Yes, that’s a big question.

The thing is, as we’ve seen with Russia, letting a bully keep what they stole only leads to even more bullying and stealing later.

If, instead, you fuck the bully up, they don’t do it again an go look for targets that don’t resist as much.

Having a Resistance relentless blooding an occupying American presence in Greenland and destroying the infrastructure they would deploy to exploit Greenland’s mineral resources (which are the whole point of trying to get Greenland) would definitelly fucking that bully up.

I suspect hope that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after letting it have Crimea some years ago has retaught most European leaders the lesson that giving in to an earlier aggression will just mean more and greater aggressions later.

Vietnam was definitelly “all out” but I grant your point that America wasn’t trying to make it part of its territory, not least because since the days of Puerto Rico and taking territory from Mexico, America’s Imperial strategy has always being one of installing puppet governments rather than direct control.

As for the rest, I disagree on it being possible for even America to 100% occupy Greenland unless the locals agree - remember it’s 25% of the territory of America, most of it being far harsher. As long as support for a Resistance keeps on arriving from Denmark and Europe, an American occupying force would keep suffering casualties.

This is actually the basis of my point: America invading and occupying Greenland’s cities is probably easy, its actually controlling a territory the size of 25% of America with very specific characteristics that totally favor the locals over American troops (hence my reference to Afghanistan, were the territory was equally large and almost equally harsh and Poshtun were in a very similar situation vs the American occupiers) is impossible unless to locals overwhelmingly side with America.

IMHO Greenland would quite possibly turn in the kind of quagmire war that happens at the stage of empires when they’re starting to fall and engage in reckless military adventures to try and prop-up the elites, which end up overextending their military and draining most of their power.

Truthfully we’ve never seen the US engage in a total war to conquer a nation.

Ahem: Vietnam.

Also I think you’re missing a massive point here: You can’t “topple” Greenland by totally destroying or taking over Greenland because it’s part of Denmark and the seat of the Danish Government isn’t there, nor are their main military assets, and this is before you even consider their European allies.

If Greenland was a country relying only on itself, it would totally make sense that it could be taken by just taking its major cities, but it’s not, it’s an independent region of Denmark, a country which in turn is allied with almost all other European countries.

The US can invade and totally crush Greenland’s big cities and that will still do very little to crush resistance because that’s not were most of it will be coming from. This also brings us around the whole carrier group thing: the carrier group would be how the US would be trying to stop the feeding of resistance in Greenland from Europe, since that would be coming from the very opposite side of the island (and as “islands” go, Greenland is huge, with 25% of the area of the US, so that’s a pretty insane task).

IMHO what the Greenlanders and more in general the Danish should be doing is not to try and stop the elements of warfare that the US does best - such as the actual initial invasion - but actually try and make that as costly as possible whilst at the same time setting up the conditions for a long term Resistance effort from the areas outside the cities to turn Greenland into a graveyard for American soldiers, something which is far more likely to end up with an outcome like Vietnam were the daily procession or american coffins turns an overwhelming majority of the population against the War and the end result was that America ultimatelly lost it.

Finally on the last point, fighting Greenland is fighting Denmark and there are way more people in the rest of Denmark than in Greenland. That said you are right that many (if not most) of the people living in Greenland who know the whole place including the hardest and most remote areas, are probably descendants of the Innuit rather than of the Vikings (both people colonized the place).

Well, sorta.

The US’s main power projection strategy is still (and has been for decades) to have an aircraft carrier group parked about 1000km away from the coast of whichever nation they’re attacking, pouding their target with airpower and cruise missiles whilst being far out enough that most cruise missiles can’t even reach them and those which can take so long that the carrier group has plenty of time to prepare and defend itself.

The Chinese and the Russians both developed hypersonic missiles exactly to counter that, as such missiles get there much faster so the carrier group has maybe half a minute of advanced warning to try and take them down rather than 10+ minutes.

This strategy has been very successful against militarilly second and lower tier nations, which is why the US has been using it since the first Iraq war.

