Comments by "Archangel17" (@MDP1702) on "TLDR News EU"
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@theodoresmith5272
You are overestimating the US tourist influence on overall european tourism. Will a lot of income be lost? Yes, but compared to the overall tourism industry it will be limited. In this video it is clearly said that around 7 million americans visited the entire EU in the summer last year. Compare this to just France receiving 80 million tourists every year (or spread out over the all the months 20 million in the summer months).
Now even if the US makes up 10-15% of European summer tourism, it will not be so bad that it will starve or be pushed to allow US citizens in. Most of EU tourism is still internal tourism. And these kind of safety measures have a lot of support in the EU nations, many people would even have accepted a complete closing of borders (even internally) probably.
Oh, and many Europeans would love to see NATO be disbanded in a controlled way, it might even push the EU to form it's own proper united army, maybe even similar to that of the US (federal and national guard). And even without Nato we could still have a regular alliance. The thing is that NATO is a political game and is mostly beneficial for the US to keep pressure and soft power in Europe and to use bases as a staging ground for military actions elsewhere, like the middle east and africa. And European leaders go with it, because it keeps them from having to divert extra resources and attention to a closer military co-operation in the EU itself and moreover they overall don't want to be responsible for souring US-EU relations too much.
As for money from military bases, I don't really see how this matters. The host countries in Europe pay around a third of the cost for these bases. Even if the economical outcome afterwards is still positive, we're talking about around a billion dollar at most.
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@ianbirchfield5124 Several of these empires actually lasted a pretty long time and did fairly well, the problem is any empire (and even nation) eventually comes to an end regardless.
The oldest nations currently probably exist for a thousand years, having gone through a lot of changes in that time (for example France today vs France 500 years ago or France 1000 years ago, big difference). Some empires (like the Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, ...) lasted for several hundred years, longer than several large nations today (US +-250 years, modern China +-70-100 years, Russia +-500 years, ...).
Now, if we look at why these nations fall, it usually is more due to corruption and internal powerstruggles together with outside pressures then ethnic and cultural differences, these usually started to really cause trouble once the empires already were in decline (essentially when things go great/fine, people don't really care, but when things start to go more difficult/badly, they start to look at reasons and often they use culture and/or ethnicity as a possible solution, even if this is not the best thing to do).
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@six2make4
Your average person don't care for modern art
Exactly, so why the f°ck do you mention this in shared culture. Modern art is the culture of none.
Nothing of what you said about culture is unique to the EU or being pushed by the EU, it is more of a general Western trend.
The EU mostly doesn't engage in cultural affairs, or if it does it is usually to support cultural things with funding. Honestly the US doesn't have one unified culture either, they have a unifiyng thread for sure, but if you start comparing New York, California, Florida, Missisipi, Mexico, Nebraska, ... you'll find quite some differences between them too.
No unified or reliant military power. Most of EU members rely on the US for military protection due to low spending and no real unified command except for NATO which is none EU specific
The reason there isn't a unified EU military is because it is controversial, especially if you don't have an efficient EU government to actually lead it yet. However NATO countries have agreed to spend at least 2% of gdp annually by 2024 and it isn't like the EU isn't strong either, all in all they are even now the 3rd biggest military spender in the world and if they all reach 2%, it could become the 2nd behind the US. The division does make the EU military weaker than is can be, therefor it most likely will eventually form one unified structure eventually.
And there are already programs for closer EU military cooperation, which overtime are being expanded.
Weak borders: By not setting a proper border a massive strain is put on the "border regions"
There is/was no real EU outer border program, because this was a demand from members, they wanted to keep control over these outer borders. Since the 2015 crisis, the EU has been strengthening Frontex to aid the border nations when asked for help.
*Foreign focus
By prioritizing foreign investments and not incentivizing "local" growth it will eventually make people question what the point of such a union is if they can get better deals outside, this is further exacerbated by point one.*
Are you here refering to the EU budget? If so, this in nothing different than is already being done in countries overall.
Nothing you mentioned here proved the EU won't last, all it showed is that the EU is still in its early stages, between an international organisation and a federal state, which is nothing new, everyone with a bit of knowledge about the EU knows this. The EU is slowly moving towards further integration.
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@marycaine8874 There has not been the dire consequences forecast by the doomsayers on the remain side
Have you actually looked at the trade figures?
Actually, support for Brexit has has jumped to 70%
Can you give me a polling source for that? Yougov polling has had it "brexit bad" ahead untill april, where "brexit good" just beat out the "bad" option. It is nowhere near 70%.
Besides, at this moment there still are some transition plans active and covid helped hide any brexit impact. It is way too early to see what the impacts are.
Five million EU citizens have recently applied to stay in the UK post-Brexit.
And? This was already planned from the start, which is why this application scheme was set up. If EU citizens left the UK, it would hit some crucial sectors hard (like healthcare). And this is btw also something the EU fought for, to guarantee the rights of EU citizens who live in the UK and the capability for them to remain in the UK if they prefer.
Besides, membership cannot be said to be voluntary when the bloc tries to make difficult the life of any member state wishing to extricate itself.
The bloc just negotiates the best deal for itself and its citizens, just like the UK did too. This isn't something that was unforseen (at least not by anyone with a brain).
Is that the yarn that the Eurocrats have cooked up: it was all Greece's fault?
Not only obviously, but yes the Greek government lying about their financial situation and mismanagment of funds really was the main factor. Ofcourse one of the reasons they could mismanage it so severely was because they could loan at low rate due to international trust in the euro. There really should have been more checks in regard to euro members spending and lending, which has actually since the greek/eurozone crisis been introduced/strengthened.
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@LeadLeftLeon
exactly. The accounts I've heard from western "volunteers" fighting for Ukraine have not mentioned anything about either side losing catastrophically.
Because they overall won't be deployed where these success are achieved. The number of western volunteers is still very small compared to the overall total involved amount of troops.
Russia has firepower superiority and escalation dominance.
Yes, and it had it since the beginning of the war, since then it's share of firepower superiority has only shrunk while gaining very little land and losing a lot more itself. Russian firepower superiority is only set to dwindle, while tht of Ukraine is likely to remain steady or even to grow.
their manufacturing is made for war
This might have been the case for the USSR, not entirely certain this is still the case for Russia now. In any case it can't produce any highly technological equipment anymore or only in small batches/low reliability. So at best it has a good production capacity of regular 'old type' dumb shells, which are only usefull in large quantity, and here come logistics and Ukrainian long range HIMARS attacks on supply depots in play.
I'm banking on Russia winning this by demilitarizing Ukraine. If Russia wins
There is no indication whatsoever currently speaking in favour of Russia winning. The seemingly best outcome they can achieve currently is a stalemate, and more likely a prolonged war of attrition will see Ukraine win, they have the morale as the defender, they can 'afford' taking high casualties, Russia can't even just from an internal unrest point of view. Furthermore Russia has been losing military equipment at a faster rate than the Ukrainians since the beginning of the war.
You know Russia now controls Ukraine's industrial heartland.
Even if that is the case, it doesn't really matter. Ukraine now is fully focused on waging war anyway and this is where their manpower is needed, not in factories. The West still is more than capable to produce what Ukraine needs, certainly more than Ukraine could ever produce themselves in that industrial heartland.
That 20% of Ukraine that has gone back to Russian leadership is where 80% of Ukraine's natural resources are
Again irrelevant. Ukraine wouldn't have the manpower to mine it and Russia also can't afford to try and extract it as long as the war goes on, that is even if they had need or money for it.
Western nations are still buying Russian resources on the down low.
A fraction of what is was before the war and soon regulation comes into play limiting this even further.
Ukraine's best trained guys have been dropped.
So have Russia's by all accounts. In fact currently it is expected that the average Ukrainian soldiers is better trained and equiped than the average Russian combatant.
Ukraine is currently sending guys to Britain for 5 weeks of training to replenish their casualties.
They are doing this because they can. Why not send troops you don't immediately on the frontline to get better training and be more usefull later on?
It takes 6 months to make a combat ready soldier.
The same can be said about the Russian mobilised conscripts, yet a lot of reports indicate that plenty of those already have been send to frontline instead of getting proper training. If anything it is Russia suffering from manpower shortage due to the limitation of not being at full mobilisation.
West deindustrialized long ago
The west indeed partially deindustrialized in the recent past, this however doesn't mean it doesn't have industry left and it sure as hell beats out Russia. Russia isn't even in the top 10 most industrial countries in the world, however 5 of the western countries supporting Ukraine are, making up 28% of the total global manufacturing. The idea that Russia is a powerfull industrial juggernaut is outdated for a long time now. And besides this the west has more funds to buy things from other industrial nations if need be.
and is running out of sht to send over to Ukraine
Just because it isn't constantly in the news doesn't mean it is running out or not improving its own production. Russia also doesn't share its numbers and for good reasons.
Western leaders are worried they won't be able to replenish Ukraine at the current rate.
Ofcourse they are, just like they were worried about weathering covid, just like they were in WW1 shells production, ... They often are worried, and yet in the end they find ways to prevent the worst outcomes. Don't expect the West to just let its shells supply run out.
On conducting a special military operation had the stated aim of demilitarizing Ukraine.
And yet they are further from this goal than before the invasion.
Ukraine exchanges lives for land to make headlines and continue getting support.
Russia even more. For Ukraine a stalemate already is a victory against Russia, for Russia a stalemate is bad news.
Land can be retaken, lives cannot.
Good advice for Russia, though in there case both lives and land being lost seems to be the problem.
no one has been educated on what Russia has recently gained with its annexations. Consider what Russia has gained. Why is that land valuable
As of now, nothing. It can't develop or properly use this land as long as there is an active conflict raging in the region and much of the infrastructure is damaged at any rate.
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@Intreductor Renewables are the cheapest new production method currently. However they were expensive when Germany started the energiewende. And ofcourse there is the problem of intermittency and with storage it is more expensive. However cheaper gridstorage is coming, it just needs some time to get here, just like what was the case with renewables and EV's.
Bjorn Lomborg's book is nothing to take account of. Essentially he is saying the opposite of what almost the entire scientific community says about the urgency and possible consequence of climate change. I won't trust him over peole who actually studies and did research on it their entire lives. His main message seems to be to follow a market driven solution with only slight government intervention, this didn't work that well in the past and won't work well now. Besides, renewables are market driven, the governments just aided in increasing the adoption speed. Instead of it taking decades, it now takes years. If we followed his approach, gas and coal powerplants would still be the go to thing for the next several decades.
Patrick Boyles video just said that prices will be higher. That is true at this moment. Every transition is expensive and often costs more than status quo initially. However this doesn't take into account the costs of the status quo in the long term, ie. the cost of climate change, which can be several magnitudes higher. Also the current increase is mostly due to the shortage of natural gas and coal, not the energy transition in general. Where there the same shortages 10 years ago, the price would also have shot up like it did now.
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@Destereir I am Belgian myself and seeing that we (based on GNI) were the 2nd largest net contributor between 2007-2013, I can only guess that in 2014 some tallying changed. Our yearly contribution didn't go down, so it must be that a lot more was spend here, maybe investments in EU adminstration buildings or some other things that cost a lot of money?
I think I just found it, in 2014 €4,7 billion from the 7 billion expenses in our country were administrative, so probably for some reason administrative costs went up or formerly non counted costs got counted, causing a massive increase.
If we discount all administrative costs in all countries, Belgium becomes the 6th net contributor gross and the same when divided by the GNI of the countries. This makes a lot more sense.
And as for splitting, don't get your hopes up, there is no popular support, only around 15% of Flanders want to actually split up, for comparison according to polls an around equal amount want to move back to a unitary system.
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@sfp2290
The leaders "I" elect, should not have any say in how the peoples of southern, eastern or western europe lives.
But the people you elect now have a say in the lifes of people in other parts of Denmark, so in the end you get the same result: your vote influences what happens elsewhere.
But it does also mean, that even if all Danes voted for the same party, it would still amount to about a tenth of the strength the Germans would represent in the EU.
Yes, but people don't vote in the EU based on nationality, they vote based on ideology. People from a town in Denmark also don't have the same voting strength as a large city. This is universal. If this is something you have a problem with, you'd need to reduce the politics to a "city block" level. It doesn't really matter if you scale this up.
Now what could be different is regional concerns. For example many people in Denmark might feel x about Z and in Italy most people feel y about Z. This can be a problem, however this also can exist in a small nation, my country Belgium is a good example of that. That is why there would be a senate where the senators are voted based on equal sized district. A north German district might have similar concerns as a Danish district and completely different concerns than a south German district. Eventually on the European level it would be Germans/Danes/... it would for parliament: left, right, center, ... and for the senate: north, south, east, west, center, ...
And for parliament I'd just have a general European list or otherwise few very large lists, not nation by nation.
Then there's the whole issue with the media. Most Danes doesn't know even the most basic things of how the EU works.
EU media networks would come into existence and the way the EU works would be learned in School, similarly to how it is done now for your national government.
I also wouldn't be surprised if there comes a univeral "EU" language that will be adopted in all nations as a second/third language. I'd bet it would be English. And EU wide media would just use that (as well as EU politicians when outside their nation).
Add to that, that most people (at least in Denmark) vote for the same parties in the EU election that they do on a national level, despite not knowing what parties the representatives they vote on are a part of in the EU and what they stances on different EU matters are.
That is just a problem with the current system. With a better new political and election system that would change.
Personally, I believe people who speak of the EU, myself included to a large degree, judge the EU and its' worth based on the idea they have of it and not based on knowledge of how it actually works and what decisions are made.
Indeed. I can agree with your sentiment in terms of how the system is operating now. I do expect this to eventually change. A federalised EU can't function with the current system.
Also sorry for the long comment :p
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@bjrnhjortshjandersen1286 I'd like to have an EU army and in that case NATO could be replaced by a just a regular defensive alliance, though it would come down to more or less the same. Even if NATO seizes to exist, I don't really care, but there certainly need to be a united EU army before that time imo.
As for the need of a credible enemy for a defensive association, I completely disagree. A defensive alliance doesn't really need a clear enemy, it is usefull eitherway. It will diminish the chance of conflicts between members (due to the other members wanting a peacefull resolution) and it defends all members against any attack, whether it comes from a clear enemy or not.
A defensive alliance in of itself can never hurt, it just can't be turned into a more offensive one. And NATO definitely isn't likely to transform to an offensive one, too many members are against that. Sure some members might cooperate regarding offensive actions, but that happens regardless of NATO. The only time NATO can be seen as an offensive alliance was Afghanistan, but this was in response to the 9/11 attacks, so it can still be considered a defensive action (though due to the more borderline nature of that situation several members only contributed the bare minimum/no combat troops).
Russia overall definitely doesn't need to fear more from the west. Its entire history is one of constant expansion since it conception, ofcourse this sometimes will cause an invasion/war at some point by another power. Even during WW2 there are credible sources that indicate Stalin hoped that the European powers would bleed themselves dry in a war between them, so that then the USSR could invade and easily take over European lands, the Nazi German invasion just came +-2 years too early.
At this moment no one really wants a conflict with Russia and definitely doesn't want to invade it. Russia doesn't have anything to fear from Europe or the US unless they themselves make the first move. Russia's problem is it is stuck in a 'war is necessary to grow power' hard power mentality, while Europe is more looking to the economy and soft power. The more powerfull EU countries rather want peace and good relations with Russia and the US focus has shifted to China and the South China Sea. If NATO is a threat to Russia, it is all due to Russia's own doing (more specifically their leadership).
This is really shown by the Ukrainian situation. There was really not a movement of Ukraine joining NATO, at best just speculative discussions. By now acting as if Ukraine would join NATO soon, Russia likely has just sped up its future ascension and even made other neutral countries (ie. Sweden and Finland) move closer to joining NATO than ever before.
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@jg9585
which have unanimously and consistently underestimated the left's results for at least ten years
Have they though? In 2012 and 2017 presidential elections the polls were pretty much dead on and this year it was within the margin of error of 3% (when looking at the entire left).
In 2012 the polling in the legislative elections the seats and votes for the left were also pretty much dead on. In 2017 it was quite a bit off, but not just for the left, also for the right. It seems the polls overexaggerated the succes of the new LREM party back then.
I'd assume with the experiences of 2017, this time the legislative polling might be a bit improved to more match the 2012 accuracy, but that is something we'll have to see within a few days.
french polling institute have explained that their formulas exclude electors who are uncertain for whom to vote or whether they will vote.
Except I am looking at the results of several different polling agencies, often with different techniques. But I guess we'll find out how accurate they were this time.
At the same time the left has been increasingly focusing their campaigns in the areas where participation has been low for a while, so I'd say there is a distinct possibility for an offset of the current power balance and so of polls.
Polling should normally look at all of the population, so if more people intend to vote compared to the other times, then this should already be reflected in the polls. Again might depend on the different techniques used.
What the current polls show is that possibly the left coalition might get a plurality of the vote, but not even close to a pluraility of the seats, which could indicate the left being very strong in some departments, but overall speaking less strong than some other parties (like Ensemble). In the % of the votes, there constantly is a switch of who gets the plurality, but there never is a switch in the number of seats, there it doesn't seem to even be close.
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@LeadLeftLeon
Russia's current account surplus is bigger than ever.
it was bigger than ever, only to then nosedive as the price of gas and oil went down and exports decreased recently.
Russian exports are going strong.
I wouldn't exactly say lowering by 5% going strong. Moreover supply lines aren't easily cut, Europe has only just begun moving away from Russian gas and oil, before now they still needed it to fill their storage and to have time to get into other supply options (like LNG). This won't be the case for much longer. Sanctions always are a long term game, not a short term one.
Moreover it is more about the imports of crucial goods. Overall imports were down almost 10% for Russia.
Then you have the -4% economy 'growth' of Russia, which are official numbers from the Russian government, it isn't unlikely they upped the numbers a bit to paint a more 'positive' picture.
US vassal Europe is having its economy crushed because sanctions backfired.
US vassal 🤣. And its economies crushed? If that it is the case the Russian economy got destroyed, considering its inflation and growth rate was significantly worse, even by Russian numbers.
US thought it could engineer regime change in Russia with sanctions.
No one expected any regime change with these sanctions, at least not in the first few years.
IF the West is pushing Zelensky back to the negotiating table, they have accepted Ukraine is losing.
No, just that negotiations still need to happen. No one likes this war and if it can be over sooner by negotiations, that is the best outcome. However they aren't pushing Zelensky to make peace at all costs, in fact they reiterated they'd keep supporting Ukraine. They know Ukraine won't accept any peace treaty if it doesn't at least include the return of all occupied territories (save maybe Crimea).
The West will just GIVE 300 billion frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. Where'd you pull this one from? Out your azz?
Logic dictates compensation for the damages caused by Russia in Ukraine. This also happened in the past. Ofcourse this best gets legalised in peace treaty ofcourse, but it Russia refuses, the west likely will just give it to Ukraine. You seriously think Russia will ever see these assets returned? Maybe after the regime change which promises war reparations to Ukraine, though these most likely will be similar or higher to these seized assets.
This long distance makes Ukraine's weapons vulnerable as they're being destroyed by Russia.
And yet this doesn't happen, and do you know why? Because Russia doesn't have that capability without full control of the airspace, which it hasn't.
To make matters worse the US is low on supplies and recently had to go shopping in South Korea to find shells for Ukraine.
This kind of shopping isn't anything new. It also doesn't mean the US is running out of supplies either, could for example be to grow their supplies or increase shipments to Ukraine. The US will never let its stockpiles run out, if they get anywhere near this point they'd invest massively into quickly upgrading its production capacity. Even a fraction of what they did during WW2 would be plentifull.
Meanwhile Russia is supplying itself
Clearly, if you ignore that they need to turn to Iran and NK to buy military equipment 🤣 Russia doesn't have the military industry anymore it once had, large stockpiles, yes. But these are meant to last long enough for production to increase to war production levels, but that isn't possible without a full mobilization and war economy. As it stand Russia is emptying its stockpiles.
and can get weapons onto the battlefield faster to maintain its firepower superiority.
And yet logistics are one of the key problems Russia so far has faced in Ukraine and it firepower superiority has only decreased in the past few months because they couldn't keep up with logistics after Ukraine started using HIMARS to destroy their logistic hubs.
20,000 Russian shells fired for every 7,000 from Ukraine.
Pityfull display from Russia. They are supposed to be the 2nd strongest military power in the world and only outmatch Ukraine, that had no real military to speak off 8 years ago, 3 to 1. If this is the rate Russia can maintain, it would get dwarfed in a war with the west, who'd immediately amp up production of shells beyond that level.
The US & the West do not have infinite weapons to send to Ukraine.
No, but they have bigger economies and industries that Russia, so can sustain a war of attrition much longer.
Over 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead already stated by EU's Ursula von der Leyen.
Casualties, meaning killed and wounded. The estimates for Russian casualties are of a similar size.
Ukraine is being demilitarized.
You have a weird interpretation of demilitarisation. A country that has only grown in military strength holding off the supposedly 2nd strongest military in the world for months and having pushed it back on several occasions when the expectations were it would fall in weeks, equals being demilitarised 🤔🤣
Demilitarization happens by destroying all of their weapons or/and annihilating the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
By that definition Russia is getting demilitarized even faster. It has lost more military equipment than Ukraine while it can't replace it with new equipment at even a fraction of the destruction rate vs Ukraine who has only seen its military equipment grown thanks to western nations sending military systems Ukraine couldn't even hope to get their hands on before (both due to cost and politics). And in terms of manpower Ukraine and Russia are losing more or less equal amounts.
But hey, I guess we'll find out in the end who was right.
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A Id Language isn't that big of a problem. At a time the US had large regions who spoke french, german, ... Only over time has this unified into one language. Hell, even now the US has actually no official language and could be seen as having two major languages: english and spanish.
As for the EU it would just be a matter of looking for a common language that would be learned as a second/third language in all schools and would be used if people don't speak the same primary language (for example on the European level, european news, from different countries, ...). Honestly english would probably be a great common secondary language. With the UK leaving there is no great nation in the EU that speaks english (yeah sure, Ireland, just assume they speak Irish and they aren't a large nation anyway), so it would be a neutral choice. Furthermore english is the most used language worldwide and is primarily spoken by most EU allies worldwide. And in several nations it is already thought as a second language.
People would speak their own language in commone life, but could communicate with others, follow news and european elections/politics/...
Eventually language in the connected world of today is bound to start growing towards one or a few languages. Dialects are already in many parts dissapearing or dissapeared altogether (at least here in Belgium I notice this tendency).
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It might not seem like many oppose it, but that is mostly because independence is not really a thing. By most it is just seen as a political talking point and not more. If it would truly become a real possibility, you'd see the opposition skyrocket, especially when the downsides would really start getting pointed out (like a certainn economic collapse and political irrelevance in the world and even just (western) europe.
There are also many young people idenfying more as Belgian than Flemish, it really mostly depends in which cricles/regions you move in.
Studies keep showing that support from independence lingers somewhere between 10-30%, but at the same time you have studies showing that support to return to unitarism might just as high or higher, there just isn't a real big political party moving into it, or they are not attractive to many pro-unitarism people due to their other policies (like PVDA).
You might feel more at hom in Maastricht or Amsterdam, I for example would not. I don't really like big city centers to start with, they are often different to the rest of the country, thus not necessarily a good representation. Except for the language I as a Flemish brabant citizen would feel more at home in Wallonian Brabant than eg West-Flanders, let alone dutch regions.
There are also regional politically differences in Flanders, should we then afterwards also split up flanders? Different regional political leanings is normal in countries.
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@mukkaar In the US the cost of new nuclear is also high, I doubt that it isn't streamlined there. There are several reasons for the high prices.
- Bureaucracy is one of them.
- Another is getting the permits, people tend to not like having a nuclear powerplant in their neighbourhood/close by. So they start procedures to stop these permits. And ofcourse it isn't only local activists, also anti-nuclear activists in general will try to stop or slowdown the construction with procedures. It is both the procedures and delays that costs money.
- then you have the interest on loans/investment. Generally without government support, the interests on investment into nuclear are a lot higher, since the large cost make the risk higher. If something happens to the plant before it breaks even, the losses for the investors can be massive. And ofcourse if the government gets involved in this to lower the interest rates, they essentially make themselves a guarantor, putting the risks on the tax payers. These tax payers don't like that and as a consequence, neither do the politicians.
- Then ofcourse you have the actual costs of the plants and all the necessary safety requirements/systems, which is far from cheap either and might have become more expensive than in the past due to increased requirements.
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@alexsilent5603 Weapons to shoot down a plane at 33000 feet are relatively rare, only state militaries usually have this (and many might not even have them), exceptions maybe being rich organisations like ISIS who can both buy it and easily get it shipped to them. The rebels don't have that kind of funding and the only way to get such a system to their controlled area's is through Russia. So the assumption that they don't have such weapons is a valid one if you are certain they didn't get their hands on one of your own. And even if the rebels somehow got that kind of funding and ties and somehow can get it into their region without Russia and Ukraine knowing, it wouldn't be worth it. There are so many other usefull things that they can spend their money on.
This Russian argument is just trying to distract from the fact that it was a Russian supplied weapons system that took it down, the fact that it was a Russian system is recognized by most outside Russia, who obviously aren't going to admit they supplied a system to rebels that then was used to take down a passenger airliner.
And ofcourse money will have played a role, just like several other factors, but the possible loss in money would be nothing compared to having a passenger plane go down because you were greedy, this is not a risk you would take if you know it is a risk. At the very least you'd close the airspace above Donetsk and Luhansk and just redirect them around this region (leaving the rest of the air space open), still getting money from the passage, while also ensuring the safety of the plane. That they only closed the airspace up to a certain point clearly indicates they had no indicators that the rebels had a weapon system that could pose a danger to a plane at that altitude.
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@Joso997 Yes, there were active military, but they made out around +-1,5% of all signees (all the others being civilians, probably followers of FN/Le Pen), and yes I know there was another one from high ranking officials, but these mostly were older former military on pension. Generally older people hold the views shown in these letters, but it will be the younger ones having to actually execute/take part in a civil war/revolt.
At this moment the letters are a worrying thing, but nothing specific, it could just be that there is a tiny fragment with this view and most of them have already signed on to these letters. At this moment the signed on active military are around 0,5% of all France active personnel. I guess the french government (or someone else) could take a survey to see whether they represent a majority, a large minority or even just a very small minority within the military.
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@________
Which institution allowed the flood of refugees?
I'd guess you can blame the declaration of the rights of men or some similar international treaty that is much larger than the EU.
* did the Middle East countries somehow forced the EU to do it or did the EU taken them willingly knowing fully the havoc it will cause?*
Neither really. The refugees came because they believed they had no choice, because they hoped for a better life. The moment they could set foot on EU ground (Greece, Italy, ...) due to international law they had to be given the possibility of asylum. Greece couldn't handle stream on their own and opened up its borders with other European countries. Then Hungary couldn't handle it and just send the refugees through. If anything is to blame it is the weak outer border of the Schengen. But you can hardly blame the EU for that, since it was a treaty created by the memberstates that said that the nations need to take care of the outer borders themselves. The EU litteraly had no jurisdiction here.
This is something many people don't seem to get, immigration or border security of the Schengen is not an EU power, but a national power, the EU has nothing to say about this. When people talk about "the EU decided this or that on immigration, border security", they are talking about the council, or in other words the national governments, not truly EU institutions.
Which institution is responsible for the consistently bad investments that led to the global financial crash?
I guess you can blame the private banks and insurers for this. Although they could do this due to the fact that US regulation was weakened under Bush and the fact that the economy and banking system is so international caused a domino effect.
was it just the US or did the EU banks collude in on the whole thing?
The 'EU' banks probably got caught in it too, just because we are talking about a global market. But I don't see why you talk about EU banks, these are private banks and banks from all over the world where caught in this net. It is exactly because of the financial crisis the EU institutions started to truly regulate/keep an eye on the banks, since the memberstates seemed to have failed in that.
Which institution is responsible for a common currency
That would be the Council, which is basically nothing more than the national governments coming together. While it is an EU institution, it is not EU driven, it is nationally driven.
that pretty much ensures countries like Greece or Italy could never economically competitive?
Greece cooked their books in order to give its people much more benefits than they could get, that already was going on before the euro, the main difference is that after that they could lend even more, because lenders looked at the viability of the eurozone as a whole, not just Greece. As for Italy, they have had currency and competitive problems even before the euro, now it just might be more visible. Italy was one of the main backers of the EU for the record.
the institution that is responsible for the prolonged and slow destruction of the Greece economy is the EU
Well, Greece was on the brink of bankruptcy due to the cooking of the books. They needed loans from EU nations and ofcourse they couldn't take the risk that Greece would just continue its former behaviour. In the end Greece itself is to blame for its problems, or more specifically former Greek governments are to blame.
Basically the institutions you have to blame are either non EU institutions, or institutions where the national governments have the power.
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@nexussmile8525
right now it’s not about human rights, LBTQ issues are so minor an fabricated of an issue.
Ofcourse it fucking is about human rights. The charter of fundamental rights of the European union is made legally binding in the lisbon treaty and this Hungarian law is violating parts of it. This isn't just the first issue either, it is something like the last drop. Countries like Hungary and Poland are constantly testing how far they can go, at some point you need to draw a line. And LGBTQ issues are not a minor thing, at least not in my country.
We face much more graver issues: China,Russia,Philosophical drought,supply lines, survival of the west etc
Like we can't also worry about China, Russia, etc. while also worry about the fundamental rights of the EU. It is not like we ignore or neglect NATO, which is the main thing against Russia. Neither does this somehow stop the sanctions on Russia.
