UN-recognised government in Yemen has no credibility

Sometimes, revolutions and coups occur. These unconstitutional seizures of power violate the rule of law and should always be discouraged. However, when such a coup does occur, the international community eventually accepts it as a fait accompli.

In the Cold War, many such violent transfers of power occurred but typically the resulting government would be backed by the US or USSR. In some other cases, such as that of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, it was China that provided most of the legitimacy to the new regime.

However, on very rare occasions, an uprising would not be backed by any of the superpowers. Examples are the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and the rise of the original Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to power in 1996. The rise of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan back to power in 2021 is another such event, although Moscow and Beijing were not bothered by the previous pro-Western regime's fall.

Refusing to accept illegal takeovers

Sometimes, the rise to power of a faction will be met with rejection by the supreme body of authority in the world - the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council, representing the victorious countries of the Second World War, provides a kind of "might makes right" verdict on a dispute where the right cannot otherwise be established. It includes the rival Russians, Chinese and Americans and can often be split and indecisive.

Based on the strictest adherence to the rule of law, you would never recognise any unconstitutional seizure of power as valid. It is the duty of the Security Council to condemn any and all violent takeovers and attempt to reinstall the previous regime. Unfortunately, this is not always practical.

In Ukraine in 2014, crowds used violence to overpower security forces in Kiev and bring opposition politicians to power, ostracizing and kicking out the elected government. The former president fled to Russia, but rather than continue backing this president, Russia accepted the new regime's rise to power as a fait accompli. Despite the hostility between Kiev and Moscow, Moscow does not say the Ukrainian government is illegitimate. Its beef with the country is about the treatment of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, not the validity of a government that rose to power illegally.

This brings us to the topic for today.

Who rules Yemen?

In Yemen, from 2014-2015, almost the exact same thing was happening as was taking place in Ukraine. In this case, the offending group that took control was Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis. The president of the country, in this case Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, fled not to Russia but to Saudi Arabia.

Rather than accept the defeat of their disgraced former favourite as Russia did in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia instead formed a military coalition to lay siege to Yemen in an attempt to reinstall the kicked-out president. This is the reason for the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

Imagine if, rather than accept what happened in Ukraine in 2014, Russia instead assembled the alliance of post-Soviet states, the CSTO, to invade Ukraine and restore the former president Viktor Yanukovych to power in Kiev. Imagine further, that this resulted in nearly a hundred thousand deaths, total destruction of infrastructure and outbreaks of cholera, and that Russia was still attempting to reach Kiev, being continuously defeated in the process. That is what Saudi Arabia is doing in Yemen.

The UN Security Council, including Russia, despite it contradicting the way it accepted the unconstitutional seizure of power in Ukraine, still recognises the discredited former regime of Yemen as the legitimate government of the country.

Peace through accepting reality

The Houthis should not have seized power in Yemen, but they did. This reality would be accepted by pragmatists and if the Houthis continue to prevail, it will eventually be accepted. The UN has a duty in this case to stop propping up a defeated regime, and to withdraw recognition of Hadi. The Houthis, like the Taliban, are the rulers of the country they rose to power in whether you like them or not. They have been in power for multiple years despite an international coalition against them. They stood the strongest tests any regime could be subjected to, and are the right ones to hold accountable for the wellbeing of that country.

Attempting to restore an old regime, possibly at the cost of killing everyone in the country, is insanity. We recognise all kinds of governments that we don't personally support, and that is what is needed here.

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Robot dogs, with guns for heads

Images of a military or security robot resembling a dog with a gun in place of a head have elicited dread online. The machine, created by Ghost Robots and Sword International and named the Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle (SPUR), may offer a glimpse into the future of warfare.

A common reaction is one of horror. We have seen all the Terminator and Matrix movies, featuring the robot takeover and enslavement of humanity. In such movies, a common theme is that robots exceeded humanity in their abilities. They became more agile, resilient, and even more intelligent. Ultimately, their fighting ability grew greater than humanity's and humanity was conquered (subverted in the movies, of course, by messianic heroes who can outclass the machines).

Warfare advances and there is no point in complaining. But is it really a matter of man against machine? Or even a matter of better machines against inferior and dated machines? Such thinking may have more in common with movies than reality.

What does technology mean to war?

