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Which country will the US invade next?

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darkstarexodus said:
But it's also fair to say the entire Canadian housing market is a Ponzi scheme that no one actually wants to see a correction on.
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Can you share some reading material on this? That sounds fascinating and rather dangerous too (when shit hits the fan)

darkstarexodus said:
the Liberals will deservedly get trashed in the election.
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... I think Trump plays in the Libs' favor here ... the more he talks his utter nonsense, the more it may force disenchanted voters to say 'fuck you' and vote for Libs as a Trump protest vote!
 
Athens said:
I think most housing markets are like that.
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True but the Canadian market is especially blown up compared to the underlying economic performance.

I'm not familiar enough with Europe to make a meaningful comparison but contrast to the affordability of housing in most areas of the USA is significant.
 
Accedalyday said:
Can you share some reading material on this? That sounds fascinating and rather dangerous too (when shit hits the fan)



... I think Trump plays in the Libs' favor here ... the more he talks his utter nonsense, the more it may force disenchanted voters to say 'fuck you' and vote for Libs as a Trump protest vote!
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I'll see if I can find some articles or stats when I have the chance. But an absolutely huge amount of Canadian household debt is tied up in huge mortgages wherein the property is seen not just as a residence but as an investment for retirement.

With housing prices well outstripping the underlying value or the overall performance of the economy (which is stagnant outside resource extraction and the financialization of the housing market), increasingly no one under the age of 50 can afford a house. But neither can anyone approaching retirement age - or those who have gone massively into debt to get into the housing market - afford for a price correction.

--

Liberals have precisely zero chance in the upcoming election. Although we have a multiparty democracy, in practice it's really just the two parties and folks are sick enough of the Libs that an overwhelming Conservative majority is a near certainty.

Unfortunately, Skippy (popular nickname for Polievre) is focusing on Trump-lite populism at the expense of developing a meaningful policy response to the very real challenges, including housing, immigration, economic growth, America, and climate change.

The Cons, like their counterparts in many other countries, just aren't serious. The problem is that none of the other alternatives are either. I despair for democracy. Unfortunately it still seems to be better than the other forms of government.

Star Wars Doom GIF
 
As he often did, Winston Churchill put it well: "Democracy is the worst system in the world, except for all the others."
 
darkstarexodus said:
True but the Canadian market is especially blown up compared to the underlying economic performance.

I'm not familiar enough with Europe to make a meaningful comparison but contrast to the affordability of housing in most areas of the USA is significant.
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The housing market in Greece, especially Athens and the tourist areas, has gone crazy because of Airbnb. Some areas in Athens have been hit particularly hard, especially Koukaki. It got hit because it's close to the Acropolis and has a metro station, so it's easy to get to and has all the touristy stuff right next to it.

About ten years ago you could rent a flat there for about 400 euro a month, then Airbnb arrived and suddenly landlords were asking 700 or 800 a month and then they weren't interested in long term lets anymore. We've friends who managed to buy a place there just at the right time.

If course it's not just the prices that's causing the locals to get annoyed. Imagine having drunk tourists stumble home and try to unlock your front door at 2 am on a Monday morning and you've work in 6 hours...

Unfortunately for Greece tourism makes up 40% of the country's GDP so I can't see this changing any time soon.
 
Athens said:
The housing market in Greece, especially Athens and the tourist areas, has gone crazy because of Airbnb. Some areas in Athens have been hit particularly hard, especially Koukaki. It got hit because it's close to the Acropolis and has a metro station, so it's easy to get to and has all the touristy stuff right next to it.

About ten years ago you could rent a flat there for about 400 euro a month, then Airbnb arrived and suddenly landlords were asking 700 or 800 a month and then they weren't interested in long term lets anymore. We've friends who managed to buy a place there just at the right time.

If course it's not just the prices that's causing the locals to get annoyed. Imagine having drunk tourists stumble home and try to unlock your front door at 2 am on a Monday morning and you've work in 6 hours...

Unfortunately for Greece tourism makes up 40% of the country's GDP so I can't see this changing any time soon.
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Obviously, it's all relative to wages and the economy but 700-800 Euro per month doesn't sound that pricey tbh. I realize you're likely talking about smaller places, but ...

Average Canadian rent is now about $2,150 Cdn per month (actually a 17 month low) and average Canadian house price is over $700k. Those figures are driven heavily by Toronto and Vancouver but the rest of urban Canada is rapidly catching up.

