Trump tells Zelensky 'make a deal or we're out' in angry White House meeting
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The Article 5 wording is vague. It states that an attack against one member “shall be considered an attack against them all.” What is quoted less often is that each member state only has an obligation to take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.”
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Wait, really? Imo, JD had that "guy who's been trying to turn a friend into a fuck for three years now" energy for Trump. I'm really surprised anybody saw that as masculine and powerful.
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Canada and Libya never had nuclear weapons.
Libya tried to develop nuclear weapons but never had them. Also they weren't invaded, there was an uprising that toppled Qaddafi.
Canada was involved with the Manhattan Project, and could have had nukes, but decided against it.
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I'm not disregarding anything. I'm making a point by driving home what it does for Americans, because all Americans care about is themselves. If I frame it from the perspective of Ukraine trying to defend themselves from invasion, Americans could give a fuck less.
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NATO was that, but it may very well continue on as something else. Without the US mind you, but nothing says the rest of the NATO countries can't just decide to stay in.
Of course it might also be a good time for them to all make the international equivalent of the No Homer's Club. Either way.
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How the fuck do we fix this?
The primary issue is twofold:
- Heavily biased information and restrictive media diets
- Democrat Inaction
If you try viewing even a tiny amount of right leaning content on a fresh social media account on any platform, you'll see the type of content that gets perpetuated. People simply become indoctrinated by content recommendations that are practically incapable of showing the other side, not to mention that most mainstream media is entirely corporately captured.
The fact that the Democrats were slow to release official policy for Harris's campaign, indeterminate on Gaza, and had (or really, still have) a very "this is fine, you're just overreacting, but sure we'll fix a few things" attitude towards political messaging, only helped Republicans, because it led a lot of people to just vote for the party that promised the most, and that was the Republicans. All the wars would be over, things would be cheaper, all the "bad" people wouldn't be here anymore, etc.
To a normal person with very little media literacy, those promises sound downright amazing.
I personally think we fix this by at least starting with messaging, since that's what actually leads most people to make a decision on who to vote for. There were literally people deciding on election night who they wanted to vote for, so messaging is highly important.
The left needs to speak to the immediately visible, material needs of the working people directly. While it's important to fight against the right on culture war issues to prevent the ceding of ground on things like civil rights and discrimination, I think a lot of left leaning messaging focuses too heavily on that, and as a result, it can seem to right-inclined people that the left has no economic policy. That needs to change.
See: Bernie Sanders, and how he very consistently addresses specific economic issues people face, and has broader support on the right compared to any democratic congressperson. Hell, even JD Vance said Bernie was one of the people he least disliked on the left, and Bernie's further left than the Democrats. Populist, economic disparity focused, anti-billionaire, pro-worker sentiment is how you change ordinary people's minds in the current media economy.
As an individual, the most you'll likely be able to do in this respect is going to be volunteering for phone banking efforts, donating money to left leaning charities focused on reducing economic inequality, and generally bringing these kinds of talking points up in general political discussion with others.
There's something else that's commonly overlooked though, and that's local policy. Think of a city's "town hall" type meetings that accept public comment. How many people in that city are actually regularly attending a town hall meeting? Think of how few people it really is during a particularly contentious proposal. Now imagine what it's like when it comes to something like "housing and urban development: reducing the rate of homelessness - meeting no. 57" Almost nobody. Get yourself and a few friends down to your local relevant policy meetings, make even a little noise, and the amount of change you can make as a result can be drastic compared to the actual % of the city's population you make up.
Pushing for things like ranked-choice voting in local elections can also be very viable, since it's proven that tends to push voters further left, on average, and it also adds some extra competition that can spur a party like the Democrats into actual meaningful action.
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Yeah, but if they can do it that fast on their own, imagine how much faster they can get it done with help.
Besides, if China starts getting a little froggy Japan and South Korea are going to need a lot more than a few armaments to ward them off.
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That's not how it works. MAD requires an existential threat to a country. Not simply the ability to maybe take out one city. You have to have the capability to completely destroy a country for MAD to take effect.
You also need second strike capability otherwise that one nuke is a target. Russia figures out where Ukraine's nuclear weapons are location, they do a first strike. There's a reason why most nuclear powers have submarines capable of nuclear strikes. Hard to take them out with a first strike.
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Watch the interview. Trump is scared shitless over the potential of WW3 and UK and France have nukes. If NATO (less US) decided to do something in Ukraine, the most Trump would do is impose tariffs, which is something he was going to do anyway.
This interview proved Trump to be a coward.
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There is no equal representation as long as the lower house is capped and the upper house is equal.
I have the same representation as millions of empty acres of land. It's fucking bullshit. Taxes should work respectively. Your votes are worth more? Cool, foot the bill instead of me funding your backwards empty fucking state.
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I think he should call Trump's bluff and send in a few dozen battle hardened Ukrainian troops with a few dozen drones and show Trump's entire nursing home and support staff how things work nowadays. We need to put together an anonymous block chain fund with the purpose of putting multi million bounties on the treason party, and build a reliable mechanism for people to anonymously, but truthfully claim the bounties.