The actual relationship between technology and warfare is often misunderstood. Technology has always been more a way for a wealthier power to leverage its wealth to produce military results with greater propaganda effect and at a reduced cost in personnel lives, rather than a silver bullet capable of producing victory. It is just more ordnance put to use against the other side's ordnance, and not ultimately the deciding factor in who will will be victorious. Just take a look. History is filled with examples of wealthier and better-equipped nations being defeated by poorer ones in wars. Technological advantages can be negated a lot more easily than many would think, and humans are a lot harder to kill than their counterparts portrayed in movies and games.

Those times when advanced technology got beaten

Look no further back than the outcome of the War in Afghanistan (2001-2021). Surely, it was a foregone conclusion that the mighty NATO forces would defeat the inferior Taliban forces? It was also a foregone conclusion that the Soviet Union would be defeated by the German military in 1941. What happened?

We might be able to inflict our wrath on people in poor nations as a result of billions spent on advanced weapons, but that act in itself just serves to encourage someone else to pick up an AK-47 and continue the fight. A Taliban fighter is a low-cost means of waging war, driven by faith, willing to sacrifice his life. You only believe killing him is a victory because you mistakenly equate his loss with your own death, when in reality a group like the Taliban has an endless supply of men. You don't have an endless supply of expensive bombs and robots. Worse still, depending on robots means you have absolutely no supply of men willing to sacrifice themselves.

Attrition ultimately can still wear you down, even when you take no human losses. And the unwillingness to take even one casualty just makes that one casualty hit a whole lot harder, when it eventually does happen. The anti-war sentiment ends up being just as strong, nay, worse, than it would be if you were taking thousands of losses in 1940.

Strengths and weaknesses

There is also the fact that a robot soldier may just be forever doomed to be less efficient, less manageable and far less adapted to its environment than the real thing.

Imagine a robot horse. That is a fine thing for fiction, but a real horse operates a lot better in the real world and is better made for it. A normal horse does not come from a manufacturing plant thousands of miles away. It can be replaced very easily using other horses. It can be recharged using grass and water abundant in many normal environments, and does not need expensive and rare power cells that must be transported to it by yet more technology.

Of course, an already good military can be made better by robots, which surely can add to its firepower. These kinds of unmanned rifles are not going to be a replacement for soldiers, but they could certainly be buddies for soldiers and increase the firepower of already effective military units.

An army that still puts a lot of human bodies to use in addition to its mechanical muscle will likely prevail over one that attempts to rely solely on machines. Willing humans will continue to be the more important factor in winning. People and even animals are going to continue to be a more convenient and cost-effective way of getting lots of weapons to the front line, for a long time.

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Weapons in space, the hypocritical way

Russia has been accused of hypocrisy by the United States and NATO, after its satellite destruction test reportedly created debris and panic in orbit.

If you have seen the movie Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, you are familiar with the problem. In fact, this recent event was exactly the plot of the movie, including such details as which country did the deed of taking down a satellite with a missile.

Some may even have been irked when Gravity came out, because back then the most recent offender in destroying satellites was China, yet the movie chose to cast Russia as the aggressor as is so often done in American media. Now, it seems, Russia has finally stepped up and played its movie role for real.

The blame game

Of course, Russia rejected claims that the debris created in the test endangered any space installation. Moreover, Russia pointed to similar satellite destruction tests by the US, China and India. Both sides accused each other of hypocrisy, with the US saying Russia's actions directly contradict its words.

When it comes to hypocrisy at this moment, Russia may be somewhat guiltier than America, and so too could be the Chinese when it comes to their activity in space. For something to be hypocritical, one's words have to contradict one's actions. Russia and China have steadfastly stated that they oppose the weaponisation of space. They may be using a narrow definition, speaking of the stationing of weapon systems in orbit rather than the temporary course of projectiles through space, but to send weapons into space to blow things up is certainly not conducive to preventing the weaponisation of space.

It is the presence of ICBMs, which move at such high altitude that they enter into space, that motivated the desire of the US to weaponise space in the first place, dating even back to the 1980s. Since the US has openly created the Space Force as a branch of its military, and declared space to be a war-fighting domain, the US is not breaking its word when it carries out military activity in space. It is doing exactly as it promises. The Russians and Chinese, however, are playing a diplomatic stalling game in which they likely intend to shame American advances in military space technology.

Warfare inevitably advances

The Russian and Chinese position is roughly equivalent to the Spartans decrying the Athenian use of arrows. Complaining about the other side's developments as being unsportsmanlike, appealing to arbitrary definitions and rules about what constitutes the right and proper way to kill people and blow things up, is unavailing in the end. It could also be deterring huge strides in technological development that could ultimately save humanity itself if we eventually come to depend on space colonies to escape disasters on Earth.

