Yeah, I really wish that people would post context there when they post something. Some of the problem is that people see news, then promptly go to create and post memes joking about a current news item. But if you haven’t seen the news item and don’t know some of the jargon or military history or other context, it can be difficult to understand what’s going on.

I’ve commented a bunch of times with a “context comment” on posts linking to source material.

To add to that, on Reddit, there was originally /r/CredibleDefense. This was intended to be serious discussion about military topics from people who knew what they were talking about making supportable statements. Like, people cited sources and such. It didn’t always actually meet that bar, but the idea was to keep the level of nonsense low.

That’s kind of a high bar, and sometimes people don’t want to rigorously examine everything and have more-casual discussion, so then /r/LessCredibleDefence showed up.

/r/NonCredibleDefense was developed as the logical extension of this, becoming less…serious…and consisted of people posting memes and often making completely-inaccurate statements for humorous effect.

NCD was more-approachable than the others, and so a lot of people wound up showing up there.

I was not around when they formed, but did show up later, and enjoyed content on all of them.

There is no CredibleDefense or LessCredibleDefense on the Threadiverse, currently. [email protected] is the sole representative (well, maybe [email protected] will be something like that, but it doesn’t quite deal with the same stuff). I tend to vigorously disregard the rule about not posting serious material on NCD, as a result, but it’s got plenty of memes and people making jokes.

If the end result is a more self-sufficient russia and profits going to the war effort … would it have been the right move?

Autarky costs something, given an efficient market. Normally, due to comparative advantage, a country will trade with whoever can produce something with the most comparative advantage. That will normally make the country better-off. So a restriction on trade – like an entity refusing to do business with it – will make the country worse-off than in a free market. Could cut off access to supply chains or money or whatever.

So you would not normally expect Russia to have more resources to go to the war effort as a result of cutting business connections. Russia of 2024 will have fewer resources available to it than Russia of 2021.

I don’t disagree that this is less-disruptive to Russia than a company intentionally dismantling its infrastructure in Russia. I do not know whether that is a practical option, as the authorities might simply seize the assets. Russia does have jurisdiction over things that happen in Russia. They can make it illegal to dismantle factories; I have not been following, but I remember reading that several laws restricting things along these lines have been passed in the past, including limiting bankers from exiting Russia, some sort of controls on moving assets, and some sort of restrictions on divesting assets.

reads article

Actually, the article specifically references this, right at the end:

However, for some companies, staying longer in Russia has not always been a carefully calculated business choice because the government has put significant obstacles in place to prevent them leaving.

These included trying to take over the assets of Western companies wanting to go

I predict upcoming NonCredibleDefense mecha musume memes.

EDIT: Apparently they’re way ahead of me. This is 12 hours old as of this writing. Just hasn’t made it to Threadiverse [email protected] yet.

Maybe.

The Kim dynasty has a history of using family as leverage. That’s potent stuff in terms of social control.

kagis for an example

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/kim-hyesook-i-saw-prisoners-turned-to-honeycomb-by-the-bullets-2312507.html

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

If you go back to medieval times, Europe used to have some similar practices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_(youth)

Somewhat-related: There was also just a post on [email protected] with an article saying that Poland would temporarily suspend the right to asylum.

https://lemmy.today/post/17565818

Keep in mind two factors.

1. This is counting MLRS systems at Russian arms depots. That means that it won’t count deployed units in the field. That’ll make this number low.

2. This is counting MLRS systems at Russian arms depots. That means that it will include non-functional MLRS systems that are being scavenged for parts and the like. That’ll make this number high.

EDIT: Also, one other important factor. While I have not been following the situation, my guess is that the limiting factor is not the launcher, but rather supply of munitions. That is, Russia could probably maintain a higher rate of munitions use if it had them available.

I don’t think that those will “run out”, but at some point – and I assume that that was probably earlier in the war, as it was with artillery shells – Russia will have consumed available rocket stockpiles, and will be limited to using any rockets at the rate at which new ones can be produced.

