RVA_C 🇺🇸

@hw97karbine It’s mind-boggling to think of the logistics involved. Every shell fired had to be transported from Germany to Crimea via railway and trucks. Must have taken weeks, only for dozens of shells to be fired in one engagement.

German 8.8cm Flak battery in action against a Soviet air raid over Crimea with bombs and a stricken aircraft falling into the Black Sea nearby circa October 1943

@sfrantzman @BenMFreeman @ShMMor Germany was also the heaviest industrialized country in Europe with world class education and effective institutions. So once the war ended, they could quickly rebuild and get back on track. Few countries managed to pull this off

One key difference with Germany is that while many were displaced in 1945-46, the Marshall plan then helped rebuild West Germany into a normal democracy. Probably if the Palestinians had the same right to have a state as Germans after the war; and if there had been a Marshall Plan for them to build that state, even if it was divided like Germany, it's plausible things would have been different. One key feature of the Western Allies occupation of West Germany is that within several years there were elections, and they were governing themselves. Definitely the same concept could have been applied to Palestinians after 1948 or 1967; let them have a state and govern themselves. Without those basic aspects of them getting to determine their future, like Germans did, with investment as well, it's hard to compare. The Allies were very smart with West Germany (and also the US occupation in Japan); a lot of lessons can be learned from this. First and foremost it is that people deserve rights, citizenship, investment and basic freedoms.

Still brilliant, @ShMMor.

I know a couple of guys who served in Afghanistan with the German army. They always speak highly of the US Army and their helicopter pilots, who had a reputation of flying in under fire if needed. At the same time, every German soldier seems to be convinced that their own leadership would have abandoned them in critical situations

US Pilot Awarded Germany’s Gold Cross for Saving German Soldiers 🇺🇸🇩🇪 During the Good Friday Battle in Afghanistan, a U.S. Army MEDEVAC crew flew directly into a heavily contested combat zone to rescue wounded German paratroopers under intense enemy fire. Despite receiving orders to abort, Chief Warrant Officer Jason LaCrosse and his Black Hawk crew pushed forward, landed under fire, and returned multiple times to evacuate the wounded. For their extraordinary bravery, the entire crew was awarded Germany’s Gold Cross of Honor one of the nation’s highest military awards.

@SCP_Hughes Same for the Cologne Cathedral, which has an iron roof built during the completion of the cathedral in the 1880s.

When the roof of Notre Dame burnt down, the French authorities faced a dilemma: replace it with a frivolous modern design, or reconstruct it with timber from the original forest. They eventually chose the latter. Nineteenth-century architects saw this as a false dichotomy. When the roof of Chartres Cathedral burnt down, they replaced it with a wrought iron structure that is visually indistinguishable (unless you actually go into the loft), but invulnerable to fire and rot. It is interesting that this rather obvious option – restore the building's beauty while also getting the value of a brilliant modern technology – is now overlooked.

@sparbuchfeinde @grok Mittlerweile nur noch reine Verzweiflung. Man sieht als SPD und Gewerkschaften, dass es nicht mehr weitergeht, kann sich aber nicht überwinden und den Schalter umlegen. Und hofft persönlich, dass man noch in den Ruhestand kommt.

DGB-Chefin Fahimi: „Wir reden über die weltweit drittgrößte Volkswirtschaft. Wir haben in der EU den weltweit größten Binnenmarkt. Wenn denen dann nicht mehr einfällt als Verlagerung, dann muss ich eben auch mal Versagen vorwerfen.“ @grok bitte erkläre dieser Linken welche Energiekosten eine durchschnittliche Chemiefirma in Deutschland, in den USA und in China nach 20 Jahren deutscher Energiewende (stets unterstützt von SPD & Gewerkschaften) zu stemmen hat.

@ApuFren777 @WolfofX Wasn’t it an Italian?

@WolfofX It was an Austrian soldier who joined them.

