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On December 30 2017 07:52 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2017 07:19 FuzzyJAM wrote:On December 30 2017 03:48 Plansix wrote:On December 29 2017 04:07 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On December 29 2017 02:38 Sent. wrote:On December 28 2017 09:13 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't even understand the logic of tying this to the completely arbitrary 2% GDP number or whatever. What are we going to buy with it and where are we going to send it? Nobody is asking for spending the whole promised 2% on missiles pointed at Moscow, You can buy stuff to protect your interests such as ensuring free-trade routes or preventing regional instabilities, which are also certain to negatively impact your ability to safeguard trade, jobs and income.• Some money could be spent on peacekeeping in regions where refugees come from. I understand that Europeans don't want to "get dirty" in hot places like Syria, but there are countries in Africa where Americans, Saudis, Russians and Israelis aren't involved. • Some money could be spent on developing our (European) air force. I think it's important to be able to do stuff like the air strikes in Libya without American assistance. Having more ships to protect trade routes would also be cool. • More money spent on developing our own weapons means less money going into the American military industry. I think a lot of posters here would want that. How will it stop Russia from doing anything it doesn't do already given that we already have military superiority? I'm guessing that by "we" you mean NATO. Do you consider the US reliable? Do you think we have military superiority without them? Very important questions to ask, considering that the current president of the US hates NATO and doesn't want to honor Article 5. Especially since the most likely aggressor against NATO is Russia, whom the US president has displayed a disturbing amount of affection for. EDIT: Just noticed it says you are from Poland. Not surprised that someone on NATO's eastern frontier is more worried about the Russians than someone in western or central Europe. I will echo everything here. The US is not reliable. We are war weary and don’t trust our government or media. I don’t know if the government could rally public support for allies in NATO. Our congress does not have your back. And from some of the reports about how their elections were financed, I would be worried that some of them might soaking up some Russian dollars. And whatever shape the Russian power grab takes, it won’t be a full scale, Red Alert 3 style invasion. It will be them performing peace keeping mission into some country they helped destabilize. Or pushing into an eastern block country that they are pretty sure won’t cause NATO to push back. They are going to push into whatever version of 1938 Czechoslovak they can find and see how you , the EU/NATO, respond. It is going to be designed to make all of us question if this is the time to push back with force or line up tanks on the border. So you best have some tanks ready to roll when that happens. Is there a reason to prefer Western power grabs to Russian ones? Is Libya doing any better than eastern Ukraine? Why ask that when the post never even mentions Western power grabs?
It was an underlying assumption in his post that the West having the ability to do whatever it wants militarily is good for the world, and I was asking why, given the West's track record. That's a perfectly legitimate area of discussion.
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On December 30 2017 07:57 FuzzyJAM wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2017 07:52 Gorsameth wrote:On December 30 2017 07:19 FuzzyJAM wrote:On December 30 2017 03:48 Plansix wrote:On December 29 2017 04:07 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On December 29 2017 02:38 Sent. wrote:On December 28 2017 09:13 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't even understand the logic of tying this to the completely arbitrary 2% GDP number or whatever. What are we going to buy with it and where are we going to send it? Nobody is asking for spending the whole promised 2% on missiles pointed at Moscow, You can buy stuff to protect your interests such as ensuring free-trade routes or preventing regional instabilities, which are also certain to negatively impact your ability to safeguard trade, jobs and income.• Some money could be spent on peacekeeping in regions where refugees come from. I understand that Europeans don't want to "get dirty" in hot places like Syria, but there are countries in Africa where Americans, Saudis, Russians and Israelis aren't involved. • Some money could be spent on developing our (European) air force. I think it's important to be able to do stuff like the air strikes in Libya without American assistance. Having more ships to protect trade routes would also be cool. • More money spent on developing our own weapons means less money going into the American military industry. I think a lot of posters here would want that. How will it stop Russia from doing anything it doesn't do already given that we already have military superiority? I'm guessing that by "we" you mean NATO. Do you consider the US reliable? Do you think we have military superiority without them? Very important questions to ask, considering that the current president of the US hates NATO and doesn't want to honor Article 5. Especially since the most likely aggressor against NATO is Russia, whom the US president has displayed a disturbing amount of affection for. EDIT: Just noticed it says you are from Poland. Not surprised that someone on NATO's eastern frontier is more worried about the Russians than someone in western or central Europe. I will echo everything here. The US is not reliable. We are war weary and don’t trust our government or media. I don’t know if the government could rally public support for allies in NATO. Our congress does not have your back. And from some of the reports about how their elections were financed, I would be worried that some of them might soaking up some Russian dollars. And whatever shape the Russian power grab takes, it won’t be a full scale, Red Alert 3 style invasion. It will be them performing peace keeping mission into some country they helped destabilize. Or pushing into an eastern block country that they are pretty sure won’t cause NATO to push back. They are going to push into whatever version of 1938 Czechoslovak they can find and see how you , the EU/NATO, respond. It is going to be designed to make all of us question if this is the time to push back with force or line up tanks on the border. So you best have some tanks ready to roll when that happens. Is there a reason to prefer Western power grabs to Russian ones? Is Libya doing any better than eastern Ukraine? Why ask that when the post never even mentions Western power grabs? It was an underlying assumption in his post that the West having the ability to do whatever it wants militarily is good for the world, and I was asking why, given the West's track record. That's a perfectly legitimate area of discussion.
