₦airaland Forum

China Could Conquer Taiwan, But It Would Be In For a Very Tough Fight
September 22, 2019
Key point:It would be very bloody and not very easy.
With President Xi Jinping having consolidated his power at the 19th Party Congress, and the United States increasingly distracted at home, it may seem like a given that China will reestablish its predominance over the Asia-Pacific region. A new study casts doubt on this, however, arguing that Beijing doesn’t have the military power to defeat its neighbors. In fact, it probably can’t even conquer Taiwan.
The new study by Michael Beckley, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, was publishedin the academic journalInternational Security. In the article, Beckley argues that China’s neighbors could thwart Chinese military aggression through anti-access/area denial strategies with only minimal U.S. assistance.
“My main finding is that there is a budding balance of military power in East Asia, which the United States can reinforce at moderate risk to U.S. forces,” Beckley writes in the article. “Furthermore, this balance of power will remain stable for years to come, because China cannot afford the power-projection capabilities it would need to overcome the A2/AD forces of its neighbors. The main reasons are that power projection forces are more expensive than A2/AD forces by an order of magnitude.”

What happened next would be hard to believe—if it wasn’t true.
In 2012, Kyle graduated college with $80,000 in debt and no job offers in sight. He asked his mom to get him a job at the real estate office, and after several months of saving a few hundred dollars a month, he realized he was never going to climb out of debt at such a slow rate. As a Biology major from UCLA, he knew his passion for science would never land him the comfortable life he always dreamed of either.
But he had one last idea. One that seemed crazy, but had a chance of working.
At the office, Kyle worked next to a man who traded stocks on the side, so he was learning a lot about the market.
Kyle had never been much of an investor. In fact, before this, he had never owned a stock in his life. He didn’t know anything about trading at all. But a few days before making his timely move, he had discovered a ​ webinar by Jason Bond​that revealed 3 simple stock trading strategies anybody could use.
The strategies were really simple,” Kyle told us in an interview. “They didn’t involve any math or anything… All it took was access to basic information that was free on the internet.”
After watching the webinar and discovering the secrets contained in it, Kyle decided to go for it. He invested all the money he had slowly saved in the markets.
In a single day, he saw his trading account grow. A few days later, as the trading became more natural to him, the gains became even bigger.
We had to verify this to be certain, but after seeing Kyle’s tax returns and trading account profits, we are shocked to report that he did, in fact, make $838,000 in profits the yearhe joined Jason’s service and mastered the lessons he was taught — more than enough to pay off his college debt in full.
In just 2 short years, Kyle turned his original $15,000 investment into a whopping $2.8 million, and won a Porsche from Jason Bond, who promised to buy a Porsche for his first three students who crossed the million-dollar profit mark (sorry, he’s all out of Porsches)

Explained: Why Did Iran Attack Saudi Arabia's Oil Industry?
Stratfor Worldview The National InterestSeptember 21, 2019
Key point:Iran has decided to push back and see how far it can go in signaling its displeasure.
Iranian protestations of innocence notwithstanding, the arrows following last week's massive drone and missile strikes on oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia all point toward Tehran. In this, there's one key question that's on everybody's mind: What is Iran after? While Tehran's aggression has made the probability of a U.S. or Saudi military strike on Iran higher in the short term, the Islamic republic does not necessarily intend to trigger such a strike and the ramifications it would entail. On the contrary, Iran is hoping to force an end to the United States' maximum pressure campaign sooner, rather than later — even if that requires riling up the world's superpower even further.
Getting on the Front Foot
Ever since the United States withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the Iranian nuclear deal, in May 2018, Iran's hard-liners have emphasized that the country must maintain credible deterrence. This means that Iran's escalation has served two interests: Make the United States and its allies pay a higher cost for its pressure campaign and establish the credibility of Iran's threats. Iran has clearly accepted the risk that such an escalation could result in a conflict with the United States, but its demonstration of a credible regional threat and a willingness to use it is forcing the United States to think twice about conducting a strike on Iran.

front page things

Locked and Loaded: Could Iran Sink the U.S. Navy If War Breaks Out?
September 16, 2019
Key Point:Given the volume of valuable commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf, Tehran is investing in improving its ASBMs—and publicizing that effort to the world—as a means to build conventional military deterrence in a context of rising tensions with Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States.
In 2009, it became clear that China had developed a mobile medium-range ballistic missile called the DF-21D designed to sink ships over 900 miles away. This then-nascent technical achievement gave rise to a still-ongoing debate over the survivability of the U.S.’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, as the DF-21D outranged the strike planes serving on carrier decks. This further compelled the U.S. Navy to introduce anti-ballistic missile capability to its destroyers and cruisers in the form of the SM-3 missile.
Ballistic missiles travel in an arcing trajectory to maximize range and velocity, sometimes even exiting the Earth’s atmosphere before plunging down towards their targets at unthinkably fast speeds—in the DF-21’s case, up to ten times the speed of sound. However, until a decade ago there were no operational anti-ship ballistic missiles (though one was developed by the Soviet Union, but did not enter service) because it’s a lot easier to program a ballistic missile to hit a city or military base, than to have one strike a small, moving target—ie, a ship

I'm a 25-Year-Old Cancer Survivor Here's the Toxic Makeup I'll Never Use Again

When I began the switch to a nontoxic lifestyle in regard to my household products, skincare, and food, I knew that switching my makeup over would be a must. As I’ve been making my other transitions, I learned what ingredients to look out for in the products I use, like how I should absolutely avoid parabens, sulfates, leads, and synthetic fragrances (which are hormone disruptors and possible carcinogens) . It’s important to know the specific ingredients because some brands perceive themselves as nontoxic or clean but actually aren’t.
Makeup I Don't Use Anymore
For instance, I thought that Burt’s Bees was a totally nontoxic company, but its lipstick has tested positive for traces of lead and its soaps and lotions contain synthetic fragrances, which cause disruptions within our hormones . This just goes to show how overwhelming this process can be, and I hope to make it a little easier by sharing my everyday nontoxic makeup routine with you! Scroll through for a few of the makeup products I used to use, which contain some of those risky ingredients I mentioned. Then find my nontoxic swaps.

Kyrx:
The question that should informed your decision on which programming language to learn is what do you intends to achieve/deliver with it?

Python language is still a very relevant and highly demanded programming language engaged by biggest corporations around the globe.

thanks

pls nairalander i what to learn programming is python still relevant