However, for all its underinvestment in its military, Europe isn’t second tier (and neither is China).

As for the second part of your post, “boots on the ground” is exactly were the US massivelly sucks beyond the initial invasion stage: they’re great at getting there and breaking shit up whilst completelly sucking at actually holding territory. Personally, from the videos I’ve seen of US troops trying to “create good will with the locals” in places like Afghanistan, they seem to be completelly shit at understanding and respecting the way of life of the locals and they reeking with a mindset of “I’m a member of a superior civilization trying to civilize the barbarians” (which, as an European, I find hilarious, since America isn’t actually all that culturally or societally civilized - especially in treating people as actual human beings - compared just about all European countries).

All this to say that the US invading Greenland would succeed, but directly cost the US far more than even Afghanistan and in a far shorter time, and they would almost certainly lose control of it in at most a decade or two, not least because they totally suck at getting the locals around to support them: trying to take on the most hardcore and resilient of the descendants of the Vikings in a land which in some ways is the polar equivalent of Afghanistan - huge, harsh and with massive uninhabited and hard to occupy areas - whilst the people there don’t at all feel they have an inferior culture to America’s (so they’re hardly attracted by the prospect of becoming American citizen) seems to me like an impossible task.

Even my shitty-shit country - Portugal - which most definitelly can’t afford the costs of a single aircraft carrier even though it has a massive exclusive economic area in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, some years ago had a submarine win a NATO exercise when it popped up undetected in the middle of the carrier group.

Even with its main focus of “force projection” being on Trade rather than Military power, Europe is a whole different beast to face militarily than Latin America, and not just because it’s far more likely to be united in its response.

This is probably why Trump hasn’t invaded Greenland yet - his military people know very well it would be a very different story militarily and his diplomats know it would be a very different story in terms of the broader consequences.

Lets put things this way: nations which hold Universal Humanist Principles will always treat their citizens well (or at least as well as they can), but nations which treat their citizens well don’t necessarily hold Universal Humanist Principles.

As for the rest, it’s just circling back to my original point that few or no nations are civilized, but the citizens in some nations are civilized whilst the elites holding power are not.

Good to know Denmark has changed its position in the Genocide. When are the sanctions on Israel starting?!

I also noticed you didn’t address my point on Denmark’s government push for broad civil society surveillance for all of the EU with Chat Control, something which in my view is the very opposite of “civilized” in the modern era.

I think we differ mainly in that I think that in this era Civilization must be broader than just “Doing what’s better for us”.

So in that sense the Scandinavian model of governance by itself (absent all else), whilst more civilized than most others, isn’t enough for Civilization - there needs to be some kind of broad holding of Universal Humanist Principles rather than merelly just the nation treating its own citizens well.

By that metric and looking at the awful position of Denmark in regards to the Israeli Genocide and even in things like pushing for broad civil society surveillance at the EU level in the form of Chat Control, Denmark is NOT a civilized country, even if it’s better for its own citizens than the vast majority of countries are for theirs.

Sure, my country too had a revolution and overthrew a Fascist dictatorship. That doesn’t make it a measure of civilization though.

I’ve lived in several countries of Europe and the web controlling Brits is exceptional in its breadth and depth and quite subtle: for example watch the BBC and look for language that subtly classifies different people as having different implicity trustworthiness, for example how they will report Israeli authorities as “saying” or “stating” things whilst Palestinian authorities “claim” things - this kind of technique is not just used for the Israeli Genocide, it’s used for everything and pretty hard to internally compensate for even if you’re aware of it because it mainly affects you at a subconscious level. Brits are constantly being indoctrinated and manipulated, all done with way more subtlety than run of the mill dictatorships.

Or look at how their level of civil society surveillance as shown by the Snowden Revelations was even worse than the US.

Further, do you know they have a Press censorship scheme called D-Notices? Most Britons don’t even know this.

