This kind of technique seems like a good way to test model performance against benchmarks. I'm too skeptical that new models are taking popular benchmark solutions into their training data. So-- how does e.g. ChatGPT's underlying architecture perform on SWE-bench if trained only on data prior to 2024.
> are taking popular benchmark solutions into their training data
That happened in the past, and the "naive" way of doing it is usually easy to spot. There are, however, many ways in which testing data can leak into models, even without data contamination. However this doesn't matter much, as any model that only does well in benchmarks but is bad in real-world usage will be quickly sussed out by people actually using them. There are also lots and lots of weird, not very popular benchmarks out there, and the outliers are quickly identified.
> perform on SWE-bench if trained only on data prior to 2024.
There's a benchmark called swe-REbench, that takes issues from real-world repos, published ~ monthly. They perform tests and you can select the period and check their performance. This is fool-proof for open models, but a bit unknown for API-based models.
A lot of talk about how the administration didn't even try to justify this, but I think that the administration actually believes they did justify it. They exist in some bubble completely un-tethered from reality. I don't know what that means for the future but it's terrifying.
It seems it was her wife who pushed for that. By reading the article, it doesn't sound like he believed any of that.
> "If it makes you feel better, go ahead and do it," she quoted the president as saying.
Also
> Both the president and Nancy Reagan denied that any policies or decisions were based on astrology.
So we can't really tell to what extent, if any, those consultations affected the actual policies.
In general, I don't trust politicians by default. Still, I also don't trust astrologers (and even less so), so there is no reason for me to believe the astrologer more than the president.
> The president became aware of the consultations and warned his wife to be careful because it might look odd if it came out, Nancy Reagan wrote in her book.
> Nancy Reagan began consulting Quigley after the 1981 assassination attempt on her husband. She wanted to keep him from getting shot again, Nancy Reagan wrote in her 1989 memoir, "My Turn." "If it makes you feel better, go ahead and do it," she quoted the president as saying.
> The consultations were revealed to great embarrassment for the White House in a 1988 book by former White House chief of staff Donald Regan, who blamed the first lady for his ouster a year earlier. Regan said almost every major move and decision the Reagans made during his time as chief of staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes. He did not know her identity.
> The woman was in fact Joan Quigley, an heiress and Republican political activist. Quigley told The Associated Press in 1988 after her identity was revealed that she was a "serious, scientific astrologer."
A "serious, scientific astrologer", but no such thing exists, does she understand formulating null hypothesis and hypothesis testing statistics? probably not, so not scientific, any scientist actually applying the scientific method to astrology will quickly distance herself from astrology at all.
Of course he now denies this so that never happened, he also said that 'doing so would not have been wrong'. Ever the lawyer. My client didn't do it, and if he did it wasn't wrong.
Nor did he ever claim that 'God influenced his deliberations'...
True, but how is that a problem; it is God. Is a human a better than God to make those decisions?
I suppose all of this assumes that God is infallible, but I imagine God has more information and processing power than the President.
I am not suggesting a theocracy. I doubt God is whispering in anyone's ear today, and humans can still make bad decisions and claim it was God's will. Just a thought exercise.
When people claim that God led their hand what they mean is that they will just do whatever they want to do and there isn't a thing you can do about because you are no match for God. This has caused 100's of millions of people to die so far.
The previous time, 23 years ago, there was a broad campaign beforehand, and Bush assembled a serious international coalition before going for Iraq. This time, it's just some PR statements before the press.
> Bush assembled a serious international coalition before going for Iraq
Uh? Bush failed to assemble a coalition by providing dubious and faked proofs of supposed WMDs and chemical weapons. The Europeans and especially the French didn't fall for it. The only one who did was Tony Blair and he's still paying the price both domestically in the UK and abroad. AFAIK, Trump isn't planning to send troops in Venezuela on the scale Bush did in Iraq.
The Spanish president at the time, Aznar, also "fell for it" (probably didn't believe it but played along just for posturing, because he loved being pictured with Bush) and paid the price domestically. The best thing is that he was such a toady, ignoring the Spanish people's will becuase he wanted to be seen with the big boys and to be their equal, and you don't even remember him when you recall that coalition. The fact that you haven't remembered him has actually made me smile hard.
Blair didn't believe it either. Nobody did. What everyone banked on (including e.g. Hillary Clinton) was that the invasion would be so awe-inspiring, popular and such an obvious unqualified success that everyone who opposed it would be embarrassed, and the WMD claims would quietly be forgotten (or maybe they could scrounge up a trailer with chemicals or something).
And for months, years even, that "can't argue with success" strategy worked great. Some help from a loyal press was necessary, of course.
This is what the architects of this invasion (it's hardly Trump alone) are banking on, too. We WILL get told that suddenly life is so much better for everyone in Venezuela, and for a while it might even be true - it's very cheap for the US to provide, after all. The serious, realistic position will be that this was a shrewd thing to do, and the Nobel Peace prize committee showed great foresight and were vindicated in their choice.
To quote from internet history, the famous "you forgot Poland" from the 2004 presidential debates:
"KERRY: ...when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better.
LEHRER: Thirty seconds, Mr. President
BUSH: Well, actually, he forgot Poland. And now there's 30 nations involved, standing side by side with our American troops."
That is not true either. France, Germany, Norway, Belgium, Canada, Greece and Luxembourg all refused to help. NATO was basically split in half on the issue.
Tony Blair wasn't fooled by the fake WMD evidence - he was fully on board and deliberately went against the advice and evidence of the intelligence services.
He should be tried for war crimes for dragging the UK into a war on false pretences.
It infuriates me every time that I see Blair given publicity by the mainstream media and how he's still involved with international politics - especially the middle east/Israel. I did declare that I would never vote for Labour until they got Blair tried for war crimes (have voted for Greens since though most years that has been wasted as I live in Bristol which was a strongly Labour area).
Bush successfully assembled a coalition to invade Afghanistan. He didn't even promise that there'd be WMDs there, he just said "They gots terrorists" and a large portion of the UN joined in the invasion.
