Then if you’re going to make such an accusation, quote one of them or describe how one of these three were disrespecting the military and the intelligence services. — NOS4A2

A military serviceman or an intelligence officer using Signal-app to forward timetables of future military strikes, an issue obviously classified in any sitution, would be severely punished. Likely that serviceman or officer would lose his or her job because of his or her recklessness of not following opsec-rules.

That these people don't give a fuck about such issues is the disrespect here. They can pray for the troops as much they want and hold up the flag, but such actions show actually how much they respect following orders.

By far, the most newsworthy statement in the whole chat? — NOS4A2

Wasn't it how to make Egypt and Europe pay?

Actually, it was Biden that didn't think there would be any need to form an international coalition to protect the Red Sea straights and Gulf of Oman from Houthi attacks (as was done dealing with Somali pirates). So the French deployed their own warships separately to defend maritime traffic. It was a great chance to build an alliance to contain Iran and it's proxies, but the US isn't in the business of forming coalitions anymore.



Since the US is had it with having any allies (except Israel, I guess) and just wants to cozy up with Russia, what is us to do other than rearm and think our security over?

I think probably you're missing that a great number of people do not think your take on his policies are that way. I mean, I can see objectively that some are vindictive, by definition, but that doesn't actually make them bad so people are open to interpret a bit differently. — AmadeusD

This is correct. And the obvious idea for the supporters is that because nothing would happen otherwise, Trump needs an Elon Musk, to go through "the waste" by a chainsaw, even if accidents happen. They don't care that this isn't how the Constitution says how these things should be done.

And some can indeed see just from two impeachments, the lawsuits and so on that there is the "deep state" and the opposition that is without reason going after him. Especially the Clinton supporters made the similar argument of the impeachment of Clinton. But then, we have to remember that Obama wasn't impeached. Biden wasn't impeached. Totally fabricated issue won't go anywhere further in court. That's the hope, at least. The US doesn't have theatrical show trials yet as in Stalin's Russia.

That said, I think its pretty obvious populism is what people do. There is something to the notion that people crave strong leaders. And most people are not that smart (shame, but true). — AmadeusD

Juxtaposition is easy. The use of "us and them". Populism succeeds if the "other", the "evil elite" is small. If it is just the few modern day robber barons, that doesn't brake up social cohesion. But once those "evil people" who are against the ordinary people are a larger group, then it get's truly ugly and becomes a monster as it tears apart the fabric that holds a society together.

I've said that when these populists go on with things like talking of annexations of territory, it's like summoning up the devil. Nothing creates so much anger than offending people like that. That's why Putin is such a threat when he says that some countries are "artificial" (as not only Ukraine is artificial according to Putin).

Take the rationals in [0,1] and form the union with the irrationals in [0,1] and you get a continuum. They are complementary in the complete interval - which itself is a complete metric space with the usual metric. — jgill

But that doesn't answer the questions we have about infinity. If we have countable infinity and then uncountable infinity, Cantor argues there's this hierarchial system of larger and larger infinities (from aleph-0 to aleph-1 and higher). Is that really how it goes? And the Continuum Hypothesis is a hypothesis, it's not a theorem.

Set theory, which can be viewed as the foundations of mathematics, simply takes infinity as an axiom. That's not a proof and that's the problem. The questions that have been around for thousands of year, things like if there is either a potential or an actual infinity are still puzzling. That's why Zeno's paradoxes are talked over and over again, even if we do understand that Achilles brushes past the tortoise in reality and we do have the math to calculate it, the foundational question are still there.

As I have stated before in this thread, we don't have a similar debate about of "Are all numbers rational?". Nobody is saying that they would be so. No, we can prove that there are irrational numbers. Above all, we can understand that there are and have to be irrational numbers. There wouldn't be this kind of over and over repeating debate Zeno's paradoxes, if we fully would understand the infinite or infinity.

Putin has no reason to stop because he is winning. — ChatteringMonkey

I agree. I would just say that he's not losing. It's a stalemate, actually. But that's OK for Putin.

A cease-fire is tactically not advantageous for the party that is winning, because it gives the losing party the time to regroup and/or rearm, and thus level the playing field. What could persuade him to consider a deal is pressure from the US and to a lesser extend from Europe. That is why I would push for a peace-deal now while the US is still involved. — ChatteringMonkey

And you said it yourself: "What could persuade him to consider a deal is pressure from the US and to a lesser extend from Europe."