Russia can blow up whatever it wants to blow up, but there is no point in Russia crying foul about the other side coveting powerful technologies that could accomplish military supremacy. Russia has very capable engineers of its own and has surpassed the United States in some areas, such as hypersonic missiles. So, too, has China. This should teach these countries that the answer is not to complain about American advances, but to make advances of their own.

Every breakthrough in space is good

At the end of the day, enemies or not, we are all human, and it is in the human interest to fully exploit space for every benefit to our security and colonise the other planets of the Solar System. The stumbling block to this has been funding, and if one organisation on Earth is not short of funding, it is the US Department of Defense.

This is not a call for American conquest of the Solar System, but an acknowledgment that someone has to start the process and it would be wrong to simply stall them.

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Fatbergs, pandemics, and the problem of not caring

Maybe as long as ten years ago, I heard about the problem of items and fat accumulating in the sewage system, forming what is known as fatbergs. However, more than just being the problem of the infrastructure - of the state - a similar build-up in plumbing threatens the homes of those causing the problem, so they ought to care.

This problem was always the problem of the individual, in the sense that individuals are causing the problem by what type of waste they attempt to wash away and in the sense that ultimately it will have repercussions for the individual if the infrastructure suffers. However, is it possible that the threat to individual homes is somewhat exaggerated? Authorities sometimes exaggerate or even lie in order to move individuals to action, where they were unmoved by the plight of the collective.

Your country needs you

In the past, it was possible to move people to action through patriotism or some notion of the collective good. The call to do something for your country was one that could motivate people. As the appeal of selfish individualism grew globally, likely through the spread and normalisation of American popular culture, appeals to national wellbeing may have fallen on increasingly deaf ears.

As a result, we now have people in countries like Britain, who fundamentally cannot grasp that problems affecting the state and the infrastructure could have any effect on them. They instead view the state as an unwelcome and intrusive authority, whose problems don't concern a citizen - some sinister big brother with his own agenda.

The ability to maintain infrastructure such as roads and the sewage system, and the ability to provide emergency and medical services are things anyone can scoff at and say they don't need them. Maybe they have a big off-road capable car, so they don't need the roads. Maybe they have experience of camping in the wild, so they don't need the sewage system. Maybe they carry guns and first aid kits, so they don't need the police or any medical workers. Such a person is rare, and they likely still are dependent on something maintained by the state, without being aware of it. The point of this post, though, is not to deride libertarianism or minarchy; most of the work done by states could hypothetically be provided by non-states in a possible future. The point is that many people bafflingly believe a problem isn't theirs until it directly affects them.

You don't need your country?

In the case of the selfish individualist, they soon realise they need a hospital if their child becomes ill, but most of the time this isn't happening, so reading about hospitals closing down probably doesn't bother them. They hear of other people's children getting ill, but their own child seems very healthy, so they don't need hospitals. This kind of thinking is exactly the problem.

Governments do not manage your life, but manage the lives of millions of people. As such, you can say you don't care what the government wants, but the state is built in such a way that you will suffer the consequences of that attitude if the infrastructure and services break down. The state won't be so rude as to say it does not care about you, but it indeed does not care, and it suffers no consequences for that attitude. Although your life ends with you, the state's life continues with everyone else, so it will always be more concerned about the wellbeing of the collective than an individual's sob story. This is at the heart of the debate over the current pandemic and the issue of vaccinating the population.

An immunised population

The state wants the population vaccinated against this pandemic. It is absolutely sensible, from the point of view of those authorities who manage millions of lives, to do what is best for that mass of people, including those millions who are vulnerable to disease. For an individual with no medical disorder putting them at risk, however, the state's goal appears intrusive.

You, you may say, are not individually at risk. But, the state retorts, what of one person's risk to others? And what of the risk of failing to efficiently manage the health of many millions of people? What of the risk to the medical services, if they should fail? 'Not my problem,' you may then say.

Then, enter the exaggerations and (possibly) the lies.

Noble lies

The state's advocates, being tasked with the health and wellbeing of millions of people rather than the comfort of the individual, are pushed to be economical with the truth in order to convince the individual to do something. If people are too selfish to see the value in any kind of collective or state wellbeing, it is inevitable that authorities will eventually try to convince them that their individual wellbeing is more at risk than it really is.

None of this should be necessary, but it seems as though it is. We are faced with the modern citizen's immature selfishness, poseur individualism and anti-establishment bias, all accidentally inspired by the American global pop culture.

