The Gaming Den

https://gfycat.com/CreamyFelineAustrali ... rcrocodile

Alternatively an article on it: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/? ... -in-squats

Must...not...Slav...joke.

*twitches*

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ital ... SKBN1JE2H0

Fucking hell.

Ancient History wrote:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ital ... SKBN1JE2H0

Fucking hell.

Sounds like an anti-vampire conspiracy to me.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/eu-meme- ... regulation

I see this working as well as banning certain words in newsgroups back in the dial up days.

Ancient History wrote:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ital ... SKBN1JE2H0

Fucking hell.

This would break EU law: ain't gonna happen.

Interesting interview with Robert Fisk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5OI17ohMos

zugschef wrote:

Ancient History wrote:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ital ... SKBN1JE2H0

Fucking hell.

This would break EU law: ain't gonna happen.

The EU doesn't have an army and can't really stop it. Lots of EU members break EU law.

*sigh*

https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.a ... urnalists/

This is kind of Trump news, US news, and world news.

Trump calls into question the mutual defense agreement of NATO

I can never tell when he's just being stupid, short sighted, or doing something specifically for Putin's benefit.

All three but especially the third one in this case.

That's already old news, now the Trump's praising NATO and boasting how everybody's gonna be spending 4% of their GDPs on buying old weapons from the USA defense budget.

Other democratically elected presidents disagree in the 4% bit but everybody agreeing NATO is great and will keep those dirty evil communists away.

The 4% rant is actually just Trump doing Putin's bidding to undermine NATO. Because it's not very long ago that he was demanding 2%. But also because the demand for military spending by other NATO members is incoherent. Not only is it a moving goalpost they can't hit, it's a goal without a purpose. It would be one thing if the claim was that other NATO members need to increase spending so that the US could decrease spending, but Trump is demanding increases in military spending either way.

Trump is making irrational, unparseable, unachievable demands on fellow NATO members for no purpose other than to undermine and delegitimize the military alliance. Similar to how he is making irrational, unparseable, unachievable demands on fellow WTO members for no purpose other than to undermine and delegitimize the trade alliance. He's demanding that Germany and Canada cease tariffs that they factually don't have, and he's demanding that South Korea and France cut social programs to pay for weapons systems that explicitly have no purpose and serve notactical or strategic goals.

It's still an open question whether Trump's insistence that we make our new aircraft carriers with steam catapults instead of magnetic ones is because he's a very stupid person who was just scared by the idea of a technology he didn't understand, or because he's still a fucking Russian agent and was deliberately undermining the military capabilities of the United States because he is a traitor.

The fact that you can explain literally everything he does with the explanation "Donald Trump is a Russian intelligence asset working to undermine the United States at all levels: economically, socially, militarily, and diplomatically." is something which really should cause you to adjust your priors at some point. That explanation is a better explanation of his future behavior than anything else anyone has ever suggested.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:The fact that you can explain literally everything he does with the explanation "Donald Trump is a Russian intelligence asset working to undermine the United States at all levels: economically, socially, militarily, and diplomatically." is something which really should cause you to adjust your priors at some point. That explanation is a better explanation of his future behavior than anything else anyone has ever suggested.

I'm quoting someone whose name I can't remember here, but it's worth remembering the distinction between "agent" and "asset". Trump is as loyal to Putin as you or I, but having a blistering jackass that nobody likes to thump the military stump so obnoxiously it turns bystanders against the idea is absolutely in Russia's best interests.

Anyway, Putin is going to go down in history as one of the all-time great world leaders. Love that lad.

............

Trump is infinitely many times more loyal to Putin than any of us. I mean, apparently you love the fucker, but we have no loyalty to him, and Trump has a lot.

The only reason to think Trump is not an active Russian asset is, Trump could not do such a good Job if he actively tried it...

OPG wrote:Anyway, Putin is going to go down in history as one of the all-time great world leaders. Love that lad.

On what criterion?
Yes, I'm actually interested. Even if you're a full-blown Nazi (you probably are) and appreciate Putin aid to European Nazi parties and regimes, you should know he also pays tribute to actual terrorists (who then use said tribute to legitimize and ingratiate themselves with the Western elites) AND conducts actual genocide of those Russians that are most likely to be considered "White/Aryan". All Putin can give you is a temporary "I can't hear you" reprieve for your feefees before Russia gets sold to China and hordes of untermenschen descend on Yurop (allegedly).

Is there any valid criticism of NATO spending though? Like is the US spending way more on it than anyone else?

There's no such thing as NATO spending (well, there probably is, but it's not what Trump is bitching about.)

Trump is complaining that NATO members aren't spending enough of their GDP on their regular military budgets.