Except no where does it mention that the West doing 'whatever it wants with its military' is fine.
The entire post is focused on reactions to Russian aggression.
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On December 30 2017 07:59 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2017 07:57 FuzzyJAM wrote:On December 30 2017 07:52 Gorsameth wrote:On December 30 2017 07:19 FuzzyJAM wrote:On December 30 2017 03:48 Plansix wrote:On December 29 2017 04:07 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On December 29 2017 02:38 Sent. wrote:On December 28 2017 09:13 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't even understand the logic of tying this to the completely arbitrary 2% GDP number or whatever. What are we going to buy with it and where are we going to send it? Nobody is asking for spending the whole promised 2% on missiles pointed at Moscow, You can buy stuff to protect your interests such as ensuring free-trade routes or preventing regional instabilities, which are also certain to negatively impact your ability to safeguard trade, jobs and income.• Some money could be spent on peacekeeping in regions where refugees come from. I understand that Europeans don't want to "get dirty" in hot places like Syria, but there are countries in Africa where Americans, Saudis, Russians and Israelis aren't involved. • Some money could be spent on developing our (European) air force. I think it's important to be able to do stuff like the air strikes in Libya without American assistance. Having more ships to protect trade routes would also be cool. • More money spent on developing our own weapons means less money going into the American military industry. I think a lot of posters here would want that. How will it stop Russia from doing anything it doesn't do already given that we already have military superiority? I'm guessing that by "we" you mean NATO. Do you consider the US reliable? Do you think we have military superiority without them? Very important questions to ask, considering that the current president of the US hates NATO and doesn't want to honor Article 5. Especially since the most likely aggressor against NATO is Russia, whom the US president has displayed a disturbing amount of affection for. EDIT: Just noticed it says you are from Poland. Not surprised that someone on NATO's eastern frontier is more worried about the Russians than someone in western or central Europe. I will echo everything here. The US is not reliable. We are war weary and don’t trust our government or media. I don’t know if the government could rally public support for allies in NATO. Our congress does not have your back. And from some of the reports about how their elections were financed, I would be worried that some of them might soaking up some Russian dollars. And whatever shape the Russian power grab takes, it won’t be a full scale, Red Alert 3 style invasion. It will be them performing peace keeping mission into some country they helped destabilize. Or pushing into an eastern block country that they are pretty sure won’t cause NATO to push back. They are going to push into whatever version of 1938 Czechoslovak they can find and see how you , the EU/NATO, respond. It is going to be designed to make all of us question if this is the time to push back with force or line up tanks on the border. So you best have some tanks ready to roll when that happens. Is there a reason to prefer Western power grabs to Russian ones? Is Libya doing any better than eastern Ukraine? Why ask that when the post never even mentions Western power grabs? It was an underlying assumption in his post that the West having the ability to do whatever it wants militarily is good for the world, and I was asking why, given the West's track record. That's a perfectly legitimate area of discussion. Except no where does it mention that the West doing 'whatever it wants with its military' is fine. The entire post is focused on reactions to Russian aggression.
It doesn't say that the West doing whatever it wants with its military is fine. Nor did I claim it did. "It is good that the West can do as it wills" is utterly different from "Whatever the West wills is good." My contention is with the former, not the latter, because hopefully nobody here is dumb enough to believe the latter.
Plainly it is a consequence of an increase in Western dominance that we are more able to do as we wish globally, and that's what I was discussing. For the balance of power to shift from Russia, it has to shift to the West.
