Driscoll was born in Ireland but living in Croydon, Surrey with her husband and children at the time of her death. She had planned a three-day trip to London to attend a League of the Cross festival. She was in the company of her teenage daughter May and her friend Elizabeth Murphy and was crossing Dolphin Terrace in the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London when she was struck by the driver of a car belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company that was being used to give demonstration rides. One witness described the car as being driven at “a reckless pace, in fact, like a fire engine”.

Although the car’s maximum speed was 8 miles per hour (13 km/h), it had been limited deliberately to 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h), the speed at which the driver, Arthur James Edsall of Upper Norwood, claimed to have been travelling. His passenger, Alice Standing of Forest Hill, alleged he modified the engine to allow the car to go faster, but another taxicab driver examined the car and said it was incapable of exceeding 4.5 miles per hour (7.2 km/h) because of a low-speed engine belt. The collision happened just a few weeks after a new act of parliament had increased the speed limit for cars to 14 miles per hour (23 km/h), from 2 miles per hour in towns and 4 miles per hour in the countryside.

It’s interesting how cultural speed expectations are. So back in 1896 a car going 4.5 miles per hour was really booking it - and I have no doubt it probably was a poor judgenent to reach such speeds considering the poor state of the roads with ample pedestrians and horse carriages going everywhere, lack of rules and training and because the roads were not at all optimized for car travel. But now that ‘reckless’ pace would get you causing an accident for the opposite reason.

Enforcement surely plays a part, too. If you know the speed limit and that you’ll be busted for sure for going a hair over in a particular stretch, then you’ll probably be on your best behavior. If it’s literally never enforced such that everyone is accustomed to going as fast as seems prudent to themselves, though…

Definitely not the Jewish people in their own country at least but some strains of the far right have good relationships with Israel nevertheless. For instance Orban worked quite closely with Netanyahu and was called a friend of Israel despite at home doing stuff like praising WW2 figures who made antisemitic laws or promoting Soros conspiracy theories.

If antisemitism grows in countries with decently large Jewish populations, that encourages them to flee to Israel where they constitute a majority. Since over half of the Jewish people in the world don’t live in Israel, such migrations could make Israel much more powerful militarily and economically than it is today, so Israel the state could be better off in a more antisemetic world that is harder on the Jewish people. It would incentivize more settlers due to lack of housing and reduce the Arab proportion of the population, furthering goals of the Israeli right. At the same time, the right wing in the countries the Jewish people would be fleeing from would be happy to reduce the numbers of people with a different culture nearby. And they can cooperate on other things they may find of interest too like how Hungary and Israel got some military and Pegasus spyware deals, diplomatic cover, etc.

I picked the Turkey example because it’s a relatively rare example of a country deciding to blow up a manned vehicle, along with the attending raft of consequences that probably shows why fewer countries opt for that course of action. But there have actually been a lot of incursions of jets and spy ships and such things into many NATO countries both before and after the war, to say nothing of drones. The drones are usually blown up because no one really cares that much since they don’t carry a live person. Manned incursions are often solved peacefully because the incentives usually fall on the politicians to not rock the boat and keep the status quo, but maybe with a diplomatic protest or more aid sent against a foe of that country.

I checked another article that says it’s thought not to be related and linked it above, also indicating that it was not in territorial waters.

Anyway, say it did happen in territorial waters, they would still have to make that determination of whether the cost is worth the benefit. It definitely sends a message to your people, partners and enemies that you’re taking your defense seriously which has benefits of its own, but escalation can also unsettle investors who may view the country as less safe than it was before which can ding the economy and stock market. Plus Russia would likely seek revenge through whatever non-military means it has available which may or may not hurt badly depending on how deep their bag of tricks goes for the situation in question.

