• 0 Posts
  • 17 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
cake
Cake day: February 19th, 2025

help-circle
  • Such an exemption would be moot: The tariff income goes to the US federal budget, and in this case, the extra costs caused by the import tariffs are paid from the US federal budget. It’s ±0 all the same with the import tariffs. However, there will also be import tariffs in the other direction, and those need to be paid to EU. Anything that needs to be brought from USA to EU in order to be processed there into an F35 component causes extra money to go to EU.

    he US federal budget doesn’t really win or lose anything through the import tariffs alone, but the opposing import tariffs go to foreign countries in the EU and there’s no reason why the US federal administration would exempt from those tariffs.

    Of course, when EU countries are buying F35 planes, it matters more: There the components being brought from EU to USA are subject to import tariffs paid to the US federal budget, and are money lost from the perspective of EU. But at the same time, how is the price of the F35 agreed upon? If the price is already fixed, then Lockheed Martin has to pay the EU import tariffs from its own pockets and might get the US import tariffs compensated as federal subsidies. But, if the agreements say that the variance in prices are covered by the buyer, then the US import tariffs actually benefit the US.


  • I see you simply skimmed through my comment and commented without actually reading it.

    Yes oh my god some of them were children

    As I said in my comment, that is a horrible thing. Please read the comment and then reply again. It is ridiculed that you just randomly accuse people of being heartless without bothering to read what they actually think about the matter.

    Also, you can be sad without being very very horrified. Those children were brought to death by their own parents. Why would that not feel bad?

    that doesn’t mean they deserve to die in a plane crash!

    True. I completely agree with you regarding this. As I wrote in that comment. Please, just read it. If somebody is robbing a bank and gets shot in the process, that is a bad thing, because it’s a dead human. A bank robber does not deserve death, because nobody deserves death. But, I won’t expressly explain that I’m very sad about a robber dying, because the robbery does decrease my sadness. And even if the robber also kills their own child during the robbery, it of course makes me angry at that horrible parent, and sad about a child dying, but it doesn’t make me actively write that I’m angry and sad. Because there are other thingsore relevant about the event.

    Arguing against a really bad argument does not make the arguer’s “empathy is conditioned on where somebody comes from.”

    If you now read my comment, you will notice that I’m saying my empathy is conditioned on what somebody has done. (And, to clarify: absolutely regardless of where they are from! It tells a lot about you that you even end up assuming it might be because of where that someone is from! That looks a lot like projecting.)

    Furthermore: how have you successfully managed to completely skip the connection to the extreme suffering in Ukrainian homes? Based on you apparently projecting there, it’s hard to not notice how you’re voicing your compete apathy to the death and suffering of innocent civilians in the terror attacks the Russia is now committing on an almost hourly basis.



  • Something in the ballpark of 90 % of those civilians support the war of genocide in some form. Some 30 % are against the war, but most of those are angry about how Ukraine was invaded: They would have wanted it done in a much less bloody fashion.

    You talk with Russians, and they keep telling you how “you must look at both sides of the situation”, in other words trying to defend the genocide their country is doing its best to commit. So, of course at least 5 %, possibly almost 10 % of Russian civilians are innocent, but out of the 44 adults that died, that is statistically about 2 to 4 people in the whole plane, plus the five children. Are we supposed to be very very horrified that 9 innocent people died in a plane crash?

    In the other hand, the Russia is doing its Human Safari attacks against civilians, hunting them down with drones for fun. And they are targeting mainly civilian homes in their terror attacks with drones and missiles. If the death of those 7 innocent civilians and 40 guilty civilians (because of course, every death is always a sad thing – always to at least some extent!) helps end the war earlier and that saves the lives of 200 innocent civilians in Ukraine (being attacked by the army most of the plane’s passengers were happily supporting), then as a net result that crash has then saved lives of a bit over 150 people. And yes, I prefer 49 dying over 200 dying, absolutely! Especially if those 200 are innocent and about 42 out of those 49 are not. Even if we were to assume somehow all of the 49 were innocent (HOW?! What are the chances for that?!), the balance would still make sense.

    And then: They chose to enter a plane, fully aware of the existence of very severe safety problems in Russian aviation. A Ukrainian living in their own home and getting killed there hasn’t really chosen their death as a victim of a terror attack. But someone willingly choosing to use the airplane under the current circumstances has made a completely free decision. They could have taken a train or a bus, but they preferred the risk in order to save time. First they decided not to do anything against Putin, in order to have a comfortable and safe life, then they decided to enter a deathtrap.

    Nope. Not terribly sad. Not even for any of the approximately four innocent adults on the flight, because they chose the flight. I am sad for the 5 children, though. But even their deaths easily hasten the end of the war enough to save lives of 20 other children, which does diminish (but doesn’t remove!) my sadness. It’s 5 absolutely innocent people who didn’t know of the risks and even if they did, could not do anything to mitigate them, and that’s always sad. But 5 innocent children dying unfairly is something that happens more often than once per decade.

