This thread is so awesome!

Anyways, most importantly, they're seriously still called U-boats? Or was that just a joke?

I must google this! (Gotta know about the country next door right)

Yeah, I agree that the major issue would be with Spain going down. But from the look of things, it seems that at least Ireland is stabilizing and Portugal's on a good route for it too, we've already managed to go down to a 4,6% deficit the last year (when the projected deficit by the financial institutions was 5,5%) and our interest rates are lowering by a large amount. 2012 is going to be the real trial by fire for Portugal because if we manage to get to below 3% deficit, our interest rates will go back to pre-2009 levels and our market rating will increase again.

However, there seems to be no solution in sight for the greek problem, even after all the bailouts they've had and this second package doesn't seem to change much. This "incrustrated" weapons deal with the bailout packages might sting a bit (or a little, depending on how much is it) on the recovering economies, but Ireland went through it too and managed to recover, so there must be something terribly wrong over at the greek side for the continuous failures to kick-start their recovery of the economy.

I recently discovered this http://news.yahoo.com/furor-greece-over-pedophilia-disability-174002476.html

Soon pedophilia will be classified as a disability and pedophiles able to receive financial aid from their government.

True.

I wonder what percentage of GDP these military contracts are in comparison to everyone elses in the eurozone... and for that matter compaired militarly to them all.

Afterall with a combined fiscal union you'd THINK You'd need to make sure each country was pulling their share military wise decided by GDP.  Since it essentially puts all Euro countries in a  mutual defense pact.

The Euro really has more or less forced the need for a "United States of Europe" sooner rather then later.  It's too bad countries who may of been against such a thing didn't look at what they were doing a bit harder.

There are a lot of reasons why Greece along with a whole host of other EU countries are on the verge of bankruptcy and military spending is a small part of it. Corruption, lack of tax revenue, not spending within means, not charging for public services (paying for the underground metro in Athens is (or was) 'optional'), early retirement age for many professions etc, etc

Also Greece buys a lot of weapons from Russia as well not just the EU.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKQQhGFR7JU

Well this is risking starting a huge wall of posts that is very tangentially related buuuut....

Strictly psychologicall speaking pedophillia is a mental disability.

Most people who are pedophiles know this, don't want to rape children, (even though they physically want to) and fight agaisnt it isolated until they "crack."

If Pedophillia was treated more like a mental disease, people were more generally acceptive of people with said urges who have never acted on them, and we offered robust prevention methods we would have much less children sexually assaulted.

As opposed to our current culture where we essentially judge people before they are guilty over thoughts they literally can't control and are desperatly trying NOT to act out on.

In general, we tend to let our fear and anger over some of our most defenseless getting assualted get in the way or preventing them from being assaulted.

Giving pedophiles a reason to register with the government BEFORE they commit crimes seems like a good idea honestly... espiecally if you have the right kind of therapy and treatments avaiable to prevent a disaster.

You mean a country is buying weapons for its military with money it doesn't have?

And that country isn't the United States?

Intradesting.

The 10% of my country that resides within Eur... no dude Turkishs immigrants are not part of Turkey's economy. They work and live in the EU and bring revenue to Europe. Its so simple why they come to Turkey for vacation: its dirt cheap and they have still family there and speak the language, much easier then going to Spain for example.

Also, on my trip across Europe, the thousands of Turkish exports on trucks beg to differ. 45% of Turkey's trade is with EU, Turkey's economy has a bigger impact than Slovenia, Slovakia and all other little central and eastern European countries together.

Our wise economic decisions seem to have helped influence Greece out even further with their spiral out of control with debt plan.  Now if we only reverted to Greek's awesome new healthcare system (treat only the ones that are about to die).  Oh wait a second... That would probably include most morbidly obese Americans which we have a little too many of...

Republican conservatives have me believe military = freedom

Freedom has no value :p