Finally. I'm going to celebrate by opening a bottle of red wine from Ukraine, seems fitting.
Try their beer. Obolon is good stuff.
Sweden Is a NATO Member
531–540 of 738 posts
Re: Sweden Is a NATO Member
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's ambiguous (or I haven't seen it written) under what conditions NATO would retaliate with NATO-controlled nuclear weapons to an attack on a NATO member. But it's definitely shy of 'never' I know during the 80s there were detailed plans to tactically nuke the larg(er) Soviet armored formations in eastern Germany et al. in the event of hostilities. I believe even before Soviet nuclear escalation.
I'm unaware of those, but I do know that US nuclear targets from the 50s were relatively recently declassified [1], and they were far more macabre. We focused on taking out Soviet air forces (to eliminate their ability to deliver nukes of their own - as this was before the USSR had developed ICBMs), but also focused on targets marked simply as "population" as well as medical production facilities. The goal was not to…
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Re: Sweden Is a NATO Member
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
This ridiculous hysteria serves no purpose. People said all these same things before his first election, and if anything Trump just accelerated aggression with Russia, just like every president before him and Biden after him.
Apologies for our Trump Derangement Syndrome. When he said that he will pull the US out of NATO and that Putin can do "whatever he wants", we will just pretend he is a comedian doing a bit.
Hysterics will spend all day talking about what a liar Trump is right up until the moment he says something he's going to do that they think is bad, then all of a sudden he's telling the absolute truth.
Trump lies, postures, hyperbolizes, boasts and self-promotes. More shamelessly than most politicians. We all know this.
Trump isn't going to pull the U.S. out of NATO. He probably couldn't, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't. He just wants to force other countries to pay more, that's all. Stop with this nonsense already.
Re: Sweden Is a NATO Member
#534Does being in NATO obligate you to respond militarily if another member is attacked (as is commonly believed)? I failed to find this clause in the text last time I looked. Edit: for everyone telling me to read article 5: I already have, hence this question. It says each member "will assist [...] by taking [...] such action as it deems necessary". That very much doesn't appear to obligate a military response, or any r…
Lawfare had an interesting discussion recently: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-lawfare-podcast-how...
Re: Sweden Is a NATO Member
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unironically correct. European defense contractors completely skipped making fifth gen fighters (other than some partnerships with the US on theirs), so there are literally no European fifth gen options on the table to even consider. This makes it pretty easy for the F-35 to cruise to victory in competitive selection processes, it's simply more advanced. Hopefully this changes for sixth gen, with the two different Eu…
There's money to be had. I mean, all in all the F-35 has come to what, something like a trillion dollars ? That'd be $1,000,000,000,000.
There's money to be had, but also a lot of money that has to be spent. Which is presumably why European countries/companies didn't develop a fifth gen fighter in the wake of the Cold War ending. Made some sense then, but now it's left them totally reliant on the US if they want a fifth gen (or better) fighter anytime soon.
Re: Sweden Is a NATO Member
#536The largest country on Earth murders people for merely expression an opinion and a massive chunk of our planet's geological wealth is funneled to fund wars of aggression. This sovereign decision is in perfect alignment with Sweden's value and security needs. Yet, that the decision involved kissing the rings of other no-good men (Erdogan and Orban) tells me we need a paradigm shift. Is it legal to crowdfund Putin's ea…
> Is it legal to crowdfund Putin's early retirement?
The money required would be not less than a couple of orders of magnitude larger than John Oliver's offer to Clarence Thomas.
Re: Sweden Is a NATO Member
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have many Serbian friends going for holidays in Croatia. Unthinkable 30 years ago. So maybe, in 50 years from now, Russia will join NATO, too?
While Secretary General, Ismay is also credited as having been the first person to say that the purpose of NATO was "to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down," a saying that has since become a common way to describe the dynamics of NATO
the irony is that NATO is pushing Germany to aggressively and quickly re-arm
if NATO wants America in then they need to do something about an angry orange political candidate...
Re: Sweden Is a NATO Member
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
The wine region is the little corner of Michigan just north of Indiana. They also do apples and cheese. I’m not sure how far north the region extends, but I’ve been there a few times. So that’s quite a bit farther south than the Swedish peninsula.
So, _London_ is further north than anywhere in the contiguous United States. But obviously much warmer than a lot of it, particularly in winter (London rarely gets far below 0 Celsius). Latitude very much isn’t everything.
Yeah the ocean does a lot.
If you look at the prevailing winds off of the eastern atlantic, it looks a lot like Southern Sweden gets the same air that London does. Plus there's a couple of considerable lakes along that path, so grapes do seem plausible.
Re: Sweden Is a NATO Member
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I humbly bow before the Ukraine. Note that “Ukraine” is now preferred to “the Ukraine”; the latter term was used in Soviet times to diminish its autonomy by implying it was just a region of the USSR.
> “the Ukraine”; the latter term was used in Soviet times to diminish its autonomy by implying it was just a region of the USSR. Source ?
Re: Sweden Is a NATO Member
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because repeating Russian lies automatically makes you a useful idiot. It comes with the territory.
How do you determine who is lying though?
By matching claims with observations from reality. When someones claims don't match reality, they are lying.