I would say we can't pick and choose on the measures some countries took. In your examples, one country is an island and the other might as well be, given that they have a DMZ with the only other part of their country that touches any other nation.

I would say our closest comparison to a nation state composed of multiple 'states' is the EU. Which, if you add up the number of their deaths in total as of now, 627,242 deaths have been reported in the EU/EEA. Their lockdowns were FAR more stringent than ours, and their death total is on par. Do all of their leaders have as much blood on their hands?

This is one of the problems with nation states, if you dont have one, youre f*cked. If youre born a Kurd, youre done and PKK sure looks like a good option. Theyre a terrorist group, cant be an army if they dont have a state.

Think of it as three Northern Irelands without an actual Irish Republic to fall back on. And the Irish are all terrorists too, whenever necessary.

Amazing what we worry about (no new gas heaters for homes in Germany is a recent idea) when this is a thing.

We can still steer between the different possible future realities.
Like that large scale famine or water shortage is preferable to nuclear war or global deadly disease outbreak. Which will it be, food or water? Reality will get more unpleasant before it has a chance to improve. Can we outrun the population and ecosystem gun with science? Possibly. Problem is society and morals cant keep up.

We have resources to do ANYTHING. Send people to Mars. Make water out of thin air and grow tomatoes in the desert. The only thing in the way are nation states and their institutions, and human instincts. The only thing that keeps those in check is culture and morals. There is no such thing as international law unless you are willing to go to all out war to enforce it (not possible since WW2).

And the "leader of the free world" is busy building a wall around his office.

So we probably need to be deceived or else we would all be hysterical without antidepressants.

Still a hysterical voice is not the voice of reality for me.

Great argument about temperatures. Now have one about nation-state economies and government systems.

Its less like what can we do about asteroids, more like what can we realistically do to help the people in Ukraine or Hong-Kong.

Greta is a marketing tool. Her science and tears may be genuine, she may not realize it, but she is a marketing tool in the hands of adults around her.

The simple point is that as soon as we realized the capability of the Zero we easily and quickly designed a plane(s) capable of combating it.

The Yak-3 didn't enter the war until 1944, at which point the war had massively turned in Western Theatre. For the bulk of the conflict, they were using the Yak-1.

The Mig 25 and Mig 31 are both interceptors, they are designed to fire from distance and evade. The Su 35 is designed for Air Superiority. We have held the edge in our capabilities for years compared to them.

Every expert I know of is skeptical of China's claimed Railgun weapon. As to why they would bother mounting it and making claims, why not? It is brinkmanship, making us think they have more capabilities than they do.

The laser rifle is a crowd deterrent weapon. It would serve almost no purpose in infantry combat because it cannot kill. Yes, it can burn things and cause pain, but that is all. Again, this was claimed to be far more effective than experts think during our diplomatic arguments over China's use of blinding lasers on aircraft. We have no hard evidence of it's capability.

Yes, Russia could sell such a missile to our enemies versus using it directly against us. The problem is that as soon as they do so, the genie is out of the bottle. It will be reverse engineered quickly and could be USED AGAINST THEM. No country gives or sells away it's absolute top level weaponry except to it's most trusted allies. Allies which, for all intents and purposes, know that using such a weapon against another nation state risks full out retaliation against not only them but the country that sold it to them.

Our carriers are excellent mobile platforms, but they are not our only way of mounting air strikes. If we were somehow in a conventional war situation, we could easily fly over and base our aircraft in allied countries for combat. Most of our nuclear capable aircraft are not carrier launched anyway. Even if somehow all of our carriers were taken out and somehow our SAC bombers were destroyed as well, we would still have more than enough land launched and submarine launched nuclear warheads to easily blanket our enemies.

My points remain:

1. It is in the greatest interest of our enemies to boast about weapon capabilities even if they are not effective yet.

2. Most well regarded experts consider many of these weapons to either be still in the research stage, early production stage (IE not available for years), or they are wildly over hyped.