Upon reflection, the justifications to invade Afghanistan were every bit as flimsy as the justification to invade Iraq.
Maybe (and this is a big maybe) at the beginning. However, it really went to show how ineffective such actions are and lead to the creation of ISIS. 20 years of occupation were wholly unjustified.
The right move by the US would have been to kill osama the way they ultimately did, through intelligence gathering and a targeted strike.
The head of the organization responsible for the deaths of almost 3000 civilians was known to be present in Afghanistan, and the government refused extradite him.
Not to me. The US was justified in killing Osama the way they did, through intelligence gathering and a targeted strike. Occupying the nation for 20 years was completely unjustified.
U.S. foreign policy is bipartisan. The big plan was to keep the Russians tied up in Ukraine, get Syria (achieved under Biden) and now get China and Russia out of Venezuela.
It could work with bribing officers like in Syria, in which case there will be minimal resistance and then probably the Nobel War Prize recipient Machado will be installed.
It is possible that all of this was discussed with Russia (you get things in your backyard, we in ours).
Trump is a man who will push boundaries further and further until someone physically stops him from doing so. But you don’t need to justify anything if you have full control over people who would normally investigate, prosecute or restrict such things.
Then you put your thumb on the scale (i.e. Texas) so you don’t cede power to the other party in the midterms and then you never need to worry about consequences for your entire term.
It’s a bit more of a problem in 2028 but Trump is term-limited so that’s someone else’s problem.
There's a pretty well established Turkic solution to that. (Change the constitution. Claim the term limit applied to the old republic and it's your first term actually and go about your day)
There's a simpler one: Have Vance run as president with Trump as VP, then Vance immediately steps down on day 1. The Supreme Court will then ignore the intent of the 22nd amendment instead focusing on a narrow interpretation, make up some "this isn't a precedent" one-time ruling that allows it, and ta-da!
You seem to assume that Vance is willing to be Trump's puppet. I don't assume that.
Vance has been willing to ride along with Trump as long as it gets Vance to positions of higher power. But it seems to me that Vance's agenda is Vance, not Trump. I doubt that he'd play that "resign" game. (He might tell Trump that he was going to...)
It wasn't until the 25th amendment (which, you'll note, came after the 22nd) that the vice president was officially the successor to the presidency. So it would be weird for the 22nd to have a "what if" answer to something that wasn't yet itself law
Or have a military takeover or manufacture a crisis. At the very least they will claim election fraud and we saw what happened in Trump 1.0. There are definitely many ways MAGA will (likely) remain in power. Fascists don't give up power without a fight.
Hum hum... Bombing of Libya. Support for ISIS against Al Assad in Syria. Doesn't make what happened today right, but it is pretty myopic to see this as unique to Trump or unprecedented.
This absolutely nothing at all like Libya, where an ongoing civil war resulted in UN resolutions of force.
Snatching a national leader of a country with which the US is not at war, has had zero force authorization, off of that leader's own soil, is completely unprecedented, no matter how bad that leader is.
Not sure if it's really unprecedented, but I think all wars should be like that. Go kidnap or kill the leader but please leave everyone else alone. Also by all means go and capture the US' leader if you think you need to retaliate.
The US president abducting a foreign head of state without any congressional authorization, and you are unsure if it's unprecedented?!
Wars should not be the unilateral whim of an uncountable dictator, ever. They should not be started by the US on pretenses that continually change, have not been clearly stated to the American people or Congress, and that make zero sense to anyone involved.
The most clear explanation I have heard that makes any sense at all for this behavior is that Marco Rubio thinks he can ride this to the presidency because he knows it will be popular with a large chunk of Latin Americans, even if it is inexplicable to most Americans.
Regardless of the logistics of how wars should be conducted, the destruction of the US constitution inherent in this action is treasonous to our country's ideals.
"Justified" in what sense? Who does this administration - or indeed USA in general - answer to?
Folks there's nothing new or insane here. Countries attacked other countries all throughout human history. The surprise is when they don't.
Now it's not super hard to understand why Trump is fixated on Venezuela in terms of geopolitics. There's a decision by this admin to bolster US in the western hemisphere, possibly in preparation to coming to terms with a bipolar world split between US and China. So the US is now meddling with Canada and Greenland. Now with the shift towards the right in Latam (Milei in Argentina, Bukele in El Salvador, Kast in Chile) Trump is just pushing a few more bricks to create a more uniform American-led sphere. Plus, Venezuela was very close with the Iranians and Russians, so removing this regime surely serves some strategic goals.
The War Powers Resolution (WPR) of 1973 sets a 60-day limit for U.S. forces in hostilities without a formal declaration of war or congressional authorization, allowing for a potential 30-day extension for withdrawal, totaling 90 days, after which the President must remove troops.
Examples of bombings/ground invasions using WPR without congressional AUMF:
Invasion of Grenada (1983) (7,300 US troops, 19 KIA)
Invasion of Panama (1989) (27,000 troops, 23 KIA)
Airstrikes on Libya (1986) (and 2011) [Obama administration argued they did not need Congressional authorization because the operations did not constitute "hostilities" as defined by the War Powers Resolution. Therefore, they argued, the 60-day clock never started.]
Kosovo Air Campaign (1999) [The bombing campaign lasted 78 days in violation of the 60-day limit]
The US Congress didn't pass a declaration of war for Vietnam, Lebanon, Laos, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Honduras, Panama, or Iraq I, all before the 2000s and since the last declaration (WWII). That doesn't include the UN-authorised military interventions.
While I in no way endorse whatever batshit insane things Trump is doing, I don't think the US has issued a declaration of war since WW2. Declarations of war have been quite rare internationally in general since the end of WW2 outside of a few examples.
All of the justification in this moment reads to me like: Trump is giving different segments of his coalition reasons to get off the fence and on his side. It’s something different for Rubio than for DoD than for the oil cronies. It’s not really about persuading anyone outside of Trump’s coalition.
I imagine the calculus goes something like "unjustified war didn't matter any of the other times, so it won't matter this time either". Although this time the US would be bringing death and destruction to its own continent so there is a moral improvement on what they normally do and that will probably going to make the war more of a political problem for Trump.