Again this is my point. But the fact is that there's not much pressure if any, and some could make the argument that the US is putting pressure only on Ukraine, which it can pressure. The US doesn't want to pressure Russia, Putin isn't a bad guy (as Witkoff explained to us).

Threat's of new sanctions if the partial cease-fires aren't held. That's the pressure? Where's the part of putting real pressure on Russia?

Russia is winning as it stands. — ChatteringMonkey

Not exactly. It's been a stalemate. But if the US shuts down intel, ceases weapon shipments and at worse, starts to bully European countries that are supporting Ukraine, then Russia will prevail. That's the reality.

Why would appeasing them now mean we will never have any credible deterrence? — ChatteringMonkey

It's the messaging you send. Deterrence is messaging. It's the whole point. When you falter already when there is no actual or only little pressure, who would think you would have this turn around when a push comes a shove, or a blow? Already you are caving in.

You see, something like a treaty alliance or defense of the sovereignty or territory of a nation isn't credible, if you start with "but in this issue we will cave in or that territory we won't defend". That will just break the credibility. That will hurt morale: if you don't stand up for this, what else won't you stand up for? And if you haven't noticed, Europeans are compared already to parasites on this forum by some and the resentment and condescending attitude towards us is already evident in the Trump team.

No it's not the same because Urkraine is not an ally, we have no alliance with them. — ChatteringMonkey

Well, if Ukraine would be in NATO, we would already be in WW3. Yet where do you think the alliance will be once Putin has carved up what he wants from Ukraine and has a puppet regime in Kyiv? Or should we then say Kiev, as in the Soviet times.

Fair enough, but these people are all former military — NOS4A2

Again, nope.

Marco Rubio hasn't served.
Steve Witkoff hasn't served.
John Rattcliffe hasn't served.

And we heard from the DNI Tulsi Gabbard that no classified information was discussed. And then this:



So that you think is taking full responsibility?

None of that happened though, and I doubt this sort of leak or the use of the Signal app will continue given these concerns. — NOS4A2

One would hope that.

But even if Hillary Clinton didn't send similar information, still, I think this all just shows the utter disrespect of the political leaders towards the military and the intelligence services, who for a reason take these issues dead seriously.

And how about the lies that there wasn't anything top secret said in the messaging?

Now we all can be a judge about that:

(Atlantic) At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:” The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues:

“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
“1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”

The Hegseth text then continued:

“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
“1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
“MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”
“We are currently clean on OPSEC”—that is, operational security.
“Godspeed to our Warriors.”
Shortly after, Vice President J. D. Vance texted the group, “I will say a prayer for victory.”

No, sorry, telling even half an hour when you launch the aircraft is by all means crucial secret information. If intercepted, you do have time to people to take shelter, disperse, bring on the air defenses. And then people like Tulsi Gabbard deny everything.

I think you need to focus on something else for a while. — frank

That Canada would join the US? Or annexed to become one state of the US? That wouldn't be delusional? Or NATO might be crumbling down?

Well, actually there's a nice talk about infinities going on the ordinary PF site, where I'm participating. Yes, mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics is one of my favorites.

You can see why we're so desperate to have Greenland. It's too crowded here! — frank

What he said in his inaugral speech is something that he wants to do. He wants to enlarge the territory of the US. That's it. Let's really think about this. Because with Canada and Greenland the US WOULD BE THE LARGEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. The new US would surpass Russia in size. Heck, only Greenland is bigger than Mexico.

This is the delusional and sick ideas that a person for whom power has gone to the head can dream about. It has NOTHING to do with security or 4D Chess. In the international order based system territorial sovereignty is one of the most sacrosanct issues, but if people want independence, it can be accepted. And naturally in the case of Greenland, former national security advisor John Bolton, who actually had to look at this when he was in the first Trump administration, stated the obvious: Greenland would become independent (that's what the Greenlanders want) and the US would protect Greenland.

But this isn't what Trump wants. Trump genuinely wants the territory of the US to be larger.

The absolute insanity of this can be seen that the Republican party is AGAINST having Puerto Rico as the 51st state or giving the people Washington DC a vote because they fear how Puerto Ricans and people of Capital would vote! Well, what about 40 million Canadians, who don't want to be part of the US?