For example, years ago Turkey famously blew up a Russian jet that intruded upon their territory, a pretty strong declaration of sovereignty. Since Turkey has a lot of economic ties with its Black Sea neighbor Russia, Russia was able to use those ties as leverage to inflict quite a lot of economic damage on Turkey in retaliation along with laying on diplomatic pressure. At the time many of Turkey’s partners were not happy with Turkey and more interested in smoothing over things with Russia so they provided Turkey little support, and Russia continued incursions in Turkish airspace. Since Turkey was kind of isolated anyway and ailing with those pains and tensions, they took a more Russia-accomodating policy to ease those burdens such as re-allowing Russian planes to fly over to Syria (until 2022 when the ban was reinstated) and doing the infamous S-400 deal. At the time Turkey probably regretted blowing up the plane for the headaches it brought on, although now many of the other countries in the area would probably look more favorably on what Turkey did than they did at the time.

So, whether it’s a good call to take the shot or not can depend on many things like if your neighborhood would back you up, what ties would the power making an incursion have that could be leveraged against you, are you in a sensitive political situation at home that may be aggravated with a worse economy or bolstered by looking strong against incursion, etc.

A couple of days ago the UK seized a shadow fleet tanker so I would assume that’s the reason for Russia to launch this provocation.

Don’t think this will rattle the UK at all when they could very easily delete this ship, but maybe it’s more of a warning to smaller countries without as robust of a navy to try to dissuade them from doing anything against the shadow fleet?

Edit: BBC says that it’s thought unrelated to the seizing. Says that the Russians were doing this shooting and sounding an alarm to tell the yacht to get out of its way while it was drifting towards them in foggy conditions. Also says that this was not in the UK’s territorial waters although it was near them and give a marker on the map.

I don’t think most people would really care about a one off… but if it becomes a regular thing and/or the person has very low credibility then they’ll be more interested on if they’ve been taken for a ride or not.

Yup

Big if true

Bear in mind national income is generally much bigger than national budget. States can go pretty high on spending if need be… the difficult part may be convincing citizens on the need be part, though.

The little green men with the Russian flags taken off their uniforms had been fighting Ukraine through all that intervening period since 2014 though whereas Germany and France hadn’t been actively shooting each other during all that intervening time.

I wouldn’t call Erdogan a buddy of Putin per se unless you’re meaning in purely the economic sense. Turkish foreign policy has been acting contrary to the Russian one in many instances. They recognize and aid and sell weapons to Ukraine on a pretty large scale, to the point of building a drone factory in Kyiv (that was bombed by Russia about a year ago). They protected dissident Chechens fighting as jihadists in Syria from destruction in Idlib and backed groups like HTS there which ultimately destroyed Russian backed Assad forces and lost Russia a ton of bases in Syria, and they’ve also been backing opposite sides elsewhere in other recently active conflicts (notably Libya). They shot down a Russian jet back some years back when it flew over their territory. Refused to allow warships to travel inside or outside the Black Sea which was more damaging to Russia than anyone else.

Economically however they are pretty strongly linked and the Turkish economy is not looking amazing so Turkey has very little appetite for the sanctions so in an economic sense sure. Even so, some economic moves like the recent signing of Turkish-supported TRIPP are problematic for Russia; that one sets up another east-west route from Turkey to Central Asia. That route bypasses Russia so if that doesn’t wind up being vaporware (which is very possible) then that’s more dings at Russia’s economy and international leverage.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said today (Wednesday) that Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon have reached a point where they also threaten his country, and he warned against further action, saying, “We see comprehensive initiatives led by Israel in the Mediterranean, and no one should pursue adventures there.”

Erdoğan warned against continued Israeli steps in the region and said, “Israel’s aggression threatens the entire world.” He added, “If the rights of Turks or Turkish-Cypriots are harmed in the Middle East - our response will be unequivocal and strong.”