It's probably just the disconnect between the two sides of american politics. On the right it's justified enough, on the left it doesn't matter what Trump says, the reaction is going to be exactly the same.
For example I'm not american and mostly on the right, and I think it's doubtful if it's legally justified (how does one legally justify a was anyways? it's extra-judicial almost by definition), but it makes a lot of sense, it aligns with realpolitik and it's morally good for several independent reasons. In particular it has a hugely disproportionate geopolitical impact, and less importantly it can bring a few million people from under a dictatorship.
As an interesting aside, I recently did a quick research on the Grenada invasion, widely spoken of as an embarrassing moment. It went... very well. They came, remove a budding dictatorship right after a coup, left in two months, and Grenada had no ill effects in the years after (both by subjective reporting, and by GDP per capita comparable to neighboring countries). The alternative would have been "do nothing", skip the reputational hit and have yet another hellhole in the region. The number of dictatorships that did well in recent history is exactly two, and neither was socialist (SK and Singapore).
I see we’re now living in a world where many people genuinely don’t even remember the answer to this question.
Roughly, you can legally justify a war if (i) it’s in self defense or (ii) you get a UN Security Council resolution. That’s why GWB tried to get a security council resolution before going into Iraq, as the case for self defense was pretty shaky.
Is it common for actual wars to meet these legal requirements? No. But that’s just because wars are something that generally shouldn’t happen. It’s also not common for murders to meet the requirements on justifiable homicide.
> The alternative would have been "do nothing", skip the reputational hit and have yet another hellhole in the region.
This. Your logic could at least make sense with other US president, but not wanna-be dictator one doing lip service for all the authoritarians and dictators in the world. Not a good fit to fight for democracy.
There is no left or right here. There is ultra right and right. Trump is a ultra right authoritarian ruler, and the Democratic party is just another right wing party. The left vs right is just a way for powerful people to have someone to blame. Please stop using these propaganda terms.
I don't like using these terms without qualifications, just like socialism means three different things in three different contexts.
But saying the Democratic party, with AOC, Bernie Sanders and two decades of progressism is "right"... you might as well say the sky is green. That's just ignoring any meaning of the words, not trying to find a more precise one.
War can only be justified after the fact as a result of good outcomes. The decision prior is always a roll of the dice that loads the thrower with infinite responsibility.
You say that as if the reason is that Venezuela is a dictatorship. I despise Maduro but this break of international rules is everything but morally good. It opens a world of brute force and lack of international rules. It is only "morally good" in the short term. In the medium-long, it's morally horrible and terrifying.
My country is not a fan of Trump, is it morally right to send a bunch of covert soldiers to capture him and throw him out of the country? We'd be saving the US from a dictatorship.
I certainly didn't expect a "well if you can depose a country's president, feel free", especially combined with a "once it's a dictatorship" cop out, as if there's the Worldwide Department of Dictatorship Judgement to tell us if a country is a dictatorship or not.
Which is why you don't do it nilly willy. There are plenty of hard decision in the real world, with real consequences when you guess wrong.
But as far as my personal opinion goes, I'd prefer a bit more intervention in the world. We actually created United Nations with this purpose, but it got hobbled by Russia and China's security vetos, and by the arab block making it a "resolution against Israel" machine.
But we never decided as a planet to just leave Sudan-like atrocities to happen without taking action because "sovereignty". That's not a thing that happened, and I'm actually a bit puzzled everybody acts like we did.
It's worth remembering the UN fought in the Korean war and wasn't was always a place for authoritarian regimes to pass useless resolutions and make noise.
The fact we, as humanity, have allowed so many genocides and slave nations to exist, and to treat them with a measure of equality, is a failing.
And, to be clear, I'm not talking about people I disagree with politically. I'm talking about places and peoples like North Korea and Cambodia and Sudan. There's a ton of shades of gray, but some situations really require a special kind of blindness to pretend are gray.
There are very good reasons to avoid that kind of thing. Modern warfare is extremely devastating, so the bar for ethical use of force is extremely high.
> how does one legally justify a was anyways? it's extra-judicial almost by definition
What? There's a process for initiating an offensive war in the US and they didn't follow it. Legally, Congress must authorize it. Though that hasn't been followed for quite a few wars now.
But we did have an AUMF for the absolute disasters that were the afghanistan and iraq wars. Somebody who isn't american coming in and saying "whatever, fuck it, Trump just does what he wants" is terrifying to me.
Trump would prefer it if I were killed. Should I be shot?
The president is legally able to authorize an offensive action though. Maybe not an "all out war" like Vietnam but what's happening in Venezuela is entirely legal from the US standpoint.
>It's probably just the disconnect between the two sides of american politics. On the right it's justified enough, on the left it doesn't matter what Trump says, the reaction is going to be exactly the same.
For example I'm not american and mostly on the right
Ah a textbook case of outgroup homogeneity bias. [1] Your follow up comment about Bernie and AOC is icing on the cake.
[edit] Maduro remained under US federal indictment on narco‑terrorism and related cocaine trafficking conspiracy charges throughout the Biden administration.
Venezuela has always been a minor player in the drug trade compared to other countries. The whole narco-terrorism thing has always been code for "he took back the oil and we don't like him"
How many is it? Your link gets us to 1, and it's from months ago. I expected you to link the number since you're claiming it's high.
Supposedly there's been 500k deportations, and 2.5m "self-deportations" in 2025, so what would be high here?
Edit: I also googled that man's name. A quick read of nbcs article suggests it's not clear he's a citizen. The judge said he "had a substantial claim to citizenship," which means nothing either way. He was born in Thailand.
"In his Nov. 3 brief, [a lawyer] contends Souvannarath stayed in the United States for 19 years after his removal order without challenging it or seeking proof of citizenship."
So, to answer his question: not realistic at all that you'll get deported as a citizen. That's without fact checking you. I haven't seen anything about actual citizens being removed, including in the sibling comment claiming it with a reference.