And if we put aside the Greenlanders, the Panamians and the 40 million Canadians, who in the hell in the US wants this? Who voted for Trump to have this? This is the total insanity here. Russians have been prepared again and again for supporting the imperial aspirations, but the US? Really? Right from the start, the whole issue with the Philippines created criticism.

What is wrong is in this World is that we understand that when it comes to Canada, Trump is hallucinating, but when it comes to Panama, that is something the US could really do. There is the historical example, and we wouldn't be so outraged in our cynicism if Trump did invade the country, unfortunately.

NOS got it wrong, it wasn't general Schwarzkopf, as I've explained. It was when the French didn't go along with the Iraqi invasion of 2003 with Dubya Bush.

That was the time that "French Fries" were to be called "Freedom Fries" and when the French were "Cheese eating surrender monkeys", a quote from the Simpsons.

It reminds me of the Schwarzkopf line “Going to war without the French is like going hunting without an accordion.”. — NOS4A2

Incorrect. Don't trust some stupid "Brainyquote" to get things right, NOS4A2:

Whenever the U.S. favors military action that France opposes (such as the disagreement in April 1986 that saw France denying U.S. F-111's overfly permission on their way to a bombing mission against Libya), jokes and sardonic comments about the prowess and fortitude of the French military inevitably ratchet up several levels in the American media. Hence the latest pithy anti-French quote making the rounds, this one emphasizing American frustration with France and expressing the attitude that having French support in military ventures is ineffective and irrelevant — "going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion."

These words were spoken by Jed Babbin, a former deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration, during a 30 January 2003 appearance on the political talk show Hardball. The full comment (offered during the course of a discussion about differences between U.S. and European policy towards Iraq) was: " . . . you know frankly, going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind."

(See here)

It wasn't Schwarzkopf, it was a puny undersecretary pushing the war that even Trump hates now, the invasion of Iraq.

This just reminds me that general Schwarzkopf actually had a full division from the French army that he went to war with. The French division "Daguet" secured the flank of the 82nd Airborne Division and of the whole combined army group:




But for people like you, @NOS4A2, one of the greatest American battlefield victories with least losses that the US ever suffered, the fact that it had French, British, Egyptian, Syrian, Saudi, Gulf State units fighting alongside Americans doesn't matter. All fucking parasites for you! So keep on hoping to destroy all the alliances that made the US actually great. Putin will be happy.

Here's the talking head, a Republican of course, that you referred to:

Or eaten by a polar bear. That would be the story for the MAGA conspiracy theorists.

So JD Vance is going too into Greenland and his wife has erased meeting with any actual Greenlanders as she won't go to Nuuk and the Dog Sled competition. National Security Advisor seems to have been cut out of the entourage.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen told Danish media it was "positive that the Americans cancelled their visit to the Greenlandic society.”

“Instead, they will visit their own base, Pituffik, and we have nothing against that,” he said.

If someone doesn't know, Pituffik Space Base (renamed former Thule Air Base) is in the middle of nowhere even by Greenlandic standards, 1500 km or so north from Nuuk. One of the remotest places where US servicemen are deployed, who likely will give a warm welcome to family Vance.

OK that makes sense seeing it like that rather than the muddle I wrote. — Moliere

Yep, it's an easy way to understand the whole thing.

It's still a concept that confuses the hell out of me, but this gives direction if ever I'm tempted to talk on it again ;) — Moliere

If your smart and observing, it should!!! It is confusing.

Because then you get to the really awesome question: OK, if we have countable and uncountable infinities, what is the relationship between these two infinite sets?

Cantor himself gave us the Continuum Hypothesis as an answer. But what does it mean? And what actually the whole idea of there being larger and larger infinities mean, because the only thing we have shown is this "uncountability" of the reals.

(Oh btw, I think Moliere-numbers sound very cool. You might really think that there are Moliere numbers)

:snicker:

Ummm....

Yes, they were indeed derelict in using Signal.

And if it wasn't Waltz, but "hackers", is it really better?

JD and JG typo can happen, it's a possibility.

