currently US long term bonds have very low yield and are being issued less as usual buyers move to gold/stock -- trust in US gov. has eroded especially in fiscal matters. The budget keeps growing, interest rates are still too low to combat inflation and debt is ever-expanding, without drastic measures taken to stabilize the situation: thus, high bond yield - we pay you premium to have at least someone buy it due to trustworthiness not being the sole attractor anymore
man, and a hundred years later after they get 1917'd there will be an outcry for those "innocent benevolent leaders, who were hated just for their success"
not really, the corruption is quite rampant in both warring armies and especially in drone manufacturers (look up national anti-corruption invesrigation into FirePoint as an example)
war and all matters adjacent are just the perfect ground for breeding corruption as there is too much entropy and handwaving opportunity at the same time
NYT breathlessly reported[1] that Ukraine lost $1.2 billion to corrupt or mismanaged defense procurement in 2024. But the article never once stated the total defense budget. As best I can tell, Ukraine's defense budget in 2024 was ~$65 billion. So this supposedly pervasive corruption cost about 2% of it's budget. That's a rounding error in pervasively corrupt countries, and I'd be surprised if corruption in Russia was less than 5x or maybe even 10x than in Ukraine.
I think the chatter about corruption in Ukraine is partly a function of the fact that it's democratizing. People don't really talk much about corruption in corrupt countries, not as much as they do in less corrupt countries. Everybody knows it's there; it's a given. But without transparency and a steady flow of concrete data and admitted examples, there's not much to talk about. You just assume such-and-such was a corrupt deal. Only when a country is capable of combating corruption do you see robust, public debates about it, as you see in Ukraine.
given that both warring parties are in top-10 military spending in the world with more or less peer budgets dedicated to the war, peer stats on basically every war aspect like casualties, recruiting rates etc I fail to see the exact mechanism of why the corruption rates should be different
Whenever people talk about Ukrainian corruption, I point to three simple facts:
1. If Zelensky was corrupt, he could've easily sold out the country to either Putin or Trump, both were ready to make him a billionaire and let him keep power if he gave in to their demands. If high level generals were corrupt, Ukraine would have already lost.
2. The proof is in the pudding (battlefield results). The fact that the Ukrainian army has held back the Russian army for almost 5 years now (longer than the Soviet war with Nazi Germany in WW2) against incredible odds means that whatever they are doing is WORKING. And in 2026 the UA army is doing better than ever: has gained territory instead of losing it, and is now striking deep into the heart of Russia with impunity. A corrupt army could NEVER achieve what Ukraine has achieved.
3. The Ukrainian army has never had a high-level whistleblower defection like Prygozhin/Wagner who exposed the corruption in the Russian army.
Covid was the same. In the UK the government created a corrupt scheme where politicians and their mates were first in the queue for personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts. Fortunes were made.
Any kind of emergency is an opportunity for graft.
P.S. Two separate enquiries found that this was fine because the corrupt scheme was fairly operated according to its corrupt terms of reference. They didn't consider whether the scheme was corrupt per se.
That always seemed so strange to me; the concept of a VIP lane _sort_ of makes sense if the criteria for entry is that you're an expert in the field, i.e. a logistics company or existing supplier of the NHS. Not just that you're friends with someone in a position of authority.
"Handwaving opportunity". I think you hit the nail there. I will steal that. The opportunity to label critique as treason also make corruption and bad policy in general go rampant. I think that is the strongest factor.
I don't know how people can have such a romantic view. Like read some fictional books on the matter. All quiet on the Western front or Catch 22.
Back cutting and corruption goes rampant and the worst kind of people profiteer while losers are slaughtered.
Whenever people talk about Ukrainian corruption, I point to three simple facts:
1. If Zelensky was corrupt, he could've easily sold out the country to either Putin or Trump, both were ready to make him a billionaire and let him keep power if he gave in to their demands. If high level generals were corrupt, Ukraine would have already lost.
2. The proof is in the pudding (battlefield results). The fact that the Ukrainian army has held back the Russian army for almost 5 years now (longer than the Soviet war with Nazi Germany in WW2) against incredible odds means that whatever they are doing is WORKING. And in 2026 the UA army is doing better than ever: has gained territory instead of losing it, and is now striking deep into the heart of Russia with impunity. A corrupt army could NEVER achieve what Ukraine has achieved.
3. The Ukrainian army has never had a high-level whistleblower defection like Prygozhin/Wagner who exposed the corruption in the Russian army.
I'd say the image of public acceptance is somewhat manufactured by media, as it is coming from the US where people, especially in power, still actually believe in religious stuff and also, sadly, control or at least largely influence the world's media
us, the general public, is more or less atomized and the whole idea of it existing, but having an opinion outside "those who know" is precisely the way they manufacture it, thus people may believe all they want, but think that it is common knowledge that Israel can commit crimes due to victimhood in the past etc - nobody needs to believe this, only to think that others do
Not sure why you're being downed. The Corvette E-Ray was one of the most impressive cars I've ever seen from design and styling to it's incredible performance, at a price point well below many cars it could stand toe-to-toe with. A big part of that impressiveness is that I can open Chevrolet's website right now, and find one to actually buy.
The demos for the future tech are fun for sure, but the Cybertruck and Tesla Semi started this exact same way. The Cybertruck arrived incredibly late, wildly missing even conservative estimates of it's capabilities, and at damn near double the price they teased, AND the units that have shipped have been a fucking mess, to such a degree where Tesla seemingly can't even give them away. And the Tesla Semi has still failed to materialize at all.
So yeah it's a bit of a joke to me to have them hocking a flying car, when their pickup truck can't even drive up a steep unpaved hill, that even my old clapped out F-150 on it's SUV tires would manage just fine.
Edit: and to clarify, I know that it can do that, because I helped a friend move some exercise equipment he bought at auction back to his house, and he has an open-back basement. We backed my truck with trailer down the hill, unloaded it through his basement patio door, and the truck then had to climb back up to the road. And I was a little nervous to be honest, but it did do that, despite as I said having SUV tires on 22-inch rims LOL
F-150s are quite amazing in their ability to climb and maintain an even footing. But you never ever want to get near the point where it will start to roll because of the high ground clearance it is very hard to recover from that. I pulled a bunch of kids with their car out of a Colorado mountain pass near Ft. Collins that had gone 'off roading' in their parents car and it was borderline, almost ended up rolling my own car because of the drag of the other vehicle. Still, it worked and I was even more impressed by the F-150 than I was before then. I live in Europe now and such a vehicle would be completely out of place here but if I would ever end up in the sticks that's the car I would want.
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