Agreed, We literally took over Afghanistan in a month and installed a government but somehow we lost? We just don't really have a dog in the fight anymore. This isn't defeat.
Yes, the US lost. The government in Afghanistan doesn't have much institutional depth or very firm control of the country. It's not a military defeat in the sense of having your army crushed, but an occupation that never achieves peacetime status is a failure by great power standards. Don't feel bad though, the US is the 3rd empire to make the exact same mistake in Afghanistan. It'd be comical if there weren't so much human suffering involved.
Giving up isn't defeat? If this was sports would anyone accept that definition?
The US just signed a peace deal with the Taliban agreeing to and withdraw all their troops and release aligned 5000 prisoners, the Taliban are also allowed back in government. Technically they could be in power at the next election.
What actual goal was fulfilled here after two decades of war?
The US was fighting a proxy war with the soviet union. We had no interest in defeating the vietcong as much as stopping the spread of communism. Ho Chi Minh was a KGB agent and the communist revolution was largely born of soviet agitprop. So there is another layer to this conflict. Even though vietnam "won" they really were just puppets in a shadow war and it came at a huge cost for them. Much less than US.
My understanding is that Ho Chi Minh was agitating for French socialists to join Lenin's 3rd International in the 1910s. I don't think he was a Soviet "agent" in any way, and had his own beliefs, aligning with Bolsheviks, certainly. However, you can definitely argue Vietnam was a client state of USSR.
Ho Chi Minh was trained at Lenin's "Comintern" with the expressive goal of training foreign assets to spread Soviet communist interests. These assets would be funded and supplied by the soviets to agitate revolution in their countries. This essentially is an agent.
OK, I see what you mean by agent now. I had assumed you meant "receiving and following orders", but receiving training (including ideological) seems more in line with your meaning.
I do think almost every leader in South and Central America in the latter 20th Century could be called a "CIA agent" by that definition though. Not something I'd say.
The fact your comment is upvoted says all you need to know about the parcipatants in this thread.
China merely isn't just engaged in industrial espionage because it works to not duplicate effort. They steal to undermine the effort of the people that made it possible to begin with. In many cases ruining the companies that made the original innovation. This isnt crying and whinging for no reason it's unethical and wrong. This isnt a two way street where chinese innovations are helping our world. Almost everything the Chinese steal all while burning through natural resources and at alarming pace and injecting the most harmful substances into the environment. And be honest they are simply doing this to saberrattle the US and create propoganda to legitmaze an oppressive state. So, yes it's not only unfair, it's evil. And I'm not happy for China.
seasonal work is less desirable than full time work. also cape cod is an odd place. they have a huge need for seasonal low skilled labor but don't really have the housing to support it.
If you are in one cloud you aren't truly HA. You also lose all bargaining leverage. If a vendor doesn't have to compete for your business, they won't and your hosting costs will reflect that. Spotify is a big name and is in the unique position to bargain because of the name and PR. But the average enterprise should really consider the tradeoffs. I get that its hard to have hybrid cloud model but there are agnostic tooling that makes this easier to to do then ever before. Its worth considering.
this was a collaboration between between corporations like Google and Netflix that want to hamper their competition and leftist who aimed to nationalize the internet. this was the vehicle by which they essentially wanted to seize telecom companies.
Your questions are making the assumption that this would cost more and limit choice. This is not how markets work, this is exactly what government regulation and crony capitalism does.
Even in the case of your Spotify but not YT music example, what if there was a 5/month offer for 15mb internet with spotify streaming. Because spotify and your provider made a deal that subsidized the plan? At the end of the day, partnerships are not bad for the consumer. YT music could make a competing for deal for less money with more Google offerings. Also, this wouldn't eliminate an unlimited option across the board. When has competition made something more expensive? Its regulations like NN which pour amber over a system and make it impossible to be cheaper or better.
Net Neutrality has nothing to do with individuals and more to do with "entities"..entities like corporations and other very wealthy edge providers. corpos who are more worried about limiting their competition and using government to ensure they aren't impeded.
Correct, this is merely a fight between corporations on who controls the flow of information. As we have seen edge providers are also information monopolies who can censor and limit who use their platforms based on subjective whims.
There isn't any major political stance that doesn't use social media and PR groups to astroturf. Anyone pretending they aren't astroturfing are lying and you should be wary of them.
