We’re probably going to have to bump our own aid as well, unless we’re confident of an asymmetric counter to whatever Russia’s doing with her funds (e.g. building munitions factory == strike on munitions factory).

I did read an article discussing that the US should be on firmer ground than last year politically on funds:

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-united-states-needs-a-long-term-approach-to-ukraine-aid/

The April 2024 aid package was delayed for months by House Republicans, with Speaker Mike Johnson fearing that hardliners would strip him of his leadership position as they did with his predecessor. But Johnson was eventually convinced not just of the urgent need to help Ukraine win, but also that he had political cover to do so. Democrats pledged to save his position should it be at risk and, more importantly, former President Donald Trump came out publicly in support of the speaker’s efforts and backed him up after the package passed.

Many Republicans in Congress had feared that supporting Ukraine aid could mean losing their seats, as the supplemental fight came just as members of Congress faced their intra-party primary election. Some incumbents were accused of putting Ukraine’s interests over those of the United States and faced attack ads over their past votes for Ukraine aid.

Crucially, every single member of Congress who voted for the April 2024 supplemental aid package won their primary election. The importance of this cannot be overstated. These primary results will likely quell the fears among Republicans that supporting Ukraine could derail their political careers. On the contrary, given that polls show majority support for US aid to Ukraine, it could be an asset.

If China wants a war with the US – which I doubt, seeing as they haven’t started one by now and Taiwan would be a better reason for them to do so – they don’t need a treaty to have one. They can just go kick one off. The treaty just means that:

• They have an obligation to act.

• It provides grounds under the UN rules to act legally. But, end of the day, that only really matters to the degree that it affects what other countries do. And in this context, that probably mostly means the US anyway.

If you look at Hong Kong, China just told the UK to get out or they’d take it. They didn’t have a legal basis for that. I don’t expect that a piece of paper would be a huge obstacle to involving themselves in Korea if they were willing to have a war over it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Hong_Kong

During talks with Thatcher, China planned to seize Hong Kong if the negotiations set off unrest in the colony. Thatcher later said that Deng told her bluntly that China could easily take Hong Kong by force, stating that “I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon”, to which she replied that “there is nothing I could do to stop you, but the eyes of the world would now know what China is like”.

There’s a reason they are constantly provoking Filipino ships and the like

I don’t think that that indicates a desire for war. China has had outright hostilities over the islands before, with Vietnam, and China didn’t aim to convert it into broader war. I think – though I don’t follow the South China Sea situation much – that China’s aim in the South China Sea is to maintain a level of friction high enough that it’s painful for the countries to maintain a claim over those islands. At some point, the country either de facto or de jure cedes the territory and China keeps it.

EDIT: There’s the Vietnam instance, where they brought friction up to a level of conflict, grabbed de facto control, but didn’t initiate a broader war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Paracel_Islands

Article 6 of the treaty requires North Korea to commit to only peaceful reunification with South Korea. They’re in violation of the treaty if they try to forcibly annex South Korea, and China doesn’t then hold obligation to aid them against attack.

They already sold a fair bit of munitions from their stockpile to Russia. At least some of which Ukraine then blew up in their recent ammo depot attacks.

I don’t know how much they have left, but my guess is that North Korea is probably in a worse place to attack South Korea than they have been for a while.

Also, while North Korea does hold a strong deterrence ability over South Korea in that they can cause a lot of damage with artillery to Seoul, the flip side of that is that they’d be starting a war that they’d lose.

From past reading, I believe that estimates are that it’d take us and South Korea days, but less than a week, to knock out North Korean artillery near the border. In that time, they’d cause horrendous damage. But then they’re in a really bad place. They don’t really have a route to militarily take over South Korea. All it’d mean is a horribly-damaging war for them.

https://theaviationist.com/2013/09/18/fuel-tanks-se-asia/

We apparently just started refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-buys-6-million-barrels-oil-strategic-petroleum-reserve-2024-09-30/

WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. has bought 6 million barrels of oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for delivery through May 2025, the Department of Energy said on Monday.

