It is true that Afghanistan was a direct consequence of the US triggering Article 5 following 9/11, so it makes sense that that would be considered a NATO mission.
Iraq is not a NATO mission on paper, but NATO allies backing up the US in Iraq is still an example of NATO allies backing up the US militarily as part of the unspoken agreement of NATO.
The US provides security guarantees for Europe, and in exchange Europe backs up the US in their escapades.
Sorry, but that is simply not true. Nearly every European ally sent troops to Afghanistan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participants_in_Operation_Enduring_Freedom
I know the American president likes to pretend we were not there, and didn’t do anything noteworthy. But that is simply a lie, aimed to break trust in NATO.
I don’t think that matters all that much. It didn’t matter back when NATO members backed up the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The difference between then and now is that America wants Europe to back them up militarily, but in turn does not want to provide the security guarantees that are fundamental to the alliance.
NATO being used offensively is part of the unspoken agreement. America would guarantee European defence, and in exchange Europe would back America up in their many escapades around the world.
Trump has repeatedly threatened not to come to Europe’s defence in case of a Russian invasion, and has even threatened to invade a fellow NATO member himself. He also does not treat his European allies as allies, but rather as vassals who have to do exactly as he says. The US and Israel unilaterally invading Iran without discussing this with NATO is another example of that.
This kind of behaviour erodes the trust and goodwill that the NATO alliance is based on. It breaks the unspoken agreement.
So why would Europe come and rescue the US out of the mess they made?
Trump gets to slowly figure out what it means for America to lose its soft power.
Prices of HDDs have increased in recent months due to the AI bubble
Here in the NL we have a website called Tweakers for comparing hardware prices. They only really list webstores that sell to the Netherlands, but it could help give you a decent indication of normal prices at the moment.
If I sort by price / TB, this refurbished 6TB Seagate SAS-drive for €122 seems to be one of the best deals I can find:
https://www.redshell.nl/seagate-enterprise-capacity-35-hdd-interne-harde-schijf-6-tb-7200-rpm-128-mb-35-sas/
Given that price, €134 for a refurbished 6TB Toshiba seems like a pretty decent deal. Though I would like to add that my experience with Toshibas is that they are quite loud compared to Seagate and Western Digital. So if noise is a concern it might be worth looking for those instead.
Big talk from a guy who made 32 sequels to the original Expedition from 1994 /s
They’ve already been pushing for Chat Control 2.0 for the past year, but thusfar it hasn’t really gotten far yet
https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
Dutch cities are an example of best practices, Paris is an example of how with some quick changes you can your city on the ladder to the reach the best practices.
I sadly didn’t really have a good opportunity to look around last time I was in Paris (we were visiting with people who had never been to Paris and we only had a few hours), but I did notice how many more cyclists there were compared to the car-sewer of a city I remember
From my understanding Apple has memory contracts locked in for years ahead. This is a benefit they have for being an enormous player in the consumer electronics world. They can keep their memory prices “low” (or at least what Apple normally considers low) because of that.
Other smaller manufacturers don’t have that luxury. When their current contracts run out they have to negotiate new ones, and they will be negotiated at the current market rate.
This is in no way a justification for what Google is doing, but they came to a “compromise” where you can still opt-in to being allowed to “sideload unverified apps” (read: install apps that didn’t have to get approval from Google).
You have to enable it in the settings, and then you need to wait 24 hours before the setting is enabled. After that you can continue to run “unverified” apps
If it is per gas station they could hypothetically require gas stations to individually keep track of licence plates and how much they fueled up in their own bookkeeping. See the same licence plate twice in a day? They don’t get to fuel up.
That way they could also enforce the rules by randomly checking ledgers
Edit: As for the fuel tourism, I’m not sure if banning the transport of fuel is enforceable. The EU has free movement of goods and people, so it is perfectly allowed to buy your petrol across the border.
As a historical parallel, back in 1973 the Dutch government rationed the sale of petrol by distributing fuel stamps. The consequence was that in the border regions people just went to fuel up in Germany where the petrol was not rationed.
But such a system is not yet in place right? They would have to set up something ad-hoc to keep track of licence plates and how much they fueled up at each petrol station around the country, which seems like something you cannot realistically pull off on the short term.
So it is basically the honour system? I wonder how effective that would be against fuel tourism from Austria
I wonder whether they have a mechanism of enforcing the “per day” part of that limitation.
What is stopping someone from driving to one petrol station, filling up 50L, and then driving to a different petrol station to fill up another 50L?
undoubtedly criminal origin
What makes you so convinced it is a bill of criminal origin? To my knowledge Germany is generally still a cash-nation, moreso than other European countries
And many shops don’t accept 200 or 500 euro notes at all
It’s still a good thing that they are adhering to the rulings of the European Court of Justice.
There are other European countries which I don’t expect to do the same thing (cough… Hungary… cough…)
I think the majority of people at this point don’t have a computer with a CD / DVD burner anymore. And at least over here the supermarket also does not sell blank CDs / DVDs anymore.
Most people would have to go out of their way to acquire the means to burn their own CDs
Not made in China, Russia or the US
From your own source…
Stop pretending America’s allies did not do anything in Afghanistan. It is disrespectful to the veterans and those that lost their lives there.