The Turkish president went on to say, “Turkey’s security does not begin in Hatay, but also in Aleppo, Damascus and Beirut. We will not tolerate any ‘fait accompli’ in our brotherly nations, and we will not turn a blind eye to aggression against them.” He also referred to statements in Israel about a “Greater Land of Israel” and declared, “If Allah wills, we will never allow that.”

The quoted text does not look like a threat but rather a warning, so the headline of the article reads as kinda misleading to me.

Anyway no particular surprise, Turkey and Israel are in competing emerging blocks with different visions for the Middle East. Turkey is aligning with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar and Egypt. That block has various states and factions relying on one or more members like North Cyprus, Syria, Eritrea, and the recognized governments of Sudan and Somalia and Yemen. Whereas Israel is in an emerging block with the UAE, India, Greece and Ethiopia. They have states/factions relying on them like the recognized government of Cyprus, the RSF in Sudan, Hijri’s National Guard in Suwayda (southeast of Syria), Somaliland (and to a lesser extent also Puntland) in Somalia. Also formerly the South Yemen separatists before they got canceled by Saudi Arabia following their offensive in Yemen. Some other regional states are split like one faction in Libya is backed by Turkey but another by like both Egypt and the UAE (they used to be on the same side).

This former emerging block is very concerning for Israel because the Turkish and Egyptian conventional militaries are quite large and Pakistan while distant has pre-existing nuclear weapons, which are in range to hit Israel anyway and could be moved quite close to give less reaction time if the other countries did some sort of nuke sharing. The foundation of it is the SMDA signed between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the immediate aftermath of the Qatar bombing which made it clear that American protection has its limits when Israel is the one striking you, even over something America told you to do. (Namely Qatar’s hosting of Hamas leadership, which although blasted by Israel was requested by the US because previously the Hamas leaders were based in Iran and that’s a hostile place for American and Israeli diplomats to travel for peace talks considering the history there so Qatar was desired as a comfier neutral site.)

Want to emphasize again that alignment doesn’t mean the groups are in total lockstep with each other on everything they do. For instance while Israel jumped to recognize Somaliland since it could be a base against Ansar Allah (Houthis) in Yemen, and Ethiopia wanted to do a port-for-recognition deal with Somaliland but was forced to reject the idea due to international pressure, India actually issued a public statement against it. And the UAE doesn’t usually make many waves publically while sending huge money behind the scenes. And North Cyprus is more of a Turkey project than everyone else in its faction plus it’s at odds with some others on who it supports in Libya.

But anyway if you look for it you’ll see increasing cooperation among intra-block relations I mentioned and generally more negative statements from the countries involved about ones in the other block and their dependencies. For instance Greece is actually having a small uptick in public sentiment towards Israel (though still net negative) at a time when much of the rest of Europe is disliking Israel more strongly.

Russia has to be very disappointed about this. They really really don’t want another east-west trade/energy corridor to arise through the Caucasus to their Central Asian backyard after all the trouble of getting a thumb on Georgia.

What kind of busywork were they doing for almost a decade when they couldn’t even agree on a foundational issue like can we use it on a carrier or not?

Buildings in the UK are designed to keep heat in to defeat the winter cold and up until recently A/C has generally been deemed an unnecessary luxury so it’s not terribly common.

At the industrial site I worked at in in MS, A/C was considered crucial in the offices and if it broke they would generally start sending all people normally stationed in them who were not working on something absolutely crucial that had to be done there home as the temperature drifted up past like the low 80s or something (even in the winter all the computers could heat the office up to the 90s without A/C and in summer going outside was like walking into a mouth so you can imagine how unpleasant that was). They had certain actions and relief that they had to provide by procedure to people with long stay times at high temperature to comply with company and federal rules and it was prohibitive to do that for literally everyone so it was better to call it a WFH day for most people while the A/C got fixed.

For some jobs in super toasty areas it was unavoidable though and they’d have countermeasures like ice vests, nearby break rooms with refrigerated water and fans that they were mandated to use with more breaks for hotter and/or longer stays, etc.