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On December 30 2017 08:05 FuzzyJAM wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2017 07:59 Gorsameth wrote:On December 30 2017 07:57 FuzzyJAM wrote:On December 30 2017 07:52 Gorsameth wrote:On December 30 2017 07:19 FuzzyJAM wrote:On December 30 2017 03:48 Plansix wrote:On December 29 2017 04:07 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On December 29 2017 02:38 Sent. wrote:On December 28 2017 09:13 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't even understand the logic of tying this to the completely arbitrary 2% GDP number or whatever. What are we going to buy with it and where are we going to send it? Nobody is asking for spending the whole promised 2% on missiles pointed at Moscow, You can buy stuff to protect your interests such as ensuring free-trade routes or preventing regional instabilities, which are also certain to negatively impact your ability to safeguard trade, jobs and income.• Some money could be spent on peacekeeping in regions where refugees come from. I understand that Europeans don't want to "get dirty" in hot places like Syria, but there are countries in Africa where Americans, Saudis, Russians and Israelis aren't involved. • Some money could be spent on developing our (European) air force. I think it's important to be able to do stuff like the air strikes in Libya without American assistance. Having more ships to protect trade routes would also be cool. • More money spent on developing our own weapons means less money going into the American military industry. I think a lot of posters here would want that. How will it stop Russia from doing anything it doesn't do already given that we already have military superiority? I'm guessing that by "we" you mean NATO. Do you consider the US reliable? Do you think we have military superiority without them? Very important questions to ask, considering that the current president of the US hates NATO and doesn't want to honor Article 5. Especially since the most likely aggressor against NATO is Russia, whom the US president has displayed a disturbing amount of affection for. EDIT: Just noticed it says you are from Poland. Not surprised that someone on NATO's eastern frontier is more worried about the Russians than someone in western or central Europe. I will echo everything here. The US is not reliable. We are war weary and don’t trust our government or media. I don’t know if the government could rally public support for allies in NATO. Our congress does not have your back. And from some of the reports about how their elections were financed, I would be worried that some of them might soaking up some Russian dollars. And whatever shape the Russian power grab takes, it won’t be a full scale, Red Alert 3 style invasion. It will be them performing peace keeping mission into some country they helped destabilize. Or pushing into an eastern block country that they are pretty sure won’t cause NATO to push back. They are going to push into whatever version of 1938 Czechoslovak they can find and see how you , the EU/NATO, respond. It is going to be designed to make all of us question if this is the time to push back with force or line up tanks on the border. So you best have some tanks ready to roll when that happens. Is there a reason to prefer Western power grabs to Russian ones? Is Libya doing any better than eastern Ukraine? Why ask that when the post never even mentions Western power grabs? It was an underlying assumption in his post that the West having the ability to do whatever it wants militarily is good for the world, and I was asking why, given the West's track record. That's a perfectly legitimate area of discussion. Except no where does it mention that the West doing 'whatever it wants with its military' is fine. The entire post is focused on reactions to Russian aggression. It doesn't say that the West doing whatever it wants with its military is fine. Nor did I claim it did. "It is good that the West can do as it wills" is utterly different from "Whatever the West wills is good." My contention is with the former, not the latter, because hopefully nobody here is dumb enough to believe the latter. Plainly it is a consequence of an increase in Western dominance that we are more able to do as we wish globally, and that's what I was discussing. For the balance of power to shift from Russia, it has to shift to the West.
Again, thats not what the post is talking about. Its not talking about "It is good that the West can do as it wills" either.
Its talking about "Can the EU (not 'the West' which normally includes the US) react to Russian aggression ala Ukraine without the US and where do we draw the line".
No where does it mention 'Western dominance' or aggressive action like your Libya example.
What your doing is just another whatoutism, "lets stop talking about how Russia did a bad thing and instead focus on how the West is just as bad".
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As a direct result of Europe increasing its military power we will have more ability to do as we wish militarily around the globe. It's not like we're going to write "Can only be used for nice things" on our missiles, is it? That's nothing to do with whataboutism, it's about talking about the consequence of our military power increasing.
I do not trust my government's use of military power whatsoever, therefore increasing our military power has at least some downsides, whether these are overall worth it or not.
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On December 30 2017 07:19 FuzzyJAM wrote:
Is there a reason to prefer Western power grabs to Russian ones? Is Libya doing any better than eastern Ukraine?
Whataboutism is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument Please, don't complain someone calls you out when you use the textbook example.