3. There is no logical reason for our enemies to use these weapons or proliferate them to their closest allies unless the weapons can prevent a nuclear response. Merely mentioning a weapon that would have such a capability creates a situation that could lead to nuclear war, like SDI did. I don't know if you recall, but I do clearly, how massively freaked out the Soviets got over our SDI claims. For two years they started threatening nuclear war as being inevitable if we continued on the path we were, all the while aggressively trying to destabilize our relations with our allies. 1983 to 1985 was pretty fucking tense, not Cuban missile crisis level maybe, but damn scary. Putin has acted similarly over our attempts to set up a missile barrier in former satellite states of Russia, although we still haven't got to the SHTF level of the early 80's.

I think I see things more jadedly than you do.

Here's what I see of the situation. On a nation state level, nobody cares about the Palestinians. The Palestinians only influence on the chess board is their suffering. All of their 'allies' like Syria, Egypt and Iran don't care about the Palestinians for anything more than making sure that they suffer, the greater and the more public that suffering the better propaganda it makes. Israel and it's allies only care about the Palestinians in so far as that same suffering makes them look bad and sways public opinion as well. The threat from the Palestinians is a police and humanitarian matter, not a military one.

So everybody with boots on the ground doesn't care about the Palestinians. The Israeli side will take what they want as long as public opinion isn't too onerous on it. The Arab nations will actively arm, encite and push the Palestinians from peace to violence at ever turn because it ensures they serve their 'purpose' of public suffering better.

I count exactly zero hope for a two state solution reached between Palestinian and Israeli's as equals. A future of the region where the Palestinian people are afforded a better future either in a province of Israel, or their own state created under terms dictated to it by Israel I see as at least an existent possibility. I honestly believe seeking something more is simply not a possibility because NOBODY wants it. The Israeli's don't, the Palestinians allies don't, even the Palestinians themselves don't.

You seem to think maybe the parties can be made to change their minds on that, but it runs contrary to their self interests.

Israel gains nothing by backing down and negotiating as equals for a two state solution.

Palestine's 'allies' actually lose out greatly in any resolution to the status quo because it currently ties down Israel and makes for great propaganda. They'd lose that and gain nothing in return but less suffering for the Palestinians whom they don't care about.

Palestinians themselves might be persuaded to change their minds, but the only ones swaying their public opinion are their 'allies' with a vested interested in making sure they continue to fight forever for all of Palestine and not settle for two states. Additionally, for all intents and purposes their opinions don't matter anyways because they lack the power to make a meaningful difference.

None of the above is my opinion on how I would like things to be, nor how I think they should be, but rather how I see it actually looking. Nation state actions can usually be stripped down to narrow self interest and naught else. The exceptions are failures of the state representation, like say a dictator choosing their personal interest over a national one, or a buffoon blundering off into idiotic random actions...

Patriotism is not bad, fundamentalist patriotism as an ideology is bad.

Patriotism or its effect is really just a will to support and defend a local community that can then defend itself from external forces and organize internal infrastructure and services.

National states just happen to be strongly defined communities that can be organized fairly easily.

As with other ideologies it is important to try to not let one take over the state without any recourse.

Misuse of xenophobia in politics is just as worrying as the apparent lack of will to defend the "European community" from external forces. No one is willing to die in trenches in the name of Europe just yet. And there is still a lot of internal xenophobia within Europe.

No, I'm aware of the difference, and I meant patriotism.

From your article:
"Patriotism is fundamental to liberty because pride in one’s nation-state, and a willingness to defend it if necessary, is the basis of national independence. Patriotism is the courage of national self-determination."

If you believe national independence and national self-determination are good things, then yes.

But it's still just another form of tribalism.

I am happy for people to defend IDEAS, but the concept that there are "French values" or "American values" seems increasingly silly to me.

There are ideas I support and ideas I oppose and the nationality of those espousing them should be irrelevant. I don't blame all Americans for Trump (especially since most of them didn't vote for him) any more than I credit all Germans for Einstein.

Again, I'm kinda playing devil's advocate here, since I'm not even really sure of my own position. I'm very proud of both my country of birth and my adopted homeland.

I just wonder if patriotism isn't something that's ultimately bad for us as a species.

Trying split up addressing your points and enoch's here, forgive me if things bleed over between a bit.

Large terrorist networks like Al Qaida were and still are using your definitions against your country. They operated with impunity and effectively as their own autonomous state within the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The question is whether acts of war launched from that region then are classed as an act of the Afghan or Pakistani state. If they are, then Afghanistan and Pakistan are to be held to account as states launching the act of war. If they are not, then they have for intents and purposes yielded the sovereignty of that territory to a new independent state waging it's own independent war.