Philosophical drought? Has nothing to do with this.
Survival of the west? I see the EU as essential to the 'survival of the west' and for the EU to to move forward, it needs to tackle these internal issues.
LBTQ issues is honestly the most pathetic thing to worry about.
Which just shows your color.
It’s like if Britain would focus on South African issues while the Germans where on the verge with war on Poland.
WTF? No, it isn't. Hungary is in the EU literally bordering other EU members, this isn't some far away region. This also isn't the first thing in regards to Hungary it is just one of many. This is about the essential values of the EU and its stability. If Hungary can just ignore fundamental EU values without any pushback, the EU is doomed anyway, and so are the chances for European resistance/strength to deal with those problems you mentioned.
well what I meant with the Germans was that : every reaction has the same and opposite reaction.
And? What is your solution? Ignore it? Lay back? Let Hungary walk over EU fundamental values?
Should we then not also follow the same appeasement politics in regards to Russia and China? Like that did the UK any good in the 1930's.
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@slanwar
maybe if the rich nations (cough Germany cough) didn’t open the borders to immigrants from 3rd world countries
This is such a stupid and ignorant comment. The borders of the EU were already breached by the refugees, Greece couldn't handle them and send them through, then Hungary (I believe) tried to send them through too when they couldn't stop them anymore, but Austria refused to accept them. It is at this moment that Germany stepped up, they essentially just offered to take on a share of the burden, never did their stance cause the borders to become more open and neither is there statistical evidence that their stance caused an increase of refugees coming over, the tide/wave already started well before that.
and then forced them in other countries we would have UK still on board
Again stupid, the UK was one of the countries who were the least hit by the refugee crisis and also would have taken a much smaller amount under the distribution plan that was aimed at lowering the pressure on the border countries (Greece, Italy, Spain and Hungary I believe). The UK did not leave due to any effect of the refugee crisis, it was just a talking point of leave that had no merit whatsoever. Much more 3rd world citizens entered the UK through commonwealth ties than due to the UK being a member of the EU.
My guess, the EU is building an enormous bubble and soon or later will explode
Your guess based on what?
After this pandemic with millions losing their jobs
I don't know if you realize this, but overall EU country have used policies that limit the loss of jobs due to covid. The unemployment rate in the EU has only gone up by +-1% since covid and has now again started to decrease. It has gone up to around 3,5% lower than it was in 2013. There is no largescale job loss due to covid in the EU. In the US on the other hand, unemployment increased dramatically and has now gone down a lot again to levels similar to early 2014.
and seeing immigrants coming in and helped by the government
Not noticing that, there is literally no chatter about that (at least not here in Belgium). Not in politics, not in conversation, not in the news, ... Immigration was a hot topic maybe 1-2 years ago, but now? Nothing.
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@alioshax7797 Germany spends 100 billion extra in the next 5-10 years, that is a yearly increase of 10-20billion. And this is after they really underfunded their army and need to get it back into good fighting shape. This isn't at all the case in France, which has maybe the most experienced and strongest army in Europe and has consistently been around the 2% of GDP target spending.
After looking into it, it seems this budget increase has more to do with just following expected GDP growth. Expected GDP for France by 2030 is around $4205B, which would come down to $84B with 2% of GDP. So yes a large increase in absolute numbers, but not actually a large increase relative to the GDP, which is what matters considering higher GDP also means higher tax income.
There are also some discrepancies. Sources in % of gdp put current French military investment at 1,95%, which would make +-$57B, but the sources speaking about the increase put it at currently $43B. There likely is just some different accounting being done, like adding costs that usually were/are kept seperate, be it to make the increase seem bigger than it really is, or to just streamline things. For example the US budget usually includes veteran care and pensions, while other countries don't do this in their official numbers, but keep it seperate as part of the welfare/pension budget etc.
The actual yearly budget for the next 6 years on average is around $66,7B (based on the $400B over 6 years), or just +-$10B higher than now. That would overall come down to a yearly increase of around 4,5% between now and 2030, from '22 to '23 France had a 7,4% increase in their military budget.
So in the end, no the French military shouldn't be getting a huge increase compared to past years, it just seems that way because absolute numbers keep up with inflation/gdp growth and France does their initial military budget planning in a series of 6 years.
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It is difficult to say so far out. Just a few months ago Macron had a pretty nice lead in the second round with around +10%. (In fact a more recent Ipsos poll that happened after the Harris poll, put it at +12%)
A lot will depend on what happens in the next year, will covid-19 be gotten under control for example. Also while Le Pen couldn't actively campaign, Macron had the disadvantage of governing, because that is what it is in France in a presidential election: a disadvantage (at least it seems like that). The fact that Macron is still ahead after some of his problems is not bad for him, even with tight polls. Closer to the election Macron will not make as unpopular or controversial decisions and it seems that when Macron actually starts campaigning he usually grows his support. If I remember correctly after his poll numbers went down a lot with the yellow vest movement, he went on a bit of a town hall tour or something and afterwards this together with some concessions saw an increase in his numbers again.
By the election Macron could fall down a lot, but it is just as likely (if not more) that by then his lead has grown again.
And Le Pen will have the disadvantage that the rest of the parties might converge around Macron in the second round. If they openly support Macron after the first round, this might take away voters that now say in a poll that they'd vote for Le Pen and switch them to Le Pen, or get more of their voters to the polls who'd else just remain home.
A lot will adepend on turn out too, it is easy to say you'll vote for X in a polling, but going out to vote might be different.
Now, I am not French, so this is only based on my limited knowledge, if you think I am wrong, I am happy to know why.
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@irham191 actually the eastern part of ukraine was predominantly russian.
Because of former soviet policies to move Russians into that region. So if these people don't wish to be part of Ukraine, they should just again be moved back to Russia imo. Anyone that hasn't had several generation living in an area should claim said area for themselves. Otherwise why wouldn't Russia just help other Russians to move into other border regions and then claim to 'defend them against aggression'?
Moreover polls showed that majority of the population might have been in favor of a special status within Ukraine (like increased autonomy), but not really independence/annexation by Russia.
And the conflict in donbass has caused about 1,6 million refugee. 600,000 comes to russia.
So in other words, the majority of the refugees weren't to Russia.
Judging from the russian history, its not the first time that the sanction caused a hardship for russian and yet we never seen them topple their government, especially in soviet era.
I'd argue that it actually was the economic difficulties that caused the soviet union to collapse in the first place. Also propaganda was much more easier to do in the past, even just by causing shear ignorance. If you never knew better, than why would you go against a government for economic reasons? These days, while there still is much propaganda, there are also more ways to get around it and people have more reference points, even due to just personal experiences of the last decades. And at the very least, a diminished economy means less government income, means less money to the military (or at the cost of a larger % of GDP).
And apperantly china had some problem with trade war and sanction, with their close ties with russia, and india abstinence in UN resolution. It should made european leader worry about their position.
Actually the expectation was that China would back up Russia. China remaining quite neutral is a very interesting development to the West, it could indicate the alliance between Russia and China is possibly more fragile then was expected and that China at this moment still very much favors stability and growing their economy vs getting into a conflict.
India remaining neutral is mostly about their trade relationship with either side and regarding the Russians mostly to do with military trade. Not at all surprising.
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@TheJK300000
also just to point this out nearly every country in the Europe uses fptp except for the Swiss though they are pretty unique as history’s go
Completely wrong, most nations use party-list proportional representation, then you have parallel voting (party-list PR and FPTP), And France uses a two round system. Basically the only European nations that solely uses FPTP are the UK and Belarus for the first house/parliament and Poland for the upper house.
where the senate for states and parliament fling the law at each other till they all agree on it or a majority agree.
Like most systems with 2 chambers/parliaments/representative bodies. Nothing really special about it. And btw, after a certain amount of this ping-ponging (I believe 2 or 3 times), representatives of both the parliament and council sit together to try and find an agreement, if this in not possible, it is just scrapped, otherwise it goes to a last vote.
it’s more complicated than that
Ofcourse, the EU isn't an nation, but something between that and an international organisation. The complexity exists because the memberstates want to remain fully sovereign.
it’s insanely un democratic due to the sheer amount of moving parts
You don't need moving parts for to create something undemocratic or corrupt (just look at the US congress if you want to see corruption). And I don't really think it is undemocratic if the two organisations deciding in the end are constituted of elected officials. Prone to corruption, fine you can lay that at the feet of the EU. Undemocratic on the other hand is ridiculous. Can it be more democratic, sure. But so can the UK (arguably there is more room in the UK to improve democracy than in the EU).
though the Greeks were basically annexed so yea
What an ignorant statement. They needed a loan, and they got it after they fulfilled some requirements. But I guess you grant someone that owns a large part of your house continuously loans without any requirements, or let them go bankrupt which causes you to lose the house (and take huge losses in the process)?
due to the fact head of state has no power (or very little)
The head of state (the Queen) actually has ridiculous amount of power if we speak in a theoretical sense. She just doesn't use it because she knows parliament will limit it then (maybe even going further than necessary). If you meant the PM, his/her power might be limited, but since parliament has the power to do almost everything and the government and majority party are usually the same, the governing party has tremendous amount of power.
and the senate can only amend and send back to parliament.
Which basically means you just have an unnecessary senate that only delays legislation. The fact that you can basically abolish the house of lords (senate) without any real consequences doesn't make the system more democratic. At best it is a status quo. An elected senate with actual power could provide a counter-balance for a parliament that most often is controlled by the same party of the government, meaning the government can do almost everything it wants unchecked as long as it has the backing of its own party (which in most cases will be so).
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@TheShadowOfZama So one bad policy is reason to completely give up on the idea?
Independence is an absolute last resort and can be used as a stick.
In a unitary model, theoretically the Flemish could create a majority government on their own, in reality it should be split among ideological lines (liberals, centrists, socialists, ....) independent of language. And if wallonian politicians make too much problems with this, make it clear it either is cooperating or seperating, lets see how long they would remain in office without cooperating then.
There are problems in Wallonia, but running away from them isn't the correct answer, neither is just ignoring them. The regional split has only caused Flanders to lose power regarding Wallonian policies, allowing the problems to become worse.
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@Fresh Turkey Yes, but there were many more other terrorist attacks, you can't just ignore them. Also between 2006 and 2013 most stopped and not stopped terrorist attacks (and arrests around it) were planned by seperatists or anarchists.
If you want the people to commit to it, ask the soviets and its republics to do it first. If they are still here.
This is a stupid notion. Just because you don't hold yourself to standards, doesn't mean I wouldn't/shouldn't. This way nothing moves forward or improves.
Millions came into the EU illegally in the past ten years.
And millions have been deported or were given status to stay as refugees (you know, because at home it is not safe). Furthermore many terrorist attacks are executed and/or planned by people who came here much earlier, illegally (and did not start a procedure, even with strong border enforcement, which for the record is a national power, people would slip through) or were even born here.
And I don't turn a blind eye to it, there are problems, terrorism just isn't caused by the refugee crisis of the last few years, it is just like that crisis a consequence of a broader problem/cause: the destabilisation of Libya and the Middle East from the last decade.
And to me the main way to deal with the refugee crisis is
1) a strong European outer border control instead of leaving it to the members, but certain members are opposed to this, some even having outer borders themself.
2) a European immigration policy instead of the several different immigration policies and systems, which sometimes get played against eachother (being denied in one country and starting a procedure in another)
3) the long time it takes to go through a procedure (1 year should be enough, now it often takes longer, so that even children who grew up only knowing europe have to be deported)
4) a proper European integration policy, because often times integration is lacking, both due to the immigrants, but also due to the lack of possibilities to integrate/learning to integrate.
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Problem is that her party was far right and the softening has happened only recently. Furthermore where did all those previous voters go that voted for the party before it took a more soft stance? If they remained with the party (which seems most likely) one can't be blamed for being sceptical and fear that the softened stance is more a political ploy of somekind, one that when it comes down to falls away the moment this far right backbench start raising trouble after the party was able to get more power. We saw this in the UK, with the ERG, who essentially pushed the conservatives even more to the right and even more eurosceptic once they were able to do so.
There is a similar problem here in Belgium with VB, a softened stance with a rebranding and some older far right people being "pushed out", but still retaining this far right base, while also gaining extra votes with their softer stance.
One can wonder if it wasn't better (though more difficult) to just create a new party instead of trying to rebrand it, causing the far right voters to remain with the old party (in the first round), but the more soft voters turning to that new party, at the very least this would have taken away some of the fear/doubt.
For example it seems Marine Le Pens voters are still more than half made up of voters who also voted for her father (in the first round), who most certainly is considered far right and with whom Marine seems to have broken (politically at least) because of that. Even in the 2017 second round Marine only got around just less than 2 times the votes her father got in the 2002 second round, so possibly around half of her voters might have voted for her father.
Her father created his own new party, but fully supported his daughter in the presidential election.
There were no (other) Far right parties running during the 2012 and 2017 presidential elections, so the far right voters stuck with the 'reformed' RN, still forming its strong backbone, which they could leverage if MLP wins the presidency, even if she wanted to have fine policies, she might be forced to take on bad (far right) policies.
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@AlanHernandez-jn2mp I can't immediately find it, but I think it came more out of context than him actually openly saying it. As for why? Like I said, an EU army would make the EU less reliant on the US, less inclined to remain silent when they believe the US does something stupid or right out illegal (like the assassination of Soleimani) and instead of buying US weaponry (like the F-35 and other), it would be more inclined to research and develop its own fully in house, immediately removing a large market for US manufacturers.
Sure, the EU and US are allies, but alliances rarely last forever and if it at some point sours, you can be damn sure the US government wants every influence it can get (hell, the US spied on allied leaders). A superpower like the US want often one thing (or at least the US of the last 70 years): influence, power, control both over allies and enemies and everything in between.
It is just like Trump like the UK leaving the EU, it weakens the EU and opens an opportunity for the US to take advantage of the UK's future really weakened position.
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@thepax2621 You clearly have no idea how people outside Germany view it if you think people laugh with it. Maybe the only thing that is laughed with in regards to Germany is its military, something most people never even think about when mentioning Germany.
Considering Merkel is respected all over (getting better polling numbers in other countries than even popular leaders from that country), I don't see how you could think she made Germany a laughing stock. If Germany is a laughing stock anywhere, it is despite Merkel, not because of her.
I am sorry, but there isn't a euro crisis anymore. Are there possible financial problems? Yeah, but these are present at all times. The Euro crisis as a crisis has been over for years. The same with the refugee crisis. Just compare the moment it was a crisis with how it is now. If you feel these are still crisis, it is your subjective opinion, not a objective fact.
And to say Merkel 'accumulated' crisis is just ridiculous, these crisis just happened while she was a leader, not because of her. They would have happened whether she was chancellor or not.
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@herculeskoutalidis1369
the only part of EU legislation that I (and Le Pen's party) find negative, is the "freedom of movement"
Which is an integral part of the single market and probably one of the advantages most people will not want to give up. Even the swiss voted against ending free movement and they are probably one of the countries most affected by it (negatively). And well, according to polls 74% of EU citizens say that the EU is not worth it without free movement. This obviously is shortsighted imo, but it shows the popularity of it and ending it will not be easy. And before saying "well, the eastern countries were the ones voting in favor of free movement" or something similar, in that poll Polish people were least likely to agree with that statement (ie. they think the EU is worth it even without freedom of movement).
which leads to a (very) higher immigration from eastern and southern Europe
Many people coming from eastern Europe don't emigrate here, they work a few years and then go back home. They normally are a net benefit to the economy, since they still pay taxes, help spur economic growth and don't require as much 'investment' (no education, no healthcare during their childhood, no healthcare costs when they grow old, ...), moreover they usually take on lower paying jobs many people don't necessarily want to do.
Besides there are already rules countries can use to minimise the impact of low payed eu immigrants. Can that be improved? Yeah probably, but I don't think this is what Le Pen wants when I look at her EU stance.
by starting some EU-wide conversation about this
This is under the assumption there wasn't already a conversation about it, there was/is. This has been a rather large issue for many years now. I don't remember the outcome, but a few years ago they were already talking on the EU level to put out more regulation/national powers in terms of controlling eu migration and cheap foreign labour.
is that in countries like France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and also the UK, indigenous population is projected to be less than 50% of their population, by 2050
You do understand that people of neighbouring countries also fall under this, right? For example for Belgium the Dutch, French, German and people from Luxembourg are also seen as 'foreigners' in those predictions. And if at the same time people from Belgium emigrate to these neighbouring countries, the proportion of people with foreign origin will grow even more, despite not necessarily a larger influx of foreigners.
People of foreign origin from eastern Europe only make up less then 10% of all foreigners in Belgium. there are more southern EU foreigners (people with Spanish and Italian origin make up 15% of foreigners), but these mostly emigrated pre-1975. At this moment people from neighouring countries make up 20% of people with foreign ancestry in Belgium.
Also you need to be aware of how these predictions might determine people from foreign origine. Is it up to the grandchildren, great-grandchildren or maybe even further down the line? It could be that in this way one foreigner can have a large family of 'foreign' children and grandchilden, even if his kids have a mother of Belgian ancestry and mary people with Belgian ancestry, ...
And then there is the fact of globalisation. In the past you didn't have many people of different origin because travelling and communicating was much more different. Even without the EU free movement, this globalisation isn't just going to end.
This is lowering the quality of the population of these countries day by day
You do realise this is a very racist thing to say and is actually close to, or exactly how Nazi's looked at/talked about 'intermingling' with slavs and jews? By insinuating that foreigners lower the QUALITY of the population you are essentially saying these foreigners are of lower quality/value/lesser.
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@csuporj It would be awkward to let Russia-s enemy build military bases in a russian speaking territory.
And like I said, NATO wouldn't built military bases there, they are not stupid.
Russian is the most common first language in the Donbas and Crimea regions of Ukraine, and the predominant language in large cities in the east and south of the country.
And? German was the predominant language in Sudetenland, Austria and Danzig, so are you saying that Nazi-Germany was justified in taking those regions and when Poland refused, to invade it? France is the predominant language in Southern Belgium, does this mean it has the right to take it? Spanish is the predominant language in most parts of South/central America, does this mean Spain can claim it? Ofcourse not, purely talking about language is non-sensical.
The Alps didn't stop the occupation of South Tyrol.
You do realize there already were German troops in Italy before the occupation as allies, right?
A buffer btw doesn't necessarily stop a war/invasion, rather makes it more difficult.
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@alexanderlipowsky6055 (FYI, this is partially a response to you and partially also going broader)
I'd say that an EU army should be defensive in nature and only can be deployed outside of EU/allies borders with express permission of the EU parliament (2/3rd permission or so, not easy to get).
However I'd have 'national guard' units that are directly under the command of the national memberstates and payed for by them (for example everyone has to give 2% of GDP to the EU army, but can get 0,2-5% or so back for the national guard units). The goal of these units could be two fold:
1) it can be easily deployed by that nation/memberstate within their own country for example against terrorist activities, natural disaster relief , ...
2) it can be used as expeditionary forces. For example if France wants to still do something in Africa, they can send these units. Why give that option? Because otherwise resentment can build up and nations might want to leave this common EU defence army to reclaim more independence.
Now memberstate can obviously call in help from the EU army for internal matters like terrorism and disaster relief, though nations with national guard units would be expected to use these first.
So nations wouldn't necessarily need national guard units, for example a memberstate like Luxembourg is too small for a usefull guard unit and a memberstate like Germany might not want one because it doesn't wishes to deploy troops outside EU borders without a clear EU mandate.
FYI a defensive focus shouldn't mean the EU army isn't focused on doing offensive operations either, rather just that it won't do these unless with clear permission or for defensive reasons. Any effective army should be capable to do both offense and defense and have the means for it. For example a few aircraft carriers might be usefull in that regard, but not too many, 2-4 could be a good number.
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@JustAGuyWhoLikesStuff. Like I said in my first comment, even if we decide to go nuclear now, it won't be operational untill around 2040, by which time we also can get a fully reliable renewable system.
And one of te problems of using current new nuclear next to renewables is the cost. If renewables undercut nuclear in price, it will cause nuclear to be shutdown. Ofcourse it isn't good for nuclear to be shutdown, from a technical standpoint, but even more from a financial one. Since nuclear that doesn't operate as a baseload will get even more expensive, giving renewables even more opportunity to undercut it. In the end the government would have to ensure that the nuclear powerplants need to run a certain amount of the time, even if this means cheaper renewables can't be used. And this isn't just going to impact the next 2-3 decades, but more like the next 6-8 decades, which is a very long time.
I do believe there can be a time and place for nuclear, but I am thinking more about gen 4, rather than gen 3. However since there isn't a single gen 4 yet in commercial operation (for so far I know), we don't know if gen 4 will meet the expectations (especially on price) and European governments aren't going to bet fully on gen 4 nuclear untill it has at least had a running commercial plant/reactor for a few years.
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@cedrickropp
because for now it’s the only technology we could start build right now and we needed to start last decade in order to get renewables as reliable as nuclear in the next 3 decades.
This already shows me you don't know anything about current gridstorage development.
Absolutely no one is Willi to allocate like a third of government spending on energy solutions
No would that be necessary.
and if countries like Germany with perfectly good regulatory oversight remove their nuclear
It was a bad decision of them, not going to argue with that.
countries like Poland with at best questionable oversight over what goes on in their economy will have to build their own solutions.
No, they wouldn't. Poland will always need to go outside their own country to get nuclear plants build. Germany likely would need to do the same thing, considering their latest nuclear powerplant was build 30 years ago and I don't think they have any company building nuclear power plants.
Also you have international oversight organisations regarding nuclear power production, so it isn't like Poland could just fuck it up.
which they now stopped producing because no one wanted to buy the damned thing.
It actually is the opposite, it was so popular (as a city car) due to its low price (in Germany with incentives only around 11 914€) demand was outpacing manufacturing for the e-up (already 16 months wait time) and because of the low price, it wasn't really profitable for VW, so because they now also sell the ID.3 and 4, they temperorarily suspended new orders, the question ofcourse is whether these will eventually restart again.
BTW the reason why it is so cheap is because it is a very tiny car with a tiny battery, giving less than 100km of reach, the id3 has between 350km and 550km of range, quite the difference and ofcourse it is also larger.
and build up coal
no one in Europe is building up coal, advocating for it or has plans for it.²
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@toddfulton2280
I hear politicians in the US warming up to nuclear
Politicians aren't warming up to nuclear, most never were anti-nuclear to start with. The only reason they talk more about it is because it is either renewables or nuclear when we're talking about reducing air pollution. And thus if they aren't pro-renewable, they need to look to an alternative: nuclear
even some talk of tech companies wanting reactors to power their data centers and transferring excess to the grid
This makes sense, I even imagined using nuclear to power industrial area's (especially those running almost non-stop). However in the end it will be cost that will decide it, and so far I don't see favorable costs for it. Then again maybe the profit these datacenters will generate and non-reliance on other factors (like the grid) will make the extra costs worth it.
but that doesn't mean it was the sole motivation or even the primary motivation
It indeed wasn't the sole one, but imo the main one. Ofcourse stop strengthening our adversaries is also a good thing, however some would argue that creating economic ties with them will make them stop being adversaries entirely. Overall most Europeans would like the EU to become more neutral on the world stage, with good/decent relations with all main countries. Also the US is helped by a threatening Russia, it causes European nations to look more at the US for support.
The idea that improving material conditions in those countries will prevent conflict hasn't panned out.
I don't think that is the right take away. Just because it didn't work out now, doesn't mean it doesn't work out in other occasions. There also have been many times it did work, but obviously it isn't a magic bullet that always finds its mark. Also for all we know in 10-15 years we'll be talking about a democratic Russia with its leaders being inspired by the economic relations we had before the invasion. Making guesses on the long term based on just the past few years is dangerous.
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@alexsilent5603 Actually, yes, I think that Ukrainian government knew that rebels have such weapons
No, they didn't. If they did they could accuse Russia of supporting the rebels with strong military weapon systems. And the risk of a plane taken down is not worth the money. Hell, even if they closed air space above Donetsk and Luhansk, this would just mean a minor detour around Donetsk and Luhansk, the planes would still fly over the rest of Ukraine => money would still be received.
BUK is a weapon system, doesn't mean it is all just one easy to use truck or whatever, it consists of several trucks with their own specialised equipment (missile, radar, tracking, ...) and isn't just easily used.
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@Zahary7
Look at Spain with Catalonia, the UK with Scotland or Canada with Quebec.
Both Scotland and Quebec had referendums on independence which failed. They failed due to popular support, not some "America wouldn't allow it" theory.
Catalonia is something else, but that is mostly due to internal Spanish problems, not indicative of some wider conspiracy. But yes, nations likely where silent about it to not scof the Spanish allies.
Catalan independence is "illegal", while Kosovar independence isn't
Probably because Kosovar independence is a consequence of ethnic fighting and Serbia wasn't meaningfull to anyone. I don't agree with the Spanish stance on Catalan independence irregardless.
Belgian dissolution would be a nightmare for American.
Depends on how it happens and what the stance is of the new countries. Most likely the split parties would just join NATO and it wouldn't really matter much for America. Wallonia likely would remain in NATO as Belgium imo, while rejoining NATO would go fast for Flanders unless Wallonia is being difficult. The EU is a different topic and this likely would see Flanders economy being ruined. But this isn't really as important to the US.
what would be quicker would be Union with the Netherlands, France and Germany for every linguistic part
I don't at all agree it would be quicker. France and Germany have essentially already infered they don't want to take (back) these regions and the Flemish definitely don't want to join the Netherlands. It would take many years to get to a conclusion on this, if it even is possible.
Belgian dissolution would just cause a big nuisance in Washington.
Nah, Belgium isn't that important to be more than a small nuissance (relatively speaking), the biggest nuissance would be whether or not to move the NATO headquarters somewhere else (from a US point of view, not european).
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Honestly the EU level should either replace the national level or the regional and national level should become one, long term ofcourse.
Most things done on a national level can easily be done (better) on a european level (defence, borders, immigration, mobility, environment, infrastructure...) and the things that can't (like cultural affairs, education, ...), can be given to the regional governments.
But ofcourse anything like this is very far off, if ever achieved.
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@terron7840 The birthrate decline and aging population isn't just a European phenomenon, but a developed world phenomenon. The higher the living standard, the more the birthrate goes down. Ofcourse there are other factors, but this is a trend. One that eventually will have to be changed by incentivizing getting children (lower costs, more free time, ...). But at this moment the problem is that there is the idea that we already overpopulate the planet, thus we shouldn't incentivize a more than status quo birthrate (2 children per woman/couple). Untill this idea changes, we will probably see an aging population appearing in all nations with high living standards.
As for unelected bureaucrats, popular notion when criticizing the idea, but unsubstantiated.
And then we have your initial claims.
- Manpower: the EU has 110 million more citizens than the US. The combined EU armed forces consists of 1,43 million active personnel, the US has around 1,35 million active personnel. So no, the EU does not lack the manpower to be a super state (if you consider the US one that is).
- Economic capacity: the EU has the 2nd largest GDP in the world, it has the most trade in the world and its currency is the 2nd most used in global trade.
- Industry: the EU has the 2nd largest industrial capacity, right inbetween China and the US (China 4,566, EU 4,184 and US 3,602 billions USD)
So on all these points, the EU definitely has the capacity to be a superpower if you consider the US one.
As for renewables, you do know that renewables make a nations overall less reliant on other countries. Currently what is used? Oil? Gas? Nuclear material? All comes from outside the EU. Only coal is found in the EU.
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@thevaidik_ Because low interests are overall most beneficial to most people, ofcourse for a country like Greece they might not like it, just like parts in the US might not like the inflation rate of the dollar. That is a consequence of being part of something bigger.
For my part Greece can leave the Eurozone, which is the only way to increase inflation, but this will likely hit their economy much more.
I support trade union but not a political one.
I disagree with this, in a world with increasing large nations, seperate small Europeans nations are essentially powerless if they don't stick together. Why do you think countries exist now and we don't have city states instead?
I want eu commission President too also elected by people.
That is like I'd say I want an elected PM in my country with a parliamentary system. But I vote for the seats in parliament and these members of parliament choose the PM. The commission president is in effect nothing more but the top cabinet member, less than a PM, they don't have the power most presidents have. Nevertheless I'd like political reform, with a directly elected EU president, but you know what, this would mean taking power away from the memberstates, in effect increasing EU integration, something Eurosceptics don't want (and neither do you seeing you don't want a political union). The Current system is effectively almost as democratically as can be while keeping the power mostly with the memberstates and not the EU, this is the compromise between best representation and not too much integration.
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@davidrenton
If you think the last 10 years have shown an energetic , decisive EU then well.
I haven't, then again neither have I seen an energetic and decisive UK government in more or less the same time, this goes for most countries tbh. At least the EU has a reason why it isn't.
but it has to federalised and that's it undoing
It definitely needs to be federalised, though I don't think it will be its undoing, I can see some nations dropping out because of it, but the ones I look at to do so, I would rather get rid of anyway.
to dissolve the nation state
That depends how you see it, there are plenty of power that can remain with the current memberstate national level (if it isn't given to lower governments first).
but Europeans will never go for that
I think you underestimate what people will go for.
How do you think Germans will feel being the bank for the whole continent.
They do get a lot of economic benefit from the EU. I guess I could ask, how does London and the south-east feel being the bank of the UK?
I design complex system's
The EU is indeed complex, out of necessity of it being an international organisation and being as democratic as an international organisation can be.
People would have said the same about the US early on, back in the beginning there are many similarities to the EU now.