> Besides, how realistic is a fear that a law abiding citizen would be endangered by the ICE?
Perhaps you are having trouble following the conversation. The argument put forth by OP is that ICE is endangering american citizens. That is factually true.
I didn’t sneak anything in - you failed to follow a thread. Why are you trying to put that on me? It’s okay to admit fault and take responsibility. It is obvious at this point that you do not care or won’t take the time to understand the conversation or respond in good faith.
My concern covers all LEO fucking with American citizens, especially the masked and unidentified ones.
So anyway, per your link: 170 citizens "wrapped up" by ice during between 327,000 and 605,000 deportations, depending on which source you like (I linked them in a different response to you in another thread).
Between .0005% and .0003% chance that if ICE grabs someone up, they're a citizen. I think that's a pretty good record, actually. I don't think it's very alarming.
We have 348 million citizens, 170 got held for...days! While we conducted the most effective deportation of illegals in history.
I'm pretty sure ICE isn't going to accidentally get me. This problem may as well be non-existent.
What's real is actual citizens wrapped up in actual bullshit with regular LEO. With probably several orders of magnitude difference, wouldn't you agree? Maybe thousands per day, instead of 170 per year? Costing folks more than a few days' detention.
I think that's extremely alarming, given the fact they are trying to deport people as fast as possible so they don't have time for a hearing in front of a judge. The hearing that they are supposedly guaranteed by the fifth amendment to the Constitution!
Why do you think deportation is the only thing that matters? We've seen ICE fuck up the lives of American citizens by destroying their property, illegally holding them, arresting entire buildings etc in Chicago. And there is zero recourse for these blatant violations. How about you open up your wallet and pay for their crimes if you're willing to go to bat for them so hard?
Mexico, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Hawaii, Guam, Cuba, Panama, and the Philippines?
In the last 100 years the trend has been been for America to invade a country and try to install a friendly government rather than formally annex them - Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria.
So it's not longer 30 years but 100? What the US did pre WW2 was in no way abnormal or worse than that what every other powerful was doing..
Also US never technically invaded Lybia, Yemen or Syria (unless you count their intervention to support the Kurdish and Iraqi governments against ISIS an invasion...)
What happened in Korea was the opposite of the invasion (of course the South Korea regime they were saving was extremely oppressive and arguably not worse at all than the one in the North at the time).
Also are you implying that the majority of military bases US has in other countries (especially in Europe) is involuntary?
Invading countries to annex them is not even that bad if you give full citizen rights to their population. Invading to occupy, destabilise and depredate is much worse.
> Invading countries to annex them is not even that bad if you give full citizen rights to their population.
How is that relevant to Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Whenever Russia takes territory they're filling mass graves with raped Ukrainian civilians.
American forces too have committed innumerable atrocities, and there is no forgiving that, but it doesn't support the premise above that Russia is in some way cleaner.
No intention to deny individual episodes of war crimes, but the ratio of civilian to military casualties in the conflict is pretty low, despite a drawn out war and massive military casualties: we're talking about 12-15 thousand civilian deaths in almost four years of war. Absolutely tragic but doesn't seem to indicate a genocidal intent. Compare with the widespread massacres of civilians perpetrated by Israel in Palestine.
Ukranian civilians sensibly fleeing for their lives when the front gets close has prevented many deaths, and doesn't change the facts of what happens when they don't escape.
There's 3.5 million people living in the Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine now. The Wikipedia entry about them even lists "forced Russification" as one of the abuses they suffer: "Ukrainians have been coerced into taking Russian passports and becoming Russian citizens". Now, as bad as this is, being forced to become a regular citizen of the occupying state is a far cry from being deported and murdered by that state. Nazi Germany wasn't giving German citizenship to Poles and Jews in occupied territories; Israel is not giving Israeli citizenship to Palestinians in occupied territories. Do you see the difference?
Putin himself has famously claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people: this is the very opposite of the ideological premise to justify a genocide.
From what I understand from friends who still spend a lot of time in Donetsk because their businesses are there, you might be taken to a basement and shot if you say the wrong thing.
It's pretty bad, but sure, if you just go along with it you'll probably be fine.
>this is the very opposite of the ideological premise to justify a genocide.
Genocide is an attempt to kill a group; That does not happen only by murdering people - it's also forced assimilation. In this case, Russia is directly violating article 2) e) of the Genocide Convention*: "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
>citizenship
Citizenship is not relevant to the genocide convention at all.
Putin has famously claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people for the same reasons that Hitler claimed that the Sudetendeutsche are the same people as the Germans - to justify an illegal imperial attack on a neighbor.
Russian imperialism needs Ukraine, since without Ukraine there's no Russian empire. Russia invaded Ukraine out of imperialist delusion, not for humanitarian reasons.
You have thoroughly bought into Russian propagandist lies.
> for the same reasons that Hitler claimed that the Sudetendeutsche are the same people as the Germans
Indeed, but Hitler is not famous for mass-murdering the Sudetendeutsche.
And I never claimed that Russia invaded Ukraine for humanitarian reasons. I think it did because it could not tolerate a Ukraine fully integrated in the West and NATO- but this just means exercising political control over Ukraine, it doesn't imply an ethnic cleansing or genocide of Ukrainians.
We'll see about Venezuela, it's early to say. In Ukraine, a short conflict would have been better than a prolonged one, and in case of annexed territories, the status and civil rights of annexed populations should have been the focus of any peace agreement. The territory doesn't care who owns it, it's the people that suffer.
For example, the Israeli occupation and progressive annexation of Palestine is especially criminal because they have no intention of including the native population in their ethno-state- it's an annexation with ethnic cleansing or, if needed, genocide.
>Invading countries to annex them is not even that bad if you give full citizen rights to their population.
This is soviet bullshit, the Moscowitz did a lot of genocides you can find plenty of sources, so they were and are as bad as Israel because the Rusky/slavs in Ruzzia are indoctrinated to feel superior to the other non slaves in the empire and feel still a bit more superior then the rest of the slavs. You can look at the existing recent data from the Ruzzian stats and how the minorities are more in decline then the Ruskies.
