Grrl Power #840 – Loopholio
I think Maxima ordered Steak Oscar, except instead of Bearnaise sauce, it came with a fancy Hollandaise sauce, and also a side of scallops. Because you know what goes well with Hollandaise sauce? Literally almost anything. It’s just a fuckton of butter with egg yolk and a drizzle of lemon. I’ll eat god damned toast slathered in Hollandaise sauce. Fortunately, I only make Hollandaise sauce 2 or 3 times a year, because it’s just a fuckton of butter, and I want to live past 55.
One of the reason Deus’s Galytn experiment is working as well as it is, is because, to the best of my knowledge, no impoverished, out of the way country like them has ever had a crazy billionaire come in and just start throwing a ton of money at a bunch of core problems, and do it responsibly. Sure, there have been plenty of government changeups in various third world countries, and every once in a while the new dictator will actually go full ham on infrastructure or something, but… as often as not, they’re involved in industrial grade drug trade to fund it, or are genociding some religious minority on the side, so whatever good they’re doing gets overshadowed by the other stuff.
Deus legitimately has no other agenda than improving the country… yes, so he can sort of become the Weyland Yutani of Galytn. I don’t mean that in the sense that he’s repeatedly fucking himself with ill advised bio-weapon experiments, I mean it like he is THE employer in the country. He understands that a comfortable and well educated middle class is one of the best engines for economic growth. A great deal of that economic growth goes back into his coffers, yes, but he’s continuing to improve the country to continue to improve his return. But then he goes and says something like on this page, about annexing nearby cities in order to improve the lives of the citizens there. It’s suspiciously like he actually cares about the quality of life of people under his “rule.” Which in itself seems suspicious.
A billion dollars in America will buy you a bit of highway and a decent sized mixmaster. Imagine how much roadwork you cold get done in BFE with that kind of cash. Deus is a big believer in public transit though. He’s built some roads but also a lot of railway. He thinks that the infrastructure cost of maintaining a few hundred million miles of roads and highways can eventually become prohibitive, not to mention the burden of putting the cost of car ownership on up and coming but still poor citizens. Plus… if you sell someone a car, you make X dollars from them, and a well maintained car can be run for a decade or two. If you sell someone a bus or rail pass every week for the rest of their lives, it provides a steady and predictable source of revenue.
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I’m pretty sure that’s not how the invasion thing works. Trick is if they INVITE you in…
Isnt he just using a variation on the chinese approach? He’s just using people instead of artificial islands.
I rather think that’s the point; Deus’ forces are ‘invading’ a nation at the request of the people who actually live on the fringes, a sort of mirror image of the issue Prince Cadram complained of in Terry Pratchett’s novel, Jingo. To paraphrase, You ‘pacify’ a neighboring nation to get rid of the marauders raiding your fringe settlements… and now the nations neighboring your newly-acquired lands are raiding THAT nation, and your new citizens are demanding that you pacify THOSE nations, and so on and so forth.
World congress is notoriously uninterested in wars in africa as long as none of their financial interests are harmed. Sure, UN does send troops, but often are woefully understaffed and depend on “if you do attack blue helmets then we will actually get involved.”
Plus I wouldn’t put it past Deus to have enough underhanded deals that enough UN members will vote against getting involved.
It has been said that a benevolent dictatorship is the most efficient form of government. Deus’ neighbors have seen how life has changed for the people Deus has conquered and decided that they want some of that. Deus invades and forces you to have reliable sources of food and indoor plumbing. Sounds pretty sweet if you’re currently living in a gutter.
As several government constructs a benevolent dictatorship sounds great in theory but has immense problems in practice.
In this case, how can you be sure the dictator stays benevolent? And the dictator’s successor?
As opposed to major political parties with the sole objective of demolishing each other in our beloved Adversarial “Democracies”?
And that “Powered by Credit” sticker we used to see ONLY on bumpers? But now we see it on military vehicles?
To answer with a famous quote (from memory):
“Democracy isn’t the best possible system. It is just the best that as yet has been tried.”
History has had a number of good monarchs (including any kind of rulership by one single person). Good in the meaning that they actually cared about their people. They usually don’t get as famous as the bad ones. The thing is, with a monarchy it is very hard to get rid of the bad ones. Democratic systems of any kind have means to get rid of the really bad ones after a foreseeable time. Not a full generation.
It wasn’t Churchill, but he is remembered for it. OTOH, in Richar Langworth’s blog we read: … Churchill’s reflection when he wrote in June 2007: “We are made to ask what it is that political democracy gives us. The system is utilitarian. But is it a fit object of faith and hope?”
And we should acknowledge the many foetid examples of democracy in this world… Well, they do have the vote… Russia, The People’s Republic of China, Malaysia, Indonesia…
The Founding Fathers had a lot of misgivings about the idea of pure democracy, which is why they used a representative model instead, with a basis in republicanism (ie, written laws). Because, to paraphrase that great movie, the Patriot, many of the Founding Fathers were concerned about the idea of trading one tyrant who lived 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants who live one mile away.”
Democracy is very fickle, and usually can result in tyranny of the majority. Having an underlying written set of laws which would be difficult to change without massive continual compromise, on the other hand, is somewhat more difficult to reduce into an oligarchy or tyranny. Or so the belief goes. Which is true, if you are basing it on comparison to ‘pure’ democracy. Very often, actual dictatorships use the farce of a supposed democracy to confirm their iron rule, like in the places that you mentioned. There tends to be no set of rules around voting, around keeping the vote fair, about not threatening the voters, about not getting rid of your political opponents, etc.
I think the actual quote by Churchill is:
‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’
Churchill – November 11, 1947
Which of course raises the question of how to define a ‘good’ system of Government.
Note that ‘prevalence among nations’ is not an adequate definition; it measures which system is best at propagating itself, not at performing the functions required of it. Note also that for much of history, including the present, prevalence and even domestic success of government systems are determined far more by who’s throwing their weight around on the international scene and what prejudices they use in doing so.
Democracy has a long track record of producing mediocrity at best, irresponsible populism at the slightest opportunity. The incessant distractions of campaigning and Party pettiness actively encourage short-term reaction, feel-good trivialities, and adversarial disintegration at the expense of long-term planning, hard-but-necessary choices, and unified action against wider issues. It is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption: that a working majority of the population has the understanding and integrity to choose based on the best long-term interests of the country as a whole, rather than their own short-term comfort. Unfortunately it spreads easily because it creates and panders to the populace’s delusions of influence and ability, not to mention the crusades that have been launched in its name.
Compare to elective-monarchy systems, such as the Irish/Gaelic tanistry. Instead of the succession being tied blindly to whoever happened to be born first to the recently-deceased monarch, these systems allow the best person for the job to be chosen to take over, and then to have the freedom of action to live up to their potential. Historical implementations tended to involve a relatively small (and usually male) shortlist based on family ties, but that is not an obligatory feature – a more modern version could have the shortlist be anyone with the requisite (high) levels of training and experience from lower levels of government, for example. It is not incompatible with being advised by public opinion and expert guidance, instead it provides a venue for deliberate evaluation and synthesis of these demands in the country’s long-term interest.
Given the prevalence of career politicians and family dynasties present in American politics, I’d say it more closely mirrors such an elective monarchy system than actual democracy. However, it does seem that we tend to choose the worst possible people for the job, rather than the best.
I think our primary problem is the number of people actively trying to subvert the government for their own ends, whether from without or within — or rather that the government was structured assuming that wouldn’t be a substantial problem, and thus insufficiently defends against it.
I believe the main point in designing a Republic is to limit the amount of harm any single person or group can do.
Unfortunately political parties basically encompass all the groups that are meant to check each other. Instead of congress working as if one of their jobs is to conduct oversight of the most powerful man on Earth we see individual lawmakers attacking or defending based solely on party lines. Partisanship has pretty much left some very important safeguards meaningless. And yet changing the basic framework would be near impossible and so I’m only really worried about how much these *** clowns can screw us over in the short term which unfortunately means a pandemic.
As for benevolent dictatorships, they’re great in theory. If you actually could get one you’d be set for life. Just not your grandkid’s life. There’s no way to pull off some reliable quality control. It’s easy enough to point out a few good examples in fiction but these tend to be more of an ideal then an actual person. Remember, Vetinari is the only known Patrician of Ankh-Morpork to have understood that the only way to stay on top is to keep everyone convinced that they’re better off with you then without. While that might seem to contradict the claim that it’s harder to get rid of a dictator it really just means constant assassination and revolution with no real stability.
I’s agree to the main first point, although I’d point out that the House majority’s presumption that it has the unilateral duty and privilege of counteracting the administration’s decisions and prerogatives, without regard to House rules, the House minority, or the other half of the legislature, is one of those “overreaches” that the checks and balances are supposed to check.
Your second point is also correct. Machiavelli suggested one solution for a dictator is to always make sure that your second in command is more feared than you are.
Ok, for your first part, please explain which House rules were violated.
For your second part, regard for the minority comes when a vote is called. If the minority doesn’t have the votes to prevail, that’s not a “disregard” for them, that’s just how numbers work. A few Dems did vote against impeachment, but they were in all cases from districts which voted for Trump in 2016, so those tools were just voting for their own best interest and not following their oath of office obligations, moral obligations, or civic obligations to the country. Just like every Republican who voted against impeachment, both in the House and then later in the Senate vote to convict.
