321
‘Would you survive 72 hours?’ Germany and the Nordic countries prepare citizens for possible war
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
321 points (95.7% liked)
World News
39385 readers
2284 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Governments are preparing for war because they want one. Cut the military budget to 0 and drive off lunatic politicians before it's to late.
Unfortunately a strong military is necessary to maintain peace
It might sound contradictory at first but you should consider that people will always disagree. And if you and your neighboring country disagree and they have 20x more military power than you, they might be inclined to use force to solve your differences
The only thing that allows you to have a civil and diplomatic discussion is the assurance that war is the worst of the options. As we see today, strong military nations are not afraid to abuse weaker military powers.
I understand the hate towards the production of weapons, and I'm with you. But defunding the military is a simplistic, utopian argument that unfortunately would not work in the present time
I've never seen a more polite and constructive way to call someone a naive idiot ;)
Peace is maintain by seeking peace and avoid conflict not by spending billions of dollars in weapons that in most cases are designed to attack and kill other people.
And that's why you want to cut the military budget to 0 so that there's no leverage to use force against others. According to your logic people will always disagree? So ban nukes and weapons before everyone kill each others, putting a gun in everyone hands is going to lead to a bloodbath not to peace.
Again cut the military budget to 0 so that your nation doesn't abuse weaker military powers.
You sound like you are making an apology to war and authoritarian nations. You are not with me and you are not with the human race, you are against it. What's utopian is to believe that you can achieve peace by spending Trillions of dollars in war. What's simplistic is to believe that you can't do without a government tossing billions of public money into military weapons.
...oh
You doubled down. 🤣
I'm very curious as to what your suggested course of action would be if you were to "cut the military budget to 0", and then another nation with a strong military uses their military to abuse or murder the citizens of your nation because they disagree with your nation in some way...
You don't need military budget to defend yourself. Governments need military budget to gain power and attack others.
If your country has zero weapons and my country has some weapons, what's your plan for stopping your country becoming an extension of mine, and your culture, language and history becoming lost forever?
Countries are invisible lines on the map to begin with. There are many ways to defend yourself that don't involve spending billions of pubic money into military assets such as aircarriers or stealth planes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_warfare
Just make peace, it's easy, just tell the invaders no, they will respect that and see the error of their ways.
Sorry: I'd mistaken you for a person using considered-reasoning.
Ideology doesn't reason.
Its symbols are comforting substitutes for reason, & they're enough, for it, right?
_ /\ _
Brother, I respect your principles but you're not understanding the issue with having no military.
First you would have to convince all countries in the world to cut all military budgets. Including convincing countries that would suffer economically from the extinction of the arms industry.
And once all countries have 0 military, there is an incentive for aggressive leaders to produce weapons since it would be easy to win a war against an unarmed country
Disarming a country is an impossible mission because it only works if the entire world agrees to it, and because it makes everyone vulnerable once someone decides to break the agreement.
I hope you can see it clearly now. Unless you have a proposal that fixes the two points above, your 0 military plan would not work
I'm happy to discuss more if you'd like
This highlight that you are thinking only according to how the system currently work (or how you are told it works). No country would actually suffer economically if they cut off the arms industry because they can use the money and resources for something else.
Countries are populated by people and humans can defend themself even without stealth planes or nuclear submarines. It's the government that needs asset to exercise their power be it machines or people.
Sorry but you don't understand how this works.
It doesn't make sense when you say:
For example. The US arms industry exports were worth 238 Billion $ in 2023. That means that the arms industry brought 238 billion from outside the US to inside the economy
Because the money is coming from outside. If the industry stops, the US will lose this money.
You are putting your convictions above logic. It doesn't matter how hard you believe in something, if it is not practical it won't work.
If your suggestions really make sense you should be able to convince at least a few people. But look at the responses you're getting. How can you convince all the world leaders to change if you can't convince a few people in the comments?
At some point you have to consider that you might be in the wrong. Admitting your mistakes makes you a better person and allows you to grow in character. I kindly ask you to consider that.
