Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "DW News" channel.

  1.  @PHlophe  If there's a quota then companies will be funding more students and measures encouraging females to join said studies and so one and so forth. This stuff has worked just fine here in the nordic countries. And it's not like they're requiring half of them to be female or one third, just *one*. And this is in a country where you are already required by law to have reprentatives from the workers in the board. So adding a woman is hardly that much of a stretch. Part of the point is actually to get more than one point of view representated there. The best individual for a task might not be the best team member for a task. Just look at football players doing it all solo leading to the team losing vs teams where every player individually is inferior to every member of the opposite team but where the team as a whole is superior. Any team where even a tiny bit of creativity is required benefits from getting more perspectives, be that from someone from a different place (say both a republican and a democrat in the US as well as people preferring third parties, men, women, natives, immigrants, people from rural areas and urban areas, cities and the countryside etc. It just means that you don't get stuck in a situation where no one has an idea that isn't different from everyone else because everyone got the same background, and because people are also different they're also more on their toes when communicating, being more careful and quite frankly better team players) Exposure to different ideas has been proven to on average increase productivity and innovation in pretty much every single contexts where it's been tried out.
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  2.  @celsieknaus5723  Yep, and we're just talking about a single bloody woman or board... It's not like they're forcing them to have 40% women like some countries...
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  3. ​ duncansmith7562 That's not going to happen. Of course western volunteers is going to continue to be a factor, but western troops that's in the employ of western nations fighting in Ukraine would make us beligerents and would make it legal for Russia to strike against targets inside our countries. And NATO is a defensive alliance, other NATO countries are not obligated to help a NATO country if said NATO country actually struck first, something that taking part in Ukraine would in essence qualify as. Official western troops in Ukraine will only happen once NATO has a consensus to join in the war as a active party to the war. Given that Russia is a nuclear nation that's a bit hard to achieve...
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  4. ​ @gdiwolverinemale3rd All of those things are possible for Ukraine to provide in the west of the country, where much of the industry of the country has been relocated. And with F16s they can slowly increase the amount of airspace that's relatively safe from Russian attacks making it easier to repair and build airstrips further east. I don't expect any F16 at the front right away, but they'll gradually be able to move their planes eastwards. Also, this is a F16, not a F22... While more demanding then Russian or Swedish planes it's not among the worst offenders in this regard.
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  5.  @dmann4683  Why do you say that? Honestly I'm kind of surprised that it was just 5 dead and 3 wounded given the weapon and terrain in question. And there's clearly arrows that didn't hit their mark as seen in pictures of arrows stuck in walls and doors, and that has hit windows etc.
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  6.  @dmann4683  Well, this is Norway, not the US. Our media isn't all owned by a single owner, and there's transparency about media ownership here enshrined in our laws. Our political climate isn't as extremely polarized as the US political climate, and being a fairly small nation with a okey relationship with both Russia and China as well as the US we're generally spared major outside interference in our society. It's mainly the EU that's pushing us around (since we're not a member and they consider us within their sphere of influence).
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  7. Possibly. He was known to have mental health issues. If that and his ownership of a bow had been combined in our systems then perhaps this could have been avoided. He'd probably still find some way of injuring others. But without a bow fewer people might have died. There's already regulation in place on who may buy a bow and arrow and when and where it may be used. But it's not as tightly regulated as firearms. This experience might make us reevaluate that decision. But the biggest take away is probably that we need to strengthen the mental health side of our health care system and possibly the laws supporting it.
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  8.  @stevenmike1878  Perhaps, last time we had something like this happen the guy used a bomb to attack the government, and then shot unarmed youths and kids in a political youth camp... The death toll from that was way, way higher.
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  9.  @steffen6987  "Deutschland" is known to everyone and so is "Germany", Germans will know what you mean if you say "Germany" and people interacting with Germans generally know what a German means when they say "Deutschland". Svalbard/Spitsbergen however isn't as obvious a difference. Meaning that people need to be aware of the difference. It's definitely relevant and as someone living here in Norway I appreciate that they mentioned both names.