A very few Republicans in the Senate went the route of standing up and saying before their ‘no’ vote something to the effect of: “While it is true that Trump did do all of those illegal things, that’s not enough to impeach a President,” which is utter bullshit.
“A very few Republicans in the Senate went the route of standing up and saying before their ‘no’ vote something to the effect of: “While it is true that Trump did do all of those illegal things, that’s not enough to impeach a President,” which is utter bullshit.”
Actually the main problem with the impeachment is the House literally did not state any actual CRIMES committed. So Trump ‘doing all those illegal things’ is incorrect, since they couldnt list any illegal things he did when they sent the two ‘charges’ to the Senate with no underlying charges. The House hearings were also rather poorly done and they did not bother to allow evidence from both sides, basically railroading things and rushing it through (before they decided to stall actually GIVING the charges they wrote up) to the Senate because Pelosi was trying to stretch things out without harming Biden in the process.
You claim to be a lawyer, and yet you make a mistake no actual lawyer should possibly be capable of making: Impeaching a president does not require that any actual crimes in a legal sense are either committed, alleged, or charged. Impeachment is strictly a political process, it is in no way a legal process for purposes of convicting someone of an actual crime. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” is not tied in any way to the legal code, with the sole exceptions of treason and bribery. And even with those two exceptions, impeachment with Senate confirmation does not mean that the impeached president is guilty in any legal sense for those two crimes. That would require a criminal prosecution.
You are not a lawyer. Or you are the most clueless lawyer in the history of lawyers. And you’ve just proven it with your idiotic post detailing your ignorance. You can choose which option you prefer, but there is no third option.
As for which House rules were violated by the Democrats – specifically by Nadler:
Denying minority day of hearings
Rejecting witnesses
House Rule XI -Clause 2(j)(1)
“Whenever a hearing is conducted by a committee on a measure or matter, the minority members of the committee shall be entitled, upon request to the chairman by a majority of them before the completion of the hearing, to call witnesses selected by the minority to testify with respect to that measure or matter during at least one day of hearing thereon.”
Even assuming that you’re correct, because it doesn’t matter to me, the House has a process for disciplining people who break its rules. With a 2/3 vote they could expel Nadler. So let the Republicans try that route, and good luck to them.
There are consequences of being the minority party, as the Republicans so clearly demonstrated when Moscow Mitch refused to allow Obama’s Supreme Court appointee to even be considered. When weighed against that, no amount of rules breaking in an impeachment where the result was a foregone conclusion has any significance.
“‘Despotism is all right as long as you have an able despot but sooner or later a meathead will be born –‘”
-Poul Anderson, “The Star Plunderer.”
“- and start an adversarial democracy with a parliament<b.*.”
* aka “Congress” (make your own innuendoes).
But Deus isn’t a dictator, he’s a despot. While both represent absolute control over a nation, according to Webster a dictator wields POLITICAL control. Deus wield economic control, he has a puppet for the politics…
The problem with the efficiency of that type of government lies in the word “benevolent”. I’m not a history buff, and I’m not willing to bother the Doctor of History I know for counter examples, but I can think of no instance where absolute control, however well intended initially, didn’t become tyranny. At which point the efficency disappears into a sea of corruption and other abuses of power.
This. As long as the dictatorship remains both benevolent and competent, it is and always will be the most efficient government.
But absolute power corrupts absolutely; just a matter of time before it isn’t benevolent anymore. Successfully getting through a single dictator’s life is a rare milestone, getting through a century? I don’t think that’s ever happened in mankind’s history.
“Benevolent dictatorship” is a purely hypothetical construct.
There have been a number of benevolent monarchs.
It just is a very volatile construct. Prone to collapse at seemingly small disturbances.
no there hasn’t, there where horrible monarchs that wrote those own history to make themselves seen benevolent.
its why they were volatile
the reality of the world is simple unless you treat everyone involved as an equal the culture is not benevolent. by their very nature of dictatorship/monarchy will always lead to some groups getting treated as lesser being and bread its down fall
Depends who you ask. There are plenty of absolute-rulers who were, by the morals and standards of their time (which is the only fair and equal way to measure them), benevolent to their subjects. It just usually coïncides with being quite the opposite to their neighbours and/or enemies. It usually derives from someone who takes charge to fix problems, or has been raised with a proper sense of ‘stewardship’.
Considering the gaping inequalities in the modern world: a good despot is better than most democracies, it’s just rarer than a bad one – but even that is less common than an ‘average’ one. In monarchies, 3rd generation is when it starts to go wrong or get entitlement.
Remember: the American War of Independence started because of the UK Parliament, not the Monarchy. If the King hadn’t handed so much power over to the democratically elected morons trying to line their own pockets, then the USA wouldn’t have wanted independence.
Meh. Even a “benevolent” dictatorship is a fertile field for corruption. The guy at the top may have all the heart in the world, but the people he delegates to don’t always (i.e. never do) share his ideals and motives. Or the people they delegate to. And so on.
It takes watchdogs to prevent corruption, and guess who really doesn’t like watchdogs looking over their shoulder (besides everyone): people in a position of except-for-the-watchdog absolute power.
Si. “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. and BTW, who watches the watchers?”
Wellington only fools say that
“benevolent” is a subjective concept not an objective one. so one can thing themselves benevolent not not really be benevolent in anyway.
You can always find SOMEONE who will invite you in (esp if you pay them enough). That’s how invading armies become ‘peacekeeping forces’.
The man certainly knows how to cross his T’s and dot his I’s
That’s not how annex works in that regard. When you cross your border to engage another sovereign nation you’ll have violated international law. Now, IF the UN actually does anything about it is something else entirely. Let’s face it, the UN turns a blind eye to a lot of stuff that’s strictly illegal.
Yeah, I’d guess Galytn was so small and impoverished it probably wasn’t even recognized as a nation by the U.N. and Deus likely picked neighbours to fight and annex the territory from, who aren’t favourites among any serious U.N. nation either.
But, a government is merely the ruling body over a geographic location, making and enforcing rules within that geographic area. If Galytn is enforcing it’s own laws in those geographic locations and no other nation is able, or willing, to contest it’s enforcement then it’s the defacto government of that region, regardless of if the U.N. recognises it as ruling over that area or not.
Maybe the U.N. will mark some dashed line and write “disputed border/region” or something, but if the other party isn’t effectively disputing the enforcement of Galytn’s rule and enforcement of law then the dispute is completely verbal and the people of that region are, for all intents and purposes, living under Galytn rule.
How well did this form of annexation work for Iraq in the first Gulf War?
It works a whole lot better when the country you’re annexing doesn’t have 10% of the world’s supply of oil.
I don’t know, why don’t we ask Crimea?
Saddam could have never held Kuwait, oil or no oil. Kuwait had allies sworn to protect them, and Iraq was a minor pimple on the world stage compared to those allies.
(You could argue that Kuwait wouldn’t have had those allies if they didn’t have the oil, but let’s keep this focused on the powers involved, shall we?)
Belarus also has powerful allies with treaty obligations to protect them. But hey wait, Russia has … nukes. Man, things aren’t looking quite as clear cut as they were when we were comparing an alliance of the world’s strongest nations against, haha, Iraq, are they?
In Desert Storm there are reports of Abrams takers who watched Iraqi tanks fire at them. Then watched the shells fall short and skip along the sand before coming to a stop far from the Abrams. And then the Abrams fired. And the Iraqi tank exploded.
The Iraqis parked their tanks “hull down” behind sand berms. The Abrams shot through the sand berm, <through the Iraqi tank front armor, and the Iraqi tank exploded.
Abrams spotters were seeing a strange thing on their heat sensors: It looked like a basketball appeared behind some sand, floated up a foot or two, then floated back down and disappeared. Turns out this was the Iraqi tanker spotter sticking their heads up out of their tank to take a look, then ducking back down again. Again, firing ensued and Iraqi tank explosions followed.
But Iraq didn't have nukes. They didn't even have conventional WMDs, because they had dismantled them all and the UN had verified this fact.
George Bush declared that the "Axis of Evil" was Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. And then the US invaded Iraq and deposed their leader. Let's use grade school diplomacy to understand this: When the bully in the grade school play ground points to 3 kids and declares them his enemies, and then beats the shit out of one of those kids, is it at all surprising that the other two kids go looking for the only stick that might keep that bully away from them? Think about that anytime you wonder why North Korea and Iran seem to really, really, really want to hold on to their nuclear programs.
Trump legitimized Kim Jong Un by meeting with the dictator. Then Kim made a bunch of promises that we know he is not keeping, and yet Trump keeps claiming that he’s done a great job there.
Iran was actually standing down their nuclear program, with some verification in place, and then Trump dismantled our multi-national treaty with them and got nothing in return.
“I’m not trespassing, it becomes my property the moment I walk onto it.” That’s so ridiculous the UN wouldn’t even bother responding, and I honestly can’t see Deus defending such a moronic stance.
“The people demanded it” seems much more defensible. And yet, as others have pointed out, the UN probably wouldn’t do anything initially either way.
I somehow suspect that Deus is on a bit more firm footing than we’d initially suspect given how quickly the borders shift in certain parts of Africa due to all the civil wars in the region.
Shouldn’t that be “since none of those countries territory from a G-8 country AND I’m not Israel”?
Mentioning Israel that way in the comic would probably result in plenty of hate-posting, flamewars and general unpleasantness. The same goes for quite a few nations close to Israel.
