels AKA the Houthis and the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government of Yemen. Up until recently there had also been UAE-backed separatists who in a major offensive almost steamrolled over the recognized government in their quest to get an independent South Yemen again. Those guys got wiped out when the Saudis moved against them and heavily pressured the UAE into cutting support though, so now the south is more or less unified under the recognized government. The thing is, while the area that Ansar Allah controls looks small on a map, that mountainous area is and has historically been basically the wettest and most fertile area of the whole country (much of which is desert) so despite the small land controlled they have a clear majority of the population… I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 75%ish. So there’s a strange sort of balance as the recognized government is in no way strong enough to take on Ansar Allah by its own power, but the recognized government has more powerful friends right on the border that can do a lot more to save their bacon than Iran is capable of for their counterpart.

It was ultimately stopped with world war in the way it turned out, but that could have been headed off far less bloodily earlier on. If the powers that be had not gifted the Sudetenland to Germany then Czechoslovakia actually had a pretty decent set-up to defend with many fortifications at the rugged borders, far more defensible than the flat north European plain Poland had to defend against a Germany with millions more people, vast amounts of looted gold reserves and extra years of deficit spending to build a far more massive army. It could have held on while the west mobilized and attacked and wrecked Germany’s military via multiple fronts on a much smaller regional scale.

Going back earlier with the remilitarization of the Rhineland the German troops had orders to immediately retreat and if they saw any armed resistance or so much as a single French uniform. The demilitarized Rhineland was key to the cordon sanitaire of French alliances that ringed Germany.

Expansionist states don’t become easier to deal with as they grow bigger so unless you already have and expect to keep amazing relations you should probably not them keep growing unchecked. And even if you do have amazing relations you have to keep in mind that politics can change on a dime and throw that in peril.

So color revolutions for thee but not for me are fine?

Glad to see you’ve graduated on from Russia posing no threat to EU to positing that it’s only fair for them to be threatening. And against big threats you prepare countermeasures, such as not letting them swallow up your neighbors.

Which power was that?

Germany and the USSR were carving off regions and conquering small states left and right in the lead-up to WWII, both in independent adventures and their team-up via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Munich Agreement is pretty egregious with Hitler claiming it was the last territorial demand he had in Europe and Chamberlain coming back claiming he had achieved peace for our time. Only for it to turn out that Germany would use all the fortifications, industry, manpower and resources it had gained at the expense of its neighbor to roll over the rest of Czechoslovakia. So Germany became a much more imposing force than it had started out as because folks were content to just watch it snowball and not help Czechoslovakia defend itself.

What evidence is that?

Because, again, the logic from you chicken hawks seems only to be that Europe must support Ukraine fighting Russia, because it is obvious Russia is an enemy, based on the fact that they are fighting Ukraine.

Notice the issue there? Nowhere is there any threat to Europe listed.

wait, so rhetoric is a casus belli now?

In that case, isn’t this NAFO style crap direct aggression? They’re very loud about how they’re willing to fight to the last Ukrainian - of course, not when they’d be in danger themselves - but how it’s good that Russians are dying.

Russia has made no threat I’m aware of to attack any EU member. If you have evidence of such, present it. Otherwise, your weasel words are just that.

The rhetoric does matter when Russian politicians are threatening the EU all the time by saying they’ll nuke them, that ex. Baltic independence isn’t legal, that they’re states at war, etc. But there’s concrete action too. A Russian drone strike just hit an apartment in Romania and Medvedev is saying it won’t be the last one. They’ve set off parcel bombs in EU countries. Blown up ammunition depots. Violate their airspace, send assassins into their countries, cyberattacks, influence operations to boost separatists and groups like Brexit… and even if it weren’t doing all of that, a country that conquers smaller neighbors is plenty concerning on its own.