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  10.  @TheHans-lq2yw  What frustrates me about the political right is that they just see threats instead of seeing the people who are suffering everywhere...
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  11.  @kukulroukul4698  You're saying that to someone who is voting for a party with less than 4% of the votes in my country. A vegetarian who has taken part in plenty of demonstrations. We might not get the election results that we need, but that's because people don't always agree with us. It takes time to change peoples minds. We managed to change the election debate, but we're probably not going to be able to put a complete stop to our oil and gas production just yet. So you can keep using gas for cooking for a few more years it seems like.
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  12. Honestly what Ukraine is showing is that a capable airforce can deny a enemy the airspace. It's not just about size. Chances are that Russia would be able to deny airspace from a majority of NATO air assets too. Even newer planes with stealth capabilities would be taking risks when flying over enemy airspace and would have to be accurately aware of where any given radar signals are coming from. Some F35s would be lost. Older fighters definitely would be.
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  13.  @NiklasHansen-yr2wl  What do you mean? What is just escapism, and what is it that you believe is the roots?
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  14.  @KNYD  That's definitely a big part of it. But not the whole story. This involves everything from psychology to city planning to lack of aid with the homework to racism and so one and so forth... Yet the immigrants that are integrated (not assimilated) actually contribute to increasing the overall innovation in a society.
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  15.  @gozy4182  Agreed.
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  16.  @alrightletstalkhockey  What do you mean?
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  17.  @thekbsessions  The parts of the world that's significantly influenced by the Roman empire. That includes Italy itself, but also any areas under Roman control that still maintain a Latin culture, like the Iberian peninsula and to some degree, France and Romania. And areas colonised by Latin cultures, like most of central south America. That's the Latin world. It also sort of includes Italian and French speaking parts of Switzerland, most of the micronations, etc, a few places in Africa and Asia. But I think that you get the picture.
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  18.  @fallenknight2580  I don't know... People have different talents or lack of it for languages... People who genuinely struggle to learn a language shouldn't be punished. Also it might lead to additional stress and the health issues that might entail. People struggling with anxiety might be essentially rendered disabled by that additional complication to their lives. Don't get me wrong, I do see the advantages. But I'm not sure if it's the best approach.
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  19.  @Commievn  In the US you only really have two political parties. Sure there's factions within them, but the politicians you're dealing with are fundamentally at least in the same ballpark as you are. Here in Norway FRP (far right populists, the former party of Brevik, the racist guy that killed houndreds of labour party people because they where too pro-immigration for his taste) and Rødt (A party formed from the merger of several far left parties, including the communists) have worked together to get politics through before and they will do so again. Parties have to work together to get results here. "Wouldn't last a day", you're underestimating the patience and screwdness needed by Nordic politicians. A US politican trying out work here would last months, but he wouldn't have anything to show for it, because your system is designed to encourage confrontation and trying to take down opponents, something that would just leave you open from the flank by other parties here. Anything negative a US politican could possibly use against one of our politicans would leave him wide open to another party on the other side to attack. While US politics is essentially American fotball ours is 5D chess. There's 10 political parties represented in our 169 seat parliament here in Norway this term. So whatever voter demographics you could possibly go for there would be other parties gunning for the same exact voters with different solutions and well thought out critique of anything you're doing politically... As for personal attacks, they tend to backfire badly...
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  20.  @frozello14  Any combination of parties that ends up with a majority is honouring the election results in my book, big or small. Just having the big parties banding together because they're the biggest isn't really democratic in the long run, even if it's definitely a good option occasionally. But each party should try to find the best deal they can get from the other parties based on the election results for their own voters. For a large party that may involve executive power or even the prime minister job. But staying in the opposition may also be a better call occasionally. It all depends on the situation.
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  21.  @adoatero5129  Simple, it makes more people available for migration.