Look, this is the kind of things similar to speaking on a normal phone and not on a secure line secrets that shouldn't get public. Just ask Victoria Nuland. :wink:

Michael Waltz screwed up. There's no evidence of anyone else doin:grin: g anything nefarious. — Relativist

Apart from going through attack plans on Signal, before the attack was implemented. Perhaps simple Waltz mixed up "JD" and "JG" and nobody of them noticed anything. Too hard for anybody to check who is on the Signal-group! :grin:

You simply don't do that. It's just a sign of utter carelessness and indifference to security protocols. It's the attitude that only "little people" face dire consequences for these kinds of breaches, but not the Trump team. You see, it's so much easier to talk these issues by the Signal app, than you the cumbersome approach of going into a secure room, leaving your mobile away and then speaking there.

Jesus* man, can't you see how extreme your position is? What is it that makes you so imperivious to all reason on this topic, do you hate them so much? — ChatteringMonkey

No, you truly don't seem to understand it:

Putin will stop the war, when continuing the war is possibly a worse outcome than having a peace.

That's it.

Putin could stop the war when he wants! If Putin now says that "OK, we'll have a cease-fire", you think Ukraine would say no? Of course not! Ukraine is OK for a cease-fire. They have shown their willing to accept a cease-fire. It's their call, Ukrainians have to decide that. Russia isn't bombing your country, so why on Earth would you make the decisions on behalf of Ukraine?

Why cannot you get this? You seem to have no understanding how Russia and it's military doctrine works at all.

If you start with your the attitude: "We have to appease now Russia", then you haven't any credible deterrence whatsoever. Never, in anything. Because Russia isn't even pushing your country much. If you appease them now, you will appease them anytime.

At worst, it's like if your country would be attacked, then you "allies" would say to you: "Do not fight! Do not defend yourself, but listen to the attacker what they want and accept that, because that would be better for us."

That's what you are proposing.

For example, do you negotiate with terrorists? At some time, yes. Do you tell after a terrorist attack, "Oh, we will fight them a bit until we negotiate with them" or even say "These terrorists have killed our civilians, so we have to negotiate with the small group now and listen to what they want". So when next time ISIS or somebody attacks people in your country, please urge the people then to listen to the demand of ISIS. That's not what you do.

I think your problem is that for you these conflicts are just forever-wars, something that you can choose to participate and if you participate in something, there's no negative issues. And you can later just withdraw. That might be the problem here.

Of course I wouldn't be happy with it. — ChatteringMonkey

But you would be OK that actually no ally will come to help you. So what's the point of talking about an alliance?

Hybrid attacks are not the same as a conventional invasion. — ChatteringMonkey

Hybrid attacks shouldn't be tolerated. If you turn a blind eye to them, you don't have deterrence. There isn't going to be the time that you will change your posture from appeasement.

And I'm also not saying we should keep appeasing Russia as a general strategy going forward, just that at this particular moment that makes the most sense — ChatteringMonkey

:roll:

Just that at this particular moment...

Obviously you don't have any idea how deterrence works.

But then the set "Even numbers" is defined by whether or not they are divisible by 2. So if we have the set of all natural numbers and the set of all even natural numbers then, if there's a 1-to-1 correspondence, we ought be able to lay out a function like the above -- such as f(x) = x * 1 million — Moliere

And there's a 1-to-1 correspondence:

(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,...)
(2, 4, 6, 8,10,12,14,...)

But if you're willing to continue....

How could we show that Moliere-numbers are uncountably infinite? — Moliere

OK, basically how Cantor showed that real numbers are uncountable is the way to do this.

Basically if you have a list where all the Moliere-numbers would be and then you show that there's a Moliere that differs from the first Moliere-number on the list, differs from the second Moliere-number on the list and so on. This way you show that there's a Moliere-number that isn't on the list. Hence there cannot be a list of all Moliere-numbers. The conclusion is a Reductio ad absurdum proof.

That's not misuse, nor is it a problem. — Metaphysician Undercover

But it does puzzle us still. Because if you think that we know everything about mathematical infinity, then I guess there should be an answer to the Continuum Hypothesis.

The problem is in Zeno's application, when things like distance, and time, are assumed to be infinitely divisible. — Metaphysician Undercover

I do get that point, sure. But do actually notice that Zeno belonged to the Eleatic School. Platonists were on the camp of infinite divisibility. The Eleatic School was different.

My personal favourite part is all these "small government" idiots partying everytime Trump guts something in a vindictive retaliation at his perceived enemies while Musk stands to win over 50 billion USD in government contracts. — Benkei

My favorite is comparing the scandals that the Republicans uphold by Congressional investigations to tarnish Democrats and then compare them to the fumblings that Republicans do.

