The latest video by Not Just Bikes is more to my taste than other videos on the channel or on "urbanist" channels in general. Namely, a recurring theme in the latest video is that urbanists are wrong and they have eyes only for some shiny hipster elements, not for the whole picture. The video is about Montreal where the bike infrastructure is patchy, so it does not deserve as much praise as (other) "urbanist" YT channels have given to it. Those "urbanists" should really get some more critique!
I'd go even further. An enormous problem with all "urbanist" channels is the disproportionate focus on bike infrastructure. The obvious major problem with bike infrastructure is two-fold: 1. It is for bikes (and not for other traffic, such as walkers or wheelchair people) 2. It is infrastructure, meaning it needs to be built and maintained. It is not something naturally arising from the landscape.
The point number two I direct against Not Just Bikes himself just a few videos back when he lavishly praised the Driebergen-Zeist train station in Netherlands. The huge problem that I have with Driebergen-Zeist train station is that it took lots of bulldozing to rework the landscape around the station. In the latest video he repeatedly denounces bulldozing, but in the train station video he did not notice that the landscape around the station used to be perfectly flat and it took lots of bulldozing and infrastructure constructing to give it its current design.
I am more radical than he is. I am anti-industrial in general. I prefer a more minimal infrastructure where everyone can coexist on the same road with necessary special infrastructure only for trains such as here.
Other good points in the Montreal video:
Walkable Islands
Every city has some nice patches to walk on. The real test is whether these nice patches are connected to each other. In Miami conurbation, generally a quite destitute car-centric wasteland, has some lovely walkable beach parks and cozy shopping centres, but when you try to walk from one such place to another, you definitely end up stranded on a sidewalkless road somewhere.
The reason for the walkable islands problem is political or administrative. An area, a block or two, is given to a single developer. This ensures a more or less coherent design for that area. It may be a good or bad design, but it will be more or less coherent as envisioned by the developer. At the same time it often also ensures that there will be no cohesion with anything around that area.
A related political problem is the current hype of bike infrastructure. When a city expresses willingness for bike infrastructure projects, they get funding more easily. In reality the city councillors are always far more concerned about preserving the car infrastructure: Talk about bike infrastructure is just to get the funding. So when it comes to actually building for bikes, the bike infrastructure is either placed incoherently in quiet streets that do not strictly need any special bike infrastructure or alongside highways that lead into bushes outside the city centre. The do *not* build infrastructure in busy highway-like central city streets where it is needed the most and where it would effectively moderate other traffic. And whatever bike infrastructure they build is uncontiguous and disjointed; there will be no unified network of bike lanes ever. All this is in evidence in Montreal and I have not seen "urbanists" take proper notice until very recently.
Hauptbahnhof test
This test involves walkability starting with a city's main railway station. I have mentioned earlier on this forum the walkability of airport surroundings for the same purpose. If main stations, ports and transport hubs are not approachable by pedestrians, then they are not meant for travelling. But main stations, ports and transport hubs are definitionally meant for travelling, so they should definitionally accommodate pedestrian travel also.
Privatised underground city
Sometimes in city centres traffic is deemed so dense that some of it is moved underground, be it rail, motor or pedestrians. When people are moved underground, it is rather hostile to let them walk in plain tunnels, so it is considered friendlier to surround them with some shops and the like. Moving pedestrians underground can be bolstered with the argument of saving them from weather, but plans of this kind transparently award a single firm a construction of what is essentially a massive underground shopping centre. This can have poor outcomes such as leaving the surface traffic unfixed or being even detrimental to it, if the entire idea is that constructing an underground shopping centre is in and of itself the fix. Shopping centres tend to hit smaller shops in the same area, meaning that the commercial atmosphere on the surface street may suffer. And finally, shopping centres tend to be closed outside shopping hours and in those times pedestrians would have to face the situation on the surface as it has become, even though the underground infrastructure was supposed to spare them from it.
Note the single track and the combination with local rail gauge on the same track. And I note that in jax's chart there is no seamless connection from Tallinn to Berlin. Nothing is as was advertised to the public and nothing looks the way the CGI plans were drawn.
So the time to take another look at the status of this nonsense is about 2040 now? Okay.
Who am I kidding. You will certainly be more whacky.
You (obviously don't) see, there is a difference between people and their country/government/statehood. For example, you are an American but you hate your government. By your own (il)logic, you are therefore anti-American! When will you stop being racist and genocidal against Americans? Yeah, you didn't even know you were one of those!