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@davidrenton
Here's the difference , we can get them out
So can it also be done in the EU. The national leaders can voted out in national elections, MEP's in direct elections and commission members are influenced by both the EP and national elections. Can it be better? Sure, just like the UK system can be much improved, now BJ has a majority with only 43% of the votes.
European voters have very little say over the EU policies and direction.
Practically as much as UK voters, since every law needs to be passed by the EP and the overall direction of the EU is set by the national leaders.
The EU will require Tax raising powers, and budgets as they have indicated.
Don't know how this is relevant as a response to what I said in that sentence.
Europe is too diverse in term's of culture, history, business and wants/needs. Federalisation either means an averaging of practices, culture or the dominate partner enforces their way's on others. Either way it's will be unsatisfactory to most, German methods will not work in Italy.
I often hear that, but then it is the same in the US, UK, ... Not everywhere is the same. Different regions want different things and vote different, that is why you need a good balance between federal and local. Everything regarding culture would be local, history doesn't matter that much, in fact at this moment history looks to be used more like a unifying factor.
I'm from London , I don't mind at all, why because it's my nation, my fellow country men/women, London should support the poorer areas.
Well, then why couldn't this be the case in the EU if you can create an EU sentiment/feeling of EU unity, which already exists more than you think.
How much affinity does the average German or French have for say Hungary , will they find common cause, this is the thing , no one is truly a proud EU citizen as they are in their nation. No one would fight for the EU, like they would for their country.
Personally I disagree with this, but maybe you just have another experience with that. Though Hungary is already a special case, acting more like leech, wanting the good parts, but not the bad and attempting/supporting to subvert EU laws an regulations. Which shows why the EU needs better way of dealing with that.
The EU is not an emotional thing, it's doesn't get to people's heart's like the pride in one's nation,
Again, that highly depends on region. Also early on in the US, most people didn't care about the US, it cared about their states. The feeling towards the US grew overtime. No reason this can't happen for the EU too.
I don't follow Football, but how many people would support a EU team, over say Spain or the Netherlands. It doesn't happen.
Again different, even the UK has multiple national teams. An EU time might be nice though in the long run, but unlikely/unnecessary.
*The US is different why because it was created from scratch, no history and a dominate culture that enforced Language, Idea's, Law, Culture all. *
And we aren't the 18th century anymore either. And to say it had no history is also not quite correct. The history was brought from Europe. All in all history doesn't matter that much, except for the history of the current generations.
France and England/UK have been rivals for centuries, yet in the past century they were strong allies.
The US seperated from the UK and fought a second war in 1812, yes again they have been strong allies.
History isn't everything things can change. There is no history that can really be a problem for further unification.
By the time mass immigration occurred in the US (19th centaury) from non N European countries, the US was established , it had a defining image, so people assimilated to that.
Actually they didn't, you got communities living together based on origin, you got newspapers in different language, ... The US essentially is a quite diverse nation. It is rather recently (past few decades) many people "lost" their culture of origin. Often their culture got mixed with other aspects of US tradition/"culture".
America at it's core is fundamentally a N/W European society, doesn't matter where your from, it's still a European inspired state.
Yeah, because nearly all immigrants came from N/W Europe before the past 2-3 decades.
So for it to be like the US , you need to have a dominate culture, what would that be French, German, Spanish.
And this is you misunderstanding me and/or being ingenuine. I said the EU was similar to the US early on, not that the EU is already the same as the US or would become exactly the same. And trust me, if you go through the US you will find many different cultures with also many similarities. At this moment you could say that you have the US culture group, with many different subcultures. This is similar for large parts of the EU (though you could split up the EU maybe in a nord-western, southern and eastern culture group. However these culturegroups are becoming more similar overtime already.
There doesn't need to be a dominate culture or culture group. That is just a fallacy. There have been empires/large nations throughout history with quite a lot if diverse cultures that lasted longer than the US has existed for now.
Will there need to be a common language for example? Yes and personally I'd guess this would be english. Why? Because it is the most used/spoken language in the world, it is a neutral language now the UK left, it is used by important allies and used in many international fields.
So the EU is nothing like the Early US, it's not even comparable.
It is, you talked mostly about current or middle late US, not early US. And especially not the political and "loyalty" situation of early US.
Your siblings analogy doesn't make any sense.
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@davidrenton
I would disagree about getting them out or not even that if your a Greek voter you can vote for your MEP fine, but that MEP has no power , Greece will never have a say , so your vote is illusionary. There is nothing a Greek voter can do to influence the direction of the EU. They are at the at the mercy of the bigger countries.
How is this different in the UK? England has more MP's and is stronger than Wales, scotland and NI combined. If England wants to really do something the only thing they can threaten with is seccesion, which is also possible in the EU. Germany and France combined have around 25% of MEP's, and these always vote based on ideology more than country of origin. In the commission both have only one commisioner and in the council they together only have 2 votes or 33% of the population.
Through official means they don't have anywhere near full control. Now, ofcourse they have immense soft power to influence others, but they'd always have that, this has always been the case. Larger/more wealthy nations have more influence than smaller/less wealthy ones. Whether this is in the EU or outside it is the same. However by being in something as large as the EU, Greece has overall more softpower worldwide and is more capable of playing along on the international stage, even if it is through the EU.
Also consider that in many aspects members have veto rights, I wouldn't say Greece (or any member) is powerless. It can stop any trade deal, any new admission and so much more.
True Boris had 43% of the vote (which in the UK is actually historically very high, usually it around's 35% for a party to get power), Labour got 32%, that's the way 1st past the post works, Winner take's all.
And that is what I personally find undemocratic, a large part of the voters are essentially not heard or represented.
*We did have a vote where we used PR and each vote counted , that was called Brexit ,where the majority of voters voted for it.
To the Media a winning government with say 35% has more legitimacy than a PR vote with 52%.*
I am not going to dispute brexit won the vote, though there was a lot of misinformation present during the campaign. Easiest example is "getting a deal will be easy", "there will be no no deal brexit", ...
The point about European difference's is that a top down approach won't work, what is suitable for Germany will not be for Italy. Therefore with an open market , freedom of movement do you enforce German practices on Italy.
This is the same in the UK. What is suitable for England might not be for Scotland, what is suitable for London might not be so for the north-east/west.
Unfortunately this is a consequence of being in a larger nation/entity. Which is why you need to keep as much power as possible local, with mostly things irrelevant of region or things that can't be done locally efficiently being done on the higher stage.
Look at the fishing issue, this highlights the difference's, for France it's a big issue, Germany couldn't give a hoot, but France will probably have to compromise on something that's vital to it, to make Germany happy.
You get this in any nation larger than a "large city state".
The US as I said come from a different place, these on the whole where people looking to start afresh, have no baggage on the past, they could experiment and do things differently.
I can understand where you are coming from, but it doesn't matter. For one these people still took the burden of (relevant) history with them. Furthermore their experiment was inspired by European thought and history, like the dutch republic, ...
This also doesn't change how people thought. Early on the states were where the loyalty was. The only reason they formed the US was because they realised they were stronger together and needed to be strong in a world with other strong nations that might have interests in them/their surroundings. This is exactly how most people look to the EU now. Their loyalty is still with their nation, but they realise they need the EU to be stronger in the world (and the other benefits ofcourse).
Immigrant's adapted to the newly created US 'culture'
The problem is, they didn't, which sparked tensions in the past. It is only in the past few decades/century you see a more "unified" culture.
it's a melting pot with a dominant culture, that being a Northern European one
Because most of the the immigrants were also European. Immigrants from elsewhere, were only a small minority. Even at this moment (with much larger non-european immigration), you have around 50-70 million people not from European descent. And in fact German is the largest group of origin. Up untill the world wars many german immigrants couldn't even speak english, you had entire communities speaking german, reading german newspapers, ...
they went to American school's
When I speak about similarities it is in US 1800-1850. Schooling wasn't as universal as now.
fought in the US Army
For some time most of the US armed forces consisted of state troops/militia's, there was quite a lot of resistance against a federal army (or at least a powerfull federal army). This isn't too dissimilar from the EU currently. And in most EU nations, there is a majority support for a European army.
flew the US Flag.
EU flag is also flown in many EU nations. Again in early US the state flag was as important/more important than the American flag.
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@davidrenton National/Ethnic interests (at least contributed).
Most large nations eventually fall due to internal problems. This can be national/ethnic, but also religious, politics, succession (the many civil wars for power in the roman empire weakened it severely), ...
If your Chinese in the US, Indian it doesn't matter on the whole you , your life, you way of work, the law's you adhere to are from that American system
This is a bit redundant, obviously you are going to live by laws of the region you live in. And as it stands the live of people aren't the world are becoming more similar due to globalisation.
Why Europe is different from the US is each and every country has developed a long time before
And countries change overtime. In the past you had many different cultures and even very different dialects in France, it wasn't one country, this however changed overtime. If you look throughout history there is a trend of more and more cultural harmonisation with just some differences remaining that are more or less irrelevant to the governing of a nation at large.
and not be worried about State or Historical differences.
Like with the civil war, which was driven by state and historical differences?
When you did have a fundamental difference between the states, you had a civil war. These 2 sides had totally incompatible views and the only resolution was succession or war.
So now you're contradicting yourself, first there were no state and historical differences, now it suddenly leads to a civil war. And the EU knows and learned about this by making it possible for states to secede. The US apparently hasn't, because states can still not secede legally.
This is the thing the UK has more in common with the US/Canada/Australia/NZ (even Japan) then say Italy
Obviously, at some point in time the UK controlled all of these regions, this is completely irrelevant. The UK isn't going to form a new nation/political entity with these nations.
Though an Japan I disagree. Japan has a lot in common with the west as a whole.
So why should the EU feel ownership over us
It doesn't?
why can't they accept we are a European country not in the EU and treat us such
You do know every kind of relationship the EU has with other European countries (except Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, since there is no real meaningfull relationship) has been looked at as an option. The problem is that for every of these possible relationships a UK red line would be crossed. Thus for the EU-UK relationship they needed to look beyond Europe. The problem is that the UK is still in Europe, with easy connections to it and even sharing a border, thus a new kind of relationship had/has to be found, somewhere between what other European nations have and what non-European nations have.
they say yes those Water's are yours's but we demand access to them
Honestly I don't have enough knowledge about the fishing problems to talk about it, but I am sure it is more complex that this.
why they don't with Japan and Canada
Because one is on the other side of the world and the second at the other side of an ocean?
Brexit has been the most lied about thing in recent history. When people voted Brexit it wasn't an attack on Europe , we still wanted to be friends, but we have seen how petty , how vindictive the EU has been. This doesn't make the heart grow fonder, it want's us to have nothing to do with them.
The EU has always made it clear that it would act in the best interests of the single market and that getting an agreement/deal wouldn't be as easy as brexiteers claimed. These kind of trade deals are usually negotiated for years. Throughout this process the EU has tried to make it work, but internal UK difficulties didn't help. Inexperienced UK negotiators that often got switched, different PM's, difficult UK parliament situation, ...
Honestly the EU hasn't acted petty at all, it was the UK that underestimated EU resolve and everything that comes with these negotiations and clearly wasn't ready for it.
The more brexit played out, the happier I personally was that the UK left the EU. Because politicians kept and keep blaming the EU for their own failure and lack of prepardness.
If the EU wanted to play petty, it would have prepared for a no deal and refused any extension.
Maybe it is different in the UK, but overall the UK is seen as the one being petty, wanting to leave, but at the same time keep most of the benefits. The UK could never have received a better situation/deal than they had in the EU. Even as a member it received much special treatment.
well the EU needs to let the UK go
It was always the UK that asked for extensions. The UK already left the EU. Everything the past year is just done to try and minimize the fall out for both sides.
So as a Brexit support I want the UK to have Fair and Friendly relations with Europe , we have no problem with that, but the action's of certain European countries is not conducive to this. The EU and those are being very short sighted and creating a lot of bad blood between us.
If you feel like this, I can only conclude UK politicians or still good at using the EU as a scapegoat. The EU has been nothing but considerate, considering how the UK government acted all these years.
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@davidrenton Europe is full of contradictory systems
Like? And please don't say Poland or Hungary.
it took a lot from England.
What exactly did they take? How did it feel 'British'?
that is not a reason, the EU doesn't claim Libya's Israel's, Turkey's waters, the UK is not in the EU, the EU has zero right's to UK waters, it's very simple. the UK has no right to the EU water, and vice versa. Distance is irrelevant.
1) EU doesn't have a free trade agreement with Libya.
2) Israel's fishing water is tiny in comparison to neighbouring EU nations and is poor fishing grounds apparently. Israel even started building fishfarms.
3) Turkey has negligable fishing waters in the mediterranean due to Cyprus and Greek Islands. Only in the Black sea has it meaningfull fishing grounds. For the black sea the EU had to step in in 2018 to limit fishing to stop overfishing and stepped into an agreement with several nations around the black sea. Why they don't have a deeper agreement on fishing with Turkey, I don't know. Maybe it is because up untill a few years ago it seemed Turkey was going to try and enter the EU, thus it could be dealth with upon them entering? Maybe they didn't want to strain relations and unlike with the UK it wouldn't lose or gain much with a deal/no deal. You'll have to look more into it if you want the answer.
Yes, the EU doesn't have rights to UK waters, which is why they are negotiating on it. And for the record the EU has fishing agreements with many African nations too. The UK definitely wouldn't be a one off.
The EU pay's NORWAY for it's Fish, they as just as close.
And who says the EU isn't offering the UK a similar fishing deal as Norway, but the UK government refused it because they want sovereign fishing ground symbolism? And it definitely isn't as simple as that the EU pays Norway for the right to fish. They jointly manage Norways fishing waters and agree on the amount that can be fished by whom, etc and Norwegian fisher similarly have the right to fish in EU waters.
A Trade deal is easy, we have done 60 in the last year
The UK just got the same trade deals from those countries they had as being a EU member. These countries just agreed to roll over the trade agreement they made/had with the EU and most of these trade deals are practically worthless for the UK. They haven't made a single unique trade deal. Even their "unique" trade deal with Japan is essentially just the trade deal the EU made around 2 years earlier.
The EU has had no interest in getting a deal, they wanted to punish the UK and made unreasonable demands'.
And yet they remain at the table instead of just refusing extensions.
they wish to subsidise their Businesses, but restrict the UK from doing the same
This is just stupid, I know that this has come in the media, however the problem is, the UK hasn't subsidies bussiness as much as it is allowed to for years. All they did about this during the negotiations was acting though. They aren't even close to the limit that would be set for state subsidies. Hell, the deal with Japan has stricter rules about state subsidies then what the EU is proposing.
they want 8 year's fish access,
Yes, and allow UK fishers in EU waters, essentially just continuing the current system. It is not the EU's fault the UK hasn't go a goo fishing industry. If it wanted it could have build up a strong fishing industry by now. Instead now most of UK waters will just not be fished with a no deal brexit. Fishing has always been symbolic for the UK, nothing more.
but restrict the UK from doing the same
Where did this come from?
the UK is not petty for wanting to leave
I never said it was. I said it was petty for wanting to leave, but not lose the benefits. Because that is how the UK government has been negotiating, wanting to get things without something else in return, because with every compromise they would lose "sovereignty".
the EU is trying to punish us for it by making impossible demand's
No, it is not. The EU is acting like it should, looking out for its members. This negotiating style has been agreed on by all members of the council, or in other words all nations within the EU. It is the council that sets what Barnier can and can't do.
No other country would accept the demand's that a separate entity can access it waters
This is clearly wrong seeing the EU has several of these agreements.
No other country would accept the demand how it run's thing's like Government subsidises.
Again clearly you are wrong, since the UK accepted stricter rules than the EU proposes about this in their Japan free trade deal.
only moron's would wish to remain.
Oh great, so the moron calls the people who looked past the misinformation and pandering morons. I guess we've gone full circle.
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I don't see how Trump can succeed here.
He has leverage on Ukraine, but only as long as European nations don't pitch in more (they provided most aid so far collectively) and maybe even nations like South Korea might take up some of the bill after NK is proven to support Russia even more openly. Moreover if Trump gives Putin too much (like forcing Ukraine to give up land they still control), it will be seen as weakness (on a personal and national level) by everyone: US allies, US enemies and internally. So the best he could do is offer a status quo and neutrality.
Russia likely won't agree to a status quo while they are making small gains and Trump can't guarantee Ukraine remaining neutral with its EU ascension plans. Thus he'd also have to convince EU leaders to stop this. After berating them for being too Russia friendly, that would be pretty embarrasing.
Putin also can't just give in to Trump's demands, it would weaken him too much internally, especially after the cost of the war so far. He'd need big concessions from Trump, which Trump can't really afford to give
Moreover while a large part of the Republicans want less support for Ukraine, a large part also wouldn't want to just give in to Russia. Many republican politicians also played hardball with Ukraine support to not support the democrats, with republicans in full control now, this could also change.
It might sound weird, but I wouldn't be surprised if the US actually will increase support for Ukraine to force Russia to the peace table on or close to US proposed terms (and pushing its allies to do the same), even if just removing limitations on already provided equipment and (US made) equipment coming from allies.
It really is difficult to say, since we're talking about Trump. But he also often followed the military/establishment advice/views after last time even if it wasn't in line with what he said in his campaign.
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@irham191
crimea annexation was done by vote,
I don't really have a huge problem with Crimea voting to join Russia, but how it was done, was completely stupid and unacceptable. Sending in armed troops and then making people vote, without any international oversight was bound to have repercussions, and the Russians knew it. However they also were imo afraid that in a regular vote, things wouldn't go as much their way as expected, similar to how Ukrainians are now putting up much more of a resistance than expected.
It also wasn't just the crimean annexation, but also the support of an armed conflict in Eastern ukraine in the Donbas region.
And judging from the gdp in 2000 its only about 300 billion and in 2013 it rose to 2 trillion, it drop after the sanction. Pretty sure the russian see him as a savior and condemn western country.
Or it could just show that it was trade with the west/Europe that caused such a rapid rise in GDP and not necessarily Putin, rather that Putin stopped it by unnecessary antagonizing Europe. Afterall, after the sanctions GDP dropped and is now just following more or less the more 'struggling' EU economies like Italy and Spain.
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@dnw009 Le Pen rises because she promises much, mostly things she won't be able to do without just passing the bill onto future taxpayers. Macron could also do that, but he realizes that 1) he already has governed, so people would ask why didn't do it before and 2) if you don't keep your promise afterwards you get a lot of problems (like protests, you and your party losing a lot of support, ...).
That is the thing with fake/'ignorant' populists, they promise much, get support because of it, get elected and then after a while without being able to fullfill those promises, they lose support, just look at the 5 star movement and Lega in Italy, they both got +-33% support at their peak of the last 4 year and are now 15% and 20% in the polls respectively.
Governing isn't easy, and keeping big promises is even more difficult
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@corradomancini3271 Populism in of itself isn't bad, however you have many kinds.
Fake populists: those who know they'll never be able or willing to fulfil the promises they make
Stupid populists: those who don't realize they'll never be able to fulfil the promises they make
Opportunistic/shortsighted populists: those whe promises much and might actually do it if they have the ability (ie. full control of the government), but doing it in such a way that the people will pay for it in the future, and most likely the same kind of people who he 'helped' with executing these promises.
And then ofcourse the real populists, who fulfil their promises in the best way for their voters/the people.
Le Pen seems to be either a fake, stupid or opportunistic. I can't she here being stupid honestly, so it is mostly one of the other.
Macron seems to try to act like a realist, but that is never popular if things aren't already good.
France is in urgent need of reforms, but the way in which they are needed are absolutely unpopular, so Le Pen will never mention them, even if she'd eventually (have to) try to institute them. Macron has no real choice, he needs to act the realist because people wouldn't accept that he wasn't able to fulfil populist promises before.
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@borisnoone
The EU recently asked Qatar to up their LNG production and were told they can't meet their demand.
In the short term most likely. If the EU creates a long term contract with Qatar, investment likely can be made to increase the LNG production in the next few months/years. I am not talking about short term, but long term ie. 5-15 years.
I am very well aware of the nuclear situation, and I am not per se in favor of nuclear due to the time to build and the cost, however if Russia keeps playing games, it might lead to higher investment in nuclear. And yes the recent reactors took a lot of time and cost. EDF gave a cost estimate to the French government regarding new similar reactors for a much lower (though still not really cheap, more average like coal-gas) price. If EU nations are more determined to go all in (like France in the 70's-80's), we might see things go a lot faster in the next 15 years and this might somewhat drive the costs down too. Greatest problem really is political, which might be somewhat abated by recent events.
Russia and China aren't the only ones, Korea recently also build new plants, so if push comes to shove and EDF (or other European companies) can't deliver, maybe a Korean company can.
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@borisnoone
Yep, such overly optimistic forecast will certainly keep them dreamy Europeans warm during long cold winter nights for the next 10-15 years.
Now you're just overly dramatic. If need be, the EU will just overbid other nations to get gas from elsewhere, at best there would be just one cold winter and even then, nothing clothes and blankets can't fix. At worst you'd get some gas rations (highly unlikely), not completely collapse.
It isn't like I expect no gas during the 10-15 years of the energy transition, just a bit more expensive.
And gas prices will likely spike for everyone worldwide, likely causing a general recession, and Russia would be pointed at for it. While Europe just needs to pay a bit more for gas from elsewhere and quickly roll out some more LNG infrastructure (maybe immediately designed to afterwards be used for hydrogen), Russia would lose more than 20% of their GDP. Maybe Russia would supply China more cheap gas as a consequence, but this would help alleviate the world gas market too anyway, since China would buy less from other countries that then would supply the EU.
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Thorium shows promise, but we need to be carefull as to not be too optimistic about it. Early on early generation nuclear powerplants were also hailed as the end solution and a way to get real cheap energy, now it is one of the most expensive forms of producing electricity.
Eitherway the true potential and cost of thorium will probably not be known for at least 10-15 years, so by the time it might become mainstream we already are +-20 years further. There is at this moment not a single thorium reactors operational and past reactors have often been shutdown due to cost, mechanical problems, etc or found large problems when shutting after having run it for a few years. I certainly hope thorium fullfills its promises/hopes, but we'll still have to see.
As for ITER, while it costs a lot and takes a long time, this is the entire thing with research and development. But the possible pay off is huge. It might never work and then at least we know this, but if we can use it to eventually reach commercial fusion reactors, it will be an important step.
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@johsenior1535 You do realise imposing a no fly zone would require attacking military installations on Russian soil, right? Also sending in western troops is a clear large scale escalation of the conflict.
Putin will not just be ousted by Russia being humiliated a bit. First off his government controls the narrative in Russia, so any humiliation will be severely downplayed or covered up within Russia. Any kind of humiliation that can't be covered up/spun around would require a clear escalation that Putin then also will use as an excuse to escalate things in Russia, by for example starting a mass mobilisation and moving to a war economy, potentially even executing small scale nuclear strikes on ukranian military positions.
If Putin isn't already looking for a decent way out, no well formulated ultimatum is going to change this. If Putin already is searching for a way out, you don't use an ultimatum, but negotiations.
At this point putin is clearly looking for an exit out of the conflict.
Not really seeing that yet tbh.
Im sure putin would see losing to ukraine more shameful, than being forced to retreat by the whole Nato bloc.
Except if he backs down to NATO, his whole image is gone, he'll be seen as weak and his days in power are numbered. He either has to win or reach a compromise (which should entail keeping Crimea and some arrangement in regards to Donetsk and Luhansk), that or he is done likely done for.
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@ianbirchfield5124 Corruption is existing in European nations (and essentially all nations) already anyways, that isn't going to change. You'll almost never have a nation without corruption, the rate of corruption matters, which in Europe is kept well in hand.
multicultural states don't collapse usually because the complaining minority is conveniently ignored.
Except many of these empires didn't have a majority culture, often these empires practiced a rather tolerant policy towards the different culture groups in their empire, understanding that that is the best way to keep the empire together.
just look at northern ireland; they never wanted to leave the EU, but because they have barely any representation in the UK gouverment they're along for the ride anyway. same goes for Scotland, btw.
The UK has one gigantic cultural majority: the English. The EU however does not. If we look at it based on languages, you get: German 20%, Italian 15%, French 14%, Spanish 9%, Polish 9%, Romanian 6%, Dutch 5%, ... If the UK were still in it, it would have been even more divided (probably with German around 15%). For comparison in the UK you have 84% English, 8% Scottish, 5% Welsh and 3% NI.
So the dynamic is completely different.
if europe unites into a single nation ruled by a single gouvernment, i doubt it will be voluntary
The EU literally has every memberstate ascending by choice and has a provision to allow members to leave. Ofcourse some members might put pressure on other members to accept further integration (be it by flexing their influence or just holding a vote with a majority in favor), however the members truly opposed can leave (or stop it if they can get a majority coalition) and form their own new EU/block based on their vision.
Belgium
Problem in Belgium is more historically (as in problems in the past that are now no longer relevant) and recently more just a anti-establishment mentality causing people to vote more for extreme parties (like Flemish nationalists). There actually is a large part of Belgium voters that wants to go back to a unitary state, more then people who want independence/more power to the regions in fact, there just isn't really a large obvious party for it.
The culture isn't really that big of a problem, the politics in general is. In fact me as a Flemish brabander has more in common with a walloon brabander than with for example a Limburger or a west flaming, with the only exception being the language, but in the EU you'll likely get a more universal second/third language, in fact this is already slowly happening with English naturally, so language will be less of an issue as time goes on.
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@michaelwalsh1278 Clearly you don't know much of how people think of the EU, due to the brexit support for the EU grew. Everyone here agrees that the EU didn't negotiate in bad faith, rather that they protected the interests of the EU, as they should. The US wouldn't have done differently if they were in the EU position. For some reason people (in the UK and outside the EU) expected the EU to be softer on the UK than it is on other nations, that was stupid, the UK has become a 3rd nation like any other. Experts both from the UK and the EU warned that the negotiations wouldn't be as easy as brexiteers said it would be.
Furthermore most of the problems during the negotiations were due to the UK, which was unprepared, with little experienced negotiators, while the EU had many experienced negotiators and more importantly the UK couldn't even get their act in parliament right. It was always said well in advance that the four EU pillars could not be seperated, getting one would mean getting the others and cherry picking wouldn't happen. The UK didn't want several so they couldn't get any. In the end a choice between doing what it s good for the UK, but threatening the single markets integrity and the opposite is a no brainer.
The EU isn't as unpopular as you think it is. There are no indications at this moment that the EU will go down in the next few years. Can it happen? Ofcourse, but it is not as likely as you think. People have been saying the EU is going down in the next few years for decades, it is still here, and stronger than it was in the past.
It has come to the point where most eurosceptic parties that talked about leaving the EU have changed their tone to just reforming it, because they know how unpopular leaving the EU actually is.
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@snowcold5932
This time, since Macron is deeply unpopular and got elected by default against Le Pen for a 2nd time
I disagree with this statement. Macron received more votes in the first round this time than in 2017. Now he might have become more impopular with those who already didn't really support him, but his core base definitely hasn't shrunk since last time it seems. In a second round he was almost always expected to win unless his opponent was too much like him. If Melenchon made it to the second round, the right likely would have voted for Macron, against Le Pen a large part of the left likely voted for him. Macron had the advantage of being in the center, the 'least worst' candidate in most 2nd round scenario's.
Though in the legislative elections his party did receive more votes than he did in the first round in 2017, possibly due to local representatives and it is this advantage his party seems to have lost, though despite this the polling does predict that the loss in number of seats wouldn't be too bad, most likely because if a candidate of Ensemble makes it to the 2nd round, that candidate also gets the 'centrist advantage' bonus.
I'd say these elections might be interesting, it could swing either way, but a full on majority for the left is going to be incredibly difficult considering polls still suggest a (smaller) majority of Macron's party in seats even after this left coalition was already formed.
I'd expect that the best this coalition causes is that no single party gets a majority and thus a coalition will have to be formed. But likely one between Ensemble and Republican if it is possible.
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@mtk77621 The left gained around 1.05 million more votes in total, so even if these were all Macron voters, it isn't really that much. It really is the far-right that gained a lot of support with 2.64 million more votes compared to 2017.
I don't think Les republicains voters mostly inflated Macron, more like the far-right, that or voters from Macron/the left went to the far right.
Yes, the right that Macron and republicains has shrunk a bit, by about 4 million votes, again mostly to the benefit of the far right, not the left.
But so yes, Macron likely has gained from Republicains fall, but he definitely hasn't been the biggest winner there and he definitely didn't lose too much of his 2017 support to the left.
If you look at Macron's approval ratings, they currently are around as high as a few years ago right after his 'inaugural honeymoon' was up. The main difference is maybe that his dissaproval ratings are higher than back then, but for a sitting French president his numbers aren't bad. I don't think any french president will come better out of their term compared to the start.
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@ludovicartu4239 Most polls were around 4-4,5% off, not 5,5%, considering the margin of error which is usually around 3%, that isn't that far out of bounds, especially not considering some left wing voters might have decided to do some strategical voting, all other left wing candidates afterall slightly underperformed their expected results. If we add up the underperformance of the other left candidate you get around 1,6% or the amount outside the margin of error.
You'd need more than double that (4,5%) mistake to turn things around for the polls in the second round. That is a huge difference. And the outcome of the second round polls make more sense than the opposite all things considered. All you have to support your theory is your own opinion that is much less to go on. And remember Macron overperformed his second round polls too.
What you also seem to fail to take into account is that Melenchon has slightly lower approval ratings than Macron (and the same as Le Pen, interestingly around the amount that voted for Le Pen, 43% approval vs 41,5% of the vote), that again would be a thing in favour of Macron. Some other ratings put his approval similar to Macron, but at a lower amount: 35% vs 34%. Though to be fair, I can't really find many approval pollings about him, so maybe there are some that put Melenchon higher.
