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Since the Ukrainian vote to join the EU, Russia has gone on an all-out propaganda offensive with the intention to split the west and weaken NATO. Russia regards the Ukraine as its "home-turf" and buffer against perceived NATO "aggression", and it regards the EU as the gateway to NATO membership for eastern European countries that were formally part of the Soviet Union.
Russia feels as if NATO is encroaching on its sphere of influence and waging an "underhanded" war of political expansion. Looking at a map you will see how one by one, former Soviet republics have been converted into NATO countries.
Russia also feels that this NATO expansion is a violation of a promise made to Gorbachev at the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that NATO would not expand to the east.
For this reasons Russia has decided to go on the offensive and start fighting NATO. Not by military means, since it does not have the means to seriously compete with NATO, but by information warfare, taking full advantage of the traits of our open societies, such as freedom of speech and of the press. Using fake news and trolls that sow discontent and dissent, it intends to cause a rift between our countries and institutions.
Russian agents already provided plenty of cannon fodder to the Brexit crew and succeeded in swaying public opinion. Everything that causes a rift through the EU and NATO is good for Russia.
Russia is very active in spreading fake news and inciting discontent around far-right groups in Europe, using the refugee crisis to full effect (fake news about rapists, terrorists and other criminals among refugees) to strengthen the far-right and to politically destabilize European nations, especially Germany and France. Fortunately these activities have only had marginal success thus far, with the far-right Front National in France and the AfD in Germany gaining some votes, but not enough to pose a serious threat to the political establishment.
It had resounding success in the U.S. were it just so managed to tip the scale in favor of Trump, the weaker candidate, and the US government and especially foreign policy is practically paralyzed and ineffectual at the moment. If you want some information or evidence on these activities, it's really only a good google search away.
Russian activities in Germany and Europe:
https://www.nato.int/docu/Revi...
http://time.com/4889471/german...
https://www.politico.eu/articl...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

On Russia's overall strategy and interference in the US:
https://www.newyorker.com/maga...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

That should be a good start to get an idea.

Well, here's the citation so you can shut up about it now. In 1990, German ex-foreign minister promised the Russians than NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe. He lied.

NATO: yeah, we lied. https://www.nato.int/docu/revi...

However, it was also achieved through countless personal conversations in which Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders were assured that the West would not take advantage of the Soviet Unionâ(TM)s weakness and willingness to withdraw militarily from Central and Eastern Europe.

It is these conversations that may have left some Soviet politicians with the impression that NATO enlargement, which started with the admission of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in 1999, had been a breach of these Western commitments. Some statements of Western politicians â" particularly German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher and his American counterpart James A. Baker â" can indeed be interpreted as a general rejection of any NATO enlargement beyond East Germany.

http://www.nato.int/cps/nl/nat...

What? Sweden is not and has never been part of NATO, you can't just make up facts.

Somebody better tell NATO.

http://www.nato.int/cps/nl/nat...

http://www.nato.int/cps/nl/nat...

Yes, yes â" a tale oft-repeated by Russian scum. Please, cite the treaty, where that promise was made. Oops...

No such treaty was signed, but documents support the claim. Here is a reputable source for you:

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

Quote Jack Matlock, the US ambassador in Moscow at the time, has said in the past that Moscow was given a "clear commitment."

NATO itself officially rejects this claim: http://nato.int/cps/en/natohq/...

The thing is controversial, but your choice of words makes it clear you have no interest in facts and nuanced views, you're a stupid git who shouts at everyone who dares to not share your dimwitted opinion.

You are trying to equate unequatable.

You are dodging the question and your counterpoint has nothing to do with the argument. It was a simple question: Do you believe the USA would stand by and watch if the Warsaw Pact were resurrected and Canada and Mexiko joined? Yes or no? It's a simple question.

