Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

Where? Are you replying to the right message?

That's another thing that puzzles me. How people claim with straight face that anyone is threatening the US homeland.

Telling 'we're the good guys' while regularly bombing entire villages into oblivion with napalm on some vague suspicions ('we heard some gunshot when flying around so we blasted them' scenarios). My Lai and many others.

If this is how US population views their past fuckups then no wonder we are where we are, objectivity ain't easy if one is on the wrong side, isn't it.

Supporting wrong side in Afghanistan? Against Soviet invasion? Sometimes, often even there are no good sides.

If you guys didn't support Soviet union in 40s (which they vehemently denied since then but its their inferiority complex, the issue with russian mentality since forever), there would be no massive eastern front with most german losses and wehrmacht spread out too thinly, and D day would be crushed like nothing. History would be very different in Europe and globally.

Johnson was a warmonger, exaggerating (or possibly faking) the Gulf of Tonkin engagements to justify full escalation was a crime that led to the death of 60,000 Americans, hundreds of thousands more with PTSD, and 2 million+ murdered Vietnamese civilians. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of birth defects caused by agent orange and the still ongoing effort to clean up dioxins from the environment.

The Southern regime was incredibly corrupt and dominated by land owners. Look at the Philippines for an example of what happens to a US 'colony' where the land lords are in control.

Communist Vietnam did some bad reforms yes, but they also changed and eventually did a lot of good things, turning the country into what it is today.

The US spent decades of war propping up a regime that was mostly incapable and killed a lot of people in the meantime.

  Parliament did not vote to impeach the president, which would have involved formally charging Yanukovych with a crime, a review of the charge by the Constitutional Court, and a three-fourths majority vote in parliament—at least 338 votes in favor.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity#Removal_...

I am talking about the formalization that is specifically the modern European Union. You are talking as if it's some inevitable consequence of earlier efforts.

> Europeans who created the EU knew about balance of power geopolitics so well, they created this slow bureaucratic mess specifically to stop Germany and France sliding back into the same old lethal habit.

I don't think anything you're saying is strengthening this statement that I had an issue with.

The Maastricht Treaty which is what created modern day EU was driven by other concerns, asking Gemini yields: "To answer your second question: No, everyday Europeans in 1992 were not primarily thinking about WWII.

By the time the Maastricht Treaty was being drafted, the public was reacting to a completely different era of history. They were focused on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the opening of Eastern Europe, and the need to compete economically with the United States and Japan in a rapidly globalizing world. The defining event on the public's mind was the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, not the end of WWII."

So you are right that the processes that eventually led to the formation of the EU started after WW-II due to concerns related to that war. But specifically the EU as it stands today with its current structure and agreements was not formed due to those considerations. Europe could have continued with the previous arrangements. At least that's my take and I don't think anything you're saying contradicts it. I'll admit to a certain lack of knowledge so happy to learn more about Europe pre-EU or why what I'm saying is still wrong.

EDIT: I guess one can see how the reunification of Germany was a factor that could have made people consider the world wars. That said the creation of the EU was a major change compared to previous arrangements.

EDIT2: When I read the EU site you linked to I get a strong sense of "backsplaining" as if it was written after the fact to appear like the EU was just part of a process that goes back to WW-II. The title says "History of the EU – 1945-59" but in 1945-1959 there was no EU. Didn't the term European Union only show up circa 1992? So this is perhaps the "history of Europe" but not the history of the European Union? I could be totally wrong. I am not European but I did live through these events and follow the news (well, not WW-II but the fall of the USSR, Germany's unification, and the establishment of the modern day EU). What's of interest to me in the context of this specific question/debate is what were the concerns of the Europeans and their leaders entering into the agreements that formed the modern day EU.

The government contracts that made SpaceX were all open bid, where SpaceX bid an better solution than anything that any of the established companies did, at literally half the price. Falcon 9 was a massive gift to the US government, in that it drove the entire industry to halve the prices they extracted from the government. Dragon was just as good.

That they also built a profitable launch company out of it just highlights how much of an outlier SpaceX is. They sold the US government a dollar for fifty cents, made a profit doing it, and ended up driving half the rockets already flying out of the business.

> I don't see you contributing to the space here. Just to yourself and your self-image, maybe. Like.. not even trying.

In that same spirit your comment wouldn’t have been contributing either. You don’t like to see comments I guess about people talking about how far behind the EU is as it continues to be eaten alive by American and Chinese industrial policy, and I don’t like comments about “decoupling”.

Given that Trump's "peace plan" is essentially for Ukraine to give up even more territory and partially disarm - decreasing the size of their military and giving up long-range weapons... and there's no such provisions for Russia to do anything of the sort. The plan all but sets up Russia's next invasion of a weakened Ukraine.

