The Mess

[Hwen Hoshino]

No one is required to nor should they; cite any sources in the Mess, anyone demanding sources to be cited in the Mess, is in bad form, a gentleman's word is good enough in the Mess, the Mess is not a formal debating club, take that sort of thing elsewhere.

Your mother is the type of hooker that steals from her costumers. My word is the law!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck logic, right.

[Xenophon]

No one is required to nor should they; cite any sources in the Mess, anyone demanding sources to be cited in the Mess, is in bad form, a gentleman's word is good enough in the Mess, the Mess is not a formal debating club, take that sort of thing elsewhere.

Your mother is the type of hooker that steals from her costumers. My word is the law!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck logic, right.

He said a gentleman's word is good enough. You're arguing in bad faith, asking for citations that follow a very specific criteria that would cause you to believe them. You're also moving the goal posts to support your own argument. You're acting as no gentleman.

[Montegriffo]

No one is required to nor should they; cite any sources in the Mess, anyone demanding sources to be cited in the Mess, is in bad form, a gentleman's word is good enough in the Mess, the Mess is not a formal debating club, take that sort of thing elsewhere.

Bloody good idea. The public house argument tradition has been killed by google. Used to be able to argue for hours over who killed Bambi etc. Nowadays someone pulls out a phone and the fun is over. Got so bad that some pub quizes use jammers to stop people cheating.

[Hwen Hoshino]

No one is required to nor should they; cite any sources in the Mess, anyone demanding sources to be cited in the Mess, is in bad form, a gentleman's word is good enough in the Mess, the Mess is not a formal debating club, take that sort of thing elsewhere.

Your mother is the type of hooker that steals from her costumers. My word is the law!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck logic, right.

He said a gentleman's word is good enough. You're arguing in bad faith, asking for citations that follow a very specific criteria that would cause you to believe them. You're also moving the goal posts to support your own argument. You're acting as no gentleman.

Moved the goalpost from where to where?

[SuburbanFarmer]

Your mother is the type of hooker that steals from her costumers. My word is the law!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck logic, right.

He said a gentleman's word is good enough. You're arguing in bad faith, asking for citations that follow a very specific criteria that would cause you to believe them. You're also moving the goal posts to support your own argument. You're acting as no gentleman.

Moved the goalpost from where to where?

From Smitty's idea of 'what we can argue about without evidence' to whatever we could actually argue about without evidence

[ssu]

If the US were invaded and overrun, Finland would not mobilize and declare war against the aggressor for our sakes.

And if Finland were invaded and overrun, neither would the US mobilize. Time perhaps to learn just who are your allies in Europe, eh?

Many of the European nations like NATO so much because they get a lot of protection from nations like the US, UK, and France, while not having to seriously reciprocate in any meaningful way.

Just like your future SecDef general Mattis has noted, "Some of those allies have lost more troops per capita in Afghanistan than we have". One country what Mattis referred to is Estonia, to it's tiny size it has more KIA in the "War on Terror" than the US has. And it spends the 2% in defence. Yeah, freeriders that hate America.

I reached the conclusion that NATO harms these small nations more than helps them. It encourages dependency upon larger nations to pay for defense, while instead diverting defense spending towards unsustainable welfare states and social policies.

That not only former Warsaw Pact members could join NATO, but even the Baltic States, well inside Russia's "near abroad", is the real amazing feat. In fact first the Western Alliance asked (with the voice of the UK) from Sweden and Finland if they could commit to the defence of the Baltics. That scared the shit out of both countries as they (we) barely can sustain a reasonable deterrence to defend our own territories with zero force projection capabilities outside our borders. It actually was greeted with relief and genuine happiness here when the Baltic states joined NATO. But then immediately the higher ranking officers noted at that time that NATO had no plans then to defend the Baltics. (Later from Wikileaks we have learned that their intel at that time was totally correct.) Only now after Crimea/Ukraine has NATO committed to the defence at some level.

A healthy defense pact ought not encourage nations to forsake their own defense and bankroll massive welfare states on the capital other nations must then spend on behalf of their lacking armed forces.

You might not remember this, but NATO reinvented itself: it wasn't anymore a "Cold War era" defence pact. But it focused on "new threats": terrorism, peacekeeping/peace enforcement and so on. Should it be noted, that actually all this was what you, the US, wanted? Do note that NATO is firmly controlled by the US, even if member countries may opt out of the usual "colonial war" operations that NATO is now doing.