At the moment the really hot one is picking on NATO. Referring to them as the North American Territorial Occupation farce, gets you an immediate probe. Especially pointing out how NATO is purposefully poking Russia, so that the Russian government will react and NATO can use that reaction to push more countries into NATO. Basically surrendering their defence forces to US control, privatising their defences industries to US/UK corporations, ceasing all investigations of corrupt NATO activities and being prepared to surrender control of their borders and cyber security http://www.nicp.nato.int/index.... Final recruitment into senior positions of corruption within NATO are conducted by corporate representatives at the NATO school http://www.natoschool.nato.int... where military officers and political representatives are screened for suitability for agents of mass corruption.

If you are wandering why a mutual defence treaty needs all that crap, the obvious answer is, well, without it how will the profits flow https://diweb.hq.nato.int/niag.... Of course try to leave NATO and expect regime change of the most egregious sort, there is no leaving NATO. The US military industrial complex is basically taking over the world one country at a time be leveraging them into NATO and then taking over.

At the moment the really hot one is picking on NATO. Referring to them as the North American Territorial Occupation farce, gets you an immediate probe. Especially pointing out how NATO is purposefully poking Russia, so that the Russian government will react and NATO can use that reaction to push more countries into NATO. Basically surrendering their defence forces to US control, privatising their defences industries to US/UK corporations, ceasing all investigations of corrupt NATO activities and being prepared to surrender control of their borders and cyber security http://www.nicp.nato.int/index.... Final recruitment into senior positions of corruption within NATO are conducted by corporate representatives at the NATO school http://www.natoschool.nato.int... where military officers and political representatives are screened for suitability for agents of mass corruption.

If you are wandering why a mutual defence treaty needs all that crap, the obvious answer is, well, without it how will the profits flow https://diweb.hq.nato.int/niag.... Of course try to leave NATO and expect regime change of the most egregious sort, there is no leaving NATO. The US military industrial complex is basically taking over the world one country at a time be leveraging them into NATO and then taking over.

At the moment the really hot one is picking on NATO. Referring to them as the North American Territorial Occupation farce, gets you an immediate probe. Especially pointing out how NATO is purposefully poking Russia, so that the Russian government will react and NATO can use that reaction to push more countries into NATO. Basically surrendering their defence forces to US control, privatising their defences industries to US/UK corporations, ceasing all investigations of corrupt NATO activities and being prepared to surrender control of their borders and cyber security http://www.nicp.nato.int/index.... Final recruitment into senior positions of corruption within NATO are conducted by corporate representatives at the NATO school http://www.natoschool.nato.int... where military officers and political representatives are screened for suitability for agents of mass corruption.

If you are wandering why a mutual defence treaty needs all that crap, the obvious answer is, well, without it how will the profits flow https://diweb.hq.nato.int/niag.... Of course try to leave NATO and expect regime change of the most egregious sort, there is no leaving NATO. The US military industrial complex is basically taking over the world one country at a time be leveraging them into NATO and then taking over.

This it isn't an obscure fact. The US Defense budget has been bouncing around 4-5% of GDP for more than 10 years. There are pleny of place to find the numbers. Here is one. I refer you to page 6.

Defence Expenditures of NATO Countries (2008-2015)

I will refer you to page 320 of this document:
BUDGET OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT - Historical Tables

Supporting the Force: The Industrial Base and Defense Conversion

The Defense Drawdown After World War II

During World War II, the nation truly had a defense economy. In the war's last year, 1945, over 39 percent of the nation's GDP was devoted to defense. By 1948, less than 4 percent of GDP was spent on defense. (Ibid., p. 140.) Defense spending in 1945 was $714 billion in 1987 dollars; by 1948, it was under $65 billion. Thus, in only three years, defense spending had fallen by 90 percent. (Ibid., p. 128.)

Stop comparing GDP to spending. The USA isn't a communist nation and therefore the GDP has no basis on government spending.

Go tell it to NATO. (Really, you can't do the conversion / math?)

Just Five of 28 NATO Members Meet Defense Spending Goal, Report Says

Only Poland this year joined the four other countries, out of 28 total NATO members, that are meeting the alliance’s goal of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on defense. The other four are the U.S., Great Britain, Greece and Estonia.

Defence Expenditures of NATO Countries (2008-2015)

One other thing - national defense is a Constitutional responsibility of the US Federal Government. And that other stuff ....?? Allowed, but not required.

