Good news. This world needs more cooperation and friendship.
Nations don't have friends, they have interests.
I'm not sure what you would call it, but the Whiskey War sure reads like a running gag between two friends to me.
EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
861–870 of 877 posts
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#862Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Eurovision is also stupid. Why is Israel part of it? That makes zero sense, even way aside from what war criminal Netanyahu is doing - it's not a european country. Something is wrong with the word EU. It constantly seeks to expand. So that is now a misnomer. Eligibility to compete is not based on country, but my membership to the European Braodcasting Union of which Israel is a member, and Australian SBS is an asso…
Agree, any country in the world should be able to participate in ESC, as long as the country agrees with peace, love and understanding. So yes, please ban Israel as soon as possible, together with any other countries that don't share these three very basic principles, that seemingly is easy for all the other participants to follow.
I get that they’ve done dodgy things in the past.
And I agree that they should behave in a consistent manner.
But it’s a song contest…
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#863Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Although, no joke, a lot of peoples first reaction is: "They need to compete in Eurovision first. Otherwise they should wait for Australia to join first." What? First time I hear of this. Honestly, Eurovision doesn't really have anything to do with the EU. We all know the main sponsor is from a non-EU country whose participation is much more controversial than Canada anyway.
Because Eurovision is this cultural joke that unifies all of Europe in this yearly cultural moment of absolute madness. And the EU treaties refuse to define what „European“ means, so using „watches Eurovision“ as a rule of thumb is surprisingly workable as a definition of where the borders of „Europe“ end.
so Australia is in Europe, but Spain, the Netherlands and Ireland are not?
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#864Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure, if I see the example of US as federation, it might work well for corporations only, but people have nothing, uniformity doesn't work because not all populations have the same needs/expectations
Maybe, but it’s way too difficult to do business in the EU. Not because I think regulations are bad. But regulations need to be well designed with clears lines on what the Federal / State are allowed to do.
It's easy to do any business in EU, it's hard if you want to do business in EU over multiple countries, but if you are planning to do business over multiple countries then you're already extremely rich so you can afford staff to navigate regulations
you don't get it, americans are shallow people with no culture or background whose biggest achievement is saying I am 1/8 irish or something, but countries over here have millennial of culture
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#865Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inexorably is not the word I would use. It’s hard work. UK is a good example of how fragile it remains, even after decades of membership.
EU got stronger when UK left. Brexit proved the value of EU.
Honestly yes and I say that as a Brit who voted Remain who has an EU national missus.
Our constant in/out wasn't great for the EU as a whole and it's now very hard to argue that pissing off your largest trading partner (by nearly a factor of 4 over the next one which is the US) was a catastrophic mistake.
Still that's democracy, even when it doesn't go the way you wanted.
Was/is the EU perfect, nope - it has all kinds of problems that are going to need addressing but was the UK in totality better off in the EU, yep.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#866Earlier quoted context omitted.
Canadians who expect America to suddenly be friendly towards Canada in 2028 are ignorant of history and reality.
Yeah speaking of history. Let’s pretend that the US and Canada have never been in conflict before. We literally went to war, had multiple territorial disputes, plans of invasions, tariffs and trade wars, not to mention all the disagreements in foreign policy including Vietnam, Cuba and Iraq. None of this has prevented the two countries to have one of the most peaceful and cooperative relationships between two soverei…
Why would the next US administration expend political capital to roll back the damage done, instead of accepting it as the status quo and negotiating from there?
I'm not saying there is no way that America and Canada can't repair the trade and diplomatic relations, just that Canadians shouldn't expect generosity and friendship.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#867Earlier quoted context omitted.
And won't the dems just undo all this tariff nonsense anyway? Or is Canada acting like a bitter ex after a breakup who vows to take their seething to the grave no matter what
Bitter ex? This is amazing. The US is a completely broken country, and simply switching governments will not change that. Without a complete and utter change in how that entire country operates -- including dissolution -- no country should ever normalize relations with it again. The US is by far the world's most dangerous rogue nation. It is a terroristic nation. It is a bully. It not only elected a rapist self-deali…
America is a lost cause with "disgusting garbage" in charge? In what ways is Xi a more fair, reasonable, citizen rights focused leader? I'm genuinely curious.
I agree that Trump is a p.o.s with bad intentions, but pretending that there is some beautiful and perfect alternative on the other side of the planet is just hilarious.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#868Earlier quoted context omitted.
That and nobody believes that if the Democrats get back in the driver’s seat that they will correct all the disgusting things Trump did. Americans voted for that clown regime twice. They cannot and should not be trusted anymore.
IMO it’s the 2 party system in the US that make it more vulnerable for things like this to happen
I'm in favor of Rank Choice Voting for this reason. Our system makes 3rd party votes hard or impossible, so instead of voting for who you like, you have to vote for who you dislike the least.
Let people vote for who they like the most without fear of their vote bolstering a candidate they really don't like. We should start exposing kids to RCV in schools. Now. It needs to not be "weird" or "hard" or propagandized as "not fair." Not fair is not being able to vote for your favorite person.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#869Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nations don't have friends, they have interests.
Democratic populations have feelings towards each other, including friendship. There are plenty of nations I feel my nation has friendships with - if they were bullied, we'd stand up for them on pure reaction. Not everything is interests. People are people.
Thanks for the good laugh.
Interesting that you didn't feel the need to say what your "nation" is, or their nation BFFs. It would have allowed us to dig into real data, but no, let's just use feelz instead :)
People are people, and nation states are nation states. These are different entities.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#870Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean the Trump party will win in a landslide. Same reasons as last time. The opposition hasn't done anything to inspire more votes.
But Trump has been doing even worse. The left things he's literally Orange Hitler, and the right is fractured between "hasn't done enough, mostly performative cruelty"/"MIGA"/"woah he's going to far, I just didn't want 'commiela'" types. The one thing nearly everyone agrees on, however, is he is a disappointment. This much is evident from his absolutely underwater support in the polls, and how multiple states are lik…
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