In many ways Britain is a lot more like an Authoritarian Regime with a bit of performative voting (think Russia) than a Democratic country, only it’s all done way more subtly with far more advanced manipulation techniques as the structures supporting it have been developed over, literally, centuries.

(That’s why I said that I left the country thinking it was basically the closest to Fascism we have in Europe, just disguised as posh)

Yet plenty of people over there still have very strong principles to the point that 1.5% of the population went out and demonstrated purely for their principles and not at all their own personal good and people are still going out and risking being arrested by the government as “terrorist supporters” for demonstrating against a Genocide that doesn’t actually affect them personally.

Granted, at the same time there is also a large fraction of the population who are complete cunts, from Financiers in the City and the Political class, to Racist Nationalists.

Don’t get me wrong: British Society itself is quite backwards as European nations go in many things, it’s just that a significant fraction of the population do hold personal humanist values and are willing to at least go out and demonstrate and even face the authorities for them. I compare it with my own country - Portugal - whose society isn’t quite as ill (it has its problems, mainly different ones) but activism for actual principle around here is almost non-existent (sure, people will demonstrate and even strike for their own personal good, but for example a far smaller fraction of people was demonstrating against the Israeli Genocide here than in Britain) and don’t get me started on just hugely unlikely people around here are to do thinks like avoiding having a car for Ecological reasons.

PS: In fact, now that I think about it, a lot of the reason why I think that Revolutionary Capability is not the same as Civilization is the observation on my own country of how people can be perfectly capable of fighting for themselves to the point of overthrowing a dictatorship and yet won’t at all fight for others. In my view, “civilization” must include fighting against certain things happenning to anybody and only just fighting against those things happenning to oneself is merely Survival.

We’re talking about Britain, not the US.

Britain doesn’t even have a written constitution.

Again, your entire point is around them not having succeeded in overthrowing a massive, complex, centuries old, highly resilient power structure which amongst other things indoctrinates them from an early age into compliance and even pride in it.

Things over there are massivelly rigged exactly to stop such a change, an many levels, from the First Past The Post voting system and a Press incredibly consolidated and either in the hands of either billionaires or controlled by the upper class boards, to the whole Public School -> Oxbridge -> Top Level Corporate/Legal/Public Service Position pathway that that makes sure the scions of the elites always end up in control of the rest.

Further, in many ways that structure has been cracking due to internal pressure, though as shown the last time it was really under pressure (following WWII and the return of large numbers of working class people with military trainin) it showed massive flexibility which is how Brits got the NHS, Social Security and even a Gilded Age in the Arts (from all the working class kids that flooded into Music and Theatre) during the 60s and 70s, though all those gains have been slowly been undone, especially since Thatcher got into power.

So you’re basically saying that when peasants don’t assault the fortress they’re uncivilized a logic which ultimately (considering that there is always room for improvement) boils down to “Only Violent Revolution is Civilization”

Lets agree to disagree on that.

First I mainly agree with you: I lived in Britain as in immigrant for a decade, which was preceded by a decade living in The Netherlands, and my opinion of Britons (especially the English, more so their upper middle class and above) is very negative by comparison with my opinion of the Dutch in general and my impression of British society by the time I left was basically “The country of Europe closest to Fascism, only it’s disguised with posh bollocks from posh people with a posh accent”.

However this shit the current government is doing there of arresting people demonstrating against the Genocide as “terrorist supporters” doesn’t have the support of most of the population. Further, 1.5% of the people of a country coming out in a demonstration for the benefit of completely different people and in no way whatsoever for their own personal benefit shows that at last that many people over there have incredibly strong principles.

It doesn’t prove that most people are quite that good people, but it still seems to me that most aren’t quite as bad as being deemed uncivilized.

As I see it, the point you’re making is really that pretty much the entirety of the non-elites there lack a spine, both as people and as a group - hence not doing much to overthrow the power structures of that country - which is not the same as not being civilized people, though as we can see both path lead to similar outcomes in situations like this one.

