Best Of

@Bob_Luken said:
In the deepest recesses of the basement of my childhood home. Found some lost treasure.

Reported to the Fun Police!

BTW. Those go for over $200 regularly on eBay if all the sliders and rings are in there.

Arctic sea trade routes. This is the new (developing last 15 years) geopolitical race for dominance. This entails all countries who possess mass wanted/needed natural resources and have shipping capabilities.

@Rdp77 simple answer…it’s all intertwined. There’s no ONE distinct answer.
@VegasFrank I agree with mostly everything you wrote. Let’s look a little closer.

Of course the following is 30k birdseye viewpoint.

Belgium…a founding member of NATO. Recent presidency to EU Council. However, path of governance and future strategies is in a bit of disarray. Securing sea trade routes. Here’s a little bit about their arctic strategy.
https://www.egmontinstitute.be/belgium-needs-a-bold-arctic-policy/

Finland/Netherlands…location location location…military alliance, American military bases, partner force training, etc etc. Close proximity to Russia. Again, securing Baltic sea trade routes.

Turkey…talk about lukewarm relations between US and them. Me personally, I don’t trust them. They have relationships with countries we don’t and use them for political mediations. They are situated between Europe and Asia. They serve as a trade bridge connecting the East and the West. They are a major source for energy and transport of raw materials for energy. Not to mention they are currently one of the largest producers of military weapons systems in the world.

I only touched on the countries you mentioned.

@VegasFrank and @Rdp77 you guys are infinitely intelligent dudes. I don’t need to educate you on geopolitics. We are all extremely aware the simplicity of geopolitics lies in control and overwatch, in whatever you want to insert here, in the name of national interest. The guy (country) at the top of the heap (world) is the winner (most powerful).

Lastly, I love talking about this stuff. Keep it coming!!!

42 F this morning at 8:30 AM, time to start keeping the lighters inside so I don't have to go skin-to-skin with them to warm them up first.

It's classified Rusty, maybe that will change soon. If I were to be hunting commies I would look a lot closer to home.

I predict that years into the future when they do a fresh remake of "Back to the Future" the time machine vehicle will be a cyber truck. I assume there are memes already that say what I just said.

If the promises made when the Berlin Wall came down and Russia finally left Germany (in 1995) were kept the war would have been avoided. The main promise being that the US would not back or support NATO moving further east, which has been continuously happening since said promises were made.

If Bill Clinton hadn't assured Ukraine that we would protect them from future aggression, they would still have nuclear weapons and the war would have been avoided.

Ukraine has 13 seaports and numerous river ports on the banks of Dnepr, the third largest river in Europe and the Boh River. Ukraine uses Odessa as its major port followed by several others. Each port has several exporting goods but each port has a specialized export, if that makes sense. For example Odessa is used mainly for agriculture. Mariupol is used primarily for coal and steel exports. Yes all ports are part of Black Sea route. Russia has control of both Odessa and Mariupol ports.