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[Sergarr]

Yeah remember when Germany attacked France... and then sold off their art?

We are one upping them because we are not conquering Iraq... We are claiming to be their "Liberators".

So... Why are we pillaging people we are liberating?

Because they wouldn't do anything good with the resources under their control. And that's because their governments are corrupt pieces of shit. Which is because they have zero national unity and no real morals to keep things together.

Really, they should thank us for relieving them of the burden of owning all these valuable resources. Maybe without access to that financial equivalent of drugs, they'll finally learn to behave like civilized people. Or at least they would stop being a danger to everyone around them, due to not having money for soldiers/terrorists. That would work out, as well.

Sadly, the main culprits are hiding either under the guise of "allies" (Saudi Arabia), or under the mask of "rational actors" (Iran). They both provide massive funding for terrorist groups and their equivalents - Saudis fund Al-Qaeda, Iran funds Hezbollah and Assad - and without said funding, these groups, which brutalize, torture, oppress and kill thousands of people every year, would have collapsed a long time ago.

And yet, there isn't any single policy-relevant group that would decry them both as such. It's somehow a "partisan" issue to call these terrorist supporters as who they are - terrorist supporters. The fuck is wrong with the world today?

[Baffler]

Sounds like a load of crap actually. UK is the 5th highest spending nation in the world and France is 7th.

Big scary Russia spends 66 billion, while UK spends 55 billion and France spends 50 billion, and Germany spends 40 billion. Just those three nations outspend the Russians 2:1. It's just a Trump meme that the rest of NATO doesn't spend enough to defend themselves from ... who exactly? Total NATO arms spending not even counting America is already three times as much as the only credible threat.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

4/26 make the agreed upon minimum contribution. If they don't feel like they're getting anything out of the treaty they're welcome to leave, but I feel it's damaging to the legitimacy of the organization to have only a small portion of it's members actually contribute what they promise.

And don't forget the millions of refugees we can draft with the promise of citizenship.

I doubt many would take you up on it. They're there because they wanted to escape fighting, remember? What makes you think they'll stick around somewhere they haven't got even the slightest connection to? Besides, not even your own countrymen will fight for your country.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[martinuzz]

Baffler, c'mon man. Do I need to put a /s tag behind everything that obvious?

Btw, that graph looks pretty unrealistic.

[Baffler]

Baffler, c'mon man. Do I need to put a /s tag behind everything that obvious?

You wouldn't think so but I have seen people, and not just on the internet either, say that and similar things in complete seriousness. Fair enough I guess (and granted most of them were Americans, heh) but if you had been serious you sadly wouldn't have been the first.

Source for graph is Gallup:
http://gallup-international.bg/en/Publications/2015/220-WIN-Gallup-International%E2%80%99s-global-survey-shows-three-in-five-willing-to-fight-for-their-country

[Reelya]

But like I said, if you look at International Institute for Strategic Studies figures on wikipedia, Russia + China spend $210 billion, and if you add up all the non-America NATO nations then they are basically equal to that (taking the available figures from the International Institute for Strategic Studies list and estimating the remaining nations from the other list)

Sure they don't hit some theoretical 2% but Europe contains most of the world's richest nations. They are spend a ton on weapons already, basically equal to most of the world's "bad guy" nations put together.

[Helgoland]

They are spend a ton on pensions already, basically equal to most of the world's "bad guy" nations put together.

FTFY.

[PTTG??]

Yeah remember when Germany attacked France... and then sold off their art?

We are one upping them because we are not conquering Iraq... We are claiming to be their "Liberators".

So... Why are we pillaging people we are liberating?

Because they wouldn't do anything good with the resources under their control. And that's because their governments are corrupt pieces of shit. Which is because they have zero national unity and no real morals to keep things together.

Really, they should thank us for relieving them of the burden of owning all these valuable resources. Maybe without access to that financial equivalent of drugs, they'll finally learn to behave like civilized people. Or at least they would stop being a danger to everyone around them, due to not having money for soldiers/terrorists. That would work out, as well.

Sadly, the main culprits are hiding either under the guise of "allies" (Saudi Arabia), or under the mask of "rational actors" (Iran). They both provide massive funding for terrorist groups and their equivalents - Saudis fund Al-Qaeda, Iran funds Hezbollah and Assad - and without said funding, these groups, which brutalize, torture, oppress and kill thousands of people every year, would have collapsed a long time ago.

And yet, there isn't any single policy-relevant group that would decry them both as such. It's somehow a "partisan" issue to call these terrorist supporters as who they are - terrorist supporters. The fuck is wrong with the world today?

Are you seriously saying that the USA needs to engage in a massive imperialist conquest of the entire middle east and take their oil, including allied nations?

[Rolepgeek]

He's saying it, but not seriously, PTTG??.