Frankly, I couldn’t agree more with that view! Countless experiences I’ve had over there speak of subservience towards the upper classes and even towards society in general (the level of concern with “what will other people think of me” there, especially amongst Middle Class women, is quite extreme when compared with, for example, the Dutch) and maybe explains why they’re so good at Theatre: a lot of people over there spend their lives behind a thick complex façade so it’s unsurprising when so many make a hobby and even a profession from it.

Further, they’re relentlessly indoctrinated with both Nationalism and Respect For Authority (in other words, for the elite dynasties) by the local Press, which is maybe why the Brits are actually the least trusting in the local Press of all of Europe.

However, lack of a spine - which in my opinion is mainly a learned trait from growing up in such a society - though not exactly positive in Psychological and Freedom terms, isn’t the same as being uncivilized.

Yeah, well, look at Britain which had a massive demonstration of half a million people against the Genocide in Gaza and yet their supposedly “leftwing” “moderate” government is arresting people for “terrorism support” when they demonstrate against it.

The people ARE civilized, it’s their elites (political or otherwise) which are unreformed barbarians by comparison, especially in those countries were the structures of power mean such people have been an entrenched and unchallenged elite for generations.

So I would say that the countries are CIVILIZED, however they’re controlled by elites whose minset is still the same as the ancient monsters from the past (hence why, for example, British governments and Press have a mindset of colonialism towards the outside and “born to rule” towards their own citizens whilst German governments and Press support the Genocide of a “lesser people by a greater people” and both deploy authoritarian means to suppress dissent even tough they’re supposedly Democracies).

This is also why I expect plenty of members of those elites will have broken the ultimate tabu of our era - they have the same principles of the ruling elites of centuries past, feel themselves above the law and firmly believe everybody else are nothing more than tools for their own personal upsides - including pleasure - and for many that would include children.

PS: As I see it, the solution for the problems in Democracies is MORE Democracy (more transparency, more accountability, more independent oversight, more variety and change) but we’re going in the opposite direction and the actions of the ruling elites in the US and the support from the political elites in certain countries for that all matches with the moving away from Democracy towards Might Is Right and Authoritarianism

Yeah, well, Spain is also one of the few European countries that are very openly against the Genocide in Gaza.

Meanwhile the “party of the pre-revolution Fascists that decided the pass themselves as ‘democrats’” government of the disgrace of a country right next door - Portugal - which sadly is my homeland, makes non-comittal noises. I trully hail from a nation of spinless subservient boot-licking provincials (an impression I’ve had since I went to live abroad), especially the sold-out political class which are very corrupt by European standards.

Anyways, congrats Spain and the Spanish for once again going against the tide of political and societal enshittification in Europe.

In my experience one needs to be a senior developer with at least some experience with their own code having gone through a full project lifecycle (most importantly, including Support, Maintenance and even Expansion stages) to really, not just intellectually know but even feel in your bones, the massive importance in reducing lifetime maintenance costs of the very kind of practices in making code that LLMs (even with code reviews and fixes) don’t clone (even when cloning only “good” code they can’t do things like for example consistency, especially at the design level).

• Inexperienced devs just count the time cost of LLM generation and think AI really speeds up coding.
• Somewhat experienced devs count that plus code review costs and think it can sometimes make coding a bit faster
• Very experience devs looks at the inconsistent multiple-style disconnected mess (even after code review) when all those generated snippets get integrated and add the costs of maintaining and expanding that codebase to the rest, concluding that “even in the best case in six months this shit will already have cost me more time in overall even if I refactor it, than it would cost for me doing it properly myself in the first place”.

It’s very much the same problem with having junior developers do part of the coding, only worse because at least junior devs are consistent and hence predictable in how they fuck up so you know what to look for and once you find it you know to look for more of the same, and you can actually teach junior developers so they get better over time and especially focus on teaching them not to make the worst mistakes they make, whilst LLMs are unteachable and will never get better plus they’re mistakes are pretty much randomly distributed in the error space.

You give coding tasks in a controlled way to junior devs whilst handling the impact of their mistakes because you’re investing in them, whilst doing the same to an LLM has an higher chance of returning high impact mistakes and yields you no such “investment” returns at all.