Similarly, being anti-Zionist does not make one necessarily a Jew-hater. And I am not even anti-Zionist, just anti-genocide. There are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews. And there are human rights activists in Israel who have to denounce their own government actions right now based on human rights principles. Oh, for a moment I forgot that you have no place for human rights in your system. Well, so much about that then.
Anyway, Israel's statehood has not been under threat at all this century. They sit very comfily where they are. A bit too comfily one might say.
By the way, did you know that during the Six-Day War Israel deliberately attacked a U.S. spy ship? It was not an accident but an indiscriminate assault against everyone they saw. Everyone was the enemy. Israeli command knew what the ship was, whose it was, where it was, and sent a wave of fighter jets to destroy it. But USA betrayed the veterans of the ship and reconciled with Israel, becoming their guardian ever since and hushing down the facts about the incident for decades. The incident is called USS Liberty. Look it up. If you had a fact-based mindset, your love of Israel would undergo some moderation.
Yeah, so much that you don't know, and not any willingness to learn anything...
But — What fun when Biden is disqualified on (technically spurious federal) grounds! (Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida...)
As I cautioned: "An ounce of perception is worth a pound of presumption"
Different from you, I have no partisan bone to pick on this issue. Let Biden go to jail, I don't care. If Biden goes to jail, but not Trump, it proves what I already know: USA is not a country of law or order or any valuable principle worth emulating. I know this because Trump is not in jail. He objectively deserved to decades ago (when he was still Democrat by the way ), but instead he was rewarded with presidency.
Whereas you have nothing but partisan bone to pick. It's particularly hilarious since nobode else has.
While the 14th Amendment's Section Three prohibits "insurrectionists" from office, the required act of congress to effect this prohibition was made and needs be followed. The effecting statute has not been followed. (I.e., no lawful prosecution has taken place...) Hence, no determination of guilt has been reached — by law. And -obviously- no punishment that deprives a citizen of his rights can be applied. Q.E.D.
How about all those other state Supreme Courts who have rulings on the very same point - whether Trump qualifies or not under Section 3 of Amendment XIV of U.S. Constitution - in Arizona, Minnesota and Michigan? Nothing to say against them, because they decided the other way? That's a hypocrite again...
You are not just full of bunkum, but full of utter, total and complete bunkum, easily debunked. State Supreme Courts are serially issuing rulings on the matter. They are judges judging without jury. They do not care about your alternative universe where you think you are the supreme legal expert.
Congress should take action to enforce Section Three against anyone engaged in the January 6th insurrection. There is currently no federal statutory authority to enforce Section Three, and if this deficiency is not addressed many problems will follow. First, some states may simply choose to ignore Section Three or do minimal enforcement. Second, having each state enforce Section Three in its own way will result in a haphazard system especially ill-suited to resolving a question of presidential ineligibility. Third, if former President Trump runs again, his eligibility must be determined promptly--before any elections take place--otherwise the Republican nominating contest will be thrown in chaos. But the ability of the ex-President or his opponents to engage in litigation gamesmanship during a primary process where each state is acting independently could easily thwart a prompt resolution by the Supreme Court. And it would be particularly unfortunate if the Court were called upon to resolve the issue in an emergency application for a stay on the eve of a primary where due deliberation on the arguments could not occur.
So there, to reiterate, "There is currently no federal statutory authority to enforce Section Three," so everybody just does what they think they should or can. The article continues:
Congress can resolve many of these issues by using its enforcement authority under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to create a rational and fair process for Section Three claims.
This is a noble hope, but also vain one. The current Congress has just one thing on its mind: Partisan bickering. No law, no order, no principle, no morals, nothing matters. Just senseless partisan bickering.
you do not know that Supreme Courts (both of the states and federal) do not do jurys in the cases they pick up for their own judgement?
In the Federal Supreme Court, Article III of the Constitution stipulates which cases are the purview of the court. Can you show an exception for any State Supreme Court?
Since you think you know better, lay out the argument to demonstrate that Colorado Supreme Court did anything they should not have done. The fact is that Supreme Courts decide, whatever it is they decide, without jury. And they decide constitutional matters, which is what Section 3 of Amendment XIV is.
Actually, [...] The jury determines matters of fact, and guilt or innocence.
So you have not noticed the court cases, including involving Trump, where there is no jury because it is not required, and you do not know that Supreme Courts (both of the states and federal) do not do jurys in the cases they pick up for their own judgement?
Why do I always know everything better about your country than you do? You are both a hypocrite and a doofus, and very persistent in both.
