Merged Greenland is part of NATO via Denmark

[Toni]

The Brittish empire was a vanity project. The Brits had a couple of fun centuries. But the empire was always a net loss. The reason the empire fell apart was because Great Britain couldn't afford it anymore, (because of the the cost of winning the world wars).

USA is in a similar position. It's now the world's greatest superpower. But there's less benefit to the US economy than the cost of swinging around it's large penis. It's a vanity project. Ie, Americans get to have the lovely feeling of creating world peace, and getting to feel being the saviour of the world. That's the transaction. But there's little economic benefit to USA from it. There's a little. But nowhere near what it costs.

I agree, ruling the world is not particularly profitable. But I am bemused as to why you think it should be, and why you imagine that economic benefit is the only kind of benefit worth having.

Everyone seems to have become crazy economic rationalists, who demand that everything must either be profitable or be discarded. This is inhuman.

I'll quote Margaret Thatcher, "the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money".

If something isn't profitable it's unsustainable. In a free market economy with competing nations, any actor who isn't laser focused on economic sustainability (which also is environmental sustainability) will eventually become dominated by those who are. There's a current pattern around the world where small countries tend to have liberal economic laws and a society continually updating and improving it's support for it's companies. The tiny Nordic countries are excellent examples. Why are these so good at optimising it's economic policies? Because we have to or we'd be fucked. Any slip up and we'll be sucked into Germanies economic dominance and we'd render ourselves irrelevant.

To sum up, if your world domination isn't profitable you will, eventually, stop being dominant. And whoever focused on profit will instead dominate the world. I'd rather it wasn't China. So I think the West (or rather democratic nations of the world should get our act together and focus on economic sustainability.

What is the value of being rich, if you live like a penniless bum because you hoard your money and only spend it on absolute necessities, and invest the rest toward the sole objective of getting richer still?

Sure. Life is more fun if we're short-sighted and don't care about the future of the world or our nations. Life is short and all that. I just think that investing in our future prosperity is worth it.

The British imperials of the C19th understood this; They wanted to turn a profit, but never at the expense of making things drab and utilitarian. When London needed a way to pump shit into the Thames estuary and away from the city, they didn't build this:

It's because the London sewage system was made from cast iron. There's very little extra cost to make cast iron decorative. But once we started making stuff out of welded steel plates, girders and concrete then making it decorative becomes prohibitively expensive.

Cast iron needs to be painted or it'll rust. Painting it in decorative colours and patterns is not much more expensive than in boring colours. I think red was the cheapest colour to paint. Followed by green. Stainless steel does not need to be painted.

They built this:


...and the world was a better place for it.

It made no economic sense. Bjt then, tbe idea that economic sense is the only sense, or the only sense worth having, makes no sense at all.

The reason Great Britain created their empire was because they wanted to ensure the UK factories had continued access to the natural resources their factories needed. They were worried other imperial nations would use monopolies as leverage to blackmail the UK out of stuff. Which the UK took advantage of, as often as they could. The historian Dominic Sandbrook aptly called Great Britain the Putin of the 19'th century.

After WW1 all the imperial nations simply agreed they wouldn't limit eachothers access to resources, which killed the need for continual expansion of empires. So they stopped. Germany and Italy just didn't get that memo.

After WW2 and the world agreed on the UN and open and free markets everywhere there was absolutely no need to have empires at all. Which is why the British empire just evaporated in the 1950'ies and 1960'ies. It was way cheaper to just buy the same products from their former colonies than it was to run the colonies.

Trump's tariffs is an attempt to turn the clock back to before the world wars. But, you may have noticed that other countries aren't hitting eachother with tariffs. So it's just stupid. All Trump is doing with his tariffs and agressive expansion plans is to give the rest of the world incentives to ally against USA. Which, btw, is already happening.

So yeah... empires are dead. It's an old way of seeing the world.

Please don’t tell Trump that eventually he will run out of other people’s money.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Are you blaming Thatcher for Brexit?

No. I am partially blaming austerity for Brexit. As a UK policy it didn't arise until the 2008 GFC, long after Thatcher, who was a massive supporter of European integration, and would likely have been horrified by brexit.

Are you just skimming my posts for 'gotchas', without trying to comprehend them? If so, further discussion is futile.

I think the basic problem is that we disagree on the causation. I think we agree on the facts. It's how they're related to the outcome that sets us apart.

