> Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. It's an intolerable premise
Actions have consequences. The continual attack on the sovereignty of countries around the world has made nuclear weapons one of the few ways to avoid being a client state of the US at the expense of your own population. Iran has figured out another method it seems.
This is blowback. The simple lesson that we refuse to learn.
They don't announce their secret nuclear weapons programs before they are complete (though they are sometimes discovered), but some countries have violated international law and developed them, precisely to protect their sovereignty:
- North Korea
- Israel
- India
- Pakistan
All retain their sovereignty, though I can't prove any causal effect and certainly nuclear weapons isn't the only cause.
Others have pursued them, includng Libya, South Africa, etc. Libya agreed to surrender their program, and then their government was deposed with Western help. Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons (left over from being occupied by the USSR) in exchange for peace from Russia, and you can see what happened. That doesn't encourage the next person to give up theirs.
India and Pakistan both rushed their programs back in the 40s/50s ( or maybe later I can't recall off the top of my head). Libya and South Africa were negotiated away. That leaves Israel probably from the, what, 70s or 80s? And North Korea was supported by Russia and China. I'm not sure you could consider any of those countries to be "pursuing nuclear weapons" today. Plus by that logic you'd have to throw in the US, UK, China, Soviets, and France too.
So when you sort of set aside countries from prior to, idk, 1980s ish you don't really have anyone at least publicly (to your point) pursuing nuclear weapons. However it's not just the enrichment of uranium which is tightly controlled it's also the missile technology to deliver the weapons. Keeping a nuclear program secret these days I think is quite a bit more difficult than in the past.
So when you look around today you've got Iran that we know of pursuing a nuclear program. I'm not sure anyone else is by virtue of how difficult (I think?) it would be to do so undetected. Though there are countries (Japan and Korea come to mind) who we think have the ability to scale up a program very quickly.
Japan and South Korea literally have 100s of American military bases on their territory. You really think they are sovereign nations who can pursue an independent nuclear program?
> You really think they are sovereign nations who can pursue an independent nuclear program?
Yes? Are you really sitting here telling South Korea, Japan, Germany, and more that they’re not sovereign nations because they choose to have American military bases on their home soil?
> India and Pakistan both rushed their programs back in the 40s/50s
India worked on them on and off for decades and first tested one in 1998, and IIRC Pakistan matched them soon after.
North Korea was in the 2000s.
> So when you sort of set aside countries from prior to, idk, 1980s ish you don't really have anyone at least publicly (to your point) pursuing nuclear weapons.
I'm not going through the comment correcting all of it.
Yes supported by Russia and China they got the keys they needed for the delivery mechanism (ballistic missiles). But the problem with North Korea is they threatened to kill hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea if anyone stopped them from building their bomb. South Korea didn't want that to happen and China would have fought against American forces had we tried anything in North Korea. Not much we can do.
For anyone unfamiliar with the topic, I encourage them to lookup when India, Pakistan, and North Korea developed nuclear weapons - you will find the answers in an instant.
> Ukraine never had nuclear weapons. Russia is the sole legal successor of the USSR and these were all Russian nukes on Ukrainian territory.
Structuring the breakup so that the nukes are Russia's is not really different than Ukraine giving up the nukes on its territory.
Where did they draw the line? Obviously not all USSR assets are now Russian assets, as Ukraine still has (or had) its own stockpile of Soviet era weapons, and other things like Soviet era airfields.
This is over simplified to the point of being misleading/wrong. Russia was the legal successor of the USSR for purposes of diplomatic continuity, but the other Soviet successor states divided portions of the Soviet military/equipment, split Soviet debt obligations, etc on a case by case basis.
Oh, those magical "Nuclear launch codes" - that turned out to be set to 0000 in the US or used a bike key in the Brtisih case ? Turns out being able to actually use the weapon in an emergency tops the codes not working.
That in the end it depends on the crew launching the nuclear weapon & the chain of command instructing them to do so. Having some codes is not sufficient - a whole complex process with many safeguards has to run to the end for things to happen.
Points 4 and 5 mention and are about use of nuclear weapons.