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  22. This is a relief. If Ukraine can get a few modern fighters they'll be able to keep the Russian airforce out of range of the majority of Ukrainian territory. 5:53 Well yes, but that's not the main point. The main point is that right now Russia can strike at targets in Ukraine with weapons that Ukraine can only intercept with systems that Ukraine has a limited supply of ammunition for. Trying to defend from these weapons after they've been fired just isn't sustainable. Shooting down the planes firing them however is and will force Russia to fire their weapons further away from the frontline or risk losing planes. In other words, the main role of these fighters is defensive in nature. Of course, they can also be used offensively, hence why the west had been so reluctant to send any... My guess is that they'll get a small number of them intended to augment their defenses and perhaps add a tiny bit of offensive potential too.
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  23. The only issues I can see... Her friends might be identified and blackmailed by foreign intelligence agencies in order to influence Finnish politics. Or just hacked in order to get access to her...
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  24.  @mayer14474  Screw ups, how so?
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  25.  @mayer14474  Well, the socialists have done a better job than the capitalists in many European countries. Here in Norway something like 2/3 of all the cabinets since the war have been socialist ones, yet the country is well run, far better run then nations mainly run by right wing parties in the anglophone world like England, USA, Australia etc.
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  26. Macron... I get your point of view. But seriously this is not the right time... -_- Whatever changes we make it's going to be slow long term changes. And this kind of talk belongs in private conversations between country leaders at this stage of the process... And honestly right now he's alienating other European countries and their peoples just for a few extra voters at home... This is also another reason why France really should ditch the first past the post electoral system...
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  27. Well, the US pull out of Afganistan is arguably as a response to Chinas growing power, consolidating US resources in case there's a need for them in a confrontation against China...
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  28. Do you want a nuclear war? Pipelines can be rebuilt and are an awful lot cheaper then rebuilding after fighting a costly war on your own territorium... Not to mention the lives cost...
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  29.  @gags-villsounds5351  Selling weapons to Russia during peacetime despite them being a strategic enemy of the west or trading resources etc with them (also during wartime) or anything else civilian is perfectly kosher... Most of the allies of the US doesn't want US/western control over the world economy to be that strong. But trading weapons with them during a proxy war with the west leaves too much of a cross hair on you for secondary sanctions to be a good idea for any developing nation. There's no international law that bans it. But it's just a generally bad idea given that the west quite frankly controls the majority of the worlds economy. It's just common sense to not piss of important trading partners that your economy depends on that much.
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  30.  @mweskamppp  Not just North Africa and the middle East. Sending signals from Europe up to satelits above central Asia and Central Africa is also quicker than from the US meaning that the EU bases also contribute to the US capabilities in those areas.
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  31.  @tolmie1141  The electoral systems using proportional representation that's popular in Europe is actually way more democratic then the US first past the post system. Over here people actually vote for people to represent them rather than voting against the worst of two options. Leaders of our politicans are then picked by the politicans they're meant to lead and serve more as civil servants doing a professional job of smoothing out the bumps in the way of getting things done that your politicans fail to deal with. Because of our structures our politicans can can actually come to agreements even from the opposite sides of the political spectrum. Think Bush, Trump, Sanders, Hillary, Obama etc all coming together and making a compromise that non of them hate that they're all willing to accept and that passes into law and or the policy of the sitting government. That's how we do it here in Europe.
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  32.  @234zuscoutjango9  I live in Norway, the representative in our parliament this election with the fewest votes got in with 0,2% of the votes. We have 169 seats in our parliament, 150 of those are proportional with no lower limit for the percentage of the votes required. Only 19 seats have a 4% requirement, that's our leveling seats. For a small party that could make the difference between 1-5 seats and 7-10 seats in some cases as the leveling seats are given to parties based on the national vote rather than the individual electoral circle, but we don't have first past the post electoral circles like in the German MMP system. Instead we just have 19 electoral circles within 150 seats distributed between them an one leveling seat for each of them. Yes, having many parties can make creating a coalition complicated. But the problem of the Weimar Republic wasn't too many parties but too few. When the communists and socialists refused to cooperate there wasn't enough viable alternative paths towards power. Only a extremist right wing coalition ended up being possible. Compare that to this election where there was 6 different coalition options on the table in Germany, if two parties refused to cooperate a viable alternative would be guaranteed. Bigger parties tends to be too confident and not good enough at making compromises. If they don't behave it's harder for the electorate to actually deal with them and get a proper alternative in place.