Previously the European states learned that letting some major power go around willy-nilly annexing strips of land and entire states from their neighbors does not end well. They’re on Russia’s list of unfriendly countries, are subject to Russian influence operations that are not especially appreciated and there is some evidence to suggest that Russia would seek to reclaim lands from eastern EU states if given the opportunity. Plus the occasional bombing and constant rhetoric against them. So obviously they will prefer to back Ukraine rather than letting Russia absorb it, become stronger and start eyeing the next country.

They also bombed Syria and Azerbaijan which have zero American bases

At the core of the defense paradigm. Since Ukraine has a gigantic military (currently more personnel than even France), pretty cutting edge work on drone and anti-drone warfare and has been fighting for years against the EU’s biggest land threat. They’re not saying Ukraine is at the core of Europe the continent…

It’s a very thin data set. One entry for 2000. Nothing beforehand. Then nothing for 12 years that just happen to occur during the height of invasion and mass displacement of the population.

I’m happy to see any data you have, that’s why I looked because 99% seemed incredibly high and the drop to 50% horrible and I wanted to check out that data. I agree this is sparse though it does ultimately come from UNESCO. There is a point on the 15-24 year old female youth graph for 2006 which is in the middle of that and another on 2011, which were the 72-73% I acknowledged. A decline of 8% for the youth until it started recovering in 2012 onward is what this particular source gives.

Wikipedia would suggest the literacy rate was high prior to 2000. After the invasion, there’s very mixed data, with high enrollment rates conbined with high dropout and grade repeat rates. But it’s an article plagued with dead links, so…

Where that Wikipedia article says “literacy levels were high” you can see that it also links to links to World Bank Open Data - the same source I used - except unsuccessfully. I would disagree that it was high based on World Bank Open Data though. If you look up global 15+ year old women’s literacy rates, the global average in 2000 was 76% so 64% in Iraq looks kind of bad comparatively.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say the war and mass displacement resulted in declining standards for education

I agree and that matches up with the drop in literacy rates for young women (whose ongoing education you would expect to be more affected by war in eight years of their childhood than for the adults). I was commenting just with respect to the stats because I was surprised.

Interesting situation where on the one hand Ethiopia is having one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but on the other hand there are vast swathes of rural areas controlled by discontented rebels like the Fano and OLA. Though I guess the former stands out because Ethiopia has less experience with that than rebellions and unrest.

From a foreign policy perspective if he wins (which seems practically guaranteed) I’d expect him to keep on shoring up relations with Israel, the UAE and India as he has been doing already, and to keep doing whatever can be done to weaken Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea. It’s a top priority of landlocked Ethiopia to get access to a decent port aside from their expensive deal with Djibouti and this administration hasn’t been above threatening war with Eritrea, attempting to do a port-for-recognition pact with the Somaliland breakaway, or the recent reporting indicating that Ethiopia has been training RSF rebels and launching some drone attacks on their behalf against targets in Sudan. Naturally this has made Ethiopia’s relations grow colder with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan.

I was curious and looked up adult women literacy rates for women in Iraq and this shows 64% literacy rate for women with 15+ years age in 2000 and 78% in 2021 for the same category. For female youths aged 15-24 it rose from 80% to 91% over the same time period (though in the intervening period that did indeed drop to 72-73% in their stats during the chaos of the Iraq War).

Can’t imagine Ukraine would harbor terribly much sympathy for Iran given the tens of thousands of Shahed drones that have been bombarding their cities that were either made in Iran or based on Iranian drone designs licensed to Russia. They probably figure that if Iran was fine starting this by selling such weapons to Russia that were certain to be used on Ukraine, then turnabout is fair play. They have basically no economy in Ukraine so they’re desperate for any way to make a buck to put back into military production for fending off their gigantic neighbor, anyway.

You aren’t going around calling Armenia a genocider nation, though, are you?

