thisislife2

Have we come full circle now with China inspired by American Capitalism to create their own model of it, that now inspires the Americans to imitate the Chinese?

> Is your view that nothing can be done about the extortion? Not really - see my other comments. I do however feel Iran would be justified in imposing a toll on countries that are hostile to it. Wh…

> This would remain the case even if the US or others violated it; Yeah, but laws are useless if it can't be enforced right? Trump claimed the US has first right's on Venezuela's o…

The US is a rich, developed country that is not fully dependent on the middle-east for oil. India is one the top importers of oil in the world and it is a developing country. Like for Iran, the stakes…

> since they just need to threaten to destroy ships. Here, you are assuming that those threatened will do nothing. Why? Even when India, for example, had some issues with piracy, they started sen…

Flagged for the wrong link.

They do treat it as a "cost of doing business" as they do hedge between making a bigger profit through such violations vis the possible fine. But enforced fines like these serve as a warning…

A few days back, Google reCaptcha suddenly showed me a QR code and asked me to scan it with my mobile to "verify" I was human. I was taken aback, and at first thought my system / browse…

Religious edicts apart, it's not that simple - in Judaism and Islam, not circumcising is also considered a health risk. (It's similar to the edict to not eat Pork). Obviously, just as parent…

Fantastic campaign. The "Go jump in some water before the data centres drink it all up" billboard on the beach doesn't mince words ... ( https://www.businessinsider.com…

Interesting. My friends and I were recently discussing the rise of right-wing parties and leaders around the world, and we observed that many of these controversial elected leaders also have an "…

The point still stands - Telecoms have been subsidised by public money. And we further subsidise WhatsApp by paying for an internet connection to use it.

Ok. And do you think Meta / WhatsApp is any different from any of those Telecoms? Just because WhatsApp is "free" doesn't mean it's a non-profit service from Meta!

Telecoms financed and built the communication infrastructure which made the internet (and thus, WhatsApp) possible. WhatsApp is also further subsidised because you also pay for the internet to use i…

@timming is right. This particular incident was triggered because Oman announced a parallel route in Strait, and some ships were lead to believe that you don't need to talk / coordinate with…

> ... the general pattern I think is just the media turning every word coming from him into a weapon Oh, "polarised" media now seems to be the norm around the world, and not just the US…

The terms of the recent US-Lebanon-Israel agreement guarantees a future civil war in Lebanon that will further destabilise it for the benefit of Israel. Apparently, Israel has to vacate the Lebanese t…

Most of the Trump bashing online is indeed based on some political ignorance of how he operates (or just the usual propaganda from the opposition). In some ways, Trump's team is to blame for this…

It will be interesting to see what the Russians do to Apple in response. Google / Youtube already owes $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [1] in Russian fines :). Banning local apps …

Oman is small state in the region with not much influence other than what the regional and superpowers allow it. It was diplomatically smart for Iran to rope in Oman on its future plans for the admini…

> “The MOU was a one-and-a-half-page document where ambiguity was the feature and not the bug,” he explained. “There was a lot of ambiguity to be filled in later.” ... Erye said Iran agreed to allo…

No. Iran has confirmed it attacked the commercial vessel (fired "warning shots" at it), and the US has officially clarified that it did retaliate in response to this. It was just the America…