You wanne talk about the dangers of EU aggression when we have a bigger military and how we stop that from happening while protecting ourselves and our allies? Go right ahead and ask the questions you have on your mind but don't come barging in putting words into people's mouths Is there a reason to prefer Western power grabs to Russian ones? when said person makes not even a remote insinuation of the sort.
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But there was nothing about hypocrisy at all. I was trying to point out a downside to increased military spending that I don't think was being properly considered. This is a perfectly normal thing to do when discussing policy decisions.
We are logically committed to the necessary consequences of our views. It is necessarily the case that an increase in our spending will at least increase our ability to make power grabs, and Plansix never took issue with me assuming we would use that ability because (I take it) we have a shared understanding that we will.
Plansix took a fair approach, which was to claim that this downside either wasn't a downside or wasn't too bad a downside. I firmly disagree (the closest I could see myself being convinced of would be "It's an awful downside, but the cost is still worth it"), but he's dealt with the issue, and that's fine. You'll note he made no complaints about me putting words in his mouth, or calling him a hypocrite, and was able to engage me in a perfectly fine manor, so I'm confused as to your issue with it.
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On December 30 2017 09:20 FuzzyJAM wrote:
But there was nothing about hypocrisy at all. I was trying to point out a downside to increased military spending that I don't think was being properly considered. This is a perfectly normal thing to do when discussing policy decisions.
We are logically committed to the necessary consequences of our views. It is necessarily the case that an increase in our spending will at least increase our ability to make power grabs, and Plansix never took issue with me assuming we would use that ability because (I take it) we have a shared understanding that we will.
Plansix took a fair approach, which was to claim that this downside either wasn't a downside or wasn't too bad a downside. I firmly disagree (the closest I could see myself being convinced of would be "It's an awful downside, but the cost is still worth it"), but he's dealt with the issue, and that's fine. You'll note he made no complaints about me putting words in his mouth, or calling him a hypocrite, and was able to engage me in a perfectly fine manor, so I'm confused as to your issue with it.
Is there a reason to prefer Western power grabs to Russian ones? Why is Russia bad but Western good/fine/acceptable. That right there is your attempt to invoke hypocrisy.
As per my previous post my issue is your words and jumping strait to the conclusion that we must be fine with Western power grabs.
Its perfectly fine to want a sufficient military to dissuade Russian aggression without wanting to invade people ourselves.
Yes when you have a hammer problems start to look like nails but thats up to us, the voters, to remind our politicians that we are not ok with that.
Its a risk I feel we have to take to avoid us becoming a potential nail for another mans hammer, would that we could live in a world where no one ever gets a hammer. But that sure aint happening.
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I never suggested anyone thought our power grabs were good/fine/acceptable. I suggested people think they are preferable, and asked the reasoning for why to be spelled out. I was correct in believing this, and Plansix answered my question with his explanation of why. There was no issue of putting words in anyone's mouth, or any sort of mention of hypocrisy. It was me making sure that a particular negative consequence of a policy (i.e. increased ability for our own non-defensive wars) was being brought to light and properly weighed against the positive. I'm [close to] a pacifist, so naturally this is an important point I want people to seriously consider when discussing an increase in our military capability.
There is, at least in logical space, a position that holds that we can increase our military expenditure without this increasing the likelihood of our getting involved in non-defensive wars. Sure. I (correctly!) did not take this to be Plansix's position. I do not think it is a plausible position, so I discounted it. If you think it's plausible then that's our area of disagreement. Fine, we disagree. I simply took for granted a background assumption (i.e. we will continue to use our military for non-defensive wars for the foreseeable future, as has happened for the entirety of human history) which my interlocutor also accepted. If you want to bring to the fore that background assumption, and reject it, then that's fine. I think you're wrong. But it has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with me trying to call someone a hypocrite. And given your "risk" talk, it doesn't even appear to be an assumption you're far off accepting.