I quoted party of the treaty explaining that the is not need to wait. You did not quote any contradicting part..

Article 6 wrote:
For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack: on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France, on the territory of Turkey or on the islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer; on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in whicH occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.

Even the simplified en wikipedia article mentions the question if/when/why the US/NATO would be involved

The Simple Wiki article does not. The en.wikipedia article says the US was thinking of getting involved, but there was no mention of NATO. The news may have suggested that NATO countries would help if asked, and indeed team-NATO has deployed outside of the treaty region as exceptions. For instance, in the former Yugoslavia and in the Gulf of Aden. In those cases, there is a a request to have a supplemental tasking. But, if France was invaded tomorrow by Russia, each NATO country is supposed to respond as they deem necessary to help ensure France's integrity, whether individually or in concert.

When did South Africa join NATO?

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/nat...

Oh, it didn't.

http://www.nationsonline.org/o...

First world is NATO aligned countries, second world is Soviet aligned countries, and third world is non aligned countries. You don't rise into the first world by improving conditions in the country, you do it by joining alliances.

France isn't part of NATO

Wut?

The operative question here is, "Are Russian military units operating in Ukraine?" The answer is yes.

New Satellite Imagery Exposes Russian Combat Troops Inside Ukraine

Are you concerned about Russian aggression at all?

What about Russian fascists and neo-Nazis attacking Ukraine? Have you any concern about them?

The Involvement of Russian Ultra-Nationalists in the Donbas Conflict
Ukraine Crisis: Who Are the Russian Neo-Nazi Groups Fighting with Separatists?

I hope you aren't among the poor lost souls so accustomed to looking to Moscow for inspiration and guidance in Soviet times that the habit still survives despite the rise of fascism in Russia.

"Yes, we have exactly one picture from NATO"

LOL. Sorry, but no.

New Satellite Imagery Exposes Russian Combat Troops Inside Ukraine

Have you made any attempt to find one? http://www.nato.int/cps/en/nat...

No, all the NATO countries count as being "aligned" with the US and are therefore first-world too. Even a whole bunch of former-Warsaw Pact countries that joined in 1999/2004/2009 are now "first-world" instead of "second-world."

Anyone who goes around saying that Albania and Bulgaria are first-world countries will get a good laugh.

It may be a shock to some that the purpose of military bases are not simply to provide optics for protesters. They have an actual function that the protesters often desire to interfere with.

As to the Pershing 2 issue, that is a splendid example of the bankruptcy of the so called "peace movement." Where were the protests over the Soviet SS-20s that the Pershing missiles were brought in to counter? It was hardly proportionate.

A short history of NATO - The Cold War revived

The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Soviet deployment of SS-20 Saber ballistic missiles in Europe led to the suspension of détente. To counter the Soviet deployment, Allies made the “dual track” decision to deploy nuclear-capable Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles in Western Europe while continuing negotiations with the Soviets. The deployment was not scheduled to begin until 1983. In the meantime, the Allies hoped to achieve an arms control agreement that would eliminate the need for the weapons.

Lacking the hoped-for agreement with the Soviets, NATO members suffered internal discord when deployment began in 1983. Following the ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet Premier in 1985, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987, eliminating all nuclear and ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with intermediate ranges. This is now regarded as an initial indication that the Cold War was coming to an end.

Soviet influence on the peace movement

Russian GRU defector Stanislav Lunev said in his autobiography that "the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad," and that during the Vietnam War the USSR gave $1 billion to American anti-war movements, more than it gave to the VietCong.[19] Lunev described this as a "hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost".[19] According to Time magazine, a US State Department official estimated that the KGB may have spent $600 million on the peace offensive up to 1983, channeling funds through national Communist parties or the World Peace Council "to a host of new antiwar organizations that would, in many cases, reject the financial help if they knew the source."[13] Richard Felix Staar in his book Foreign Policies of the Soviet Union says that non-communist peace movements without overt ties to the USSR were "virtually controlled" by it. Lord Chalfont claimed that the Soviet Union was giving the European peace movement £100 million a year. The Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) alleged Soviet funding of CND.