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@Fresh Turkey
domestic attacks that already existed does not justify more imported attacks from abroad
That doesn't make sense, these attacks both cost lives and are both fought the same way by the same security organisations. Like I said, terrorists can be homegrown (even people whose ancestors lived here can radicalize) as well as get in even with a strong border control. Europe has had a lot of immigration for decades due to the colonial history, yet the attacks increased only in the last few years due to geopolitical circumstances (isis, middle eastern instability, Libya, ...), plenty of Europeans went to go fight in Syria on the side of ISIS, when they legally return they can also execute attacks.
It is stupid to keep claiming it are "imported" attacks, they would just keep happening, since many terrorists are/were actually already in Europe, either having come here as a child or even born here.
And German And Swedish unilaterally taking mass is not sustainable.
Germany took it upon themselves to take so many refugees after the outer border failed to the point that the border countries were just ferrying the refugees through, their policy was not the cause of the refugee crisis. Sweden had a rather "weak" system, but they too already changed that.
Either way this exactly shows why you'd need a unified policy and reaction to these sorth of things.
They would rather the control to be in their own hands and I believe that is the correct way to go.
Which is exactly why the border failed, the border countries (Italy, Greece, Hungary) couldn't take or wanted to take the refugee streams on, and thus just started letting them through to the rest of the EU.
And the deportation is extremely inefficient and delayed.
Again which is why you need a unified system. Part of why deportations are so difficult is because every country for themselves need to check if people can safely be returned to land of origin, make sure refused asylumseekers don't go into hiding and need to make deals with countries of origin. Do this as the EU and you'd need one deal per country and have more negotiating power, can more efficiently plan return trips and can keep better track of denied asylumseekers through all of the EU.
They were incentified by the "liberal" logic of if you stay long enough or some what grew up here you should be granted citizenship.
Honestly I haven't heard this outside of US politics regarding dreamers. I am sure there are some who think and argue this way, but most (at both sides) are usually just criticizing the time it takes for a procedure to end and deportations to happen. I haven't yet heard people/politicians argue to give citizenship to people who have been in the EU illegally for a long time. But if you have examples I'd be willing to inform myself more.
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What should also be mentioned is that it isn't yet clear whether people who have had covid-19 also have longterm immunity. For all we know now they could only have immunity for a few weeks/months. There are already people who have had covid-19 early on, but don't have significant immunity markers at this moment.
So the idea of immunity might work, but it isn't a certainty. Even if 50% is infected, if there is not longterm immunity, this is basically worthless.
And ofcourse Sweden's strategy can't work everywhere. Just look at Spain, Italy and other countries for example, they already suffered such a high toll, imagine if they followed Sweden's strategy. It seems Sweden is in a rather "lucky" position in terms of population density, social distancing, pre-covid behaviour, ...
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@hiufgterde
Russia is of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world
This is complete bullshit, Russia isn't even in picture in this regard. Maybe in the soviet era, yes. The US arms manufacturer is around 3 times bigger and while Russia is 2nd, France and Germany together already equal it. There is only 1 Russian company in the top 15 arms companies, and it is at the bottom of the list.
but somehow we say they only have old crap
Yep, because Russia hasn't really been creating "new" stockpiles of modern equipment, mostly keeping their old soviet stockpiles. So if they want to quickly equip many new units, they need to grab that older equipment. The current Russian arms industry is focused on export and limited modernisation, while for example the US is mainly focused on keeping it military modern and exports are just an extra addition.
They watched NATO sending in weapons to Ukraine for 8 years.
NATO barely send any weapons before 2022. Only Lithuania send military equipment to Ukraine in that timeframe. That is one of the main miscalculations of Russia, they didn't expect that NATO nations would react so unified in coming to Ukraine's aid after the 2022 invasion.
Russia never starts a war it cannot win
Except they have in the past.
and they knew they'd also be fighting NATO.
Not at all, since Ukraine isn't a NATO member and NATO's response to the annexation of Crimea and actions in the donbas in 2014 was very weak and completely disunified.
We said they only have old missiles and they would run out soon. Well that was a lie.
People also said Ukriane would fall in days and her we are. You can be wrong about some things. Though Russian missiles attacks have been decreasing in the past few months and them resorting to using Iran made suicide drones isn't promising about the size of their missile arsenal. Not to mention using anti-air defense missiles to strike ground targets instead.
and the ones they have using so far are only the basic ones.
Yeah, because they don't have many of the more expensive/special ones, which they need to keep on hand just in case. Not wasting it on some pretty meaningless infrastructure bombardment.
They have missiles we cannot match over in Europe.
That is a claim from Russia, yes. However there isn't any proof that they have those, definitely not in meaningfull numbers.
If they wanted to they could level every Ukrainian city easily
Only with nuclear missiles, which would completely isolate them on the worldstage, even China would be in complete condemnation and think about joining sanctions. No one wants to allow nuclear weapons to be normalised.
They have the best air defense system in the word as well, a 3 tier approach copied by many other countries.
One the Ukrainians have now repeatedly got past, though obviously not with big numbers or such. Also pretty useless having the best air defense system against an oppenent with essentially no usable air- or missileforce
Brand new tanks, brand new armored cars etc etc.
The manufacturing capacity of Russia regarding tanks is pretty well know, it isn't even enough to replace a fraction of what they already lost. Most "new" tanks are formerly mothballed tanks put back in operation.
It's not for free.
Most equipment has been, though some loans were also given. And in any case these likely will either be dismissed or the seized Russian assets might even be used to repay it.
we said HIMARS was a gamechanger
It truly was. It hampered Russian logistics greatly, destroyed a lot of shells otherwise used to bombard Ukrainian lines, took out several command posts and troop concentrations and especially in Kherson it was instrumental by damaging the bridges in such a way Russian units on the west side couldn't be properly supplied anymore.
then it was the Patriot system
Never really was a gamechanger, at best it helps protect vital area's against missile attacks, but it would never have changed the course of the war. The game changer in this was only that it formerly was rejected, so supplying it meant another step towards pledges of other equipment, like tanks and maybe eventually planes.
now it's the Leopard tanks again.
It is a gamechanger in a certain perspective. It is more modern tanks than what Ukraine currently has and its addition can help in the creation of a stronger offensive force, whereas Ukrainian tanks currently are used to keep the line. Moreover it again is the step towards further aid. If the US wishes (and prepares Ukraine) it can send hundreds upon hundreds of (pretty) modern Abrams to Ukraine (it has around 3000 in storage).
Russia has the same if not better equipment
🤣 that is a quite naive comment.
Russia has destroyed their equipment 4 times over already
Do you not realize how that sounds? How can Russia already destroy their equipment 4 times over? Not to mention doing so without making any real gains.
We're trying to prolong this war, not actually help Ukraine to win it. Then we should do much much more.
Yes and no. We are definitely helping them first with keeping their ground, but also definitely to win. Though we can do a lot more to speed up the process towards Ukraine winning. This is even a complaint at the highest political circles, but as always things are a bit more complex than one thinks.
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@Jazzcat135
- France is expected to decrease their nuclear % of the electricity mix due to costs of new nuclear, and looking at how long and expensive Flamanville 3 took, this might become a bigger reduction than initially expected
- France NEEDS to export its electricity to maintain its nuclear production and price to make sure their nuclear power plants can keep running as baseload and reach best price. If everyone of their neighbours had the same nuclear % in their grid, things would get quite a bit more complicated and prices would be higher.
- France has had problems in summer past few years with cooling the reactors, to the point it had to import quite some electricity.
- France's nuclear has had a lot of government "subsidies" (it is exploited by a government owned company)
TLDR; France is currently living on their old reactors, their new construction hasn't looked promising and expectations are that renewables+storage will drive out or at least outshine new nuclear in coming decades. This would only change if new nuclear suddenly becomes a lot cheaper or experiences some big development breakthrough (or grid storage cost reduction is less than expected).
As for Slovakia, it seems plans are still in early stages, even if it is built, it will likely not be active in the next 10 years, by which time it will have to compete with cheaper renewable+storage, thus potentially reliant on government subsidies.
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@malikjackson9337
Even the best estimates don't even put renewables at half the global power generation at that time frame.
I didn't say anything about half the power generation coming from renewable, so not sure which timeframe you're talking about.
Many of the developing nations are well placed for using renewable and are often also investing in it. They are definitely more unlikely to go nuclear, unless they cut serious costs somewhere.
Yes, Japan is one of the few nations geographically not great for renewables considering their population. China I don't really agree with. They are just focusing on everything at the moment, despite rolling out quite some nuclear compared to the rest of the world, it is still really small compared to their renewable development. Nuclear only made up 4% of their grid mix in 2023, compared to 30% for renewables (even just talking wind and solar it is at 16%). So nuclear definitely isn't really driving China's grid away from fossil fuels, currently that is clearly renewables doing it.
People forget that nuclear isn't the only thing slowed down by regulation, renewables are too. For example here in Belgium (and likely most of Europe) without regulation it would take around 4-6 months to build a wind turbine from inception to operation, currently it takes in actuality over 3 years due to the requirement for studies, paperwork, build up of local support, ... (which also drives up the costs).
Purely theoretical solar panels can fuel our entire society (for those things that can be electrified) if we also use grid storage and even then it would take only a small part of available ground surface. But ofcourse it is always better to have some diversity and grid storage at the scale and cost that is needed is still 10-20 years off (though roll out of renewable generation can be done before that, so we only need to slot in the storage, theoretically).
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@malikjackson9337
Depends on the time frame and your interpretation of a significant percentage.
Currently all renewables (Hydro, solar, wind, bioenergy, ...) make up 30% of the worlds electricity mix. Ofcourse at this moment half of that comes from hydro, but the other renewable sources are already 50% higher than nuclear's attribution, while having been still very expensive just 10-15 years ago. In 10 years they went from +-5% to +-15% and in many regions of the world renewables are only just starting to ramp up or coming into development.
I do think it will take several decades still for renewables to make up a large majority of electricity generation, but I don't really agree with the "without nuclear" take. There is no reason nuclear would positively change this the speed of low carbon production vs focusing solely on renewables. Even in 50+ years nuclear never went above 18% and has been on a downwards trajectory since the 1990's. The investments that are being/would be made in new current nuclear powerplants would be just as effective, if not more effective, if they went into renewables instead (at this moment). Maybe this would change once renewables start making up 60-70% of the grid mix and storage still isn't fixed, then nuclear might be usefull for that last 30% (though nuclear and renewables aren't really that complementary and overbuilding renewable for green hydrogen production and hydrogen gas plants would be better if costs come down enough, though storage should be fine way before either scenario).
The point is it doesn't have to be slow and tedious like it is in say the US which is one of the longest development times in the world.
It doesn't, but neither do renewables. China is building nuclear powerplants reasonably fast, but then they also are developing renewables even at a lot faster pace. This is more a China (great at big construction works) vs the West (slow and expensive), whether this comes at some cost or not.
And it still is on average 6 years in China from building start to commercial operation. Add another 2-3 years decision making, planning, preparing, .... and you also are at around 8-10 years. Sure some in the west are gigantically overtime, but 8-10 years lead time still seems to be a good assumption under even good conditions.
To say solar is even remotely as regulated is either naive or disingenuous.
It is proportionally. Regulation isn't even necessarily the right term, rather bureaucracy. Ofcourse in pure numbers it most certainly isn't. Wind turbines (and likely also large solar) might take around +-4x times as long to develop and build with the bureaucracy etc vs if you just planned and started building without the need of all the bureaucracy. For nuclear powerplants that would be the equivalent of 20 years vs 5 years (which is around the ballpark or even higher of what we see unless we are looking at the absolute worst).
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@gungan5822 You do realize the non-mRNA ones that were available (Astrazenica and janssens) are ones that tend to have more side effects and less effective?
Novavax hasn't been available due to production difficulties, though the EU is looking into using it as a third boostershot at the end of this year. This because it is logistically easier to use and there is no clear knowledge yet which vaccins are more effective against new strains, the mrna ones or the ones from novavax.
If rapid tests are cheap, no problem. However the state should not subsidies it. If people need it due to not accepting a vaccination, it is their problem. Hundreds of millions have been vaccinated without problems. Yes, there have been some problems, but we are talking of a few every several millions, this happens for many medications and vaccins, unfortunately not everything can always be avoided. And many more would have died in the mean time due to covid without the vaccination.
Lockdowns will be ended when covid is under control enough, this mostly will be looked at by hospitalisations and deathrate. Considering these days it are mostly non-vaccinated people that end up in the hospital or die due to covid, you can blame them for lockdowns/measures not getting lifted completely.
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@TheShadowOfZama
That is just a bollocks comparison. If Limburg performs poorly then it's because it is a Flemish issue.
And if Wallonia performs poorly it is a Belgian issue.
The Flemish government has full control over Limburg (well in regards to the domains that it has control over of course).
That depends entirely government system of this new Flemish state. Who says it wouldn't see a devolution similar to what happened in Belgium?
The Flemish government can give it money, the Flemish government can decide how to use it to assist Limburg, it can even intervene in Limburg directly depending on what Limburg is doing wrong exactly.
And this is exactly what the Belgian government should be able to do in Wallonia.
Wallonian politicians want Flemish money (be it directly or indirectly), but Flanders has no say about how that money is spent and there's no way they will agree to give Flanders such powers over them.
Which is why we should move to a system with more direct federal control over the regions, instead of essentially going for a nuclear option of blowing up the country.
They would prefer independence for sure if the choice was give Flanders veto power over policies in Wallonia or seperating because that would be the end of the PS and Ecolo by default.
By your own logic seperation would also be the end of the PS and ecolo by default because they wouldn't have the funds anymore for their policies.
They would never agree to that.
If they prefer separation over less regional authority, I guess they would give us now other choice. But currently that isn't even a discussing in the "money transfer" critique. There it is always just more autonomy/independence to stop the transfer, instead of trying to fix the issue as to why the transfers are taking place. This kind of mentality would always lead to more and more seperation, not just in Belgium, but also a new independent Flemish state.
Flemish independence for cultural reasons I can understand (though I don't agree with it), Flemish independence for economic reasons makes no sense at all, unless ALL other options are tries first.
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@TheShadowOfZama
because of the traditional parties wanting to cling onto power
Like everywhere?
And the Wallonian parties flat out refusing to work together with the two biggest Flemish parties
N-VA was literally in the federal government for 4 years last decade. And ofcourse they don't want to govern with a party whose main goal is ending the current nation, which they don't want 🙄
with the result being monster coalitions between a whole bunch of parties with as sole unifying factor keeping the Flemish nationalists out of the government.
The problem more was that N-VA couldn't get the other parties to agree with them. The first government negotiations literally happened to form a government with the N-VA, they just couldn't get to an agreement. There actually for a time was a good chance that the N-VA and PS would form a coalition, but other needed parties refused to support this agreement due to the policies not being in line with theirs.
Your unitary state would just be more of the same old that we wanted to get rid off since the 60's.
Completely different situation. In the 60's the problem was Flemish identity having been curtailed by the Belgian government for decades/since the belgian independence. Currently the Flemish identity is well entrenched. In a unitary state you also shouldn't have French and Dutch parties anymore, but just ideological parties, making government coalitions more easy to do. Ofcourse the transition wouldn't be simple, it would take effort and time and most likely replacing the old guard politicians with a new fresh guard.
What makes you think the very thing that failed before will suddenly start working in an era with even more debt?
Because debt wasn't the problem cultural/lingual identity was.
Flanders is doing alright
So who better to then help Wallonia to do the same?
The federal government, the Wallonian government, the government of Brussels are all failling.
The wallonian government is failing because it is allowed to fail.
Brussels never stood a chance on its own, the wealth being generated in it literally moves to Flanders and Walloon Brabant due to people working in Brussels, but paying taxes outside it. It was always stupid making a city its own jurisdiction, this could only work with tax transfers or a different way of taxation.
It isn't easy comparing to the federal government due to the difference in powers and responsabilities. It could very well be that the Flemish government also would struggle similarly if given the same duties with the same budget. Or not, difficult to tell either way.
They are failling because the system enables parties to essentially side line the Flemish majority.
Does it? From 2014 to 2018 the federal government literally saw a larger underrepresentation of the French speaking community compared to the underrepresentation of the Dutch speaking community in the current government. And ofcourse the parliament still is made up of 60% dutch representatives and 40% French speaking representatives. Hardley sidelining the Flemish majority.
But the current system is indeed not logical and cumbersome, which is why I'd advocate for a more unitary system where the difference in language should play less a role than the difference in ideology.
The Flemish Greens, socialists, liberals and Christian democrats are only relevant because the Walloon parties keep them important by refusing to work together with the parties actually popular in Flanders
I disagree with this take. These parties going into the Vivaldi coalition actually sets them back because it makes them less popular and more likely to lose more in the next election. Staying out of it and acting as the opposition would have been better for at least the Greens and CD&V, potentially some other of these flemish parties too.
The walloons also literally are willing to work with N-VA, though the Socialists would prefer not to. And even N-VA didn't really liked to go into a government with VB. VB in general just are not a likely coalition partner for any party.
The socialists in Flanders their best results was like 20% once upon a time and curretly it's like 11% or so. They are never going to vote for a system in which their outsized influence would come to an end.
They literally wouldn't lose that influence though, together with the PS they'd become potentially the 2nd biggest party in Belgium.
Seperation forces the issue in many ways, all the other ideas essentially requires many parties to essentially vote themelves out of power.
And this is where you are wrong, they wouldn't just vote themselves out of power, unless you think VB and N-VA will get a lot of votes from Wallonia. Rather in that new system N-VA and VB would become smaller parties while the socialists, liberals and greens will become the bigger parties (though PTB/PvdA might also have something to say, but they essentially all already acting like a unitary party). Now the Greens, Socialists and liberals aren't even on the same line often, despite sharing the same ideology, and this mostly is because the current system (and pressure from BV/N-VA) promotes this division.
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@AlanHernandez-jn2mp
*For example, you talk about America like if EU/NATO members have not lived through prosperity the past 70 years ...
100million died in WW1 .. 150Milllion died in WW2 ...
Compare that to the past 70 years under America domination over EU/NATO... No comparison .....*
And? What point are trying to to make here?
Like I said, most of America want our troops to come home ..
From so far I can tell from here this mostly is about getting out of the middle-east/conflicts, not necessarily pulling troops out of all overseas bases. The US has a large amount of bases all around the world, no president is just going to pull troops out of peacefull/safe area's.
Furthermore, the total amount of US troops in Europe is around 64.000, the troops in Japan number around 55.000 or to put it diffently, Japan: 4,34 troops per 10k citizens and Europe: 1,27 troops per citizen. So clearly the US isn't contributing that many troops to European defence. Furthermore, it is unclear how many of these US personnel is actually in Europe for NATO (and for example "diplomatic" personnel) and how many for non-Nato operations (like in the middle-east and africa). The main presence of the US in Europe is for a long-range missile defence shield, which doesn't just benefit Europe, but also the US.
That better than being bossed around by Merkel for 15 years !!
What?
they will protect all Japansese internets
Internets?
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@AlanHernandez-jn2mp
America spends 300billion every year on its Navy ...
Irrelevant. The spending on the navy is so that the US can project power over the entire planet. Regionally Europe can protect itself well enough on the seas. Neither Russia, nor anyone in the mediterranean can really threaten Europe in its regional seas. If the EU is weak somewhere it will be mostly in ground combat due to its fragmentation.
That Navy ensures that tiny countries like in Europe get their merchandise to any corner of the planet ...
So basically it is about protecting global trade which the US is a participant in. So why would the US not protect its own trade routes exactly? Besides, these global trade routes are vital for all large powers, except maybe Russia, but they aren't a really strong naval power (not weak for sure, but they can't project seapower far past their coast lines), so if the US steps back, the major powers will just take care of their own parts of the seas and if there are piracy concerns, a coalition would just be formed against it.
No, it's going to be Americas 12 Super Carriers ...
Carriers aren't what protect trade, they are meant to project hard power over a large area, especially as mobile strikeforces against far away lands. The ships that protect tradelanes are mostly frigates and destroyers. Anyone trying to disrupt trade on the seas will do so either with submarines or small, fast and spread out ships.
Basically carriers are used to support land operations or in large scale sea battles (although I don't know how much use they are in sea combat these days with anti-aircraft missiles, it has been decades since a meaningfull conflict between fleets, so it is difficult to say).
300 billion is nothing to America, but how much is that for Europe?
About the same I guess. The EU GDP (with UK) is around 18,8 trillion dollar, the US GDP is around 20,5 trillion dollar, so it is 1,6% and 1,46% of GDP respectively.
They seem to struggle to pay their agreed 2% annual GDP ...
That depends from nation to nation. Sure some nations might have more problems, but then again, they are trying to decrease their debt, unlike the US, which is ever increasing its debt. It is not that they can't, it is that the 2% was agreed against 2024, so some nations might be using this time to get there in a healthy manner.
This system of protecting Europe no longer serves American interest ...
I don't know, do I think the EU needs american protection? No, announce withdrawal from NATO with a time of around 5-10 years and Europe will be fine. Even without it, it will be fine. As for it not being in American interest, I don't know. Europe is the US oldest ally, its largest trading partner and it is often used as a gateway into Africa and the Middle-East. Strategically supporting the EU is very important. But what do I care. I'd like the EU and US to take a step back and become regular allies.
*We need nothing from Europe..
Everything is luxury goods..*
But the EU is still your largest trading partner. Do you really need it? I don't know, but you wouldn't just want your biggest trading partner to suddenly fall away, it would cause a great economic crisis. Eitherway, I don't see why we are discussing this, it is irrelevant in the military discussion since even if the US withdraws from Europe, it will not change economic relations.
*& btw American want better health care, better transportation, better jobs, better wages ...
These things will force America to stop protecting Europe & instead focus on domestic spending ...*
Yeah, because the 25-30 billion dollar is going to do a lot for that. Hell, even if you pull out of the EU, you will have to house these troops. So this isn't really about European-US military relations, but rather the US military budget at large. Yet, despite there being no real large threat, the US keeps increasing its spending (and that is certainly not to protect Europe).
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@AlanHernandez-jn2mp
wow, are you sure about that one? Didn't we just agree that America sells F35 jets?
How exactly is the US spending more by selling equipment to european partners which will effectively reduce the research burden on the US exactly increasing US costs? Are you saying the US wouldn't have developed the f35 without Europe? Or that they give them away at a discount?
What about those Javelin Anti Tank rounds America gave Ukraine ?
I was always talking about the EU, Ukraine is not in the EU. And Ukraine is a special case eitherway being in a open conflict with pro-russian seperatists.
But hey, i guess American technology doesn't help Europe..
How is this relevant? It is not like the US is just handing technology to the EU.
*What on earth are you talking about? Those soldiers will be back on the workforce … Its much easier relocating thousands of soldiers to American soil than sending them across the world, logistically … *
So they'll be fired? Also you do know European nations pay around 1/3 of upkeep costs for these soldiers on European soil, right? People can't even say whether it wouldn't be more expensive to bring them home. I don't think troops stationed in Europe will cost that much more logistically.
... This will create a crisis in EUROPE .. Because you guys will need to start funding a Whole Air Force, Navy & Army ..
The EU spends already 300 billion on the military, more than any nation except the US. I am quite sure that is more than enough for an air force, navy and army. The EU navies put together is at this moment already the second largest in the world, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same for the airforce and army. The greatest problem isn't spending, it is management and fragmentation. The EU could easily become as strong as the US locally. A major part of US military costs is due to it choosing to be a global power, the EU would most likely focus more on regional dominance, like Russia and China do. A lot more can than be achieved with less money.
As for America, do you think we're going into a crisis just because we have shaky relations with Europe?
Shaky relations a crisis? No, but it would harm US international power if it loses the EU as an ally. It would mean the US will get more isolated on the world stage. Seeing the US is already seen by many people around the world as the greatest threat to the world, that is not that positive. Furthermore the US might now be the sole superpower, but that won't remain that way. China, India, ... will also eventually join it. Hell, even the EU might have more possiblity than the US if we look at population numbers and growth potential (eastern europe).
Keep in mind it was America who placed sanctions on EU for giving Airbus subsidies…
And? A trade war would just harm both. But I guess that is the US way of acting, if there is something it doesn't likes, it attacks it, either militarily or economically. How good will the US economy exactly fare if it starts an actual trade war with both the EU and China at the same time, Its two largest trading partners?
Washington is not afraid of a trade war with Europe since you guys have no leverage ..
Right, so I guess the hundreds of billions in trade isn't a leverage. The US is now basically playing a bluff, I would really like to see what happens if the EU retaliates with its own sanctions. If both the EU and China cuts trade with the US, it would hurt them heavily, but it would cripple the US economy, 1/3 of the US trade would be hit. For the EU it would be less than 1/5 of its trade and for China it would be around 1/8. So the US would be really stupid to start a trade war with both the EU and the US. But again we are going off track. Ending the old alliance or just nato wouldn't result in the US and Europe becoming enemies.
Actually, i take that back, it will ready hurt Washington if you partner with China, but does Europe really want to be a puppet of China ?
A puppet? No, but a partner? well, no, not as they are acting now. But if the US pushed them, who knows how the EU might act. Just imagine if Russia somehow becomes democratic in the next 15 or so years and allies with the EU (maybe in the long term even joining? unlikely but you never know). Russia's military strength with the EU's economical strength would be a real threat for US dominance. But again this isn't the EU's goal. I don't even know how we got so off track LMAO.
This was the case before America became the world leader in shale oil & is Now a net exporter of oil
The conflict in the middle east was never about getting the oil for the US, but about controlling it and by doing so controlling prices.
What you dont know is that we also want them back from Europe & Asia
I am sure there are many who want that, but I don't know how many that would actually be (a minority? Plurality? Majority?).
wow, why do you keep using this "2024" excuse ? that deal was struck because Europe realised that they were wrong for taking advantage of America all these years … they agreed on 2% a looooooong time ago, "2024" is for their lack of commitment to their own security
2% was always a goal, not an agreement. EU nations let down military investment after the cold war, because there wasn't a threat left. Even now Russia is just a slowly re-emerging threat. But whatever is the case, the "2024 excuse" is an actual agreement, unlike the directive/advise. Honestly, 2% is fine for me, but some EU nations are just now recovering from the 2008 crisis and it is/was deemed more important to get debt down, so that a possibly new crisis' impact isn't even worse (which would reduce overall spending anyway, 2% or not). Again, while the US might be fine by upping the US debt just like that, this isn't what EU nations do.
These trade routes are most important to TINY countries .. Look at UK, they colonised the entire planet, meanwhile their homeland was the size a tiny Island … how? TRADE ROUTES .. America doesnt NEED To trade ..
LMOA. Sure trade is important for tiny countries, but also for large countries. Why exactly would the US not need international trade, but the EU which is a larger nation in terms of for example population need it? Besides if anyone needs the seas for trade, it is the US. If the seas are unsafe, the EU/China/India can develop and overland trade network, much less efficient, but better than have nothing at all. But basically we are now talking about basically open war. All large nations trade a lot and have a great deal to lose when trade stops/slows down. This goes for China, India, the EU and the US. Neither of these NEED trade, but all off them are well off with it and would like it if trade remains fine.
oil ? We're a net exporter ?
So in other words, you wouldn't be able to export it without trade, roger that.
Food? We have more farm land than any other country on the planet..
And the EU produces all the food it truly needs. The Netherlands a nation smaller than Maine exports equal to a third of US food exportation, and is at the top of food production efficiency. And you do know that the EU has more arable land than the US, right?
we no longer have to protect you from Communism
Yeah, if only there was a current communist threat, are you still living in the cold war?
I don't really know how this has been reduced to a pissing contest, but lets just end with some polling: 43% of Americans are happy with current military spending, and 25% want to see it increased. This shows me that the reason you have such a high military budget has nothing to do with Europe or its protection, but with what US citizens want and the lobbying of the MIC.
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@AlanHernandez-jn2mp
1. https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/eu-agricultural-outlook-arable-land-area-continue-its-decline_en
This link shows that the EU has 172 million ha of arable land which equals to 1,72 million km2. Wikipedia shows that the US has 1,65 million km2 of arable land. Now the total land of the US is twice as large as the EU's, but a lot of it is desert, bad climate, etc.
2. Well, no. I am sorry if I confuse you, often I use Europe when talking about the EU. Just know that I am generally talking about the EU unless I specifically state otherwise (like whole of europe, or something similar). So no, Ukrainian arable lands (as well as Russian, Belarussian and other non-EU european lands) are not included. The thing is, Europe is just a fertile place with fairly little bad land and climate.
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@sarahbrown5073
Russia isn't in a "war economy". Their military spending is only 6% of GDP
Officially 30-40% of russian state budget goes to the war, unofficially we know that a lot of the costs of the war are carried by things like forced loans from banks to make the cost of the war look lower than it is and from savings they put aside just for this war.
The Russian bank already said that unemployement is at an all time low and that there is a labour shortage, with only a growing need due to war demands.
A war economy also doesn't just look at % of gdp spend on the military, but how much the military is prioritised in the economy. For example investments and measures/policies in other fields also can be changed in those fields to suite the war economy.
If you don't want to call it a war economy, fine. But it is still leagues away from a regular economy.
5% of GDP is very high (extremely high in peace time) only basically done during war times or an arms race (like in the cold war) and just another stupid demand of Trump.
Russian official spending is more like 7,5% of GDP. And its GDP is also increased by investment in military personnel and material, increasing it artificially higher than it would be without this spending, so 8% would be more logical following official numbers.