In our world, I’d expect that Israel would have welcomed the aliens in, knowing exactly what it is like to nearly have been exterminated and to be hated simply for existing.
the plus side: The Israelis would fight to the death to defend them.
the minus side: The Israelis would fight to the death to defend them.
The problem is that Israel is a thorn in the eyes of many.
My gripe is mostly their settling of occupied territories. This is so very much against intenational law.
And the pro people yammer about ‘Israel’s historical claim’ to those areas. Sorry, but no. I don’t consider biblical history valid deeds.
5….
4…
3…
Any second now, I expect a troll to show up…
(Or am I the troll?)
Anyway, you get the idea. Mentioning Israel is bound to start a flamewar.
Well if the Palestinians and other Islamic groups would stop being antagonistic and make peace there would be no problems.
Problem is the Palestinians making peace would be a lot like the Native Americans making peace with the US – without the land rights and recognition the Native Americans had. There’s literally nothing in it for them at this point in time.
C’mon now, Jared made the most perfect peace treaty ever, and then went on live TV and said that if the Palestinians didn’t accept it that they were idiots.
And on the subject of idiocy, if you can’t trust the judgement of the man who made the largest NY city real estate purchase immediately before the housing market/real estate collapse, and is still being bailed out of it by other people much smarter than him, well who can you trust?
Yeah um… you are pretty much being the troll, yes, with that post. And yes, it’s bound to start a flamewar, but not because of people defending Israel from a legal standpoint – rather because of people attacking it from an inherently bigoted standpoint (not calling you a bigot, I’m saying the reasons used to attack Israel have been hsitorically based on an inherent bigotry against jews).
I won’t even bother arguing how Israel has non-biblical, internationally consistent, completely legal claims to the land, that have nothing whatsoever to do with the bible or the talmud or any other religious text, because we will go waaay off on tangents then (or how aside from the jewish people, the only other people who have a legitimate claim to the land are the Sarmatians, which number about 500 or so people, whom Israel granted automatic citizenship for that purpose).
Also what DR. Revenge said is completely correct as well.
So yes, probably not a good idea to bring it up. Just for different reasons than you’re assuming.
> I’m saying the reasons used to attack Israel have been hsitorically based on an inherent bigotry against jews
Sorry, they’re a nuclear-armed country that refuses to define their borders and is actively invading their neighbors with massive financial and material support from the USA (among other “Western” nations)
They were created several decades ago by an invasion of Palestine (which mostly no longer exists, because of that invasion)
None of that has anything to do with religion.
“Sorry, they’re a nuclear-armed country”
Which has never used their nukes, despite being constantly attacked by all sides by people who have, in their constitutions, the destruction of Israel, target Israeli civilians on PURPOSE, and have, also written in their constitutions, that they want the death of every jewish man, woman, and child and drive them into the sea
“that refuses to define their borders”
They’ve define their borders multiple times, then they get attacked on all sides, or the other side refuses to acknowledge their existence and tries to destroy them. Israel has definitely defined their borders. Unfortunately most of the arab countries around them, except for Israel and I think Jordan, refuse to even acknowledge there ARE borders.
“and is actively invading their neighbors”
I don’t think you understand what the word ‘invading’ means. When someone attacks your country and is threatening to kill every single citizen, attacking back or defending yourself is not invading. Try again.
“with massive financial and material support from the USA (among other “Western” nations)”
Actually the surrounding arab countries and ‘palestinean’ people also get massive funding from the USA, and where Europe is concerned, MUCH more funding. Not surprising, since Europe has a little bit of history with exterminating jews and forcing them out of their countries (the Hugenots, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, etc).
Again… if the arabs and palestinean proxies laid down their arms, there would be peace. If the jews laid down their arms, there would be no more Israel. Sorry that you feel that the only peace can be the extermination of an entire religion/nationality, but that doesnt feel much like peace to the people who would be exterminated, especially since they’ve had people try to do that to them continuously over the last 2000 years, and in particular over the last 100 years.
“They were created several decades ago”
You REALLY need to learn about when nations in the Middle East were created. And Israel actually goes back thousands of years. The Romans renamed it Palestine as an insult to the Jews, as a play on the word “Philistines.” And until about 100 years ago, there was no persistent population in the region except for the Jews and the Sarmatians.
When Mark Twain visited the region in 1867, he described it as a barren wasteland of nothing, and published his impressions in “Innocents Abroad.”
“….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
The only population he even mentioned living there at all were the jews, who maintained a constant presence for several millenia.
“by an invasion of Palestine (which mostly no longer exists, because of that invasion)”
You are absurdly ignorant of history. The jews were already living in the area. There were no people called ‘palestineans’ at the time – they were jordanians and egyptians who moved into the area AFTER the legal purchases. Maybe you should read up on Israel’s legal founding. It’s probably the single most legally-based creation of a nation in history, even before you take into account that the jews have maintained a consistent presence only equaled by the Sarmatians.
To quote Alan Dershowitz, who made a marvellous video on this:
“Of all the countries that have come into existence in the last century, no country’s birth certificate is more legitimate than that of Israel.
One reason is that many of the men who founded the country — Theodore Herzl, Ze’ev Jabotinosky, David Ben Gurion, Menecham Begin, and Yitchak Shamir — were either lawyers or had legal training. They were obsessed with “making it legal.”
Unlike almost every other country, lawyers, not generals, were the midwives of Israel’s birth — or more accurately re-birth, since it had existed as an independent country twice before in history.
Step by legal step Israel moved legally toward nationhood — from the Balfour Declaration in 1917, to the San Remo Agreement in 1920, the League of Nations Resolution in 1922, to the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine in 1924, to the partition of land ordained by the United Nations in 1947 into a nation-state for the Jewish people and an Arab state.
Yet, immediately upon its lawful establishment in 1948 as the nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel was illegally attacked by all the surrounding Arab states as well as by elements of the local Arab population. In defending its right to exist during that war, Israel lost one percent of its population, including many civilians and Holocaust survivors. It also lost some of the land assigned to it by the United Nations. It captured other land from the aggressors that was originally assigned to the Arab state. The end result of that war against Israel was an armistice line that prevailed until 1967, when Israel was once again attacked by Jordan during Israel’s war with Egypt and Syria.
Between 1948 and 1967, despite the armistice, Arab terrorists continued to infiltrate Israeli borders and to injure and kill Israeli citizens. This was part of an official policy by the surrounding governments and by leaders of local Palestinian groups. All of it was in violation, obvious violation of International law.
Following the establishment of Israel a transfer of populations occurred. Several hundred thousand Arabs who fled from Israel during the War of Independence were not allowed to return. Some had chosen to leave, assured by their Arab leaders that the fledging country would not last a week. Others were forced to leave. At that time, approximately the same number of Jews were forced to leave Arab countries — another violation of International law — where they had lived for thousands of years. The difference was that Arab countries kept the Arabs who left Israel in refugee camps, where many of them still live more than half a century after leaving Israel. And Israel, on the other hand, fully integrated all the Jewish refugees from Arab countries into Israeli society, where many of their descendants now serve in the highest positions of Israeli life.
Israel’s establishment as the nation-state of the Jewish people by entirely lawful means is quite remarkable for several reasons. First, there is no country in the world that is as surrounded by hostile enemies as is Israel. It’s been that way since 1948. Yet Israel sought the way of the pen rather than of the sword. It has needed the sword to survive. But its preference has always been for the pen, that is, for peaceful negotiations. Its peace treaty with Egypt in 1978, its peaceful abandonment of Gaza in 2005, and its many attempts to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians are examples.
Yet despite its entirely lawful origins, Israel is the only country in the world today whose origins — and therefore its very legitimacy — have been questioned by the General Assembly of the United Nations, by numerous member nations and by many organizations that claim the mantle of human rights and the rule of law.
Ironically, current attacks on Israel’s legitimacy have taken the form of “lawfare” – the use of international law as a weapon. Any fair tribunal that judged Israel by universal standards would reject such attacks out of hand. But, alas, international courts, like the UN itself, have been packed by those bitterly antagonistic to the nation-state for the Jewish people. For example, the misnamed International Court of Justice refuses to acknowledge that Israel, a country that deals with terror attacks and the threats of terror attacks on a regular basis, has any special security needs.
As I’ve demonstrated, this phenomenon — questioning the very right of Israel to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people — cannot be explained on legal grounds or on any other rational basis, for that matter.
So, then, how can this worldwide attack on Israel alone be explained? In only one way: It is pure bigotry. And there’s a word for this bigotry. Anti-Semitism.
“None of that has anything to do with religion.”
The reasons Israel is constantly ATTACKED is because of antisemitism. The reason Israel defends itself, however, is because of not wanting to have every man, woman, and child murdered. Literally everything you said was absurdly incorrect.
PS – sorry for the very long post. It’s not meant to be political even. I tend to write a lot when dealing with anyone saying something incorrect about the law, and like I mentioned above, there’s no modern nation that probably has more legal standing than Israel. So most of my arguments were from very legal standpoints, since modern Israel was also based on very legal standpoints.
That’s… Somewhat one-sided. And it falls into the usual trap of taking ‘criticism of Israel’s policies’ to automatically mean ‘criticism of Israel’s people’ and from there to ‘primarily on grounds of race/religion’. Just because there’s a label for criticising based on ‘what you are’, it does not make you immune to criticism based on ‘what you do’.