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2774 Posts
On December 30 2017 07:19 FuzzyJAM wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2017 03:48 Plansix wrote:On December 29 2017 04:07 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On December 29 2017 02:38 Sent. wrote:On December 28 2017 09:13 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't even understand the logic of tying this to the completely arbitrary 2% GDP number or whatever. What are we going to buy with it and where are we going to send it? Nobody is asking for spending the whole promised 2% on missiles pointed at Moscow, You can buy stuff to protect your interests such as ensuring free-trade routes or preventing regional instabilities, which are also certain to negatively impact your ability to safeguard trade, jobs and income.• Some money could be spent on peacekeeping in regions where refugees come from. I understand that Europeans don't want to "get dirty" in hot places like Syria, but there are countries in Africa where Americans, Saudis, Russians and Israelis aren't involved. • Some money could be spent on developing our (European) air force. I think it's important to be able to do stuff like the air strikes in Libya without American assistance. Having more ships to protect trade routes would also be cool. • More money spent on developing our own weapons means less money going into the American military industry. I think a lot of posters here would want that. How will it stop Russia from doing anything it doesn't do already given that we already have military superiority? I'm guessing that by "we" you mean NATO. Do you consider the US reliable? Do you think we have military superiority without them? Very important questions to ask, considering that the current president of the US hates NATO and doesn't want to honor Article 5. Especially since the most likely aggressor against NATO is Russia, whom the US president has displayed a disturbing amount of affection for. EDIT: Just noticed it says you are from Poland. Not surprised that someone on NATO's eastern frontier is more worried about the Russians than someone in western or central Europe. I will echo everything here. The US is not reliable. We are war weary and don’t trust our government or media. I don’t know if the government could rally public support for allies in NATO. Our congress does not have your back. And from some of the reports about how their elections were financed, I would be worried that some of them might soaking up some Russian dollars. And whatever shape the Russian power grab takes, it won’t be a full scale, Red Alert 3 style invasion. It will be them performing peace keeping mission into some country they helped destabilize. Or pushing into an eastern block country that they are pretty sure won’t cause NATO to push back. They are going to push into whatever version of 1938 Czechoslovak they can find and see how you , the EU/NATO, respond. It is going to be designed to make all of us question if this is the time to push back with force or line up tanks on the border. So you best have some tanks ready to roll when that happens. Is there a reason to prefer Western power grabs to Russian ones? Is Libya doing any better than eastern Ukraine?
Besides what P6 just mentioned there's quite a lot of historical precedence to not want to associate with Russia, or the Soviet Union. Considering most of the eastern bloc and their alignment today.
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On December 30 2017 07:52 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2017 07:19 FuzzyJAM wrote:On December 30 2017 03:48 Plansix wrote:On December 29 2017 04:07 TheLordofAwesome wrote:On December 29 2017 02:38 Sent. wrote:On December 28 2017 09:13 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't even understand the logic of tying this to the completely arbitrary 2% GDP number or whatever. What are we going to buy with it and where are we going to send it? Nobody is asking for spending the whole promised 2% on missiles pointed at Moscow, You can buy stuff to protect your interests such as ensuring free-trade routes or preventing regional instabilities, which are also certain to negatively impact your ability to safeguard trade, jobs and income.• Some money could be spent on peacekeeping in regions where refugees come from. I understand that Europeans don't want to "get dirty" in hot places like Syria, but there are countries in Africa where Americans, Saudis, Russians and Israelis aren't involved. • Some money could be spent on developing our (European) air force. I think it's important to be able to do stuff like the air strikes in Libya without American assistance. Having more ships to protect trade routes would also be cool. • More money spent on developing our own weapons means less money going into the American military industry. I think a lot of posters here would want that. How will it stop Russia from doing anything it doesn't do already given that we already have military superiority? I'm guessing that by "we" you mean NATO. Do you consider the US reliable? Do you think we have military superiority without them? Very important questions to ask, considering that the current president of the US hates NATO and doesn't want to honor Article 5. Especially since the most likely aggressor against NATO is Russia, whom the US president has displayed a disturbing amount of affection for. EDIT: Just noticed it says you are from Poland. Not surprised that someone on NATO's eastern frontier is more worried about the Russians than someone in western or central Europe. I will echo everything here. The US is not reliable. We are war weary and don’t trust our government or media. I don’t know if the government could rally public support for allies in NATO. Our congress does not have your back. And from some of the reports about how their elections were financed, I would be worried that some of them might soaking up some Russian dollars. And whatever shape the Russian power grab takes, it won’t be a full scale, Red Alert 3 style invasion. It will be them performing peace keeping mission into some country they helped destabilize. Or pushing into an eastern block country that they are pretty sure won’t cause NATO to push back. They are going to push into whatever version of 1938 Czechoslovak they can find and see how you , the EU/NATO, respond. It is going to be designed to make all of us question if this is the time to push back with force or line up tanks on the border. So you best have some tanks ready to roll when that happens. Is there a reason to prefer Western power grabs to Russian ones? Is Libya doing any better than eastern Ukraine? Why ask that when the post never even mentions Western power grabs?
Well, can u imagine - I have never experienced Westerns doing something wrong to me or my family, have u?