The hope is that all of NATO combined might be able to produce half of what Russia is currently producing, by 2027
Russian production for 2025 is expected to be around 3m shells, the EU 2m and the US 0,5m. The US is also targetting 1,2m/year by 2026.
So that would make 3-4million shells/year for NATO vs 3-4million shells for Russia in 2026. Russia is already having problems with employement, while the US and EU doesn't suffer from this problem.
NATO countries didn't ramp up as fast as Russia, but they have a higher ceiling than Russia, which makes perfect sense since they have a population 6,6x that of Russia and a combined economy 24x times bigger than that of Russia. The idea Russia can outproduce NATO on shell production longterm is moronic.
there is only a finite amount of antimony, steel, and guncotton
Turkey is the 3rd biggest antimony producer and Austrialia is a big producer too.
China and Russia don't even have a majority of guncotton production.
And steel, really? NATO countries have more than enough steel to produce the shells.
From all these antimony is the most likely that could cause trouble, but there is no indication it really limits production increases.
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@lamebubblesflysohigh
Yes, but there are also 5 representatives. You could also do district of 2 million and one representative, but then you get FPTP which is terrible. Or you could increase the number of representatives and do 5 per 5 million people districts. But then you get a senate of 445 people. You can't go much higher than that. Honestly the current parliament is already too large. 500 representatives to me should be the maximum in any parliament/senate.
And the goal is to give everyone a voice. in the end they will get as much a voice in a 1 000 000 people district and a 10 000 000 district, since it would scale similarly in the number of representatives. The main goal must be to group regions with similarities in districts.
For example Malta would be in a district with Sicily, calabria, Basilicata and half of Apulia. These regions are quite close to eachother, thus will have similar geographic concerns. With a 5 million district, it would just be Sicily and Malta, which could be fine too.
In the end Malta in a fair system would never have much power on a federal EU government. Their vote will be dilluted in the district or in the senate. If a nation doesn't want this, they don't belong in the EU imo. Now these districts would only matter for the EU senate, for regional (national) powers they would still control themselves.
In the end there will be powers given to the EU and all other powers remain with the nations, they do with it what they want (for example Germany might decide to give most power to their states, since most national powers went to the EU and thus the federal german government would become more symbolic, but the Maltese government would very much remain relevant seeing its size).
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@helpingeiz Nothing to do with naivity. I am well aware a large nation can use its soft power to get votes from smaller nations. But that will always be the case unless we move to a system where all "districts" are of around equal strength.
In my opinion the power to be able to stop something on your own (veto) is much more dangerous and an abuse of power than the larger countries would ever be able to do in a 2/3rd vote.
the reason the vetos are there are so that hte large countires with vested intrets cant bully others into things that would harm them.
And? With a 2/3rd vote 1/3+ just have to not let them be bullied. If large nations are able to bully enough smaller nations into voting their way to reach 2/3rd, then either the vote isn't so bad for (most of) the smaller nations, or the larger nations are willing to go so far that no small nation would dare to use their veto.
If large nations can bully other nations so easily, the EU would already be as good as over. The ability to veto decisions by one nation is an existential danger to the EU in the long run. Just look at Poland an Hungary who can just ignore EU rules because they know the other one will veto any sanctions against them.
Even without the EU (and thus a veto) larger nations would be able to bully smaller nations into doing what they want. They don't (or at least not to the extend to really worry about it), why? Simply because this would show all other nations that these larger nations can't be trusted and the smaller nations would bind together. An ofcourse it is not like the larger nations always are on the same side.
In theory larger nations can bully smaller nations into doing anything. In practice however the potential loss of soft power these large nations would suffer would impact them too negatively in the long run.
As for your example about the UK, what if France and the UK worked together to bully other smaller nations into only allowing UK and French fishers in the nordsea and the other large nations wouldn't care? The veto power would be worthless, afterall who would (dare to) use it? To stop a 2/3rd majority you would always have multiple people opposing the others, which would make it easier for smaller nations to band together as a stronger unified force. With a veto, the one using the veto would be targetted.
And well, what stops the smaller nations from exactly doing what you expect a large nation to do and bully the larger nations into giving large concessions in exchange for not vetoing something? A veto essentially could just turn the tables around, a 2/3rd majority is much better, safer and more democratic.
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@maxkick7656 I think you misunderstood the spitzenkandidaten system. The idea was that every group put a frontrunner (spitzenkandidat) forward. Then the council would nominate one off them based on their own dealings (who would be assigned for what post). Now they had to balance I believe three groups that were necessary for a majority in the parliament and each of this group had to be given something. The problem was that certain spitzenkandidaten were just not a possiblity, for example the candidate for the left group was unacceptable for certain countries due to past "problems" (punishing them for going against EU rules). But at the same time other candidates weren't possible due to nationality, group => other positions. As such the spitzenkandidaten system was shown to be ineffective due to the political reality of how the EU functions at this moment. They should have upfront insured that all the candidates were possible to be nominated by the council (which in Timmermans case was never going to happen) at the very least. But even then it could have been the candidate from the second or third largest group that would have been nominated. Never have I read that the goal was to have the largest group candidate to be "automatically" be nominated.
But honestly, who cares? I doubt more than a few voters actually knew who the spitzenkandidaten were.
actually because of Macron not liking any candidates
Incorrect, Timmermans was not possible due to eastern nations and EPP opposition, Vestager due to Charles Michel (right liberal) being put in as president of the council and Manfred weber due to again eastern nations (although Macron might not have like him). The other candidates were just from "irrelevant" groups.
In the end, the system was just a non-binding tool to make it seem that the voters had a more direct control over the next candidate. In reality, it never truly mattered, I doubt voters voted for any of the spitzenkandidaten.
In my eyes the entire political system of the EU needs to be reformed.
My vision would be:
- EU parliament reduced to 300-400 MEPs, but chosen in (at most) 4-5 EU districts (for example: south-east/south-west/north-east/north-west), so they represent the entire EU and not have to split loyalty between both home nation and party/ideology. (Seated in Brussels)
- EU senate consisting of around 200-250 senators who are elected in regions of around equal size (9-11 million people), 5 representatives per region. Their job is to represent the regions of the EU when creating legislation and other things. In essence they'd take over the "daily" job of the council. (Seated in Straatsburg)
- The EU council would be reduced to a "constitutional" organ in that they decide (together with the other bodies) far reaching decisions and reforms to the EU itself (like which powers does the EU have, the structure, funding, ...).
- EU government replacing the commission created by the parliament.
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@MrAapasuo and nations would feel left out as smallest nations get pushed to blocks with multiple other nations or next to a much bigger populations that drowns them entirely.
That's effectively what happens with small towns vs cities which are in the same district. By that argument nations should split up their nation even more (politically) than it usually already is. The idea is that in this nationality doesn't matter, because the people who get grouped together will generally have the same regionally concerns.
The EU's progress and reforms have ultimately always been about taken some powers from the nations and bringing it to the EU level. If the EU remains a union of nations instead of federalising, it will become stagnant and eventually this will cause so much problems that it might even lead to the fall of the EU within 2-3 decades. It can't remain that 11% of the population can in fact stop practically everything.
And the entire point of how the senate would operate is that most concerns will be regionally and thus there should be no "drowning out". Also that large nations would have more districts shouldn't matter. The entire goal is not to think anymore in terms of this or that nation when it comes for EU powers/level, but this or that region/district. This might initially feel weird to some, but after a while, people wouldn't really care and get used to this.
But this is also the reason why I wouldn't just abolish the council, only limit their regular work/power. If necessary something could be included like that the council can stop any decision of the senate (and thus EU level) with a majority if there was less than a 2/3rd majority in the senate.
Now I understand your argument, but we just shouldn't think about that, but rather how we proceed into the future, and if the small countries aren't happy with it, I'd say that the other nations should just tell them they are free to leave. Nations like Malta and Cyprus don't really offer a benefit to the EU anyway, it only offers them major benefits. And most other small nations wouldn't probably mind being in larger districts.
And in the end most nations aren't politically homogenous, now in the council it would seems like they are, but in reality even a government with bareky a majority would represent their view as that off their entire country, which also is again a great democratic deficit that can't really remain on the EU level.
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@glennvdh2348
*Almost all girls i know vote for Vlaams Belang with these reason: *
Anecdotal and thus worthless, it could be that there is a lot of support in just your area. A poll showed that among girls it was about 12% for VB and another 12% for N-VA, with boys it seems to be double.
the working class pays to much for our social system while the rich people can avoid a lot of taxxes
And yet while VB claims to be for the working class, their voting record shows a bit of a mixed message on that front.
a lot of money is spend on the southern part
Which is why we need to go back to a federal government with much more power that can directly improve the economic situation in Wallonia. Ther will always be transfers from a rich to poor region. What if in the future money flows to Limburg (already happening btw), what then? Split Flanders from Limburg? You know what, let's split Vlaams-Brabant, Waals-Brabant, Oost-Flanders en Antwerpen of from the rest of Belgium, after all these are the provinces that give money to all other provinces and that in the order I put them in.
they are much more lazy and are the first ones to strike.
Or you know, there are less jobs opportunity which causes higher amount of unemployement? And/or there economy is much more reliant on industry where strikes are more frequent in general? Or maybe it is just the political climate there, ie. the socialists are in power and to remain in power don't fix the economic problems? Either way most if not all of these problems could be fixed with a much stronger federal government where the right will hold quite some power.
Also paying a lot of taxxes for immigrants who call you a hooker on the street because you are a western girl...
Numbers please. Also is it immigrants or refugees? Further I agree things like this shouldn't happen and there must be a better integration and immigration policy. But what has VB done other than shouting about it? What has N-VA done the last few years they were in charge of that department?
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She could really harm the EU and European cooperation, which imo can be much worse, not just for France, but all of the EU.
Problem seems to be that no French president is able to solve the problems in France (not a right wing, left or centrist, all
3 have passed in the last decade or so), possibly because they are almost unsolvable with the power of the many different groups (unions, environmentalists, bussiness, farmers, ...) and the real situation? If that is the case there is no certainty any president can do better, but many can do a lot worse.
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@robynjackson348
The UK existed long before
And the Roman Empire existed long before its decline and collapse, this is an irrelevant argument, times change, circumstances change. One of the reasons UK joined the EC was because of declining trade with the commonwealth. And now the UK's main sector is financial services, for which access to the EU was a major benefit.
our Country
I don't live in the UK.
and how the EU are still trying to stop us becoming a global economy
This is a joke, right? How the hell is the EU trying to stop the UK from becoming a global economy? By not surrendering its economy to the UK?
*Not me I want a free Country able to make our own choices *
You are still tied by by other treaties, for example WTO rules, FTA agreements, international laws,NATO, ... The EU was only a small part of this. And the UK was one of the nations with the most say in the EU and actually was responsible for much of EU rules and regulations brexiteers criticise. And the UK for example was the driving actor to get eastern Europe into the EU.
and how we can spend our money
Oh, please, this is like people from Manchester or so saying they don't want Westminster to control how their money is spend.
In the end a negligable amount of UK money went to the EU, and this was easily made up by the economic benefits of being an EU member. We are already seeing capital leaving the UK to the European mainland and the predicted GDP hit makes the contribution to the EU budget seem like almost nothing.
Trying to keep us down.
LMAO, you clearly are delusional.
just look at Article 16 last week
The EU didn't activate article 16 last week, there was just some talk that they might do. And you do realise Jonhson threatened to activate article 16 over a month ago, and again a few days ago. British talking about article 16 are rather hypocritical, fine if you do it/threaten to use it, but if the EU does the exact same, oh my, the outrage.
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While there is no way to kick them out, if Poland doesn't back down it will happen. In the end the EU is made up of states, if a large majority of the states want Poland out to preserve the EU, they will find a way. This can go from levying sanctions against Polish officials to even just pushing them out in a defacto way, only letting them be in the EU in a symbolic manner (for example not including them in any future budgets and decisions and maybe even closing the borders for whatever made up reason). Sure these things might not be in line with the EU currently, but then again Poland doesn't accept the EU either according to this ruling.
In fact one can argue that by going against all these articles, the end result is that Poland sigining up the EU treaty wasn't lawfull, and therefor Poland was never actually a member of the EU, thus they can either sign up to all these articles (and if necessary change Polish constitution) or just leave/be kicked out as somekind of squatter.
In the end it will likely be up to the Polish people, if they don't force their government to back down or elect a new government that will do what is necessary to remain, they will bare the brunt of a defacto exit.
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@666Tomato666
The thing about heating, that electric heating, especially with heat-pumps is less carbon intensive than direct heating with gas, even if you use gas turbines for electricity generation.
I know, but that takes decades to transition. So while it has to be done and currently is being done, it wouldn't have changed anything in the short term.
Yes, certain industrial processes need natural gas specifically, but that need could easily be met with LNG.
LNG is way more expensive, which is why Germany didn't use that. And currently they don't have the infrastructure to import it, though they are working on getting that as fast as possible to replace Russian gas. Even then, there needs to be enough and the increased demand for LNG will drive up the higher price even more.
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@666Tomato666
You can deploy heat-pumps far faster than you can build nuclear power plants
Possibly if a nuclear power plant takes a long time to buid. But you can't just install electric heating everywhere in a few years. First you need the skilled labour force to do so, then the necessary equipment, ... but more importantly, not all houses can function with electric heating, they need to be isolated well and most people won't switch from gas to electric just like that, they'll only do it once it is needed, thus why it takes decades. The government can mandate that in new building and renovations electric heating should be installed, but they can't force owners to replace their gasboiler with electric heating just like that.
Also electric heating and the nuclear phase out argument have nothing to do with eachother. Obviously it would have been better to keep the nuclear powerplants open untill the end of their lifetime +-50 years lets say. However this wouldn't have changed anything about the current situation, since like I explained, electric heating wouldn't just suddenly replace gas in all buildings and nuclear would replace coal, not gas in the grid mix.
Sure, LNG is more expensive, but there's a difference when 1% of your economy has to pay 400% more for gas than when 15% of economy has to do the same and pay even more because they drove the demand higher.
This is pretty worthless statement. The gas price going up like this wasn't forseen and could have happened with LNG too depending on the situation. Actually LNG is already hit by price hikes due to the Russia-ukrainian conflict too if I am not mistaken, because that conflict send ripples over the entire world economy. For example Belgium imports most of its gas with non-Russian LNG, but the gas price still spiked here too.
And not importing for Russia would mean higher strain on gas demand from elsewhere anyway.
Also your 1% pay 400% more vs 15% ... doesn't even make any sense.
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saiswarrior
Sure, everyone who has an opinion about immigration, crime, religion and so on that doesn't agree with the progressives ideas are being considered a nazi
That is not true at all. If you think this, you are essentially blind. N-VA aren't called nazi's and yet they too want a harder stance on immigration, crime, religion, ... It's how you go about it and how far you're willing to go that determines whether someones a nazi or not. VB aren't nazi's, at least most of them not. Many are racists though.
The cordon is nothing more than an instrument to keep the status quo
The cordon when it was formed had a good reason. The program of the VB was most definitely racist and borderline nazi (if not already crossing that line). Now the main reason the cordon still exists isn't due to their being a cordon, but because no one wants to work with VB except for N-VA. It is kind of hard to break the cordon if the VB doesn't align at all with your goals. Greens and socialists can't agree with VB on separatist issue, the liberals can't agree with VB on both economical and separatist issues, N-VA on its own isn't strong enough to break it and the CD&V just doesn't give a shit about anything other than how it would look if they work with VB and the possible blowback they might get, especially if a VB/N-VA/CD&V government fucks up.
So it is not that parties don't work with the VB due to the existence of the Cordon anymore, it is that the Cordon still exists because no one wants to work with the VB. The cordon itself is essentially meaningless and is only talked about because it is easy to use as a reason why parties don't want to work with VB. If the cordon was still in effect VB would never have been involved and wouldn't have been invited to the palace initially together with other parties.
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@lordekker But this isn't about democracy, but international agreements. And it is not like the EU wouldn't renegotiate, the problem is that when you draw out of one part of an agreement the other parts also can be voided. Else if someone can unilaterally cut one part of the agreement, but the other remain, they can essentially cherry pick. And also the entire agreement(s) being voided would happen after renegotiations failed within a certain time frame.
The Greek situation is a terrible example. They needed help, the EU offered help. They did talk with eachother, but ofcourse the EU can't just hand over money without any consequences.
And yes, the EU should have reacted more in the Catalonian "troubles" or whatever you'd call it, but this has nothing to do with negotiating international treaties/agreements.
I honestly don't understand what the point is that you are trying to make. The agreement stated that there would be renegotiations, but if these didn't work out within a certain time, either of the two parties (EU and Switzerland) can unilaterally withdraw from a part of the agreement, but this would also void the rest of the agreement and negotiations would essentially start fresh to form a new agreement. To say that the EU doesn't negotiate/talk with smaller partners, but only with larger ones is stupid. And brexit is a clear example that the EU won't negotiate on several things seperately, but rather that many things are interlocked and are necessary to be discussed together, whether a partner is large or small.
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@lordekker
I was talking about the bilateral arrangements with Switzerland, which has nothing to do with Greece or Catalonia, but fine.
Ofcourse Greece can't just default, they are part of the Eurozone, them defaulting would cripple the rest of the eurozone and have a huge negative impact on the EU. Ofcourse if they decide to default they should first leave at least the eurozone. Leaving the EU for that might not be necessary, though I don't know what rules there are regarding defaulting while in the EU.
Any new nation would fall outside the EU. This is just how it is. A new nation also falls outside the UN untill it is recognized. That is just the normal procedures. This has nothing to do with keeping them down. Else you might see larger nations leaving the EU out of fear that they will be broken up into more regional nations. The EU should have definitely condemned the violence against Catalans and the refusal to have a referendum. However a newly independent nation shouldn't automatically enter the EU, they should follow the same procedures as any other new country. Maybe a quick deal could be made to essentially have bussiness as normal while they try to enter the EU. This would be the logical thing. However this would be blocked most likely by the original parent nation. Whether you or I like it or not, existing members of the EU have tremendous power in this, and it mostly is the fear of nations with independence movements that will never accept this. This is not the fault of the EU itself.
Swiss have overcrowded issues? EU again doesn't care.
There is a good reason why freedom of movement and free trade are interlinked. Honestly this is up to the Swiss, what is worse, the too large amount of EU migrants or economical pains. This isn't any different from a member of the EU or how any nation works for that matter. It is not that the EU doesn't care, it is that this isn't easily fixed.
And if they try to address it by their own they'll be completely cut out of trade with all their neighbors.
No, they can still trade, just as a third nation. Again nothing different from how bilateral deals work. What is your solution maybe?
Those deals should not be used as weapons to compel small partners to not even try address their issues.
How is it used as a weapon? The free trade and freedom of movement are interlinked, period. You can't have one without the other. This is also the major problem with brexit, and I wouldn't call the UK a small partner.
But they should at least be acknowledged and discussed.
And how is this not happening? After the previous referendum in 2014(?), the EU and Switzerland talked to see what could be done, how the demands of the referendum could be enacted. It is not like the EU just refuses to talk. This isn't and has never been the case.
Without no so subtle threats.
That the things in the deal were interlinked and would be null and void when either party goes back on any part of the agreement unilaterally is not a threat, just a fact. One both parties agreed to upon signing the agreement. This is to protect against cherrypicking. And again there is a period for negotiation before going down this route.
So in the end, what is your proposed solution?
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@lordekker
It won't be ignore just because the current regulations say so
And how is this different from the situations? The EU continuously enters into talks when necessary. However this doesn't mean these talks always get to a solution. There often at that level are no easy fixes and sometimes there are just not fixes except status quo or reverting back.
EU is dysfunctional because it's all about bureaucrats and legal binding agreements, while it ignores souls and feelings of the people.
Oh please. The EU is at this moment a complex international organisation. Unfortunately it is just baked in with such organisations that things move slowly. And it definitely just ignored the feelings of the people. The problem is that it needs to think about the feelings of so many people that it is much more difficult to act in a way that it seen as good by all. Do please offer examples, those are easier to discuss than this abstract saying that the EU doesn't care except bureaucracy.
In Switzerland (and most of Europe at a different degree) you have an issue and this issue is discussed.
This also happens in the EU. The problem is just that it is at a much bigger size, and many people don't even know what goes on there. Switzerland is actually one of the few countries where you often have the people deciding directly or where discussion about this happen at a lower level. Most often these discussion are limited to the political level and people just vote for the politician they think represents their views best.
Also, you are comparing nations with international relations. These just don't work the same way. Do you really think the US or any other large country works differently in regards to international agreements? Now, they all cover their side in a similar way.
EU today is built to deny exactly that. Don't listen, don't discuss, stick to status quo.
The EU is constantly changing things. People just don't notice this really.
Because entire slices of population are being denied representation or at least their representatives are denied agency to make their represented interests.
What the hell are you talking about? The European council and council of the European union are the elected federal governments of the memberstates, the EU parliament is elected directly by the people. Only the commission isn't directly elected, guess what? This happens in most non-republican parliamentary democracies.
First it lowers EU popularity Then grows resentment. Eventually it becomes hate.
EU poularity has grown in the last few years. And what you say applies to many nations, this isn't something just EU. You can't always make everyone happy.
I'm no Catalan being denied the right of self determination
The EU doesn't deny them that. Spain does. Though the EU should take a stance against that and mediate more between Spain and Catalonia. And if you talk about them dropping out and having to re-apply to join the EU, this isn't denying the right of self determination. This is a consequence of making a specific choice. Self determination doesn't mean you don't get any negative side effects of your choice, it just means you can make you own choices and then live with the consequences. It means they should be able to become independent of they want (and I agree with that), it however certainly doesn't mean the EU needs to keep them in the EU.
nor Greek being denied right of default and rebuild my life
Again, defaulting would seriously harm all other eurozone members. If you put it to a vote "should Greece be able to default while in the eurozone" in all those nations, what do you think the outcome would be? A big fat no.
Nor I am a Swiss being forced to migrate because house prices in my native village became to high.
And? Shouldn't this be something the Swiss government needs to adress? By putting a cap on house prices or something similar? Again, you can't have the benefits without the negatives. This is unfortunate, but nevertheless a consequence of the real world.
Political institutions are supposed to fix issues.
And they do, just maybe not always to everyones satisfaction, or as fast as people like. This isn't as simple as flipping a switch or just have some conversations.
Bureaucrats are the one keeping things as they are.
They are necessary to keep things as big and complex as the EU running. I'd like to see it slimmed down, but this would mean a kind of federalisation of the EU, something the EU can't do, only the memberstate governments.
n the case of the Swiss arguing the the single market is a single thing and one can't cherrypick is a disingenuous lie. That's Bruxelles stance. Not a fundamental issue in the market mechanics.
Then please tell, what is the magical solution you have?
UK were given special exemptions to prevent Brexit.
The extension? Just a delay of what would happen. The same could have been done with Switzerland if necessary and if both sides want it. Though I believe the Swiss government would be able to accept that even if the EU offered, because they'd have to honor the outcome of the referendum. Though I don't know enough about swiss law to know for certain. And well, brexit is essentially so far the only situation where all agreements between the EU and a partner would dissapear, so I can't see how you can claim it wouldn't do the same with another nation in a semi-similar situation.
And after that covid demonstrated time and time again how single countries can regulate people movements to address internal issues without hurting the single market.
Covid never saw borders close completely and/or not for long. Many nations still allowed trucks to pass the border and allow border crossing with a good reason. Furthermore any borderclosures were very short, closing the border with Switzerland permanently would be completely different.
The free trade and freedom of movement are simply NOT interlinked. Period.
They are in the EU period, and these days in most far reaching trade agreements., period.
I am going to end the discussion here, since to me it seems like you are talking about a very idealistic frame, while ignoring how the real world works.
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Русс град Just because it wasn't called Ukraine in the past, doesn't mean the idea/entity didn't exist under a different nation. Russia came from some of the principalities of the Kievan Rus, not all of them. The southern principalities (who make up current day Ukraine more or less) weren't part of Russia when it was formed.
Kievan Rus to Russia is like the Frankish carolingian empire to France. Or in other words, both the Ukrainian and Russian territories were part of the Kievan Rus in the past, but the southern principalities (ie. Ukraine) weren't historically part of the Russian kingdom/empire up untill somewhere in the late 17th century.
Russia claiming Ukraine based on Kievan Rus heritage is like France claiming Germany based on the Carolingian/Frankish empire.
And if you would like the Kievan Rus claims to be used, it would be Ukraine that would Claim the former Kievan Rus principalities (ie. modern day western Russia), not the other way around, since Kiev was the leading principality in the Kievan Rus untill the mongol invasion and subjugation, after which it was soon annexed by Lithuania.
Upper Ukraine was almost as long part of Lithuania/PLC as it was part of Russia.
And their is no 'Russian' religion. Orthodoxy existed long before Russia, in fact it is one of the older forms of Christianity and was adopted by the Kievan Rus leadership (and forced on the people) to become friends with the Byzantines (which btw always kept calling themselves romans, since you are so hung up on names), the original orthodox Christians.
There was not really such thing as Russian land or Russian people before the 16th century (You could argue that the slavic are Russian, but these also lived/live in the Balkans and Poland/Lithuanian regions, which were never part of a 'Russian' entity up untill recent history (or just never regarding the Blakans) and Southern Ukraine definitely wasn't part of 'Russian land', it was constantly inhabitated by tribes from the east up untill the Ottomans took control of that region. The Kievan Rus leadership were mostly Scandinavian vikings which took control of the Kievan Rus lands.
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@martinboskovic1009 "The Russian army is there as a deterrent in case Ucraine invades Donbas."
For that even a 1/10th or max 1/5th of the troopconcentration is necessary. No way Ukraine would try anything with that and if it does that are more than enough troops to stabilize the Donbas front and gather troops for a further invasion of Ukraine.
wars are expensive
You know what is also expensive? Mobilizing so many troops at the Ukrainian border. Sure a war is more expensive, but it isn't like this isn't.
By which standards?
Usually you compare it to a high in recent times, like 2013, when GDP was 800 billion dollars higher, or a drop of 35%. Though to be fair, compared to other European power, the Russian economy on average has taken a similar trend (or better yet, between nations hit hard by the economic crises like Italy and those that recovered, like Germany), and it is more that the 2013 high was unusual. Nevertheless is the the impact of the European sanctions following Crimea's annexation and the Donbas/Luhansk conflict clearly visible. And considering this and the fact that around 20% of Russia's current GDP is dependent on trade with the EU and the US, future heavier sanctions could really cause another great fall in Russia's GDP (and thus spending power for example into its military). If countries like Turkey, Korea and Japan can also be convinced to participate in sanctions (unlikely for the eastern countries, but you never know in case of war), this would be even more problematic.
In the end Russia is always better off if they have friendly relations with the west, or at least Europe, both from an economic and geopolitical aspect, not even conquering Ukraine would trump that. This likely is just a play in internal Russian reasons more than anything else, invading Ukraine would at best be a side effect.
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@bobbysbits2575 It probably is. It might be due to stringest criteria for their tally (like not too old, operational, at the frontline, ...).
Ofcourse we know that they already lost something like 2000 tanks at minimum (verified losses) and likely more since the start (maybe up to 2500?). Considering they started with around 3000 operational tanks in their total army (definitely not all send to Ukraine), they could actually have very low amount of operational tanks in Ukraine, it all depends on how many they've since then put back into service from their storage, new tanks produced, how many tanks are also out for maintenance/repairs, ...
So while it likely is an underestimation, it also might be close to reality for all we know.
If we trust Russian sources, they push out around 1500 new tanks/reactivated from storage out in a year time. That together with the 3000 tanks at the start would make 4500 tanks. Let's assume that they keep 1000-1500 in reserve outside of Ukraine in case they are needed elsewhere and you get 3000-3500 tanks. Assume 2500 have been taken out since beginning of the war and you get 500-1000 tanks. Then you also can assume quite some tanks are out for maintenance or repairs and you might get something like 300-800 operational tanks.
Ofcourse these numbers are only crude estimates, they for example might be willing to keep a lot less in reserve. But you get how they actually could have a much lower amount of actual operational tanks in Ukraine than most would expect.
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@mattayele1906 you can not just discredit the financial situations the US is in
Yes and no. This economic situation was always coming. The US has the idea that because they have the worlds currency, they can get away with this a lot more and that is at least partially true. Also on polling Americans consistently have a majority of people who say the US military has the correct funding or needs more, so cuts into it are unlikely. So at worst the US government needs to get a bit more creative in supporting Ukraine with funding from the military budget. Also again the amount of support the US is giving Ukraine is pretty low, so doesn't really impact the economic situation in the US in any meaningfull amount.
record level of inflation rates, high levels of everything
Which was mainly caused by the high gas and oil prices, these have now dropped and inflation levels are normally going to come down again this year to more normal levels, apparently even expected to dip really low (around 1.5%) somewhere at the and of this year to than pick up to the normal 2-3%. So by US elections, inflation will have normalised.
and the US debt was $3 trillion at the start of the afgan war and $2.4 trillion in 1992 at the gulf war
True, overall US debt/GDP spiked twice: the 2008 economic crisis and the covid crisis. As long as support for Ukraine isn't going to up this by any meaninfull amount, the US government will see it as a good way to weaken a rival (potentially for good). I also doubt the average American is going to think a lot about this.
and i think to defeat Russia it will const a lot more (possibly a lot longer) than the afgan war.
Except there is a huge difference in the fact that it isn't the US fighting a war on the other side of the war, just aidding an 'ally', as part of a bigger alliance. The US isn't going to need to spend anywhere close to the Afghanistan amounts to support Ukraine in defeating or at least significantly bleeding Russian forces.