The Signal-app use scandal is the latest hilarious issue. Comparing it to Hillary's "private server" incident. But if you mix up "JD" with "JG" and don't notice that among members you have put in an reporter and then just talk about future military operations, that's so hilariously pathetic.

QALY's are cost efffectiveness indicators and death toll are quite different things. And the Netherlands had one of the lowest death rates to COVID-19, only a third of the deaths per million that the US and many other countries suffered.

Some countries had it better. (But this is for the Coronavirus thread that still goes on.)

The problem is that there are many misuses of infinity, such as the idea that there is some type of thing which can be infinitely divided. — Metaphysician Undercover

Is this a "misuse" in mathematics? We are talking about mathematics.

Pick two real numbers, and it can be shown that there are real numbers between them. Pick even two rational numbers, and you have rational numbers between them.

You would wander to the illogical, if you would to start to argue that it isn't so, that it's misuse or something.

The pandemic was a disaster because it came from a lab, likely funded by the US and China, and therefore entirely avoidable. — Tzeentch

That was a case example of how that was tried to be controlled, by those that had ties to it.

As far as the death toll goes, it wasn't anything special - on the level of a serious flu. — Tzeentch

No, it was one of the large pandemics and historically a notable pandemic. You yourself said that flus kill 60 000-70 000 a year, which is actually on the high side. Something hundred times deadlier is a notable event.

And of course, the AIDS has been a larger killer, but it has lasted for far longer.

The economic fallout is much more damaging than the death toll. Although it’s difficult to see because there is other economic turmoil going on at the same time. — Punshhh

Here the cause effects in history makes history not so clear. The inflation spurt was basically caused by the actions to avoid the "natural" recession when people are forced to stay at home. But these events then blend in to others. Another issue is also the 2008/2009 Financial Crisis and the Great Recession, which basically too has still fundamental effects still to this day.

This makes us very difficult to see what is happening. Some things are just events of the day, some are events taking many years to develop. Only with historical perspective the historians can have an agreement on what were the notable events as something "notable" is something that explains future development.

Remember what he told in his second inaugral address:

The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation — one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.

Territorial expansion is something very close to heart for him indeed.

What I meant is that afterwards a lot seems to be the same if our own lives are similar, when we live and work at the same place, see same friends. It seems that nothing has happened. Yet a lot has and will happen.

Now when the United States is again under populist leadership, I would come back to this discussion that we had a year ago. In the OP I wrote:

It just seems that there's no antidote to populism, no way other than the disillusionment after the populists fail when in power. Then you just hope you have the means to get them out of power. — ssu

I would still hold that this is true. But perhaps here Trump's vindictive and outrageous policies are just creating this antidote to populism in a far quicker pace that we could imagine.

In Canada the conservative Pierre Poilievre was campaigning "Maple MAGA" and totally following the Trump playbook, until Trump had his brainfart of wanting Canada to be the 51st state of the US and started the trade war. A year ago Trumpism seemed to be working. But now it seems like a kiss of death. Similar things seem to happen also in Europe.

We're limited in terms of measuring -- but I want to say that Zeno's paradoxes are not problems of measurement at all. They are logical problems (which is why they evoke the difference between physics and logic and math, as the OP stated already) — Moliere

The logical problems are the result of not having an adequate way of measuring. We are reduced to logical possibility. If we had the proper way we wouldn't have to entertain those possibilities. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here I would side with @Moliere. It is a logical problem. Or basically that the measurement problem is a logical problem, hence you cannot just suppose there to be "an adequate way of measurement".

The problem is infinity itself. And that is a logical problem for us.

In that case I'd say I'm in even less understanding of the difference between the "size" of infinite sets. — Moliere

Ok, it's can be difficult to understand, but I'll try to explain.

Let's say you have a set of numbers, let's call them Moliere-numbers. As they are numbers, you can always create larger and larger Moliere-numbers. Hence we say there's an infinite amount of these numbers. The opposite of this would be a finite number system that perhaps an animal could use: (nothing, 1, 2, 3, many) as that has five primitive "numbers".