As regards the foundation of Israel itself, I’m not sure to what extent you’re aware of the campaign of Zionist terrorism against the legitimate government of the time (early-mid 1940s) that led to that establishment. But a country whose founding philosophy could easily be described as ‘lebensraum for the Jews’ is hardly going to make itself popular when it’s displacing people who’ve lived on that land for generations, and encouraging mass immigration on the basis of ethnicity to help swing the numbers. Let alone when it continues to blockade civilian populations for decades thereafter on the basis of ethnicity.
I think there have been some scifi stories where stuff like that actually did happen and the main country which did accept alien refugees was Israel because of the whole ‘we know what it’s like to be persecuted/hunted/lied about/exteriminted en masse/etc.’
Can’t remember the name of the book though. I do remember that in the zombie book, World War Z, Israel survived relatively well because while most other nations did not wall up to keep the zombies out at the first sign of trouble, Israel did because they’re so used to being attacked and so used to being on the defense. As a result, after the zombie wars, Israel was one of the major powers in the aftermath because they were relatively unharmed compared to most nations. Not to be confused with the movie, which had almost nothing to do with the book aside from the title.
Rather than complaining about the Talmud accounts not being a ‘proper’ record (which is pointless – we have plenty of independent documentation from the Greeks and Romans showing that Jews lived in Israel about 2,000 years ago), use it as the opposite: the Talmud shows that they took ownership of the land by evicting the previous residents.
Either that was valid method – in which case, by the same reasoning, the land now belongs to the people currently there, not to Israel – or it isn’t – in which case, it belongs to the descendants of the evicted people (and part of the conflict is claims that those descendants are the people currently living there, having moved back in when the Jews were scattered) and Israel should stop trying to occupy it.
Have cake or eat it, you can. Not both, hmm, yes?
Sorry, but that is just naive. Israel is as rabidly partisan for themselves as is any of their neighbors. They do not welcome outsiders into their community.
Here’s a primer for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_policy_for_non-Jewish_African_refugees
While I do not know for certain, smart money is on the Alari not being amongst the Chosen People.
You might want to read up on Israel’s history of helping countries like Ethiopia, providing aid to Christians being slaughtered in Syria, providing medical equipment and expertise to other Arab countries AND the Palestineans (only for them to refuse the help because they did not want any equipment that was made by jewish hands – true story), and the 1 million extremely loyal Israeli Arabs that are citizens of Israel who even have political parties and members of the Israeli parliament (the Knesset), who live far better in Israel with equal rights to ny other Israeli citizen, regardless of religion, than the majority of Arabs in the surrounding countries.
PS – Israel has only 8.8 million people (and at the time of what I described, it was a population of only 5 million people, 4 million of whom were jews, 1 million of whom were Israeli arabs). And they still did more to help save lives of Christians AND Muslims being slaughtered in Syria than any of the surrounding countries.
Don’t let a wikipedia article – which tends to be HEAVILY edited – cause you to ignore a very consistent
history of humanitarian actions by Israel, including against people who try to murder them on a regular basis for the crime of being a different religion than the surrounding nations, who had forcibly kicked out or exterminated almost all jews from each of the surrounding countries, and had also committed an attempted genocide of all Christians in Syria, while Israel is the one nation in that region that allows members outside the majority religion to live in the country without paying a special tax (ie, a jizya) or being forcibly converted.
—
TL;DR – I would not be surprised AT ALL if Israel had been quite willing to take in alien refugees in this sort of hypothetical situation, given their history of humanitarian aid and taking in refugees (even if on a temporary basis).
The Baha’i’ religion is now headquartered in Haifa, Israel.
There are many mosques in Israel. There aren’t synagogues in the countries that have expelled their Jews (Iraq had 250,000, now it has 1. Afghanistan’s down to 1. Egypt has gone from 125,000 to about 20 people, all in an old age home, etc).
Israeli humanitarian aid arrived in Haiti shortly after that from the USA. Their aid contributions were left to rot in Ethiopia during their famine, as they would rather die than accept aid from Jews.
Israeli medics will treat Syrain, Lebanese or Palestinan injured before they treat people from their own country, based on need.
There is no hatred of any group on earth comparable to the hatred of the Israelis.
Deux had contact with the Alari via his stargate, setting himself up as their liaison on earth. He’s chosen a tiny, destitute nation to act in because even the poorest nation would rank among the world’s wealthiest of businesses. He has the ability to assume control of the tiny nation He’d be quickly pushed aside in any non-starving country.
I’d expect that, in our world, Israel would have welcomed the aliens in, knowing exactly what it is like to have nearly been exterminated and to be hated for existing.
The plus side: The Israelis would fight to the death to defend them.
The minus side: The Israelis would fight to the death to defend them.
Yes you pointed out that Deus’s invasion on a UN country will result in decades of problems for all. the UN has not even recognized Israel’s possession of lands that belonged to no other country. Much less those gained after being attacked by a UN member.
The difference is that there is literally no anti-Deus-Galtyn faction worth mentioning in the region. Nothing like an entire religion focused on a small holy site at the center of his territory.
A benevolent despot is still a despot. Just because he is getting rid of less than benevolent despots doesn’t change that in any Lex Luther kind of way. It doesn’t mean that I would not respet him, but trust him? Only in situations where it is in his best interest.
I do think that a benevolent tyrant (not despot) is the best sort of government. The problem is s/he would need to be immortal, because history has shown us that the good work of a good king has often quickly been ruined by their sons.
I can’t imagine Deus doesn’t have at least several contingencies in the works in that regard. He’s not going to let something like growing old and dying get in the way of his plans.
you think that only because you never put thought into seeing over people as real humans with thoughts, will and wants and needs. you imagining a world where only the tyrant is a full person and everyone else is just a unthinking NPC.
More usually grandkids: Good King takes over, is good. Raises child with sense of duty, remembering what life was like before. Mediocre King takes over, just about holds things together. Raises child as “Child of King”. Entitled brat takes over. Is bad.
Some sort of non-hereditary meritocratic monarchy would work to a reasonable extent, assuming you could keep politicians out of the process. Consider: Bill Gates, Will Smith and George Lucas might be eligible, but Trump and Clinton probably wouldn’t be…
The issue here is: who gets to decide which merits and who conforms to those rules.
After all, becoming a supreme court judge if supposed to be on merit, yet we have brett kavanaugh.
Please tell me that Will Smith’s son, Jaden, wouldnt be eligible.
Also, not trying to go down another political thing, but why would Trump not be eligible if you were talking about non-hereditary political systems, if Bill Gates is eligible? Both of them are not actually politicians (or at least Trump was not, prior to becoming President in 2016, and before that he had absolutely no political experience whatsoever, just like Bill Gates or George Lucas or Will Smith). Genuine question on how this non-hereditary meritocratic monarchy would work.
Trump was in essence “elected by the people” (I won’t give my opinion on the electoral college)
Cavanaugh was put forward by Trump and then vetted by (once again, popularly elected) officials who were supposed to look into his past actions and words and then give an unbiased final word on putting him in the right place.
Wether they did or not is another story.
Which brings me back to “who gets to decide who has merit in a meritocracy?”
“Some sort of non-hereditary meritocratic monarchy would work to a reasonable extent, assuming you could keep politicians out of the process. Consider: Bill Gates, Will Smith and George Lucas might be eligible, but Trump and Clinton probably wouldn’t be…” – Chronocidal
“[Why] would Trump not be eligible if you were talking about non-hereditary political systems, if Bill Gates is eligible?” – Pander
From the way Chronocidal phrased their description, it sounds as though the confusion comes from their jumping two steps in one. As I understand it, their idea is not about defining a class of ‘politicians’ that can then be excluded from consideration – if it were purely that, then you’re right that Trump was not (at the time of candidacy) politician enough to fall into that class. It’s more about removing the political influence from the decision process, so that the leader can be chosen on merit rather than demagoguery. If the best person for the job genuinely happens to come from a political background, so be it – but the door would also be open to candidates who’ve spent decades establishing a track record in other ways. Saying that Trump or Clinton would not be eligible is a bit of an overreach: they may be eligible for consideration, but their chances of being more eligible for selection than countless other contenders is low.
I am in, like, three minds about Deus, what he’s up to (and most importantly, HOW he’s up to it)…but I gotta admire his ability to actually, legitimately get shhh done that actual government leaders refuse to do.
…Still leaning heavily toward him being a super with an ability to find out all sorts of information about others that would be inconvenient for anyone to know…but advantageous for Deus to learn it. But time will tell, I’m sure…
I’m guessing a power similar to Zeus, one of his lesser known godly powers – coital absorbption. Yeah, the greeks thought that sex had a lot of transfer abilities, and Zeus was said to go on a shag campaign before he became king of the gods, were he banged a wise woman for wisdom, etc etc.
Perhaps if he’d bedded his wife more often, he might have absorbed some faithfulness, he?
Hera was the goddess of marriage and birth, not fidelity/faithfulness. Zeus married her, and that seems to be as good a way for ‘absorbing’ her aspect of marriage as is bedding her. As for birth, well, Athena did spring from the head of Zeus without any help from a womb. so Zeus apparently picked up the birth aspect from Hera as well, just modified for his physiology.
This is all hilarious and part of the reason I love greek mythology.
I see Deus as somebody who knows he has the supervillain gene, and who is coming up with his own therapy for it because there’s nobody else that will, or more importantly, *can*.