My guy, I'm going to finish this conversation here. I hope this was useful. Cheers!
The US spend a trillion on war each year
Did you even read what I wrote? Are you willfully ignoring the points that I made? God, how do you expect to get anywhere like this 🤦♂️
Don't forget the postcard to Russia inviting them over for tea
You chickenhawks are always so loud and self-righteous, until someone wants to force you or your kid to actually go fight in the war.
On the contrary, I would rather NOT go to war. You know what's the best way to get that to happen? Have a strong enough military that bullies like Putin and Xinnie will think very very carefully before launching a 'special military operation' into your country.
History, at least in the US, does not support your position on this. Hell, the US has rebranded what war means so we can get involved in even more foreign conflicts and kill more civilians. ("Enemy combatant" and "peacekeeping actions")
At one point under Obama and Trump the US was at war in seven different countries. (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.)
And people call it a bad thing that Trump got us out of Syria and Afghanistan, lol.
Our military is not a tool of peace. It's a weapon for corporate interests to brandish throughout the world.
Oversimplification:
Actually, it's both, at different times, in different places, sure, but it isn't just-1 or just-the-other.
Never has been.
Politics has ALWAYS been this way, through millenia.
Read Sunzi ( formerly Sun Tzu, aka Master Sun ), about how the supreme general never has to get into battle,
simply because the entire region's too busy prospering, for anybody to be digging-into battle..
As machiavellian as some of that book is, that final principle's right right right.
_ /\ _
You must have confused me for a german politician
Its almost like the west tried to be cordial with Russia before Russia decided to be an expansionist imperialistic power...
Both west and russia are exmpansionist imperialistic powers
There is no "both sides" here. Russia invaded Ukraine, repeatedly since 2014, salami slicing it. It interfered in elections. It killed multiple people on foreign soil, using highly dangerous, banded methods, that could easily have killed many others than the target. Putin has completely destroyed any democracy in Russia and murders his opponents.
This is a fact and has nothing to do with sides or teams. Both the west and russia are exmpansionist imperialistic powers
Countries joining NATO to get protection from Russia, or the EU, to get trade deals, is not remotely the same as Russia invading Ukraine in bloody war. Or any of the murderous shit Putin has done.
The person you're arguing-against has a valid point..
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/25/1067966116/u-s-air-strikes-have-killed-thousands-of-civilians-nyt-magazine-investigation-fi
& that is just 1 source I was able to find in mere-seconds, as this issue has had entire books written on it.
BOTH sides commit imperialist narcissist machiavellian psychopathic nihilistic sadistic shit, while gaslighting the entire-world about it.
The difference is a difference of degree, not a "1 does it, the other doesn't do it" difference,
& that has been true for .. the last 8+ decades?
This is actually a fundamental problem with "politics":
IF a particular machiavellian-operation is established,
AND a "new government" is elected,
Do you try resetting everything, in order to align with the temporarily-in-power new-electorate?
XOR do you just keep everything underhanded going as S.O.P, while letting the "politicians" play in the polls?
( this is intentionally a false-dichotomy: the right-answer is somewhere between, & keeps dynamically changing, as the country's morality devolves/evolves )
Without periodic-review, there won't ever be any accountability, & evil can just continue growing, endlessly, until the "deep state" really is the primary enemy of the country's civil-rights..
With periodic-review, however, then .. done by whom?
when?
At what intervals?
With what authority?
etc.
Therefore, the default is for evil to just continue growing..
As a collector-of-knowledge told me, years ago, the more he understood what had actually happened in the US molesting Nicaragua, via the CIA, & drug-cartels, etc..
the more he couldn't figure-out who the bad-guys were supposed to be.
That is normal.
Spook stuff does everything it can to eradicate true-good & true-evil from all frames-of-reference!
that is by-design.
which is what makes it & some-people so .. utterly-incompatible.
_ /\ _
Frankly if someone supports Russia over the West, or "both sides" Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I count them as either a Russia troll farm or a tankie.
