Western powers promised Ukraine protection against attack or invasion by themselves and Russia in the December 5th, 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

The US, France, UK, Russia, and China all agreed not to invade Ukraine and in fact to provide protection, and in exchange, Ukraine gave up their nukes.

Russia violated this just 20 years later when they invaded and stole Crimea from Ukraine, and now 30 years later they are trying to conquer the entire country.

Thats why everyone is so hell bent on providing support for Ukraine. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because they were promised protection by world powers.

Is that gamble worth the lives of nearly every living thing on the planet and the future of human civilization?

Russia alone has enough nuclear weapons to cause a mass extinction event. Even if no one else fires a single one, they could erase life as we know it.

If Putin sees a Leopard tank in Moscow, are you sure he wouldn’t order a launch? And if Britain or the French see those missiles and bombers, are you sure they won’t launch in retaliation?

That’s the logic that European leaders are operating under. If they pull the trigger on article 5 and launch a war with Russia, even if they win, everyone could still lose literally everything.

I thought all the hesitation was because of the nukes.

I’m pretty sure it’s the nukes.

And how exactly would they force the United States to do anything?

“Join Us or we’ll start a two front war to make you join us” is hardly a convincing argument.

The thing with IQ or any cognitive test, is they’re only administered when there’s a call for one.

If trump was behaving like a normal man his age, then there wouldn’t likely be a cognitive test. Just like how most people who get an IQ test are only tested if they’re either exceptionally advanced or exceptionally behind in their learning.

Yet he’s either too demented or too cognitively slow to realize that the fact his doctors want tests means that something seems wrong to them.

False positives implies the people will be real.

It’ll probably just invent people to hunt down and waste a bunch of tax dollars.

Now trump is black bagging US citizens in broad daylight, and Musk is an immigrant who fully admitted that he originally entered the country illegally. The danger must have creeped its way through his ketamine addled brain.

How long until Russia doesn’t have nukes?

“If we don’t let you leave you might forget you were mad at us and keep giving us money”

Is he still using his youngest child as a human shield?

They stopped buying his cars

I mean, it’s a wedding.

If part of your culture is firing guns in the air as celebration, I might not get it, but I can support that it’s a cultural tradition.

That being said, some people do fireworks in the US to celebrate weddings, it’s not like they have a pile of old gunpowder that they just set off in the middle of the crowd. Guests, or the couple, will supply the celebratory munitions. I feel like the host could have just bought a crate of common caliber blanks and left it in a corner.

Accessibility to a service is just as important as continuity of service.

I’m sure the Philippines disagrees

And Taiwan

Reading comprehension has left the chat

What about the civilian right to repair.

Why can’t we all just be allowed to fix all of our shit. Sell me parts, let me open up things and poke around without illegals saying I violated the warranty.

international VPNs are not immune from US subpoena

And condoms are only 98% effective.

A condom and VPN work on the same principle: a layer of protection. No protection is ever 100% effective, but you can at least try.

Remember, they’re already building the camps. It’s only a matter of time before “helping illegals” is a crime that gets you sent to the camps. I’d rather make the fascists work for it at least.

You’ve still got to connect to their servers and they can monitor who connects to what.

I wouldn’t trust it without a non-US based VPN. We should assume anything in the US is compromised by the fed, and that they are watching.

Probably buy RD-180 tech package or just the engines from the Russians.

The RD-180 is one of the most robust and reliable rocket engines ever made. Slap that baby on the bottom of a couple fuel and oxidizer tanks, and you can reach just about anywhere in the world in 30 minutes or less. The North Koreans stole the plans for it and now they have ICBMs, the Iranians could do something similar.

Linux Mint is very user friendly. It’s basically the windows UI, including all the familiar keyboard shortcuts, and the software store is very robust. 99.9% of things are just point and click. Using Steam and a browser is the exact same experience as on windows, only a bit snappier.