“Latest” as in “Insider”? I’m on the first Patch Ring at work, so I’m one of the five people who get the latest patches, but we’re not Insiders. We had 3 BSODs last week when MediaTek fucked up their WiFi drivers and the devices crashed if connected to WiFi 7.
The previous BSOD I saw at work was 3 years ago. The tech came in, replaced the MOBO and the issue was solved.
It’s ironic how, just like people make jokes of Linux audio even though it’s been stable for years, people stil joke about Windows throwing BSODs or requiring reinstalls non-stop, even though the last BSOD I had that wasn’t caused by faulty hardware or a weird one-of-a-kind driver issue was… 12 years ago? Something like that.
Airfryers are just much faster to deal with smaller things. Less air to heat up before it reaches the desired temp.
Okay, but can you see how that’s not actually what you said?
You just called it stupid.
He said, and I quote:
Yeah, it was made at a time when the concept of a war was a months long preparation of deploying troops and moving assets into place
Note the plural in “months”.
Then he added:
You might want to look at the preparations for the invasion of Iraq if you want to know what an actual preparation for a war looks like.
If you don’t know, the prep for the 2003 invasion of Iraq took 18 months.
Even the extremely rushed (due to the fact that Saddam was actively killing Kuwait) Desert Storm took almost 6 months to prepare.
Note that Iraq is 1/3rd the size of Iran.
But with hindsight, do you think that carrier deployment unrelated?
It’s not that it’s unrelated. It’s barely consequential considering the scale of the operation. And by “operation” I mean “the actual preparation that would normally take place if someone competent was responsible for the planning of the attack”.
The US has assets (including carriers) in the region practically non-stop. One more or less doesn’t really change much in the context of them burning through ammo supplies, or the fact that @UnspecificGravity@piefed.social was 100% right in saying that this was completely rushed.
Sure they were! Nothing happening over there had anything to do with the women that were kidnapped, raped, and/or killed in the custody of the Guidance Patrol! Everybody celebrated these as beautiful moments of religious expression!
Wow, you surrendered that discussion real fast and real childish! I’m actually impressed!
No u
The preamble explicitly commits members to “safeguarding the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.” Lying about an easily verifiable fact isn’t a rebuttal, it’s just embarrassing.
Maybe it’s a language barrier, but do you not understand the difference between “safeguarding the freedom and common heritage of democratic peoples” and “safeguarding the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy”?
Or is it historical ignorance, with how it is considered common knowledge that the western civilisation grew from the Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman civilisations, both famously implementing the very first democratic tools, and Europe being commonly accepted as the birthplace of democracy?
Then you don’t understand how capitalism operates at scale. Military alliances aren’t separate from economic systems, they enforce them. When NATO standardizes procurement, secures trade routes, and backs regime change, it’s not “just capitalism” floating in a vacuum. It’s capitalism with teeth.
It would only be “teeth” if NATO wasn’t a defensive alliance but rather an empire, like the USSR. Standardisation was also not done because some people wanted to enforce economic policies. It was done because the military already went through two massive wars where the lack of standardisation was causing massive logistical issues.
Again: you know nothing about what NATO is.
Portugal used NATO-supplied weapons to wage colonial war into the 1970s
NATO doesn’t “supply weapons” because NATO has no factories to build weapons. It’s a military alliance.
France used NATO intelligence in Algeria
France used French intelligence in Algeria.
Belgium used NATO logistics in Congo
Belgium relied on logistics from the US, not from NATO, in Congo. There was also a large UN contingent. UN is not NATO.
The alliance didn’t “accidentally” include fascist colonizers, it coordinated with them. That’s not a graph problem; that’s a priorities problem.
The alliance included fascist colonisers because they were in control of the military. NATO is a military alliance, it doesn’t concern itself with the economic or political systems of its members.
This is dishonest. NATO executed the Yugoslavia bombing campaign under a UN mandate. NATO led the Libya intervention under a UN mandate.
No, it didn’t. The UN resolution called for military involvement, UN member countries provided contingents. This had nothing to do with NATO other than the fact that some NATO members were included. Russia was part of these operations too.
It’s like saying “WHO executed the Yugoslavia bombing campaign” because all militaries involved were from WHO-member countries.
The Greece coup was US-backed, yes, but NATO never suspended a fascist junta that violated its own “democratic principles.”
Again: you have no clue what NATO is. It couldn’t do anything like that because it has no power over anything. It’s a defensive military alliance.
You’re splitting hairs to dodge institutional responsibility. When the alliance provides the command structure, intelligence, and logistics, it’s NATO.
Yeah, yeah. WHO was responsible for the Greece coup. Sure.
And the Marshall Plan was just generosity
What does the Marshall Plan (1947-1948) have to do with NATO (1949)?
US defense contractors didn’t lobby for NATO standardization. Congress didn’t tie aid to arms purchases
Of course the did. They’d be insane not to. But the agreement came from the fact that they had their massive actually functioning military industry behind their lobbying. It was a “smart” (and short-sighted) decision to rely on the US to this extent, but it’s not like all members states immediately copied everything the US did. France and Germany famously have their own, strong military industries.