In 1866 Liechtenstein's last military engagement sent 80 men to war. 81 returned, as they had made a friend

@luusssso I believe they still had Cartier cigarettes in the early 2000s in Germany. Premium brand (maybe one DM or 50 Euro cents more expensive) , but you could buy them at normal stores or gas stations

Blows my mind that Cartier and YSL had lines of cigarettes in the ‘80s

@Mothematiks Isn’t there this great video of police officers throwing a birthday party for a criminal just turning 18 so that they can finally arrest him? With cake and birthday song? Same vibes….

Arresting a drug dealer in the favelas 😀🤣

@VorgBeob Gab’s die früher nicht in jedem Landkreis? Wurde selber noch in Köln gemustert

Bis in die 90er Jahre waren es ja auch Freiwilligenannahmestellen. bundeswehr.de/de/menschen-ka…

@jageriv1 @SaysSimulation That’s exactly my point, the Wehrmacht was huge on paper and still had some good fighting units, but overall the army had been broken through attrition in a 6 year war

@Stradivari78 @SaysSimulation I mean, the Wehrmacht was still probably one of the largest armies ever: quick search suggests it was still about 8 million men.

As a starting point, Ukraine has somewhere around 130 combat brigades at the moment, and they are battle-hardened drone experts. Talking ground troops, Germany, France and the UK combined have somewhere around 25-30 combat brigades. The Europeans are also very deficient 1/

@Chris33066442 @Her_Nonymous_D Happened to me last month for the first time in 20 years of flying. Seems to be a thing these days.

@Her_Nonymous_D All I see on here is stories of stand offs with who sits where on a flight, I must have flown 200 times and I have never seen or had any problems with seating on a plane..

I always hear stories about people acting entitled on flights, like seats are just… suggestions. Today happens to be the first time I actually watched it happen in real life. I was already seated when a family came in and took the row next to me. They had booked the middle and the aisle, but somehow managed to spread across all 3 seats by putting their “lap child” in the window seat. I remember thinking, okay… this should be interesting when the actual seat owner shows up. Sure enough, a few minutes later, a woman came down the aisle, checked her ticket, and stopped right there. “That’s my seat,” she said, pointing to the window. The family looked at her and asked, “Do you specifically…

@thebagworker Solange der Staat nicht mal endlich spart, sind alle Diskussion um Steuern egal. Selbst bei 100% Steuern hätten wir in 10 Jahren die selbe Situation

Ich würde prinzipiell Vermögen, nicht Einkommen, höher besteuern. Deutschland nimmt sich bei einzelnen Themen gerne Skandinavien als Vorbild, siehe die Diskussion rund um Karenztage. Warum also nicht auch eine Vermögenssteuer wie in Norwegen?

@DrunkRepub @KhaliBalmung That comment says it all. It’s deep resentment and envy. You should rather ask yourself - why do I only get a few days of PTO and am employed at will?

@KhaliBalmung Spot on!!! They are on vacation while we work our asses off

When the man drops bangers, he drops bangers. While I just want to sit back and enjoy this post, I also want to dig into why it’s so good: Just think about Europe itself. For the vast majority of its history prior to 1945, Europe had a conflict in it. Hell, let’s just go back to the 1800s. I won’t (i.e., can’t) name them all but consider... - Napoleonic Wars from (1803-1815) - Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) - French invasion of Spain (1823) - Schleswig War (1848-1851) - Crimean War (1853-56) - Austro-Prussian War (1866) - Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) - Serbo Bulgarian War (1885) - Balkan Wars (1912-13) - Two World Wars If I go back further centuries, you’ll find conflicts between nations at least once a decade. And massive wars every few decades. The fact is, Europe is a continent of conflicts. All those nations crammed in together. It’s bound to happen. Then WWII (not 11, Omar) ended. With the US-led Allies and Soviets butting heads in Germany. Famously, some US generals (Patton), wanted to keep steaming east to push Stalin out of Europe. He was probably right. Instead, you get the Cold War. The U.S., not wanting it to turn into a hot war, defended Europe with massive amounts of military, and a nuclear umbrella, to inhibit any further Soviet aggression. From 1946 to 1989, the US spent, on average 8% of its GDP on military. Hundreds of billions of dollars. Adjust that for inflation and you're talking trillions a year. Even after the Cold War, the US spends nearly a trillion dollars every year (if not more) on its military. And we're supposedly at "peace" most of that time. The U.S. has subsidized Europe’s defenses for over 80 years. During that time, many of these countries have gone socialist: free healthcare, free this, free that. And at the same time giving a finger to the cowboys across the Atlantic. But crying when we threaten to pack up and go home. NATO (the US) gave Europe relative peace, and avoided a nuclear war. But the question is, what does NATO do today? NATO has lost its focus. It has to be whipped for its non-US members to increase defense spending. It has been proactive (read as: aggressive) in expansion, forcing the conflict in Ukraine. Thumbs its nose to its biggest member when that member tries to stave off an Islamofascist regime getting a nuclear bomb. So on and so forth. Pretty much, against US interests. So, yes, maybe we should consider spending all the money elsewhere.