That is nonsense. Most European nations are part of NATO and allied with each other, including the US and Canada. If all of Europe were vassal states to the US this wouldn't be an issue, nor would many other things. The fact of the matter is that Europe has long been dependent on the US for filling the gap in Europe's defenses since European nations for the most part don't meet the level of defense spending agreed to by treaty.

Drug offences are not "ordinary criminal offences". Assault, fraud, and theft are ordinary criminal offenses. Drug prohibition is simply oppressive.

I think the number of countries without some sort of limitation, whether substance, quantity, purity, purpose, or other, is going to be very small. If you want to talk about minor edge cases, as marijuana, that is one thing, heroin is another.

Most of those in Guantanamo are known not to pose a threat, and about a third of them are known to be entirely innocent.

Guantanamo is pretty much down to the hardcore cases now. Of the "innocents" that were outright released, instead of transferred to prison in another country, at least 27% have been found back on the battlefield engaging in Jihad. Several of those released have engaged in infamous attacks.

Which is a war crime. When are the prosecutions going to start?

It could be a war crime . . . if they were protected persons. Unfortunately Al Qaida has made the commission of war crimes a focus of their strategy and thereby forfeits the conventions protections. (Where the "unlawful combatant" classification comes from.) The US has been gracious enough to treat them largely in accordance with the convention nonetheless. Now if this was the 1940s, and it was German soldiers we were talking about, or the 1950s and Korean soldiers, it would be illegal and the two of us would hold the same position.

"On the battlefield"? How about "attending a wedding party [wikipedia.org]"?

That would fall under the "theater of war" following the "battlefield or" part.

But, wedding parties are an interesting topic. It is an unfortunate fact of life that during armed conflict mistakes will occur, and attacks that shouldn't happen, do happen. To the best of my knowledge the NATO forces compensate victims and their families for mistaken attacks in the customary Afghan way. They also try to learn from the mistake and try to not repeat it. On the other hand, the Taliban propagandists aren't shy about accusing NATO forces of attacking "wedding parties" that consist of solely Taliban fighters. Of course, they have their own problems with weddings.

ISAF Discusses Insurgent Propaganda Messaging

“Their spokesmen do not hold themselves to a truth standard,” the official said. “Common Taliban propaganda practices are to fabricate or inflate damage estimates and deflect blame away from their fighters for civilian causalities.”

As an example, the official cited a June suicide bomb attack on a wedding party in Kandahar Province which killed over 35 Afghans and injured more than 70. Following the event, Taliban spokesmen claimed area was bombarded by coalition forces. Evidence from an investigation into the event, including ball bearings found in the victims’ bodies, proved the Taliban spokesperson’s claim false.

17 Afghans beheaded by the Taliban because they danced at a party

KABUL, Afghanistan - Insurgents beheaded 17 civilians in a Taliban-controlled area of southern Afghanistan, apparently because they attended a dance party that flouted the extreme brand of Islam embraced by the militants, officials said Monday.. . .

The victims were part of a large group that had gathered late Sunday in Helmand province's Musa Qala district for a celebration involving music and dancing, said district government chief Neyamatullah Khan. He said the Taliban slaughtered them to show their disapproval of the event. . . .

So, how long, do you think, your generous social benefits would last under those circumstances? Please provide numbers, and sources. Not hot air.

How long do YOU think it would last? Rhetorical questions are only good if you know the answer yourself. Please provide numbers, and sources. Not hot air

I actually did look at some numbers, and I actually think it's possible to cut all US contributions. The guideline states the US pays over 20% of funding. If they leave, that can split to the 27 other countries so individually they won't be burdened so much.

Of course, the popular rhetoric (including the rhetoric of the GGP, which the GP was responding to) is that much if not all government spending, including military spending, is excessive and unnecessary, so if the US pulls out, that might actually be a good thing for both sides as it'll wake everybody up to clean up their houses and be more efficient.

More like the captain of the football team keeping a wary eye on the strange loner in a trench coat that seems to keep stirring up trouble, hangs out with bad people, spends a lot of time in a private workshop, and muttering under his breath "someday you'll all be sorry."