I'd argue that the UK is still struggling with issues stemming from the 1950'ies and 1960'ies. Trying to switch from a war time economy, while dismantling an empire, while making England socialists is tough. Only one of those would have been tough. England did all at the same time. And then a strongly socialist 1970'ies. Absolutely not what the UK needed at the time.

England was badly prepared for manufacturing shifting to Asia in the 80'ies and 90'ies. A huge problem England has is that the European economies are extremely high tech, but higher education is barely subsidised. Which creates and unfortunate class divide. The socialist reforms of the 1970'ies wasn't geared toward getting a stronger future tax base.

Do you disagree with this narrative?

 

[DrZoidberg]

By the time Thatcher came along her options were to go in hard or let the UK turn into Portugal.

False dichotomy is false.

Thatcher was fucking horrible, unless you lived in the Home Counties, or outside the UK.

I don't disagree with that Thatcher was horrible. As far as I am concerned she was about as lovable as Trump. I also think Pinochet was horrendous.

But something needed to be done about the UK and Thatcher did it. Just like Chile needed the grip of the socialists to be broken. We don't need to agree with Pinochet's methods to agree with that the Chilean economy needed it. And today is better off for it.

Horrible people can do things with good outcomes. Horrible events can lead to good things. Thatcher was a neo-liberal fanatic.

Israel was likely founded as a result of the Holocaust. That doesn't make Hitler a good person. Nor does it imply that the Jews should be grateful to Hitler.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Are you blaming Thatcher for Brexit?

No. I am partially blaming austerity for Brexit. As a UK policy it didn't arise until the 2008 GFC, long after Thatcher, who was a massive supporter of European integration, and would likely have been horrified by brexit.

Are you just skimming my posts for 'gotchas', without trying to comprehend them? If so, further discussion is futile.

Austerity or a blitheringly ignorant voter base that didn't know what they were voting on, idiots like Boris promising shit they knew wouldn't happen if it passed, and some of the most feckless leadership in the UK since Chamberlin, where the PM allowed a referendum on something the PM was wholly against and then the party in general allowing a mere majority vote to force a dissolution from the EU when the referendum lacked any authority to force the matter in the first place.

The whole thing was very close indeed; The vote would have almost certainly been to remain if it hadn't rained in London on the day of the poll, which very slightly reduced turnout in the capital.

So it's not possible to identify a single thing that was to blame; just a stack of contributing factors, any one of which could have tipped the balance.

My main point was Brexit happened because of far-right, anti-Europe stupidity that needlessly treated the vote as an infallible holy command from God. It happened because idiots like Boris Johnson were given power.

I thought Brexit was a result of a political elite that lost it's mandate from the people, and Brexit was more about a general unhappiness about how they were ruled? I see far right extremism, rather than some sort of mystical corrupting force, as simply a result of an insecure working class. A working class who has lost faith in it's leadership. Boris Johnson is a public school clown. He's a Trump figure. The fact that he got elected was just a one big "fuck you" to the political establishment. No?

I don't like any argument based on that our political oponents are stupid. It's rarely the true reason.

 

[bilby]

Brexit was the result of an internal Tory Party spat, having zilch to do with governing the nation, about whether the UK should be taking a leading role in the EU, as desired by the Party leaders, or striving to be entirely independent, as desired by a small but vocal group of back-benchers, whose support was needed to maintain a commons majority.

"Knowing" that the public were basically supportive of a strong role for the UK in the EU, David Cameron decided that it would be a great idea to shut the Euroskeptics up, by delivering a referendum showing that they lacked popular support.

So sure was he of the outcome, that no effort whatsoever was put into the question; Nor consideration given to the shape or form that "Leave" might take, if it were to win (which was clearly absurd).

The question asked was simple - to the point of being lethally simplistic:
"Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?"

This sounds like a reasonable question - but it's really not.

Imagine a US Presidential recall referendum. "Should Barak Obama remain President of the USA or cease to be President of the USA?" is not a complete question. If the answer is "remain", then everything is fine; But if the answer is "cease", what then? Who is to be the new President? Nobody has a clue - so anyone who is in any way annoyed at Obama can assume that it implies any person they want as the replacement President.​

​

So the votes are tallied, and by a razor thin margin, "cease" is the "will of the people". Who is the new President? Nobody knows. More importantly, none of the candidates has as much support as Obama just got in the vote. But "cease means cease", so when the Trump supporters are shouted down by those (the vast majority) who hate Trump, they just declare that Trump has a clear mandate - though nothing of the sort is close to the truth.​

So with Brexit. There's a clear mandate for "leave", but while everyone knows and agrees upon what "remain" means, there are as many opinions about what "leave" means as there are "leave" supporters.