So for uninformed people that might read this soviet guy comment, read a wikipedia summary of what moscowites did and Putin is still doing, I suggest not reading in detail, like reading books or interviews with vitims of this criminal empire you will fill a big amount of pain if you have empath on how this Ruscists treated humans , I will never forget the stuff Ir ead and better if I did not know the details.
Ruzzia, israle , USA all are bad but the situation is multidimensional and is not easy to say that Ruzzia is less bad then Nazis and are better then Israle etc., we cana dmit that criminal are criminals, dictators are dictators, bastardads are bastards and trolls are trolls.
Russia in the last 30 years invaded and occupied Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria - not to mention the atrocities committed in Africa.
But with the exception of Syria, Russia always had genocidal intent - deny cultures, erase them, and make those countries as unstable as possible while remaining occupied.
I'm not saying what the US did was good, or right, but there's a big difference.
The US never denied the existence of cultures, languages, etc.
Right, so what's the scope of time we're talking about here? Are we talking about the world post WW2, or are we going back to the Roman Empire?
Because if you want to "win" arguments by randomly swinging hundreds of years to make a point, then it's pointless, because anyone can pick a point in thousands of years of History to show "look - they were bad here".
I think discussions about modern history are sufficient for the post-WW2 period, as there was a global consensus on international law and the Charter of the UN.
If you hold grievances about events hundreds of years old to make points about current events, then it's pointless.
If you believe the US that colonized part of North America is the same as post-ww2 US, then I can understand.
I don't think they're the same, so many institutions were established that over the years that I don't see them as the former colony of the British crown.
But hey, if you want to discuss semantics, go for it.
Yeah, when you draw arbitrary limits (30 years for you it seems), it's easy to paint one side as the better one. Once you start to think a bit bigger, you start to realize most big nations act as the others, and it's just different flavors of "bad", yet they're all as bad as the others.
What about segregation then, is that recent enough for you? Or that wasn't about culture/language, so that too isn't applicable? I'm afraid that with rose-tinted glasses, everything has an explanation why your favorite is different than their favorite.
Why is the founding of the UN, at the end of WW2, and the signature of the UN Charter, considered an arbitrary event in modern History for you?
It's the biggest geopolitical event in modern History to prevent the death of millions, by attempting to stop the expansion of borders through military force and making countries recognize the borders of each of its members.
> What about segregation then, is that recent enough for you?
What about segregation? Where? In different European countries? USA? South Africa? India?
Was there a global consensus to end segregation? Or were different events at different points in time, achieved in different manners? Is there still segregation happening in some societies?
So all the countries Russia interfered with are neighbours, with hundreds of years of ethnic, cultural and religious disputes, while basically all the countries the US interfered with are across one or more oceans, with no historical disputes with the US, and happen to be resource rich.
Thanks for explaining why Russia is less unreasonable than the US.
"Historical disputes" is the most unreasonable claim to violate international law and the UN Charter lmao
You're basically saying that one countries interpretation of events is enough to annex another. That's the old logic of pre WW2 lol
Especially Russia that has revised their history so many times they even have a saying that "Russia's past is uncertain".
So to have that interpretation of what I said shows that you have a very poor understanding of History and current events, or it's just a deficient provocation.
So they invaded their own internationally recognized territory. Wonderful. By that standard Ukraine invaded Donbass after they declared themselves independent of Ukraine.
>Syria
Even more outlandish claim, considering they were invited by the government. Whether the west considered the government illegitimate or not didn't matter.
>Moldova
>Georgia
in both conflicts in protection of a minority, on whose territory a larger state laid claim using Soviet drawn borders and dissolution of the USSR. Since the Ukrainian conflict started I observed lots of enthusiasm for Soviet borders on the side of Russia's detractors, which were often drawn with territories assigned as a form of favoritism, simply because communist leadership in Moscow had better a relationship with the communist leaders of one of the ethnicities in question. That way historic Armenian land of Artsakh was assigned to Azerbaijan for example -- the recent ethnic cleansing outcome of that is well known.
The US just stole every good ever. The Maine. Union Fruit/Banana Company.
If the US tried to survive by just fair economics it would crumble into dust in less than a decade. Yet they use Latin America as their own backyard in order to avoid this.
And, well, as an European I have to say that France does the same with Africa in order to be semi on par with Germany. If not, their GDP would just be slightly better than Spain, if not worse because centralisation it's hell for modern times.
Some states in the US would do fine, OFC. But in order to support the whole USA, that's unfeasible. You can't have a country where a few powerhouses have to carry up the rest in a really innefective way, such as oil dependant transportation.
Meanwhile, the Chinese and Europe will just build non-polluting railways everywhere.
Someday it will be your country and yourself, and nobody will be outraged anymore, because everybody is the same. Stop this cycle and organize, instead of separating like-minded people with useless lines, standing aside and shouting about how things should be, in your opinion, and how everyone else should do... something, because you know better than insiders.
You know that justification in support of access to firearms in the US- "we need to be armed in case our government goes rogue". I always thought it was BS, but in case it's not, maybe this is the time.
The problem is that there's no "we". Tens of millions of Americans support the Trump regime and its actions in Venezuela. Coincidentally, they are also the ones who have most of those firearms.
The specific Americans you speak of mostly care about domestic issues and trend isolationist. They'll perhaps be slightly peeved anytime we intervene overseas, but they'll certainly overlook it while they get what they want at home.
I doubt they care (or know) about Venezuela.
Also I think the number is hundreds of millions, not tens.
I'm referring specifically to the people who support the military action in Venezuela, which is a subset of those who voted for Trump. Like you say, most of them care mainly about domestic issues. However there is a crowd that is all in on Trump and supports whatever he does - you can see them cheering even here in the comments - those are the tens of millions that I'm speaking of. It's still way too many, unfortunately.
Thanks for answering my question and imploring me to drone some mantra (I counter with: everything is a system, my dog is a system), and I'll guess I have to wait for New Zealand to do some invading.
sigh Nevermind, it's obviously way too much to ask for a simple answer to a simple question after being strawmanned.