If we then say that these Moliere-numbers are countably infinite, then it means that there's a way to put them into a line:

Moliere-1, Moliere-2, Moliere-3,.... and so on, that you can be definitely sure that you would with infinite time and infinite paper write them down without missing any.

If Moliere-numbers are uncountably infinite, then we can show that any possible attempted list of Moliere numbers doesn't have all Moliere-numbers.

my thought was to extend that to the rational sets "All Rational Numbers" and "All Rational Even numbers", and note how, intuitively at least, that the first seems to contain about twice as much as the second, even though both are infinite. — Moliere

Ok.

If you think so, then wouldn't there be more natural numbers (1,2,3,...) than numbers that are millions? Isn't there 999 999 between every million?

No, similar amount, because
(1,2,3,....) can be all multiplied by million
(1000 000, 2 000 000, 3 000 000,...)

And because you can make a list of all rational numbers (as above), the you can fit that line with the (1,2,3,...) line in similar fashion. That's the bijection, 1-to-1 correspondence.

The way I put it to make it make sense to me: I can say there are "more" rational numbers than there are even numbers. Both sets are infinite, but it seems to me that the Rational Numbers > the Even Rational Numbers, as I understand the notions. — Moliere

Umm... as the set of rational numbers is countably infinite, I would say there's as many rational numbers as there are natural numbers or "even rational numbers".

Because you can go through all rational numbers in the way Cantor showed:

It'll be quite interesting to see how these threads go when, in say six years time, shit's the same. No disaster, no world war, no collapse of society... Wonder how we will deal with that. — AmadeusD

Hmm....

The Corona pandemic killed about 1,2 million people in the United States alone. In the World roughly seven million.

Now we had a thread about that here... still do. Let's just look at the Opening Paragraph (OP) and the first reply from page 1:

Coronavirus, COVID-19, is spreading exponentially. So far we have seen news reports from countries where there is an organised and rapid response to outbreaks. But what we are beginning to see now is it's rate of infection in countries without such preparedness. Italy and more worrying Iran. Italy is adopting a very strict strategy now, after being slow to tackle the infection. Whereas Iran is in denial, they are refusing to quarantine suspected cases. They have refused to lock down an important religious site which appears to be the epicentre of their outbreak. Also it has been spreading amongst the political class. There is talk of it's spreading rapidly throughout the Middle East.

What concerns me is that the chaos which will ensue in the Middle East, the virus will find a breeding ground and develop into a more deadly strain. Similarly to the way that Spanish Flu developed during the chaos of the First World War.

Should we be worried, or should we just wait until a vaccination is developed so that we can irradicate it through a vaccination programme?
Or is this the beginning of a deadly pandemic? — Punshhh

Overblown hysteria. The media have nothing better to report, and what better to draw attention than pretending there's a crisis.

The coronavirus has killed about 2,700 people so far. The flu kills roughly 60,000-70,000 people each year. — Tzeentch

Yeah, so do you think @AmadeusD that the pandemic was something you would put into that category of "no disaster... Wonder how we will deal with that."

Because naturally at hindsight everything will look OK. My grandparents lived through a civil war and World War 2 and survived, so naturally my life has been just dancing on roses compared to that.

Are you OK with Brussels annexing Ukraine? Or do you prefer euphemisms like “European integration”? — NOS4A2

Well, EU membership, just as with actually NATO membership, countries have asked themselves to join, not that they have been forced to join. Countries like Norway have even negotiated about joining EU and then have decided that the benefits aren't so good and opted not to join. If you assume that the EU would be another imperialist player, would it let tiny but oil rich Norway not to be a member? Not how the EU works.

When Ukrainians seeing how Poland and other European countries have prospered in EU when their country has stagnated, hope to join the EU is quite understandable. Friendship with Russia didn't given them prosperity.



But I guess you might have gone too far down the rabbit hole and eagerly accept bullshit lies of Putin and think that there's nothing good even in what your own country has done (before Trump) and it's just the strong against the weak. And to say anything else is just naive.

Well, as I live in the country that ought to have the happiest people in the World (which is crazy btw), I disagree. We're still the good guys here and don't hate our government. :wink:

I hope he’s not going to Nuuk Greenland. — Punshhh

Trump sending his national security advisor looks a bit sinister.

