grrmx1

And that somehow precludes marrying for love?.. You are a village girl, you've been around the village, you know all the boys you age. You marry the one you like. Love.

I am not denying that pre-arranged marriages are a thing, and that they played a more prominent role in the past, but to say that genuine love played no part in the match making process until 200 years ago, like the OP suggested, is an exaggeration.

Love is a part of human evolutionary toolbox, it's been around for a while. Accordingly, the subject of love, and marrying for love, comes up in literary works since the start of recorded history.

I was referring to the arms inspections that were taking place through the 90s. Iraq had some quantity of chemical and biological WMDs that the Americans were eager to destroy. Iraq let them. And then still got invaded.

I was referring to this, when I said they disarmed.

Iraq was subject to fairly intrusive US-lobbied inspection for much of the 1990s [1]. Inspectors were looking for WMDs (chemical and biological in that case), and did in fact find and destroy (at least some of) them.

Iraq went through the trouble of accommodating the US. That didn't help them in 2003.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Special_Commiss...

Behavior you describe is traditionally attributed to the upper classes of pre-modern nobility. At least that's how popular imagination paints it (see Game of Thrones).

I am not so sure this was modus operandi for commoners when it came to marriage. Caste-bound poor village dwellers, with few prospects and no family wealth to maintain, I imagine married for love more often than not.

The North isn't going to disarm. Nuclear weapons are their one deterrent against the US, who have shown in the past that they are willing to invade and destroy regimes that went through the trouble of disarming (Iraq, Lybia). So why would he disarm now, if he knows - for a fact - that ten years from now his goodwill will count for nothing with the next, presumably hostile, American administration?

My guess is that in the next few months we will see none of the vague promises made today come to life. This will then be followed by retrenchment, with both sides blaming the other. I can already see Trump furiously blasting tweets about the treacherous North. Meanwhile, Kim will go on doing what his family has been doing for generations - play regional and global powers off each other in order to get small concessions from each of them, while keeping his personal dynasty intact.

I hope it's not so, but logic suggests it is. The goal of every state is to survive. As long as the US poses a legitimate threat to the North, they are not going to willingly give up their one effective deterrent.

It's easy to be outraged by this, but the bottom line is that journals need to make money to sustain their own operations. Research might be tax-funded, but the publishing houses are privately-held entities with employees and payroll (per their wiki page, for example, Nature employs 800 people).

Someone has to pay for expenses associated with maintaining these platforms. Right now its either the tax payers or college students who pay for it indirectly, when their institution buys library access.

I see three ways Russia will react to this. One is to feign injured innocence and boycott the Olympics by not sending any un-uniformed athletes. Another is to grudgingly accept the punishment and participate without their flag. The first is an escalation of the conflict, taking the Russia vs West dynamic up another notch. The second way is a conciliatory step that underscores that Russia erred but still wants to be part of the world community. Either scenario is likely, depending on how far Russian decision-makers get tilted in either direction.

Then there is the fun third way - double down on the ethically suspect. Have a pet ally like Belarus issue citizenship to all Russian althletes, then participate under a Belarus flag. Westerners would pop a vein.

Had there been a blanket ban on all Russian athletes, that would have been seen as a politically-motivated decision. It would have been interpreted by many third-party observers as Westerners using their clout to mess with a geopolitical foe.

Right now it's about a non-state actor (the Olympic committee) doing what amounts to disciplinary action within it's own ranks. From that point of view, it's purely administrative, and keeps politics out of it (to a degree).

Boycott means they are not letting any of their athletes participate, including the ones who can do so under a neutral flag.

Seems like an appropriate punishment.

Russia's state-enabled cheating at the Sochi games was extraordinary. It's the kind of cheating that the monitoring agencies are not equipped to fight. You can't go up against a state with all its resources. So banning Russia from participating is the correct response.