That’s one of the many claims they make, yes.

For reference the main groups left standing at this point are the Iranian-backed Ansar Allah rebels AKA the Houthis and the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government of Yemen. Up until recently there had also been UAE-backed separatists who in a major offensive almost steamrolled over the recognized government in their quest to get an independent South Yemen again. Those guys got wiped out when the Saudis moved against them and heavily pressured the UAE into cutting support though, so now the south is more or less unified under the recognized government. The thing is, while the area that Ansar Allah controls looks small on a map, that mountainous area is and has historically been basically the wettest and most fertile area of the whole country (much of which is desert) so despite the small land controlled they have a clear majority of the population… I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 75%ish. So there’s a strange sort of balance as the recognized government is in no way strong enough to take on Ansar Allah by its own power, but the recognized government has more powerful friends right on the border that can do a lot more to save their bacon than Iran is capable of for their counterpart.

It was ultimately stopped with world war in the way it turned out, but that could have been headed off far less bloodily earlier on. If the powers that be had not gifted the Sudetenland to Germany then Czechoslovakia actually had a pretty decent set-up to defend with many fortifications at the rugged borders, far more defensible than the flat north European plain Poland had to defend against a Germany with millions more people, vast amounts of looted gold reserves and extra years of deficit spending to build a far more massive army. It could have held on while the west mobilized and attacked and wrecked Germany’s military via multiple fronts on a much smaller regional scale.

Going back earlier with the remilitarization of the Rhineland the German troops had orders to immediately retreat and if they saw any armed resistance or so much as a single French uniform. The demilitarized Rhineland was key to the cordon sanitaire of French alliances that ringed Germany.

Expansionist states don’t become easier to deal with as they grow bigger so unless you already have and expect to keep amazing relations you should probably not them keep growing unchecked. And even if you do have amazing relations you have to keep in mind that politics can change on a dime and throw that in peril.

So color revolutions for thee but not for me are fine?

Glad to see you’ve graduated on from Russia posing no threat to EU to positing that it’s only fair for them to be threatening. And against big threats you prepare countermeasures, such as not letting them swallow up your neighbors.

Which power was that?

Germany and the USSR were carving off regions and conquering small states left and right in the lead-up to WWII, both in independent adventures and their team-up via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Munich Agreement is pretty egregious with Hitler claiming it was the last territorial demand he had in Europe and Chamberlain coming back claiming he had achieved peace for our time. Only for it to turn out that Germany would use all the fortifications, industry, manpower and resources it had gained at the expense of its neighbor to roll over the rest of Czechoslovakia. So Germany became a much more imposing force than it had started out as because folks were content to just watch it snowball and not help Czechoslovakia defend itself.

What evidence is that?

Because, again, the logic from you chicken hawks seems only to be that Europe must support Ukraine fighting Russia, because it is obvious Russia is an enemy, based on the fact that they are fighting Ukraine.

Notice the issue there? Nowhere is there any threat to Europe listed.

wait, so rhetoric is a casus belli now?

In that case, isn’t this NAFO style crap direct aggression? They’re very loud about how they’re willing to fight to the last Ukrainian - of course, not when they’d be in danger themselves - but how it’s good that Russians are dying.

Russia has made no threat I’m aware of to attack any EU member. If you have evidence of such, present it. Otherwise, your weasel words are just that.

The rhetoric does matter when Russian politicians are threatening the EU all the time by saying they’ll nuke them, that ex. Baltic independence isn’t legal, that they’re states at war, etc. But there’s concrete action too. A Russian drone strike just hit an apartment in Romania and Medvedev is saying it won’t be the last one. They’ve set off parcel bombs in EU countries. Blown up ammunition depots. Violate their airspace, send assassins into their countries, cyberattacks, influence operations to boost separatists and groups like Brexit… and even if it weren’t doing all of that, a country that conquers smaller neighbors is plenty concerning on its own.