The purchases are part of an effort to replenish stockpiles after President Joe Biden ordered the largest ever sale from the reserve in 2022 of 180 million barrels in an effort to control fuel prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

I’m currently looking at two Wall Street Journal articles on Kagi’s news results. One is from yesterday, and has Saudi Arabia warning of a price collapse to $50/barrel oil. The other is from today and asking whether oil is about to skyrocket to $100/barrel.

https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/saudi-minister-warns-of-50-oil-as-opec-members-flout-production-curbs-216dc070

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp500-nasdaq-live-10-03-2024/card/will-oil-prices-surge-to-100-a-barrel--n3mmknym7wNJeDidlnFz?mod=lctimeline_finance

I guess that pretty much covers all the bases…

You’re probably thinking of this like the US, which has a presidential system, where the president has a veto and Congress can override.

Georgia has a parliamentary system, and typically there – don’t know about Georgia in particular – the president, if one exists, has a more symbolic role. Like, maybe he’s supposed to formally authorize legislation, but doesn’t really have a veto.

EDIT: In the UK, the monarch – the head of state in the UK, like the president in a parliamentary system – sometimes has to do something, but on the “advice” of the elected government, which in practice means that in 2024, they don’t really have the option to not do it.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/how-queens-consent-raises-questions-over-uk-democracy

Buckingham Palace insists that the monarch’s role is “purely formal”. Declassified files show that from time to time the palace has complained that the Queen has not been given enough time to respond, or that the government has treated the procedure too casually.

If consent is withheld, parliament is in effect blocked from completing its scrutiny of the law. “If Queen’s or prince’s consent is not signified (in a case where it is required), the question on third reading of the bill … cannot be put,” parliamentary guidance states.

Robert Blackburn, a professor of constitutional law at King’s College London, warned of “an inherent danger that a misguided future monarch or prince of Wales, holding strong moral views on the subject matter of a bill covered by the royal consent procedure, might believe he or she is entitled to impose his opinion on the matter”.

While I’m generally sympathetic to the idea that the EU should strive to be more economically-competitive, I’m also skeptical that economic competitiveness represents an existential threat for the EU.

I’d also point out that the devil is in the details of what specific changes one plans to make. France has a lot of EU regulation and economic restrictions that they like. I suspect that a lot of people might point to the Common Agricultural Policy as something to reduce in size, though it’s generally benefitted France at the expense of some other members.

That may have broader implications than just for Israel. My understanding from past reading is that the Iranian ballistic missile stockpile was of concern to other countries too, like Turkey, and why Turkey was pushing hard for having anti-ballistic-missile capability.

But if Iran’s ballistic missiles can’t reliably impact much closer to their target than this, absent nuclear warheads, it may mean that Iran has much less military capability against other countries in the region than expected.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, told the AP they assessed that 50% of the Iranian missiles failed at launch or crashed before reaching their target.

Assuming Iran targeted the hangars, the James Martin analysts measured the distance between the hangars and the impact zones of the missiles. That gave an average of about 1.2 kilometers (0.75 miles) for the “circular error probable” — a measurement used by experts to determine a weapon’s accuracy based on the radius of a circle that encompasses 50% of where the missiles landed.

That’s far worse than a 500-meter (1,640-foot) error circle first estimated by experts for the Emad. After a U.N. weapons ban on Iran ended in 2020, Iran separately advertised the Emad to potential international buyers as having a 50-meter (164-foot) circle — a figure that is in line with top missile specifications for systems deployed elsewhere, said Hinz, the IISS missile expert.

One of the more-hawkish takes I’ve read.

deleted by creator

https://archive.ph/NsUtm

A Russian company will export chickpeas and lentils in exchange for tangerines and rice from Pakistan

Pakistan is coming out way ahead on that one. Chickpeas and lentils are awesome.