EDIT2: Well, I guess there are any MLRS rockets that Russia has obtained from North Korea this year. Ukraine destroyed some munitions from North Korea in those ammo dump drone attacks, as I understand it. No idea how many, if any, of those remain.

So, countries can multitask. I don’t believe that it’s a fair criticism of an action to say “I want the country to do this other action that I want”.

It might be a fair criticism to say “the country isn’t doing the thing that I want”.

But countries are large organizations. There are many, many things that a country does in a given year, and many of them won’t be the particular concern of some given individual. But that doesn’t imply that those things shouldn’t (or should) be done.

doesn’t the UK not have a constitution because it’s basically whatever the Monarch says?

No. In the 2024 British system of government, the monarch has essentially no power. The upper house of the bicameral legislature, the House of Lords, has very little power.

Virtually all power is wielded by whoever controls a simple majority in the House of Commons, the lower house. They can do anything (short of limiting what future Parliaments can do). Rewrite any law, whatever.

My understanding is that this is largely a result of having a system constructed in an aristocratic period, and shifts in power occurring, but the system of government not being restructured.

In, say, the US, the constitution limits and specifies the powers of government. It places a set of constraints on what Congress and other bodies can do.

The British system evolved from a situation where the aristocrats were represented in the House of Lords, the monarch was his own thing, and the rest of the public in the House of Commons.

Part of the transition over time was to limit the power that the king had. The Magna Carta constrains what the king can do, shifted away from an absolute monarchy. In that sense, the UK is nominally a constitutional monarchy.

But since the king has no real power today, power has shifted from the monarch, the written restrictions on his power are essentially meaningless.

Over time, the aristocracy also lost power. The House of Lords lost most powers it has, and today has very little actual power – I believe that perhaps the most-notable is the ability to delay legislation for a period of time.

Where basically all the power has concentrated is in the House of Commons.

And that has no real restriction on it. The Magna Carta doesn’t restrict Parliament. Parliament has modified text from the Magna Carta with a simple majority before.

There is no power of judicial review over the legislature on the UK – laws Parliament passes cannot be ruled unconstitutional. The executive is subject to judicial review – there were some notable UK Supreme Court cases in the part few years relating to the actions of the prime minister. But the legislature is not – the judiciary cannot rule a law passed by Parliament to be unconstitutional.

I once read something calling the UK an “absolute republic”. I think that that’s probably a much-more-apt description for the state of affairs in 2024 than its official designation as a constitutional monarchy. The UK, as it exists in 2024, isn’t run by a monarch whose powers are limited by a constitution. It’s run by a simoel majority in the lower house of a legislature who have no real limitations on their powers.

Not only that, but the one great convention is that Parliament cannot be bound. So Parliament cannot go write a constitution and then have it bind future Parliaments. That future Parliament could rewrite it as easily as they could do anything else, with a simple majority.

My belief – and this is me talking here, not some British constitutional law expert – is that the plan had been to move the UK to something that looked more like a conventional, constitutional republic by way of its EU membership, by some fancy legal and political footwork. If the UK signs onto a treaty, then it cannot do something against that treaty without violating the treaty. Parliament can still, perfectly legally under UK law, instruct the UK to violate treaties. But that would have consequences with the rest of the EU, and there would come a point in political integration where being in trouble with the EU would be unthinkable, so the UK would have become de facto a constitutional republic (or part of a constitutional republic).

If that was indeed the plan, I’d say that it was actually quite impressive – the UK has a very elderly system of government that has, over time, managed to transform itself into very different forms, de facto without revolution or an official break with the past system by kinda kludging things, and some elaborate legal reasoning. This would have added another transformation.

But with Brexit, I suppose that that’s off the table, at least for some time.

And there is basically an agreement to off on whatever the MPs decide because otherwise they would officially overthrow the monarch

Sort of. There are a lot of things that are formally done by the King by way of the King-in-Parliament, where British sovereignty is theoretically vested, is the “ultimate power” in the legal system, the way the US Constitution is in the US. But in practice, the King doesn’t really have a choice as to whether to do them or not, and he’d basically get ignored if he objected, absent some sort of real question as to the legitimacy of Parliament acting (e.g. if there was a dispute over election fraud determining control of the House of Commons, I expect the King’s voice might bear weight). It’s really the Parliament, and within Parliament, the House of Commons that holds political power today.