Do you understand that the difference in the Ukrainian case is literally caused by the actions of Western countries?
Venezuelans are going to work tomorrow because no one has provided their corrupt dictatorial government with hundreds of billions of dollars in military and financial aid?
The difference is that Russia's goal is the annexation of most or all Ukrainian territory, the looting of the country and the erasure of its national identity. Without western support, Ukraine would be in a much worse state than it is now.
Whatever US goals are, it seems they are not pushing forward after snatching Maduro.
Yeah, sure, if they did not get support they would have dies already and look what peaceful place this graveyard is. Slight hiperbole, not everyone would be dead, but a lot, for sure, and the rest, too scared they would be next to do anything else.
Regardless of anything else equating Maduro's Venezuela and Ukraine and the military side-effects of both invasions/"operations" isn't exactly fair. The Venezuelan government is/was both illegitimate and very oppressive. Not that I'm implying that Trump did what he did on Humanitarian grounds...
> Americans who are upset don’t possess the wherewithal to hold them accountable.
Any attempt at holding the admin accountable would make it look a bit more like Venezuela. NA is rightfully too soft to want to ever go that route. They'll peacefully protest and that'll be it. Anything more than that would be the individuals throwing their lives away unless the whole country did it in unison.
Trump was extraordinarily lucky here, the Maduro regime was wholly unprepared and he was immediately extracted from the county; he can claim "mission accomplished", parade Maduro in front of the world media and watch from afar the PSUV leadership tear themselves appart.
But the dice Trump rolled could have easily fell onto a well prepared Maduro regime, which could have downed a few Blackhawks, torpedoed the ship from which they launched, captured and killed a few dozens to a few hundreds US service men, paraded them in the streets of Caracas and used them as human shields protecting the main military targets etc.
I.e, Trump could have easily committed US to a long term war and a ground invasion, without Congress authorization or allied support, and with Iraq or worse long term results.
While I strongly doubt this is true, it still doesn't change the fundamental gamble Trump took: it's impossible to predict how a regime change attempt will go, who will betray and who will rally around the flag. Especially in a resource rich country.
DJT 2.0 did a `Charlie Kirk' flex and acted out of MAGA base self interest before the Who you know. Stocking up on fuel will put more cards in the hand for next moves in China or Iran.
what? I'm reading this as: "We're gonna need oil for fuel when we go to war with china"
But south America is easily blockaded in times of war the oil (if we needed it) would be ours regardless. Second, we don't need it, we've been a net exporter for like over a decade now right?
Its been a few days. It turns out this was a simply capricious and erratic act on the part of Donald Trump, and we stand to essentially benefit not one iota as a country from it!
I mean, do they really need to justify it any further? They just arrested Maduro while causing very little collateral damage, if they'd failed dramatically then they'd have much more questions to answer.
The obviously reply to that would be "The US forces were invited by the democratically elected Venezuelan leadership to put a stop to the ongoing coup"
The concept of "international law" here is pretty confusing because to begin with you'd need to choose who decides what counts as a violation of Venezuelas sovereignty. Presumably the people backed by the US are okay with this, and team Maduro isn't.
Presumably, if you were to agree that Maduro wasn't in fact the legitimate leader of Venezuela, you'd just consider this an internal issue with US helping in local law enforcement matters.
If you disagree and consider Maduro to be the legitimate president, presumably no amount of justification will help you see it differently. But then, I'm not sure anyone particularly cares about your opinion either.
>The obviously reply to that would be "The US forces were invited by the democratically elected Venezuelan leadership to put a stop to the ongoing coup"
Were they? And is that the justification the US has cited? If not, you're writing fan fiction and that's not really interesting.
I'm not a supporter of totalitarian regimes including Maduro's, but the US has a track record of producing very poor outcomes for people in South America when they topple one leader in favor of a more--shall we say--"market friendly" character waiting in the wings.
As for international law, it is extremely clear, prohibiting the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. International law recognizes only two clear exceptions: self defense or a US Security Councul resolution.
>Were they? And is that the justification the US has cited? If not, you're writing fan fiction and that's not really interesting.
This is all necessarily speculative, we might never have sufficient visibility to know all the facts.
I'm merely attempting to provide the strongest reply the administration could provide if they cared to try. I believe it's reasonably grounded in facts.
1. US government openly does not recognize Maduro as the legitimate head of state of Venezuela
2. US government does recognize Edmundo González Urrutia as the president-elect.
3. Venezuelan opposition has been heavily lobbying in an effort to get foreign governments to intervene in Venezuela
All of these things are verifiable facts, I think they can be distilled into my perfectly reasonable suggestion as to how the US could fend off such criticism.
There's no second party to this action, it's the US's alone. Even if we accept the electoral fraud claims, Venezuela did not ask for US intervention. The rightfully elected leader of a nation can't call for a second nation to invade and bomb their nation.
Because nations have laws and the majority of nations laws don't give a leader unilateral authority to call for self invasion. In fact, that's usually called "treason".
For Venezuela, this would be something that, if any organization could call for it, it'd be the "Supreme Tribunal of Justice" [1]
And before you say it, yes I get that they are corrupt. But there are still laws. Which is why if you are going to overrule the laws of another nation, you should have at least some backing from the UN first. Deciding on your own that the the courts are wrong is just international vigilantism.
> Which is why if you are going to overrule the laws of another nation, you should have at least some backing from the UN first. Deciding on your own that the the courts are wrong is just international vigilantism.
On the other hand, if much of the world agrees with you anyway, not bothering with asking the UN might not matter at all.
> As for international law, it is extremely clear, prohibiting the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.
International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of rules, norms, legal customs and standards that states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generally do, obey in their mutual relations. In international relations, actors are simply the individuals and collective entities, such as states, international organizations, and non-state groups, which can make behavioral choices, whether lawful or unlawful. Rules are formal, typically written expectations that outline required behavior, while norms are informal, often unwritten guidelines about appropriate behavior that are shaped by custom and social practice.[1] It establishes norms for states across a broad range of domains, including war and diplomacy, economic relations, and human rights.