The people have spoken, and what they demand (by a razor thin margin) is, clearly and unequivocally, "something".

Enter the very vocal nutters of the far right. They now have a (totally nonsensical) mandate, and a PM who is so obviously inept that he fucked up the un-fuck upable.

Exit Cameron stage left, pursued by allegations about sexual misadventures with a dead pig.

He broke the UK, over an internal party matter, and then bailed without the slightest effort to mitigate the damage, leaving an irreperable mess.

The whole thing was a disaster from go to whoa. It was an advisory referendum that had no ability to advise; And the only guy who could have stood up and said "Well it was never binding, that's why we had no Parliamentary Bill hashing out the details of what 'leave' would entail", instead bolted for the exits as soon as he realised that he had fucked up. Leaving the nutters in charge of the asylum.

Meanwhile the people, many of whom were as sure as Cameron that "remain" would win by a country mile (and so didn't bother voting) were left to suffer the consequences, which include (but are not limited to) the bankruptcy of the UK, the elimination of the significant influence the UK had in EU affairs, the elimination of free movement and unlimited EU residency for UK citizens, and the massive and needless expense of duplicating EU bureaucratic activities, from Air Traffic Control to Zoonosis detection and mitigation.

There has literally been nothing good for the UK or her citizens that comes from Brexit, and the bad things form an interminable and tragic list, too large to reproduce here.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Brexit was the result of an internal Tory Party spat, having zilch to do with governing the nation, about whether the UK should be taking a leading role in the EU, as desired by the Party leaders, or striving to be entirely independent, as desired by a small but vocal group of back-benchers, whose support was needed to maintain a commons majority.

"Knowing" that the public were basically supportive of a strong role for the UK in the EU, David Cameron decided that it would be a great idea to shut the Euroskeptics up, by delivering a referendum showing that they lacked popular support.

So sure was he of the outcome, that no effort whatsoever was put into the question; Nor consideration given to the shape or form that "Leave" might take, if it were to win (which was clearly absurd).

The question asked was simple - to the point of being lethally simplistic:
"Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?"

This sounds like a reasonable question - but it's really not.

Imagine a US Presidential recall referendum. "Should Barak Obama remain President of the USA or cease to be President of the USA?" is not a complete question. If the answer is "remain", then everything is fine; But if the answer is "cease", what then? Who is to be the new President? Nobody has a clue - so anyone who is in any way annoyed at Obama can assume that it implies any person they want as the replacement President.​

​

So the votes are tallied, and by a razor thin margin, "cease" is the "will of the people". Who is the new President? Nobody knows. More importantly, none of the candidates has as much support as Obama just got in the vote. But "cease means cease", so when the Trump supporters are shouted down by those (the vast majority) who hate Trump, they just declare that Trump has a clear mandate - though nothing of the sort is close to the truth.​

So with Brexit. There's a clear mandate for "leave", but while everyone knows and agrees upon what "remain" means, there are as many opinions about what "leave" means as there are "leave" supporters.

The people have spoken, and what they demand (by a razor thin margin) is, clearly and unequivocally, "something".

Enter the very vocal nutters of the far right. They now have a (totally nonsensical) mandate, and a PM who is so obviously inept that he fucked up the un-fuck upable.

Exit Cameron stage left, pursued by allegations about sexual misadventures with a dead pig.

He broke the UK, over an internal party matter, and then bailed without the slightest effort to mitigate the damage, leaving an irreperable mess.

The whole thing was a disaster from go to whoa. It was an advisory referendum that had no ability to advise; And the only guy who could have stood up and said "Well it was never binding, that's why we had no Parliamentary Bill hashing out the details of what 'leave' would entail", instead bolted for the exits as soon as he realised that he had fucked up. Leaving the nutters in charge of the asylum.

Meanwhile the people, many of whom were as sure as Cameron that "remain" would win by a country mile (and so didn't bother voting) were left to suffer the consequences, which include (but are not limited to) the bankruptcy of the UK, the elimination of the significant influence the UK had in EU affairs, the elimination of free movement and unlimited EU residency for UK citizens, and the massive and needless expense of duplicating EU bureaucratic activities, from Air Traffic Control to Zoonosis detection and mitigation.

