Micay owns the whole project. Ownership of the project was not exchanged or divided, part of the explicit terms of the agreement were that Micay would hold the keys and ownership of the project just as they always have.
I'd be careful normalizing bribery. It's very micro-efficient, almost definitionally, but the macro effects of normalized bribery are well known and not good.
The fundamental problem is that "staying alert for tricky situations" is essentially an exercise in prediction. FSD effectively hides a bunch of variables from you, making the prediction harder.
Have you ever been a passenger of an unpredictable driver? Was that stressful? Now, add not just the capacity but the responsibility to fix their mistakes.
Clearly you do, since Donald Trump has been aggressively doing this for his whole political career. I agree that it's a morally problematic thing to do, and it can be bad tactically depending on the situation. Practically, it does happen without consequences.
If you get into the details, the two biggest "points of past contention" (nuclear enrichment and sanctions) are in the ten point proposal. I only see four ways to resolve that conflict:
1) The US agrees to the resolution of those that Iran publicly claims in the proposal (aka we lost)
2) Iran is lying publicly, and actually agrees to keep sanctions in place and/or give up uranium enrichment (maybe, but the plausible version of this is just reversion to the diplomatic status quo ante - a de facto defeat for everyone).
3) Trump is lying publicly, and there is no agreement on any of this (plausible, but it's unlikely to end better than #1 or #2)
4) This is just a rhetorical trick in service of a stall tactic ("almost all" does not include the ones that actually matter - plausible, but it's unlikely to end better than #1 or #2)
#2 is best case for the US, and represents a defeat in that costs were paid but nothing achieved. It's also a defeat for Iran, but I don't think many of us care about that?
Edit - I guess it is also plausible that Iran's current leadership is sufficiently fragmented that "what Iran agrees to" is not a coherent concept right now. That is just the practical effect of #3 by another route, though.
Just to make sure: you understand that "workable basis on which to negotiate" does not mean anything remotely resembling "thing to which we have agreed", yes?
Yes? "Workable basis on which to negotiate" generally does not include things that directly contradict existing agreements, though. I am pointing to "Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to" to establish that he's claiming some agreement on the past points of contention that matter.
If the "workable basis for future negotiation" contradicts that agreement, then someone is lying about something.
> "Workable basis on which to negotiate" generally does not include things that directly contradict existing agreements, though.
I disagree, and don't understand why you see it that way. Of course each side's negotiating position includes things they couldn't get before. The point of negotiating is to get things they didn't have before.
I'm just not sure how to respond to this, because this criticism doesn't seem to actually address the point. I suppose I could have communicated poorly, but I'm not sure how I could have been more clear.
"Almost all of the past points of contention have been agreed to" is pretty specific language, that indicates a new negotiation. What does "have already been agreed to" mean?
Do you think Trump was referring to an agreement that was in place prior to the war? If so, why did the war happen at all?
Do you think he was referring to future negotiations? "Have been agreed to" would be an odd way to phrase that.
Do you think he was referring to an agreement that lifts sanctions and permits uranium enrichment? That's #1, US lost.
Do you think he was referring to an agreement that contradicts the public 10-point proposal? That's #2, everyone lost.
Do you think that was just something he said, that doesn't have any truth behind it? That's #3, he's lying.
Do you think he was referring to negotiations that did not include uranium enrichment or sanctions? That's #4, he's using an obvious bad-faith rhetorical trick to stall.
Do you think he was referring to something not in one of those categories? Then what?
> Do you think Trump was referring to an agreement that was in place prior to the war?
Either this, or else: "agreeing to a point of contention" simply means agreeing that it is a point of contention, not agreeing about how it should be resolved.
> If so, why did the war happen at all?
Because of some combination of:
* there were new points of contention;
* some few unresolved old points of contention became more salient.
Trump's tweets are low effort. Just like most of his rally speeches, which are also unhinged. Other presidents, especially e.g. FDR, put effort into all of their communications. Including speeches and, when available, tweets.
Republicans have been calling democratic voters baby-killers for the entire time I have been aware of what a republican is. This sort of behavior has only gotten worse over time. They still manage to win elections.
I get that there are real asymmetries here, but I really don't think there are substantial blocs of swing voters who use "who has insulted them less" as a real factor. If that were the case, Trump would not have made the gains he did in 2024.
The important thing is to make people feel welcome in your coalition. It is clearly possible to do that either with or without being nice. It's just a different skillset.
If you have to lie to make a point, maybe the point is invalid. And the same goes for your other comments on this page ... they have no truth to them. Low quality trash comments like "[Newsom] does seem wildly corrupt though with extreme exceptions in bills for his friends and backers, more than other politicians I've seen" and "Betting sites are trusted third parties".
I will ignore further bad arguments and baseless claims from this source.
The thing that makes the large quantity of American gun owners potentially useful in that sort of scenario is not that they possess guns. That matters a little, but usually most of the equipment a resistance uses is captured and/or supplied by allies. The thing that would be useful is these individuals' skills with firearms. It's theoretically kind of an alternate route to a similar (but lower) background proficiency level that some countries achieve with mandatory military service.
Note however that America is not only not unique in having that background proficiency -- but unlike mandatory military service, this approach has not really been tested. It's far from a certain proposition either way.
The hardware still matters because it lets you execute suspected collaborators and force the occupiers to incur cost hardening their logistics train (i.e. insurgency 101 type stuff) without waiting for the bureaucrats in whatever foreign country wants to fund your insurgency to prepare your arms shipments.
If you're in a situation where the thing you're doing can be meaningfully called an "execution", a firearm is a convenience, not a necessity. There are also plenty of effective attacks on logistics trains that don't involve firearms, though I will grant that they are at least sometimes a force multiplier there. Hence "that matters a little".
Exactly the type of gunnut I'm talking about. You lot couldn't handle being asked to wear a COVID mask, you wouldn't be able to handle actual war against a state armed with ya assault rifle and tinned food
I think you misunderstand me. I have never owned a gun, fired one exactly once more than 20 years ago (Boy Scouts), and advocate for more gun control (not less). I would be totally useless in any realistic fight. The argument has some merit though, in that it is as yet unclear how much it would matter.
I don't think that unclear merit outweighs the very clear and data-driven drawbacks. I just prefer to engage subjects like this in a charitable manner.
People always need to be reminded, though. It seems to be in human nature to fear bad publicity, and the people who fear it less end up with disproportionate power as a result.
The Iran-Contra scandal from the Reagan administration comes to mind. Congress explicitly de-authorized the executive from funding the Contras in Nicaragua. The executive kept doing it anyway. Nobody faced any consequences, though Congress at least made a lot of noise about it.
That's kind of ineffective, but not to this level where Congress is just fine with blatant illegality.
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