Wildly, there's such a housing shortage (crisis, really) where I'm at that 1-bedrooms (when you can find them) are around $3,000+ per month. Basically, your either have employer subsidized housing or social housing, because very few can afford the private market. (We're fortunate to have fully subsidized housing through my wife's employer.)
 
darkstarexodus said:
Obviously, it's all relative to wages and the economy but 700-800 Euro per month doesn't sound that pricey tbh. I realize you're likely talking about smaller places, but ...

Average Canadian rent is now about $2,150 Cdn per month (actually a 17 month low) and average Canadian house price is over $700k. Those figures are driven heavily by Toronto and Vancouver but the rest of urban Canada is rapidly catching up.

Wildly, there's such a housing shortage (crisis, really) where I'm at that 1-bedrooms (when you can find them) are around $3,000+ per month. Basically, your either have employer subsidized housing or social housing, because very few can afford the private market. (We're fortunate to have fully subsidized housing through my wife's employer.)
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The biggest problem for Greeks is they get paid fuck all. Average wage here is about 14000 euro a year. Those prices are from a few years ago, I don't know what they're asking now.
 
rurikbird said:
Let America actually invade Greenland first, displace about a quarter of the population, mass murder civilians and turn entire cities into rubble while threatening to nuke the rest of the world, then we can start the comparisons. Right now all we have is Trump saying stupid shit.
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Thankfully America has not invaded any countries before.
I mean the millions displaced in Iraq aside.
Or up to half a million civilians killed.
Let's also not mention the 2000%+ increase in rates of cancer, the horrific birth defects in places like falujjah.. likely because of the white prosperous and depleted uranium shells.

Invasions of Afganistan
Bombings of Hiroshima/ nagasaki
Tacit involvement in the ongoing plausible genocide in Gaza, millions displaced Likely multiple tens of hundreds killed.
Vietnam likely over a million killed!

Etc etc not even mentioning the supported coups and more America have been involved in.

This isn't to say Russia and Putin are lovely but let's not pretend America are the 'good' guys.
Maybe we have enough evidence to start the comparisons.
 
Not unexpectedly, that's more slanted than a ski slope.

It was a coalition (one which included Arab countries) that invaded Iraq and it was likewise a coalition that invaded Afghanistan, both times because of clear and present dangers to everyone else from the regimes in charge at the time.

Without the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki extra millions of lives would have been lost in an invasion of Japan which would have been resisted tooth and nail.

"Etc.etc.not even mentioning the supported coups and more" (to coin a phrase) Russia has been involved in, not least the Communist takeover of North Vietnam which led to the war in the first place.
 
I think atlas has made a few decent points. The US hasn't exactly covered itself in glory over the years.

The case for the war on Iraq was built on nonsense, we all know that now. The Afghanistan regime was there in the first place because the Americans helped put them there.

Haven't the CIA got involved with all sorts of drug trafficking and trying to overthrow democratically elected governments over the years?
 
No-one's "covered themselves in glory" over the years. My point isn't that the US has been blameless. It's that targeting the US alone for such criticism is skewed to the point of being seriously misleading, and I stand by that.

Sorry but it's flat wrong to characterise the whole case for going into Iraq as "nonsense". The stuff about WMDs was a load of hooey but there was ample reason to remove Saddam even without that. He'd previously taken Kuwait over before being kicked out, he was on the move again and the rest of the Gulf states would have followed if he hadn't been toppled. That's why Arab countries got involved again.

The US did have a hand in supplying arms to the Afghanistan regime later on, but not in helping to put them there. Pakistan was largely responsible for doing that, then the Soviet Union saw an opportunity and got heavily involved. It was only after that that the US decided it had better throw its own hat into the ring as well.
 
Judge Jules said:
Not unexpectedly, that's more slanted than a ski slope.

It was a coalition (one which included Arab countries) that invaded Iraq and it was likewise a coalition that invaded Afghanistan, both times because of clear and present dangers to everyone else from the regimes in charge at the time.

Without the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki extra millions of lives would have been lost in an invasion of Japan which would have been resisted tooth and nail.

"Etc.etc.not even mentioning the supported coups and more" (to coin a phrase) Russia has been involved in, not least the Communist takeover of North Vietnam which led to the war in the first place.
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Can you name the countries in the coalition For both iraq/Afganistan.

It was vast majority US & UK.
Maybe a handful of few other countries.

