And again, the only mandatory after Article V have been monitoring and patrolling US airspace for a few months after 9/11 and some maritime operations in the Mediterranean to protect shipping and prevent terrorism and smuggling. All those other NATO operations were voluntary, and other NATO countries have happily told the US to fuck off when they don't want to be involved.
Also, Sweden, despite not being in NATO, also participated in operations in Afghanistan. Your premise that being in NATO necessarily causes you to be involuntarily dragged into gallivanting around the Middle East is simply false. Other nations have autonomy and agency, actually. Not everything is about America.
No, it is not, and I'm not going to allow you to just walk back your claims after some inconvenience. To quote you yourself:
This just means that Sweden will have [to] send their troops to fight wars in middle east for oil companies.
No, it doesn't. NATO membership does not mean that anyone is forced to fight wars in the Middle East. If that were the case, all of NATO would have been roped into the Iraq invasion, but they weren't. The vast majority told America to fuck off during the invasion, and only lightly participated in some minor training operations with the Iraqi military afterwards.
And again, Sweden not being in NATO did not prevent it from participating in other NATO campaigns in a voluntary capacity. Your claim that Sweden joining NATO means that it's going to be forced to participate in all these Middle Eastern wars against its will simply does not stand up to even a cursory look at actual reality. You can believe whatever you like since it appears that you're immune to facts, but anyone else reading this should know that you're not saying anything based in actual evidence.
Also, if you really think that ten Norwegians trying to teach Iraqi soldiers how to resist the groups that later became ISIS is an example of the "horrible things" that NATO does, that says much more about you than it does about NATO. The world is actually more complicated than "US brainwashes the world into killing the third world because oil".
It absolutely is; this guy is either an idiot or deliberately misleading.
Article V has been invoked exactly one time, by the United States after the September 11 attacks. The direct outcomes of this were two operations: Operation Eagle Assist, where NATO forces helped patrol and monitor US airspace in the immediate months after 9/11, and Operation Active Endeavour, a maritime operation where NATO ships patrolled and secured shipping lines in the Mediterranean. NATO itself was not directly involved under Article V in the Iraq invasion, though some members did voluntarily participate (hence Bush's "coalition of the willing").
There have been NATO operations in the Middle East under Article IV invoked by Turkey, which mandates only military consultation from members, not direct intervention, though they may voluntarily participate if they want. Likewise, NATO was involved in Afghanistan (which, it should be noted, is not in the Middle East) and Libya in a similar voluntary capacity. It should be noted that, despite not being a member, Sweden did participate in NATO operations in Afghanistan, voluntarily.
Sweden is only obligated to participate in military action if a member state is actively attacked. Otherwise, it's able to voluntarily participate in other NATO operations, as it has already done in the past. That NATO is a tightly organized and coordinated international military organization makes it really useful for large international operations - generally directed by the UN - but outside of defensive invocations of Article V, these are strictly optional, and members very much have refused to participate in American-led operations that they don't agree with (see Iraq).
Unless you're implying that Gaza is a part of Israel, which truly would be a pretty bold claim that not even Netanyahu makes, I'm pretty sure not even you think that there's a genocide in Israel.
NATO didn't participate in the invasion of Iraq, so what exactly are you talking about?
You might remember the term 'coalition of the willing'. The only major ally the US actually got to come along with us to Iraq was the UK. Everyone else rightfully sat out of that mess.
This was all after the invasion to support the fledgling new Iraqi government.
If ten trainers from Norway training the Iraqi military to resist terrorist attacks is your idea of an example of gross western imperialism, you'll have to forgive me for not being hugely convinced.
Nothing, though the budget reconciliation process allows for one filibuster-proof bill a year if it primarily deals with the budget.
That said, the filibuster is just an internal Senate rule. A majority could simply eliminate it at any time, but that of course may come back to bite them when the balance of power shifts.
Meta will probably be pretty cautious and strict about what inbound content is allowed, since they have a global quagmire of laws and regulations to comply with and cannot just open up the firehose without significant legal risk. I'd imagine they'd only accept content from vetted instances that agree to some amount of common policy.