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Failed Liverpool attack signifies nothing

Sound and fury last weekend in Liverpool took Britain by surprise. Almost immediately, it was labelled as a terrorist attack, although this had more to do with the method employed by the perpetrator rather than any kind of motive.

Terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda have not chosen to take responsibility for inspiring the attack, in which a lone attacker detonated a bomb inside a taxi. This is likely due to two factors. One is that the attack failed so spectacularly, causing no casualties other than the person who carried it out. The second is the nature of the target. Targeting a women's hospital, with that hospital having no religious, ethnic or political significance, is of no interest even to the most violent terrorist organisations. At a glance, such a target suggests the perpetrator could have been driven by misogyny, possibly stirred by poor mental health or feelings of alienation rather than ideology.

According to reports, the perpetrator had a history of mental illness. This may put the designation of the incident as a terrorist attack into question, since it suggests that the attacker may have had no religious or political motive. As such, naming it as a terrorist attack could have accidentally focused the state's resources on stirring even more division, conflict and unrest rather than putting mental health in focus.

A way of life under attack?

To talk of the attack as being against our "way of life", as the British government has done, seems to have been in error. The attack was not against any way of life, but against life, in particular the life of the individual who did it. It was an attack by someone fed up with his own life. To talk of unity in the face of people trying to cause division, and to talk of preserving the way of life of the country, could simply be the wrong speech for the occasion and irrelevant to what happened.

The Liverpool attack attempt is something that would have happened even if the so-called war on terror was not taking place. It would have happened even if there were no different cultures cohabiting on our islands. This looks like a case of someone, mentally unstable and enraged at the world, seeking to commit suicide and take others with them. Unfortunately, such things are known to happen, even in countries and societies that are boring, homogenous and not embroiled in any kind of controversy. The perpetrators, enraged at everyone, often even target their own families.

Comparison with the Plymouth attack

Think back to the other recent attack to have disturbed Britain, which occurred in Plymouth. That was a case of a loner who snapped, and sought to take his rage out against the world, including a young child in his path. The acts are evil, as they would have been in Liverpool if the attacker succeeded, but the motive is not one that fits with what we know as terrorism. The motive is simply based on isolation and mental illness. We have a crowded, complicated world that gives rise to false expectations, shattered dreams and mental illness. Sometimes, people die because of it.

More disturbingly, it may be that the attack in Liverpool was designated as terrorism because the perpetrator was a Muslim and of Middle Eastern origin, whereas the Plymouth attacker was not. Yet, in both cases, mental illness played a role. It it seems very likely that both attacks have no political significance and only represent the perpetrators' rage at their own lives, made worse by the disruptions to social life caused by the pandemic.

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Why do militaries form big alliances (and still lose)?

Perceptions of World War Two still guide many a thought about how to wage war. Many see the Allies as a supreme example to follow to achieve victory, apparently forgetting that the Allies spent the start of the Second World War being picked off and defeated one at a time.

The newest big military alliance that seems to be under construction is the one against Iran in the Persian Gulf, with Israel cooperating more openly with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in the area. It is unlikely that such cooperation would offset the kind of damage Iran is able to do against any specific target in that area such as a ship, naval base or oil facility if it actually goes on the offensive. So, what's the point?

Forming an alliance is the first thing to do if you are scared of taking a lot of damage from an adversary, and would prefer the damage to be more spread out across your broad coalition. If casualties are spread out between different member states of NATO in Afghanistan, for example, each country can brag that it lost very few soldiers while defeating many Taliban. But how does it look when your massive 30-nation alliance gets defeated by a small guerrilla organisation in one country?

Lack of commitment or willingness to fight alone

Another example of an alliance proving absolutely ineffective is the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. The coalition of Arab armies is not only failing to crush a rebellion in the country but running away, surrendering ground to low-tech rebels.

The problem is that alliances are usually formed to cover up weakness in the first place, and that weakness still exists in them. Alliances often lack commitment, and indeed they are formed in the first place by members who lacked the commitment to fight alone and sought an easier path.

Your military alliance helps the enemy target you

For example, when World War Two began, Germany achieved a massive winning streak against the Allies by simply targeting them one at a time. Allies form their alliance because they feel stronger at the thought of standing shoulder to shoulder with others against an adversary, like some propaganda poster emblazoned with slogans of strength in unity, but practical reality often doesn't work out that way. Often, it works out more like a hit list for the opponent, who now knows who to bump off when he sees them alone in some dark alley.