Is your main concern that countries should respect one another's sovereignty? — frank

Mainly yes. Especially when you start craving for territories from others, it's really like opening a Pandora's box or summoning the Devil. Nothing else can harm relations so easily. And I'm fully aware that many times countries do intervene in the politics of others and especially if a country collapses into Civil war, yet it's really a big step then to go to annexations. Especially when there is no desire among the people to join another country.




The absurdity of all of this is that if Trump wasn't so obsessed to annex Greenland, make it part of the US, the "neo-imperialist" option would be there, which likely would succeed as John Bolton has described. The US would simply behind closed doors push Denmark to give independence to Greenland, then make security arrangements with the new independent country and help the new country to it's feet (and thus getting a close relationship with the country). Now Greenlanders do want independence, but they also understand that there's just 50 000+ of them and they simply don't have the income to provide all the services that now Denmark is providing, starting from things like Greenland has no universities and the Greenlanders can now study higher education in Denmark.

Now what would some JD Vance (or her wife) look like going to Greenland and supporting the freedom of Greenlanders and stating that the people have the right for independence and would stand among them waving the red-white flag? VERY DIFFERENT!

And anyway, the idea that more territory gives you more prosperity is basically an outdated idea...

But that's not what Trump's America stands for. Not at all.

The decision to support them or not, and under what conditions, is ours. The idea that we should just follow them, wherever that may lead us, is insane considering what is at stake. — ChatteringMonkey

So when it's your country who will need assistance, will you be then happy with allies that decide that what they can do to answer your call for article 5 assistance is to send your country bodybags, because you need those and anything else would be too "escalatory" for their own safety? After all, they have to think about their own security and not put that on line with you and your decision...

Let's just remind us what Europe has done to help Ukraine: it has given weapons assistance, financial aid and is giving refuge to millions of Ukrainians. Europe is not giving manpower as North Korea is doing. It isn't letting it's airspace or territory to Ukraine to attack Russia like Belarus is giving to Russia.

You should think first how the allies of Russia are behaving here. And just how they are left alone.

And then come the threats from Russia and all the hybrid attacks that it already is making and has made even before 2022. Against my country even before we were part of NATO.

As I've said, appeasement is not only historically, but in this situation logically it is the worst thing to do.

. I wish we would stop the empty promisses, so as to not give Ukraine false hope, and not to hinder peace negotiations. I think it's disgusting the way we are handling it, with so much at stake either we do as we say, or we shut up. — ChatteringMonkey

This is actually confusing. On one hand you argue that the promises are empty, on the other hand it seems that we should not give the promises.

In the end it's not our decision to do. It's the Ukrainians that should decide how to go forward.

And I think it's totally consistent to back up Ukraine, as they know better what they can do and what they are facing. The idea of others deciding on behalf of Ukrainians is not only arrogant and condescending, but inherently dangerous.

What's suspicious is the national security advisor going along with Usha Vance to a dog sledge competition in Greenland. The Greenlanders aren't amused.

(The Guardian)Greenland’s prime minister has accused Washington of interfering in its political affairs with the visit of an American delegation this week to the Arctic island coveted by the US president, Donald Trump.

“It should be said clearly that our integrity and democracy must be respected without foreign interference,” Múte Egede said on Monday, adding that the planned visit by the second lady, Usha Vance, along with the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, “cannot be seen as just a private visit”.

Vance, the wife of the US vice-president, JD Vance, will travel to Greenland as Trump clings to the idea of a US annexation of the strategic, semiautonomous Danish territory.

Vance will visit Greenland on Thursday with a US delegation to tour historical sites, learn about the territory’s heritage and attend the national dogsled race, the White House said. The delegation will return to the US on 29 March.

Waltz and the energy secretary, Chris Wright, will also travel to Greenland to visit a US military base, a US official said. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

What's the likelyhood of Trump being so insane that he would truly annex the Panama Canal Zone AND Greenland?

Taking back to US control the Canal Zone is real possibility.

But Greenland, really?

Because when you look at a map with Canada and Greenland being a part of the US, you can understand where this delusional ideas come from. Talk about grandeur:




Are Americans here truly OK with this? This what you really want? Because Trump sure as hell wants this.

And if the support for Ukraine is dropped, Russia will surely prevail.

Here's one, a cartoon encouraging "domestic terrorism"?