Also, one last note on the British system of government, as to your comment:

UK not have a constitution

So, personally, I’d agree with you here. The British don’t have a constitution, or at least not one with meaningful effect aside from other British law, aside from maybe the convention that Parliament cannot bind future Parliaments. But that isn’t the British legal view of things. Their take is that they have an uncodified constitution, that many different (not always specified) documents and traditions make up their constitution. My take is basically “well, in what functional way does that differ from not having a constitution”? But in the name of completeness, just wanted to keep things correct.

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

But even if you adopt the British take on this, whether or not something is part of the constitution or just regular law becomes essentially an academic question, because there is no special status that constitutional law holds relative to anything else.

But in Canada, there is a difference between law that is part of the constitution and all other law, so that becomes suddenly a real and meaningful distinction.

They are not an army,

They are members of their own state militaries acting in an operation headed by the UN.

They have ROEs and similar orders handed to them.

kagis

Here’s a sample UN peacekeeping RoE for a recent exercise simulating an actual operation.

https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/siteassets/english/swedint/engelska/swedint/courses/unsoc/d-29-roe-incl-annex-a-d.pdf

It’ll lay out the conditions under which one attacks and to what degree peacekeepers should hold maintain a position given the possibility that it is attacked, who they are authorized to engage, and such.

In this situation, you’ve got an active conflict underway between Hezbollah and Israel. Like, this isn’t going to be a “there’s nobody shooting at each other” situation. My point is that normally, countries are pretty particular about the lines for international conflict, and I’d expect an RoE to have specified whether they are expected to maintain positions during an evacuation order or not.

The UN isn’t, but the soldiers themselves are, and are acting for their respective member state military:

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

Most of these operations are established and implemented by the United Nations itself, with troops obeying UN operational control. In these cases, peacekeepers remain members of their respective armed forces, and do not constitute an independent “UN army”, as the UN does not have such a force.

Yeah, but there’s a difference between random individual down-on-their-luck schmucks off in Cuba or Africa or wherever and arrangements being made between states.

Even in the individual recruiting cases, you had states that found out about the situation pushing for a stop and/or their nationals to be returned, as with India:

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/indian-man-working-with-russian-military-amid-war-with-ukraine-returns-home-6562591

Mr Sufiyan said he was promised a security-related job and not told about having to help the troops in the war. He was told that he would have to undergo training for three months after which his salary would increase

Russia had agreed to India’s demand to ensure early release of Indian nationals working with the Russian military as support staff after PM Modi “very strongly” raised the issue with President Vladimir Putin during his visit.

The soldiers are sent from the militaries of member countries.

In a military operation, there are going to be directives as to how to act. You have RoEs, and usually normally countries are going to make calls as to what they want to do from a policy standpoint with their militaries.

Bigger question. Given that it’s known that Israel’s issuing evacuation orders for places that it’s going to hit, why are people on the ground making the call to go or stay? Like, why hasn’t this policy call been made at a higher level?

I’d understand if this were the first one going out and nobody had time to make a policy call on it. Then you have to make an ad hoc call quickly.

But this isn’t that situation, not now.

Speaking of ties, I notice that Pezeshkian, unlike Putin, isn’t wearing a tie.

And thinking back, I don’t recall Ahmadinejad – notable for his signature jacket – wearing a tie either.

And looking at some presidential pictures, I don’t see images of ties either:

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

kagis

Ah. It’s a political thing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-necktie-ties-sign-of-westernization-making-comeback/

Iran banned the tie for men after the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-backed monarch as a symbol of Western culture. Although it has made a slow comeback since, government officials and most Iranian men continue to shun the cravat.

Iran’s Shiite clerics who came to power in 1979 banned the tie because, in their eyes, it was un-Islamic, a sign of decadence, a symbol of the cross and the quintessence of Western dress imposed by the shah, said one trader who asked not to be identified.

After vanishing for decades, ties reappeared in some shop windows during the era of reformist president Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005.