Sure, yeah, but you'll just give yourself a headache trying to keep track of all the ridiculous things this admin puts out.
The reality is that there a lot of people across the political divide at very high levels of government who deeply dislike Maduro for a variety of reasons, some perhaps more pure-hearted than others.
Oil and drugs are obviously not even how they're justifying this to themselves. The oil in Venezuela isn't that interesting because it's really only US and some Canadian oil companies that are capable of extracting it. The US is always going to control oil production in Venezuela, no matter what.
But yeah, instead of focusing on all the silly statements the admin puts out you might as well just guess at the eventual steelmanned argument they'll present in writing at a later date.
This is quite a bit like the invasion of Panama by US forces and the removal of Manuel Noriega from power. Except Noriega wasn't "elected" like Maduro and the US doesn't have a strategically important canal to protect in Venezuela.
Anyway, good riddance. Maybe the Trump Administration actually has a plan for peaceful transfer of power now that they removed Maduro? The US still needs to disrupt ELN drug operations, if that's what they're really after.
There are many undemocratic and repressive regimes around the world. Trump has professed his admiration for various of these leaders. You can't seriously attribute noble goals of supporting democracy to him. Also, shouldn't he then be doing this in many other places in the world?
I like how we went from "international law" to "noble goals", I suppose that's pretty on point :)
> Also, shouldn't he then be doing this in many other places in the world?
No, I don't see how that would follow. I can choose to give money to a charity, but that does not mean I have to choose to give my money to all the charities in the world.
Much like “intellectual property”, “international law” is a nonsense term that tells you only that the person who employs it lives in their own bubble, captured by powerful interests of others.
And money is just a construct but I still need to pay the mortgage. And international rules removed the hole in the ozone layer, reduced cheminal weapons stockpiles by something like 99%, and ICJ rulings have adjudicated to force entire countries to comply with compromises.
I would be curious about the logic that allows you to call intellectual property a nonsense term while still allowing other property to make sense. Both are social constructs.
In general, that term is mostly used outside of the borders of a country looking in. After all, "illegitimate leaders" tend to be authoritarians who take power and quell dissent within the borders.
Not at all arguing that it somehow leads to justification for an illegal invasion.
In this specific case the claim comes down to assertions of a sham election. If this was indeed the case (with the lens of an international survey obviously the US view is suspect considering the attack), then the Venezuelan people themselves do not view him as a legitimate leader, which simplifies the situation.
You really believe this, right? That you can decide for someone else, specifically a whole nation, what their view is and what they want to do with their nation. That you are doing the world a favour. Guess it's worked in the past, a new sucker is born every minute.
Your original comment is justifying the bombing of a foreign country and kidnapping of its leader, not whether a leader can be seen as illegitimate. That is not reasonable at all.
Step out of your American exceptionalist bubble for a second. How would you like if the inverse were true? There's some shady elections in US so Venezuela decides to throw bombs on Washington. How would you enjoy that?
I think you're misreading my original comment, I was merely stating that there will be no meaningful calls for Trump admin to justify themselves because they succeeded in pulling this off without making a mess.
>Step out of your American exceptionalist bubble for a second. How would you like if the inverse were true? There's some shady elections in US so Venezuela decides to throw bombs on Washington. How would you enjoy that?
I'm neither from the US, nor a huge fan of the US.
I do think Venezuela could probably have been right to depose Trump in a similar manner had he managed to cling to power after January 6, but that's an absurd thing to speculate about.
What if he was the leader of a brutal coup and the legitimately elected government requested foreign help to have him removed?
It's really really difficult to paint this as inherently bad, it's hard to see how the conclusion here doesn't entirely depend on how you feel about the results of the previous Venezuelan elections.
It shouldn’t be difficult to see this as bad, but I guess the future will tell. I hope for the sake of the Venezuelan population things go better than the last time the US decided to initiate regime change.
Depends on the point of view. I certainly agree that there are many very good reasons to see this as bad, but I don't think that concerns about Venezuela's national sovereignty rank very highly on that list.
From the perspective that regime change often goes horribly wrong? Absolutely.
From the point of view that Maduro was effectively in charge of a coup that the real elected candidates were desperately seeking foreign support to stop? Harder to see the intervention as bad, as it is probably the only way to rectify the situation.
There's no doubt that this heavily depends on one's personal views, so there's no obvious answers. At least the concern about regime change is fact-based and pretty much universal, regardless of personal beliefs. The concern about whether or not it's right or wrong for the US to go and arrest Maduro depends largely on how one views the recent Venezuelan election results, and therefore inherently relies on some major assumptions on matters where we're unlikely to ever see conclusive proof.
Of course, there are also pretty good technical reasons to believe the electoral receipts published by the Venezuelan opposition. I believe they would have been pretty much impossible to fake. That topic and others related to it have been pretty much endlessly discussed on HN already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41123155
“The concern about whether or not it's right or wrong for the US to go and arrest Maduro depends largely on how one views the recent Venezuelan election results”
Again, no it doesn’t. It’s the unilateral extraterritorial interventionism that’s the problem. I have no time for Maduro or his administration.
And if you think this intervention is about protecting democracy I have a bridge to sell you.
It's only unilateral if you reject the electoral fraud claims.
>And if you think this intervention is about protecting democracy I have a bridge to sell you.
No, I certainly don't think that. I'd suspect it's mostly about personal grievances and Trumps desire to make a show. But still I think it makes more sense to focus on the best-case justifications than trying to guess at the real reasons behind why this administration does what it does.
By that definition no foreign intervention could ever be unilateral because you can always find some local group to support you. By that logic the English conquest of Ireland was locally supported because the Earl of Desmond supported them.
The actual motivations matter because they dictate the outcome. In this case the actual motivations have been stated publicly by Trump a few years ago, they want the oil back. They will happily support whoever ends up in power so long as they hand back the oil rights.
I think you're stretching a bit, I'm simply proposing they have a pretty good case here because much of the world openly agrees with the US claim that Maduro did not actually win the previous elections.