Was the U.S.S.R (e.g., Russia) wrong to pursue the destruction of Nazi Germany in WWII? Were the Allies wrong to do so? Should lawyers and accountants have drawn up tote-sheets to determine what was acceptable?
Even after all your analogising has been proven wrong, you resort to more analogising?
There is no reasoning with you. Too much persecution complex, saviour complex and other delusions. Try to stay on topic at least.
Anyway, yes, unconditional surrender is proportional when the aggressor is engaged in all-out assault in all directions. The comparison on this point puts Israel in worse light than Hamas.
A grossly misguided one, when war has been declared. You are not just naive, you are perversely so.
What other principle do you observe if not proportionality? You are not naming any. I know: There is no principle. Instead of principle, you are guided by the persecution complex, saviour complex, Manifest Destiny and other delusions. Now that's perverse. And that's the reason why there is no analogy or parallel to be drawn with Estonia, Taiwan, as there is not any even between USA and Israel.
...like the four Colorado Supreme Court Justices recently: We know he's guilty, so we treat him so! (Might work in other countries; it's not supposed to in the U.S.)
Actually, in both USA and in every other country it is precisely the job of judges to judge who is guilty or not. But not for you when it comes to Trump (this is a hypocrisy, I should point out lest it is somehow unclear to you).
You realise that any complaints that you have about the response to Covid in USA you should direct at Trump, don't you? Or are you so hypocritical as to never realise it?
Since when is war against an enemy whose stated purpose is your destruction a "tit-for-tat" affair, one death at a time?
Proportionality is a principle. Not just in international law when waging a war but also pragmatically. You don't send a four-man squad against an army nor do you mobilise your entire population when your plan is not to wipe out your neighbour.
Impartial onlookers can take note that Israel has mobilised absolutely all resources and is observing no proportionality whatsoever against far weaker enemy. Not to mention mass displacement of practically the entire civilian population in Gaza.
You again demonstrated that you know literally nothing about anything. This will keep happening until you acknowledge this to yourself and get a grip.
You'll likewise not care when Taiwan is "reunified"... (I don't recall you being upset at what happened when Great Britain ceded Hong Kong back to China...)
One wonders: How about Estonia?
Do Taiwan and Estonia compare here the way USA did for you earlier in the thread?
You have (and you think USA has or must preferably have) both the persecution complex and saviour complex at the same. On this point, there is no analogy with Israel. First off, nobody ever persecuted USA. Nobody ever invaded USA. After War of Independence (or perhaps 1812 war), not a single battle has ever been fought on U.S. soil. And USA never saved anyone, only displaced, annexed and colonised. Jews, on the other hand, have in fact been persecuted, and the country of Israel has been created on the sentiment of taking back the ancient homeland for the sake of self-determination, and in the process root out and subdue the pre-existing Arab population. Not to save them, but root out most and subdue the rest. Israel displays no signs of saviour complex.
So it is flawed in every way to try to conjure up any analogy between USA and Israel. As I said above: Confederate sympathisers are deeply racist slavery-nostalgic jerks. Zionists are carving out a country for themselves by means of ethnic cleansing. Zebulon Vance was wrong seeing parallels here and so are you. It is even more wrong to try to see any parallels with Estonia or Taiwan here, particularly when you know hardly anything even about your own country where you lived all your life.
But -of course- because Gorsuch has been described as "Conservative" and something he said may support an ultra-liberal (for ersi, any anti Trump) stance, I must be a hypocrite!
You're a hypocrite either way, with or without Gorsuch. But thanks for clarifying some of Gorsuch's shenanigans. (I really could not care less.) It remains to be figured out if you are against him because he is not hypocritical enough for you or because you're aspiring to out-hypocrite him but your efforts go unrecognised.
Namely: Yet again you have nothing to say about the substantive matter, the leading Republican presidential candidate Trump who is at the same time election head-fraudster and insurrection arch-conspirator. You always miss the point in every topic every single time.
Summary: Q: I just heard one might call you naive. Is this true?
A: Yes, honestly. Despite having worked for security organs for decades, I assumed that the so-called civilised world understood that there is no longer any ideological pushback from Russia, thus no reason for confrontation, and if anything negative happened, such as Western support of terrorists in Russia, I assumed it was only inertia of thought and action of former middle class in Western establishment, who were used to struggle against Soviet Union. This was naive on my part. Reality is that, like Brzezinski suggested, the West wants to divide Russia in five parts and subjugate the parts to themselves.
