No, that’s like dad straight up saying “I know you need new clothes for winter, but I don’t like you and I do like drinking, so I’m going to spend our money at the bar instead.”
Saying we don’t have the money to feed the poor is at least having some shame about it.
Europe drops the welfare state for fucking what? To spend money in weapons from usa? The same weapons that usa can disable remotely while they treat to invade iceland?
Nice…
My favourite right-wing trope is that the US can’t have socialised healthcare because they spend so much on defending Europeans so that they can.
Also the same weapons the USA wastes on a completely useless war.
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Europe doesn’t drop anything, it’s an opinion peace from the Financial Times.
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No, not US weapons (or rather: not only). The EU-based military industry is currently booming with countries ordering tonnes of stuff from Germany, Poland, Sweden, and France. All locally designed and built gear.
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The people are what makes the continent.
If you stop defending the people, what are you defending?
Wealth. The wealth of companies and individuals that have no loyalty except to themselves.
So let’s kill what makes our countries worth to live in.
Fuck you, bootlicker!
I am worried about Russia and it’s behaviour, but I totally disagree with this narrative across Europe about spending more on defence.
We spend plenty as it is, we just need to reorganise things and integrate our armies and navies. So many resources can be freed up by removing pointless duplication and redundancy, without spending more money at the expense of other parts of our economies.
It won’t happen because nationalism is a disease that infects almost all European countries.
Exactly.
OK, if you’re worried about Russia, let’s build a few more nukes and drone factories, and call it a day. Unless you’re trying to project power (the US) or use weapons manufacture as a fill-in for failed industrial policy (the US and now Germany), that’s all you need.
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If you want to help Ukraine, feel free to go volunteer. There’s plenty of conscripts there happy to change places with you.
Using them as a proxy to bleed Russia is not helping anyone except the US and weapons manufacturers.
We just have to invest in European defense systems and stop buying shit from US. Funding the fascists is unacceptable
The Royal Navy currently has fewer than 20 vessels active, including coastal boats. This is not enough to secure fisheries, defend the home islands, interdict drugs before they arrive, and to keep open the global shipping lanes Britain relies on existentially. There is no redundancy. Until earlier this year, only one Type 45 destroyer was operable. It had to be removed from its duties and sent to defend Cyprus from air attack, but it took a week to get it ready to leave.
Since the 2010 Strategic Defence Review, British military capability has been gutted. A large investment is now needed to course correct. Many European powers fell into the same complacency trap at the same time.
Some countries, like Ireland, have never had adequate military capability. Ireland has no surface to air missiles - not even a radar tracking system - and no jet aircraft at all. Again, half of its 8 naval vessels are inactive. Russia has been camping out in or near Irish waters happily doing whatever they please. Considering the amount of European data going through Ireland, this is a concern and the Dail is considering whether they need a more comprehensive military.
Financial Times has been maskless for a long time.
It’s the highest priced subscription of any paper by far. That alone should tell you something.
It’s sort of there thing. FT is where the business people go to talk about business. The NYT is where they go to scream “Ah! Socialism! China! Migrant Caravans! AI Gap!” at the rubes.
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I remember years ago reading an article complaining that Germans are too frugal and their frugality will negatively impact the economy because of lack of consumption. And I thought to myself: “Hang on. I thought they tell us to spend only on what we need?” And if we do spend as they have wanted, the elites will say this is why we can’t afford a house because we spent it all on avocado toasts.
This is the hypocrisy, gas lighting and double standards of capitalism. They tell us such and such is good, and when we do exactly what they tell us, and it has had negative consequences, they say it’s our fault. It reminds me of one of the episodes in the first season of Squid Game, in which the players were winning but the games master broke the rules to handicap the players.
Wish this wasn’t evergreen.
I hate this US- American “We HaVe To DeVeNd OuR sElVeS” propaganda BS. They only have two borders. In theory no one would give a shit about them if they were actually only caring about they’re safety!
‘We will kill so many brown people abroad just to kill welfare’ - Liberals
«Opinion» pieces are a way for news media to cover their asses.
Defend the continent from who? The teetering regime that has spent the past 5 years drawing the poorest country on the continent to a stalemate?
And the same regime definetly has the power to rule territory in which it’s despised by the majority of the population. /s
Defend the continent from people whose countries are becoming unlivable, and from missing out on all the resources we might want to procure.
I’m afraid we’ve really entered into a new era of increasing aggression and warfare.
War is very expensive though. It makes sense to spend fraction of that on a deterrent and that’s one thing EU does really well is to hedge all investments for overall stability. This is more of the same.
Interestingly it’s always the welfare state that has to be sacrificed, that is too expensive etc. The foundation of our democracy IMO.
But at least the americans think about us and want to help us! /s
Well, kinda, yeah. The only reason that has been a stalemate is that Europe mustered a bunch of support for Ukraine, at great expense. They’ve needed to gather and regather the will to spend money on this throughout, if you’ve been paying attention you’ve seen it.
Now I totally object to someone saying they need to dismantle their social programs to dump all that money into warfare, but neither should we say there is no threat at all.
What exactly will happen if there are suddenly “separatists” in Narva?
There’s 2.200 soldiers in Tapa which I assume would be deployed immediately.
There’s a total of 27.000 soldiers deployed as part of the Enhanced Forward Presence NATO deference. So they need a little more than just “separatists”
No way to make more rich people richer than to sacrifice the underclasses benefits.
It’s so unjust that I don’t have everything!!
Where is a good guillotine when you need one.
Or better, send the asshole and perhaps his family to a war somewhere, so he knows first hand what he is asking about.
There’s plenty of conscripts in the trenches in Ukraine who will swap spots with these NAFO chickenhawks in a second . . .
Just stop subsidizing the rich, problem solved.
