Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
12hr ago
Trump had intermittently banged the "annex Greenland" drum from the start of inauguration on, as listed here. It wasn't just about January 2026. January 2026 was just the culmination. Whatever the case, if you're ostensibly allied to a country, you should probably not leave a door open to seizing their territory in any particular circumstance, it's like International Politics 101.
I'm not exactly sure what would have been a real "show of force" at Greenland. Denmark had and has actual forces in Greenland to deter a sudden seizure scenario, the others sent troops as a show of solidarity/tripwire.
The American action in Iran fully demonstrated that it was sensible from Europe to "over"react to the Greenland crisis, as it demonstrated that Trump has the full intent and capability to pull idiotic stunts without a regard for consequences with very little warning time.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
13hr ago
America, under its president, just recently just pointed at Greenland, a territory held by an European government, and basically went "Me want! Me take!", up to hinting to using military force for taking it. There was zero provocation by Denmark - one of the most consistent and reliable American allies in Europe - or the rest of Europe that caused this to happen. It wasn't just Trump's idea, as soon as it was thrown out not only did the Republicans enthusiastically line up to support it but even some lib commentators went "well... it's not completely stupid..." and the Dem response can be described as lukewarm at best. It was justified as a continuation of Manifest Destiny and what have you. The whole of European establishment understandably went absolutely hogshit and then Trump's mind wandered off to the next thing and the Americans just dropped it for now and are now expecting Europe to line up for the next adventure like nothing had happened.
You don't need highfaluting theories about history and Cold War and 18th century or endless anecdotes about snooty snippy Europeans (with the main part of the anecdote often seeming to be some personal psychodrama by the American telling it with moderate to minimal actual European participation). You can just look at this one thing! It's not the only recent thing America has done to basically teabag Europe out of nowhere but it's pretty damn big! It's a very justified reason for Europe to distance itself from America!
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
19hr ago
Besides being a nice FU to Europe it also exposes their geopolitical weaknesses as real. Which hopefully gets them to do things like build big guns, drill for oil, restart nuclear programs, forget Greta ever existed, etc.
Europe has been doing all of that (expect for drilling for oil, which Europe would do if we had oil) ever since 2022 without this being prompted by US belligerence. (Yes, including plans or initialization of new nuclear projects, like this and this - Germany isn't all of Europe, which frequently seems to be forgotten in discussions like this). All that stuff like this, or the tariff debacle, or the senseless Greenland affair, does is make EU distance itself from the US. Of course building big guns and restarting nuclear programs becomes quite a bit harder if we are suffering from an economic crisis, such as one caused by an extended shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz.
Of course none of that matters, does it? It's all just Trump suppporters trying to figure out some way, any way, in which the Iran affair makes sense or how it would make sense for EU to participate in enabling idiotic American policy in this particular matter.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
5d ago
Okay but isn't the categorization used here... pretty odd? It differentiates Ashkenazim from "Soviet Jews", who presumably are either Ashkenazi or even more European, and it doesn't appear to differentiate Sephardim from Mizrahim, even though Sephardim (afaik?) are also quite European in ancestry. Also, some of those in the "Mixed" category would presumably be, like, Ashkenazim/"Soviet" mixed, if these are really the categories used.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
5d ago
This is one of those claims that not only conflicts with the facts on the ground but doesn't even really make sense on its face. Why would they need to leave for the "Arabs" (are Palestinians and Arabs different population now?) to kill the Jews? Wouldn't they stick around, participate in the genocide and partake of the loot?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
9d ago
Most historical Marxist-Leninist orgs would consider this proposal to represent irresponsible left-deviationist adventurism (well, unless you actually really succeed in getting a revolution going, obviously).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
9d ago
Diamond Princess had 712 confirmed cases and 14 deaths, a 2% mortality rate, which indeed makes sense for a ship full of old people.
The people didn't rise up, as they were told that these are temporary measures, which they indeed were, stupid as many of them were. The conspiracy theory crowd - insofar as it still remembers Covid and hasn't moved out to other topics - tends to nowadays just take continuous victory laps over how "conspiracy theorists are still 100% correct" whenever some authority admits that some of the measures were less-well-than-thought out or there's news about lab leak possibility being considered or whatever. However, they confidently predicted that the sheeple are wrong about all this being temporary and its just going to be an endless cycle of lockdowns and mandatory vaxx from here to eternity. It wasn't. That probably has a lot to do with why it's been forgotten so quickly (it shouldn't be, it should be pored over in detail for lessons on how to answer similar crises better in the future.)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
13d ago
Yes, thought that the direct connection made the satire obvious.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
13d ago
No, you don't undesrtand. The problem of wokeness facing our society is so deeply entrenched as to be essentially impervious to resolution or amelioration. You surely cannot believe that wokeness has been meaningfully improved or ameliorated. In a sense, almost everyone you encounter in contemporary society has adopted woke narratives in some way.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14d ago
As I said, I'm comparing what is being said here with my own observations for 40+ years of life and counting. Who am I going to believe, my own lying eyes or some guy online?