The jihadists are trying to hard to live in an international loophole where they are operating with the autonomy of a state right up until another nation state wants to wage war back against them and then suddenly they are just citizens of the larger state they are technically within the borders of.

When the Bush admin pushed back hard, the Afghanistan government refused(more on this in my reply to Enoch) while the Pakistani government extremely begrudgingly agreed to at least pretend they weren't friendly with them in back channels anymore. Thus act of war met with war in Afghanistan, and yes, I would insist a war that Afghanistan initiated and NOT GW.

As for Saudi Arabia, they are more responsible for Jihadi ideology and funding than any other state, and yes the west largely has ignored it so long as they sold their oil and then used the money to buy back top of the line American made military hardware. I have to say I think it's a bit shortsighted to have made Saudi Arabia number 3 on the global military budget charts... You won't find my hypocritically trying to defend them, they are the ones sending most of the money into Pakistan's mountains to build the madrasa's that don't seem to teach anything after how to fire and assemble your AK.

soo the problem is the title?
ok,kind of ignores the historical implications for every empire and powerful nation state.
i thought it was interesting,and made solid points how history in cinema is almost always either wrong,or slanted.

whatevs..message received.

*discard

Absolutely. We've had our share of - primarily Austrian and French - mercenaries as part of our internal wars. These were groups who enlisted for one of the fighting parties.

In Syria, however, you've had thousands of mercenaries who were not fighting for the government or the "rebels", but for their own. And we're not just talking about ISIS carving out pieces of Syria for their own caliphate, but also other jihadists who merely want to turn Syria into another failed state, like Libya.

To describe this as a civil war distorts the nature of this conflict, it makes it sound as if it were a struggle for control between two groups of Syrians. It may have been at some point years ago, but it hasn't been for a long time.

Mali is looking awfully similar by now, too. Lots of foreign fighters in nation states that were only ever stable on paper anyway -- a recipe for disaster.

@Fairbs
i agree that trump is dangerous.i am reading david cay johnstons "the making of donald trump"...and boy oh boy...

i viewed trump as a used car salesman,a circus barker but he is worse..far worse.

as for obama acting on russian interference,and the fact that nobody is pointing out the obvious...is just depressing to me.

the ability for a president to do that never existed until GW and his merry band of neo-cons.

but thanks to addington and woo,the president has the power to do,what previously took approval from congress.

as i told newt,IF the russians DID hack and therefore influence our elections,then this would equate to two things:
1.this is an act of war.
2.the election would be considered compromised,and trumps presidency would be illegitimate.

i am confident that there was cyber-spying going on.all nations engage in this tactic,and as dore points out,we even spy on our allies.we can safely assume that along with the spying,there was hacking,again...all nation states participate in this tactic.

but as of now there is NO evidence that putin directed russian intelligence to hack the 2017 election in order to put in his muppet trump.

so until such time as they provide such evidence.
i will remain skeptical.
would not be the first time intelligence reports have been manipulated to politicize a cause.

see:iraq
see:vietnam
see:korean war
see:panama

shall i continue?

@Fairbs
while i agree that russia is the aggressor in regards to crimea,can you provide evidence that our election was hacked by russia?

was there actually cyberspying going on?
probably,all major nation states play that game,and all deny participating.(looking at you china).

because i see a LOT of accusations,and declarations of russian hacking,but i don't see any actual..you know..evidence.so i remain skeptical of the russian hacking meme,and am even MORE skeptical that the hacking was intentionally to give trump an edge.

and you are right,maddow simply reported the troop deployment in poland.she reported that this deployment was rushed,and before schedule,,,

and then she did something very curious.
she posits the question,and implies that it will answer a previous question..that she does not actually STATE..but "after all the worry.we are actually about to find out..if...maybe..russia has something on the new president"?

this is the old "i am not saying your sister is a whore..i am just saying your sister is a whore".

she never directly speaks of russian hacks.
she never directly accuses putin of influencing our election.
she just puts it out there,that if trump withdraws troops,then maybe..possibly..he is sucking putins cock.

i'm juuuust saying.
with all due respect...
your sisters a whore.

look man,i adore maddow and i love her analysis,but can we have a moment of honesty here?
she is fairly biased,and is particular on the stories she will cover,and during the run up to the election and even during..she has engaged in some serious apologetics in regards to hillary clinton.

as for the host from secular talk.
this is just his opinion.maybe he did take some liberties,and made some assumptions but i agree with him on calling maddow out for her dog whistle tactics.

lately the democrats have been beating this drum like indians on meth,and when i see so many tv pundits all beating the same tune,without providing tangible evidence....my bullshit alarm starts to go off.