The West does bad thing, but often with some misplaced good motives. It doesn't do things like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_Skripal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko
Perhaps you consider Israel to be not part of the West?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N7LQ2NR/
Or perhaps you consider the US to not be part of the West?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations_by_the_United_States
I've read that the CIA's "heart-attack gun", which shoots a frozen needle ( so it dissolves, leaving no "piece" to find ) of poison, explains a plague of heart-attacks among biomedical researchers, some years ago ( including those who refused to play any spook-games for anybody? either you're working with us or you die? )
NONE of our countries is "clean", is my point.
Some are more overtly evil, than others, is all..
Israel is acting in a monsterous way that doesn't make it think of it as part of the West. The US isn't an angel, but that doesn't make it like Putin's Russia. It's false equivalent. Though, with Trump, it could degrade so much I don't see it as part of the West anymore. If it stops being a real democracy. It could even full apart as I don't see all the States standing for it. Putin's, and authoritarian's everywhere, wet dream.
Believing that only Good(tm) & Bad(tm) are the only possible-conditions is false-dichotomy, false-framing.
1 is openly-evil, the other .. is less evil, & works hard at hiding all the evil it does, from white eyes.
Israel holds it is Western, & treated as Western, in alignment, so it doesn't matter if someone holds that "because of what they do, therefore they aren't Western": their centrality in the US's military & international policy makes it Western in a functional sense.
Representative-republic ISN'T, & never was, democracy, & the electoral-college made the US 2-times-removed from democracy, not 1-times-removed, as a normal representative-republic was.
Trump-dictatorship just finishes converting it to an ideology-archy, is all.
It'll take 7-8y for Trump to personality-convert to not-even-understanding-how-any-other-could-be-valid DarkHexad personality,
& then another 7-8y cycle for that personality's dictatorship to BUTCHER the US of A, as the Confederate reverse-takeover enforces its race-+-religion totalitarianism.
He promised his followers they wouldn't have to vote anymore, & that is a promise I trust him to fulfil.
You identified very-few assassinations, but I linked to a whole damn table-listing of the US's assassinations..
IF that doesn't count, because you've already made-up your mind, that isn't Empiricism, that is ideology/prejudice/"religion"/programming/Kahneman1-mind, & I'm fine with that being your religion: it is many people's religion, & you've total constitutional right to your ideology/prejudice/religion/programming/Kahneman1-mind, as all Westerners do, it seems..
( the problem is wrong-granularity: Nazism can be called a "religion" & there's no logically-valid falsification of that.
Instead of guaranteeing the constitutional right to any ideology/prejudice/religion/programming/Kahneman1-mind, the right needs to be much more precise, DISallowing DarkHexad principles or embodiements from being any guaranteed-right.
But that would violate the current "entitlement" to evil as a religion, wouldn't it? )
Our view is whitewashed!
Holding that an acceptably-whitewashed view "proves" that our side isn't evil .. that hasn't upright-spine in it, you know?
Here is a book I invested-in years ago, in order to discover if there was ANY truth to the "my whole view is whitewashed" position, & I figured that if I could understand 1 section of the book's context rigorously-enough ( based on my knowledge of outside-evidence, stuff NOT in the book ), THEN I'd be able to judge whether the book was all conspiracist-delusion XOR whether it was proving that at-least a significant-percentage of what it was saying was .. proving my belief to be what was baseless..
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Conspiracies-Cover-Ups-American-ebook/dp/B01KEL9Z82/
The section I dug-into was the systematic-assassination of biology researchers..
From what I could tell, it checked-out.
I never read any more of that book, because it's too damn depressing.
So, when it takes mere-seconds to find, online, evidence of THOUSANDS of falsely-labelled EKIA "Enemy Killed In Action", as it was Obama's S.O.P. to simply label ALL who US bombing butchered "EKIA", ignoring their being just families who lived there..
then the "evil XOR not-evil" false-dichotomy grates on my blood with its false-framing.