It is pitiful that you are trying to paint Iran as an innocent victim. Most Gulf countries live in fear of Iran and its ambition of hegemony, and it drives large arms purchases.
 

If they were, I suspect the electromagnetic pulse would be reduced by the shielding. Controlling emissions also controls ingression. See Emission Equipment Selection Process for an overview of how NATO buys hardware.

>Eh?

Yes, the OP is right.

> The Czech Republic is an honored member of NATO.
Czechosolovakia has won no honors in NATO. http://tinyurl.com/9v6ec6b

> The U.S. has already sworn to shed its own blood and spend its own treasury to defend it.
The U.S. has not sworn to shed its own blood or spend its own treasury to defend it. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm

>One NATO member spying on another is none of the U.S.'s business,
Then in that case your previous statement falls. Either it IS the U.S. and other NATO member states' business in which case it IS the U.S.'s business OR it's none of anyone else's business in which case the whole falacious comment about blood and treasury (false as it is) is inapplicable.

>except for the diplomatic pressure...
Yeah you made that up for your convenience. I've shown you the NATO charter. Please
demonstrate where it says any of that.

Such rabid conflictory justification of "The US Must Shed Blood and Treasury" but oh wait "It's none of the US business" but wait "The US should exert diplomatic pressure."

I see the horns waggling and I'm not stepping in your words.

E

There are international treaties concerning radio interference. Among the provisions of these treaties are sections defining amateur radio frequencies which are not to be assigned to other usage or interfered with. If power line communications interferes with amateur radio and emergency radio services, the country in question is in noncompliance with the treaties involved. The governing body of these treaties is the International Telecommunications Union; the United States and the United Kingdom are both signatories. (actually, almost every country on Earth is, with the non-signatories being North Korea and their ilk)

In the United States at least, treaties come immediately after the Constitution in being the highest law of the land (the Supremacy Clause). Depending upon where you are, your kilometerage may vary.

Our alliance with those Allies only comes into play if they are attacked by a third party. It says nothing about putting American blood and treasure on the line for a country that isn't even part of the alliance. Nice try though.

Why are you worried about Turkey?

#1) Iran has demonstrated (via press release) the equivalent of a model airplane with a camera. They don't have the military data network capability to reliably deliver these anywhere outside their borders. Furthermore, Turkey has one of the largest and most powerful air forces outside of the major superpowers with approximately a thousand aircraft, and over 200 F-16's (mostly modern CCIP variety, and the ability to produce them locally). I wouldn't take Iranian air aggression too seriously.

more importantly it's who your friends are:
#2) Turkey is a NATO member country. That means that if Iran (an external force by NATO definition) attacks Turkey, the most powerful military powers on the planet are obligated to rip Iran a new one...

Assange is employing a multi-layered defense strategy and he seems to be quite smart in his plans and execution.

However, this is just bidding for time: through his actions Assange made himself an enemy of the USA and also of the NATO coalition on the ground in Afghanistan. While I don't believe Poland will actively pursue his arse throughout the world, I am pretty sure the Americans will get a benevolent help from almost all NATO partners. Ouh, did I mention Sweden is part of the Partnership for Peace framework since 1994?

I'm a journalist by trade and education and I can assure you his revealings were not of the Woodward & Bernstein kind. A responsible journalist is always protecting the sources and editing sensitive data (be it sensitive for national security ofr for the safety of innocents). Assange did nothing like this, and people are currently dying in Afghanistan because of that.

For all I can see, he's just a narcissistic enemy of the United States, and he'll be soon meeting his fate (which I assume involves some Gitmo holidays).

How do you figure that Canada has a higher per capita military presence in Afghanistan than does the US? Official ISAF troop contribution statisics are 2830 from Canada and 62415 from the United States. The total populations of the two countries differ only by about a factor of ten.

How do you figure that Canada has a higher per capita military presence in Afghanistan than does the US? Official ISAF troop contribution statisics are 2830 from Canada and 62415 from the United States. The total populations of the two countries differ only by about a factor of ten.