The US didn't declare war on Russia. The EU isn't a party to the Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine, US, UK, and Russia are with China and France giving separate assurances.

The immediate reaction of the other parties was roughly the same as the USA's immediate reaction.

> Here’s a better question though: why didn’t the EU do something when Russia violated it?

The EU isn't party to the Budapest Memorandum.

> Is your gear ready?

It is actively being sent, unlike US gear which appears to have stopped roughly with Trump taking over.

> Are you ready to deploy to the front lines?

We aren't asking you to deploy to the front lines of Ukraine. Why do you even think this has been asked of you?

> Why are 600 million Europeans asking 340 million Americans to defend them from 180 million Russians?

This is an entirely separate question to Ukraine.

About 500 million Europeans are living in a NATO state. For them, if war came to them (which it has not yet done so!), the answer is "Article 5". We're already wondering if the USA honour its obligations, so yet again the very fact you have even asked this question makes us trust the USA less.

It's almost like you think, as the Russians keep claiming, NATO was never really a mutual defence treaty, but a way for the USA to be stronger.

That said, a thought crosses my mind: If I were a Chinese or Russian propagandist, I'd get someone to do what you're doing now. Or, better yet, convince some actual Americans to do what you're doing now.

"Divide and conquer, baby. Isolate the big scary army from all their allies who are also their industrial suppliers and FOBs!"

Giving away intel is the exact opposite of supporting Ukraine.

Most of the other stuff you list was the USA's (or Trump's) own interests; Iran was more of an Israeli interest.

That said, keeping the Iran conflict warm is now also now a direct interest of everyone else that the USA has threatened, because it locks up your materiel, depletes your munitions, and lowers the morale of your personnel. As the Trump admin has already threatened military force against the USA's allies, that list is rather long.

> Sure it is

Mate, one of them wasn't even a coherent sentence.

Fundamentally, if you're an American isolationist government tearing down all the connections with the EU, we all know you're going to deal with the other big trading bloc that is China, or you will go bankrupt, because you are not an autarky.

But if you want to have good trade relations with the EU, and want the EU to not have good relations with China, you need to stop enabling the proven dishonest warmonger in the White House, who is giving us a choice between someone who has threatened military force against us (i.e. himself) or China, because we are also not an autarky.

It is not an argument to say "oh I guess we'll deal with China too". Yes, you will. This is not relevant. It is not an argument to say "but Germany's jobs". Yes, big issue due to car manufacturing, USA (big export market) tariffs, and Chinese competition (worldwide). This is also not relevant: *Your president threatened military action against one of us, and tariffs against anyone who helped defend the target*.

> But I’m also not going to tolerate these asinine “what if France nuked my hometown” comments nor other similar sensationalized rhetoric.

If you don't care, you don't care: I'm just giving you the consequences of not stopping him from sending the military into our territory to annex it. The consequences will include war on US soil, just like the consequences to Russia trying it with Ukraine were war on Russian soil. And Ukraine managed to hit the capital city of a nuclear power despite, similarly to our ally Canada, not having any nukes of their own.

You say Trump should be in jail? Great.

*Make that actually happen*.

And make sure the next apple isn't from the same rotten barrel:

Right now, if he resigned or was incapacitated *today* and didn't make it to the end of his term, it would still take an entire Presidential term from a decent president just for our trust in the USA to rise to about the same low level we have for China, who are "only" threatening the sovereignty of someone else we like to do business with but aren't that closely allied to (plus human rights abuses), and one or two decades of hard work on your part to get back to the level of trust we had in 2024.

Keep him around long enough to screw up the relationship more, that becomes three decades if the USA (him or successor) were to somehow force Ukraine to capitulate to Russian expansionism.

Ignore this, sit on it, brush it aside? Well, he came back after Jan 6. We can't trust you until you actually sort yourself out.

Your, personally your, suggestions to withdraw even harder are the opposite of sorting yourself out. That threat itself is a reason to distrust the USA.

Think of it this way: if you were a drunk, this would be an intervention.

Your (personal) responses have been like facing an intervention and saying "oh if I can't drink around you, I just won't invite any of you over for drinks! I'll have new drinks buddies! You've been listening to China too much! If you drink with China instead of me, I'll drink with China too!"

Meanwhile, the police keep giving you (the nation) DUI tickets and someone's wondering if they can hide your (national) keys before someone gets hurt.

> > Legally, or de-facto?

> Either.

https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/156691-how-sanctions-can-weap...

De-facto it's one sanction away.

So far as I can tell, this specific event is why the EU now has a big interest in "sovereign cloud" etc.