Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

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The US can call Austria in 5 minutes and with no burden of proof get the airspace permit for a head of sovereign state revoked and the plane swatted instantly upon landing, because someone might have been on board (he wasn’t) whose only real crime was embarrassing the USA by exposing their fundamentally unconstitutional lawbreaking.

Same goes with the prosecutors in Sweden; a phone call and the US got, not charges (as that would actually be official misconduct in Sweden), but enough of an official statement from a prosecutor to get the words “Assange” and “rape” in headlines together around the world by that evening.

European countries are, by and large, lapdogs of the USA. It’s sad. And then the US president turns around and stabs them in the back by threatening invasion and annexation, or complete disregard for the fundamental obligations of NATO members.

I really don’t know what the fuck the Europeans are thinking by playing the US’s stupid games. As we see time and time again, it won’t be repaid in kind.

Neither US or EU are monoblocks though.

Obviously, on both side (and beyond) they are nice people trying to plan good things without being too naive. But bragging all day through and destroy all that is in your power is both easier and more attention grabbing than discrete hard work at building better future for everybody.

I might have bought the stuff about Austria, if it weren't for the tinfoil-hattery about Sweden. The authorities there were investigating Assange not because of any American phone calls, but because some of his Swedish sex partners reported him to the police.

But since that's your level of accuracy on Sweden, it's hard to see any reason to trust you on Austria either.

Unfortunately the big game is opaque it's close to impossible to understand for the common folk. So many questions, so tough to grasp answers. Sickening. The enemy is hiding. One could say that paying the taxes in some form is a path toward a destruction. Phrases like "war economy" are lunatic. It all starts in your mind, and that's why it's the most important to protect your children from the propaganda. Take care!

> I really don’t know what the fuck the Europeans are thinking by playing the US’s stupid games. As we see time and time again, it won’t be repaid in kind.

I feel like the European relationship with the US can really be summed up by the 30 permanent military bases and 84,000 military personnel stationed in their borders and the underlying faith that it's for their own protection, except we better never ask them to leave just in case. Everything else sort of follows from that point.

84 thousand personnel (of which maybe 20 per cent are actual combat troops, given the standard tooth-to-tail ratios of modern mechanized armies) could perhaps occupy Denmark on a good day. For a continent the size and population of Europe, this is not a dominant force by any means.

Putin has about 700 000 personnel in Ukraine right now and isn't making any progress. Barbarossa took about 3 million personnel to start.

Speaking of, my favourite Denmark story was probably Greenland when the US abandoned their cold-war era bases they just buried all their highly toxic trash in the ice. That ice is now melting and Denmark has to clean it all up. In the agreement with the US they excluded the US from any responsibility so they have to pay for it themselves. They also got really mad when the Greenlanders went behind the back of Denmark to complain at the UN about it.

Then Trump threatened to invade Greenland. And now the US is in negotiation with NATO (yeah lol) to build 3 new bases there that would be designated as US territory (bwahaha). One thing I like about Trump he drags all the Europeans through the mud so publicly it makes the contradictions impossible to miss, that's why they all hate him but still have to kiss his feet it's awesome. Like Obama made their groveling seem less suspect.

But yeah people are fucking clueless about everything. At least our media is free and not state controlled propaganda right?

What they're thinking is that they really don't want to be playing Russia's stupid games.

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