There aren't a lot of competing schools of thought here, there isn't one group claiming you should shrink your hairline, another claiming you should restore your hairline, one claiming you should gain 100 pounds, one claiming you should develop acne, etc. etc.
Well, sure, obvious stuff is obvious, but there are in fact differing opinions on how muscular you should get and where, whether you should aim for the hollow-cheeks look etc.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14d ago
The "Clavicular Thesis" would be closer to "Looks are the most important thing, more important than everything else." You could say, yeah, everyone knows looks are important, but since you're not currently a looksmaxxer, clearly your preference for looks is weaker than Clav's. And he'd say your preference was wrong.
Yeah but... so? What does it exactly even mean for a preference to be "wrong" or "right" in this context? Near as I can tall, it's a debate on what is effective (for attracting women), and my observations on what the type of a guy who attracts a lot of women and has a highly successful dating life indicates that yes, looks are important, but they're not as important as being fun, charismatic and confident, and the manosphere types are frequently not a reliable type on what sort of looks are actually the most attractive to women (partly due to ignorance, partly due to their predilection for maing money by advertising get-swole-quick solutions etc.)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
23d ago
I saw the spoilered section as a part of the larger theme of "everyone's at fault, it's the society (the patriarchy, if you will) that's killing these women more than any single actor you can put blame on, it's a continuation of the same general evil of humanity as Archimboldi experienced in the war" theme.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
23d ago
Woah, I also just finished 2666 a bit over a month ago, with the same thoughts as you did (well, apart from the guns part, I didn't catch that.) The Archimboldi section ended up being the best part.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
23d ago
Yeah, should probably specify that I was talking about strictly the use of the word "revolution" in politics, it is used in social trends like "industrial revolution", "sexual revolution" and so on. But yeah, "kill" in this sense is probably a better example, and there's a lot of other violent-style rhetoric like that - "crush X", "kick X's ass" and so on.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
24d ago
Without taking a stance on what the Iranians actually mean when they say Death to America, I was just thinking a few days back how there exists an American relative equivalent in phrases that demonstrate ambiguity of rhetoric and the need to take cultural context into account in translation: the constant calls for "revolution" and uses of the word "revolution" as a description in politics (Ron Paul Revolution! The Reagan Revolution! Bernie's "Our Revolution!") with "revolution" basically just meaning electing a candidate within the existing system instead of its general historical meaning of a complete societal upheaval from the bottom to the top, often/usually through the force of arms (or at least an implication of the same).
You don't see the word "revolution" used the same way in Finland, for example, a country with negative experience of actual attempts at revolution (the left used the word when it was communist but basically doesn't any more, the right has approximately never used it in any sort of a positive sense).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
24d ago
This is the same as my experience. The guy who was the most insistent about going "fuck them" was basically just a teenage edgelord, a channer before the chans. He became conspicuously right-wing a few years after the events (conspicuous enough to stand out in the generally apolitical atmosphere). The next day there was a minute of silence for the victims of 9/11 and the one guy known for left-wing activism in the class made a point of saying that he was only doing it to honor the civilian victims.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
It's clearly taking up air from the real scandal of Olympic hockey in 2026, meaning two Canadian refs being allowed to be refs for the Canada-Finland semifinal.
Therians (the modern iteration) have been a thing in Finland for some years now.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
I thought that D means Decadence [causing the fall of empires] here, not Devereaux.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
But when the Arabs built their empire they did it by steamrolling the (Eastern) Romans and the Persians who had a plenty of martial prowess and whose troops were well battle-hardened, precisely because they had spent hundreds of years butting heads against each other.
The Arabs were highly united and driven when doing their conquests, but that's because they had just been united by a fresh new mission-oriented religion, not any inherent "desertness". Before Mohammed, and during the early parts of his career, the Arabs were notably disunited and prone to clannish infighting.
Also, the Fremen are Chechens.
The response from Europe's political leadership for the general current situation, ever since 2022, has been steadily hiking up defense expenditure. Despite this being presumably exactly what Trump wants, this hasn't led to a positive change in American attitudes, to say the least.
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