All the Western Azerbaijan stuff is tit for tat fodder Aliyev says to boost appeal with nationalists. Azeris get incensed when all the formerly occupied regions and NK get referred to as “Artsakh”, and its capital as Stepanakert after Stepan Shaumian whose forces murdered thousands of Azeris, or the cases of Armenian media calling Azerbaijan a fake nation younger than Coca-Cola that should go back to Mongolia or whatever. So because they find that sort of stuff humiliating, nationalists get a fuzzy feeling when Aliyev claps back and returns that by calling their cities and regions by Azeri names from before they were cleansed out of Armenia which he’ll sometimes do to shore up nationalist support. But in actuality Azerbaijan has been angling to get the borders demarcated and settled with an agreement that allows them to transit to their exclave as settling those uncertainties would bring an insane amount of money in which would be impossible if they actually attempted to conquer Armenia.

With respect to the siege, the context of it was that originally the ceasefire agreement stated the following:

6. The Republic of Armenia shall return the Kalbajar District to the Republic of Azerbaijan by November 15, 2020, and the Lachin District by December 1, 2020. The Lachin Corridor (5 km wide), which will provide a connection between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia while not passing through the territory of Shusha, shall remain under the control of the Russian Federation peacemaking forces.

As agreed by the Parties, within the next three years, a plan will be outlined for the construction of a new route via the Lachin Corridor, to provide a connection between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, and the Russian peacemaking forces shall be subsequently relocated to protect the route.

The Republic of Azerbaijan shall guarantee the security of persons, vehicles and cargo moving along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.

[…]

9. All economic and transport connections in the region shall be unblocked. The Republic of Armenia shall guarantee the security of transport connections between the western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic in order to arrange unobstructed movement of persons, vehicles and cargo in both directions. The Border Guard Service of the Russian Federal Security Service shall be responsible for overseeing the transport connections.

As agreed by the Parties, new transport links shall be built to connect the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic and the western regions of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan re-opened the Lachin corridor in a flash. Armenia however did not do the same for Azerbaijan to access its exclave and kept on dragging its feet on the topic. So Azerbaijan started doing more and more tactics to pressure Armenia into reciprocity like by having the supposed environmental protests. Armenia did not budge at all and eventually Azerbaijan determined that if Armenia wasn’t going to provide the access that the ceasefire called for then neither would it and so blocked the Lachin corridor, BUT they did have an alternative ready of supplies via Azerbaijan’s Aghdam road. The problem is that the NK Armenians absolutely loathed the idea of relying on Azerbaijan in any way. Here is an Armenian website’s article about the protests blocking Azeri supplies from coming on the Aghdam road, which they called a “road of death”. Another Armenian website here showing concrete barriers installed to prevent the wrong kind of aid from getting to them. It’s kind of a weird siege where people are setting up barriers to prevent aid from getting to their own people. Then again these were supporters of Ruben Vardanyan who was a stooge installed as Minister of State of NK a month before he got his Russian citizenship personally annulled by Putin so he could afterwards become a citizen of the state he was now a leading politician of.

Firstly, screw Russia for their part in making this conflict far bloodier and worse than it had to be.

Secondly, Armenia ethnically cleansed well over half a million people from not just contested Nagorno-Karabakh but the seven overwhelmingly Azeri regions of Kalbajar, Lachin, Qubadli, Zangilan, Jabrayil, Fuzuli and Aghdam surrounding it for their ‘buffer’, in which they would destroy Azeri cities, use their mosques as stables and settle Armenians from Syria and Lebanon. In both the first and second war for Karabakh Armenia was the side that killed more civilians whether it be through direct massacres like at Khojaly or by stunts like the missile strikes on Ganja in the second war. It is not unreasonable for Azerbaijan to get the territory back when it had hundreds of thousands of IDPs, well in excess of the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh.

If my grandma had wheels, she’d be a bicycle

https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf

Not having friends has similar health impacts to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Making friends makes you physically and mentally healthier, gives connections that can help you out of rough patches in your life and into opportunities.

You ‘can’ live without them, but probably not as long as you would have otherwise.