My buddy Mike Garfield, over at globalish says about this video:

"t’s that time of the year again: since 2008 (a million years ago!), DJ Earworm’s mashup mania crescendos once a year to form an epic audio collage that features Billboard’s favorite 25, all woven into one symphonic DJ mix. It’s like a Google Earth view of the musical identity of young Americans – by zooming out until a year of singles happens in four minutes, culture seems like nature, and the spirit of the times shines through the often-mediocre music Earworm brings together. Seeing Earth from space, we found a new identity beyond the nation states; a similar escape into low orbit around Pop reveals the flavor of the age with more appeal and sentiment than year-end news reviews.
It isn’t merely that “United States of Pop” resamples factory-assembled dross to offer tunes more interesting than their gathered parts. “Do What You Wanna Do” sings volumes about how and who we are right now, the character of mainstream culture we can’t see until it’s past, the air that we’ve been breathing without paying much attention. The cynical might say it demonstrates how all this music sounds the same, how easily it’s recombined – and while that’s definitely true, it’s also and more deeply true that we’re in this together, and will be remembered sharing space on stage as actors in a common play of history. Here is a window into how this moment will be seen, in digest form, the way we now look back on 1969. But go back and look at the mixes from 2008 – 2013, and a trend is obvious: even lousy music’s getting better. It’s an optimistic sign that we are getting deeper as a culture. Let’s hope.
Earworm’s genius lies not only in up-cycling tracks I’d rather never hear again as standalone recordings, but also in transforming the familiar and mundane into a damn-near magical homage to each year’s zeitgeist. This must be what an end-of-life review feels like: everything remembered and forgotten rushes back for one last joyous and nostalgic celebration.
Here’s to the change we all seek in 2015."

I'm finding it was a fair discussion on both sides. Harris is clearly more knowledge in the subject but Cenk came up with enough counter-examples to keep the discussion interesting.

Ultimately I think they've spent far too much arguing on the part/predominantly Islam to blame and whether Islamic is worse than certain other religions. Both are very subjective positions and I feel Harris comes off dogmatic here. He may be well placed to argue that people will undersell the role of Islam (perhaps due to political correctness) but to take a very absolutist position cheapens his argument.

I'm only half way but I feel they skipped over socio-economics far too quickly. The reason a middle class citizen in a western country can be radicalised by Islam (say ISIS) is because of the wellspring of specifically radical Islamic communities on the internet relative to other religions. This makes the chances of an impressionable individual stumbling on these much higher than say on a radical Christian call to action which I'm sure exist. As an area, the Middle East is also far more conflict prone and engender an immediate need to respond.

That Islam is so important in many Middle Eastern countries is in itself a product of their low socio-economic level. I suspect that in societies where religion rather than the nation state (which is corrupt or ineffectual) is the main cohesive entity and where low education may make many events we attribute to science unexplainable, it is no surprise that religion (Islam) is taken more seriously and literally. For example insofar as there being no effectual system of law and punishment to more humanely deal with criminals. Also because religion is such a more important glue of community, it's strictures are enforced more rigidly - more varied interpretations would lead to disagreements and risk breaking the community apart (or alternatively, I am saying that only communities with rigid ideologies have survived).

The reason why a Palestinian Christian behaves less radically than Palestinian Muslims on average may also have manifold explanations if it is true. If we accept that many religious groups are linked globally, it is arguable that western countries with their more moderate Christian view are a moderating influence relative to the more radical average global interpretation of Islam. Perhaps with suicide bombings being such an Islamic stigma, it is an activity they as a community have actively tried to avoid? Perhaps anthropologically being in the minority in a community engenders less radicalism and more passive behaviour?