When the Germans formed their own mighty alliance to attack the Soviet Union, the USSR played the same game the Germans had played, targeting the weaker members of the Axis alliance on the frontline as a means of flanking the Germans. Were it not for the Germans' desire for a mighty coalition, and their false sense of security in that coalition, Soviet victory at Stalingrad may have been unattainable. The Soviets needed no allies to turn the tide in that battle, but the Germans failed because of their allies.

A domino effect

It is worthy of mention that NATO's Asian counterpart, SEATO, dissolved almost immediately after America lost the Vietnam War, proving that all it takes to destroy such a military alliance is to destroy one party protected by the alliance. Since an alliance often involves weak members and thoughtlessly adds members to its ranks, including pitiful ones, defeating an alliance member becomes so easy that the alliance's existence is more of a boon to the opponent than a threat. This is why NATO would not add the feeble Afghan regime or any other especially weak government to its alliance, since it might tie the fate of the alliance to that one regime, as was the case with South Vietnam.

In a military coalition, one member is always more vulnerable than another, and another is more vulnerable following the fall of that first one. As such, alliances often fall like dominoes. Unless their individual members are mighty and committed enough to go it alone and take all the casualties for a significant amount of time (like the British Commonwealth, followed by the Soviet Union, in World War Two) a military alliance means little against a strong peer opponent.

In their worst form, alliances are just propaganda, a false parade of flags to lift the spirits of a fool, good for enticing you to go to war in the first place but not for helping you win.

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Poland-Belarus migration wars: who is to blame?

It has been called the weaponisation of migrants. But, with the Poles more culturally averse to migration than their western allies, it may be better described as part of the EU's own internal split.

The EU Civil War

The EU is divided. In the east, we have more conservative states such as Poland and Hungary. In the west, there are those liberal-leaning, more (so-called) advanced democracies in Western Europe. The members of the eastern flank of the EU (and by extension NATO) see migrants as hostile objects. The migrants are weapons - like guns flying into a country to shoot people and cause chaos. The other, frankly more important EU states do not see migrants this way but rather as a way to reinvigorate their economy with fresh workers - more like shovels than guns - who don't need 18 years to be constructed before being used.

Although the leading NATO states (now including the US) have overwhelmingly condemned Belarus for letting migrants cross their border to Poland, it is inconsistent with their own positive view of migrants. Their insincere condemnation is really just an extension of their disdain for the current Belarusian leader Lukashenko, whose political opponents have been explicitly endorsed by Western powers and unilaterally recognised as the country's new regime by at least Lithuania.

Are migrants weapons?

Mindless NATO chants for Belarus to stop its supposed weaponisation of migrants, portraying migrants as agents of foreign harm rather than people, will only work for as long as civil society organisations such as humanitarian NGOs are not involved or on the scene. It is easy enough for governments to make propaganda-like statements about the vague evils of their opponents and use warlike language while no-one else is present at the scene of the controversy, but the liberal civil society of the West will likely side against Poland for its anti-immigration views.

Despite attempts to call on Belarus to take responsibility for the refugees, no expert of migration would tell you that the migrants are trying to stay in Belarus. The destination of the migrants, as in every other similar case, is the European Union. To claim Belarus is somehow the party abusing the rights of the migrants by letting them gather on the border to the EU, their destination, is absurd. They are gathering there because they know the EU will let them in, and it will. The decision to delay and potentially expose the migrants to an approaching deadly winter will be the EU's decision.

The EU's problem is still its own problem, even if 'Putin did it'

Even if Belarus and Russia are conspiring to create the cultural rift between the eastern and western EU sooner than it would otherwise happen, it is still inevitable. If Belarus was not aiding migration through its border to Poland, the migration would eventually just come from somewhere else and the same controversy would happen, with the Polish government receiving all the condemnation from its allies. 

Blaming Lukashenko or Putin for painful problems in the innards of the West itself does not do anything to alleviate them. Problems still exist and have to be dealt with, even if they are the result of foreign mischief or trickery. The same lesson must be learned in America, where the claim that Trump voters were simply tricked by Russia sounds patronising and does nothing to change their radicalised minds or address why so many of them were attracted to extremist views in the first place. Sooner or later, Western alliances have to deal with their internal tensions rather than calling the name of a foreign country in the belief this magically moves their problem elsewhere.

Remember who destroyed the homelands of refugees?

Finally, we must remember who created the migrant flows. These are the result of chaos that needed not be created. The United States and allies did not need need to impose their liberal democratic ideology using sanctions, aerial bombardment and other means of force against countries in the Middle East, to the point of neglecting human life and living standards. Poland was a huge offender in this, zealously following America into Iraq in 2003, supporting every reckless military adventure by every American administration in the hope America will return the favour one day (spoiler: it won't).