"Bump" is a galactically humble description of a collision with a container ship weighing nearly 200 million pounds.
To illustrate this more cleanly, the momentum of a loaded Boeing 787 flying near top speed is 17,760,000 N.s. For this ship going at just 10 km/h, the momentum is about 260,600,000 N.s. In other words, the bridge would need to be able to sustain the equivalent of 14 9/11 attacks, simultaneously.
The way to tolerate incidents like this is to add multiple points of isolated failure so that even if one point is catastrophically destroyed, only a portion of the bridge goes down while the rest remains intact. I don't think there are many, if any, structures on the planet that can withstand that much force
"I think what you're reacting to is that, at the moment, Biden is an unpopular president seeking a second term while Trump is a popular figure inside his party who is winning primary races. I wouldn't necessarily compare the two."...
The funny thing about Lemmygrad people is that you could tell me that this comment was an intentional caricature and it'd seem just as likely as it being genuine.
There's this narrative that Israel is completely dependent on US aid and would be powerless without it, but I don't think that's obviously true. What military is going to meaningfully threaten them? Jordan has no interest in another giant wave of Palestinian migrants (given that the last one led to a coup attempt), nor does it have a significant military. Lebanon hardly has a genuine government. Syria is a mess. Egypt does have some legitimate power, but also has no interest in a massive war right next to them.
The only regional power capable of meaningfully threatening Israel is Iran, and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Sunni coalition do not want massive expansion of Iranian influence.
Not to mention, Israel has already defeated all of its neighbors, simultaneously, twice. I'm fairly confident that the only thing that would actually happen if the US stopped sending aid is a bit of a dent in the Israeli economy.
To compare forced labor camps where the alternative is being murdered to people making the active choice to volunteer to serve as moderators is a comparison so lacking in perspective that I'd expect to only find it on Reddit, but I guess Lemmy has managed to foster the same kind of behavior.
Are you going to compare Reddit killing the API to the Holocaust next?
You cannot set the rent to "whatever you like". There's a reason why my NYC apartment is $2500 a month and not $250,000 a month. If a corporation does take an owned unit into the rental market, it'll be competing with all other rentals. That will decrease supply for the ownership market, yes, but it also increases supply in the rental market, which tends to consist of people who are financially struggling more than people looking to buy a house.
Regardless, the actual solution is to just build some more god damned housing so that it stops being an attractive investment in the first place. Housing cannot be both a good investment and affordable.
It won't end until we have significant growth in the supply of housing units in the places people want to live relative to the number of people we have. Anything else is just window dressing.
We've been chronically underbuilding for decades, while population continued to grow. What would you expect to happen?
This is only available to first-time buyers, not universally, so it wouldn't be quite that simple. If you're confident your house will sell quickly, yeah, you'll just increase the price by 5k, but if you've been having trouble finding a buyer, the credit might tip your current price into being affordable to a first-time buyer that would otherwise pass it up, so you may hold the price steady.
That said, subsidizing demand like this while ignoring the core supply crunch issue is generally not very helpful.
I'm gonna take a wild guess that most Lemmy people use Android, and the suggestion that someone might prefer an iPhone is triggering to someone whose sense of superiority comes from their choice of operating system for some reason.
The measure permits only certain flags to be flown over US embassies, including the US flag, US Foreign Service flag, POW/MIA flag, Hostage and Wrongful Detainee flag, flag of a state, “insular area” or DC, Indian tribal government flag, the official branded flag of a US agency, and the sovereign flag of another nation.
What specific protections that actually fall under the Executive's unilateral authority are you looking for? The Presidency isn't a kingship, and the federal government's authority to interfere with state laws is limited, particularly in the absence of a friendly Congress.
Re: Housing, discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation is illegal and you can file a complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development if you experience it.
Harassment is, for better or for worse, a pretty high bar, and the President absolutely does not have the power to prevent people from being assholes to us. If healthcare is in reference to HRT, the administration has been heavily involved in pushing back against state laws, but again, there are constitutional constraints.
