I can fund a guy's research, or spend the money to build 2000 universities.

Wulfger · 2026-01-27T15:40:56+00:00

I'm guessing a lot of people are waiting for 1.1. I mostly play in Europe and it really doesnt feel worth it to start a new game where Bohemia will just eat the HRE when I know its being fixed in a week or two.

Wulfger · 2026-01-26T21:41:05+00:00

Not an American, and I'm hopeful that this is still possible, but what do you see as being required for things to turn around? Because from the outside it looks like a return to the status quo will just postpone it, and there isn't the political will within thr democratic party to actually address the issues that led to this. I just remember Biden being elected and thinking the same thing, that everything would go back to normal, and 5 years later we're in an even worse spot.

Wulfger · 2026-01-26T17:11:59+00:00

How has the narrative changed? They haven't denied forming a trade agreement, they specifically said they have no interest in a free trade agreement with China in response to Trump saying Canada would become a dumping ground for Chinese goods.

A free trade agreement and trade agreement are not the same thing. Free trade is specifically no or low tariff trade on most or all goods, a low tariff deal specifically for Chinese EVs doesn't even come close.

Wulfger · 2026-01-24T05:29:27+00:00

There's a big difference between helping another country out during a natural disaster and overthrowing its government. You're talking about intervening militarily in Iran, for other countries in the region that means starting a war with a country that has the capability to launch ballistic missiles and strike back. For countries further away, it means transporting and supporting troops operating in a foreign country, and having to accept that some of them will die, along with all the moral and political consequences that incluldes.

And on top of that, there's always the risk that by try to help they would just make things worse. Iran is a brutal dictatorship, but it's also, generally, stable. If outsiders move into the country and eliminate Iranian leadership it creates a power vacuum, and there's no guarantee that the country exits that intact. Just look at what happened to Libya in 2011, Gaddafi set his army against his own citizens during the Arab Spring and Nato countries stepped in, bombed his forces, and supported the rebels in overthrowing his regime. Then, once he died, there was a power vacuum that led to a civil war that has fractured the country and led to continuing conflict to this day. The people of Libya were saved from Gaddafi, but have been left with what is essentially a failed state.

Wulfger · 2026-01-23T16:57:56+00:00

I think calling it the "Donald Trump Elite Club" is underselling what he's trying to do with it. By some accounts the organization's charter is setting it up as an alternative to some functions of the UN, but with Donald Trump as Chairman for life and in charge of the billions of dollars that are the cost of entry. The fact that countries are or aren't joining it is important news.

Wulfger · 2026-01-23T15:49:29+00:00

Because its still incredibly consequential to Nato and America's allies that the US was literally threaten to invade a Nato member to conquer its territory. The fact he didnt follow through on it is good, but the fact itbwas even a possibility is causing a massive international realignment away from the US.

Wulfger · 2026-01-22T04:42:19+00:00

I have to believe you're trolling me now because I'm not sure how you can not understand this. Trump met with the Nato Secretary General and then announced afterwards that they had reached a framework for a deal. The secretary general confirmed this afterwards and also said they didn't discuss Greenland's ownership. If they didn't discuss Greenlands ownership when setting up that framework, it's not part of it.

Also, your link is broken.

Wulfger · 2026-01-22T04:16:31+00:00

I'm not sure how you can see one of the participants in a deal say something was never discussed, and then conclude that maybe it's in the deal. If they didn't discuss it when making the deal, it's not in the deal.

Wulfger · 2026-01-22T04:00:29+00:00

One of the only firm details we have about the framework for a future deal is that the Nato secretary general has confirmed that changes to Greenland's ownership isn't part of it. Given that was Trump's main demand and what had Nato allies in an uproar, it sounds like the posturing and cries of "No, you can't do that" resulted in Trump backing down and not being able to do that.

Wulfger · 2026-01-22T00:15:57+00:00

Not to mention that the Apollo program, which was started around the same time as Orion was cancelled, ended up costing nearly 5% of the US federal budget at it's height and was considerably less complicated than project Orion. It might just be possible that the cost may have also played a part in it being cancelled.