There has literally been nothing good for the UK or her citizens that comes from Brexit, and the bad things form an interminable and tragic list, too large to reproduce here.

Thanks for taking your time to write a detailed account.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Are you blaming Thatcher for Brexit?

No. I am partially blaming austerity for Brexit. As a UK policy it didn't arise until the 2008 GFC, long after Thatcher, who was a massive supporter of European integration, and would likely have been horrified by brexit.

Are you just skimming my posts for 'gotchas', without trying to comprehend them? If so, further discussion is futile.

Austerity or a blitheringly ignorant voter base that didn't know what they were voting on, idiots like Boris promising shit they knew wouldn't happen if it passed, and some of the most feckless leadership in the UK since Chamberlin, where the PM allowed a referendum on something the PM was wholly against and then the party in general allowing a mere majority vote to force a dissolution from the EU when the referendum lacked any authority to force the matter in the first place.

The whole thing was very close indeed; The vote would have almost certainly been to remain if it hadn't rained in London on the day of the poll, which very slightly reduced turnout in the capital.

So it's not possible to identify a single thing that was to blame; just a stack of contributing factors, any one of which could have tipped the balance.

My main point was Brexit happened because of far-right, anti-Europe stupidity that needlessly treated the vote as an infallible holy command from God. It happened because idiots like Boris Johnson were given power.

I thought Brexit was a result of a political elite that lost it's mandate from the people, and Brexit was more about a general unhappiness about how they were ruled?

No. It was more an issue of too many people believing in the shit far right media they were consuming.

I see far right extremism, rather than some sort of mystical corrupting force, as simply a result of an insecure working class. A working class who has lost faith in it's leadership.

The far right stuff was instigated by far right exploitive media. The far right has been rekindling their support across Europe. It was beaten back enough to keep most of it from the top levels of power, but not remotely far enough. Brexit was yet another nationalist bullshit movement that promised a whole bunch of awesome shit it couldn't produce. Much like the tariffs in the US making America wealthy. There are movements out there trying to extinguish unity between nations, to make the 19th Century great again. Johnson and Trump aren't politicians. They are charismatic (in some perverted way) embodiments of nationalistic propaganda.

Boris Johnson is a public school clown. He's a Trump figure. The fact that he got elected was just a one big "fuck you" to the political establishment. No?

No. Jesse Ventura winning the Governorship in Minnesota was a "fuck you" to the political establishment. Boris Johnson won because enough people who had swallowed down so much nationalist media bullshit saw him as a representation of what they'd been told to like for the last decade or two. That they believed all of their troubles would disappear, the nation would become rich if the nation just isolated itself from the others and made itself more British. Much like how Trump was the embodied image of three decades of pro-white Christian American nationalism AM radio turn cable news media.

I don't like any argument based on that our political oponents are stupid. It's rarely the true reason.

And if I had simply said they were dumb without expanding on the thought, you could maybe have a point. Also, would you prefer that I said the Conservative party was conspiring with Russia to weaken the EU? Being stupid is the positive spin here. The conservatives didn't want Brexit to happen. Brexit didn't have to happen. It did anyway. What is that other than stupid?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Truth Social

Truth Social is America's "Big Tent" social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology.

truthsocial.com

Greenland rejects Trump's hospital ship proposal, citing existing free healthcare system

Greenland's prime minister rejects Trump's hospital ship offer, saying the territory has free healthcare unlike America where "it costs money to go to the doctor."

www.foxnews.com

 

[crazyfingers]

Truth Social

Truth Social is America's "Big Tent" social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology.

truthsocial.com

View attachment 53661

Greenland rejects Trump's hospital ship proposal, citing existing free healthcare system

Greenland's prime minister rejects Trump's hospital ship offer, saying the territory has free healthcare unlike America where "it costs money to go to the doctor."

www.foxnews.com

Trump's a nutter. Apparently he "decided" this a few hours after the Danish millitary evacuated a US sailor from a US submarine due to a medical emergency and helicoptered the sailor to a hospital in Nuuk for treatment. Why this would suggest to anyone thinking person that Greenland needs a hospital ship is beyond me. Clearly, Trump is a nutter and doesn't think.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/21/politics/trump-greenland-hospital-boat

 

[Elixir]

Clearly, Trump is a nutter and doesn't think.

