shawn1122

Way too generous to Kash Patel.

Agree that Mossadegh was imperfect but, in the eyes of many, Western meddling was a direct contributer to the revolution, opening the door for the Mullah regime. It exemplifies the hipocrisy of the US/British as they claim to stand for democracy while installing autocratic puppets around the world to meet their needs. They have dutifully deprived millions of the very self-determination they claim is one of their core values.

Agreed thanks for the insights.

This seems like an inaccurate representation of Iranian history so please feel free to elaborate. Sure Iran was an autocracy in 678 BC, not sure how that’s relevant to today, but Iran’s democracy was overthrown by Western powers when it tried to nationalize its oil. The West then installed an autocrat representing their interests until the revolution in 79.

One can imagine that being told “a civilization will die tonight” will act as motivation for them to get one.

It’s not just about how useful the dollar is to Iran, it’s about making it less useful to other countries also. If Iranian oil is back on the market there will be a lot of interested buyers. If it’s only sold in yuan or crypto. The petrodollar wasn’t going to last forever youre right but there are many parties interested in ending it sooner than later.

But therein lies the hipocrisy. The nations that have had historically excessive CO2 emissions (especially per capita) should not be telling nations that emit significantly less per person what to do. 50% of cumulative emissions from 20% of global population. That’s the data point that captures the big picture. Looking at the past 20 years or recent trends only provides a myopic perspective in my view. Don’t get me wrong, these nations have achieved an incredible quality of life for their people through their excess but they shouldn’t be suprised when other countries work towards the same for their people, which will involve using and expanding utilization of conventional energy in the short term. You or I are not more worthy than a person in China, India or Africa of having a good quality of life. Props to Norway to for the milestone but they do not manufacture EVs, it imports them, and third of them are Teslas. Chinese EVs are innovating at a pace far beyond anything Tesla has been able to muster in the past 5 years. I’m glad that the nations that have historically contributed the most to climate change (despite making up a fifth of humanity) are acting to offset that excess. I’m also very impressed with nations that are both expanding their grids and increasing proportion of renewable utilization simultaneously. Ultimately we all share this planet and what’s happened in the past is what it is. We didn’t know then what we know now. I think we both want to see global emissions decrease and here’s hoping that we see more global collaboration towards that.

Sure that's one way to look at it but it's short sighted in my view. From the other perspective it comes across as the West saying they could pollute as much as they wanted to in order give their people a better life and now everyone else has to operate under strict constraints or get a finger wagging from the largest contributers to CO2 emissions in human history. That's a lot of hypocrisy. You're right that solar panels do exist now. It should be noted that China has done more with renewables and getting ICE vehicles off the road than any Western country, many of which seem to be stuck in old habits. Nations like India and China are developing on a massive scale, actively integrating renewables into their expanding grids as they pull hundreds of millions out of poverty. The average person in India and China contributes substantially less to global emissions than the average Westerner. So as their emissions increase, rather than seeing it as them cancelling out your efforts, you should be flattered that they want to live with the luxuries and privileges youve had for some time now. They are in no way less worthy of that. Perhaps Western nations should be made to contribute less per capita than developing nations, as a way to offset their historically disproportionate contribution.

Tough argument to make. Nation states are a somewhat arbitrary construct. What if China or India were each four countries instead of one? Should we take geographical area into account? This is why the per capita measure is important. The UAE is land mass less than 2% the size of India and China and relies on desalination plants for habitibillity. Why would either India or China have populations that small, while not having such limitations? It's easy to say less humans is the solution (and don't worry, the world is clearly headed that direction looking at global fertility rates) but saying a specific country having less people is part of the solution, especially when it's a country with lower per capita emissions, seems difficult to justify.

Even this data is fairly overly decontextualized without considering cumulative emissions since the industrial revolution, proportion of corporate contribution and off shoring. Per capita is important too. In the context of a developing nation specifically, emissions will go up as people get pulled out of poverty and have lifestyles more like people in developed nations. It’s hard to ask them not to pursue that or to delay it (or it comes across as hypocritical). Now with the US/Israel’s war in Iran more nations in Asia will be burning coal due to oil supply constraints. It’s easy to show a graph blaming those nations for resorting to that but several of those nations are already rationing gasoline (Americans would lose their minds lol) and the people are absolutely struggling.

Tesla has 35% market share in Norway. France saw an increase in Tesla registrations by 203% year over year. Sweden had a 144% increase in registrations. Denmark had a 96% increase. In the US, the core demographic remains white male, ~48 years old, with a household income exceeding $140,000, particularly. In conservative states (Texas/Florida). Part of the problem is that competition is still lacking in many ways particularly when it comes to charging infrastructure.

Yeah it’s not Indians, though the brand loyalty has dropped significantly: According to the analysis, Tesla achieved loyalty rates of 63.6% among Asian households and 61.9% among Hispanic households. These figures exceeded national averages.

This is solid geopolitical analysis. The India blunder cannot be understated. This is one of the fastest growing large economies in the world and its struggles in the past half millennia are more a blip in history than the norm. This similarly applies to China and its century of humiliation. Multiple US administrations were carefully and measurably courting India over the past several decades which Trump undid essentially overnight. India has a very strong history of trust with Russia which dates back hundreds of years but more recently the USSR directly supported India when the US sent nuclear armed vessels into the Bay of Bengal in support of Pakistan during the '71 Indo Pak war (before either India or Pakistan had nukes). Portugal also tried to keep one of it’s colonies (Goa) after the end of WW2 which India took by force. Western nations intended to collude through the UN to force India to give the territory back but the USSR vetoed the vote. Blunders like this generally come from not knowing history and it feels like Western leaders both in Europe and the US are no longer knowledgeable. A few months ago Kaja Kallas, the Vice-President of the European Commission said: "I was in ASEAN meeting, and Russia was addressing China, like: ‘Russia and China, we fought the Second World War, we won the Second World War, we won the Nazis…’ And I was like, ‘Okay, that is something new. If you know history, then it raises a lot of question marks in your head… but nowadays, people don’t really read and remember history that much.’ Completely diminishing the obvious sacrifice both countries made in the war, being the two countries with the most casualities (25 million in the USSR and 20 million in China). If these are the top minds in the West then we are absolutely cooked.

It’s a very optimistic outlook. I hope you’re right. What’s more likely and uncomfortable for countries in the Western hemisphere is that upon shifting to a multipolar or “spheres of influence” model of the world (which was the norm preglobalization), America will continue its imperialistic tendencies to claim some form of dominion over Canada Mexico and South America. The latest foreign policy strategy document from the Trump administration seems to harken to the Monroe Doctrine (which was a warning that colonization of any further territory in the Western hemisphere by European powers would be viewed as a threat to U.S. security). I also don’t see the US competely discarding neoliberalism when it comes to tech / services, where it still dominates. That requires some type of openness to the world otherwise they won’t be able to continue to enforce their IP rights.

Needs?