The operational cost for 1 US soldier in Afghanistan was really high, between 400-1000k dollar per year This isn't something the US needs to care about for Ukraine, for Ukraine we are likely talking about a fraction of this. The US only needs to provide some equipment, training and information/intelligence and that as part of a much larger aid alliance.
but now if trump comes he can stop Ukraine support overnight.
Theoretically yes, but he'll have to make sure he has the support to do that. As it stands support for Ukraine is still strongly represented in congress in both parties. And even if this is the case, we are talking about something almost 2 years away. If it seems that this is how Trump will go, the current government could sanction a huge suppport package for Ukraine to arrive right before Trump (or rather another anti-war president) takes office, blunting any impact he/she will have for some time.
if someone comes along and says "America first" i wanne give you that $1.5 billion and "build the wall" rather than send it to Ukraine, i think people with go with that.
You think the US stopped with military operations under Trump? It certainly didn't. And $1.5b is quite low in the context of the wall cost.
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@jend5271
why would they continue to waste money on a war they can never win?
Who says Ukraine can never win? It was expected it would fall in weeks or even days and a year later not only are they still holding out strong, but they've retaken quite some territory too.
It all comes down to numbers. N in the end Russia just has more.
Even if it all comes down to numbers (it isn't, inferior forces have defeated superior forces quite often throughout time), stating Russia has more is just bullshit. Yes, theoretically Russia has more. More population, more tanks, more artillery, planes, ...
However its manpower pool is limited compared to Ukraine due to it being an attacker in an unnecessary war.
The amount of tanks is much lower than claimed, and Russia is losing tanks quite fast thanks to anti-tank systems from the west (which are much cheaper and easier to produce than those tanks).
Regarding artillery, Russia is currenlty using up its soviet stockpiles, once that is finished, it isn't entirely certain its new production can keep up with use, since they like almost everyone else too have cut back on production of things like this in the last 2-3 decades. As for the actual artillery systems, barrels do need maintenance overtime and the question again is how well Russia can keep up with it using artillery at this rate.
Russia has a lot more planes and missiles, but it cant really use it effectively. It's airforce is kept at bay by airdefense systems and missiles stocks are getting depleted for little to no gain.
Next to this one of the most important numbers is funding, here Ukraine is much better than Russia thanks to western support.
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@mattayele1906 No, most military equipment that is so far being send to Ukraine is from existing stockpile. I did read that US tanks might be newly produced items due to taking out certain state of the art things, but this might also be talking about reserve tanks needing a slight overhaul, not sure about that one.
all countries are saying they are low in the weapons stock and they needbto kick up manufacturing.
That is mostly for ammunition, and ofcourse most nations don't have production going for a prolongued war, if they send equipment that was in active use, they will need to replace it obviously. But this also goes for Russia, it too can't keep up with losses for much of their equipment/weapons.
inflation=interest rates
And like said, inflation is going back down to normal levels. More than a third of US debt is owned by US government institutions itself too.
Also a lot of debt isn't necessarily in variable interest rates, rather more static, which means for most of the debt interest rates are not likely to soar with inflation. New debt aqcuired this year might be at that higher interest rate due to inflation, but if that is only for one year, we are talking about something like $1.38T new debt this year and assuming an interest of 10%, that would make $138B in interest on top of lets say $660B, so $798B. Not even close to the crazy amount of your $2.79T.
sending $100s of billions to Ukraine every month
Who is talking about $100s of billions a month? The total US aid for Ukraine for the entire war (start to january) was only around $80B, that would make something like $6.5B/month, peanuts for the US and will definitely not have an impact on the everyday live of average Americans.
Ukraine needs $5 billion every monthly to run the gov, not excluding anything to do with the war
Which is the main thing the aid is given for, ie supporting Ukraine in the war/defence? So why act like this is only a tiny part of the equation?
Trump almost pulled out of NATO in 2019 he said" America first", time is not in Ukraine side.
There is a whole lot different between Trump threatening to pull out of NATO because of perceived injustice in members funding and something else entirely to abandon a friendly nation to a long held rival, especially when the needed financial aid is very small in comparison to what the US 'gains'. Quite a lot of Trumps decisions (or the shown intention) have been stopped because of what his advisors told him, definitely in regards to the military.
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@terron7840
The roman empire didn't collapse due to diversity, there just were a lot of people profiting from it being weakened by many other factors. Most important factors were economic troubles, civil wars for power, pressure from outside the empire, ...
The USSR also didn't fail due to diversity, rather the problem was that it couldn't keep up with the western world in terms of economy and socially. It mostly was the economic factor. Also the USSR isn't a good example to use. Most of it started fracturing in nations that were only under their control for a few decades.
The austria-hungarian empire definitely wasn't helped by its multicultural nature, but in the end it was economic problems caused by WW1, its bad action in the war and Wilson who refused to allow Austria-hungary to remain united that really caused the collapse. There were (possible) plans to make the slavs the third entity in the empire (like hungary), but there never was time for it to materialize.
The Ottoman empire is also a great example of how diversity at the end causes an empire to rupture. However it wasn't the diversity that actually started it to weaken, the diversity became a negative after it weakened and showed this weakness. Hell, the ottoman empire didn't collapse completely untill world war one when it was carved up by the entente.
The thing is that empires are made up of several different cultures/people, if that isn't the case they aren't really empires to begin with. Now, you could say the US might be an exception (if you want to call it an empire), but that is because it was created by people that mostly come from one culture group and even in the US there are distinctions between the regions. They have an overall culture and then different subcultures. In the end all large empires were diverse and eventually all empires fall. It is easy to just point to diversity, but that is much much too simplified.
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@istvanglock7445
Yes, but these "answers" were purely token slaps on the wrist
Russia lost around 45% of their GDP in the years after sanctions for the Crimean annexation were introduced, hardly a slap on the wrist. Currently they only reason there economy isn't completely going down the drain is the influx of money from gas and oil exports to Europe being used to artificially keep the economy up. The EU already is going to phase out Russian oil by the end of this year and plans to move away from Russian gas as soon as possible. Next to that the EU and US have supported Ukraine with billions of dollar in financial and military aid.
Calling all this 'token slaps on the wrist' just shows you have no idea of what actually was done. It isn't that the West/EU isn't doing anything, rather Russian leadership just doesn't seem to give a shit, underestimated what would be done and are now forced to see things through to the end.
which Russia would have regarded as a price well worth paying - which is why it continued
At this moment Russian leadership has little to gain pulling back from Ukraine. The hardest sanctions are essentially going to remain, namely Europe moving away from Russian gas and oil in the next year(s). Moreover European nations are still going to spend more on defence, NATO will still be strengthened and Ukraine will still be supported by the west. Next to that Russia already has lost a lot of military equipment and troops and getting out without gaining anything is thus a net loss for Russia, they don't get any benefit from it, while having suffered all this losses for nothing. And then we are not even talking about the fact that such a loss could destabilize Putins support with the Russian people.
If anything earlier sanctions were too effective, they forced Russia to become already less connected to the EU and they have not much more to lose with the current ones.
Short of getting directly militarily involved, which likely would just escalate things causing more casualties, the west has no real options left to push Russia to a peace agreement/witdrawal, short of helping Ukraine make the invasion too costly on the ground.
Appeasement is when the cost you inflict is less than the benefit the aggressor receives.
That is completely wrong, in that case you could say that even going to war with Russia could be appeasement if they think they'd gain more from it than they'd lose, which is obviously ridiculous.
Appeasement in an international context is a diplomatic policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power in order to avoid conflict. The opposite of what the EU and US have done, since instead of giving concessions (like withdrawing nato from Eastern Europe), they have only doubled down on NATO presence in that regions and have instituted some of the harshest sanctions on such a large nation in decades, maybe even since before WW2.
Until this war, the west has never inflicted serious costs on Russia in response to its aggression.
Losing half of your economy and going to lose another 1/4-1/3 of the remainder in the next years is hardly a non-serious cost. Like in that case Russia could have lost up to 60% of their economy since 2014, that is massive.
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@DomR1997
and some easily circumvented trade sanctions that had no real impact on Russia's continued aggression.
These aren't actually easily circumvented and the Russian government has to push billions upon billions into the economy to just keep it artificially stable, that is money that doesn't go to for example the military. Russia also had to stop production on quite some of their weapons production since they lack the parts due to the sanctions (for example their tanks production is completely shutdown according to reports). If you think the current sanctions are weak, you don't know a single thing about it.
Russian leadership just don't care about the sanctions since they are still pretty well off with what they have within Russia and accepting a loss in Ukraine would put them in a much worse position with the Russian people. Russia is hurting, badly, they just had prepared quite some financial reserves to be able to last a bit despite the sanctions. The west even froze half of these reserves, worth a total of more than 300 billion dollar, 1/3 of the entire yearly GDP of the Russian economy.
I remember the allies also giving Hitler a stern talking to and imposing trade sanctions on Germany though
Actually they didn't. They accepted Hitlers annexation of Austria, Sudetenland, ... Only once he kept going did they start to slowly go against him. Currently the west hasn't recognised any of the Russian annexations and has impose sanctions of such a severity that no one expected them would do so.
it's that the west's approach was as effective as appeasement in ww2.
Except that is complete bullocks. If Hitler stopped with the sudetenland and Austria, Germany could have kept these lands without any sanctions and negative consequences due to the appeasement policy. The sanctions after the Crimean annexation caused Russia to stop its modernisation of its armed forces, which likely helped out Ukraine currently. Moreover it caused the Russian economy to weaken. More than likely without these sanctions Russia would have gone into Ukraine years ago, not long after the annexation of Crimea. At that moment Ukraine's army was much weaker than it is now and Russia might have been able to take Ukraine in a much shorter time. However the sanctions back then showed Russia that the west was willing to impose hard sanctions and they needed to take time to create a high amount of currency reserve funds to withstand worse future sanctions with the coming conflict.
Moreover even if Russia is (semi-)successfull in Ukraine, the sanctions essentially hamstrung their future. They will have to reduce the military budget after their military already was hit hard, they can't keep their economy artificially stable for long, likely causing internal problems, .... In the end they won't be able to keep Ukraine or a large part of it occupied at all. Hitler on the other hand saw the Germany economy increase and also its potential military increase, the opposite of what is the case for Russia now.
Whether you like it or not, there are no sanctions the west can impose on Russia that will stop the war in Ukraine on the shortterm. If the west wants to do more than they do now, it would be sending in military troops, but this would be essentially a declaration of war in Russia's eyes and is more likely to spark WW3 and having Russia use tactical nukes against ukraine, thus a big escalation, rather than ending the war.
What do you think the west could currently do to force Russia to stop the war?
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@LancesArmorStriking Then again Ukraine is unlikely to ever get Crimea back unless something fundamentally changes in Russia, so it doesn't really matter what the people in Crimea think.
Also since we aren't talking about a natural river, but a canal, Ukraine can just say that it is not their bussiness to supply Crimea, which wouldd cost them in maintaining the canal. It is essentially up to Russia to make sure Crimea has the necessary water supply. It isn't about punishing/convincing the people in Crimea, just let Russia deal with the consequences of their actions. At the very least Ukraine can demand payment for the water.
If it was a river, it might be different, since there actually are international laws on that, not on this canal. It would make most sense that the court rules that it is up to Russia to provide water to Crimea, however they need to, be it a deal with Ukraine, ferry water from Russia or build a new canal/pipeline from Russia.
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@Chikanuk But not with water
Ofcourse it can be supplied with water, there are thes things called pipelines, canals, trucks, ships, ... The romans even built aquaducts 2000 years ago, imagine that. ofcourse Russia can supply Crimea with water, it just will not be cheap to do so, but that is not Ukraine's problem. I am pretty sure the Russian territories right next to Crimea also need water. Russia has a very large lake around 200km from Crimea and several smaller ones even closer. FYI, the canal in Ukraine from the Djnepr to the Crimean border is around 100km long, so it is not like Russia can't build something similar themselves.
And btw, the main reason for that water that came from Ukraine is for agriculture, not drinking water, to survive Crimea has enough water of itself. And food can even more easily be imported by Russia then water if truly necessary.
All this "they cut of the watersupply" is just Russia trying to stick it to Ukraine, I really doubt it will hold up in court.
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@Chikanuk closing down a canal that wasn't even there originally is not a violation of human rights, especially when it is mostly used for agriculture. Crimea itself should have enough water themselves in terms of crucial need.
And ofcourse it is about Russia. Now that Crimea is under Russian control it is up to Russia to provide Crimea's basic needs.
(which was build by USSR btw)
So? The USSR is collapsed and no more, moreover it is Ukraine that needs to pay for its maintenance and operation.
Yes. So its violation of human right
No, it is not, and the court will rule as such.
Also it was doing by purpose and with evil intent, so its also is a crime agains humanity.
This again is incorrect, Crimea doesn't have an automatic right to this water or the usage of this canal. As long as the crimean people have enough water for basic necessities (which they have even without Ukraine's water), there is no problem.
And this will fail in court, cuz such courts have nothing with justice.
So you know you are full of bullshit, realize the courts will also know this and are already covering your arse by blaming the 'bad' courts LMAO.
Before that 85% of crimean water supply come from ukraine.
And a lot of that was used for fields. You see Russia already provides around 73l of water per day per citizen in Crimea since 2017, basic needs according to the WHO are between 50l and 100l, so apparently basic needs are already fullfilled according to the WHO standards.
In fact households before the crisis used around 100-450million cubic meter of water per year, Crimea's water resources are 430-915 million cubic meter of water per year. So their is enough water for households, just not for agriculture, industry and expanding military.
And the Geneva convention btw states that it is the occupier (ie Russia here) that needs to provide the basic necessities (ie drinking water).
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@Chikanuk
85% of water IS basic necessity.
What exactly do you mean with this? I can't respond if I don't know. 85% of what water?
If for example China will block all water supply to India (from Tibet) - t will be a crime against humanity too.
Except this would be blocking rivers, natural waterflows. Like I said that is regulated by international laws, human made canals like in Ukraine-Crimea are not.
Russia 100% will lose court battle simply cuz West is currently rusophobic and hypocritic.
You already proved my point, Russia had nothing to lose. Eventhough they knew they'd almost certainly lose the case, they could respond the way you do now, claiming they just weren't treated correctly.
Like USA biggest "paladin" in the West in the past decades illegally invade several countries and cause more then million of deaths (at least)
I am not going to defend the US actions in the middle east, since I never supported it. Just one thing, the USSR/Russia did this too, remember Afghanistan among others.
And remember how they made a fake proof of bio weapon in front of whole world in UN?
It was nuclear bombs, not bio weapons if I remember correctly. And the UN refused to give the US go ahead to invade since there wasn't enough credible evidence, they attacked despite this anyway.
Saudi arabia have laws what made homosexuality and sorcery (lol) a death penalty crime... But nobody cares.
I care, I just can't do anything about it. And this has nothing to do with this discussion.
Cuz they big friend of West
Friends of the US. For most other countries they are just a trading partner. I hope that the electrification of our society will cause SA lose the power it now has thanks to oil and actually be held accountable somewhat, even if just by some sanctions. I however do not want any kind of invasion or whatever in that region.
Its kinda funny how much hypocrisy western world have right now. "Kinda", cuz this cause real deaths and suffering.
Except I am not hypocritical, I agree with you on those things. They weren't/aren't right.
For example if West didnt overthrow Ukraine president and didnt treat Russian military bases,Crimea would still be Ukrainian.
Oh sure, if only Russia could have kept their puppet in charge in Ukraine, they wouldn't have to take over crimea and supported the Don Bass rebels (since they already would control it indirectly anyway). Does this make you feel better, thinking this way?
I don't know exactly whether the removal of the president was justified, or whether it was actively done by the West. What I do know is that according to the polls these days most people in Ukraine are looking more favorably towards the west than to Russia. Even most people in the Don Bass region would like to remain part of Ukraine, either as it was before or with special privileges (and there is a generally support in Ukraine for giving Don Bass and possibly Crimea after a reintegration such special status, like an autonomous region within Ukraine).
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@Chikanuk @qe qe Blocking access to drinking water is a crime. Ukraine did it.
Except, they didn't. Crimea has enough water to provide their own drinking water, the water from Ukraine is used to water the crops/fields.
And when I talked about natural rivers, I was talking about water that was used for more than just drinking water/basic needs.
at least USSR build infrastracture.
It must not have been good infrastructure if they did. The US pumped hundreds of billions in projects to improve live in Afghanistan, but sure they didn't do anything.
Not nuclear weapon.
I have to admit, we were both wrong. They said weapons of mass destruction, with which they meant/insinuated both. Though they knew Iraq didn't have nukes and they had no evidence or knowledge about biological weapons.
According to polls it was literally 50/50 west-east split in Ukraine.
Not according to latests polls, I guess this might have to do with Russia annexing a part of Ukraine and supporting the Don Bass rebels, which causes the conflict to still linger after all these years. I have no doubt this antagonised many neutral people or even people slightly pro-Russian, causing them to look more favorably on the west now than Russia.
Ukraine government for 25 years talk about this autonomy and privileges
Except there now is widespread support for it and it could end a conflict that has been raging for years and hinders Ukraine immensely.
EVERY, literally every big ukraine politician (inc presidents) says (mainy for ukrainian public on local media ofc) what Ukraine will not follow Minsk Protocol.
You mean the protocol that the Ukrainian government actually tried to implement, but that time after time was violated by the rebels and time after time they denounced them, that protocol? It was doomed to fail from the start, since the rebel leadership doesn't want it, they either want independence or become part of Russia.
every big power, no matter - Russia, USA, China, or else will have puppet states, or client states, or junior partners, or vassals - call whatever you like.
And? How does this make it better that Russia went after Ukrainian territory the moment they lost their pro Russian puppet president. It is not like they try to reinstate him or such, they are just using it as an excuse to take more direct control over Ukrainian territory.
Russia btw ensured Ukraine's territorial and political integrity in exchange for Ukraine handing over the nukes left in their country after the collapse of the USSR. So, by annexing Crimea and supporting Don Bass rebels, Russia broke that treaty. If only Ukraine had kept their nukes, Russia wouldn't have dared what they did now.
And if big power half the globe away from you try to overthrow your puppet state goverment right at your doorstep
Can you please prove to me it was the US that was behind the overthrowing? If I remember correctly it was more about the treaty with the EU that was about to fail due to the president wanting to keep his ties wit Russia intact. This sparked large protests. Yanukovych tried to crack down on them and several dozen Russian agents have been implicated in helping with that. Russian involvment just made things way worse. It lost the President any trust there still was among pro-EU protestors.
P.S. - forceful illegal removal of legit president is never justified. Never.
Bullshit, there are certainly situation in which it is justified to illegally remove a president. Whether this was the case in Ukraine I don't know. Personally I don't think so, then again maybe it would be different for those who actually were there protesting and met with harsh crackdowns.
It would have been best if the mediated deal the EU helped to achieve was accepted by the protesters, which would have led (among other things) to earlier presidential elections. Maybe it just came too late, I don't know.
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@rehurekj
It are indeed mostly Vlaams-Brabant and Waals-Brabant that get their wealth from Brussels.
And nothing from above erased this unprecedented level of unemployment in Brussels
You do know that unemployment in Brussels is lower than in Antwerp and Ghent right? It is apparently more of large city problem than just a Brussels problem.
Also you say splitting is coping out while sentence before you say Walloons would demand splitting Brabant even further
No, I said Brussels would want that, not Wallonia. What do you think Brussels would want more, living in a dutch speaking nation that will overtime force dutch upon them, or staying with the french speaking community? And ofcourse if Brussels remains with Wallonia, it will ask for a corridor. Even if this is just a highway (E19 between Brussels and Wallonia) that becomes Brussels ground, or/and maybe they'll want for example the part of the Zoniënwoud between Hoeilaart and Sint-Genesius-Rode. But this obviously is all just speculation.
As for the stats, even more reason for Wallonia to want Brussel, many jobs in Brussel might be moved from Vlaams-Brabant to Wallonia. If Wallonia at the same time makes a deal with Brussels to give lets say half of income from people working in Brussels but live outside it to Brussel, Brussel could become a rather wealthy region. And if people from Vlaams-Brabant keep working in Brussels, they'll have to pay part of the income tax there in case Brussels and Vlaams-Brabant are not part of the same nation.
Why not keep Brussels bilingual capital district of Flanders instead
Honestly if Belgium splits it will be under pressure from flemish nationalists, do you really think Brussels with a majority french will just trust that Flanders would keep Brussels bilingual?
In case of partition Walloons would have to grant similar autonomy to their own German speaking Eastern Cantons
And? That region is straegically irrelevant on practically all things compared to Brussels. The eastern cantons won't be an issue. They'll either rejoin Germany or stay with Belgium (Wallonia) like it does now.
and as i said before Flemish ppl have bad history and past bad experience with being left at mercy of Walloons so I dont think they would agree with condemning their compatriots in Brussels to be assimilated.
And Walloons would trust them after seeing Belgium split under impulse of Flemish nationalism? You forget that Brussels is mostly french. If it come to it, it was Flanders choice and this gives enough reason to Brussels to decide for itself who to join and whether to remain bilingual. Losing the last vestiges of dutch in Brussels would probably be a cost of Flemish independence.
Maybe you should look at historical, cultural and underlying political and socioeconomic reasons why significant number of Flemish vote how they vote
I am Flemish, I know how Flemish people vote and why. Many of the current votes for VB and N-VA have nothing to do with seperatism, or anti-Walloon tension, but more as a protest vote against the traditional parties and against things like the immigration problems. Only around 15% of Flemish want independence and only 33% want more power going to the regions.
In the end if Belgium ever splits I see two possible solutions for Brussels:
1. They remain with Belgium (or Wallonia + Brussels then), they possibly get somesort of link to Wallonie, be it one town, a piece of forest and/or the E19 highway. Whether they remain Bilingual in this scenario will be up to Brussels itself most likely.
2. They become a European capital district similar to Washington DC, government by the EU and will most likely remain Bilingual or possibly even losses a main language and becomes just multilingual (which it already kind of is, just not officially) or a language like English is added to give it 3 languages.
Now after all that, I don't see Belgium splitting up anytime soon, so this is just a theoretical exercise/thought process.
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@AnaIvanovic4ever
Why in the world would the EU bureaucracy improve if we gave it more power?
Because now the system is created exactly to keep the power with the memberstates. For example the reason why there isn't a directly elected EU president is pretty simple, he would replace the commission. Considering the commissioners are proposed by the council (ie national government leaders) this already takes power away from them both the choice and because they can't appoint one from almost any country. Secondly it would mean a redistribution of power. Some powers from the commission would have to go to the EP (for example proposing new legislation) and other powers will have to be taken from the council to make the office of the president not just a seemingly empty thing. This is just one easy thing to point at.
The areas where they the EU has lots of power (farming, fishing) are catastrophes of bad policy.
Except you just proved my point. These are areas where memberstates (like France) are executing a lot of their influence/power. Any change proposed to it by the EU that isn't positive for France, will be shot down by it, even if the change overall is an improvement.
Also, Europe is diverse without a common language.
And this obviously has stopped us from cooperating for the last several decades, right? And if that is a problem, just choose a common language that all memberstates will teach in schools as a secondary/tertiary language. English makes most sense, since many people can already use it, it is the most used language in the world and in several large sectors, the language of our allies and there aren't any major english speaking nations in the EU (anymore).
Sweden and Ireland do not have the same view on abortion, for example
Also not difficult to solve, just either not make any EU laws on it, or a law that allows memberstates to deviate from it if their is enough support for that in their country. Or whatever. In the US the states also have many of their own laws. Sure they can be superseded by federal law, but clearly this happens not with everything.
but the European Parliament should be abolished and it should go back to being a cooperation between soverign nations.
This is going backwards, the worst thing that you could do.
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@ArawnOfAnnwn Where do you get from that the Russian army is larger? The combined EU armies are larger both in active/reserve manpower and military investment (even in PPP, ie accounting for lower prices in Russia for the same equipment).
The only place the Russian army is larger is military ground equipment (ie. tanks, SPG's, towed artillery, ...), though the question is how much of that is old stuff from the soviet era that might have seen only limited updating?
Now, if you were to add the US to it, there is no question between which armed alliance is larger, not even close. Even the old manpower advantage Russia historically held is now in the hands of the EU. Or the industrial strength from in WW2, also in Europe's favor now.
The only real thing were Russia could really hurt the EU in the shortterm is import of gas (and oil maybe). Though in wartime the US likely would try to quickly jump in and the EU would also quickly try to get it from the middle east. In the end Europe might maybe suffer 1-3 seasons of real difficult times regarding power supply and heating. Russia however likely would never be able to sell fossil fuels to Europe again, no matter how the conflict end. And this export makes up 15% of russia's entire GDP.
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@answerman9933 Well, in terms of larger systems/arms, it indeed is mostly limited to air assets, though remember, this still goes about tens of billions. Looking into the smaller arms systems (or parts of it) would be quite some work considering it depends from country to country. Overall Europe makes up around 15% of US export (so low mostly due to middle eastern nations being such a large buyer, which is no surprise with SA and Israel being their main costumers and Iraq also after the occupation), but the US obviously hopes to increase this by getting nations to spend more.
For example Germany now seems to be looking into buying F35 with the increase in their military budget, something that before was never really a consideration.
And remember, a fighter plane for example isn't just the sale price, but also income later on from spare parts, advice, changes, ...
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@toddfulton2280
When has enriching our adversaries worked?
You aren't just enriching your adversaries, but also yourself. And the EU is a clear example of it working out.
The UK and France also did so in 19th century, turning into allies after being rivals for centuries before.
Let's take the Islamic Republic of Iran as an example. We've had that country almost entirely isolated for almost half a century.
And still they haven't changed, while also now working with Russia.
They haven't been able to pose a threat to the scale of Russia or the PRC
Because they never could be? They don't have the economy or technology to become so. You are comparing a former super power and a rising superpower with a regional power.
North Korea, as an example, is interesting. With the level of isolation, it's hard to tell, but I would guess that by the cult of personality and lack of information from outside NK, the citizens may not be as opposed to the regime as they are in Iran.
And that supports you viewpoint how? It imo shows more that isolating a country completely isn't necessarily going to make it change, but rather turn more into itself and more steadfast in their own beliefs.
I'm sure lots of people thought similar things about the Soviets and Germany
And that wouldn't have been a problem if they acted like the EU has done now: no appeasement as answer to violence. Appeasement was the problem.
When good negotiates with evil, only evil wins
And when good doesn't attempt to turn evil good with all possible means, evil will remain or will have to be eliminated by force. It isn't as black and white as that statement makes it seems. People are too complex to categorized like that.
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@toddfulton2280
Containment isn't about regime change
Where did I talk about regime change?
Containment is about limiting the threat level an adversary poses.
Yeah, because that worked out well with NK who got nuclear arms, and Iran also would have gotten them without deals being made to prevent it and if only isolationism was done.
Engagement is about regime change
Or interconnectivity. You don't necessary need regime change to foster decent to good relations.
I find it odd that people will do whatever they can to avoid buying American gas or oil because "America bad"
It is often actually more about costs. The US gas and oil often is more expensive when shipped to Europe and other places around the world compared to many other sellers.
but are perfectly fine doing business with the PRC because "it's just business, who cares if they are fascists, communists, or religious fanatics, as long as it's not in my backyard".
No one in Europe makes a problem of trading with the US out of ideologic reasons, rather the US usually is more expensive and tries to force/push their products on others in several ways.
Yes, France and the UK became allies, but it wasn't economic trade that did that. It was shared enemies and resolution of colonial disputes.
It was both. If you don't improve relations with a rival, you aren't going to ally with them against other rivals most of the time, rather try to play them against eachother.
Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are all very much interested in a return to old style imperialism and a degradation of the world order that France and the UK helped to establish.
Russia, certainly. Not sure NK and China belong in that list, at least not more than the US and some other western nations.
As soon as Trump says he's going to invade Greenland, everyone is ready to go to war with the US
Not going to war, protecting if acted against. Also this is due to regional concerns. Tibet isn't exactly close to Europe and definitely not part of it. The annexation of Tibet also was criticized, but it is kind of hard to not look hypocritical if European nations still had many colonies at that time.
or threatens to invade Taiwan, crickets
China's goal to annex (or retake as they see it), is quite often criticised and several nations indicate they would support Taiwan without openly saying it. Currently China has already been talking about Taiwan for decades without really moving towards it, ofcourse it then will not be talked about and definitely not as much as when Trump suddenly comes out with or hinting to wanting to annex Greenland, Canada, Panama canal and potentially invading northern Mexico all in the span of maybe a month. And this is even worse than China, because it is backstabbing and threatening who are supposed to be you closest allies.
Israel fights a war against Hms after 10/7
Israel is commiting a genocide, has been illegally occupying the Gaza strip and West Bank for decades and is an apartheid state. You can be against Hamas' tactics, but they are actual freedom fighters that have international right on their side much more Israel.
Hell, the genocide in Gaza and western reactions to it has damaged the established international order more than anything else in decades by far.
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@toddfulton2280
Their militaries are stuck 70 years in the past.
Their militaries likely wouldn't be in much better shape without that containment. It isn't like western nations would have sold military equipment to them and Russia doesn't give as much about the sanctions anyway.
Nuclear weapons have limited strategic value other than ensuring mutual destruction
And yet they are strategically much more significant than a strong conventional NK/Iran.
Neither NK nor Iran have the capability to expand their territory
They wouldn't have that either way. The only way for NK to expand is into SK, facing a coalition that would still be vastly superior to its own.