Today, government ministers, senior civil servants and heads of state-owned companies don’t wear ties with their suits and opt for shirts with buttoned, open or Mao collars.

Lawyer Masoud Molapanah said “wearing a tie is certainly not a crime” under the constitution or Islamic sharia law. “But there are dress restrictions in certain places such as on television.”

Man, I didn’t even think about Quebec.

Some treaties that the French sign have had them require a French version and that the French version be equally-binding. I imagine that this makes any form of translation difference exciting. Is this the case for Quebec?

searches

Apparently so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act,_1982

English and French versions

Section 56 of the Act provides that the parts of the Constitution that were enacted in English and French are equally authoritative, and section 57 adds that the English and French versions of the Constitution Act, 1982 itself are equal. Section 57 is akin section 18 of the Charter, which provides that English and French versions of federal and New Brunswick statutes are equal.[20] The Supreme Court has interpreted section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and section 23 of the Manitoba Act, 1870 to mean that the English and French versions of federal, Quebec and Manitoba statutes are equal.[21][22]

Despite sections 56 and 57, significant portions of the Constitution of Canada were only enacted in English and even if there exist unofficial French translations, their English versions alone have force of law. To address this problem, section 55 requires that the federal Minister of Justice prepare “a French version of the…Constitution of Canada as expeditiously as possible.” The Minister of Justice established a French Constitution Drafting Committee in 1984, which prepared French versions of the Constitution, and presented them to the Minister in 1990.[citation needed]

Section 55 also requires that “when any portion thereof sufficient to warrant action being taken has been so prepared, it shall but put forward for enactment by proclamation issued by the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada pursuant to the procedure then applicable to an amendment of the same provisions of the Constitution of Canada.” No action has been taken to put forward the French version for enactment. The reference to a proclamation by the Governor-General implies that some combination of the general, unanimity and special arrangements procedures would be required to enact the French version.[citation needed] Although the intention was presumably that the government of Canada would do so by introducing an amendment resolution in the House of Commons,[citation needed] a Senator or a provincial government could presumably do so since, under section 46, such amendments “may be initiated either by the Senate or the House of Commons or by the legislative assembly of a province”.

Additional wrinkle: my understanding is that the question of what parts of Canadian law are part of the constitution and what are not is an active legal question being gradually resolved by courts.

The UK doesn’t have any formal constitution, as the bar for Parliament to change anything it wants is the same – a simple majority.

Canada’s legal system was originally structured in a similar way, and did not have an explicit constitution written. When it became independent, part of the process indicated that some of that body of law was part of the constitution. And in present-day Canada, as in the US, it does matter whether a piece of law is part of the constitution, as the constitution has a different legal status from ordinary federal law.

But because the division is not presently fully-defined, I imagine that a rewrite would be a pretty substantial task, even above what would typically be the case.

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

After patriation, the methods of constitutional entrenchment are:

• specific mention as a constitutional document in section 52(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982;

• amendments to constitutional documents using the amending formula in Part V the Constitution Act, 1982;

• in some cases, reference by an entrenched document;

• ruling by a court that a practice is part of Canada’s unwritten constitution; or

• judicial interpretation of constitutional provisions.

The list of documents for the first two methods is well-established. For the next two, however, there is debate about which documents, or which parts of those documents, are included in the constitution. In some cases, the Supreme Court of Canada has made definitive rulings regarding whether a given documents forms part of the constitution, but in many cases the question is still unclear.

On the up side, I suppose that doing such a rewrite would clear this up. On the down side, I imagine that an actual rewrite would be an unholy mess from a legal standpoint, as it’d have to resolve what the constitution is at one go.

Two points:

First, other articles state that these are expected to be used in an engineering role, not in a combat role. That will potentially have an impact on the front line in that it will permit Russia to use Russian engineering forces in a combat role. But they aren’t expected to be fighting themselves.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4925134-ukraine-strikes-russian-ammunition-depots/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/09/asia/north-korea-army-militarized-border-south-korea-intl-hnk/index.html

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starrmer

No double “r” on “Starmer”.