No matter.
Perhaps you hold that the evil the US does to its own not-have populations doesn't count in G-D's eye, either..
Most whites don't..
In the 1st while of the BLM uprising there were 5 open lynchings in the Deep South, but .. of course, .. the police called all those hangings "suicide", same as in the old days..
( read the Black news, when such events are happening, to get one's eyes opened, I learned.. )
I'm insisting that ignoring/denying OUR side's evil can't fool or convince G-D itself, & that objectivity is how it sees all,
& any Continuum/Soul which holds that it is child-of-G-D .. that continuum NEEDS to get holding to G-D's standards, including objectivity.
Seeing what actually IS, you know?
shruggeth
I've linked to evidence, & provided correct reasoning, but nobody has ANY obligation to tolerate that there's ANY truth in either:
ideology/prejudice/religion/programming/Kahneman1-mind ( Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow", THE most important book in all psychology, in the world, now
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman-ebook/dp/B00555X8OA/ NONE of my links are "affiliate" links: read the sample, there, & invest-in-truth if you find something, anything, to be truth, if you want. You determine what you find to be true, obviously. )
all the imprint->reaction mind, no matter what it's labelled, has the right to ideologically reject both evidence & correct-reasoning.
WHEN one begins finding-out what's being hidden by one's own-side's propaganda, there is nothing more demoralizing, more depressing, even betraying-of-one's-belief.
Nothing.
But upright-ones require uprightness, & if "our side" has been warring against uprightness, then either we are accommodating it, XOR we are attacking it, for uprightness's sake.
Same with any cancer: accommodating it produces future-life-destruction, whereas fighting it, really digging-in, COSTS, but may save one's life, itself..
Ignore or dig-in, whichever you want.
I've provided enough examples-of-evidence, & no reader of this has any obligation to step outside of ideology & actually-consider evidence, let-alone keep-digging until even-more objective-view gets put in their gaze.
which is enough: Empiricists have all the convincing they need, & ideologues won't ever be convinced, anyways: that is The Great Filter which will extinguish nearly-all of this-world's population, this century's deathmatch.
Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen.
_ /\ _
TLDR - if you don't support Ukraine's right to exist, I'm not interested in your opinion. There is no balance here. I've met and know too many Ukrainians.
Which sovereign nations have the west invaded recently?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invasions_in_the_21st_century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change#2010s
RB probably also isn't aware that the US has been helping Saudi Arabia starve and brutalize Yemen for the last eight years too.
One of the reasons why I'm anti-war is that history has shown the US to be the bad guys more often than not.
That pic is obviously of a much younger Putin and Merkle.
More recently you have this instead ... https://tenor.com/en-CA/view/merkel-putin-eyeroll-gif-9164919
Or maybe that where he put Merkel with her fear of dogs into this situation
There's some truth to this. One does need a military, but you don't need one that costs 2T a year. Canada and Mexico, combined, spend around 35 billion a year on war material, and both have universal health care.
I'm Canuck, so this issue is of central concern for us, ongoingly..
The reason we're able to spend so-little on military, per GDP,
is because of the excessive expenditure by the US.
Pretending that these expenditures are "independent" of the US's expenditure, is intellectually-dishonest.
I'm not saying that was your intent, I'm saying that's what the result misrepresentation is..
_ /\ _
"people take anti-cancer drugs because they want war-with-cancer:
simply by stopping all war-with-cancer, & stopping all the anti-cancer-drugs,
then everybody won't having malignant-tumors killing them!"
False reasoning.
WHEN there are truly-rabid people with armies,
THEN defense is a SANE investment, if the truly-rabid could affect one's country's life.
Lethal-self-defense is exercised within your body by your own immune-system, all the time.
Whatever health you've got, it's because of that!
Countries are the same as individual-organisms, in terms of being killable-by-pathogens & killable-by-cancer.
Destroy both, & live healthy.
You CANNOT give your body to pathogens/cancer & be healthy: that's just delusion.
_ /\ _