I think the memorandum was intended to be a security guarantee to Ukraine after they (and Belarus, and Kazakhstan) joined the NPT and transferred formerly-Soviet nuclear weapons to the Russian Federation. I don't know why anyone would suggest otherwise.
There is no large country left which is not an American client state to pursue nuclear weapons . India was in the 90s, and they pursued nukes, tested them and got sanctioned by the west.
How are you defining large? Geography? Population? Certainly you've got countries like Brazil or South Africa or Indonesia. I'm sure we could think of a few more.
I've been playing music for 20 years, learned and forgotten plenty of music theory. The only way I actually "grok" it, is by re-deriving the whys, but then that slows my learning to a crawl and I begin to forget the earlier lessons.
The memorization doesn't work well for me. I can read music, I can derive scales and chords, but the memorized knowledge of "this chord is technically the same as this one so we'll start calling things other things but it all means the same thing" gets me totally lost.
> And very little ability for anyone or any group of people from any walk of life to resist getting screwed by the government if the government chooses to screw them.
Sorry to break it to you but if the Feds in the US have it out for you, it won't matter how squeaky clean your record is. They'll fuck you up and ruin your life without batting an eye.
There is a huge difference between the feds having it out for a specific person and the feds having it out for a whole class of people.
Society is not rich enough for the government to skim enough off of us to provide itself with the kind of resources it would need to go after every petty deviant or inconvenient activist the way they'd go after a mob boss.
They don't need to go after everyone. They just need to make an example of a few, ie 40 years in prison for "moving evidence".
They set the example that even if you're not related to the person shooting the gun, or even at the location, you moving vaguely political speech is a federal crime.
>> and the feds having it out for a whole class of people
Are you suggesting this is not happening with the goverment suddenly criminilizing the status of legal immigrants? (this is in addition to enforcing laws against illegal aliens)
Like a lot of data collection, the meta data gets you pretty far. The who's and where's can be hoovered up with tracking data buys and essentially get you a nice list of who has access to certain areas, which can be used for targeting individuals.
The real terrifying aspect of this whole story has nothing to do with Milo Vs ICE.
It's the fact that these previously cartoonish figures on Twitter are now wielding some level of power.
People love to say "oh just get off those bad social medias", but that fails to recognize how there is now multiple social media sites exercising a high level of coercion and misinformation that is injecting the previously goofy "it's just online" into real life.
The white nationalism that has been boosted by Elon and co IS REAL. It will have lasting effects on every facet of our society. The people who used to be internet clowns are now deporting their enemies.
I can't emphasize this enough, this is BAD.
There is no one with any level of morals or ethics at the wheel. It makes too much money to tear apart society. You can bring up endless cliches, "mainstream media", "billionaires", "politics". But the fact is, news channels have spent endless hours covering Hassan(the twitch streamer) and avoiding actual news. Nearly every facet of society has been captured to manipulate us, and there is no good ending for any of this.
They're suggesting[1] they'll be attempting arrests at polling locations, which due to the statistics on fraudulent votes(statistically microscopic), equates to interference and intimidation since we know ICE isn't beyond arresting US citizens to harass them. This will have a chilling effect on citizens who are remotely non-white, who may avoid voting in person due to the risks associated with interacting with the under-trained ICE forces.
Additionally, USPS's current plans[2] for purging mail-in votes will disenfranchise the other method of voting.
This tidbit should show people how the line between "terrorist", "freedom fighter" and "useful lackey" is razor thin.
You should never take the "terrorist" label at face value.
The US funded the Mujaheddin in the 80s in Afghanistan. Their first moves upon receiving the weapons was to throw grenades through the windows if Girls' schools.
They began as the "useful lackey", and the US lost control of the Wahabist movement that was amplified to fight Communism. Then they were "freedom fighters" to the religious extremists, and "terrorists" to fight a war against.
In your own example, Al-Sharaa(a product of weaponizing Wahhabism) did actual terrorism, and then was able to squeeze back into the "useful lackey" position, like many "terrorist"s have before him.
Actions have consequences. The continual attack on the sovereignty of countries around the world has made nuclear weapons one of the few ways to avoid being a client state of the US at the expense of your own population. Iran has figured out another method it seems.
This is blowback. The simple lesson that we refuse to learn.
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