Case in point: nobody in Europe is even considering the switch from 5.56 to 6.8x51 for infantry rifles, like the US already did, because nobody’s industry is ready to properly support that.
Europe wasn’t “naive”; it was integrated into a hierarchy that served core capital.
Explain the fact that France, Germany, and Denmark retained strong and independent military industry then.
Military power and economic power aren’t separate spheres
Correct, but NATO has no saying over economic power, and very little saying over military power. NATO is the vehicle for inter-country military cooperation, integration, standardisation. NATO doesn’t even have the ability to call any military power to action.
NATO secures the conditions for capital to operate: sea lanes, airspace, regime stability
Sea lanes and airspace, yes. It has nothing to do regime stability (as showcased by what was happening in France, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Czechia, or Netherlands, with their either massive anti-government protests, or attempts at killing the democratic rule of law).
You think finance capital enforces unequal exchange by itself?
Of course it does. That’s the best possible deal for any capitalist - gain more than you’re actually paying for.
It doesn’t. It has gunboats. NATO is the gunboat coordination mechanism.
NATO cannot use “gunboats”, because NATO is not a singular entity. It’s an alliance. A member country’s military can be ordered to use “gunboats”, but that’s got nothing to do with NATO.
You lied about the treaty preamble
Again: maybe it’s a language barrier thing, but I very much did not lie.
That’s not good faith engagement
Yeah, I’m not getting on your ignorance bandwagon, how uncouth of me.
You have only shown deflection, arrogance, and intellectual laziness.
50% of the two of us are showing intellectual laziness, and it’s not me. I’m just stating facts.
I don’t want to waste more time on someone who either can’t engage basic political economy or chooses not t
You talking to a mirror right now?
All the best to you.
Likewise! I sincerely hope you get out from under the propaganda umbrella (I don’t know if it’s Chinese or russian, the effect is the same) and start perceiving reality as it is.
You’re not a serious person.
Can’t figure out any rebuttals already? That was faster than I expected!
Again imperialism isn’t just “strong countries pushing weaker ones around.”
It literally is.
From Britannica:
imperialism, state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas
The modern form is structural: monopoly control of capital, export of finance rather than just goods, and a global system where wealth flows upward from subjugated economies to core powers through enforced unequal exchange
That’s not imperialism, that’s just capitalism. It is tied to imperialism, because the countries with the most capital are the ones with the most imperialistic policies to boot, but what you described here is just flat out capitalism.
Then why does the treaty’s preamble commit members to “safeguarding the freedom and common heritage of democratic peoples”?
It does not.
Why were “democratic reforms” mandatory for post-Cold War expansion?
Because the 1995 study found that strong democracies contributed to stable and peaceful existence. NATO member countries can promote democratic principles, but NATO itself is uninterested in the underlying system of a country because it’s a military alliance.
You can’t dismiss the values rhetoric when it’s useful, then hide behind “just a military alliance” when the Portugal contradiction hits
Portugal “contradiction” is from 1950s.
The “democracy contributes to peace” study is from 1995.
I’ll need you draw me a graph of where exactly you see a problem here.
The USSR applied to test whether NATO was about collective defense or containing any state outside Western capital’s orbit
Correct, it was a political provocation. Pointless, considering NATO was specifically designed to defend the West from russia.
The rejection confirmed the latter
Not a single person on the planet was surprised.
but NATO’s function wasn’t moral arbitration. It was to lock Western Europe into a US-led military-economic bloc
The “Soviet threat” was instrumentalized to justify permanent arms spending, discipline allied capitals, and secure markets for Western defense monopolies
It would’ve been much harder to instrumentalise it if the Soviets didn’t confirm time and again, that the spending was necessary.
And, again, the spending was mostly on the side of the US. Europe was famously lacking in this regard to the point where Trump 1.0 threatened to withdraw US from NATO if the other member countries didn’t increase their spending.
NATO doesn’t always need boots on the ground: bombing Yugoslavia in 1999 to break a sovereign state
That wasn’t NATO, that was the UN.
arming proxies to overthrow Libya in 2011
Again, that was the UN, not NATO.
backing the fascist coup in Greece in 1967
Once more, not NATO. That was the US. Possibly some more member countries, but it was not NATO.
But the deeper point isn’t about direct occupation, it’s about how military hegemony enforces the economic conditions for extraction: debt traps, structural adjustment, resource access. NATO secures the airspace; finance capital does the rest.
That’s not NATO, that’s capitalism and politics.
Again: you have no idea what NATO is and it painfully shows.
That’s a embarrassingly low bar. By that logic, any alliance that doesn’t commit genocide is “good.”
Compared to the ones that do? Correct.
Meanwhile, NATO’s actions have enabled mass death through sanctions, bombing campaigns, and destabilization
NATO has no capability of imposing sanctions.
