Maintain the illusion that they’re still a superpower, would be my guess.
Also! We had a day in Sydney last year where the sky turned orange.
Russia might not be a superpower, but they’re still a very powerful country.
Oh! I just remembered who Myanmar is… it’s the Country Formerly Known As Burma, aka “Dirt poorest country in the world.” So their military spending is a tiny part of GDP because their GDP is so damn tiny.
Bob Violence – I don’t think that’s it; they are transmitting ambient noise, not something like that. The best theories I can think of are:
- It’s to give an atmosphere of an active, bustling city, to help the locals feel productive;
- It’s to give visitors the impression of the town being busy and productive, kind of as a show of wealth. Like the way Eastern Bloc countries would put facades of stores in abandoned buildings.
But I really can’t fathom why.
Rambo 4 :)
I continue to be amazed your flammable continent is habital. I summarize it after my vacation there as “like mars with lots of cute huge birds” Fun though!
Presumably continue doing what they already did in Georgia and Chechnya?
Do you need THAT big of an army, though?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=azQRzn_a9eP8
Looks like the U.S. isn’t doing anything on April 15th to address the pegged currency, after all. Just a bunch of damn chicken shits, like all those that came before.
It’s not that big really, just 1 million soldiers for a country of 142 million that’s engaged in constant skirmishing along a vast border.
You are probably referring to that Guardian figure of ~15,000 soldiers per 100,000 citizens but that’s grossly misleading – most of those are inactive reservists inherited from the Soviet Union or discharged from the conscription system. According to that measure, any country with universal conscription would have a gigantic army. I just saw that figure right now and it’s a huge error that obviously contradicts their own “Active Forces” figure further up in the article – amazing that it slipped through and got published.
Russian military spending is pretty high relative to GDP, but I think most of that goes to the maintenance of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, aka “we want to be a superpower”.
Its been 65 years since we used our first nuke, I am still stunned we even have militaries.
I mean, is any country like Russia with its nuclear deterrent invadeable, does the military still think footsoldiers will actually matter?
The US could defeat any invader with a pitch fork and its nuclear arsenal in minutes, I don’t care how many millions of troops they have.
For a superpower, defence means a lot more than just defending the literal integrity of your physical borders.
If the US had no standing army it doesn’t seem plausible that it could remain a member of NATO or the UN security council, allow Japan to remain relatively demiltarised or reduce the chance of a war in Korea.
An army allows violence with nuance and more importantly, it offers the threats of different levels of violence, nukes are kind of a blunt instrument. You’d struggle in life if your only ways to respond to someone being aggressive towards you were doing nothing or just killing them. You’d basically be the main character from Doom.
Ah, that makes sense Chris.
Tried to find a thread for this.
So about 7 years ago, China started rolling up the CIA’s network in country HARD. Like, it was wiped out almost overnight. Almost all assets were rounded up and executed before they could be extracted. It set a total panic in Langley and they underwent a massive mole hunt. This was covered in the mainstream press; I recall reading NY Times articles about it.
They arrested one former agent earlier this year (he retired and moved to Hong Kong), and he’s accused of selling out for money. They had to lure him back to the States to arrest him.
That was that, right? But the problem is that agent couldn’t have known all the assets. Everything is compartmentalized for a reason.
And now we have the answer:
TLDR: the agency had two separate encrypted communication systems for assets using the Internet. One was for “fringe” assets that they weren’t sure about, and the other was for safe assets.
The problem is that they completely fucked up the coding. It turns out, they were totally exposing WHO the assets were communicating with (Langley), and by compromising the fringe system the Chinese were totally able to hunt down everyone on the “safe” system.
To quote Scotty: The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.
The old school CIA folks are basically going, “BETTER MY ASS.” It sounds like the agency is resorting to the pre-digital method now.
The Chinese can be frighteningly brutal.
https://tnsr.org/2018/08/from-engagement-to-rivalry-tools-to-compete-with-china/
He certainly included enough end notes.
It looks like a Chinese nationalist is running for office in Canada.
Um. This seems like a thing.
France has opened an investigation into the disappearance of Meng Hongwei, the Chinese head of the international police agency Interpol.
His family have not heard from him since he left Interpol HQ in the French city of Lyon for a trip back to China a week ago, police sources say.
“He did not disappear in France,” a source close to the inquiry told AFP.
The South China Morning Post quoted a source as saying Mr Meng, 64, was “taken away” for questioning in China.
The Hong Kong-based newspaper added that it was not clear why he was being investigated by “discipline authorities” or where he was being held.
Chinese officials have so far made no public comments on the issue.
Mr Meng is a senior Communist Party official in China.
Moved from The Everything Else P&R Thread.
Saw that this morning. That is definitely a thing IMO.