What Deus is doing is simple. He’s building a power base.
He’s gathering allies and creating a skilled workforce with factories, and infrastructure to support them.
Yes, in the short to middle-term the inhabitants are benefitting greatly, but in the long term?
That depends entirely on what he plans to use that workforce for, and what his end goals are.
I enjoy Deus primarily because he is an amazing antagonist, and while good heroes are easy to write, good villains, not so much. Heck, he may even be an antihero at some point in the future of the comic. As much as I like him for his benevolent application of the ‘supervillain gene’ as others have dubbed it, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop and the ‘world domination’ aspect to show its ugly face. I will be very happy to be proven wrong in that respect.
I’m still leaning towards time traveller version of himself from the future gave him enough information he needs to become a TRULY self-made man. :)
Although there are probably fluctuations in the timeline so he is not all knowing – he probably has a lot of the most pertinent points.
The problem of trying to depict someone as an evil despot is they have to ACT like an evil despot. Deus is someone who’s working to improve the lives of his
employeescitizens and is actually doing precisely that. That it makes him both look good and improve his profit margin is just a perk.So, his alignment is “Pragmatic Evil”?
More like Pragmatic Neutral (Greedy), I’d imagine, as he hasn’t actually done anything evil just for the sake of being evil.
The word isn’t Pragmatic, it’s Ruthless. And not Evil? He killed the ruler of a nation in cold blood to advance his agenda – that’s Evil. And taunting a bully known for violence, then having a minion assassinate him when he reacts the way you planned for is DEFINITELY in cold blood.
Evil for the sake of doing evil isn’t alignment Evil, its alignment Stupid (and Deus certainly isn’t that).
See, the problem here is that ‘evil’ is an entirely subjective term. To someone who merely sees the extrajudicial slaying of a man in cold blood with zero context, yes, it appears to be an evil act. To all the citizens of Galytn, who are now living far better lives with freedom, safety and prosperity, the removal of their former despot is a good thing. Hell, by now, I’m sure even his son, who initially was probably *incredibly pissed off* likely sees the inherent positive effect of the act, even if he still laments the loss of his father.
To build upon that, how many tyrants in history could have been legitimately killed in cold blood and the rest of the world would’ve (and did) say “Oh, good, I’m glad that’s over with.” Hell, without mentioning any names, there are probably more than a few legitimately elected leaders right now that many people hope are killed and would probably risk being shamed on twitter to celebrate it if they were.
I think it’s fairer to characterize Deus’ actions as ‘morally gray, but still technically not legal’ – unfortunately for his detractors, the positive, thus far, is far outweighting the negative.
> See, the problem here is that ‘evil’ is an entirely subjective term.
No, some shit’s just evil no matter what a person might think to the contrary.
evil is what a society says it is. If a society says cannibalism is good, guess what? Same for slavery, child marriage, institutional discrimination, and anything else.
evil is simply treating others as a lesser beings.
thats universal and understood by both animals and people no matter what age when it comes to them personally. the problem come form the fact that humans are very good at rationalizing their own views and discounting other peoples.
so their actions are still evil they just don’t care which is different
Uh, no.
Raping children, murdering people to eat them, treating people like dirt because of superficial characteristics or ancestry, slavery, etc… wrong no matter what.
How… exactly… is ordering your body guards to kill a murderous dictator who had JUST ordered his guards to murder you, after you told him you were going to make his country wealthy but would NOT be just writing him a blank check because he’s a murderous petty dictator, an evil act?
Seems to me it’s complete self-defense. And a net positive for the world and for that nation’s people. If the murderous dictator just said ‘You can leave. I’m not taking your deal’ (or better yet ‘I will take your deal because I can make more money legally than enslaving my own people like I’ve been doing for decades’) then he would not have died, because the tipping point was him trying to murder Deus and Deus not having any of that.
I was responding to the postmodernist garbage that evil is “subjective”, and that alone.
Ohhh okay then. You’re talking about people who say there’s no such thing as definitive good and evil, and everything is a shade of gray based on perspective and perspective alone.
Yeah. That I agree with you on to an extent. I think that’s a lot of pocky as well.
There are some areas in which evil is most definitely objective, since certain actions tend to be seen as evil despite differences in culture, society, era, etc.
The devil’s in the details though. The label of ‘evil’ does tend to get a bit diluted when people use it too frequently for smaller things, or when they remove context from the actions that they are labelling as evil (which is where some of my defense of Deus – praise be upon him amen – comes into play).
He did show the son some ‘home videos’ of his father’s actions.
The son probably doesn’t lament the ‘loss’ very much.
And Deus did offer his condolences…
And a crown and wealth.
Quite correct. “… Your government thrives on corruption, terror squads, abduction. …”
But I remember the last day of Salvador Allende’s life (did you know his socialist government was democratically elected by the people of Chile?) as Augusto Pinochet’s troops stormed the Presidential Palace. Allende ordered his troops to flee, then used a Kalashnikov to suicide rather than be captured for a death by torture. Of course, Richard Nixon’s government had nothing to do with that, did it? Obviously not, because Gerald Ford did nothing to undo the Chilean disaster, and neither did any successive U.S. Presidencies.
Deus positively radiates enlightened self-interest. I can live with him.
Nope. Not evil. Maybe even “Ruthless Good”.
That Ruler he killed “in cold blood’ had murdered thousands. It would be evil to leave an evil man alive when his living would muddy the legitimacy of his successor and thus prevent millions of people from having a better life.
“No code against killing” =/= “evil”.
I would say Chaotic Good.
He does what he believes is good, regardless of rules.
No, he does what he believes will benefit HIM.
In D&D style alignments, “Good” and “Evil” are (roughly) along the “Selfless / Selfish” line rather than the “altruistic-Martyr / cartoon-Villain” line.
It doesn’t improve his profit margin. What he’s doing is hugely costly and might pay off in the future (although mostly for other people)… but after he’s done with one level of expansion he moves to the next level and repeats the process so he’s always in the “hugely costly” area.
What about the alien tech he got on Fracture?
You’re making a big assumption in assuming we know all of what Deus wants.
Steak Oscar? my first impression was ‘Steak au Poivre’ but hey, it’s drawn with asparagus so Steak Oscar it is.
Anyway, I always get a bit suspicious if the food is smothered in sauce.
Bit skimpy on the sides though.
au Poivre sauce is darker and the peppercorns are round, not large flakes like that. Oscar is topped with crab (or any shellfish depending), then the seafood and steak medallion are topped with Bearnaise Sauce, which is just Hollandaise with Tarragon and shallot added to it. Asparagus is the standard side/base for the dish but isn’t strictly necessary
“International law.” Ha. But I think the real stretch is the idea Deus could spend the money without losing his shirt to corruption.
Considering what happened to the previous king of Galytn, I really don’t think Deus is particularly worried about being the victim of corruption. He’ll ignore it up to the point where it’s disrupting his plans, at which point the problem will *disappear*.
It wouldn’t take many heart attacks before the remaining bureaucrats took the hint, either. For that matter, once Deus’s subjects internalized the fact they’re now being ruled by somebody who *will* enforce the rules, they’ll go after the corruption themselves. I suspect that Gatlyn’s cops and judges are very carefully vetted and picked for nigh-monastic self-discipline.
Self-discipline isn’t that much needed when there are enforced rules and following them is more personally profitable than breaking them.
Once you establish a norm (with a few heads on pikes as needed) the rest will follow as long as you have given them positive ways to engage the rules, jockey for power, and win or lose.
I think it was LRH that said, “If you don’t allow them to have a game, then getting YOU will be the game.”
Deus won’t be that stupid.
You could actually get a lot of infrastructure in the U.S., IF contracts weren’t picked up by someone’s cousin-in-law.
It’s not so much the cousins-in-law, and more the large corporations offering high-paying consultancy jobs to politicians and bureaucrats when they retire from “public service”. The company gets some tax breaks, the politician gets some big government-supported jobs programs in his state, and everyone is happy except the taxpayer…
PoTAto, potAHto…
I’m just wondering, has anyone ever actually pronounced it ‘po-tah-to’?
Or for that matter, has anyone ever prounounced it ‘to-mah-to’?
Customer: “Excuse me, I’d like a a hamburger on a potahto bun, with some tomahto ketchup.”
Me (if I ran a burger joint): “Get the hell out of my restaurant you freak.” (takes out her shotgun) *cla-click!*
Most people in Oz say ‘to-mah-to’. Never heard ‘to-may-to’, or ‘po-tah-to’.
Hmm. Okay then. You and other Australians can eat at my fictional burger joint then. But if you say potahto, yer outta there! :)
Also if you say catsup instead of ketchup. I have my standards, sorry, and that is a bridge too far.
I always wondered what “catsup” is… Some fancy pet-food?
Likewise in Britain, po-tay-to and to-mah-to (and now you’ve got me thinking of hobbitses).
I’m playing a max lvl D&D game (slightly modified) with a lot of backstory that isn’t really pertinent. It’s an eastern-ish setting (in the way D&D sometimes is) and my character is an Oni of Greed. He’s horrendously evil, willing to do anything for his goals and… would get along fabulously with Deus here.
He does not believe in possessing all that is, but instead believes in possessing all that will ever be… and in order to do that, humanity needs to have a bright, productive, profitable future to continue to fuel his ever growing hoard. Humanity can’t make more art and magic and technology for him to possess if they’re all penniless and dying. Happiness with just the right amount of both challenge and opportunity allow for a far more conducive environment for gold, power, knowledge, innovation and art to flow in.