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  33.  @GTA5Player1  Quite the country. Any time someone does not feel represented by the political system they start looking for alternative paths towards relevance. And I'm sure that Germany has experienced enough terrorism in the seventies to know that disgruntled citizens can be quite problematic... The fall of the Soviet Union might have helped, but the presence of Die Linke in your parliament is probably just as important in avoiding a modern "Rote Armee Fraktion" as the political changes further east. If you allowed more smaller parties then perhaps some of your current parties could split up into their current factions giving people more real options instead of forcing everyone into a few big parties. Germany is bigger than Norway, has way more seats in your parliament, and more diversity, yet you have less parties represented. The best way you can possibly reduce your conflict levels is by ensuring that more people are represented and by splitting up the political identities into smaller ones that are easier to deal with. Some of the values of AfD could perhaps be meet without turning to racism if they could be represented in another party. There's certainly room for a party between communists and labour in a country. Conservativism can take more than one form, CDU/CSU isn't the only possible answer for that. The 3 direct seat exception to the 5% rule helps, but is still problematic in my view. 5% is just way, way too high, and the exception relies on a fundamentally unfair first past the post system. I see what they tried to achieve with that system, and I agree with many of the fundamental ideas, but there's other ways to implement those ideas that avoids some of its pitfalls. Like the focus on person over politics caused by a system where you are voting for people rather than parties. You can ensure local representation without turning to the first past the post system. The German system is only fair when it comes to the relationship between the bigger parties, not to the smaller ones the way I see it. However it's your country, not mine. I'm just glad that we don't have to deal with it.
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  34. Exactly. I wonder what was going through their mind when they killed these officers. Are we talking mental illness? Or are they from a culture with less trust in the police and authorities then we typically have in the gernanic countries? Or has something else happened?
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  35. The EU is slow, and that's a problem during wartime. But overall it's a good thing leading to fewer policies that's harmful to EU citizens.
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  36. ​​ @fwiffo hile painful such slow processes are actually preferable in the long run even if they're frustrating here and now. That kind of democracy and self determination among European nations is honestly what European support for Ukraine is all about.
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  37. ​ @mrnygren2 Actually, they "faught" Norway after Napoleon was defeated and we wanted independence. But in reality non of the casualties where hostile in nature. As usual at the time most deaths where outside the battlefield.
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  38. Ja.
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  39. Or alternative power sources, yes. I live in Norway myself. If my political party had about 0,1% more voters we could probably have played a role in forcing through a stop in the search for new oil and gas here (we still wouldn't have been big enough to get the end date for extraction that we wanted due to other parties doing well). But as you can imagine putting a end to these climate sinners both in my own country and abroad is a long term goal for me. Russia is also going to suffer because of the climate changes even if they also create new opportunities for Russia.
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  40.  @ShayNoMore1  Not enough production is a good thing. Higher prices will hopefully help convince more people to switch over to alternatives. That said, we're hoping to make said alternatives. Increasing our production of electricity and start producing hydrogen. We still have a lot of untapped wind and water power potential as well as tidal power potential here in Norway. Of course, just like in Germany there's a lot of people that don't want a windmill near their homes... :-/
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  41.  @omaramoodi3057  If the hospitals fills up the lethality rises to about 5% (1 in 20 people getting the disease) I believe? Of course with hospitals it's not all that lethal... But hospital capacity isn't scaled for a full blown epidemic like this in modern times...