As for Iran, they already fought a long bloody war with Iraq in the 80's for basically no gain. Moreover any war they'd openly start against their neighbours would likely end up in proxy war with the other side supported by the west if they deemed Iran action dangerous. There is a reason Iran focusses on using proxy's.
No, Israel is not committing genocide
It is. This is already confirmed by basically every major independent international organisation. Anyone still refusing to call this a genocide is just refusing to see the truth because it doesn't fit their narrative. Even jewish holocaust survivors call it a genocide. Some even call it worse since at least the Germans didn't have gall ot openly brag and celebrate it. But I am sure you know better than all the genocide experts and those who lived through other genocides 🙄
and the Palestinians in Gaza were not under occupation
According to international law, the UN and even the US they have been under occupation for decades. Just because Israel didn't actively place troops in Gaza doesn't mean it isn't occupied. It still controlled all trade, food, water, energy, travel, ... in and out of Gaza, which still made it an occupied region. Don't talk about things you clearly have no knowledge off.
Ireland literally wants to change the legal definition of genocide just so it can apply to Israel
Ireland doesn't need to change the definition of genocide for it to apply. Most experts on the matter already pointed out it fits to the recognised definition of genocide.
People are intentionally confusing legitimate acts of war with genocide
There is nothing legitimate at purposefully targetting civilians, blocking aid, blowing up all major government buildings, mosques, schools, ... (even after securing them), bulldozing still standing houses, cutting off food and water supply, ... The ICJ literally told Israel to stop many of its actions and Israel only intensified those soon after.
Israel currently is one of (if not) the most lawless countries concerning violations of international and humanitarian law and the only reason it gets away with it is the support of the west.
the CCP is actively engaged in gross human rights violations of the Uyghurs, including forced labor, internment camps, and cultural suppression
Compared to Israeli violations, there is little evidence of the large scale persecution of the Uyghurs. Not saying it doesn't happen, but there is no evidence whatsoever it rises to level of what Israel has been doing against Palestine.
*Yes, China and NK want to overthrow the current world order that is preventing them from attaining their imperialist ambitions. *
And yet it is the west that has show much more disregard to the current world order and imperialistic ambitions/actions than China and NK.
and they have proven they are not to be trusted to play by the rules
Currently China is more playing by the international rules than the US is. But ofcourse if you are blinded by US propaganda you'll likely not realize this.
Maybe to help you understand, I'm starting to think that the US should go back to the relationship we had with Russia in the 1800's, start buying their resources, selling them advanced technologies, giving them access to advanced American weapons and platforms, advanced manufacturing technologies, etc. Let's see how Europe does with that.
What has that do with anything? Are you maybe that kind of person that if they don't get their way with someone, they'll just try everything to spite them?
I have no problem with the US buying Russian resources if they want. Selling them advanced technologies etc, that wouldn't make sense from any perspective, politically, financially, ...
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@narff0292 The deficit under trump has skyrocketed to post 2008 levels, this while Obama had lowered it to almost half that. Trump doesn't care about the deficit or debt, if he did, he might now already have had a budget surplus. That the deficit increases while (according to himself) the US has the strongest economy ever just shows how incompetent or uncaring he is towards US debt. Claiming otherwise is just foolish.
Trump: hate him or like him he has made America great again.
Except generally outside of the US, the US is now seen at its weakest position since the fall of the USSR. Its support in the world and among allied populations have drastically decreased, while the aversion towards the US has just grown. Politically Trumps action have made the US seem less reliable and has opened the way for nations like China or even Russia to gain influence and in case of China taking a step to a possible future leadership role in the world. Livingstandards in the US have decreased, causes life expectancy to go down. Huge drug crisis and suicides, ... If the US now is great again, I hold my heart for when it slips below that. The only thing in the US that is great is its GDP, incarceration rate and its military.
Mexico is paying for the wall, USMCA
Bullshit, USMCA is a minor upgrade of NAFTA, which might be beneficial to the US, but will never cover the costs of the wall even in the slighest, maybe a very small part of it. That USMCA cause Mexico to pay for the wall is a talking point, no more than that.
How is it good for bunch of in-elected bureaucrats running the institute that passes laws
I guess you mean unelected? The commission is appointed by the elected governments and approved by the parliament. Basically this is just like the US cabinet.
The parliament is directly elected by the voters in an election.
The European council is comprised of the elected heads of states (or their ministers) and is basically like if you put the presidential powers in the hands of the governors in the US. Not really effective, but definitely not unelected.
Are there unelected bureaucrats working behind the scenes? Ofcourse, just like is the case in the US. The unelected bureaucrats talking point is just an unfounded popular myth.
The EU is a cancer to Europe
Then I guess the US would be a cancer to America. The EU is now essentially where the US was early in its existence, while the system is a bit different due to the way it has moved to this point, the essence is the same. The states still want to hold the power, but also understand the need for a larger united entity.
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@Livestream Fail
Garbage "hasn't been a poll" we don't base things or garbage polls
Honestly then you are not even worth discussing with. Since polls are the only thing we can use to discuss about how much support x or y has. Polls might not always be accurate, but there are more often right or not. And often if they are wrong it is just with a few % points. So if no poll has shown even close to 40% support for independence, it is extremely unlikely, more like impossible that there is a 50%+ support for it.
that have been wrong about basically every election and referendum for the last 4 years
really? like what exactly?
If you're so confident about your side winning why don't you support having a referendum on it then?
Because it is a non-issue? Why would I support a referendum on a non-issue? There are plenty of things more worthy of a referendum than this. Especialy since referendums cost money, time and sometimes even social unrest. You wouldn't support a referendum being organised about Belgium becoming a fully socialist state or authoritarian, eventhough there will be people that might prefer that, or do you?
because you know you would lose and the fake country of Belgium would finally end
I am certain that the separatists would lose. Just because I don't support a referendum that I do so because I am afraid of the outcome. I also don't support a referendum about taxing everyone 90-100%. Not because I fear enough people would vote yes, but rather because I know that there is no way it will win and would thus just be a waste of money, time and effort.
VB is going to be the largest party majority
So is it going to be a majority and/or the largest party. If it is the first, no that won't happen. If it is just the latter, yes that might happen. Will it? I don't know. Would it mean something? Yes, that people are fed up with the traditional parties and don't like the way things are going. Does this mean all VB voters want to split Belgium? Not at all, many are just protest votes. The best thing would be to get rid of mandatory voting, this might already show how many people would actually be willing to stand in line for VB (and other parties obviously).
N.WA voters only voted for N.WA because they hoped one day they would have a referendum on seperation
No, if they just wanted separation, they'd remain with VB. A strong VB might show more strongly the support for separation, this while a vote for N-VA might just be people who either want a more economically right party, want stronger immigration, want more powers to the regions but no separation, ... N-VA voters are a mix of people who vote on many different issues. Separation is probably one of the last ones. And even if separatists voted for N-VA initially, they would already have shifted back to VB in the 2019 election, seeing how weak N-VA actually was in terms of Flemish nationalism.
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@pavlom4745
UK left. This is definitely sign of critical disagreement, and as soon as strongest powers Germany and France still in EU, this indicates who was not agree with UK the most.
The UK always was one of the most eurosceptic nations, which is not surprising considering UK governments often blamed the EU for their own failures and many UK citizens still have this imperial UK in their mind/memory, this anglo exceptionism.
It also wasn't like the governments of the UK and other EU members couldn't agree, Cameron campaigned against leaving the EU and he actually believed they wouldn't vote for brexit. He thought he could safely call the referendum as a political move, which backfired in his face.
But it increases trade supply from Russia
Yes, so? At the same time there still are also are embargo's and sanctions against Russia/Russian officials, it just so happens that Russian gas can be gotten for much cheaper than other sources of gas. And btw Russian gas is a necessity for many eastern European nations. Should we just tell them they can't import that anymore?
Same time in Normand Four format Germany and France was not able to provide legal peaceful solution for Ukraine
So they tried but weren't successful, what's the point? That they should just bully Russia into a peaceful solution? Yeah, that will certainly work.
If would EU stop trade to Russia for 1 year there would not be a war in Ukraine at all, because Russia don't have own resources.
This is the most stupid thing you said, the entire thing is that Russia does have massive amount of resources, it doesn't truly need the EU trade, would it hurt their economy? Ofcourse, just like it would hurt EU's economy. Would it force Russia to the table? No, it wouldn't. Russia would just try to find other trading partners (like China etc) or just stick it out. The crucial things they need, they have. However, Europe would suffer from large gas shortages, which actually will lead to people dying of the cold and people not being able to cook food, you are underestimating the importance of Russian gas to European nations.
Germany for decades seems pushes "green energy" taxes
Decades? They didn't impose more green taxes than many other nations untill the last decade, when extra green taxes were needed to pay for the then still expensive renewables.
Same time we saw Dieselgate
Which was the action of a company, not the German government or the German people. This is completely irrelevant in this discussion.
This is huge sign of corruption
No, it isn't. Volkswagen just figured out a way to cheat on emission tests. They didn't need to bribe politicians or whatever to get that done, just the necessary software, knowledge and "guts".
Few EU countries understand Russia threat and see Germany is a major Russia trade partner, which secures Russia military budgets.
Russian military budget is around 1/3 of the budget of the EU memberstates combined, realistically Russia shouldn't be a military threat to the EU. The main reason it still can be is because the EU military is divided into many different armies. Germany is exactly one of the countries that isn't entirely against an EU army and probably would even support it, unfortunately it is politically just unfeasible at this time.
Could you believe Germany as NATO member would get in war with Russia if would Russia invade any east EU member?
Yes, absolutely, if not the EU would collapse almost immediately and Germany would be ousted by every close ally it has. Germany literally would have no choice but to defend that member, both due to the EU and NATO. That you don't believe Germany would act to defend them, just shows your anti-German sentiment. In no way would it make any sense for Germany to try and sit that one out.
Russia is Germany's 13th largest trade partner in terms of export and 15th in terms of import. If they don't honor their pledge to defend fellow NATO or EU members, it would get into a huge diplomatic (and possibly economic) conflict with 9 of its larger export partners and at least 10 of their more important import partners. In no way would the trade with Russia be worth risking the relations with those close allies and trading partners.
I believe we see something similar to Hitler - Stalin relations at 1939, when they was partners and agreed to divide Europe.
This is just ridiculous, this must be a joke. We couldn't be further from that situation.
Russia act in a very similar way as Hitler in Czechoslovakia 1939.
Not illogical, since this is the only way to try and get some territory (back) without causing a large scale war.
Same time Germany and France not provide sufficient efforts to stop the war in Ukraine.
Because Ukraine is neither a NATO member, nor an EU member. Nevertheless, the EU did impose trad sanctions on Russia as a result of the situation in Ukraine. More then that however would mean a more direct involvement, which would also allow the Russian troops to drop the pretenses and just openly support the rebels en masse at a scale that would make the current support seem like a joke.
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@pavlom4745
Now I get you. You think Russia not invaded Ukraine, but took Ukrainian Crimea back.
Nope, that is not what I think or said at all. I indicated it shouldn't be surprising that it reminds you to Nazi Germany, since this isn't a new tactic. The best (or only way) to get a territory (back) without causing a larger war is by doing what Russia and Nazi Germany (and other countries in the past) did: claim they came as 'saviours/liberators' to protect their people from this oppressing regime and that these people wanted that.
Unlike with the 1930's, countries haven't just given their permission, there was no appeasement politics, the EU and US rather quickly put economic sanctions in place against Russia.
they left that is it. If would they see more beneficial to stay, they would do.
Don't really see how this is response to me saying they always were more of a eurosceptic nation, but ok. And btw, personally I think this will help the EU in the long run. The UK always demanded special treatment, they always wanted to be in for the advantages, without all the disadvantages and they also would work against further EU integration time and time again.
Problem is somebody who talks about green energy increase carbohydrates consumption.
It is not mutually exclusive, one can roll out renewable energy at a large scale and still need fossil fuel to meet increasing demands. FYI, this gas isn't meant for something like powerplants, it is to supply private needs. So far Germany (or any country) has not put a ban on gas for private use (heating and cooking), the only thing they'd do now is increasing taxes to get people to use less. Besides the pipeline is mostly to cut the large transit costs that now exists for existing pipelines, not to increase the amount of gas necessarily, in fact natural gas use has slightly gone down compared to the previous decade in Germany.
Germany has set deadlines regarding emissions for both 2030 and 2050 (fully neutral), so it is not that it can just increase its gas consumptions, at best the pipeline will be used for the coming 3 decades, more likely would be around the next 2 decades or less.
as there is no any embargo, but sanctions
Part of the sanctions was an embargo on certain goods.
By the way in occupied Ukrainian Crimea works German turbine produced by Siemens. Also there works German Metro network supermarket.
Considering Germany doesn't recognise Crimea as part of Russia, one could argue that this is a loophole in the sanctions. Moreover the sanctions aren't on everything, that would be a complete embargo, which would just cause the situation to escalate further.
Russia steals Ukrainian natural gas in Crimea and Germany happy to buy more stolen gas.
Russia has more than enough natural gas of their own to sell (Crimea's reserves would respresent around 0,06% of Russia's natural gas reserves. Russia will never even be able to sell most of their natural gas, by 2050 European nations would only import it for certain specific reasons, those imports will be a fraction of what it is today. So for Russia these reserves are worthless, they are unlikely to sell them, probably not even mine them for now. It is just unfortunate for Ukraine that they can't sell it. But this wouldn't change by Germany (btw Nord stream is meant to supply other nations than Germany too) buying Russian gas or not. Russia isn't going to give Crimea back unless it falls apart, has a complete political shift (like becoming more like other European nations) or it is taken back in a larger war, which would be far more disastrous for Ukraine than the current situation.
This shows how Germany regulators works. This shows like Germany applies strict regulations, to limit foreign manufacturers competition on EU markets, while fails to control own manufacturer. Yes Volkswagen created the problem, but we cannot just ignore the regulator failure and it does related to German government.
You do realise this weren't German but European regulations, Germany has around 13% of MEPs, one seat in the commission and 1 seat in the council, they can't just push through regulation that suits them. They'll have to influence a lot of people. And Volkswagen didn't just fool German tests, but European tests and even US tests.
This is a problem of/caused by one company, not Germany.
Germany is the second Russia trade partner
Which means Russia needs to be very carefull to anger Germany, this just means Germany and the EU by expansion have a larger power of Russia through this trade relation than the other way around. However Russia would rather bite their tongue and receive a hit to their economy than to just lose their plans with Crimea and the Donbass region.
An embargo would hit both sides hard, without certainty of success. In fact it is even possible that it would entice Russia to react by pouring more troops and material into the Donbass region.
Once Ukraine would fail East Europe can get in fire.
Ukraine won't fall unless there is a massive escalation from Russia's side, at which point the EU and US can also escalate things, however they won't escalate it themselves.
Most dangerous USSR ballistic rockets was built in Ukraine as well as a lot of other military equipment.
Irrelevant.
It just feels like you don't understand geopolitics that well. You think you can just use a stick to hit an animal to chase it away, however the animal can also react differently than expected and instead attack you with a much greater ferocity than it showed before, and then what?
Lets say we completely Embargo Russia, Russian imports are mostly non essential things, sure they are needed, but Russia can survive without it. Then as a response Russia would cut of all gas to European nations, it would cause deaths due to freezing in winter definitely and possibly even cause starvation/diseases because many people can't cook their food anymore, not to mention the still needed gas powerplants would fall silent causing electricity shortages. At the same time russia likely would send in much more troops to the Donbass region and execute a massive assault they likely already have plans for. By the time the NATO can react, Ukraine most likely would already be overrun. What then? A full war between Russia and Nato with Ukraine being one of the main battlefields? I am sure that will be much better for Ukraine than the current situation.
You don't just go for something that it supposed to be the last resort before open war, if you play that hand and they bluff you, you're in trouble. If you really believe Russia would cave with an embargo, you really underestimate them. What is happening now is move and countermove without trying to let things escalate, since that wouldn't be good for anyone.
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@wtfamiactuallyright1823
Since Brexit, the EU has show its hand. It functions more like the USSR
LMAO. You do know that the EU strategy regarding brexit comes from the leaders of the memberstates? With advisory imput from the EU parliament because they'll eventually have to verify any deal.
I was ALWAYS adamant that the EU should never form an armed forces
We disagree on that.
they keep demanding more controls from the nations of Europe in order to "let them function better".
This is called federalisation, which has happened in nearly every well functioning country. And the EU can't demand shit, since it is the memberstate leaders that decide what powers the EU get and the EU itself has not a single way to force the memberstate to do what the EU wants.
There's a major difference between the EU and US btw, US citizens refer to themselves as Americans first
Except this wasn't the case around 150 years ago, back then state often came before the US. You can't really compare the US today with the EU, since the EU in terms of a nation is at best the US from 150 years ago.
when talking to a foreigner
Many Europeans would just call themself Europeans or from Europe when talking to foreigners, ofcourse, again the EU isn't even close to what the US is now, nor is it meant to be there.
and that flies in the face of EU intentions in relation to Europe and its rich history.
What are you refering to?
The elites run the show
Just as much as in the US. And I'd personally put the EU above the US in terms of the people in power.
and stamp on those that don't follow suit.
Oh, please. Most Europeans agree with the EU stance regarding brexit. It has always been said by the EU that is won't just fold and that a deal wouldn't be easy. It is UK politicians that were stupidly saying that a deal would be easy, and that it would be the UK that comes out great. Guess what, the EU did what every other nation would do: protect the interests of their own nation(s) and citizens.
those nations who would want to continue to trade with the UK are threatened to not do so unless the EU wills it
What are you talking about? The EU won't block trade, nor threaten nations that do, The nations trading with the UK are among the most powerfull in the EU (France, Germany, Benelux, ...). That the EU and UK can't reach a deal isn't just the EU blocking everything, since their stance barely changed, and when it did, it was to the benefit of the UK to compromise. There just are some things the EU can't compromise. The EU wouldn't compromise on these things with other potential trade partners either.
the UK were one of the few nations in the EU that are economically strong enough to do so.
I'd personally say the UK was just one of the only countries where people didn't really the importance of the EU and what it actually was. When I look at how the EU is discussed in the UK media, I am quite baffled.
UK regulations and standards are still more inline with EU regulations
But one of the issues brought up in brexit is the capability of changing regulations once out => take back control. Obviously if there is a trade deal this is less easy to do and the UK will once again be bounded by these standards.
and many of those within the bloody thing,
Countries within the EU should follow EU regulation, however EU regulation in fact is often the bare minimum in regulation and often replaced already existing national regulations in many countries.
yet they're willing to try and us Ireland as leverage to screw over the UK
Ireland isn't used as leverage, since Ireland itself has a veto and a strong voice regarding EU strategy on brexit. And it isn't like the EU is being unreasonable about Ireland, since in the US democrats and even republicans were clear that the good friday agreement had to hold for any future of a UK-US deal. The EU can't allow an open border in Ireland to threaten the entire EU system, obviously. The US wouldn't just say "have an open border with Mexico and New Mexico", would they. So why would the EU do so in Ireland? There either needs to be a border somewhere or the UK would have to agree with everything needed to be a functioning member of the EU market, similar to Norway, but ofcourse this goes against their "sovereignty" goals of brexit.
It is the fault of the UK government that it wasn't prepared with a good plan for Northern Ireland.
I could go on and on about all this
You mean spewing bullshit? Yeah, most people can keep doing that.
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@wtfamiactuallyright1823
Yep, and your point is?
The point is that in the USSR this would never happen. But maybe I am didn't quite get what you were refering to by "It functions more like the USSR"
Then you're part of the problem.
Not really. Why does the UK have combined armed forces instead of seperate armed forces for Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales? Also according to polling in the countries with the highest support around 75% are in favor of an EU armed forces, in the lowest around 35% in favor. In most EU countries it is above 50%. Ofcourse there are exceptions. In the end researches even found that is due to politicians hesitance/resistance to the idea and not public support that there isn't really much happening in terms of an EU army.
How do US elections work, remind me. You sound stupid here.
And this is relevant how exactly? The US is already a federal nation, the EU is not. If you want a comparison, fine. The US house is directly elected, so is the EU parliament. The senate is directly elected, this can be equated to the leaders of the memberstates, though obviously prime ministers are chosen by the elected parties that form the government, nevertheles people directly voted for these parties. As for the commission, that essentially functions like the US cabinet, with the difference that it is not the president, but the state leaders that select the possible options and the parliament that approves them. It is definitely not that the EU is less democratic. In fact with gerrymandering in the US and the FPTP system I'd say the EU is more democratic. And obviously if the EU truly federalises/centralises, it would have to change its government system either way.
Part of which was in my first post to you, how did you miss it?
You mean the "Hhhmmm... The chat is highly reminiscent of an American group screaming "Build a wall". You should just hand full control to the EU now, what's the point "fighting" it anymoe" that says literally nothing on european rich history?
You couldn't be more wrong here.
Oh no, I am very much right. But then I guess you might just not realize, since it is the same in the UK.
I'm pretty certain if you ask around countries like Greece, Italy, Romania etc, you'll find that what you say here is not entirely true, quite the opposite. You're making may case for me here btw, out of touch.
You are now listing countries that are almost farthest away from the UK and thus would be hit much less. Their stance on brexit negotations is overall less meaningfull. And well, you are ofcourse also mentioning countries that are these days more eurosceptic due to other reasons than brexit, which colours their overall view of the EU. But even in these countries there is a much better approval for the EU regarding brexit than other things like the economic and refugee issues. In Greece the favoribility for EU brexit handling was at 32%, for economy 14% and for refugee 7% in 2019, Italy was similar with 31% vs 20% and 16%. This for the record is higher than the british support for their governments handling of brexit at 28%. Ironically it seems more British like the EU's handling of brexit more at 36%. Possibly due to different things, hardliners who don't want a deal might like that the EU takes a hard stance, while those more pro-EU might be more thinking that the EU is just doing what it must.
Also I'd like to point at that some might say it is handled badly because the EU isn't strict enough (in the UK too), or maybe they just don't care. Since the polling didn't show whether some people just didn't respond to the question. Looking at other questions of the same polling data, it does seem like there often is a third option that it not mentioned, which is very likely "don't care".
But yeah, I shouldn't have said most Europeans, but still more than British people their own government.
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@wtfamiactuallyright1823
I don't agree. Can't compromise, on British waters, seriously. It's not even worth going into this with you if that's you assessment of the situation. The EU already sanctions nations within the EU.
While british fishing waters (which are actually international waters when not talking about fish) is a contentious topic mostly for France and maybe the benelux/ireland, not the EU as a whole. The reason the EU needs to hold a firm line here is because otherwise France can just veto any deal they don't like. Furthermore it isn't just about fishing the fish, but also where it ends up. Around 75% of fish from UK waters is exported to the EU, so this will also have on impact on a trade deal. In the end the fish is a much more complex topic than you ore I might think. Personally I'd think it would be easily fixed, but that obviously isn't the case.
As for the EU sanctions, yes they can. However these are either rather minor sanctions that are layed out in clear agreements earlier on and only can be used in certain situations and even then most often it needs the full support of the other EU members. This is exactly why the EU can't take a stance against Poland breaking certain EU rules, Hungary protects them and refuses to support any penalty. Sanctioning by the EU is thus not as easily done and definitely impossible to do something like forcing memberstates not to trade with other nations (unless all nations agree on the sanction, but then it isn't really just the EU and sanctions would have come either way, EU or not).
UK media has been slamming Brexiter's since the beginning and before. I was a remainer and changed my stance to vote for Brexit party, after the attempts to go against the will of my nations people. Don't try feeding me your rubbish, Sir.
Oh please, there might be certain media against brexit, but the media in the UK has been mostly anti-EU, at least before the referendum, often times even telling things about the EU that weren't even remotely true, but literally invented it. Honestly the lack knowledge about the EU of the average English person is rather astonishing.
So why can't we continue to trade as is.
Simply because we need a free trade deal to do this. In order to get one the EU needs to be certain the UK doesn't suddenly lowers it standard, possibly causing these lower standards products into the EU markets. UK politicians have repeatedly said over the years they can change regulations if needed. And the US has specifically said UK standards should be lowered for any US-UK free trade deal to happen. In other words the EU wasn't certain the UK would keep the standards, this while the UK didn't want to be bound by these "EU" standards.
I wonder how and why it even became an issue, since we're on the EU's doorstep and no different to most of North America, in fact, less so. Lets add in the addition of threatening to dismantle the UK via incorporating their demands, but that would never be their intention now, would it. So much for standards. Get bent, Sir.
This whole part doesn't make sense, honestly I can't decipher what you are saying here.
Then there shouldn't be an issue trading with the UK, considering our standards have often been of a far higher level.
Like I said in this comment and the one before, the problem isn't the current standard/regulation, but rather the risk that the UK lowers theirs.
But honestly at this moment I thought standards/regulations problems have already been dealt with mostly for some time. Ofcourse the brexiteers won't like not being able to lower standards below the EU's standards. The main problems however is for example the border in Ireland.
You making my point again. Treat us like Canada, the US etc but... Since we're on your bloody doorstep, you don't have much adaptation to do when it comes to treating us like Norway, Switzerland, Ireland even.
The EU is doing that, but the UK doesn't like it. A Norway style agreement was rejected by the UK, a Switzerlands style deal again doesn't fit UK demands and Ireland is an EU memberstate, the UK had a better deal than Ireland when in the EU. Do you not know what actually happened during the negotations. There were several options for a style of deal based on already existing deals with other nations, and any deal that resembles one that the EU already has with its (friendly, not Russia, Belarus, etc) neighbours was impossible due to British demands. The EU negotiators even made a slide with all these deals in a waterfall style, going from closest deal to less close deal, everytime there was a UK demand in the way, eventually the closest deal possible was what is called a Canada+ deal.
Dear EU, Never criticise Russia, ever again, you clearly agree with what they did to the Ukraine and as for Turkey... Why so protective of Ireland, but not Greece lol. ;)
Ukraine is not a member of the EU, not even a member of Nato, and ally or even a trading partner (in regards to FTA), what could the EU do that it hasn't done already. In fact the EU put in place economic sanctions against Russia due to the situation in Ukraine. Sanctions are not considered for the UK. As for Greece-Turkey, what specifically are you talking about?
And for Ireland the problem is the Good Friday agreement, which for the record the US too are protective off, not just the EU. The Good Friday agreement requires an open border between NI and Ireland. Obviously there can't be an opend border between the UK and EU without an FTA. And since the UK will have created a border by leaving the EU and if no deal is reached, it will be internationally seen as the UK breaking the GFA. This is exactly why the EU proposed a trade border between the british isles and NI during a transition phase and give time to get an FTA. This was btw agreed to by Jonhson, but which he now is stepping back from if I remember correctly.
the UK didn't intend on changing anything that hindered the GFA.
Yes it did. The moment it decided to leave a hard border has to be put in place between NI and Ireland if there is no FTA between the EU and UK. The UK can't even choose to keep it an open border without and FTA, since this would break WTO rules, under which most countries in the world trade if they don't have special deals. Thus it very much was a problem that could and should have been perceived. But it seems the UK government ignored it (or didn't even notice it) because they seemed to think an FTA was so easy to acquire, except it isn't.
Hence, the UK is not responsible for anything wrong on this one.
Apparently even the US disagrees, so who is wrong here? The US and EU? Or the UK/you?
I'm unlikely to respond to your posts again out of boredom of this topic
Good, because I am getting tired of responding to your bullshit.
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@English_Dawn They lose £12.5 billion p.a. and that is being subsidised by England.
Just out of interest, does this include federal taxes that go to westminster? Or are they not tallied as scottish 'income' before going to Westminster?
Britain (mainly England) was being used as a "milch cow"
No, it wasn't. It was even given special treatment in that that payed less into the budget net than they usually should have done. The UK was 9th in net contributions proportional to their economy.
The UK didn't leave for money, they'll (people) just never were into the EU to start with, they were always rather anti-EU, this was in stark contrast to their government, which actually was pretty pro-EU but had to keep up appearences.
Even in Britain there are poor regions, probably that you never hear about.
It's funny that you mention this. I believe the UK had 9 of 10 poorest regions in (north) Western Europe, but also the wealthiest one (London).
Not sure some in the EU have really grasped that as they carry on expansion Eastward.
You do know the british government was one, if not the, biggest supporters for Eastward expansion. The UK leaving might actually slow down new additions, especially with Macron first wanting to focus on internal EU issues.
How many EU counties are putting in money, net? About 5 or 6. With the rest taking money out.
For the 2007-2013 budget it was 11 countries contributing net (minus the UK would be 10). These nations (UK not included) represented 60% of the EU population. Thing is that while only +-1/3 or net contributors, many receivers are smaller nations. Most of these net contributors btw also gain a lot economically from being in the EU, if you account for that, most of these likely also were net beneficiaries in the end.
Britain has a lot of poor regions which once were industrialised with high unemployment and social problems. It was largely those regions that ran out of patience and voted to leave.
Which was rather stupid, since it is internal UK policies that cause the inequality and poverty.
10,000 bureaucrats in Brussels on more money than the British Prime Minister.
Just out interests, where do you get that from? Also the EU's bureacracy might seem large, the UK's is still much larger in terms of employees/bureaucrats I believe.
Not sure the EU populace feel they have a link to their country's political "appointees" as they do those parliamentary members (MEP's) they have a choice over electing.
The EU parliament is elected in a way similar to the process in many nations (and thus by the british people). The council is made up of elected leaders and the commission is essentially just the cabinet, do the British people vote for the cabinet composition? Thing is, the EU doesn't by far have the same competences/powers national governments have, so ofcourse people aren't even really interested in their EU representatives. And I doubt labour voters feel represented if their representant is a conservative and vice versa.