Why would it matter if Arab countries were part of the coalition? But anyways please do name them and their involvement?

The original point was about 'invasion' so your point about Japan makes even less sense. US dropped nukes on Japan so they didn't need to invade, basically making the point I was making?

Last point re Russia, yes agreed, I mean I mentioned it, I'm not here to pretend Russia and Putin are great, they are not.
Let's just not pretend Murica is some kinda bastion of freedom and peace.
 
Judge Jules said:
No-one's "covered themselves in glory" over the years. My point isn't that the US has been blameless. It's that targeting the US alone for such criticism is skewed to the point of being seriously misleading, and I stand by that.
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The post I responded to was about US v Russia and how we gota wait for the US to invade a country, kill civilians and displace more before we make comparisons.

I called BS on that assertion.

We can make comparisons based on how US has not 'covered itself in glory' and gave examples.

You then choose to defend the America invasions by saying Arabs were involved as if that makes it better, I don't get that at all.
And choose to defend American support of coups by saying Russians have also done same.
 
Atlas said:
Can you name the countries in the coalition For both iraq/Afganistan.

It was vast majority US & UK.
Maybe a handful of few other countries.

Why would it matter if Arab countries were part of the coalition? But anyways please do name them and their involvement?

The original point was about 'invasion' so your point about Japan makes even less sense. US dropped nukes on Japan so they didn't need to invade, basically making the point I was making?

Last point re Russia, yes agreed, I mean I mentioned it, I'm not here to pretend Russia and Putin are great, they are not.
Let's just not pretend Murica is some kinda bastion of freedom and peace.
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The countries who sent sizeable contingents to the coalition for Iraq were Australia, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK and the US. Smaller contingents also took part from: S.Korea, Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Albania, Mongolia, Singapore, Latvia, Bosnia, N.Macedonia, Tonga, Armenia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Hungary, Nicaragua, Norway, Portugal, Lithuania, Slovakia, N.Zealand, Philippines and Iceland.

Most of the same countries who sent larger contingents were also involved in Afghanistan, along with Germany.

As far as Arab countries go, the Iraq invasion was launched from Saudi who, along with Egypt, persuaded the rest of the Arab League to support the coalition's action. This matters because it destroys your attempts to paint the whole thing as some Western imperialist overflow.

You seem to be hinting that any invasion (or perhaps, more exactly, any invasion undertaken by the US) is automatically wrong. That is utter rubbish when applied to 1945. Japan was Hitler's ally and had to be defeated to stop Fascism, so the choice which faced the Allies was either a (fully justified) invasion or the course they actually took, which ultimately led to a far smaller loss of lives (the majority of whom would have been Japanese BTW).
 
Can we agree that the absolute vast majority of troops used in Afganistan and Iraq were US, followed by UK.
These prob made up over 90% of troops.
The 10 lads from Mongolia who went over prob didn't make much of a difference?

You should mention Pakistan re Afgan war. How america got Pakistan on board is I'd imagine, though I can't say for sure how they got a few of the Arab countries involved.

Arabs involved in western imperialism? Never happened.

Feel free to keep condoning the use of nuclear bombs on a civilian population. It definitely helps to better understand your specific mindset when it comes to these kind of things.
Literally, 'allies' (America) did Japanese a favour by dropping a previously unused of in war nuclear bomb on them. What benevolent people they are, cos there was no other option.
 
Accedalyday said:
Can you share some reading material on this? That sounds fascinating and rather dangerous too (when shit hits the fan)



... I think Trump plays in the Libs' favor here ... the more he talks his utter nonsense, the more it may force disenchanted voters to say 'fuck you' and vote for Libs as a Trump protest vote!
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View: https://x.com/tobi/status/1878839236637741157?t=jzO1Qo2zEiAWzdHePariqg&s=19


View: https://x.com/ShaneAParrish/status/1878840514138771465?t=cJuXPbLTrMS19HP1bG0kCA&s=19

Here's an example of the over-investment in housing in Canada. If that market ever corrects, there's not much else going on here. Total house of cards.
 
Maybe Trump’s trying to free his biggest fan boy’s long lost love.
 
The Nomad said:
He's not going to invade you. He's just trying to bankrupt you.
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He's got a decent chance tbf.

Economic vassal isn't that much different than 51st state. And if we turn off the oil taps, he'll start rattling sabres.

I'm not actually worried in the long run but sure is annoying dealing with a loud bully on the border for four more years.
 
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