".int" is also sometimes used, although the only example I can think of right now is http://www.eu.int/ .

http://eu.int/ is actually dead, since EU has its own domain .eu now.

On the other hand, there's http://nato.int./ Curiously, UN is at http://un.org./ Here's a WP listing of .int subdomains, though I wonder whether it is complete.

Then let the nations of Europe defend themselves. Why does the US need to be the one defending everyone?

I can't imagine why the US needs to defend Europe.....

.int is a valid TLD today. See http://www.nato.int/ and http://www.un.int/

...but certainly qualifies..

The US Navy's P-3 Orion (in many variants) is a 4-engine maritime patrol airplane. The engines are Pratt and Whitney T-56 turboprops, a powerplant shared with the C-130, the E-2 and the C-2.

In the flight station, in the top center of the instrument panel are four big yellow handles that you pull when you need to shut the engines off in an emergency. Because they are used for emergencies, the are cleverly called "e-handles". Underneath each e-handle is a red button. This is the the button that releases the contents of the high-rate-of discharge (HRD) fire extinguisher in the corresponding engine compartment. You can see a picture of this configuration here:
http://www.namsa.nato.int/gallery/systems/p3orion6 .jpg

I was in the navy flying with a P-3 crew in the mid 1980s. We were at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, trying to take off and get to the same place in the ocean where some foreign naval unit was exercising its right to free navigation in international waters during the Cold War. Even though there are other P-3s on the ramp that day, *our* P-3 was special, since it had some sensors that that other kids didn't have yet..which is why we got to hang around the airplane during this maintenance delay...

During our engine starts, there was a problem with the number two engine (inboard on the port side). It was fixable in an our two, but the mechs would have to pull the plane into the hangar to do the work.

It's late spring, a mild sunny day, and I curl up by the port overwing exit in the tube; this part of the crew cabin it has enough space to stretch out and get a decent. The overwing hatch is open, cool breezes are flowing off the East China Sea. Others are lounging in their seats, on the bunks in the back, in the flight station, listening to the radio on the ADF receiver. We're just chillin', waiting for the mechanic on the ladder under the number 2 engine compartment to work his magic so we can go flying.

I can hear the sound of his tools banging around in the engine compartment, and just as I'm about to go asleep, I hear him call to the flight station (whose side window was also open): "Hey, somebody pull the number 2 e-handle"...

The e-handle does a number of things, including severing some mechanical connections between the propeller and engine turbine, cutting fuel flow, and generally making sure that the the motor you shut down during an inflight emergency won't be further damaged.

That's the 'splaining. Here's what happened next....

The guy in the flight station who responded to this request was neither an aviation mechanic nor an aviation electrician, nor an aviation hydraulics technician. Regrettably, he was an aviation electronics technician, and this particular one was not, shall we say, the sharpeset tool in our shed that day.

Here's what he didn't know:
He didn't know that the red button under the e-handle was *not* the push-to-release-button for the e-handle. So, before he pulled the e-handle, he pressed the red button underneath it, believing it *was* the push-to-release button.

When he pushed the button, the contents of the HRD fire extinguisher emptied --immediately-- into the number 2 engine compartment...where our helpless mechanic was still working.

The good new was that nobody got hurt (including the poor bastard who pushed the button, who was spared physical harm by the mechanic). The mechanic was none too pleased, because now cleaning the engine compartment just got added to his list of things to do...we didn't get to go fly that day because it takes many more hours to clean up the engine compartment after the fire extinguisher is emptied out in there.

Big red buttons ang big yellow handles...equal sources of entertainment.

Participating in a war in Afghanistan is not, IMO defence as we were never an Afghan target until we involved ourselves.

I'll assume you're a fucking moron, because you are. If Norway sent its infantry abroad, it would not equip them with AG3s.

I guess you looked the articles, but didn't read it. :)

Here an except: "Canada and Spain followed in permitting women to serve on military submarines.". Following the reference, you would have come to this:
http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2001/0102-09.htm

Which states:
"[...] Norway was the first NATO country to allow women to serve on submarines [...]"