Make it worth while and let rule#3 take effect:
"Number three, never trust nobody
Your moms'll set that ass up, properly gassed up
Hoodied and masked up, shit, for that fast buck
She be laying in the bushes to light that ass up" -
There was a Russian state media reporter in the room tho.
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40.000 is what is currently part of the reaction force - not the total force strength.
Active service/Reserve forces of the nations with direct borders to either Belarus or Russia:
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Norway: 33.000/60.000
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Finnland: 18.000/ 180.000-280.000 (And we all know how this turned out the last time)/18.000
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Lithuania: 23.000/104.000
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Estonia: 7.700/80.000(but almost half in rapid response readiness)
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Latvia: 17.000/38.000
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Poland: 216.000/670.000
That does not include the countries that are currently heavily investing in the Baltics.
Germany plans to have 4.000 soldiers stationed there permanently with 30.000 active personal rotating in and out.
Canada has also a brigade stationed there, the UK does the same and hosts the command in the UK.If you count the other Baltic sea nations that mostly have a very high interest in keeping the Russiand at bay you also have Sweden (24.000+22.000 Homeguard/32.000), Denmark (16.000/12.000+51.000 HomeGuard) and Germany (180.000/930.000) you have even higher numbers.
These are roughly twice as many soldiers as Putin currently can access at the moment - and he is heavily based on conscripts and semi general mobilization which is not part of the equations for most countries here, neither are other key players (e.g. UK 135.000/32.000), France (270.000/63.000), Spain(133.000/264.000), Italy (165.000/35.000), Romania (81.000/55.000) and the smaller but often highly motivated nations, e.g. the Czech Republic (34.000/4000).
Even though there are some countries who's motivation may be shaky (Italy, to some extend Germany and some smaller players like Hungary) Europe very likely would be united against a common cause in a situation like that. The most interesting point would be how Erdogan in Türkiye would respond - he has one of the largest armies on this side of the pond (481.000/380.000) and there are quite a lot of people who believe that Erdogan would actually stick with "European NATO" in this case simply he would be too afraid that Putin could either reconsider his "future" border (post Georgia invasion which is far more likely) with Türkiye or simply because he would be afraid of his old military guard.Would that guarantee victory against a joint Putin-Trump full on attack against Europe? No. Not at all. All sides would loose. Terribly.
In total soldier numbers Europe does actually surpass both the current Russian and all US armed forces combined (narrowly). Of course the US have a huge material advantage,but this is partially based on logistics from Europe (and often stored here). All this facilities would be lost then and Russia would be unable to easily supply similar logistical capacities - they simply don't have them and transport via eastern polar routes(as the western routes are within Norwegian and Finnish reach) or the eastern ports of Russia is bothersome.
While the US navy is mighty,it would be operating very far from home - further away than it has operated from any allied base ever and in very very hostile waters. (Actually the British navy is the last modern navy to have operated that far away from an allied base during a combat mission)
So the US would be limited to high flying stealth bombers (don't do that much damage and can absolutely be detected by modern western radar), stuff they drag all the way through Russia, whatever they can ferry through the pond which would be infested by various submarines that, while mainly non nuclear, are still a major treat to their navy (ask the Swedes).It would certainly not be enough for a D-Day like operation.So the other option is:
Well... intercontinental ballistic missiles.
While I am absolutely sure that the fascist orange wouldn't hesitate a minute to use this option if someone tells him it makes his golf course worth more as all of Scotland's course are now burned to crisps it would also mean that Putin and Trump himself would be fucked. Because the very next minute he presses the button someone else will press a button - either in London or Paris. France is already offering to place nuclear capabilities in eastern and central Europe for this very reason. In the end Washington would be nuked the same way Moscow, London, Paris and Berlin would be.
And while the Orange acts irrational his buddy Putler does not - the mediocre KGB officer understands what happens to him if his puppet in Washington overreacts. -
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I wonder how long until the US is nuked? Or at least actually attacked, militarily.
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Under Putin's Sock Puppet, most certainly. However, the US MIC might hold the key to bring the USA back to being the USA.
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US didn't spent most of it's money on army for nothing. Doesn't matter if the army is as powerful as it says it is, the image is strong enough, so nobody will dare.
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Huh. I guess it’s high time for the Norwegians to develop a sense of humour then.
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If that's your goal, then you need to understand that Americans give even less of a fuck about the framing you gave it. It's not the Cold War anymore; Americans have no concept that "Russia... expanding their borders and influence" would affect them in any way. Americans don't even have a fucking clue where the borders being fought over even are!
At least the "Ukrainian self-defense" angle has a clear villain and a heroic scrappy underdog to root for as entertainment. In terms of getting Americans to care, that really is your best bet.
(Source: am American. And if you think this viewpoint is even more cynical than yours, then congratulations, you're correct.)
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Indeed, especially during the first Cold War, the US Military Industrial Complex was everywhere. Germany and Japan were forced to buy out dated shit from the Americans. The magical button, tell the US military to shutdown all their European military installations and leave. What would the US MIC do then? I highly doubt they want to lose business.
