Politics Thread!

[F-ZeroOne]

It’s just occurred to me that Musk is living the Nazi Overlord thing backwards. First he developed the rockets, now he wants to invade the UK. Presumably the next step is some sort of beer hall rally?

[Ratsoap]

On the bright side, it means this $100m for Reform is probably not going to happen. Can't see the gammons wanting to vote for a party that is pro invasion by Johnny yank.

[PFVA]

It's going to be a long 4 years term. Trump is not in the White House yet and is already irritating me:

n a post on Truth Social, Trump said, in part, "Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California." I

https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news ... les-fires/

First there is no such thing as a 'Water restoration declaration'

Nevada current explains in a lot more intelligent way what's going on and the Bay-Delta management policy

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-w ... p_catchall

And Cal Matters explains the project

The rules will oversee operations of the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, which carry water from Northern California rivers south to San Joaquin Valley farmers, Los Angeles area residents and many other water users in the southern half of the state.

https://calmatters.org/environment/wate ... ery-rules/

In California, Arizona, New Mexico just like here in Southern Europe people cannot continue consuming more water than they have and desertifying everything. And we cannot continue to build cities in ways that increase drought and desertification.

[zip accident]

And we cannot continue to build cities in ways that increase drought and desertification.

Wanna bet we don't?

[PFVA]

And we cannot continue to build cities in ways that increase drought and desertification.

Wanna bet we don't?

We don't build cities in ways that increase drought and desertification?

In Wales maybe.

I can't say the same for here or the South of the Iberian Peninsula in general.

[KlaxonCow]

This is possibly in bad taste, but I can't get this song out of my head whilst watching the footage from LA:



(To be clear, unlike Johnny Rotten, I'm not calling for it. Indeed, I watch a YouTuber who lives in LA and I'm quite concerned that they're okay. But in watching Hollywood actually burn, the lyrics "Burn, Hollywood, burn" are just rattling around in my head, because it's actually happening.)

[F-ZeroOne]

Trump can have Greenland only if he agrees personally to recover every last piece from the 1968 Thule air base crash. Every. Last. Piece.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thul ... B-52_crash

[PFVA]

I think the plan is to promote Greenland's independence and apparently they have a lot support fm some of the population which totals 56 thousand people.
Greenland is very rich in oil, natural gas, and metals necessary for the modern technologies. In addition has a very strategic location even more now that the ice is melting.

[PFVA]

As for the LA fire, the LA times publishes an explanation of why the city hydrants ran out of water (something that happens in my side of the world frequently during the late Spring to early Autumn fires:

Why hydrants ran dry as firefighters battled California’s deadly fires

https://www.latimes.com/environment/sto ... y-problems

[KlaxonCow]

If Greenland becomes the 51st state of the United States, then it'll easily be the biggest state by land mass (2.1 million km^2, compared to Alaska's mere 1.7 million km^2).

Lest we forget, the 50th state - Hawaii - was originally annexed after the Spanish-American war, before becoming a state by referendum in the '50s. So America has expanded by such means before.

But, admittedly, that was the 19th century and you'd think the world had given up on such ideas. But with Putin trying to annex Ukraine and Trump trying to annex Greenland, apparently not.

[zip accident]

If Greenland becomes the 51st state of the United States, then it'll easily be the biggest state by land mass (2.1 million km^2, compared to Alaska's mere 1.7 million km^2).

Lest we forget, the 50th state - Hawaii - was originally annexed after the Spanish-American war, before becoming a state by referendum in the '50s. So America has expanded by such means before.

But, admittedly, that was the 19th century and you'd think the world had given up on such ideas. But with Putin trying to annex Ukraine and Trump trying to annex Greenland, apparently not.

If it's going to be quid pro quo annexations, think how many can play: China wants Taiwan, Agentina wants the Falklands, Korea wants Korea, Israel wants Gaza and maybe Lebanon, the Kurds want bits of Syria and Turkey, Turkey wants some of Syria. If it's a free for all there are so many potential players, I'm sure I'm missing dozens.

[zip accident]

Following on from the above (I'm feeling a little paranoid about world politics), what if Trump said (probably not in these exact words):

You can have Ukraine, Kazakstan, Taiwan, Korea, Lebanon, Gaza, Suez and Sri Lanka; we'll take Canada, Cuba, Greenland, Diago Garcia and Panama.

[KlaxonCow]

As Canada and Denmark are members of NATO then, under Article 5, is NATO not obliged to go to war with America, if America attempts to attack them by placing any (additional) military presence there?

Yes, that's absurd. But I don't see any language in Article 5 that says "...unless it's a NATO member that's doing the attacking". There's no "except America" exemption in there.

If America puts any boots on the ground, then we're obliged, by treaty, to repel American aggression. However absurd that proposition might be, as there's no "...unless it's really silly" clause in the NATO agreements.


(By the way, I actually typed out that Russia going after Ukraine and America going after Greenland could legitimise China going after Taiwan, and then we'd have a global free-for-all. Which is the sort of thing that causes World Wars. But that felt like a whole other topic to go into, so I curtailed it to focus the point. But, yeah, there's several dozen land grabs all around the world that'll erupt if Trump legitimises what Putin started in declaring that the days of might-equals-right "conquering territory" are back in action again.)

[PFVA]

California was independent for a short time before joining the US federation.

If Greenland is to become American most likely it would be in a similar way. The 57 thousand of them proclaim independence fm Denmark and then join the US.

Or under that threat Denmark agrees to whatever the US wants to do there and Greenland stays as an autonomous area of Denmark.


Note: For a long time I always thought Greenland was an independent country. Only after I moved to the US I learned it was part of Denmark.

[Dio]

(By the way, I actually typed out that Russia going after Ukraine and America going after Greenland could legitimise China going after Taiwan, and then we'd have a global free-for-all. Which is the sort of thing that causes World Wars. But that felt like a whole other topic to go into, so I curtailed it to focus the point. But, yeah, there's several dozen land grabs all around the world that'll erupt if Trump legitimises what Putin started in declaring that the days of might-equals-right "conquering territory" are back in action again.)

I think that's really the heart of it. The US, China and Russia do a deal so the US can have Panama and Greenland and the latter get Taiwan and Ukraine respectively. There's really no other way to view it. It's quite baffling really.