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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
The Trump campaign also apparently had access to the content of some of the leaks before Wikileaks made them public.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The autocorrect didn't commit the most notable major errors in that one.
Assange is Australian, he's accused of crimes in Sweden, and he's hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London because he fears that after being extradited to Sweden he'd be taken to the US for a trial that he believes would be unfair.
You did get England right, although it would be more reasonable to refer to it as the United Kingdom (which also includes Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales, and the capital of which is London, where other nations would have their embassies.)
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Read the whole thing, but here are some highlights.
There's no question, now.
Trump is a Manchurian candidate.
New Survey coming this weekend!Note that this association is not being reported on endlessly in the media despite being speculative and based on evidence that's not substantial enough for a trial...
I'd imagine that "Trump is a Russian agent" would make for some spectacular full-day news coverage on CNN as a substitute for "Clinton emails", and be slightly more likely to have actual substance behind it.
edited 31st Oct '16 3:37:48 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The Russians have all kinds of reasons to pull for Trump. Probably the biggest is his repeated promises to abandon our allies and NATO.
A NATO without the US barely exists and the Russians will get free reign of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Not to mention the space they'll have if we fall out with Japan and pull out of the Pacific.
Oh really when?@Tobias: The image actually has Trump clothed in the armor of Gilgamesh from the Fate series... who wants to cleanse the world and get rid of those he views as useless and unimportant. Furthermore, he's incredibly wealthy and has ALL of the weapons. All of them.
So... yeah. Not a good guy.
"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-MaeI can only speak for myself, but my opinion about NATO is that if Europe wants to constantly criticize the US they can fend for their own damn selves.
You said it yourself, NATO is almost nonexistent without the United States. Making us do all the heavy lifting hardly seems fair, and they should contribute more.
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That's such an uninformed view of what NATO is and does that I don't even know how to begin critiquing it.
edited 31st Oct '16 3:54:01 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"It's a mutual defense pact founded during the cold war to mostly protect Europe from the USSR?
I hardly think it's the very next day that would happen.
Something I actually agree with many on the left is that we spend too much money on defense spending. I don't see what the big deal is with us spending less and then spending a bit more
edited 31st Oct '16 4:03:16 PM by TheWanted
The UK, France, and Germany are all European NATO members that are among the top-10 largest military spenders in the world. Together, those three spend much more than Russia does. That's just three European NATO members.
Japan and South Korea are allies of the US in Asia. They are at #8 and #10 on that list. Together, those two spend more than Russia, as well.
The world's third largest defense spender is Saudi Arabia, another US ally.
The only top-10 military powers in the world that aren't the US or its allies are China (#2), Russia, (#4) and India (#6). The US still has an absolutely massive defense budget - more than double that of Russia and China combined.
You shouldn't be too worried about a lack of military spending by the US or its allies. (Incidentally, if you take the top spender list to 15, you'll get another 4 US allies: Italy (NATO), Australia, the UAE, and Israel. #11 is Brazil, which is also friendly to the US.)
edited 31st Oct '16 4:04:10 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.I'm not on board with that fear, to be honest. Of course, Russia would have less of a deterrent against it, but the armed forces of Europe, if they join together, are still extremely strong. (Russia could take the Baltic states and Finland and so on, but it couldn't go very far into Europe and would eventually get pushed back out.) Even that wouldn't be likely to happen, though, because of the nuclear deterrent.
The benefit of having Baltic states and other potential targets of Russia that might otherwise be easy pickings is that article 5 of NATO says that if any member is attacked, the entire alliance is attacked. That massively escalates the deterrent against an invasion.
In the US, politicians often complain that other NATO members aren't participating sufficiently in all of the illegal wars that the US undertakes. Most of the time, though, those wars aren't strictly defensive actions, so it's hard to justify mandating a defensive partnership to join in. (For instance, Afghanistan was essentially defensive; Iraq was illegal; and the intervention in Libya was mandated by the UNSC, so legal.)
Still, NATO offers a very effective command structure and avenues for sharing technology and tactical innovations and mutually benefiting from this. This means that even if you're taking a military action that is not strictly defensive, the alliance will be a massive help. It's true that NATO members don't always commit as heavily as the US. Part of the reason is that most of the US allies' armed forces tend to be designed for defensive actions, and not force projection (to a great extent). They do still tend to participate in NATO operations in all sorts of ways. For instance, if you look at a list of countries militarily supporting the Iraqi armed forces' attempt to retake Mosul, you'll see basically all of the US' allies listed there.
Japan and South Korea feel threatened by China and Russia, and their close cooperation with the US and Australia - and the link to NATO that this brings - is also a very useful deterrent. It tends to put a cap on other powers' aggression.
EDIT:
edited 31st Oct '16 4:23:09 PM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Two? I thought it was one. Not much difference it makes in quantity in why he is hiding I guess.
When did the Russian state media post before wikileaks? About all I know is that they have been released in batches over the last two weeks correct? So someone hit the post button before wikileaks did?
Anyways, is the thinking for why Russia could be for trump because of what's been going on in Syria? Wasn't Hillary in favor of a no fly zone for that?
edited 31st Oct '16 3:35:10 PM by TheWanted