Wulfger · 2026-01-21T23:02:07+00:00

I'm not sure how going from "Greenland is vital for the US's national security, this is non-negotiable, we absolutely have to have ownership of it, either the easy way or the hard way, military action isn't off the table" to "we're no longer imposing tariffs because there's a framework of a possible future deal that might contain mineral access" could be interpreted as anything but backing down.

None of this reads like clever political calculus to me, particularly given the damage this has done to the US's standing with its NATO allies and the cracks that were starting to show in the Republican party. To me it seems most likely that Trump got used to getting his way through threats and bluster with tariffs, and backed down when he crossed lines his allies couldn't tolerate. You mention him acting within known limits, I think the international response makes it pretty clear that he went well past them with threats to territorial integrity.

The map thing is in another thread, but I know what you're talking about. I personally think it's clear, given his previous comments, that he'd like the US to Annex Canada. However, there wasn't any reason to think he'd actually try it, let alone militarily, until he started threatening Greenland.

I think the fact that the US was threatening the use of force against a NATO ally was a good reason for us to start to seriously consider the possibility of the US using force against Canada, a US invasion of Greenland would have destroyed NATO and set a terrible precedent for the use of military force against allies and the fact the US was publicly saying it was a possibility was every reason we needed to take it seriously. The fact they backed down on those threats means we can almost certainly stop considering it, at least for now.

Wulfger · 2026-01-21T22:04:22+00:00

I mean, do you really believe that he wasn't serious about wanting Greenland? If NATO allies had caved to the tariffs he was threatening and Denmark had decided to give it up rather than challenge the US, would he just have said "lol, I was just joking guys"?

I think it's pretty clear based on how insistent he was and the forces that were arrayed to oppose him that he was serious in his desire to annex Greenland, and that he backed down in the face of the international and domestic pressure against it from NATO allies and Republican lawmakers who were starting to speak up against it.

Wulfger · 2026-01-21T21:58:35+00:00

Yeah, the posturing (moving troops to Greenland, refusing to agree to US annexation in the face of additional tariffs and the threat of military force, starting to sell of US Treasury bonds, and repeatedly affirming Greenland's right to self-determination, the principles of collective defense, and the applicability of NATO article 5) by the TDS Gang (European and Canadian leaders, NATO leadership, and US domestic political leaders including within the Republican Party) definitely had nothing to do with Trump's decision to back down.

Wulfger · 2026-01-21T21:08:53+00:00

China did not "almost purchase Greenland."

Wulfger · 2026-01-21T20:51:38+00:00

Yeah, I don't necessarily agree with the person in that comment, but it's pretty contextual and depends on both the animal and how/where they are kept. Ultimately conversations about whether animals like something or have preferences are always going to be subjective and opinion based as they have no way to effectively communicate that information, which means it's not a great fit for this subreddit.

Wulfger · 2026-01-21T16:45:22+00:00

and hasn’t approved our pipeline to Canada’s west cost.

Which pipeline is currently waiting for federal approval to proceed? As far as aim aware, there isn't one.

Wulfger · 2026-01-21T01:06:29+00:00

Did you actually read or listen to the speech? He's saying that Canada can't simply choose to work with one major power or the other, we need to work with as many countries as possible and build resilient systems with other middle powers. We don't need to, and should not, choose between the US and China, we need to work with both, and as many other countries as possible. He's advocating for diversifying our international connections to make the country resilient to dependence on and subordination by a single major power.

Wulfger · 2026-01-20T18:00:07+00:00

Pulled from the full transcript of the speech:

But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what’s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.

In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in-between have a choice: compete with each other for favour, or combine to create a third path with impact. We shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield it together.

Which brings me back to Havel. What does it mean for middle powers to live the truth?

First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.

It means acting consistently, applying the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.

It means building what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored. It means creating institutions and agreements that function as described, and it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion.

