I agree, but it appears to be the weakness of all multi-national organisations. The UN security council is paralyzed by the fact that the US and Russia have veto powers. The League of Nations was similarly paralyzed before it. NATO can't do anything unless the US is involved, and the EU is hamstring by one nation out of 27.
Just being devil's advocate, but what's the point of a voting system when those in power can strip voting rights from a country when their votes are inconvenient.
I'm not supporting Orban here, because he's a Putin puppet that. However if your system can't handle a single country disagreeing without needing to cheat the system, you might want to question your system.
Oh... I see. I thought it was referencing something actually...well...new.
...but what are the "two new suns"?
I've put on a bit of weight since then, but I wouldn't say that I'm giant.
You spent a few evenings downloading a hundred or so 1.44MB floppy imges over a 56kbps modem. You then booted the installer off one of those floppies, selected what software you wanted installed and started feeding your machine the stack of floppies one by one.
Once that was complete you needed to install the Linux boot loader "LiLo" to allow you the boot it (or your other OS) at power on.
All of that would get you to the point where you had a text mode login prompt. To get anything more you needed to gather together a lot of detailed information about your hardware and start configuring software to tell it about it. For example, to get XFree86 running you needed to know
- what graphics chip you had
- how much memory it had
- which clock generator it used
- which RAMDAC was on the board
- what video timings your monitor supported
- the polarity of the sync signals for each graphics mode
This level of detail was needed with every little thing
- how many heads and cylinders do your hard drives have
- which ports and irqs did your soundcard use
- was it sound blaster compatible or some other protocol
- what speeds did your modem support
- does it need any special setup codes
- what protocol did your ISP use over the phone line
- what was the procedure to setup an tear down a network link over it
The advent of PCI and USB made things a lot better. Now things were discoverable, and software could auto-configure itself a lot of the time because there were standard ways to ask for information about what was connected.
If somebody has been diagnosed with a mental disorder it doesn't give them a free pass to be harmful to others. Their actions are still their responsibility. The diagnosis is there to help her explore options for managing her condition, getting treatment or medication. It's not there to give her an excuse for being a bitch.
Yes you're right, but then you get into the argument
- The data is corrupt
- The data are corrupt
I'm camp one because I treat data as a collective noun of data-items, not as a plural of datum.
We still have lower trade barriers with the EU than we do with the US. I think buying European is a good option.
How can you ban somebody else's flag?
I obviously have a different definition of "charismatic" to many other people, because Trump has zero charisma in my eyes. He was repugnant in the 80s and he's repugnant today.
It's interesting when America tries to make British panel shows (like the recent HIGNFY one). The competition aspect and the points, which are only a conceit in the British version, start having importance. They care who wins and it destroys the comedy. The right answer becomes more important than the funny answer.
Yes, but have you ever seen a vice president as visible and vocal as this one?
Trump is certainly the wrong model, but they do need to communicate better. In particular I think they need to communicate the reasons behind their decisions.
- Why aren't we standing with countries like Canada in response to Trump's sabre rattling?
- Why haven't they just told Trump to get fucked in trade talks when his administration is asking for changes in our laws?
- What are the cuts on winter fuels and disability benefits paying for?
- Why are we not looking to rejoin the customs union to remove barriers to trade with the EU?
Etc, etc, etc.
So far it's been contained by hitting supply routes between the two. The rail line in particular is vulnerable due to the terrain it runs through.
I suspect the China is quite happy to sell arms, but doesn't want to actually enter the war.
I think it's a bit reductionist to say "similar mentalities". They're both authoritarian states, but that's pretty much where it ends.
Putin's Russia is all about reviving the Russian Empire and reliving past glories. China is capitalist through and through. They want to own world trade. As such they do not share goals, and if there is an alliance it will be a utilitarian one and probably short lived after it's usefulness has ended.
It's the ignoring of people's issues that's the key problem. If the people are hurting and the government aren't doing anything to help them, preferring to bail out corporations or enable their exploitation of their customers/employees, then the people will look for alternatives to vote for.
All the extremists need to do is pay lip service and they have a ready made electoral platform.