Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[TheBiggerFish]

@Internet thing

Has it already passed? Tbh, I'm still waiting for it to pass before I go 'DOOOOOOOOOM' about it.

I believe it may have.

[palsch]

Trump is tweeting again.

Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!

I'm sure that will make those groups - the core of the current Republican House majority and right wing policy shops - more inclined to work with him on tax reform.

[Hanslanda]

His public relations advisor must be having a stroke every time he tweets now.

[Aedel]

now.

I feel like they've been having strokes since he got the job.

[palsch]

I... I honestly thought this was a joke.

Donald Trump handed the German chancellor Angela Merkel a bill — thought to be for more than £300bn — for money her country “owed” Nato for defending it when they met last weekend, German government sources have revealed.

The bill — handed over during private talks in Washington — was described as “outrageous” by one German minister.

“The concept behind putting out such demands is to intimidate the other side, but the chancellor took it calmly and will not respond to such provocations,” the minister said.

[Neonivek]

I had no idea NATO was a protection racket.

[Azzuro]

No wonder he shook her hand when they first met but refused to do it during the meeting later. She must have refused to pay in between.

[wierd]

More, Trump is using it like a cudgel.

The US spends absurd amounts of money on "national defense", and is the big 2ton giant ape, to contend with Russia's version of Godzilla.
NATO makes use of the US to balance against Russia for european security, via all the treaties they have established with th US, and so on, and so forth.

Trump is (rightly, as US expenditure is astronomical) stating that NATO's defense strategy is "Not free".  SOMEBODY is paying for it. (Namely, the US is paying for it, by being the poster child for excessive military expenditures on research and development into ever more effective ways of killing lots and lots of people.)

Germany benefits from NATO for national security, and thus is getting free benefits of the US's absurd military expenditures. Trump is essentially telling Merkel how much that security actually costs.

It is a very provocative, and foolish way to go about it-- but that is what he is TRYING to do.

[Hanslanda]

I just got an idea for the title of Trump's autobiography. Orange bull in a European china shop: the Donald Trump story

[wierd]

Orange bull vs Formerly Red Bear, the untold story of how NATO fell apart.

[Frumple]

@Internet thing

Has it already passed? Tbh, I'm still waiting for it to pass before I go 'DOOOOOOOOOM' about it.

I believe it may have.

Again, the thing FD linked to is currently in the house. It passed senate, but that's it, so far.

[Flying Dice]

^Storage is why I'm all about those tanks of molten salt, yo.

... voted down? It passed the senate a few days ago, hit the desk in the house on the 23rd, iirc. Least the bit of bullshittery FD linked to mention of upthread a bit.

"Congressional disapproval [...] of the rule submitted by the [FCC] relating to [Protection of Privacy]" seems to mean they were voting against the FCC proposal for privacy protections.

Those protections have been in place for months. They passed a bill designed to strip them away.

They were passed in the FCC, were initially put in place in Oct 2016, due to be in force by last month, large (over 100k users) providers were expected to comply by Dec 2017, and small ones were given until Dec 2018?

The initial bit: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/isps-will-soon-have-to-ask-you-before-sharing-private-data-with-advertisers/

The start of what they're doing today: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/isps-wont-have-to-follow-privacy-rules-if-gop-lawmakers-get-their-way/

A stay on the rule while the vote was set up: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/isps-cheer-pause-of-rule-that-guards-private-data-from-security-breaches/

The actual vote being presented: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/ad-industry-lobbyists-celebrate-impending-death-of-online-privacy-rules/

The current situation: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/how-isps-can-sell-your-web-history-and-how-to-stop-them/

Max, you're missing the point, which is that they existed and the Senate was voting on a bill to strike them down, not voting against a bill to approve them. That's how votes work. Representatives in a legislature vote for or against the bill. The Republican majority in the Senate voted in favor of the bill designed to strip away the new protections, which had been put into place months before the 115th Congress was elected.

[ChairmanPoo]

Germany is not benefitting for free because NATO membership is not free. Trump is simply full of shit. Worth noting that this bill is curiously similar in size to the estimates of the Wall cost.

I think that after the Mexicans told him to get lost, he decided to try his hand at blackmailing EU countries.

(My bet for next stop in the extortion queue? Theresa May, assuming he hasnt done thst already)

[smjjames]

I... I honestly thought this was a joke.

Donald Trump handed the German chancellor Angela Merkel a bill — thought to be for more than £300bn — for money her country “owed” Nato for defending it when they met last weekend, German government sources have revealed.

The bill — handed over during private talks in Washington — was described as “outrageous” by one German minister.

“The concept behind putting out such demands is to intimidate the other side, but the chancellor took it calmly and will not respond to such provocations,” the minister said.

And she still wanted to shake his hand? hell of a way to start off a relationship.

Also, any Brits know how good The Times is? Like is it NYT/WaPo credible or is it Daily Mail credible?

[wierd]

"for free" is not the best wording, no.

However, let's look at this another way.  Say we have one person who is much wealthier/access to resources than a lot of other people, but who gets some limited benefit from cooperating with other people to get things they need. (exotic things that are rare in their locality/sphere of influence) They agree to build a fancy house along with the people they trade with.

The other people help, as best they can (or claim to be able to) in the construction and maintenance of that house, but the bulk of the labor and resources used to construct that house comes from the singular person with access to the greatest resources.

In a breakdown analysis, this person gets the LEAST utility from the partnership. They outlay the most material expense, and get significantly less benefit for that expense, than do the other partners in the agreement.

That is a better way of looking at NATO, and how it gets funded.  NATO member nations get the benefit of the research dollars spent on arms development by the US, because the US shares that produced knowledge with NATO member states. The actual costs of producing that knowledge are not diminished significantly by the "fair" contributions of the other members.

To put it a better way, the relationship the US has with NATO is not symmetrical.  It is doubtful that even combined, the other NATO members could repel an actual threat to US national security on a military theater, because their combined contributions to NATO are not a significant fraction of the US contribution, and if the threat can overpower the US, it will clearly overpower all the rest of NATO combined.

Which is a nice way of saying that NATO is not able to live up to the mutual protection nature of the agreement.

To live up to that agreement, the other NATO members must contribute substantially more to the maintenance and improvement of NATO forces and armorments.