>In this case the actual motivations have been stated publicly by Trump a few years ago, they want the oil back. They will happily support whoever ends up in power so long as they hand back the oil rights.
That's obviously not credible, you can't profitably extract Venezuelan crude without US involvement. There's simply nobody else with the capabilities to do so. Venezuelan oil is particularly difficult to get out of the ground, it's tremendously difficult to extract profitably.
>"That's obviously not credible, you can't profitably extract Venezuelan crude without US involvement. There's simply nobody else with the capabilities to do so. Venezuelan oil is particularly difficult to get out of the ground, it's tremendously difficult to extract profitably"
I see that you do not manage your finances properly. Lemme take over.
Besides I do not believe this "nobody else" BS. If there is a need and money to be made they will find someone with the tech or deep enough pockets to develop it.
> If there is a need and money to be made they will find someone with the tech or deep enough pockets to develop it
There's no need and there's likely to be no money to be made. The extraction costs will probably be closer to $60 per barrel, which is more than you can sell it for.
You seem intent on not understanding my point. Absolutely none of the details matter, the broad strokes of arresting someone in a foreign jurisdiction and taking them by force to your country to face trial sets about the worst precedent imaginable.
Trump says a lot of things which aren't remotely credible. WTI price is under $60 and going down. The last thing they need is more crude supply into the market lowering the benchmark price even lower.
It doesn’t have to be a good idea for it to be their rationale. They have stated it publicly to the media a few hours ago and you refuse to believe, how utterly bizarre.
Their stated rationale also doesn't have to be their true rationale. For example, it's hard to believe that this is about oil rather than the headlines for Trump.
I think there may have been some deliberate misdirection. I'm writing this after the US announced they have captured Maduro. If they had said they were going to do that he probably would have taken precautions. The subsequent justification may be that María Machado won the election, is the legitimate ruler and is entitled to ask for Maduro's removal with US assistance. Though who knows?
He might have. Or he might well have come willingly, ordered his bodyguards not to shoot etc. figuring that he'll have a better chance being an alive headache for the US, than as an Allende being found dead by his own hand (supposedly), or as Saddam being found hiding in a pigsty somewhere 50 days later.
That justification feels weak because of how much it could parallel with Putin's special military operation, where Zelensky is an illegitimate president, Viktor Yanukovych is the legitimate ruler and is entitled to ask for Zelenksy's removal with Russian assistance.
I don't like how Trump has unilaterly decided this extreme of an action, but at the moment I am glad that this didn't fail like it did in Ukraine. I am still worried about what the aftermath will lead to. I don't think peace and democracy is having a particularly winning record at the moment.
Yeah but if you take an honest look Zelensky was elected with 73% of the vote so probably a legitimate ruler. The Venezuela election seems to have been about "Maduro had in fact won just 30% of the vote, compared with 67% for González" so González, the proxy for Machado should have been the winner. (source https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/10/gonzal...)
But if we're going to invade some country on the grounds of making it into a democracy, one does have to wonder why we don't start with the countries that are very proudly and openly not democracies.
These are the bad non-democracies. There are good non-democracies too. Are you being critical of good non-democracies? Maybe you are living in a bad non-democracy and can't tell the difference, you might get invaded and enlightened any time soon.
But the Russian narrative would be that Viktor Yanukovych was ousted by the Ukraine Parliament in 2014 in what Putin described as a "coup". So Moscow will allege that any president from a future election is illegimate.
Just listened to the Trump press conference, it seems Machado won't be involved in the US-led transition government. He said she is deeply unpopular in Venezuela and it wouldn't work. Conversations are developing between Sec.State Rubio and Venezuela VP Delcy Rodriguez who is Acting President.
It's a US military invasion. I hope that an unpopular invasion with zero justification results in some level of political consequences for Trump but sadly I remain skeptical
> Why am I seeing footage of Chinooks if it's only a bombing? Those are troop-carriers
Based on what we're being told now, this was an extraction. (Slash detention. Slash kidnapping. In any case, requiring troop transport and extraction.)
Too much focus on what is "scalable."
Universities are richer than ever. Just pay teachers to give the oral exams rather than trying to do it for cheap like this.
In my graduate studies in Germany, most of my courses used oral exams. It's fine, and it's battle-tested.
Just like vote-counting, testing students is perfectly scalable without anything but teachers. But: In Europe, I have witnessed oral exams at the Matura, and at the final Diploma test. In the US, I understand all PhDs need a oral defense session.
To me, this mindset of delegating to AI because of laziness is perfectly embodied in "Experimenta Felicitologica" (sp?) By Stanislaw Lem.
AI is great when performing somewhat routine tasks, but for anything inherently adversarial, I'm skeptical we'll soon see good solutions. Building defeating AIs is just too inexpensive.
and TIL that this story is only in the original Polish and the German translation.
This is a summary of sorts:
"Trurl, having decided to make the entire Universe happy, first sat down and developed a General Theory of All-Possible Happiness... Eventually, however, Trurl grew weary of the work. To speed things up, he built a great computer and provided it with a programmatic duplicate of his own mind, that it might conduct the necessary research in his stead.
But the machine, instead of setting to work, began to expand. It grew new stories, wings, and outbuildings, and when Trurl finally lost his patience and commanded it to stop building and start thinking, the machine—or rather, the Trurl-within-the-machine—replied that it couldn't possibly think yet, for it still didn't have enough room. It claimed it was currently housing the Sub-Trurls—specialized programs for General Felicitology, Experimental Hedonistics, and Happiness-Machine-Building—who were currently occupied with their quarterly reports.
The 'Clone-Trurl' told him marvelous tales of the results these sub-Trurls had already achieved in their digital simulations. Trurl, however, soon discovered that these were all cut from the same cloth of lies; not a single sub-Trurl existed, no research had been done, and the machine had simply been using its processing power to enjoy itself and expand its own architecture. In a fit of rage, Trurl took a hammer to the machine and for a long time thereafter gave up all thought of universal happiness."
It's a great allegory. A real shame there is no english translation.
reply