Under an agreement signed at the Pakistan-Russia Trade and Investment Forum in Moscow on Tuesday, Russia’s Astarta-Agrotrading will supply 20,000 tons of chickpeas while Pakistan’s Meskay & Femtee Trading Company will deliver the same quantity of rice, according to state-run Tass.

The Russian side also plans to supply 15,000 tons of chickpeas and 10,000 tons of lentils in exchange for 15,000 tons of tangerines and 10,000 tons of potatoes from Pakistan.

Given that every single commodity there was traded at a 1:1 mass ratio, that doesn’t sound like people went to a whole lot of effort to figure out the relative worth of the two.

Given that that Iran’s the common factor with all the other targets, I’d imagine that that’s probably a pretty good guess, though looking online, we bombed targets in Syria yesterday as well:

https://apnews.com/article/syria-militants-killed-airstrike-us-central-command-8921f045b25d621143778730d78bd4e4?taid=66f93b79f602a500015dd02a

BEIRUT (AP) — Two U.S. airstrikes in Syria killed 37 militants affiliated with the Islamic State group and an al-Qaeda-linked group, the U.S. military said Sunday. It said two of the dead were senior militants.

U.S. Central Command said it struck northwestern Syria on Tuesday, targeting a senior militant from the al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen group and eight others. They say he was responsible for overseeing military operations.

On Sept. 16, a “large-scale airstrike” on an IS training camp in an undisclosed location in central Syria killed 28 militants, including “at least four Syrian leaders,” Central Command said.

“The airstrike will disrupt ISIS’ capability to conduct operations against U.S. interests, as well as our allies and partners,” the statement read.

EDIT: Wait, no, that was one week ago yesterday. Wrong Tuesday.

It’s a quote from Snatch.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLsWMdxTMcw

Well, I can pretty much guarantee one thing – given the international situation, Russia is gonna veto any action against Iran at the UNSC, so Israel isn’t looking for UNSC action in calling for the UNSC to convene.

Countries don’t need UNSC signoff to defend themselves, though.

I think that there may be an obligation to notify the UNSC, though, if a country is taking military action in defense of itself or another country with which it has a collective security agreement.

kagis for the UN Charter

Ah, yeah, here it is.

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text

Article 51

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

So I suppose that it’s good odds that that’s what this is.

A top Iranian military commander has warned that his country will hit Israel’s entire infrastructure if it takes any action against its territory.

Iran’s armed forces joint chief of staff Gen. Mohammad Bagheri said Wednesday that the Revolutionary Guard was prepared both defensively and offensively to repeat its missile attack with “multiplied intensity.”

“If the Zionist regime, that has gone insane, is not contained by America and Europe and intends to continue such crimes, or do anything against our sovereignty or territorial integrity, tonight’s operation will be repeated with much higher magnitude and we will hit all their infrastructure,” he said.

Hmm.

Israel’s U.N. ambassador says his government will decide when and how to respond to Iran’s barrage of close to 200 ballistic missiles that forced Israel’s 10 million population into bomb shelters. “But I can tell you one thing, it will be noticed,” he said. “It will be painful.”

Hmm.

The U.N. Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting on the escalating situation in the Middle East for Wednesday at 10 a.m., at the request of France and Israel.

Hmm.

Ryder said two U.S. Navy destroyers — the USS Cole and the USS Bulkeley — fired about a dozen interceptors to defend Israel in the latest attack.

He decried reports indicating Iran wants to de-escalate tensions in the region.

“You don’t launch that many missiles at a target without the intent on hitting something,” Ryder said.

Hmm.

Turn-based RPGs I can understand, but “RTS” is “real-time strategy” – it’s intrinsically not turn-based.

You can get turn-based strategy games, but they aren’t RTSes.

It depends on what you’re looking for. There are more hard-warsim oriented games at Matrix Games, though a number of those are also available on Steam these days.

Steam has a “Turn-based Strategy” tag:

https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&tags=1741&supportedlang=english&ndl=1