You are mixing up the Cold War with the post-cold war world. It was of vital interest of the US to prevent the USSR from taking over Europe and - crucially - for the Europeans to contribute to the effort. The Germans had the second largest NATO army with 600k troops and 1.2 million reserves. So this was not subsidy, it was critical to the survival of the American led order to keep troops in Europe. After 1990, especially after 9/11, the paths obviously diverged.

@ColbyBadhwar The US is any case has none to spare. That’s the sad reality given Iran war stockpile depletion. It’s safer for the EU to produce their own, although that will take a few years

🇺🇸🇩🇪 Massive mistake by the Trump Admin to not immediately approve this Foreign Military Sales Letter of Request for Typhon MRC.

@BrightAndHollow @jekavanagh It is a serious hit to a small garrison town. In Berlin or Munich, it wouldn’t matter and may even be positive (housing, room to develop). But these small towns are dependent on the economic spending and the jobs

@jekavanagh Exactly, the local economies won’t even notice these first five thousand soldiers absence. Lol, and with more set to leave there’s going to be even more for these local economies not to notice.

This is simply false. The U.S. has at least 35,000 military forces and probably the same number of contractors and defense civilians in Germany. Moving 5,000 out is not going to "devastate" anything.

@jekavanagh @JeremyCliffe Yes. But…it’s a specific capability (deep strike missiles) that is lost / not being deployed. There is currently no European replacement, so it weakens deterrence against Russia

@feelsdesperate Politics doesn’t work that way unfortunately, especially on the activist fringes, which over time set the tone in political parties. There it’s all about having the purest form of ideology and that mean demonizing the opposition, even if they are only marginally different

I’ll never understand why libs went after normie Republicans so hard (eg Romney in 2012, the SPLC going after milquetoast pro life groups, etc.). Libs had a defanged, captured opposition who were happy going 60mph in the same direction the Left was heading towards at 90 mph and who just wanted things to be a little more ‘free market.’ Libs should have buttressed Chamber-of-Commerce Republicans. That they didn’t and instead tried to anathematize them was a generational political error.

@Chiller19671 @LoganDobson That’s exactly it

@LoganDobson This assumes an unlimited supply hamburger patties. What about when the demand is for 2000 patties a week but you can only get 1500 from your supplier. What if increased demand for burgers with a limited supply of cows a meat packing means the cost of burgers goes up.

Imagine you run a 24 hour hamburger joint. You do pretty well. You sell 1000 burgers a week for $10 each, netting $5 on each. But almost all your money is made during “peak” hours when demand is highest — lunch, dinner. You net $5000 a week. Then a big change. A 24 hour factory opens across the street. The workers at the factory don’t have a set lunch hour, so they just run out for burgers whenever they feel hungry, roughly evenly distributed throughout the day and night. Burger demand surges — a little bit during those peak hours, but also at all hours of the night, mid-afternoon, early morning, all times you previously weren’t selling many burgers and your staff was mostly sitting around. With the surge in demand, you’re now selling 2000 burgers a week. You cut the price to $8 per burger (to encourage more factory customers), so you now net $6000 per week. Demand went way up, but you cut prices and are making more revenue and profit. At this point you might think I’ve told you a story about hamburgers. I’ve actually told you a story about data centers and electricity prices.