And we used the "nuclear bomb" of financial measures against them. — ChatteringMonkey

The financial measures are always overstated, because for Putin this is an existential endeavor. He will put nearly everything on the line and only won't dare to touch the pool of reservists in the Moscow and St. Petersburgh region. But ethnic minorities, they can be thrown to the meatgrinder.

We are at war, what do you expect? — ChatteringMonkey

We are not in war. In war, the missiles would be flying into the city you or I live in. That's not happening. Basically there's a term in Finnish for what we are in now: harmaa aika, basically "grey time" as these things aren't black and white. And likely Russia will also want to have the time to continue like this.

That Russia would just say, go ahead Europe, you can freeze all our foreign assets, throw us out of the global banking system, give financial and military support to our enemy we are at war with? — ChatteringMonkey

And when Russia attacks an non-aligned country that doesn't pose a threat to it, when NATO wasn't on the table (even Germany made this absolutely clear prior to the February 2022 invasion), and Russia breaks dozens of international agreements starting from the UN charter, we shouldn't respond?

Don't lose touch of what is the reason and what is the consequence here.

I mean, back then the laws professed towards women were much less favorable towards women, and how did they (men) get punished, if at all, once committing such crimes (rape/molestation of women)? — Shawn

In Sweden the first legislation protecting women was given by king Magnus Ladulås in 1280. In Finnish, the term use is naisrauha, direct translation is women peace, legislation was given to protect women from harassment, including sexual harassment. Basically it forbid to have any sex without being married and stated adultery also be illegal (which was naturally already there). Thanks to the legislation, a women didn't have to have a witness to a rape. Hence these legal attitudes go a long way. And punishment? You could get the death penalty, as typically for Medieval times you could get for many things.

Yet I think that we should notice that even today in societies where women don't have rights and don't participate in the workforce, they are protected. At least in the eyes of the societies themselves. Every woman or girl is someone's daughter. And when the women marries, then there is her husband and his family.

An American saying how it is. Just love the constant honking in support of the cars going by.

I've said that Musk will be the most hated guy in the US for a long time. And likely he might stay for six months and then has to retire to look after his collapsed businesses (that likely will be saved by the Trump government).

Yet the project is clear: Elon brakes everything, does the "savings", then afterwards Republicans can just say it has already been done, that it wasn't them.

Actually comes to mind how politicians in Europe blame always the EU and Brussels for every painful decision they make. With the exception that the EU doesn't demolish the institutions of government like a madman.

Trump is not going to side with Russia in attacking Europe. — ChatteringMonkey

That attack might not take the form which it took in February 24th 2022. Please understand that the objective is to 1) destroy the Transatlantic alliance and 2) weaken the EU. With these objectives Russia gains power and influence over Europe and then can work on enlarging it's sphere of influence.

And Russia isn't going to attack Europe on its own, because they can't.

Non of this is real. — ChatteringMonkey

It is real alright. I can list just like @jorndoe the hybrid attacks now being implemented against Europe, but if don't care about that. Yet the truth is the following:

(CSIS) Russia is engaged in an aggressive campaign of subversion and sabotage against European and U.S. targets, which complement Russia’s brutal conventional war in Ukraine. The number of Russian attacks in Europe nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024, after quadrupling between 2022 and 2023. Russia’s military intelligence service, the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (or GRU), was likely responsible for many of these attacks, either directly by their own officers or indirectly through recruited agents. The GRU and other Russian intelligence agencies frequently recruited local assets to plan and execute sabotage and subversion missions. Other operations relied on Russia’s “shadow fleet,” commercial ships used to circumvent Western sanctions, for undersea attacks.

The data indicate that Russia poses a serious threat to the United States and Europe and that the Russian government, including President Vladimir Putin, cannot be trusted. Roughly 27 percent of the attacks were against transportation targets (such as trains, vehicles, and airplanes), another 27 percent were against government targets (such as military bases and officials), 21 percent were against critical infrastructure targets (such as pipelines, undersea fiber-optic cables, and the electricity grid), and 21 percent were against industry (such as defense companies). Many of these targets had links to Western aid to Ukraine, such as companies producing or shipping weapons and other matériel to Ukraine. Russia also used a variety of weapons and tactics. The most common (35 percent) involved explosives and incendiaries. Other weapons and tactics included blunt or edged instruments (27 percent), such as anchors used to cut undersea fiber-optic cables; electronic attack (15 percent); and the weaponization of illegal immigrants (8 percent).