If he starts making sense, it’s because Stephen Miller took his phone away from him.

 

[Shadowy Man]

If Trump said there’s a hospital ship heading to Greenland it’s a good bet that there isn’t a hospital ship heading to Greenland.

 

[crazyfingers]

If Trump said there’s a hospital ship heading to Greenland it’s a good bet that there isn’t a hospital ship heading to Greenland.

It appears that the only two US hospital ships are hanging out in Mobile, Alabama. But one of them doesn't have it's transponder on.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Truth Social

Truth Social is America's "Big Tent" social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology.

truthsocial.com

View attachment 53661

Greenland rejects Trump's hospital ship proposal, citing existing free healthcare system

Greenland's prime minister rejects Trump's hospital ship offer, saying the territory has free healthcare unlike America where "it costs money to go to the doctor."

www.foxnews.com

That sounds a bit too good to be true. Denmark is famous for it's excellent socialist healthcare, while USA famous for being very much not. I find it hard to believe not many in USA knows this?

 

[barbos]

Truth Social

Truth Social is America's "Big Tent" social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology.

truthsocial.com

View attachment 53661

Greenland rejects Trump's hospital ship proposal, citing existing free healthcare system

Greenland's prime minister rejects Trump's hospital ship offer, saying the territory has free healthcare unlike America where "it costs money to go to the doctor."

www.foxnews.com

That sounds a bit too good to be true. Denmark is famous for it's excellent socialist healthcare, while USA famous for being very much not. I find it hard to believe not many in USA knows this?

Why is it so hard to believe? You yourself believe in all kind of bullshit, why idiots in America should be any different?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Truth Social

Truth Social is America's "Big Tent" social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology.

truthsocial.com

View attachment 53661

Greenland rejects Trump's hospital ship proposal, citing existing free healthcare system

Greenland's prime minister rejects Trump's hospital ship offer, saying the territory has free healthcare unlike America where "it costs money to go to the doctor."

www.foxnews.com

That sounds a bit too good to be true. Denmark is famous for it's excellent socialist healthcare, while USA famous for being very much not. I find it hard to believe not many in USA knows this?

You find a lot of stuff hard to believe... and the damnedest stuff easy to believe.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

People are saying Trump's hospital ships have the best most beautiful healthcare in the world. These are big beautiful ships with amazing healthcare. Isn't it amazing? Those beautiful, amazing ships even have ballrooms. But Denmark doesn't want anyone to see the ships. So the ships have to go, but Trump will be back. Never say he won't be back because never is the 3rd n-word he doesn't like to use. So he'll be back with the big beautiful ships to save the sick people of Greenland.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Trump sends Denmark $87,500 bill for fueling up hospital ship.

 

[Tigers!]

 

[DrZoidberg]

View attachment 53690

For planes already purchased. From where else can they buy them? Fun trivia, since 2022 all Europe has pivoted away from purchasing US arms. To homegrown arms. That includes Denmark. All the USA is doing is fullfilling old orders. When those dry up their only customers will be Latin America and India.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

View attachment 53690

For planes already purchased. From where else can they buy them? Fun trivia, since 2022 all Europe has pivoted away from purchasing US arms. To homegrown arms. That includes Denmark. All the USA is doing is fullfilling old orders. When those dry up their only customers will be Latin America and India.

Not according to this.

The situation is funny in the narrow sense that it juxtaposes two contradictory realities. The United States is simultaneously selling weapons to defend an ally’s territory and publicly suggesting that it should control that territory itself. The humor, however, masks a serious point about how power is exercised inside alliances.

Foreign Military Sales are intended to reinforce trust, signaling commitment and long-term partnership. Political rhetoric undermining an ally’s sovereignty pulls in the opposite direction, even when it does not translate into concrete policy.

Greenland will remain strategically important regardless of who occupies the White House. Arctic routes will continue to open, missile warning will remain essential, and cooperation will remain cheaper and more effective than coercion. Denmark’s missile purchase reflects that reality. It treats defense as a shared responsibility rather than a property dispute.

The irony lies not in the weapons themselves but in the mismatch between institutions that quietly sustain alliances and rhetoric that occasionally disregards them. Denmark buying U.S. missiles to defend Greenland is normal. Doing so while fielding questions about defending Greenland from the United States is something else entirely.