That aside, I like to think that the Pride flag flying at embassies is a very nice signal of what America can stand for at its best, particularly in countries where LGBT people won't otherwise see any kind of support at all. It's obviously not the same thing, but as a gay kid from a tiny rural southern town, it was always cool when I traveled to cities and saw Pride flags or saw Pride campaigns on TV as a way to know that not everyone was like my hometown.
I completely understand the frustration with Congress. The main obstacle there is the filibuster in the Senate, and the simple fact of the matter is that there was zero chance Manchin and Sinema would ever be willing to kill the filibuster over something like the Equality Act (something which Biden has routinely urged Congress to pass, I'd add).
At the end of the day, there's really only so much that can be done given the structure of the American government. The federal government's authority to interfere with state laws is quite limited, particularly under this Supreme Court, and structural biases in the government make it much much easier for Republicans to stop something than it is for Democrats to do something, all while Republican state governments can act freely at the level of their state. Oftentimes, there's isn't some magical hidden 'play dirty' lever that Democrats could easily pull but refuse to. Short of simply holding a gun up to his face, Biden literally could not make Manchin vote any particular way (and I'm sure he wanted to several times). Despite that, the Respect for Marriage Act was still a genuinely strong legislative achievement.
And to be clear, I don't mean to invalidate your frustration or say that any of this situation is right. But ultimately, there are reasons the mess is the way it is, and if we want to move things in a positive direction, we have to understand the rules and know what the available moves actually are.
Lastly, I'd add that the Biden White House, particularly the DoJ, has genuinely done quite a lot in order to enforce LGBT protections wherever they legally can, including routinely interpreting discrimination by sex to be inclusive of gender identity. Here's a general timeline:
Kenya is one of the major supplier of UN Peacekeeping forces. It's not at all unusual for Kenyan forces to be involved in something like this, anywhere in the world.
And for better or for worse, optics matter. You really don't think that the US military moving in wouldn't bring a storm of controversy and accusations of neo-colonialism?
Sweden officially joins NATO, ending decades of post-World War II neutrality (apnews.com)
The House GOP just gave Biden’s campaign a huge gift: Roughly 80 percent of House Republicans just lined up behind a plan to cut Social Security and ban all abortions (www.vox.com)
Donald Trump would be on track to win a historic landslide in November — if so many US voters didn’t find him personally repugnant....
😠Meta just showed off Threads’ fediverse integration for the very first time😠 (www.theverge.com)
Video: Baltimore bridge struck by boat and collapses (streamable.com)
Here is a link to another post with an article....
A New York Times reporter was asked why they consistently frame things as bad for Biden but never bad for Trump. (old.reddit.com)
"I think what you're reacting to is that, at the moment, Biden is an unpopular president seeking a second term while Trump is a popular figure inside his party who is winning primary races. I wouldn't necessarily compare the two."...
Biden says Medicare should negotiate prices for at least 50 drugs each year, up from a target of 20 (www.cnbc.com)
Key Points...
Lemmy.world seems to have banned the largest piracy community on Lemmy. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
This has happened once before and they reversed it. But they said this last time too:...
US trying to overthrow Netanyahu, senior Israeli official says (m.jpost.com)
Hamas, Al Jazeera admit: Story of IDF rapes in Gaza hospital fabricated (www.jpost.com)
Can Reddit—the Internet’s Greatest Authenticity Machine—Survive Its Own IPO? (www.wired.com)
archive.is/urG1R
Biden to propose new $5000 tax credit for first-time home buyers (www.washingtonpost.com)
Even Korea is starting to prefer an iPhone over a Samsung (www.androidpolice.com)
White House looks to repeal funding bill provision that would keep US embassies from flying Pride flags (ground.news)
The measure permits only certain flags to be flown over US embassies, including the US flag, US Foreign Service flag, POW/MIA flag, Hostage and Wrongful Detainee flag, flag of a state, “insular area” or DC, Indian tribal government flag, the official branded flag of a US agency, and the sovereign flag of another nation.
Haiti’s leader resigns as gangs run rampant through country engulfed in crisis (edition.cnn.com)