His hope is to eventually ursurp even the gods in the eyes of the city, taking and possessing even their faith, love and very souls… Which he will of course keep carefully polished, cleaned and happy in his vaults serving as an effective paradise because they shine brighter that way.
Now admittedly he and Deus might have similar ideas, and ideals, of greed… but they’d eventually come head to head if they shared a world and achieved all of their goals. Still, before that, they’d get along.
“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”
That’s so sinister, it’s beautiful. Hell, it would explain a lot of religions as well, for that matter.
Petty god: Hoo boy if i tell these people all to live pious lives free of sin and corruption, i’ll get all those shiny souls for my collection! Mint in box, baby!!!
Okay, now I’m fucking scaring myself.
so Galytn flag design contest?
I propose: DEUS in gold, upon a field of greenbacks, the Galtyn royal symbol tucked discreetly into a small corner.
Hapana. Go with what you’ve got, it’s no more ridiculous than any other. Personally, I’d reduce the central G! a bit, probably to make it 1/3 of the flag height, and a background change, maybe a pale blue? The G! should be a gold colour I think.
God damn. Deus is too damn smart . Appealing to people’s greed, especially in that region, will always work. He’s realised that the smartest thing too is the Vetinari option. Make it so you are too important to ever be removed from the game
Shit, he’s so smart, he’s not even doing that. He’s appealing to their desire to live safe, comfortable lives. The greed comes later, and I’m not even sure if his plan will allow that kind of monkeywrench in the works.
Deus is so pragmatic that I wonder if he’s a villain or not.
(After watching Return of the Jedi) “I want to be Emperor Palpatine when I grow up.”
“Son, that guy was capital E Evil.”
“No, he was just an epic dumbass. ‘Let’s spend the entire Galactic budget to build a Death Star… What do you mean some hick farmboy blew it up? Start building another one! Twice as big goddamnit! I want my penis substitute back ever since that badass MOFO Jedi with the pimpsaber rotted mine off!”
(Deus’ dad is confused since it’s 1983) “Uh…”
“DON’T QUESTION IT, FATHER!”
Why would you want to be someone you see as an epic dumbass?
“So I can show you how it should be done.
can confirm.
Also…
“OH NO! I’M SHOOTING LIGHTNING AND THEY’RE REFLECTING IT BACK AT ME AND ITS KILLING ME!”
Why not just stop shooting lightni-
“I MUST KEEP SHOOTING MORE LIGHTNING UNTIL I DIE!”
This is absolutely nitpicking, but then again I have also been picking aphids off my basil plant, so it seems appropriate.
Railways for transporting people aren’t really profitable, so they’re almost always subsidised to some degree (I don’t think there are any exceptions to this in Europe – which has relatively high railway usage)[citation needed]. There are exceptions of course, China’s high speed railway is quite profitable, but I’m not sure that makes up for the fact the rest of their railways are not. There’s definitely an argument for wider benefits on the economy that Deus might profit from, but if you charged people the real cost to build/maintain railways, it seems unlikely people in Galytyn would be able to afford it.
Commuter rail is seriously subsidized. And I don’t trust China’s reports on their system–whether is it railroads or viruses.
Railways for people suffer from the iniquitously high construction cost, which is difficult to amortize from ticket revenue. On the other hand, railways can carry megatons of freight at ludicrously low per-tonne rates.
Germany and later Britain worked it out properly in the then Tanganyika, by laying all rail in East/West orientation, while laying the main highways North/South. This enabled agricultural and industrial goods to get in and out economically via seaports, and people were well-served by privately-owned bus services in an economy too impoverished to afford private motor cars.
As well, most nations have discovered the magic of train stations: how population centers miraculously spring up around them… which need market gardens and farms to feed the masses…
Most places with heavy passenger rail, there are some key routes that make plenty of money, and a lot more that run at a loss. Overall, the entire network usually runs at a loss, which is why most rail networks are either run by the government directly, or by companies majority-owned by the government.
Take Japan, for example… the Tokaido line runs between the two biggest cities, Tokyo and Osaka, passing through Nagoya and Kyoto along the way. With about half a million passengers a day, that one line makes up a big chunk (80%?) of JR Central revenue, enough that they’re at least considering upgrading the route to a 600km/h maglev, despite the huge expense of doing so. But that route is very subsidizing almost all of the others.
This is highly dependent on the time frame you’re looking at, and the overall usage of the railway. As with any infrastructure project, there is a large initial outlay of resources (time, effort, and money), and recurring maintenance costs, which are meant to be offset by the project in the long term – Most profit producing infrastructure projects (toll highways, canals, hydroelectric dams, etc) is focused on producing a consistent profit yearly (ie, bringing in more than it’s maintenance and operation costs), while considering the initial outlay of resources as something to be paid off over a fixed term (anywhere from a few decades to a few centuries).
There are a myriad of privately owned railways in Japan, for instance, which focus primarily or exclusively on transporting people, and do quite respectably for themselves. They’re typically short by the understanding we have of rail-lines here, often running through various neighborhoods in a city, creating a connections between them and a larger long distance rail line (which probably is subsidized to some degree). The key to creating a profitable line like this is about volume of passengers versus length of the line and maintenance (and therefore frequency of trips possible). A Short length of line (10-20 stops) running through an urbanized area, like Osaka, can easily turn a profit, especially if the population buys into the use of rail heavily.
It helps tremendously, of course, if the rights of way can be acquired at little to no cost initially, and the track is laid for low cost as well. Both of these situations presumably apply to Deus’ actions. Even if he isn’t using some space magic/science equipment he brought back to create or lay any of the rails, or make them, he’s presumably paying third world wages to his population, slowly increasing these so as not to entirely disrupt the local economy overnight.
So, I suspect Deus is planning to turn an operational profit (bring in more than his cost to run the rail) in the immediate future, while also greatly improving the overall logistics of the economy he is tying (a portion of?) his wealth to. This is especially true of he’s laying mixed use rail, or freight rail side by side with his passenger rail. And it is important to note the point that Dave made – development costs on the railroad aside, if Deus can turn a regular yearly profit (bringing in more revenue than it costs to maintain and run the railroad), it does create a steady revenue stream.
It also generates a lot of small size but consistent movement of money within the country’s economy, (station vendors and snack transactions and payments to staff, etc) which is how Deus will be able to transform Galtyn’s economy overall. By ensuring that there is consistent movement (velocity) of money internally within the Galtyn economy, Deus is actually making sure it is healthy overall and allowing for it to grow, despite the overall currency in the economy being (comparatively to a nation like the USA) relatively low. This allows his injection of actual currency in the economy to happen in a time released method, limiting the unpleasant side effects it might otherwise have.
Think of it like putting sugar into water while the water is being stirred. The sugar rapidly becomes undetectable, because it can dissolve throughout the whole glass easier. Do the same thing with the same amount of sugar into a still glass, and you end up with some of it dissolving throughout the water, but most of it sinking to the bottom in a recognizable clump.
Yes, but if cars aren’t an option more people will use the railway.
And if they combine communter systems(subways, tramways whatever) that has high peaks two times per day with long range railway on the same tracks(just schedule most train arrival and departure times off of off-peak usage, particularly freight trains) and the cities are largely rebuilt around the railways…
A major issue with commuter trains and subways today is that they’re ‘fitted into’ an already well-established city. That makes for a less optimal layout. Deus, being the dicatator in a ‘less developed’ country can much easier raze a few buildings to fit the stations and tracks where he wants.
And if he relocates parts of the population closer to their places of work, and add stores nearby, that will reduce the peak loads, which means that they need fewer carriages, and less ‘off peak’ parking forr them.
It probably still won’t break even. but the benefits should make up for it.
And as an outsider, he’s less likely to favour a ‘home area’ when doing the layout.
And doing it faster… There’s roadway projects here in Norway that has been delayed for 30 years(yes, really) because local politicians insists on meddling and ‘suggesting’ alternate routes and whatnot.
The thing is, rail is really good at keeping heavy cargo moving inexpensively at a moderate speed. Getting it moving, and bringing it to a stop again, are both energy wastes, but moving from point to point is very efficient.
So rail rocks at long distance cargo, where you know in advance the source and the destination, and they aren’t changing any time soon.
But it’s not very common that you’re moving large masses of people from point A to point B, where a moderate speed is acceptable, the two points are far apart, there aren’t many stops in between, and the points won’t be moving around. So rail is a terrible fit for people moving, and is virtually always subsidized for that purpose.
And, especially, rail suffers badly from the “last mile” problem; Even if it’s efficient moving you between cities, once you’re at the rail station, how do you get around the city?
And Galytn is a developing country, points A and B are moving around almost daily, and very few people have a reason to travel long distances. Horrible fit for rail, really.
Now, if he gets a path to the sea, it would probably make sense to use rail along it.
In Galytn’s position, the people moving technology of choice is bicycles and motorcycles, actually. Affordable, flexible, don’t require very improved road surfaces. Even used for small cargo in developing countries.
Then as things build up, yes, trucks and cars and buses. Flexibility is where it’s at for transport, most of the time.
None of you are taking in to account the fact Deus has alien tech. What can it do? Did he get a few hover skateboards to reverse engineer? Some reaction less thrusters? Perhaps a micro cold fusion reactor or two. And now he has “access” to Alari tech. How will that change his plans?
inputted the wrong name sorry.