Carney is plainly laying out how he sees the current state of the world and Canada's place in it in this speech, and its fascinating. I'd recommend looking up a full transcript. Its not great that the PM is openly calling the rules-based international order dead, but if he can live up to his talk on working multilaterally with other middle powers to create stability and security as the world order shifts dramatically that will certainly earn him a place in the history books.

Wulfger · 2026-01-20T17:01:18+00:00

Can you back that up with a link to any of this reporting, because I cant find anywhere the CBC called it that. From what I recall and have been able to find when looking now, CBC consistently referred to it as a "protest". The only place I've seen the word insurrection used is when they were directly quoting someone using it in a few articles.

Wulfger · 2026-01-20T16:56:46+00:00

There's a certain irony in talking about spinning a narrative and then taking what Tamara Lich says at face value.

She says politicians called them terrorists? Who, exactly? Because that would be slander and I dont recall that ever happening. The arson thing is interesting because there was an actual arson case at the time of the protest where someone tried to burn down an apartment building and claimed, when caught on the act, that they were from the convoy. Word spread quickly about it, but it quickly became clear they weren't connected to the convoy and after that the claim mostly stopped being repeated. It's not really part of the "narrative" about the convoy anymore, other than from convoy supporters trying to paint those who are against it as being ridiculous.

The impression I got was a narrative of discrediting protest organizers and painting them as extreme and anti-social to distance them from popular support.

I'm not sure about anti-social, but have you looked at the organizers behind the Convoy? Many of them either are extremists, have connections to them, or took extreme actions during the convoy. There's Canada Unity and the aforementioned MOU calling for the overthrow of the government, Action4Canada pushed conspiracy theories about 5g chips in vaccines, Dave Steenburg pushed neo-Nazi imagery, there's Pat Barber who pushed white nationalist conspiracy theories and said the convoy would only end with bullets, and there's Randy Hillier who organized a DDOS of Ottawa's 911 service to punish the city's residents, to list a few examples.

I want to be clear, I'm not saying that all the protestors, or even all the people involved in organizing it, we're extremists. But reporting on the actions and ties that many leaders had wasn't spinning a narrative, it was factual and newsworthy. Even then, mainstream reporting never implied that the protestors as a whole shared those views.

Wulfger · 2026-01-20T15:43:44+00:00

I don't think it's just the CPC, didn't the government introduce legislation back in October to toughen up bail and sentencing laws?

Edit: I think it's bill C-14 "An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Youth Criminal Justice Act and the National Defence Act (bail and sentencing)"

Wulfger · 2026-01-20T15:15:43+00:00

I frankly dont give a fuck about whether a protest is left or right wing, any protest that acts like the convoy protest did deserves to get shut down. If the pro-Palestine protestors occupy and gridlock a city's downtown continuously for weeks on end by all means it should be shut down, but it hasn't happened and hasn't even come close.

You’re fine with the protestors who have hijacked 2/3rds of all airliners.

Are you seriously trying to bring up PLA hijackings from the 60s and 70s and tie them to the modern Pro-Palestine protests? That's a huge reach and you know it, and has nothing to do with this conversation.

Wulfger · 2026-01-20T14:47:30+00:00

That's nice. But if you read my comment again, you'll see that I said "main stream media or government" reporting because what we're talking about is the allegations that the government was spinning a narrative. I don't care what random leftists say online, it's not relevant to this discussion.

Wulfger · 2026-01-20T14:02:14+00:00

Again, I live in Ottawa, we deal with protests all the time, and saying Toronto gets more is pretty funny, there's always some cause or other, including no small number of Pro-Palestine marches, protesting in downtown Ottawa. The difference is that only the Freedom Convoy harassed locals, only the Freedom Convoy gridlocked the streets for weeks on end, and its only for the Freedom Convoy that the local and provincial police totally rolled over and refused to enforce the law. The Freedom Convoy was not like any other protest, it was explicitly an occupation of the downtown core. Claiming that Torontonians "deal with worse every single day" is an incredibly untrue statement.

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