Poland helped to create the instability, chaos and destroyed infrastructure that migrants are fleeing from in the Middle East. If it does not welcome the consequences of American foreign policy, much as it does not welcome the prevalent liberal ideology and civil society at the heart of NATO and the EU, it should rethink its relationship with its allies.

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Why did the French just change their flag?

France has reportedly altered its national flag, swapping out the lighter shade of blue for a darker one. It no longer matches the blue of the European Union's flag.

It may be that the change of blue, returning to the colours of the French Revolution that were carried by the French in the Napoleonic Wars and both world wars, does not signify anything. It was probably made on the request of high-ranking military officers who preferred the old colours.

An attempt to win over conservatives and nationalists?

Although the French government has downplayed the change, a Twitter poll by Euronews showed an overwhelming preference for the darker colour as of today, suggesting it is a welcome move.

There is speculation that the change is a subtle expression of resentment towards the EU, but this is unlikely. The current French administration has made no move away from the European Union, and staunchly supports it.

We can guess that older French people would prefer the darker blue they knew in their youth, while the younger may be more familiar with the lighter shade. Given that French President Emmanuel Macron's biggest political competitors are conservatives, the move could have been calculated to provoke a debate that will win Macron some affection from French nationalists who would otherwise vote for his rivals.

Nothing at all?

Based on the official news reports, there is nothing much to say. The change of blues occurred in July last year and went unnoticed. The significance of what happened has probably been exaggerated.

Ultimately, there may be no meaning behind the change other than an adherence to the wishes of those officials who frequently are present at the Élysée Palace. It may not ultimately even apply anywhere other than that one site.

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YouTube commits to bringing you bad videos

YouTube's decision to hide dislike counts on all videos is absurd and seems more like the result of a child's tantrum than an informed team decision. I say this as one of the first users of YouTube in the days when few had heard of it, who uploaded content and withstood heavy dislikes. Those were barbaric times, when the scary dislike bar was red with blood.

Without being able to see the number of dislikes on videos, the dislike button itself becomes redundant. Pushing it will do nothing for viewers except indicate to the person who pressed it, that they pressed it. It will serve no purpose, and might as well be removed too.

What will the new system even look like?

Without being able to see the dislikes on videos, being able to see the likes on videos is also of no consequence. YouTube did not explain how it would display the now-meaningless likes on a video while they compete against nothing. Yes, we are used to the competing like and dislike bars, formerly coloured before they were reduced to thin lines to look less impactful, and eventually turned grey as if to reduce the crimson stain of being disliked too much. Will there now simply be a grey line representing likes, always the same on every video, that doesn't indicate anything?

This might be an example of inclusivity and inoffensiveness reaching an extreme at which it undermines inclusivity itself - a point where the desire to value every voice comes full circle and instead excludes every voice. Moreover, if people are excluded from expressing their dislike of something, they still won't like the thing and their resentment may only be more intense, perhaps moving to an ever more offensive comments section.

Failure to fight disinformation

As well as causing other problems, YouTube's decision to remove the public dislike count may undermine its own fight against disinformation on the platform. A significant amount of false information, such as bogus science, proliferates on YouTube and is combated by a sensible and balanced community who dislike, flag and debunk such content. Removing the dislike button on such videos will remove an obvious sign that might have prevented people from falling for scams and disinformation. In short, YouTube's decision to help bad videos look good, to safeguard the feelings of bad creators, will probably allow internet conmen to take their game further and claim more victims.

Who is vandalising YouTube?

At the end of the day, the site and all the changes it makes are up to Google, and YouTube will continue to remain a very popular service despite this change. However, such a change points to a lack of talent or creativity.

YouTube complains that mobs are exploiting their system. However, if YouTube's hands only deface and destroy services and features, they are vandalising their own website rather than improving it. They won't make people more feel safer or more respected.

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Frank Herbert's Dune and the future of monarchy

Are better forms of governance really inevitable, and is progress itself inevitable? Thousands of years from now, will people still look at the ideas most people consider progressive now, and agree that they are so?

In a previous post, I talked about the British constitutional monarchy and how some feel now is the time to put an end to it. Yet some interpretations hold that there is nothing inevitable or even necessarily good about political and social change, and that in fact there is no clock pacing our civilization forward to a better time.