I’m sure he’s sustainably upcycling the tech level BEFORE he implements the new infrastructure. His citizens will be an economic and technological power base to dominate the region immediately, and the world in the next decade or two, holding that status for the next century.
Because he’s greedy, you know?
It is far cheaper to do that in Galytn than it would be in Kentucky, for example. No installed base to worry about, and plenty of room to grow and coopt the middle class into your desired culture.
I’m hoping we get to see what happens the first time an American leftist tries to preach to Galytn citizens about Deus’ “cultural appropriation”.
Most superhero shows I’ve seen growing up unrealistically depict the UN as a world dominating power that has a large measure of control of military and political matters. Deus sees it more realistically as the ineffective bickering bureaucrats they really are.
But they do hold a large amount of power and sway over many nations.
The pop-culture image of them busting into every minor event is just exaggeration.
I looove ambiguous characters like Deus! Is he a good guy? Look at how he’s improving the quality of life around him! Is he a bad guy? He’s invading & stuff! And what if he makes Galytn one of the world’s superpowers (ah-heh), and then tries to take over the world?
“Hey, under this guy I’ve got a good job with plenty of time off and lots of cool alien tech to play with, and my kids are training for the Space Force. . . .”
Looks like Deus understands that if you make yourself valuable to the community, you don’t have to force them to, say, defend you (& your interests) — they’ll do it *themselves* because they *want* to!
From “The Lion in Winter”:
Henry II: The Vexin’s mine.
Philip II: By what authority?
Henry II: It’s got my troops all over it; that makes it mine.
Nice reference! That is a hilarious movie, watching two masterful actors (O’Toole & Hepburn) verbally spar in virtually every scene. :D
Deus makes Hank Scorpio look like an amateur. XD
They probably play golf together.
With asteroids and gravity lasers.
The thing about Deux is that he acts like an evil overlord and wipes his butt with teh spirit of any laws he doesn’t like, but from what we have seen everyone he deals with legitimately ends up better off than when he found them.
It must drive Maxima insane that he has likely saved more lives by conquering countries against international law than she has working as a literal superhero.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2305
only because of bad writing.
Deus exist of a perfect show case of the villain sue his plans and action are completely illogical and could never lead to these outcomes but the writer bends over backwards to make it happen.
On a completely different note, Bernaise is fancy Hollandaise. Hollandaise is one of the five, (or six) savory mother sauces. If you add tarragon to a Hollandaise and use a slightly different spice mixture as the water based liquid to stabilize the emulsion, tah-dah, Bernaise.
Beat me to it :-)
Don’t get saucy with me Bernaise
Don’t get saucy with me Béarnaise.
fraggin double post.
If you’ve ever wondered what Doctor Doom and/or Lex Luthor would look like without their monomaniacal, self-destructive obsessing over Reed Richards and/or Superman, well, wonder no more.
Instead, picture them obsessed with Sue Storm and Lois Lane (oh wait, they both did)
Eh, Sue was more Namor’s obsession, not that I can blame him with some of the outfits the artists had Sue wearing over the decades.
Ugh, can’t Maxima just kill this fucker and get it over with.
It’s clear he is a smug, rich prick only out for himself.
Yes, he is. But he’s a smug, rich prick only out for himself, who genuinely understands that, in the real world, the optimum approach to benefiting himself involves benefiting a lot of other people along the way.
Your smug, rich pricks only out for themselves who cause real damage, are the ones who have some (not so) buried need to hurt other people. The ones who are fine with helping other people if it benefits them are the drivers of civilization.
hahah yeah, everyone ‘hates’ the billionaires who are ‘literally destroying the world’, but that doesn’t stop them from owning teslas and ipods that they bought on amazon made from petroleum products by slave labor. XD
Buy American!
I am something like 99.9% certain that people have tried to use Deus’ “it can’t be an invasion because I own it now” justification, which basically just boils down to “possession is 9/10s of the law,” before to try to justify their violent invasions of other countries. It is rarely accepted as a legitimate excuse (because it is obviously complete BS).
However, it is even more rare for anyone to DO anything about it. The UN can’t form a cohesive response to anything whatsoever, and the US’ response to foreign countries invading each other in recent years has either been to wag our finger sternly at them while saying “don’t do that” and then doing nothing when they “do that,” or say “Oh, you want to slaughter, murder, brutalize, rape, and ethnically cleanse our allies? Hang on a second, let me get my people out of the way… all right, go to town guys! Send pictures!”
That was the idea behind Saddam Hussein’s attempted annexation of Kuwait, based on a misread of a GHW Bush ambassador’s statement that the US had no opinion on their border dispute. If Hussein had just taken a few miles that Kuwait was using to cross-drill from, and then stopped, there would have been no international repercussions, but Hussein got greedy.
The problem isn’t replacing the leadership in corrupt countries; it’s replacing the entire culture. Replace the leadership and the new leaders just start doing what they wanted to do all along but didn’t have the power for.
I wish there were an edit function…
Not only stopping people from doing things in a corrupt manner, but teaching them to do things effectively and teaching job skills. Just because you no longer steal doesn’t automatically make you a productive member of the economy.
Hm.. the public transport thing could be an interesting thing to explore. Public transport is notoriously hard to make profitable. One of the reasons is that it is hard to root out free-riding.
However when you are a megamaniacal billionaire with access to space tech and supers, you can probably create some sort of implanted microchip or magical barrier or whatever to check every single passanger every time and enforce severe punishment on people who try to ride without a ticket. Which could reinforce the whole “mostly benign but still a tyrant” thing.
True, barring the last bit. His people still love him. Which means that, when he identified “free riders” he can have them (discreetly) assessed, and if they are genuinely too impoverished to reasonably be able to afford a ticket, then he can issue them a free pass. Or simply ensure that all the deserving get issued such throughout the country.
“I understand that you don’t have a job, but are actively looking for work, and are willing to travel? Here is a pass for free travel. It will also entitle you to free accomodation at the following list of venues, if you apply to jobs in any of the relevant areas. Here are a list of Machina industry posts which you may wish to consider. Reasonable terms and conditions apply, such as on durations, to ensure that you make genuine effort to obtain a job.”
Or, depending on your economic base, you could decide to make all public transport free-at-point-of-use – effectively making a network-wide season ticket part of the standard package of citizen’s benefits. If it helps to enable sufficiently increased tax income from increased business and employee earnings, plus the avoided cost of ticketing infrastructure, then it can pay for itself.
The idea’s already being tried in our world: Luxembourg has removed fares completely across its network, while Tallinn only charges non-residents (and even they pay less than they would for a similar ride in many other cities).
Here is the question. Where is Deus a citizen? Right now he is in a restaurant in the US. The US is not the UN. If they feel concerned in the slightest. Then the FBI can pick him up for pretrial on numerous ‘crimes’ holding him for years before a judge decides if they actually have anything on him.
He is not the king of Galytn, he made the last dictator’s son that. So he can’t declare himself to have diplomatic immunity either.
Diplomatic immunity is not just limited to heads of state. Diplomats, their families and many ancillary individuals are also routinely granted such too. It would be incomprehensible if Deus had not instructed his puppet ruler to order him added to the list. It is one of the critical perks of controlling your own country.
When has SmugD declared that he was a diplomat? Where are his diplomatic papers?
Off-camera :)
Just so.
It is something within Deus’s power to arrange, it would give him tremendous advantages and there is absolutely no down side to doing it. On top of which he is smart and proactive, so he would neither be oblivious to the option, nor procrastinate about enacting it. Hence why I used the phrase:
It’s never been expressly stated. He speaks ‘American’ fluently and his businesses are largely headquartered in America, but other than that..
I expect he has at least dual citizenship in Galtyn at this point, along with one or more countries that would benefit him.
Diplomatically, I can’t imagine him NOT being listed as at least an ‘economic attache’ with the Galtyn embassy, with the associated protections that provides. If the wife of one of an american embassy worker can get away with vehicular homicide by coming back to the US, the protection is pretty solid.
Besides, Deus hasn’t invaded anyone. He doesn’t run Galtyn, officially. The king is making those decisions.. honest.
He speaks ‘American’ because he is American
Dude’s selling stuff to Archon – which is to say, he’s a defense contractor. Who gets to be the guy in the FBI tasked with telling President Obama how the Agency managed to miss any hinky activities on Deus’s part in their background checks? For years?
And what was that again about ‘holding him for years’ on ‘pretrial?’ Is that *normal*, Attorney General Lynch? Oh, it’s not? So why is the FBI planning to do that?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-407-pseudohistory/
Moe Lane
Will Maxima’s eye widen at certain aspects of Deus’s proposed Operation:Cha-Ching?
Yes. But why will depend on whether Deus is seeking to provoke a response or to avoid one. If he wants the former, then he expects that he will be able to defeat a UN response (be that politically or militarily). In which case his offer will be lavish, but clearly a bribe meant to be declined by anyone moral. But which, after the defeat, will fuel political demands, in future dealings with Deus that “we should have accepted his generous offer”.
Alternatively, his recent shopping trip to the Dyson Sphere may have provided the ability to make an offer that cannot be refused.
e.g. providing a cure for all Cancers or advanced medicines which will double human lifespans or offer a fleet of star ships as an Earth defence force
It will NOT be a bribe directly to Max, although it WILL be designed to coopt her self-image. It will likely be a program more directly designed to appeal to Max’s viewpoint. In fact, the core of it will be brilliant and make lives better for women in the region…. but will only work if Deus’s control of geography and politics increases so he can bring stability to the underlying infrastructure.