Have you seen Scotland's? Boy the EU will love Scotland.
Ireland wasn't doing great either for a long time, now it is thriving, who knows where scotland is in the future.
Scotland are currently running a10% debt to GDP ratio.
Can you tell me were you got this number from? I found 4,4% or 7% depending if you include capital investment and including nord sea revenue share and 5,7% or 8,5% without north sea share revenue for the year 2018-2019.
EU reform that Claude Juncker promised but never carried out
Thing is, as soon as the UK voted to leave, reforms were more or less shelved untill the UK actually was out of the EU. It is probable that now there again will be more of an emphasize on reforms.
hard-core Remainers tried an effectual coup
When was this?
England doesn't
Because it doesn't need to, it has a massive majority in Westminster, 82% of seats are English.
any idea why the Scots are in the Union in the first place? Look it up! The SNP will never admit it. In 1707 they crashed their economy in the Darian Scheme (modern day Panama). They were bankrupt. They asked England to pay their bills.
The Darian scheme was only one part. The Scottish economy was also hit hard by privateers during the seven years war and spanish succession war and the seven ill years causing 5-15% of the population to die of starvation. To make matters worse, the english actually imposed trade restrictions on Scotland to "entice" them to agree to the union. In essence the UK just saw it as an easy way of annexing Scotland, where other invasions/attempts failed.
they want independance at any price even if it makes them poorer
Kind of like many brexit voters, many of whom literally said that they'd take the economic hit in return for sovereignty (which the UK never lost).
England will be considerably richer.
Which was also claimed about brexit, only for it to get reputed/ignored afterwards when every expert (including UK government institutions) found the opposite.
Honestly I don't know what is best for Scotland, but I think you are also making it seem a bit worse than needed. And who knows, maybe this is exactly the jolt Scotland needs to put in some necessary economic reforms.
The EU had done little for Provincial England in 43 years of membership.
This is a wrong way of looking at it. The EU helped the UK prosper, it is the UK government that just didn't made sure this prosperity was shared around England, why would they, the tories most often are in power and are in favor of "little government" and austerity. It is also the UK government that facilitated the transition from heavy industry to services, because they saw the writing on the wall for UK heavy industry at large. They just failed to help the regions hit by industry dissapearing.
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@Yora21 Definition of a disaster: "a sudden accident or a natural catastrophe that causes great damage or loss of life."
What happened in Belgium and Germany is very much a disaster and seeing it is a natural one, it is a natural disaster.
There are only exceptional weather events that people dealt with poorly.
If you have extreme exceptional weather events for a region, that is a natural disaster, no matter how yo wish to spin it. Especially if such weather events haven't occured in hundreds of years or even longer. Even if people dealth well with them, they would still be a disaster since you can't evacuate houses and infrastructure so the damage still occurs and you can't prepare for the extreme never seen weather events, then you'll have to prepare against everything, which is impossible.
Haiti constantly has massive disasters, while the Dominican Republic has not
That is quite stupid. Geography plays a role, as well as other things like wealth. Even on the same island you can have different outcomes for exactly the same circumstance, as long as the island is large enough. Hispaniola is a pretty large island. It is the same size as the benelux and this recent disaster hit the south of Belgium/Germany, but not for example the north of the Netherlands or even the north of Belgium (except for some minor flooding in some regions).
The reaction to this recent disaster might not have been great, but even with a perfect reaction it would still have remained a disaster, afterall who is prepared for a situation that has never happened in recent history (several 100+ years or more)?
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@a.a.6203 It is not used as an excuse, rather as an explanation. For decades scientists have warned that climate change will make the weather more erratic/extreme and have said that stopping it/slowing it down is much cheaper than facing its consequences. Overall the recent flooding is impacted by climate change, but compared to the actual long term consequences of climate change, this is a minor thing, which shows the emergency of fighting climate change. Afterall this minor thing still caused billion upon billions in damages and around 150 lives with just one event that can in future happen more often.
Ofcourse climate change isn't the only thing to blame for what happened, bad reactions, underestimation and bad management in general made it worse.
I need to know why there wasn't a good preparation and response!
The answer to this is rather easy: no one expected this huge result. Sure there were warnings, but flooding like this hasn't happened for hundreds of years, never in the lifetime of many of these villages that were hit. How could they be prepared for something like that. They probably never realized how bad it CAN be. Maybe just some slight flooding, some minor damage, ... was probably thought off. Give the people all the information that was known before and they wouldn't have done much different, except maybe put some stuff on the second floor and maybe place some sandbags.
No one is going to evacuate large amount of people for some minor flooding, at best they'll inform emergency services to be prepared to help when needed. It is only after everyone else saw what happened in other regions, they started thinking of evacuating people lower down the streams/rivers.
In several places they had even heightened dikes around the rivers in the past years thinking it was high enough by a long shot. When the water reached it, it just didn't overflow with maybe a cm to spare, this was never envisioned to be a possiblity in our lifetimes.
It is easy to criticise now, but don't just willy nilly ignore the fact that this was a never seen occurance in these regions and one never even thought to be possiblity.
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@a.a.6203 that's great and all, but why are you insisting in changing the subject ?
I didn't, you just doesn't seem to understand it.
I don't need to know why it happened, these things will always happens
Except this thing has not happened in this region for at least a few hundred years, possibly a lot longer, so they no, they don't always happen.
climate change or not, natural is our true enemy
But climate change makes it much worse. It can be the difference between a decennial flooding causing only basements be flooded to annual floodings that can cause houses be flooded away. And the way you react to both is obviously a lot different.
What I need to know why the lack of concern and response
Like I said, this has never happened before and no one could even imagine something like this would happen, that caused the slow and inadequate action before they started realising the true scale of what was happening.
Do floodings happen? Yes, but usually no more than maybe some basements that get flooded. People losing their lives in a flooding is rare to non-existing here or large scale damage to housing as well as even cars being swept away have never happened here in even my grandparents lifetime, so why would we/the leaders be prepared for floodings of this scale and think it might get this bad.
Furthermore getting a warning is one thing, but it matters a lot what kind of warning you get, is it "you'll get X meter of flooding that can cause this kind of damage", or is it more obiquous warnings like "chance for severe flooding", which can be interpreted quite differently. This kind of warning should have been labeled "chance or a 1 in several 100 years flood", doubt they used such a warning.
people have lost their lives and you are only concern about climate change !
Maybe because climate change can cause this kind of events to become more frequent, with a lot more people dying as a consequence? Ever heard of the greater picture? Are you trying to be ignorant of the larger scheme of things?
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@Yora21 Rain and rivers aren't natural? If you say so.
Netherlands didn't had the same event in the slightest. The only thing they had was that the rivers height and water throughput increased and this with much more time to prepare, afterall it took around 1-2 days before their critical point was reached after the damage and scale in Wallonia was already shown. They were warned a lot more and had to deal with water confined to large rivers, not all small rivers and creeks and even roads overflooding just due to the rain.
I live in Flanders Belgium, just a bit north of the affected area's. If the Netherlands was hit the same way Wallonia and German regions were, so would my region, yet is wasn't. A lot of rain? Yes, but no flooding, since the amount of rain was a lot less.
If you make these claims in front of those that were hit, they'd slap you in the face for daring to minimise what happened, which is exactly what you do with your comments of it not being a natural disaster. Houses collapsed due to the flooding, houses got flooded up to the 2nd floor, roads flooded, railways damaged, bridges integrity threatened, a lot of rubble and filth everywhere, ... This would have happened no matter what the authorities did.
Not a natural disaster, what a moronic thing to say.
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@hmthisisit
Slowing it down is much cheaper, they say?
Just to be clear, I meant more like limiting the effects, rather than just slow them down, though both will be cheaper then doing nothing.
* I mean, it doesn't seem to be cheap on the consumer's end but fine*
Then just imagine you paying 10-100 times more in the future to deal with the actual effects.
It is like installing sprinkler in your garage when you know there sometime will be a fire. Sure the sprinkler installation cost money, but not as much as getting a new car after it burned down. This is a rather silly metaphor, but I guess it gets the point across. Just this one event will likely cost tens of billions in damages, not mention the lives lost and that is just one event. Climate change will make events like this more common by making weather events more extreme. Moreover the actual changing of climate will hit some countries especially hard, completely flooding it, increasing the overall temperature causing crops to not be possible anymore, pushing more refugees to the less affected parts (we are talking about possibly a billion or more people getting displaced and having to move to other regions), ...
Slowing it down pushes it further down in the future but it's still inevitably gonna happen, right?
I meant more limiting its effects/change rather than slowing it down, my bad.
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@frederikjrgensen252 Ofcourse it won't have influence now, no one expected them to get any real influence in this election. Why this result is important is because it shows it is a party that can win seats and now will/can be more taken seriously. There are many people that wouldn't vote on a party just because they are afraid their vote wouldn't matter (because the party would win no seat), however now in the next election Volt will get more recognition. It is not the gained influence in the parliament that is important now, rather the result itself, the growth and the effect on their image for future elections and growth.
And btw Volt isn't an outright leftwing party/organisation, more of a center/center-left party. On the right btw you also have some fragmentation with FvD, JA12 and some others. There are at this moment only +-4 larger parties and it is not easy to just classify them left or right. For example D66, CDA and PVV are economically center parties, but on social/cultural issues they are much more seperated, with D66 being very progressive (left/very left), CDA conservative (center-right/right) and PVV extreme right.
VVD is probably the most traditional right wing party, both in terms of social and economical issues.
So overal D66 could be classified as center-left (Volt is in a similar position as D66), CDA as center-right, VVD as regular right and PVV as right to extreme right (though probably the most difficult party to classify on a simplistic left-right scale).
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@BineroBE The executive is the Commission which is responsible for executing EU law.
You'd think that (and you're partially right), but in the end the commission lacks crucial powers to truly be an executive branch. Basically the parliament is purely legislative body, while both the commission and the council are a legislative and executive body. So the legislative is made up of: the commission, the parliament and the council. The executive is made up of: the commission and the council.
The eurozone crisis and the refugee crisis where two instances where the EU was not allowed to act. The most it could do was mediate. That's why many people within the EU Parliament want the EU's power on fiscal matters and immigration to be extended.
Fully agree with this assessment and personally I'd like to see a proper senate to replace the council (though the council should still be able to veto some things and should always play a part in reforms, the council needs to be abolished and replaced by a proper government, either run by a directly elected president or prime minister and there should be a clear division in powers (for example things like energy, transportation, foreign policy, border protection, immigration... should be transferred to the EU level, eventually also the military).
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@UCRCGpyFupwLoWw5er5MmBeQ The result of raising and lowering taxes is not a zero-sum gain. You can lower taxes and increase government revenue.
The theory is that lower taxes increases productivity and thus income, but this takes time, longer than Trumps presidency. Any increase of the income due to the increased economy is an after effect of Obama era policies. Moreover time after time it has been proven that this trickle down theory holds no merit in the end.
He lowered taxes across the board which increased government revenue to the highest levels in US history at the same time lowering unemployment to the lowest levels in US history (before the pandemic).
The unemployment under Trump just followed the same trend already happening during the later years of the Obama administration. Moreover I believe under Trump the definition of unemployment as used by the government was also changed in his favor. The real unemployment under Trump right before the pandemic had just reverted to pre-2008 economic crisis levels, again, following the curve that started under Obama.
After the great depression, it also took around 10-15 years to revert back to normal levels.
Also if we compare 2016 Obama revenue vs 2019 Trump revenue, accounting for inflation, 2016 saw a greater revenue than 2019. Government revenue almost always increases year after year in absolute numbers due to an increase in inflation. If we compare it to the GDP, in 2019 government revenue was equal to 16,1% of GDP, while this was 17,4% in 2016. Moreover when we look at the deficit, Obama's deficit in 2016 was around $585 billion dollar, Trumps in 2019 was $984 billion. Even accounting for inflation or GDP increase it would be (a lot) higher under Trump.
Moreover Trumps tax cuts actually will automatically increase taxes for the middle class after few years, to a higher level than before, only keeping taxes for business lower than before.
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@dalibornovakovic93
1) this isn't at all going to bring in enough money, just a fraction of the needed funds.
2) people are not going to like that they work, but don't get any benefits/securities. Especially the highly educated workers are likely going to act on this and move to another country, and these are exactly the kind of immigrants you want to have.
3) If it were to save so much money (which again I seriously doubt), that also means a lot of people would lose benefits, which will cause great unrest. Even if we are very generous and say that on average such a person would lose around 20k in benefits annually (which is highly overexaggerated), we'd be talking about 2,5 million people losing benefits, or around 3-4% of Frances population. The yellow vests movement will be nothing compared to what this would cause. Even if I lower the total cost of Le Pen's program to 10 billion (which is even lower thna Macrons, so unlikely), we are talking about 500k people losing 20k annual benefits, that still is an insane number.
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@reverendroar Jesus, so much bollocks.
Le Pen is losing from Macron in polls with around a 16-18% gap. Merkel leaving is indeed unfortunate, but it isn't like this will suddenly see the EU collapse.
AfD, Vox and national front are strong not due to euroscepticism, but rather their anti-immigration and strong security rhetoric. And AfD has actually been losing ground in polls during the last year. Vox is either remaining on the same level or even losing a bit of ground, and they are soft eurosceptic, as in they want a different EU, but an EU nonetheless. And FN's rise has more to do with French internal problems, than euroscepticism.
Spain isn't even close to eurosceptic, let alone leaving it. Poland and Hungary will not leave either. Their whole thing is more of a "want the benefits, not the burdens" stance. When it comes down to though, they won't leave. The EU is economically too important for them and they also fear possible Russian aggression if they are on their own. Italy is a bit more difficult, but if their internal problems can get fixed, everything will be fine. To me it seems more like the Italian people are dissapointed with their leaders and their policies and are just trying out other possibilities.
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@terron7840
The problem with renewable are that they are first of all inefficient, unreliable and can not cover the ever growing energy demand of an entire nation?
They are not that bad on efficiency compared ot other methods. A wind turbine is around 50% efficient compared to a gas powered plant being around 55-60% efficient and coal even in the 30%. But I guess you meant low energy density, and you are right. But this just means spreading it out more. PV can just be placed on roof, Wind turbines along highways, industrial area's, fields, ...
Unreliable? Yes, that was there is huge development in storage. However eventually we will be able to get more than enough storage and battery storage would actually even better for the grid than regular power plants. EV's will also play a major part in this, since they'd offer massive amounts of cheap battery storage.
As for not being able to cover the growing demand. Sure it can, it is just a matter of scale.
which would cost Trillions od euros,
You do know renewables are cheaper than almost any other source to produce electricity, right?
Renewable energie also has to be stored in batteries, the materials for batteries can only be obtained from Barsil, Turkey, China and certain parts of Africa
Not true by far. While batteries are a favorite for obvious reasons (and they are important whether you use renewables or not), there are plenty of other storage being worked on for the grid. And battery composition can change. Honestly in the long run we'll probably even get many of these rare materials from space. And once you have enough batteries, you can build new ones from recycled old ones. So in the long term Europe won't even need to be reliant on imported resources for batteries.
Assuming the EU would run on 100% renewables, it would still have to export gas and nuclear energy to cover the energy demand.
Ehm what? Do you mean import? And why would Europe need to import electricity if it is 100% powered by renewables.
Renewables may be used to substitute certain sectors, but the 100% goal is stupidly impractical and unrealistic unless they can make renwables more efficient and cheaper.
Renewables are already way cheaper than the alternatives, only storage really is a problem and that could change rapidly in the next few years, with all this research into several storage options and batteries for EV's, ...
The notion to increase birth rate is that countrys should close the gender gap, offer extended maternity leave and more benefits, something that Sweden and Germany do a lot, yet their birth rates are still declining. It seems that this is not the fertility boosting model people think it would be.
Because of 2 issues. It doesn't go far enough and because in nations with higher living standard, gender equality , there is more "emphasize" on women working than having children, exactly because it doesn't go far enough. Women lose a chance for experience and climbing the ladder if they stay at home with the kids, so having less kids helps to not "slow them down" in their career. It is a consequence of gender equality and better living standards ironically.
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@terron7840
way higher than what renewables can cover in the long run.
I don't think you understand the scale of what renewables can cover.
The construction, the quantity and the mentainance isnt.
Actually yes it isn't. Full lifetime costs for onshore wind turbines are around 40-50 $/kWh, offshore 70-90 $/kWh, concentrated/large scale solar 40 $/kWh, hydro 20-25 $/kWh and private pv (regular house roofs) 120-170 $/kWh.
For comparison coal is 60 $/kWh, gas 70-90 $/kWh and nuclear is 120-180 $/kWh.
They could also extend maternity leave and give them more subsidies but that comes at a price for which taxpayers must pay for.
Yeah, that is essentially it. In the end this will happen if ever necessary.
But another are the marriage rates
People can have children even without marriage. In belgium for example around is 57% unmarried and 43% married (I didn't count divorced or widowed), 50% of births happened with unmarried couples. The difference between married or unmarried doesn't really seem that large. So I'd say that that is not the main issue. Just because people do not marry, doesn't mean they don't get children.
europe does not legalize surrogacy,
I think this should be allowed, though this probably more a national than european issue.
Another factor is birth age. In 1970 it was around 25-26 years, now it is around 30 years. Probably a cause of higher education and not wanting a child in the first few years thay start working.
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@terron7840
people in europe already pay a lot of taxes as they are, crushing the middle class and working class families.
You are overexageting. And people don't mind paying taxes if they get enough in return.
These kind of couples have fewer kids
I just gave data that shows that the difference isn't all that large. While yes, marriages are slinking, this doesn't mean people don't end up together. It is very common these days for people to be unmarried, but still live together as if they were married. Many see marriage these days as just an unnecessary symbolism.
older first time mothers arent willing to have more children, most usually have only 1 or 2, rarely 3 or more.
exactly my point.
But lets leave the birthrate topic for what it is, I am not going to continue that anymore.
Solar farms take 450 times more land than nuclear plants,
But unlike nuclear plants, you can place PV on roofs and many more places. And this could even be more usefull if the houses/buildings have batterystorage, since then they can become selfsustaining.
wind farms take 700 times more land than natural gas wells
And? it is not like there are many gas wells in Europe. And wind turbines use aroun 5 to 10 times more surface than gas power plants. Seeing in how many places it can be put, not so bad. Especially if you consider this is only about onshore, offshore space wouldn't be used eitherway.
Wind plants also come with a myriad of issues like birds flying inside
Except compared to the total amount of bird deaths, it is really nothing. And even regular power plants kill birds, just in a less direct way.
a constant noise disturbing locals
Only in direct surrounding, which is why there are rules for how close it can be to houses.
changes in wind direction.
Oh, please, this doesn't matter at all.
Large scale electrticity storage is as of late ineffective and expensive,
For now, it is expensive. Though I wouldn't call batteries ineffective, they are considered much better back-ups for the grid. And in terms of price, batteries are now around similar price range as nuclear. Ofcourse you'd need to add part of the renewables cost to it. It is highly unlikely we'll not fix storage in the next 2 decades.
Overall efficiency is below 40 Percent
Batteries have an efficiency of over 90%. Some other storage options also go well above 40%.
no viable business can be made out of this.
Not yet. That is why there is a lot of research being done into storage.
but as long as sotrage is like this, no country will be able to cover the energy demand
But then renewables won't cover 100% for several decades, so there is still plenty of time to improve storage.
the end of the century.
By then a lot can have changed. Fusion can be made economically, we can have large solar fields in orbit around earth sending down the power with microwaves, renewables and storage can have improved enormously, ...
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@terron7840
Thats why income inequality is widening across europe, particulary central europe.
It is growing everywhere in the world. In Europe it is actually growing more slowly, so that is a positive.
In most europeans countries, most people pay lots of taxes, but as a result, many young people do not own property as there is little to no effordable housing.
I can't speak about other European countries, but that isn't for sure true everywhere, neither is this a cause of the systems necessarily, but also many other factors, like the economic problems of the past decade. Taxes aren't necessarily a cause of this, since taxes cover many costs that aren't covered elsewhere. For example if you compare many european countries with the US, overall people in EU countries have more to spend in the end (compared to cost of living in the nations).
Problem is, its for once expensive
Roof PV is as expensive as nuclear and the cost is decreasing, while that of nuclear has only increased in the past decades. Maybe new generation reactors will change this, but that is to be seen for now.
and many europeans do not own a property to beginn with, particulary young people and students.
And? how is this a problem? Students often live at home or in student facilities. This had nothing to do with my statement.
And then again, solar panels also absorb no energy at all when the sun doesent shine,
True, this is why storage needs to be improved, but with the decreasing cost of batteries and the arrival of EV's, by 2030-2040 there will be rather cheap home batteries available able to power a house for several hours to days. Even now in several countries combining solar PV with home battery storage can be a net benefit compared to taking from (and putting solar power on) the grid.
which is problematic in eastern europe and Germany, which arent particulary sunny places during autmn and winter.
Most months a solar roof "field" combined with storage could deliver enough power to power a home independently of the grid. Ofcourse it depends on how many pv panels you install, your usage, ... but averagely most regular homes are likely to be able to power themselves and in the end it might be cheaper than taking from the grid and if not now, than it will be in the future. Afterall you don't have to pay taxes. For example in Germany you pay around 16 cent/kWh in taxes of the 30-31 cent/kWh. But again all depends on the regional cost of the PV and battery storage, .... and time. If we'd speak about this five years from now, it can be much cheaper, afterall both PV and Batteries have become much cheaper since 5-10 years ago.
On the other hand, Batteries arent green or renewable, Lithium ion, the most important material for a batterie is hazardous and only exists in finite numbers.
And these days most of a battery can be recycled and there are constantly new process being developed to increase the efficiency of this recycling. Furthermore there is done a lot of research in both alternative batteries to replace lithium batteries and more large scale storage options that don't use rare resources. It is not a matter of if, but when are we reaching full scale cheap recycling of these batteries. There for now just wasn't really a market for large scale battery recycling, but it is expected that it will become one of the largest bussiness in the next few decades.
The only other possible substitute for Lithium ion can be only obtained from Brasil or Turkey. So batteries are not renewable.
They are very much renewable when they are being recycled.
There would be no need for solar fields when you have fusion plants
I was stating possible options, I wasn't claiming renewables would be needed when fusion plants are economical. Then again they are unlikely to just dissapear, they can be usefull for people to become energy selfsufficient and batteries are likely going to find their ways in home either way. Though if fusion is commercial, renewables will become an extra, not the main power source (if fusion price is low enough ofcourse).
However, we need nuclear power plants in the present. If you look at Germany, who dared to transission to renewables, energie prices have increased to 50% for germans
Citing costs to support current nuclear is a selfdefeating argument, a current new nuclear power plant would produce electricity at a cost 1,5-2 times higher than renewable energy. If Germany wanted to get 50% of their electrcity production from current new nuclear, it would cost around 700 billion euro, much more than the energy transition has cost Germany now while they reached 45% renewable in 2019. And this while Germany started the transition when renewables were still much more expensive. That being said shutting down already built nuclear powerplants too early is a stupid decision, most of the costs already would have been made with these plants.
renewables are cheap in itself, but they are more expensive for the end consumer, who will suffer the costs for this project.
No, they will not. The problem is that Germany was a frontrunner, they went full in when it was still expensive (it is partially due to them costs decreased in the past decade), the costs of being one of the first are now still born by the German consument. However if another nation now does what Germany did, they'd reach the same result at a much cheaper end cost.
It may profit rich people and the state, but it will put a great burden on poor, working and middle class people.
This wouldn't be problem of renewables but the capitalistic system and corruption, this can be found with all electricity sources.
Another problem with renewables is that they are inconsistent due to the limitations.
Production of renewables can be predicted by using weather forcast not too difficulty. But yes they are intermittent. That is why it must and will be fixed by storage and smart grids.
we arent so far from getting nuclear fusion energy
Unfortunately that is really true. ITER will at best be ready in 2025 and it is meant to just prove the ability to produce more than it needs and to be a stepping stone to the next plant, it isn't even going to incorporate electricity production. After that another testplant is planned that is expected to still be far away from being commercial. I fear that at best we won't see the first true commercial and competitive fusion reactor by 2050-2060 if nothing pushes this further back (very much possible). And the goal should be to be nearly 100% renewable by 2050, so fusion will come to late to fix the discussion. At best it will just cause another transition from renewables/fission to fusion, like is happening now from fossil to renewables.
In the end it is now waiting to see what ITER will teach us. For all we know ITER will prove to be an inconsequential small step that shows problems we haven't even considered yet. Though I really hope to see commercial fusion soon and I hope the findings of ITER will really spur things into a higher gear.
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@leighharveycabatic8791
1. To get to melitopol you also will have to punch through strong defences, in fact that likely is the case over nearly the entire front now. But often the defense lines don't seem too deep. If that is the case, once you punch through you could quickly take a lot of ground if you can move fast enough (which is where western mobile equipment (like the bradleys, tanks, ...) comes in.
2. Obviously breaking through established defenses isn't easy, but you'll need to get through it eventually else we're just in a stalemate. Not sure what you are pointing at regarding Tokmak.
3. The partisan movement can be a help and a reason to focus on melitopol, however the presence of these civilians can also be a hindrance, with Russian troops potentially using them as human shields. The distance between the existing frontlines and Melitopol and Mariupol is more or less the same, though Melitopol has more roads going to it (but also heavily defended and potentially dangerous for advancing).
But yes, both have advantages and disadvantages. If that wasn't the case, the best target would have been clear to everyone know.
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Germany is one of the countries in the world that did most to transition to renewables, however without further improvement in storage, they almost went as far as economically possible +-50-60% at most. So it would be better to replace the existing coal plants with gas powerplants. Moreover the US would probably be the worst one to criticise, since they also have grown the amount of gas in their electricity supply more than the renewable part. At this moment Germany gets more out of renewables in terms of electricity production than gas and coal combined. The US isn't even close to that. And no it wasn't just because of Trump, because gas increased under Obama too.
And the gas is also used to heat homes, prepare food, ... in fact that is where most of the increase in gas imports went in the last decade in Germany.
As for the gas coming from Russia, it isn't like Germany has ample choices economically speaking. And the US has also a personal reason, if the gas doesn't comes from Russia, from where then? Well at least partially from the US fracking industry. And else all the way from the middle east (Iran, SA, ..), yeah these countries are really much better.
As for diplomatic power, it is a double edged sword. If Russia tries to play the gas as a trump card, Europe will be weaning of and looking for the gas elsewhere sooner rather than later, causing a huge economical loss for them. So at the very least they'll need to be carefull. And it isn't like Germany is just abandoning their zero fossil fuels goal by 2050 (at least I think that was the case), they just need something to fill the gap for a time.
Honestly the pipeline consequences are a bit overblown and is more about countries personal interests.
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@derorje2035 That is caused by a counter-movement. Parties against renewables were gaining traction, partially because of the push for the transition, so they had to take it back a notch. And not everything is decided on the federal level. Unfortunately politics is a real thing to consider in terms of climate policies.
Anyone that criticises Germany on renewables either doesn't know what he's talking about, is a hypocrite or doesn't live in reality.
At this moment Germany already produces 45% of its electricity with renewables, getting higher than that isn't just about increasing production, but more importantly having access to enough storage. Any country with a higher renewable production has abundant access to more dispensible sources, like geothermal power (eg. Iceland) or hydro. Without these you need to rely on wind and solar and storage is need to use these in a high proportion renewables mix.
The thing Germany could do better on is supporting renewable heating more, like geothermal heat pumps, but this is expensive for existing homes, for new homes, it should be made the norm in every country honestly. Air heating pumps are more easy to integrate, but also more inefficient.
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@mjferroni
The world electricity production in 2019 was around 27 000 TWh.
One solar panel has a power of around 300W.
if we take 5 hours/day of sunshine we get 1825h in a year
production per panel = power * time = 300W*1825h=547500Wh =+- 550 kWh/panel over a year
number of panels needed = world production / production per panel = 27 000 000 000 000 kWh / 550 kWh/panel = 50 000 000 000 panels
1 panel is around +-1,6m2 or taking into account mounting angle and distance between rows 3m2 per panel
surface area needed = number of panels + surface per panel needed = 50 000 000 000 panels * 3m2/panel = 150 000 000 000 = 150 000km2
If we take a safety factor of 2 to be safe total surface needed would be around 300 000km2
New Mexico surface area is around 314 917 km2
Now ofcourse you can say we need storage etc. too, but you can put this in the safety factor probably.
Now if you search a bit you can find others that have made these calculations, I quickly did it here myself using real numbers so I don't have to go look where I exactly read this. If you think I used incorrect numbers or made a mistake, please tell.
Ofcourse there will be a rising demand, but for example Africa has plenty of space and a good overall climate for it (available sunlight). China too has still plenty of space. India would be more difficult seeing its population density, however there still is quite some place, it is just a matter of using space efficiently. And ofcourse solar isn't the only supply of green energy. Personally I think there will be a mix of green power with nuclear power, though this depends entirely on nuclear development.
If Europe can become completely powered by green energy, then no other continent except for Asia should have a problem, and honestly Asia shouldn't really have a problem either. Even if the African population doubles in size, they still will have more land per person than Europe. Ofcourse you can argue that the sahara is a large part of the continent, but this isn't entirely a wasted space in terms of energy production, in fact energy production there might help combat desertification or even help shrink the desert, when done correctly. Though the last part is more speculative based on the fact that solar panels helped crops grow in warmer climates by providing more shade. I didn't actually looked up research on the environmental impact of solar power in deserts.
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