xNIBx

Pretty sure there are NATO nukes sitting in Turkey already

Those are US controlled nukes. And the US doesnt have the best relation with Turkey atm. They are there now, gone tomorrow. Turkey cant rely on american nukes. If other regional powers have nukes, they need to have nukes. And if Turkey has nukes, then Greece needs to have nukes for selfprotection.

Turkey gets to wave their dicks around and make demands at the big boy table despite being a complete joke of a country.

They have the 2nd biggest military in NATO, after the US, an immensely important geographical location and they are a regional power(along with Iran and Saudi Arabia).

And if Iran and Saudi Arabia get nukes, then Turkey will get nukes. And if Turkey gets nukes, then unless there is an EU army, Greece will want to get nukes.

Maybe Volvo? Do note that Polestar cars are made in China, but Volvo ones should be made in Europe or US. I dont know how good the conditions in the american Volvo factory are but in Sweden, Volvo is considered a good employer. Volvo/Polestar are owned by Geely, which is a chinese company but Volvo is pretty independent.

So you would be ok if Turkey says “we only invaded those greek islands because they had greek military bases in them”? I am just wondering, since when having military bases(your own or of allies), in your own sovereign, internationally recognized territory is an acceptable casus belli for you.

Would you be ok if the US invaded Cuba, if Cuba had russian bases? Is this what you are saying? How something like this justifies invasion?

The Acropolis of Athens is extremely small. EPCOT is 40x larger(123 hectares vs 3 hectares).

Neither Europe nor the US can make chips like this, thats why they are trying so hard to convince TSMC to make a chip fab in their territories. Does this mean that white people are too stupid to make chips? No, they just cant atm and they arent willing to invest the infinite time and money it would take to reach that level, especially since their ally Taiwan(TSMC) is already making the most advanced chips in the world.

China on the other hand needs to become more self reliant, especially with the new Cold War escalating. So they have to do it. And they are doing it. But it will still take a lot of time and money to be able to manufacturer modern high end chips.

TSMC is taiwanese, which is “yellow” people. Why are you trying to spin this as a racist thing? Literally the best people in the world manufacturing chips are taiwanese(han). Why would anyone think that the chinese, who are basically the same ethnicity(han), wont be able to make advanced chips because of racial reasons?

It’s not sinophobia. Neither the EU nor the US can manufacture high tech chips, which is why they are sucking TSMC’s dick in order to make some chip fabs in their territory. It’s extremely hard and expensive to develop(or start developing) this. It’s literally the most technologically advanced thing humans make.

And even TSMC relies on western companies all over their world for the manufacturing of their tools and tech. But since China does not have that luxury, they have to make everything from scratch and that is extremely hard. I am still not convinced China can make 7nm but remains to be seen.

Because manufacturing super high tech chips is extremely hard and complicated and basically only a couple companies in the world can do it and they also depend on parts and technology from other companies all over the “western” world. China didnt have anything near this capability. It requires advanced research and knowhow on a million different technologies. So unless China does extensive industrial espionage(which they are trying to do), it’s gonna take them like 10+ years to start producing anything relatively modern without needing any external parts/help.

In any case, it remains to be seen if it is actually 7nm. With a new cold war ramping up, China is trying to become self-reliant as much as possible.

Noone in the West wants Putin dead because his replacement will be even more hardcore. Every potential replacement candidate, people with real power, are bigger hawks than Putin. We might see Russia do a full conversion to war economy or some nukes flying.

I mean this is what homophobes use when they say “hate the sin, love the sinner”. You are still a sinner. And this isnt just some interpretation or parable, it clearly says it is an abomination. It’s just silly.

Turkey under the Kemalists is an example of a primarily Muslim nation at least attempting to build a liberal democracy.

Yes, building a liberal democracy by using military dictatorships. When you are trying to force something on people that dont want it(at least the majority), thats when you get Erdogan. It might suck for turks living in Western Turkey and in cities like Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara but the other half of turks have a majority.

And one of the fundamental principles of a democracy is that majority rules. You cant use the military to overthrow democratically elected governments just because you dont like their policy.

However, i agree with your point, there are plenty of turks who selfidentity as muslim and are ok with lgbtq, etc, just like there are christians. Though i never understood how that works. Like how can the Church of Sweden participate in Pride parades. At what point something stops being christianity and becomes a social club? In the Bible is clearly says that homosexuality is bad.

It’s not semantics. True, you can overthrow a government without a military invasion but doing a military invasion is much more serious and more “bad”. My point is that the US hasnt recently done the “more bad” thing(except for Libya but not even Russia gave a fuck about that), while Russia is actively doing the “more bad” thing.

The expanding of NATO depends on democratically elected governments of sovereign countries choosing to join an alliance. NATO didnt roll tanks over those countries forcing them to join NATO. If NATO did that, i would agree that it would be a very bad thing.

There are a lot of degrees of interactions between countries. Soft power, hard power, hybrid warfare, etc. Not all of them are equal or destructive. Just because Russia is currently doing the worst kind of interaction(invasion), you cant equate all negative interactions between countries to rationalize “but all countries are doing bad stuff”.

Russia had very little soft power and with this invasion, they wasted large chunks of it. They proved to everyone that ultimately, they are willing to use military force to achieve their objectives. The fact that the US did/does it, doesnt justify it. Both sides can be bad and in this specific situation, one side is clearly in the wrong while the other side is supporting the “good” side(for their own reasons).

Do you not think that we should respect country borders and their governments, especially when they are democratically elected? The whole “it was a coup, thats how Zelensky got elected” is bullshit that was started by Russia AFTER the invasion.