There will be aspects that are “throwaways”, clauses or features added so that Max can demand to take them right back out, so that she feels in control and is able to put her stamp on the program. (This is absolutely standard in diplomacy and business negotiations between strong personalities.)
Max’s expression in the final panel does provide me with a sense of foreboding. She appears to not like very much what she’s reading.
Also with Rail/Bus the .gov gets to tell you where you can go, when you can go there and what if anything you can carry along with you AND as a major bonus the .gov gets to STOP all transport from places that it finds… out of compliance with edicts. I mean whats not to like !
If you like Hollandaise sauce then you might want to try Maltaise Sauce… it’s basically hollandaise with the zest and juice of a blood orange added. That little touch of sweet citrus and the aromatics from the zest really push it over the top. It instantly became a favorite at our restaurant and we were forced to add it to our regular menu by popular demand!
I don’t think that Deus’s argument will hold water. Yes it may trigger debate, but I think it would only be protracted if there were significant vested interest. Which the second part of the proposal may well endanger.
Nowadays, those kinds of delays tend to occur when the risk of atrocities or genocide is contained within a country’s borders. Take Syria or Malaysia as examples. Debates and complaints, but no significant action to prevent the killing.
Whereas full scale invasions tend to provoke responses such as sanctions or military action. International law is pretty clear on the matter. Deus’s would need to have one of the UN security council members on its side, and willing to use a veto against taking any action, in order to pull this off realistically.
As for the offer, I doubt very much whether Maxima would place even a significant national bribe as being enough to turn a blind eye. Likewise, as the story is set in the Obama administration era, I don’t think she would be at odds with the president.
However how it may have played out amongst the other arms of the government is another matter.
When it comes to the UN, debate can be as protracted as you want to buy. A remarkable number of politicians are on the take.
You mean the number is remarkably small?
It’s not an argument, it’s a strategy. See the whole Ukraine border annexation thing with Russia for exactly how this goes in practice… except Galytn’s neighbors have zero klout compared to Ukraine and Russia, and nobody would be dying in the process. No one in those neighboring countries is going to die protecting their city from prosperity, and few of the strong men would continue to fight Deus when their options were made clear.
It’s just the last country, the one with a thriving seaport and lots of foreign investment, where Deus’s blunt strategy will have to moderate and adapt.
It depends on that last country. Not every African nation has a thriving coastal economy, or they wouldn’t be resorting to piracy to survive. If Deus can get to an un/underdeveloped section of coastline, he can ‘build’ a modern seaport.
Since Deus is being quite blatant (or is he?) about his motivations, the flag should be something like an iron fist holding a wad of sweaty money. Or maybe the Ferengi flag, or a variation thereof.
How about a variant on the Sistine Chapel’s hand of God? A cyborg-like hand (to represent Deus / Machina Industries), reaching out to take money from a black hand.
Enlightened Capitalism? Not sure that really exists…
Not many people know that Marx and Engels were not actually anti-capitalist: they often stated — and Marx mentioned it in Das Kapital — that the capitalists were necessary as they were the only people with the money necessary to build, maintain and repair the factories, so the peole could continue working. Marxist teaching is that the capitalist should pay proper wages and provide good working conditions.
At least here in Oz his teachings have been adopted, in both parts. We’re waiting for the USA to catch up with the rest of the world.
This week I installed the XKCD substitutions app. Which gives some COVID19 and other news stories an amusing twist. Like the UN warning about “spherical depression”. And the chief US science advisor “testifying to Elf Lords”. But it also amusingly affects other things too, like Dave’s blog:
It’s true, the maintenance on a run-down cat gets expensive fast.
My problem with Deus is that he seems less like an actual villain and more like a self insert mary-sue. He’s rich handsome, intelligent and always wins. His action while on the surface seem immoral are always vindicated as the the moral and correct thing to do and He’s legitimately more interesting then the main characters. at this point I’m wondering WHY we still waste time with sydney and the rest when Deus is the obvious true main character.
He likely is a super, with the super power of not making mistakes, or something else along those lines.
When have his actions been vindicated as morally or ethically correct? They’re expedient and successful but no one is under any illusions as to his methods or motives.
See above, in my rant about the rescue of Chile from Salvador Allende’s socialist disaster.
Heh. Ironic that most Mary Sue calls are pointed at Sydney, Maxima or Dabbler.
Don’t you think that having a justifiably powerful antagonist is an ideal foil for staggeringly powerful protagonists? No matter that any of them could punch a hole through a tank or an aircraft carrier, when they cannot do the same through politics.
Well not without the story diverting quite significantly from its current status quo anyhow.
Now to me Deus to be a primary antagonist needs to be powerful. Someone the team needs to handle carefully. The mustache twirling, tie the maiden to the railroad tracks for the lulz kind of villain is weak. A powerful, hard to approach villain makes the heroes work have meaning. Having the antagonist have a point or points gives them depth. And really does pull one in. I am more interested in seeing how Deus is handled than say a Mojo Jojo. Because one has a plan and realistic goals. And one is a card carrying villain.
Your comment made me realize something. The big increase in supers is because Deus has discovered the formula for Chemical X.
This is about right.
For a story to be engaging, the antagonist needs to *actually be challenging*.
Combo Sydney (god-tier artifacts (Worm classification: Mover 10+, Brute 7, Blaster 5?, Stranger 2?)) and Dabbler (Worm Classification: Tinker 8, Master 6?, Everything else at least a 3?) and there’s not much that could be considered a legitimate physical threat. Dabbler is actually *really* dangerous due to versatility and experience – Tinker classifications always are once they get access to resources and time.
So any long-term antagonist cannot be a physical threat, because they’d have to be bigger than the planet-destroyers to even rate at this point, and that means they’d either win or die very quickly.
“Mary Sue”? “self-insert”? That’s a hilarious pretense.
Deus is larger than life, but he is a voracious clown with clear weaknesses.
He has never lost yet (onscreen), but he’s also never directly conflicted with Sydney or Max over anything significant.
He is an epic villain, no more “self-insert” than Vehemence was.
“He has never lost yet (onscreen), but he’s also never directly conflicted with Sydney or Max over anything significant.”
And he’s likely not going to, unless he’s arranged to be in a position where he can win.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
The smart general doesn’t win every battle because he’s unbeatable. He wins every battle because he avoids the battles he can’t win.
The real question is, what’s the outcome if you know your enemy but don’t know yourself?
Not good. For you.
Deus is a perfect example of a villain sue
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainSue
the term you’re looking for is villain sue and there is a whole tv trope page on them.
Well, we both have brown hair, so… I guess he’s me?
Deus will have to tread carefully, as he will soon run into countries that have alliances which will trigger outside intervention.
He’s absorbing neighboring cities that request a change of sovereign. So he’s playing Civilization in the real world?
It’s a bit like how Elon Musk is playing Kerbal Space Program on hard mode…
For more efficient trains, you pair the rails, which eases problems with scheduling as one rail is dedicated for a specific direction, and the other rail is dedicated for the opposite.
Also, a wider base for the trains adds significant stability. Of course, when all is said and done, a train going any speed is still a buttload (an actual legitimate measure as opposed to a “fuckton”) of energy and mass in motion.
That’s… still invasion
Wait, that means, all Maxi has to do, is carry the Stars and Bars into Doucheville and it now becomes sovereign US territory? :thinking:
Explain Crimea then. Been six years and they’re still wholly owned and operated by Russia.
Here, Deus is suggesting that the areas he’s annexing at least requesting it.
Is there a term for cities and nations requesting sanctuary from other nations?
He literally said, that anywhere his supers go, becomes sovereign territory, so they can’t be punished for ‘aggressively expanding Galytn’s borders’
Wasn’t the Crimea in the 1890’s? Charge of the Light Brigade and Florence Nightingale and all that?
Take a dekko in Wikipedia. I won’t go so far as to suggest it was a “village bicycle”, but yes it had rulers from many lands, including Russia. Ukraine shares a very similar history, and we might want to point out that it does have a tradition of Kievan Rus’ identity.
Deus pretty clearly knows he’s full of it, but until someone actually challenges him on it, he can do what he wants. Picking a region with a lot of instability and border disputes to begin with gives him some extra leeway.
The Crimean War Guesticus is talking about was the 1850s, not the 1890s, but Russia also basically did what Deus is doing in the Crimean Peninsula a few years back and everyone seems to have given up on kicking them out.
Deus might be playing his hand a little too early there.
But it is only one hand out of how many?
Who says that’s his actual hand? Like in Texas hold-em, He’s dealt her one set of two cards, which she can add to the visible river however she wants. They both know he’s got more cards as well.
This is a single negotiation, where he is trying to co-opt a powerful potential adversary into a powerful ally, or at least neutralize her by tying her into his plans. She knows exactly who he is, so his pretense of open-ness and invulnerability is effective camouflage and diversion for whatever he is NOT telling her.
This is really not a card game, but a magic trick, and he’s just prestiged “Operation: Cha-Ching”.
We will see whether she notices his control of her attention and unearths any of his other hole cards.
Maxima already knows Deus is up to stuff that he’s not telling her and that he’s not being entirely truthful. It’s kind of his thing.