Whether or not spending that money would actually be useful is something better left to the experts.

But NATO members had sort of but not formally agreed to increase their military spending, and it's a matter of public record that by and large they weren't going to meet their target.

I mean, obviously Trump just wants NATO members to waste money buying vaporware like the F35 instead of actually spending it on something useful, but he's not completely in the wrong on that issue.

OgreBattle wrote:Like is the US spending way more on it than anyone else?

That is to be expected, though, as the US is going to be the biggest, and thus the leader. You could spend (proportionally) the same as the US, and you still only get to be an appendage of someone else. Maybe a favoured appendage, but the US has obvious reasons for spending more money on a US dominated thing than others.

OgreBattle wrote:Is there any valid criticism of NATO spending though? Like is the US spending way more on it than anyone else?

There is no NATO spending. There's just a commitment by NATO nations to pay for their own armies.

Trump is simultaneously complaining that the US is being bilked because it's spending "more on NATO" than everyone else, IE, we spend too fucking much on our military, and at the same time, demanding that we, the US, spend more money on military, IE, increase "NATO spending."

This is of course completely incompatible, and comes from several factors:
1) Trump doesn't know what NATO is, and won't let anyone tell him. So he imagines a completely different NATO spending that isn't just regular US military spending.
2) Trump imagines all other countries are trying to screw us, because like all conservatives, he is incapable of understanding that other people are not clones of him with the same motivations and scruples, and he personally is trying to screw everyone else.
3) Trump just wants to set impossible goals for other countries so he can say they failed so he can save the US from evil NATO exploitation. If he demands 2% and they all pay 2%, he'll demand 3%. But he doesn't even demand 2%, he just declares they aren't paying enough, which he will keep saying even if they paid 100% of their GDP towards a military.

"I want to take this opportunity to commend Greece for being one of the five NATO allies that spends 2 percent of GDP on defense, a goal that we have consistently set but not everybody has met,” Obama said at a press conference in Athens in mid-November. “Greece has done this even during difficult economic times. If Greece can meet this NATO commitment, all our NATO allies should be able to do so,” Obama said.

You remember Greece, right? Economy ruined, riots in the streets, but damn they got their 2% GDP spending on buying old USA weapons NATO so Obama himself praised it and pushed for the whole of Europe to be more like modern Greece.

OPG wrote:Anyway, Putin is going to go down in history as one of the all-time great world leaders.

Very unlikely. Even if he manages to be the catalyst that destroys the American Empire, that's not the kind of achievement that gets you lauded in history as a great world leader. No one hails Odoacer or Nurhaci as "great world leaders." Destroying a major world empire is an achievement, but not one that historians particularly praise. Nor has Russia met with much success economically under Putin. The Russian Federation's GDP is straight up lower than it was five years ago and is now ranked as a smaller economy than Canada. They also have seen a degradation of their military and diplomatic status, where former client states like The Ukraine have become conflict zones in Russia's front yard. At the beginning of Putin's tenure, a hypothetical conflict between Russia and NATO would have been fought in Warsaw - now it would be fought in Kiev. Putin hasn't even gained ground in the "cultural" conflicts he's been beating his chest about all this time. Putin's crusades against the Muslims in the south have gone poorly and he's had to allow Muslim warlords to set up an Islamic state in Chechnya to avoid losing the territory completely.

There's also no guaranty that him throwing in with the international radical right is going to pay dividends even in breaking up the empires he is opposed to. There's still significant chances for this to go terribly. Russia has already been essentially kicked out of the G8 and been smacked with a number of economic sanctions. If the West decides collectively that Russia is "The Enemy" in a Cold War sense, the Russian Federation is basically partying like it's 1989 only this time they don't even have much in the way of nominal global allies.

-Username17

https://mobile.twitter.com/ScanBC/statu ... 0115690496

Also, the comments.

maglag wrote:

"I want to take this opportunity to commend Greece for being one of the five NATO allies that spends 2 percent of GDP on defense, a goal that we have consistently set but not everybody has met,” Obama said at a press conference in Athens in mid-November. “Greece has done this even during difficult economic times. If Greece can meet this NATO commitment, all our NATO allies should be able to do so,” Obama said.

You remember Greece, right? Economy ruined, riots in the streets, but damn they got their 2% GDP spending on buying old USA weapons NATO so Obama himself praised it and pushed for the whole of Europe to be more like modern Greece.

Well... he praised them for committing 2% GDP to defense, which was a commitment to NATO, and he said that it'd be nice if everyone else did this too, since Fucked Up Greece is managing it. I wouldn't call that praising Greece as an example in general