For a long time the US was insisting that NATO should move on from being a defence pack and move to the Globocop role. Defence against outside aggression was so passé. International operations, the new threats, that was the thing that NATO was talking about in the 1990's. Mutual defence was out, a relic of the past. NATO headquarters was actually angry about some Estonia having universal conscription and looking for an example of territorial defence/total defence from Finland. Then Russia wasn't even a potential enemy anymore, and having even plans to fight Russia was considered politically destabilizing. Come to fight in Afghanistan... and NATO came to fight in Afghanistan.

Then I was totally against my country joining such bunch of idiots trying reinvent themselves: the objectives of NATO would have been detrimental to my country's armed forces then. The wide support that the people have for the armed forces would have definately eroded with coffins coming from Iraq fighting a war of occupation based on total bullshit.

If we continue with NATO at all, we ought to require nations meet specific defense spending levels in terms of percent of GDP, and to maintain quotas of troop levels, tactical and air interdiction squadrons, etc.

My friend, both Obama and Trump have been on the same message on this subject: NATO countries have to spend 2% on defence. Trump being Trump has rattled the cages by going off the standard rhetoric, which I think is good.

I'm actually starting to like Trump.

[ssu]

Give me some concrete evidence outside of articles with no Russian sources.I want some leaked insider policy documents for example. Their version of the PNAC.

How could I say this that it the message would go through...

1) Your asking of their version of PNAC with no Russian sources??? Or do you mean sources in English? Perhaps it's more fitting in the "Europe boring, until it isn't thread" as there are the doctrines in English and some key advisors with texts in English.

2) The Kremlin isn't open about it's intension, and it doesn't talk about it's objectives and intensions like the some arrogant American politicians use ordinary e-mail to talk sensitive stuff, so there's not so much similar Wikileaks stuff. The investigative journalist end up dead in Russia, you know.

3) There isn't exactly a similar culture as in Washington DC of leaking sensitive information to give the appearance of being at the centre of things in the Kremlin.

The US tries to be a democracy, and in many ways it's governance is far more open than the EU has, which mimics French governance customs.

A small anecdote about the subject would perhaps be fitting in the Mess:

I participated in a seminar where there was the top brass of the Navy (except the Commander of the Navy) alongside the Estonian commander of their navy and the number 2. of the Swedish navy. The talk was about Russia and it's intensions. The Finnish view about it was given By an Finnish Intel officer now in an academic position, who adamantly emphasized that everything was his only own personal views and everything was from public sources, which gave me the impression knowing active Finnish officers, that this was the real deal for a selected audience. And his speech sounded uh... a bit like Smitty talking. And it gave a logical answer just why Russia is doing those "snap-excersizes". One retired high ranking officer remarked from back of the audience: "What else is new under the sun?". The Intel Officer agreed, not much had changed from the views of the old Cold War times.

Btw. the difference between a NATO country and a non-NATO country was obvious in the meeting. The Estonian Commander of the Navy (of a very small fleet, yes) held a talk that when like this: "Russians are doing this, Russians doing that,... Russia, Russia, Russia". And he replied once to a question from some ignorant participant as why he was so hawkish about Russia with: "Been there, seen it."

The no 2. of the Swedish Navy however basically had a line: "The situation in the Baltic has become more tense." Yep, a non-aligned state, at least officially.

[ssu]

Post it to the Mess too:

Information

Thank you for 10+ years of great conversation. The DCF is now closed.

[Smitty-48]

He said a gentleman's word is good enough. You're arguing in bad faith, asking for citations that follow a very specific criteria that would cause you to believe them. You're also moving the goal posts to support your own argument. You're acting as no gentleman.

Moved the goalpost from where to where?

From Smitty's idea of 'what we can argue about without evidence' to whatever we could actually argue about without evidence

It's not a courts martial, sir, one does not come to the Mess to prosecute, nor to be prosecuted, persecuted perhaps, but not prosecuted, if you wish to spam up a thread with pointless cherry picked confirmation biased links to other websites in lieu of being able to convince someone of something, you're free to do that in another thread.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Moved the goalpost from where to where?

From Smitty's idea of 'what we can argue about without evidence' to whatever we could actually argue about without evidence

It's not a courts martial, sir, one does not come to the Mess to prosecute, nor to be prosecuted, persecuted perhaps, but not prosecuted, if you wish to spam up a thread with pointless cherry picked confirmation biased links to other websites in lieu of being able to convince someone of something, you're free to do that in another thread.

I feel that you're dodging the real question here... Does your mother steal the money of her clients, or deal fairly in matters of commercial love?