    This war must end. It will only end when Russians get fed up with it. Everything that pushes them that way is more good than bad.




  • We’ll see how that will go in the States. I just read a text about why there are so few pickpockets in USA, and someone mentioned that during the Paris Olympics people had tried pickpocketing spectators from USA, and got so frequently immediately beaten up by spontaneously formed mobs of Americans that the French police had to start actively intervening on the side of the pickpockets O.o

    Not everyone on this planet is like the Chinese and Russians. But, we are about to see.




  • If we don’t win this war now that it’s limited to Ukraine, Putin will spread it to first Baltics and then Finland once he his army has regained enough strength. Unless we have developed our defense capabilities sufficiently by that.

    We need to be ready for the event that France and Germany decide that Ukraine should fall. And if at that point the only countries that have a serious ability to defend against the Russia are Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, then the economy of northwestern EU will be in shambles. And that will definitely affect the rest of EU, including whatever country you are from.

    If the whole EU is interested in repelling the Russia when it attacks, then it probably won’t even attack. But if only the countries bordering it are interested in that, it abaolutely will attack the northeastern EU. And then your bread will get a lot more expensive.


  • Using mines is not necessary for repelling a Russian attack, but it makes it possible to repel it with less land area lost in the initial phase. The Russia is very weakened by its crazy war, but that is not a situation that will stay that way forever. In something a bit more than 5 years after this war ends, the Russia can very well have enough material to attack Finland. (It will probably attack Estonia or Latvia first. Most likely Estonia, because Narva is located in a very precarious location and taking Narva without NATO reacting would decrease NATO’s political ability to react to bigger things in the future.)

    NATO is good to have, and it probably will help if needed, but for example Germany and France have shown that if the Russia says the word “nuke”, they reduce their help dramatically, and the country under attack is largely left to its own devices. It would be idiotic of western countries not to support Ukraine as much as possible, yet they do indeed only support it at a minimum level. Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania must be able to defend themselves adequately even without external support, because there’s not much reason to assume central European countries’ thinking about supporting a country in a war against the Russia would be very different in the future than it is now.

    It’s theoretically possible that a country uses mines and still gets conquered, yes. But the likelihood is smaller. Also, what is much more important is that it’s not a black-and-white “you get conquered or you don’t”. There’s also the middle ground of “part of your country gets conquered for a while, then you regain that territory”. As is the case in Ukraine at the moment. The smaller that conquered part is, the less demining you need to do to remove the mines sown by the orcs. And if you are a small country like Finland fighting the Russia alone, fighting with other systems plus mines slows down the Russia more than fighting with those other systems only.

    Also, mines are indeed generally not as useful as they were 100 years ago. But against the Russia they have been proven very useful in this war now. Not as useful as 100 years ago, true, but extremely useful all the same. Because the Russia is a country that works about the same way civilized countries worked some 100 years ago.

    And, to your last point: You’re saying it’s unlikely that Finland would use mines in a responsible way. Why wouldn’t it? Remember, it’s Finland’s own people that will suffer from the mines. If we are irresponsible with them, it’s us that will suffer. This is a country where people take responsibility much more seriously than in any other country that I know. I do trust that the Finnish army does make maps of the minefields. What is the extreme thing that you’re claiming Finland would do, actually? Lay a minefield but somehow decide not to make a map about the mines’ locations? Why?




  • Well, what can one do, if one has the Russia as one’s neighbour.

    Anything the Russia conquers, it mines extremely thoroughly, with zero maps. Several mines on every single square metre along the front.

    If you have mines, the Russia will advance much slower, and that means you will have less mines to worry about.

    The question is: do you want an area to have 5000 mines of your own with a map showing each one’s location or 30 000 Russian mines with no maps of their location whatsoever?

    I prefer having less mines. Therefore, I am happy that Finland left the Ottawa agreement. And any other country neighbouring the Russia should definitely do the same, because mines are horrible things and the less of them are in the ground, the better.


  • Not really. European NATO countries are currently strong enough to repel a Russian attack if we so wish. Taking into account how strong the Russia is at the moment. It will be stronger in the future, but we are easily able to increase our strength more than the Russia can.

    And if USA withdraws from NATO, then the rest of EU, not only Finland, Baltics, Sweden, and Poland will be forced to take defence seriously. This will make NATO more like it was supposed to be, and it will no longer be used for offensive wars.

    But… USA withdrawing from NATO would of course have negative sides:

    • a war with the Russia would not end in two days with a decisive victory for us as it would with USA in, but would drag on for weeks at least, likely years. And thousands or tens of thousands would die.
    • USA’s allies in Asia would not dare to trust USA anymore and would turn towards China for coöperation, regardless of China’s imperialism. This would make China stronger, which would be bad for Europe.

    But still: The EU is the biggest economy on this planet. We are absolutely able to win a war against a country with an economy only as big as one of our 27 member states. We just need to bother to do so. Which means we’ll need to change our mindset. Heh.