Q: While USA leads imperial policies, they also say that if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he would attack Nato.
A: I'm sure Biden understands this is completely false, but he maintains it as a figure of speech to hide their erroneous policy with regard to Russia. First, it is erroneous because it does not harmonise with their interests in terms of what they envisioned for mutual relations with Russia decades ago. Second, USA as the master of Nato − Nato is their backyard − should see that Russia has no geopolitical, economic or military interest to wage war with Nato countries. They took Finland and made it a Nato country. We had long ago resolved all disputes with Finland, the relations were most warm and heartfelt, but now we will have problems because of confrontation with Leningrad military district. Why are they doing this? This way they are creating artificial problems because they want to outcompete Russia.
Q: How will you spend the New Year's Eve? You said earlier you'd be watching the president's speech. Anything else?
A: Champagne with people close to me and discussions on mundane topics.
Edit: Nice cozy interview I must say. From this one should get a sense of the kind of dude that Putin is. Namely, in my opinion geopolitics is importantly a character study. And then compare it with the kind of character that e.g. Mearsheimer sees in Putin.
I generously assumed that Israel would begin to relent once Palestinian casualties amount to tenfold Israeli casualties. Now the balance of casualties approaches 100-fold in Israel's favour. I have severely misunderestimated Israel's ruthlessness. Israeli soldiers even shoot their own returning hostages.
Colorado Supreme Court turned out braver than the lonely judge: Yes, Trump is an insurrectionist and therefore removed from ballot.
Technically it will suffice to repeat this in a few more states, but it would be more correct to decide it in SCOTUS. And incorrect of SCOTUS to leave the decision to the last minute.
Colorado court used Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's ruling to justify disqualifying Trump
- Trump is disqualified from the ballot in Colorado, the state's Supreme Court ruled. - But the case is sure to go to the Supreme Court. - Colorado's court cited Justice Neil Gorsuch in their decision.
The Colorado Supreme Court cited Gorsuch's ruling as cover for its unprecedented decision to kick Trump off a primary ballot based on the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.
"As then-Judge Gorsuch recognized in Hassan, it is 'a state's legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process' that 'permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office,'" the state opinion reads.
"We zien dat Rusland is overgeschakeld op een oorlogsindustrie", zegt Hofman. "Ik denk dat we ons terecht zorgen moeten maken. De taal van het Kremlin en van president Vladimir Poetin is altijd dubbelzinnig. Het is absoluut niet uitgesloten dat ze later ook andere ideeën krijgen. Ofwel in het zuiden in Moldavië of de Baltische Staten."
How is such a prognostication possible? Because there is no plan to ensure that Russia will be pushed back in Ukraine. The West has decided that Russia shall not lose.
Also, everybody's favourite "realist"[1] John Mearsheimer recently argued thusly: Ukraine must become "neutral" (i.e. disarmed and unconcerned with its own foreign affairs) and give up the four annexed oblasts, or else Russia will want to annex four more oblasts. So, in order to stop the annexation of four more oblasts, Ukraine must yield and sign peace with Russia on Russia's terms. He makes this point beginning at 1:08:35 in this interview:
In other words, the school of geopolitical so-called realism teaches: There are big dogs and small dogs, and small dogs shall have no sovereignty. And Ukraine is small!
The "kid gloves" is because Austria hasn't done domestically what Fidesz has done.
The kid gloves are also because this is more about banks and less about the government. In an approved country banks are far more powerful than the government. In an approved country, whatever banks do is deemed acceptable.
The 12th round of Russia sanctions was to impose an EU ban on imports of Russian diamonds, tighten EU exports of high-tech goods, and blacklist mercenary firms, according to a draft.
Raiffeisen Bank has 9,000 employees in Russia, where it does consumer banking, and where it made €2bn profit last year.
It is "beneficial [chiefly] to the Russian elites, as it allows them to continue transferring funds abroad", after earlier EU sanctions disconnected most Russian banks from the Swift international-transfers grid, Russian financial consultant Ivan Fedyakov previously told this website.
"Austria has been quietly playing on Russia's team for a long time — they're a huge problem in the EU. Potentially explosive. To be watched closely," a senior EU diplomat said.
"It's not Austria learning from Hungary, but the other way around," the diplomat said.
"I never understood why everyone forgives them [the Austrians] so easily, treats them with kid gloves compared to Orbán, or other EU rogues", he added.
In addition to Raiffeisen I can mention also UniCredit and HypoVerein as such banks.
), but instead he was rewarded with presidency.