Reactionary science fiction

In Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, adapted to a movie in 1984 by David Lynch and again in 2021 by Denis Villeneuve, we are presented with a world apparently tens of thousands of years in the future. It is some fine escapism because so little resembles our world today. Nothing important, divisive or aggravating in today's society exists in that world. Even the Earth itself is a distant memory, never mentioned in any dialogue or being a passing thought of any character.

The characters in Dune are motivated by values that would be alien to most Western audiences, and affected by conflicts between ancient forces that will not exist for us for many thousands of years. They follow traditions that, to us, don't even exist yet or mean anything to us.

Despite how strange it may seem, the political system in the distant future worlds of Dune is very clearly based on our own past. Rather than advancing forward to increased liberty, inclusiveness and kindness, darker aspects of humanity have won out. Feudalism has made a return, with no mention of democracy. Capital punishment seems to be commonplace, as are torture, duels and assassination.

But is this regression really possible? Can values that protect the flourishing of a sovereign people indeed be forgotten and replaced simply with the base desire to rule as a monarch? What historical precedent exists?

It isn’t unusual for things to get worse

The best example might be the Greek and Roman civilizations. Each of them established a democratic order for a time. Both Athens and Rome, in their heydays, were determined to maintain a constitution that prevented the abuse of power. The Romans loathed the idea of a monarch, and yet the ultimate evolution of their system turned out to be an empire of absolute rule. This later developed into a system of absolute spiritual rule in addition to temporal rule, under the Emperor Constantine, once Rome turned Christian. Can that kind of social change, driven by such fervour, really be considered progress?

When the meaning of change, changes

The defining difference between the left and right in politics - the progressive and conservative - is their attitude towards whatever set of reforms and changes are the order of the day. It has nothing to do with a particular set of ideas, ideologies or values but simply one's response to whatever social changes are held to be new and pertinent at the time, by a majority of people. In revolutionary France, the advocates of harsh nationalism were also the ones advocating increased rights for common people. Nationalists were considered the political left, attempting to redefine the people as sovereign rather than the monarch. Opposing them. the political right were the defenders of the old order of the monarchy and the church.

As the classical liberal reforms and changes that were once considered revolutionary came to pass, they came to be accepted and written into constitutions such as the American constitution. They aged and became associated with a stable order. In becoming old, these once-revolutionary ideas that had been loathed and fought against by conservatives became the new order the conservatives would defend.

Many views of politics are stuck in the Twentieth Century, because of the dramas of the Second World War and the Cold War. They imagine the political left to be a static set of ideas, essentially socialism or Marxism as applied in the Soviet Union, and imagine the political right to consist of permanent defenders of classical liberalism’s old maxim of life, liberty and property. This becomes confused, however, when modern issues like those surrounding LGBT rights come into the picture, because those would fit into the right-wing ideology based on the above definition, yet are staunchly opposed by the American right because they are contrary to tradition. Tradition is really the main defining feature of the right, rather than a prioritisation of individual liberty. A person on the right merely advocates classical liberalism as tradition.

What constitutes tradition changes, depending on who won out in the previous struggle. In countries that adopted Marxist systems of government, youthful rebellion and subversion came to be associated with Western influence and capitalism. On the other side, in countries that maintained Western capitalism, change has been associated for a long time with socialist movements and the youth were drawn to them, even rallying behind Jeremy Corbyn in the UK before his downfall.

We all want to be a character in some special story

Whether or not something is held to be a form of progress is entirely dependent on what thing challenges the established order. If democratic governments were in power for long enough, revolutionary movements would quickly see something new and promising in the idea of monarchy and wish to reimplement it. Social change is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to make sense or be consistent with past change, and it is normal for it to be awful.

Left vs right, liberty vs order, is simply defined by generational difference and possibly even boredom with what came before. You could have a society with no faults, and the energetic next generation would still find ample things to complain about and try to alter that society into something possibly worse or less stable just so they can feel special in the attempt.

Nobody wants to live in the end of history, or to do nothing about their world. They all want their lives to feel like a story where the world was set right at last, even if this means they must advocate regression or simply nonsense to get that sensation.

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How Russia and America pick sides in civil wars

There are signs that Russia and America are taking sides in the conflict in Ethiopia. But who is worse than the other?

Throughout the Tigray crisis, Russia has been supportive of the Ethiopian government managing its own internal affairs. On the opposing side, the American State Department maintains a list of condemnations of the same regime's handling of its affairs.