Encouraging more democratic leaning voters would’ve made a difference however, you don’t have to assume linear proportional effect

Which is exactly the job of the Democrat Party leaders, which is done via amongst other things offering potential voters the things they desire and assuaging their concerns, things which are clearly not “Unwavering support of Israel and its Genocide”, “Do whatever is good for Finance and Tech-bros” or “Supporting the Cheney family, legacy and political ideology”.

The people with by far the most power to convince leftwing leaning non-voters to vote for the Democrat Party were the Democrat Party leaders and they, with all that power they had, actually did the very opposite of trying to cater to the desires and concerns of such non-voters.

Yet around here whenever american politics pops up as a subject we get a rabid pack of mindless useful idiots blaming non-voters literally for not convincing themselves to vote for a party whose leaders activelly tried to reject them, never blaming those fucking leaders for activelly rejecting said potential voters.

Fuck the subservient, bootlicking Democrat Party tribalists who keep on excusing the profound incompetence and greed of their tribe’s “chiefs” and parroting the DNC propaganda line that pushes the blame to non-voters rather than accept that the blame for a fucking monster like Trump having been elected a second time is overwhelmingly of the DNC and the rest of the Democrat Party leadership who once again chose to “stay pretty close but just below” in the Evil scales from the Republicans

Maybe it’s not so obvious for those living inside America and its Politics, but from the outside it’s obvious that both of Trump’s presidential election victories are the end product of decades of the Democrat Party leadership getting away with representing ever fewer people whilst relying on a “vote lesser evil” strategy, all of which supported by the very same useful idiots who now, once again, come out relentlessly parroting the “everybody but ourselves is to blame” mindless bullshit that only an acephalic tribalist muppet would believe.

It is fucking obvious for anybody who knows just a bit of World History that Trump or somebody like him was bound to be elected sooner or later in the US when the strategy of the competing political force there was nothing more than invariably sidding with the handful of moneyed elites just limited by the need to stay just one step below in the Ladder of Evil from the other political force.

So enjoy the Fall Of The Empire you created for yourselves (by supporting a “Greater Evil” vs “Lesser evil” political power structure) and for the other 340 million people over there, whilst the rest of us batters the hatches and endures the side effects of the “Empire overextending itself militarily whilst the homeland becomes ever empoverished and authoritarian” phase of such Fall until America fizzles in power (if you’re lucky) or breaks up.

I doubt it’s just the Israelis who have compromision photos of top European politicians fucking little kids that they got using operations like Epstein’s.

Being older than 18 means Maduro is way too old for Trump to do that to him.

A fucking rock would be better.

Or just leaving the post unoccupied.

A good woman would be better, but so would a good man. It’s the “good” (person) part that guarantees it would better, not the gender.

Two words: “Margaret Thatcher”

The idea that a woman president is bound to be better just because of being a female is ridiculous.

When the USD stops being the world’s reserve currency, it will never recover its previous value because it will never again have such a status and the worldwide demand for a currency that comes it it, so in broad terms it won’t be a “dip”.

Sure, it will overshot its final value (big market movements always do) so there will be a local dip at the bottom, but even if one can actually time it right (good luck with that) whether one can profit from it or not also depends on whether it actually caused hyperinflation and how the authorities deal with it - those things tend to be confusing and involve things like emission of a new currency or other non-orthodox measures as seen in Germany’s, Zimbabwe’s and several Latin American country’s historical situations of hyperinflation.

More in general and if you look at other markets, a run on an asset (say, a stock whose price is crashing) usually breaks the market for it (for example, in the 2008 Crash Bear Stern’s stock value collapsed and the whole company ended up being bought by another bank for $1), so I wouldn’t bet on the usual market rules applying to a USD during a period of hyperinflation.

I suppose if you’re just using something that mirrors the asset rather than being the asset, such as a derivative, you might be able to take advantage of the local dip at the bottom.