[Sergarr]

Are you seriously saying that the USA needs to engage in a massive imperialist conquest of the entire middle east and take their oil, including allied nations?

"Conquest" would amount to taking over their state structures. That is unnecessary and actually harmful to everyone involved. No, what you need is enforcing privatization and free trade, so that your corporations would be able to buy all these resources directly. Localized, efficient and profitable. They even have their own private armies nowadays if they need a little big of muscle to defend against local "drug lords" trying to get their fix source back.

He's saying it, but not seriously, PTTG??.

Well, maybe a little bit, but.. back when their resources were owned by foreign companies like British Petroleum, there wasn't any "international terrorism" going on. When these resources were then nationalized by those Middle Eastern states, that's when the jihadism started to form.

I don't think that is a coincidence.

[Frumple]

Oddly enough, re: NATO spending, the subject kinda' bothered me so I just went and checked. The 2% thing was agreed upon in 2006, near as I can tell in either prague or riga, though I still can't seem to find the official text about the damn thing. Closest I've found is this, in part 26 -- which says sod all about % of GDP, and specifies than the goal is to see an increase, or at least a halt or reduction in decline, in real spending -- and a quick check of the raw dollar amounts indeed shows that most member stats have been holding steady, increasing to some degree, or only somewhat declined since at least '09, with another check suggesting it's about the same from '06 to '08.

In any case, it was not a minimum contribution agreement, or anything of the sort. It was an agreement to be trying to reach that amount, guideline to a path forward, etc., so forth, so on. There was no substantiative commitment or penalties involved, it's not part of the NATO charter (in at least the sense of an exact amount being specified), and though I've already lost where I saw it, something else related to the agreement openly acknowledges that countries are going to fail to reach the goal.

Basically, while I'd easily agree that a more equal contribution is a desired goal and something I'd personally like to see just so the US has less of a reason to stick its dick into everything, this apparent insistence in holding NATO to a goal that both isn't solid, isn't penalized, and as near as I can tell actually being met sufficiently for both the spirit and word of the agreement in question (particularly in relation to how the economic situation has been between '06 and now), is sketchy as all hell, and to a large extent (from what I've seen checking over a few of the news articles/summations/etc. trying to find the goddamn legalese) being badly misrepresented in its nature.

If someone can actually find the original agreement, and maybe any amendments et al that have popped up since '06, it'd be nice if they could share. Right now this is reeking of trump/conservative media spouting bullshit and the rest of the news taking up on it without checking what the hell was actually involved in that referenced amount.

E: Link was borked. Should be working now, but if not, look for the 2006 riga official text. If the 26 doesn't show up, give it a search for "decline", should get you right where the spending bit was at.

[Reelya]

Privatization and free trade aren't the answer - that's how you asset strip a place. Places that were made to do that by IMF aren't actually in good shape now.

Rich nations actually have high government spending. All rich nations. Sure, some made a lot of money through exports but you'll find the successful nations of that type had heavy government intervention.

The only exceptions to that are some tax havens / one-city trading ports and the like, but they really skim off nearby much larger nations while avoiding the costs of having a large population to take care of.

But you want to trick poor nations by force into lowering their spending and slashing taxes. It's a case of "do as we say, not as we do".

[Sergarr]

Privatization and free trade aren't the answer - that's how you asset strip a place. Places that were made to do that by IMF aren't actually in good shape now.

Rich nations actually have high government spending. All rich nations. Sure, some made a lot of moneu through exports but you'll find the successful nations of that type had heavy government intervention.

But you want to trick poor nations by force into lowering their spending and slashing taxes. It's a case of "do as we say, not as we do".

This wasn't a recipe to make them rich and prosper, if you've noticed. It's a recipe to make them less dangerous to both themselves and other people, and hopefully also to destroy the jihadists' way of life by removing the cash flow that seems to be necessary for propping it up.

[Reelya]

I think you'll find that will backfire.

We tried that with Germany after WWI after all.

And as you'll notice the whole "sanctions" thing does fuck all to make places less dangerous.

[palsch]

CPAC just uninvited Milo from being their keynote speaker because of 'resurfaced' (read, someone linked the publicly available podcast and it went viral) comments defending relationships between men and underage boys, as well as claiming that woman teachers who have sex with school boys are the real victims. The American Conservative Union are having to clarify that they don't believe there is room for debate on paedophilia. I haven't seen a good source yet that isn't an image linked on Twitter. Rumour is that Milo still wants to go to DC during the event. Maybe now he can be loudly boycotted by both students and conservatives?

Apparently Trump is now the keynote speaker. Because he doesn't have any tapes of saying stupid things about sexual assault or underage kids...