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  42.  @andreaerling7614  No... It's because of the new strains... Positive rates are going up all over the world because of those, not just in Germany. More test might theoretically increase the total number of cases confirmed, but not the number of confirmed cases pr x number of tests. Sure, that particular test might be questionable, but it's not like Germany only uses a single test, is it? Cases are going up. That's just indisputable at this stage.
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  43. I enjoyed the format. But may I suggest that you pick someone with a bit more experience in self disiplin for the enviromentalist next time? ;-) I'm left wing and an enviromentalist of my own country myself. But she needs to let the other side talk too if we are to have a proper debate. And not just interupt all the time.
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  44. I don't know about that. It's both in Russias and NATOs interest to not acknowledge any attacks made by Russia as Russian if they're relatively small scale like this. A internet cable or gas pipeline can be repaired unlike dead humans and is an awful lot cheaper then fighting a war and repairing the damages that will result from a war... Fighting a proxy war in Ukraine suits both sides well.
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  45.  @lawrencekling8598  Simple. Nuclear war is extremely expensive, not to mention deadly. It's cheaper to just accept the loss of some relatively cheap to replace infrastructure then to start a full on war. A proxy war suits NATO well. And that's why Russias attacks on NATO is all based around plausible deniability. Because up to a point it's just better to let them get away with it. And it has been for a long, long time. They've been doing this since early in the cold war.
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  46.  @MellonVegan  What happened in Thuringia? As for not working with AfD at all... That's probably not a good idea, and will only increase their vote share. It's better to include them but keep in political work but to keep them on a tight leash. Perhaps there's non-racist policies of the AfD that can be implemented that makes some sense?
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  47.  @emilsinclair4190  My thought was that there's just too few parties, and no real alternatives to FDP for a coalition... See my description of the situation in my own country to get an idea about what I mean.
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  48.  @lamiz3786  Exactly, and my objection is that there is too few parties in the German parliament. And that the relative power is too skewed towards the bigger parties. In my view the ideal situation is one where there's multiple paths towards a majority. In Germany that's barely the case, for instance AfD can be ignored by the other parties because there's other paths to majority that doesn't include them. But the way I see it there should be more, and the relative power of parties should be more proportional, even among the smaller parties. Germany has two methods of getting into parliament. Having more then 5% of the votes or being the biggest party in 3 first past the post electoral circles. Both of these discourages smaller parties too much. What I would suggest is to change that 5% rule to just being a requirement for the seats that's proportional at a national level. And to merge some of the single seat electoral circles and possibly also adding seats there to make them more proportional. Not necessarily making all of them proportional, but make most of them proportional at a local level. So instead of 4 electoral circles with 1 seat each you could have 1 with 5 seats for instance. The two biggest parties might get 2 or 3 of those seats, but smaller parties could get a seat there too. How the proportional seats are distributed could also be tweaked to favor bigger or smaller parties, and I believe it currently favors bigger parties in Germany also when it comes to the national proportional seats.
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  49.  @NeverEverII  My understanding was that the first past the post seats where only given to parties that wins at least 3 first past the post electoral circles or 5% of the vote. A party getting neither (say 2 first past the post seats and 4,9% of the national vote) would not be represented unless it's a party representing a minority like the Danes. I thought they got their seat through a first past the post electoral circle and kept it despite only having one first past the post electoral circle mandate and less than 5% of the votes, but I'm glad to hear that they got their seat through proportionality instead. That was my mistake. But unless you got a source saying otherwise then I'll have no reason thinking that you can get representation without those first past the post seats needing to coming from 3 places or the party needing 5% of the total electorate to get a seat in parliament, except of course for the recognized minority parties.
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  50. ​ @jojolafrite90 It depends, sometimes religious people can be reasoned with. And at any rate giving up and ending communication is how you create echo chambers and differences in your understanding of the reality. They're not going to stop believing in fairytales. But by communicating you can sometimes overcome that us vs them mentality and get some results...
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