I went back and checked the russian statements after the latest ukranian elections, where the actual antirussian candidate(Poroshenko) had lost. The Kremlin was tendative but hopeful since their main “bad guy” had lost. Kremlin didnt say anything about staged elections, didnt say anything about CIA conspiracy to elect Zelensky or anything like that. Kremlin was “well, at least that asshole(Poroshenko) lost, maybe we can find some common ground with Zelensky”.

But Russia lacked the soft power to do that. So they overplayed their hand and used hard power to achieve it.

the USA deployed troops for a “joint training” with Brazilian troops during (far-right USA backed) Bolsonaro’s government.

I mean the US is training people from other countries and when it comes to Latin America, those people are usually far right. Is this a good thing? No. But this isnt as bad as invading a country. Again, it is a spectrum. There is a difference between Russia training for example people from Donbas(bad), or giving them Buk missiles(more bad) or straight up invading(most bad) or straight up going after Ukraine’s capital instead of just liberating/securing the separatist regions(you have gone full disney bad guy).

This is what i am talking about Russia overplaying their hand. You cant really talk about “protecting the people of Donbas”, when you are literally speed marching(literally airlifting and dropping) to Kiev. You dont give a fuck about Donbas, you just want a regime change(through violence, against the democratic results) in Ukraine.

Did the US deploy military troops in Bolivia? You do understand the difference between saying “yeah, we support you” and then local forces do a coup and literally invading and using your own troops to violently overthrowing a government. Dont you think there is a huge difference there?

Did the US deploy military troops in Brazil?

When did the last military coup in Latin America, orchestrated by CIA ,happen? I am not saying that the US is great but at some point, we need to talk about the present. And at the present(and recent past), the US is not trying to overthrow a government, at least not by using military force in Latin America.

As far as the war in Ukraine in concerned, the US is doing the right thing, even if they are doing it because it benefits them. This is the only time since WW2 that the US is doing the right thing. Have you ever wondered why historically neutral countries like Sweden want to join NATO now? What caused that change?

Mexico has every right to join the Warsaw Pact and i would be on Mexico’s and Russia’s side if the US invaded Mexico for wanting to join an alliance.

Now let’s talk about how NATO is threatening Russia. How would that happen? If Ukraine joined NATO, do you think NATO would invade Russia? You do realize that Russia has nukes, right? NATO is not about invading Russia, it’s about preventing Russia, a big country with nukes, from invading smaller countries with no nukes.

Armenians are christians, azeris are muslims(and ethnic turks). Turkey(Ottoman Empire) did a thing(genocide) on the armenians back in the day. Anyway eventually both countries were part of the USSR. The USSR collapses and all these new countries are created.

There is a large region in Azerbaijan, inhabited mostly by armenians(the azeris say the armenians ethnic cleansed the azeris from the region). This armenian controlled enclave in Azerbaijan is separated from Armenia. Wars ensue, things become as they are now, with many issues but relatively peaceful.

Fast forward to today, Azerbaijan has a lot of natural gas reserves, they are relatively somewhat rich and with the war in Ukraine, Russia(the ally of Armenia) refused to help Armenia and Europe has a huge appetite for non russian gas(ie for azeri gas). So Azerbaijan is in a very powerful political and economic position atm.

Azerbaijan is using that power to “solve the issue” by military conquering the armenian controlled enclave, knowing that Armenia doesnt have any military allies anymore(Russia refused to answer Armenia’s equivalent to NATO’s article 5 request for help) and Europe/West cant do much politically because they are extremely dependent on azeri gas.

Are the armenians the victim? Well, kinda. They are atm. But they were also the perpetrators in the past.

I mean everything exists in everything, the issue is what is their form. And cows convert methane in a very bad(for the environment) form. It’s like burning down a tree, CO2 already existed in the tree but it was harmless. By burning it, you are releasing it in the atmosphere.

Wow, that is insane, i didnt know Australia does that.

There was one time, when Turkey had a legitimate chance of joining the EU, back in 2005ish. Back then, one of their biggest supporters of their EU candidacy was Greece. Greece wanted to normalize the relation with Turkey and Turkey wanted to become a normal european country. Greece was even willing to throw Cyprus under the bus, by supporting the Annan Plan, which was objectively terrible for Cyprus. Though the thinking was “if Turkey becomes “normal”, then any negative part of the deal wouldnt be relevant, it could be like Belgium”. Though Cyprus(and pretty much all its political parties) voted against the deal.

Erdogan was seen as the extrovert, moderate muslim, someone who could merge moderate Islam with european values.

Nowadays, Erdogan and Turkey are on a completely different place. Erdogan has said “we might come on night” and “our missiles can reach Athens”.

https://www.politico.eu/article/recep-erdogan-turkey-threat-against-greece-g20/

https://www.politico.eu/article/erdogan-warns-greece-that-turkish-missiles-can-reach-athens%EF%BF%BC/

Turkey is constantly pushing their “blue homeland” concept, which basically includes a lot of greek islands in the Aegean. And thats on top of ridiculous Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ) claims that basically say “(greek) islands have no EEZ rights”. Turkey feels that it has been historically wrong and that they need more “breathing space” in the Aegean sea(where Greece owns all the islands except 3).

And even the turkish society is different. There is a greater chasm between western/urban Turkey and the rest of Turkey. There was a hope that the rest of Turkey could slowly transition closer to european values, but nowadays it seems the country is getting split in half and each half is moving further away from the other.

And last but not least, the russian invasion of Ukraine has shown to the world that integration and shared economic interests do not always translate to peace. So do we really want to do the same mistake with Turkey?

PS I am greek, so i am biased.

Because it’s the law

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZQ0AERdt_Y