The Russian U.N. envoy dies suddenly in New York. No cause of death yet and no public health issues. Tomorrow would have been his 65th birthday. He maintained good relationship with westerners and the English press while being a staunch Putin loyalist and defender of all things Russian, and USSR before that. Be interesting to see how he is replaced. Mostly mentioning here for the New York connection, as well as current relations between the US and Russia being key to US politics.


Another piece on McMaster as maybe the last available option for the NSC job. One point I hadn't previously seen; he is due for retirement this year. The US military has an up-or-out policy where people who have been passed over for promotion twice are gone. Apparently there aren't any 4 star jobs they could find for McMaster. That could change the calculus in taking the job, as well as the pressure Trump could apply to him as an active duty officer.

Oddly enough, re: NATO spending, the subject kinda' bothered me so I just went and checked. The 2% thing was agreed upon in 2006, near as I can tell in either prague or riga, though I still can't seem to find the official text about the damn thing. Closest I've found is this, in part 26 -- which says sod all about % of GDP, and specifies than the goal is to see an increase, or at least a halt or reduction in decline, in real spending -- and a quick check of the raw dollar amounts indeed shows that most member stats have been holding steady, increasing to some degree, or only somewhat declined since at least '09, with another check suggesting it's about the same from '06 to '08.
...

It was only a recommendation without any legal or political teeth. The sort of agreement made in public speeches but never written down. It has been codified as of 2014. As a target for 2024;

In September 2014, NATO’s heads of state and government agreed at the Wales Summit to make an obligation out of what hitherto had only been a recommendation: to spend 2% of their GDP on defence. Those who were spending less should undertake efforts to lift themselves to this level within ten years – by 2024. ...

There are in fact three problems with the 2% target: how to count, how to figure out whether the money is actually well spent, and the fact that the gap between the ambition and reality has not closed in the past two years.

Pretty interesting article actually.

[EnigmaticHat]

Yeah remember when Germany attacked France... and then sold off their art?

We are one upping them because we are not conquering Iraq... We are claiming to be their "Liberators".

So... Why are we pillaging people we are liberating?

Sadly, the main culprits are hiding either under the guise of "allies" (Saudi Arabia), or under the mask of "rational actors" (Iran). They both provide massive funding for terrorist groups and their equivalents - Saudis fund Al-Qaeda, Iran funds Hezbollah and Assad - and without said funding, these groups, which brutalize, torture, oppress and kill thousands of people every year, would have collapsed a long time ago.

And yet, there isn't any single policy-relevant group that would decry them both as such. It's somehow a "partisan" issue to call these terrorist supporters as who they are - terrorist supporters. The fuck is wrong with the world today?

...by that argument tho we're terrorist supporters.  Secondhand ones, but still.  Arms sales are a MASSIVE portion of our economy, and a tool of soft power.  American arms are much more useful for governments than poorly trained NGOs.  F16 is great for Egypt or Saudi Arabia, useless for Al Queda.  Drop an M16 in the sand, pick it up and pull the trigger it won't fire, but an AK will.  So yeah, us pouring weapons into Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the AUE, (which we very much do) doesn't DIRECTLY give weapons to terrorists.  But those governments just keep our, for their purposes superior, weapons and then funnel the old soviet stuff to terrorists.  The effect is exactly the same as sending the terrorists weapons our self, and in any case in the long term we're still flooding an unstable region with weapons.

Some of our biggest buyers are in the Middle East.  Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, the UAE.  Not that Saudia Arabi and the UAE are in particular involved in current conflicts.  That's just SALES, we have a long history of giving stuff away.  Arms to the Mujahideen in the Invasion of Afghanistan, arms to Israel all the time, CIA sending non-US arms to Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war, several F16s to Egypt, probably a bunch of other stuff I haven't heard of or don't remember.  And then of course, we export plenty of live ammunition, mostly in the form of bombs.

This is to say nothing of the plentiful arms that George Bush Sr. and Jr. flooded the market with when they defeated the Iraqi army in both their wars.

Like don't get me wrong, if you want to criticize terrorist funders from a helpful perspective that's one thing.  Its awful that terrorism has become a political tool in the Middle East.  But if you want to come in like "look at these barbarians" I got news for you, we're not particularly different.  As for what you're talking about as a working political perspective, retaliation against terrorist funders is a tool but not a cure all.  Many countries that resort to supporting paramilitaries do so because they are weak governments in developing nations.  If you bring sanctions against them, the military gets their bread and the poor don't, if you attack them you'll kill more people than the terrorists.  The vast majority of people killed by Middle Eastern terrorist groups are people in the Middle East, foreigners killed in their own countries are a drop in the bucket.  You don't help people by declaring war on them, and you don't befriend them either, what we need is a more nuanced approach.

I'm not even going to quote your first two paragraphs.  Since this isn't the Age of Sail, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that was sarcasm.