and one of the first things Zalensky did was crack down on that.

Rather replace Russia-dependent corruption with more generalized corruption.

for freedom and democracy. Supposedly what the alliance exists for.

What? It’s been founded by a bunch of colonial nations (not ex-colonial at that point) still from time to time fighting colonial wars with war crimes and such. It has Turkey of all genocidal bastards as an important member.

The only reason for its existence was accumulating power. Well, as with all alliances.

Of course, kinda motivated by USSR redesigning its ground forces for capturing large parts of the world after they’ve been nuked. I’m not joking, that’s the reason ex-Soviet militaries so terribly suck at actually fighting - they are sort of a different mechanism, more like huge mobile garrisons to deploy in wastelands. Their analog of western ground forces was, say, VDV in Russia ; which is why despite nominally having the narrow function of paradropped assault troops, they’ve been used for every kind of thing important.

But corruption is present in all countries, including the NATO members, so that’d be a bit hypocritical,

Yes, and also weird.

I don’t think the decision was ever on the table.

Yes, when after 2 years of war and hundreds of thousands dead they meet and sign something about “discussing help to Ukraine” in case fighting gets more intensive by not clear which criterion - it means Ukraine is not becoming a member.

About “irreversible path” - they’ve said such things about Georgia too. Ivanishvili’s party is not good, but there’s been plenty of time before they started acting like now.

OK, it’s totally false now, but before that bill it was technically false, but practically usually true. I don’t live in Israel and kinda forgot that whole thing due to being more interested in it in the context of Israel arming Azerbaijan.

And it’s fine when there are states behaving with the responsibility of an RTS player. Will read, thx

I should have added that practical Catholicism in South America doesn’t seem to have this kind of weirdness, so indeed it’s Puritans or even more generally, the spirit of a closed small sect, where the religion itself is not as important as the sect loyalty and uncritical following. Only it’s neither closed nor small.

It requires very rigid discipline to threaten your enemy with MAD. The more tasks you can solve without testing your own faction’s discipline, the better. If every parking place argument gets to threats of nuking the opponent, because you can’t threaten anything else, either eventually you’ll have to use MAD for such a small cause, or you’ll step back on that and then there’ll be something a bit more important over which you’ll threaten MAD.

And so on, until MAD is in practice useless for you.

No word on Artsakh being literally occupied and ethnically cleansed.

Forcefully drawing a border less encouraging of violence against native population. Also forcefully stopping all their meddling in the form of military occupation, blockade, block posts and so on. Arming their neighbors so that Israel doesn’t have such a military advantage.

Even Yeltsin made a few nuclear threats in his time.

And frankly those threats were more meaningful, with all the bravado of today Yeltsin’s poor depressive Russia was much stronger militarily than the one we have.

Yes, opposing the establishment of a new state with a new population where someone else already lived would have been appropriate in the late 1940s.

Unfortunately it’s 2024 now, Israel does exist and time is linear.

That means that if you commit a crime and wait long enough, it’s legitimized. No way in hell.

Looks cool.

I really like it when people solve complex tasks with simple and natural means.

Same goes for analog electronics and 60s-80s ideas of the future of technology.

Only about keeping the grass short - why? Is it for the ground to dry faster?

What’s that heathen land where lamb is not considered the best meat?

There’s a reason pretty much no culture or religion bans consumption of goats or sheep; they are critical. Beef is a luxury food.

And lamb is so much tastier than beef. Lamb barbecues, lamb chops, lamb broth, lamb kyafte.

Just being religious doesn’t require you to join that crowd with its weird main rabbinate and preferential treatment in laws and state funding.

So it’s basically lots of uneducated idle fundamentalist morons. Their worldview is too simple for comic books, and at the same time their level of life is kinda normal.

I don’t think such people make useful soldiers, but being that stupid you usually support whatever you hear from your leaders.

A friend of mine very easily repeats stupid shit of that kind and has recently passed an exam to become a rabbi. Still to “maybe Israel shouldn’t have invaded Lebanon twice” in a conversation about Hezbollah he answered “ok, maybe they shouldn’t, I agree”. That’s a fucking qualitative difference. If he manages to repatriate and meet those people, I suspect he’ll experience “Idiocracy” firsthand.

That said, secular (but nationalist) Israelis have quite a few slurs for them and in general don’t like them. So use as a cannon fodder, say, in case of attacking Lebanon, - is kinda possible.

Nukes are good, but in fact full arsenal, from home-produced small mortars to MRBMs, and a standing military. Actually, if possible, all the means of power projection the big guys have. Including even proxy militants. Because the big guys back up their words with the blood of the small guys anyway.

Yep, starting with the first paragraph. The author might have skipped his Sunday school or something. In Christianity it’s considered that “God’s chosen people” has been extended to the whole humanity.

“I don’t think these people even know what that truly means” - maybe most of them don’t, but they are using the designation correctly.

“Arab citizens of Israel have the same rights as Jewish citizens” - well, the statement is kinda true ; technically false due to Israeli laws being a patchwork of weird shit with some inheritance from the Ottoman millets system, which is the same as apartheid give or take, but that’s not why the author is wrong. It’s just that most of Arabs living under Israeli military control are not citizens of Israel.

Why am I even commenting that, there are sometimes outrageous texts with which it’s a dubious, but still pleasure to argue with. This one is just some jellybrain’s product.

I did read it a lot, it’s just that Christianity over the pond is weird. Weirder than in China and Japan, I can understand where their traits of it come from, but in USA it’s something hard for me to emotionally grasp.

Those plenty are not so numerous if we consider how many nation-states there are on the globe.

Israeli dark money

… is something important enough to kill a 100 JFKs for.

It’s a state sporting F35s and such.

and the political influence of evangelical millenarians

Can’t speak about them, I don’t live in the US and the fact of such a group existing is wild for me.

Their loyalties still aren’t lodged with anyone, but we keep sucking them off anyway.

Well, I shit at Israel every day, but they would be nuts to “lodge their loyalties” when that means loss of such leverage.