The Tigray Region's people have genuine grievances against the government of Ethiopia, and increased autonomy may be the solution. However, with separatist rebels seizing core territories from the central government and threatening to march on the capital Addis Ababa, it is clear that something is not right with what should be a very much local conflict for the rights of a region.

While the United States has expressed disapproval of the rebels' advances, it is also clear that the US is no friend of the Ethiopian regime anymore, having applied sanctions against it. As always, the sincerity of US intentions with regard to human rights and their sanctions in response to abuses should be doubted. The US staunchly backs notorious human rights-abusing regimes nearby, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.

It should also be considered that Ethiopia was a US ally since the fall of the former Soviet-backed Derg regime in the country. It had sought to maintain policies favourable to the US, including good relations with Israel, and was more reliable to the US than the uncooperative regimes of adjacent Eritrea and Sudan. Why America might choose to undermine its own ally and convince it to move into the Russian and Chinese camp, giving Moscow a new ally at no cost, is difficult to understand.

One may compare the possible battle for Ethiopia with the far more severe but now frozen conflict in Syria, where the US also placed sanctions on the central government. In Syria, however, the US went a step further and directly armed rebels in the country. This turned out to be a mistake, as the rebels were not really on the brink of victory and were later pushed back by the central government with Russian assistance from 2015 despite receiving their own aid from the United States.

Ethiopia may have irritated the US by growing closer to China rather than Russia, but Russia stands out as more vocal and more passionate than its economic powerhouse ally when it comes to war and conflict. Russia, not China, wants its place on modern battlefields with the US, and it seems to want to be on the opposing team to America.

Russia’s position on conflicts is usually just the UN’s position

By and large, Russian and Chinese positions on foreign policy are not radical or revisionist in nature. In almost every case, Russian and Chinese demands align entirely with the United Nations. Despite the unfavourable coverage of Russian foreign policy in the Western press, it is the United States rather than Russia that more often seems to ignore international law and the consensus of the United Nations.

The US routinely declares governments to be illegitimate and announces a new regime, as it did with Venezuela. This is a violation of the norms of international law and undermines any sincere hopes for a rules-based order, which requires not wantonly interfering in other states and instead going to recognised international bodies with one's concerns. One country's government, whether Western or not, cannot simply act as a kingmaker by declaring part of the world under new management, faxing out communiques for the press to reprint obediently and tell everybody the news.

China and (with some exceptions) Russia are fierce defenders of international law. They back up regimes not because they like them or approve of their human rights record, but because they are the recognised government and guarantor of stability in a country. In their view, regime change is reckless and irresponsible and promotes chaos, as observed in Iraq and Libya. It is an obligation in international relations that you recognise the sovereignty of another state, even if it is the not the kind of state you would establish yourself.

Surely, you might then say, Russia is at a disadvantage to America. Russia is stuck defending old regimes, while America gets to topple them with sanctions and every other tool in its toolbox? Surely, every government in the world will flip gradually to the side of America? This is the thinking that seems to guide aggressive American foreign policy, but the Russians see things differently.

Russia, and possibly America too, may not have the resources or requisite influence to overthrow all the world's governments and set up new ones. Russia does tend to go for lower-cost strategies or wait for the other side to become tired, whereas America tends to throw money at problems. All things being considered, the Russian approach seems to be working better.

Russia winning allies effortlessly while the US struggles to retain them

While America failed to turn Syria into a friendly country despite pouring significant funds and ten years of its time into the effort, Russia won a major ally with very little effort and less time just by shoring up the Syrian regime in its time of need (it even profited from weapons sales and acquired a large military base). While America devises sanctions to pressure its former long-time ally Turkey to do its bidding, Russia simply doesn't do that and therefore is a more appealing partner to Turkey.

Russia is able to appeal to America's allies to change sides based on the mere fact that America is so unappealing as an ally. America doesn't want the outcomes other countries want; it wants what America wants and has no tolerance for the interests of others. By just tolerating other regimes and their goals (what has been called a multipolar world in Russian foreign policy advocacy), Russia is able to steadily ally with everyone at very little cost, whereas America has to enter a costly confrontation with each government in the world.

While the US may decide to overthrow the government of Ethiopia, and may see Tigrayan rebels as possible servants in a new regime, such a step would not convert more of the world or even this one country to America's cause. The Russians and Chinese are not going to help the Ethiopian government oppress the Tigray Region and create a spectacle for Americans. They will simply pursue a peaceful settlement in the country. Tigrayan fighters, if they really received American backing and were victorious, would eventually just desire a peaceful homeland rather than to act as agents of destruction against some regime, and the Americans would begin to hate them.

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