Want to see shit really hit the fan? Imagine if Taiwan applied for NATO membership. They are already recognized by most countries as an independent entity and I assume are aligned with many Western goals since they conduct joint military exercises with the US, but China would go crazy over attempts at NATO membership.
Makes me wonder if there are are any rules to prevent acceptance if a country is attacked because of asking to join? Like I know Ukraine can’t join right now because they’re already at war (despite whatever Russia wants to call it), but I think Taiwan is not officially at war with anyone.
Because of the Chinese Civil War (which technically never ended), both the government of Taiwan (under the name “Republic of China”) and Beijing (under the name “People’s Republic of China” claim to be the ‘real China’. At some point in time, most people recognized the Republic of China as the legitimate government of China, however, as the situation stagnated and the relevance of China became more important, most countries now recognize the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government of China.
As for the NATO question - no, no such rule exists and nobody would want such a rule because it is a defence pact.
Seems like a lot of shitty countries are trying to make land-grabs all at once, with the goal being to wipe out the existing population. I figure it’s only a matter of time before China starts trying to commit genocide on Taiwan, but Russia and Israel have already jumped into that pool.
I wonder if this is a matter of countries refusing to choose a side (by not recognizing new countries), or if they ARE choosing to side with the aggressive countries?
Depends on what interests are linked to the sides.
In the case of Taiwan, the PRC is the main worldwide producer of cheap goods, so nobody wants to antagonize them, but at the same time many countries have interests in outsourcing and importing from Taiwan, so they end up in a “low-key recognize” situation.
In other cases… some countries have a direct strategic interest in one side, some have economic relations with one side but not the other, and others just don’t care.
It will be. Islamic events are scheduled by a lunar calendar, which has less days in a year than our solar calendars. So things like the fasting in Ramadan and the pilgrimage are about 11 days earlier each year. So in like 12 years the Hajj should be during February.
I’m no expert, but I think the events the pilgrims attend to are strictly tied to the time of day, meaning they can’t be rescheduled to be in the night.
Yeah, this isn’t going to get any easier. Right now KSA is mostly blaming “unauthorized” pilgrims, saying that they did not have any air conditioned hotel rooms to escape the heat in, but I think given the very wide range of reported countries affected, they are just minimizing anger.
The Middle East is going to get more and more dangerously hot, and I’m worried this is going to start being more normal during Hajj.
There are, reportedly, many more making the pilgrimage without the permit to be authorized than previously…
And what’s the answer why they aren’t prepared for people who break their rules? Couldn’t be that those permits cost hella money for those people, and the price isn’t exactly a “halal” thing… could it?
Taking one right out of the Vatican’s earlier edition of the playbook I see.
But wait… didn’t China say the re-education camps were a hoax, that Muslims have the same rights as everyone else in China, and that any issues they’d been having had already been resolved?
This is an interesting issue, with multiple fronts:
Spain has a large chunk of its GDP tied to tourism, but…
Some places are getting overcrowded, like Ibiza, Barcelona, or Madrid, which discourages tourism.
Having a large number or holiday apartments, increases housing prices for local residents…
And causes noise issues during the holiday season…
And makes it difficult for seasonal workers to find a place to live.
While during the off-season, it leaves a lot of apartments unoccupied, making them an easy target for illegal occupation, with whole gangs living from it, which then require LEO resources to vacate them…
And makes it extra difficult for local non-tourism businesses to survive…
To the point that they’re converting business locals into… holiday apartments.
The plan to shut “all” holiday apartments is kind of a pipe dream, or part of populist politics… more so in Barcelona, where right now the recent elections have left Catalonia with parties so divided, that they can’t even agree on a viable candidate to lead it.
A slightly more realistic issue to tackle, are “illegal” holiday apartments that don’t pay the corresponding taxes. Some estimate that Madrid has a 10:1 ratio of illegal vs. registered holiday apartments.
But in general, there is currently no solution that would keep those apartments occupied all year round, without neighbor conflict, in areas that live mainly off seasonal tourism.
For example, Ibiza has 40K permanent residents, but capacity for 600K tourists, which leads to seasonal workers living in trailer parks, or even in their own cars.
According to FlightStats and FlightRadar24, the original plane was a Boeing 777-206 from 2003, which has been replaced by a 777-300 from 2023. It’s en route now over the Atlantic.
So an issue caused by Boeing’s recent series of quality problems seems unlikely, unless there was a dodgy spare part involved.
I follow a couple of channels on youtube that post replays of interesting radio communications between pilots and air traffic control. There are technical issues that cause departing flights to return to the airport virtually every single day. Electronics, landing gear stuck down or stuck up, engine stall, engine fire, flaps jam, a sensor says something unexpected. Every brand of airplane imaginable. Pilots are trained to navigate every possible failure mode a plane can encounter. Getting permission to carry commercial passengers requires an incredible level of training and testing. Commercial planes are rigorously engineered.
I’m not trying to carry water for Boeing, but this article describes a relatively common operation (as far as I can tell).
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summaryA Boeing 777 aircraft, intended to reach Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, turned around and landed back in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport shortly after takeoff on Sunday, reporting an unspecified technical issue. A spokesperson for Dutch air traffic control said the plane requested to land as a precaution and turned around over Belgium some 40 minutes after takeoff. The incident comes at a time when the US aviation giant Boeing is experiencing a series of safety issues, with its CEO Dave Calhoun announcing he will step down by the end of the year. Boeing has since faced heavy scrutiny from US regulators, and authorities curbed production while the company attempts to fix safety and quality issues. Last month, a Singapore-bound Boeing 777-300ER carrying 211 passengers from London hit sudden turbulence over the Irrawaddy basin, forcing the pilot to divert the flight to Bangkok. In March, a Boeing former employee who had recently been giving evidence against the company in a whistleblower suit died of what police later said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. — Saved 61% of original text.
Because you think the inevitable alternative will somehow be better? I hate Biden as much as the next reasonable human being, but I don’t want another 2016 situation. We don’t have good options, only least bad ones.
I’m convinced at this point that the US is only keeping Israel supplied with weapons because of how important control of the Suez Canal is. Having an ally close to that region is important and Turkey is just not quite close enough
Businesses are not moral entities, and the sooner people stop expecting them to be, the sooner people can start pushing for regulations that control and limit them, instead of trying to “work with” them.
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