"[...] Canadian servicewomen, on the other hand, have been able to serve in almost all functions and environments since 1989. The only exception was on board submarines and even that restriction was lifted in March this year. [...]"

So there is women serving in submarine in some country. I wanted to reply to the parent because I remembered the decision last March (I'm Canadian).

If you want something more than that, feel free to use good old fashioned diplomacy to make treaties.

I said that in my post, so I was fully aware of it.

They dont even spend money on their own defense and are almost entirely dependent on the US military presence (and NATO) to protect them.

Except that the US doesn't want us to increase our military. Talk about double standards. Source 1 Source 2 Source 3.

America has to step in because europe is not willing to and not capable of fixing its own problems.

And when you're done whupping ass, we come in and clean the mess up. It's called peace keeping missions. Keeping a disturbed region peaceful is much harder than bombing it flat, but you're just learning that in Iraq. Go and take a look who is actually keeping peace in Afghanistan ...

Eveyone knows it is a war with Islamic fascism,

Now, I know you're trolling. There are plenty of moderate muslims. This is the same as saying that all American are Bible-Thumping-Christians, when we damned well know that it isn't true.

The United Nations
The European Union
NATO
Interpol
World Health Organization
International Civil Aviation Organization
The International Telecommunications Union
The Red Cross

I don't know what to say about this one though:
International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR)

And more: Google it

Not to mention the sloppy rules for registration:

To register in the .int domain, the applicant must be an intergovernmental organization that meets the requirements found in RFC 1591. In brief, the .int domain is used for registering organizations established by international treaties between or among national governments. Only one registration is allowed for each organization. There is no fee for registering an .int domain name.

Thats all the US ever does, Envade and sanction. When it comes to peace keeping they are never around except maybe a handful of people. Check this out for Afghanistan, http://www.nato.int/issues/afghanistan/040628-fact sheet.htm They have a whole 89 troops compared to everybody else, yet the US was the invading country. Its the same story every time.

http://www.nato.int/issues/afghanistan/040628-fact sheet.htm USA IS A MINORITY CONTRIBUTOR TO PEACE KEEPING ISAF contributing nations (as of 21 February 2005) NATO Nations Belgium 616 Bulgaria 37 Canada 992 Czech Republic 17 Denmark 122 Estonia 10 France 742 Germany 1816 Greece 171 Hungary 159 Iceland 20 Italy 506 Latvia 9 Lithuania 9 Luxemburg 10 Netherlands 311 Norway 313 Poland 5 Portugal 21 Romania 72 Slovakia 16 Slovenia 27 Spain 551 Turkey 825 United Kingdom 461 United States 89 Partner Nations Albania 22 Austria 3 Azerbaijan 22 Croatia 45 Finland 61 former Yougoslov Republic of Macedonia (1) 20 Ireland 10 Sweden 85 Switzerland 4 Non-NATO / Non-EAPC nations New Zealand 5

France isn't a NATO member? This would seem to disagree

I concede to the rest of your points, though :)

Coalition forces in Iraq now number fewer than 23,000 from 24 countries, down from about 50,000 from 38 countries in 2003.

Whoops. I shouldn't have added that slash on the end of the URL. http://www.nato.int/docu/pub-form.htm This should work... hopefully.

http://www.nato.int/docu/pub-form.htm/
You can get the periodic table in English or French (Bon Jour!). You can also get other such wonderful documents as "NATO after Istanbul" in languages varying from Azeri, Macedonian, and Ukranian!
(I don't know if it still works, I did it several months back. It takes several weeks to get the package to you from, I believe, Sweden.)

This should be a reply to (your own?) grandchild-post, but anyway...

http://nato.int/
http://eu.int/ ... & various other international goings-on that are, roughly speaking, more established than (open source) ".org"s.

He provided hyperlinks to the organization's websites, which is not, as a gneral rule, although that informative, or all that great of a response to criticism. If someone criticizes NATO, I can't just refer to their web page and say "Ha, you are refuted!"

I don't even know if int is around anymore, amensty.int doesn't seem to work