The ONLY “bombing campaign” by NATO was in Afghanistan in 2001 because that was the ONLY time when Article 5 was called and member-countries responded as NATO.
"Not genocide” isn’t a defense, it’s a deflection from the material function: enforcing a global hierarchy where wealth flows from the periphery to the core.
Again, you’re not talking about NATO, because it has no tools to do any of that. That’s just capitalism you’re angry with.
You called my analysis “propaganda,” told me to “read Wikipedia,” and dismissed structural critique as “talking points.”
Yup. all of that is still true. Even Wikipedia would give you the basic fundamentals of why NATO cannot impose sanctions or force economic decisions on countries.
Don’t pose as the adult when your rebuttal is moral scorekeeping and establishment sources. If you want to debate how the system actually works (finance flows, military backing, unequal exchange) I’m here. But you clearly have a narrative and talking points you like.
You’re just ignorant, mate. You’re angry at NATO for being what it is not, and every point you mention proves that you just don’t know what NATO is.
Read a bit, learn some, then we can talk. As is, the discussion pointless.
Ah, the classic “west empire bad, east empire perfectly fine (ignore all the atrocities committed)”. Like I already said: grow up.
NATO action and support has only ever been used for bad
As we already established, you have no clue what NATO is or what it does
The world would be net better if the US empire crumbled.
No, because then the russian and Chinese empires would rear their heads. The world would be better off if ALL empires crumbled.
Sweden didn’t provide ammunition, equipment, or men. It provided knowledge. Your example is bad.
People like you are always hilarious. It’s like “we will not take part in the alliance because there is a potential that maybe, who knows, some of the knowledge we shared might be used incorrectly”.
Grow up. The world is not black and white, it’s not simple, and people are not all-knowing.
Modern imperialism is a specific stage of capitalist development: export of finance capital, monopoly concentration
OK, if you mean “imperialism via specifically means of economic pressure”, sure, call it “modern imperialism” or something.
But “imperialism” is what I already said it is. Britain was pushing imperialist agendas before capitalism was a thing. Same with China, Japan, Spain, russia, Germany, France, etc., etc.
You dodged the Portugal point entirely. Fascist dictatorship, founding NATO member, using alliance supply chains to wage colonial war in Africa. France and Belgium same deal. If NATO was about “democracy,” how does that fit? Or do we just ignore the actual history?
I didn’t dodge it. I answered it specifically - you have no clue what NATO is. NATO has nothing to do with what political system is running in a member country. It’s a military alliance. Has nothing to do with democracy.
And on your “buy weapons from Russia?” joke: the USSR applied to join NATO in 1954. They were rejected. The whole point was to have a permanent external threat to justify massive arms spending, lock in Western defense contracts, and discipline allied capitals.
“The murderer asked to be let in the house. He was rejected”.
Stop gobbling up russian propaganda. The threat was USSR. They were the ones who sent tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring. They were the ones who subjugated the conquered countries, and attempted russifying them.
NATO is a defensive pact against that aggression. Members consist only and specifically of countries that asked to join, nobody was forced.
Also wikipedia isn’t a neutral source on US-led institutions. It’s edited by volunteers, heavily influenced by Western narratives, and routinely policed for “fringe” critiques of state power. Citing it as the final word on NATO is like citing a Pentagon press release and calling it independent journalism.
Then how about you just open your eyes to what’s going on in the world. Show me ONE instance of NATO sending tanks to suppress an independence movement in a country.
If the argument is just “NATO good because wiki says so,”
No, the argument is “NATO good because they don’t subjugate or attempt genocide”
But if you want to engage in actual analysis and conversation like an adult, as opposed to shouting talking points ad nauseum like a petulant child I’m all for that.
Oh, look, you’re already nearing the point of flinging personal attacks? One even say: “like a petulant child”? I guess discussion is difficult when you’re arguing against reality.
If you provide military intel on targets to a military who then strike them using said intel you are absolutely an accomplice.
If you provide intel on how to drive a car to a person who then drunkenly plows into a group of people, killing them, you are absolutely an accomplice.
Yeah, clearly the ones still in Iran absolutely loved him. To the point where they recently went out to the streets to show their support, right?
Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism
Yes, the famous capitalist society of Ancient Rome.
No, mate. Imperialism is the maintaining and extending of power over foreign nations. NATO does nothing like that.
NATO was not founded to protect democracy but to secure the geopolitical conditions for Western capital to extract surplus value
Ah, OK, so you have no clue what NATO is, got it.
The alliance institutionalized a transatlantic arms market guaranteeing demand for Western arms manufacturers
Where else would the West be buying weapons during the Cold War? Russia? :D
History disproves the democratic pretense immediately
Yeah, because NATO had nothing to do with democracy. Like, what pretence? Where the fuck did you even get that from? Maybe, I don’t know, read the Wiki entry on NATO?
I love this so much. :D
I said that Linux AND Windows are stable these days. You took “Windows shill” from that. How pathetic is this?