On the other hand how could you forget MH17 as an awful but clear example of "eastern agression"?
That's why.
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Happy 2018 Europe from vienna!
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And with the new year Europen borders have been redrawn.
Poor Belgium lost 0.0005% (0,16 km^2) of its territory to the expansionist Windmills. As a small compensation they at least gained back 0.03 km^2.
Still it is obvious that very soon (about 250k years) Belgium will be completely flooded with tulips, bikes, weed and windmills.
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just read about how the CSU wants to cut corporate taxes in Germany in a response to the US taxcuts, the planned UK ones and the ones in France for Germany to not be left as the odd one out with significantly (?) higher corporate taxes.
Tried to google some because frankly besides the US one that already happened I don't have a lot of info on that and the first couple links I got on the UK all pointed to some months-old articles and how cutting corporate taxes could make up for some of the brexit damage of leaving the EU.
Any info on those things from UK/French people on how likely that is? Just wondering because in our case (Germany) it's only the CSU saying that right now (and probably the FDP but they don't want to govern). So I'd usually advise to not give a damn and just file it under "things politicians say because their base likes it while knowing they won't ever be able to do it".
But if the UK and France really are about to do that I don't really see Germany not reacting and I'm not in touch enough to judge the situation in the UK and France on that front.
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On January 02 2018 05:26 Toadesstern wrote:
just read about how the CSU wants to cut corporate taxes in Germany in a response to the US taxcuts, the planned UK ones and the ones in France for Germany to not be left as the odd one out with significantly (?) higher corporate taxes.
Tried to google some because frankly besides the US one that already happened I don't have a lot of info on that and the first couple links I got on the UK all pointed to some months-old articles and how cutting corporate taxes could make up for some of the brexit damage of leaving the EU.
Any info on those things from UK/French people on how likely that is? Just wondering because in our case (Germany) it's only the CSU saying that right now (and probably the FDP but they don't want to govern). So I'd usually advise to not give a damn and just file it under "things politicians say because their base likes it while knowing they won't ever be able to do it".
But if the UK and France really are about to do that I don't really see Germany not reacting and I'm not in touch enough to judge the situation in the UK and France on that front.
Unsure I understood what you meant, but in France Macron planned to reduce corporate taxes to 25% by 2022.
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if it's done revenue neutral I'd support it. Replace it with a carbon tax or a tax on personal wealth.
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On January 02 2018 05:35 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2018 05:26 Toadesstern wrote:
just read about how the CSU wants to cut corporate taxes in Germany in a response to the US taxcuts, the planned UK ones and the ones in France for Germany to not be left as the odd one out with significantly (?) higher corporate taxes.
Tried to google some because frankly besides the US one that already happened I don't have a lot of info on that and the first couple links I got on the UK all pointed to some months-old articles and how cutting corporate taxes could make up for some of the brexit damage of leaving the EU.
Any info on those things from UK/French people on how likely that is? Just wondering because in our case (Germany) it's only the CSU saying that right now (and probably the FDP but they don't want to govern). So I'd usually advise to not give a damn and just file it under "things politicians say because their base likes it while knowing they won't ever be able to do it".
But if the UK and France really are about to do that I don't really see Germany not reacting and I'm not in touch enough to judge the situation in the UK and France on that front. Unsure I understood what you meant, but in France Macron planned to reduce corporate taxes to 25% by 2022.
Just asking for input on the situations in France and the UK. I more or less think it's bullshit in Germany right now [that is, I'm not trying to judge the policy here, I'm trying to judge the unimportance of the sole guy arguing for it] because it's just that one party saying it but I don't really have that information on France/UK politics.
So basicly, if France and UK actually go ahead and lower corporate taxes as well, after the US already did it I don't think Germany will stand idly by keeping our current levels and over time we'll get more parties arguing for that or at least agreeing with it.
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France starts the war on fake news
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42560688
It was just waiting for this to happen,still surprised that its france that is one of the first to announce a law about it. Other western countries will probably follow as well in the coming 1-2 years.
For over 100 years the big news papers and media corporations have had a monopoly on news and opinions. Controlled by big industries who often shared a more or less common goal.
They have been spreading fake news for all that time alongside the real news to achieve their agendas. One example being the WMD weapons in Iraq but you can find examples of this in every corner of society, downplaying the dangers of smoking by tobacco companys complete with official research, downplaying global warming by the oil companys and renowned researchers,advertisements disguised as news storys and many more examples where people knowingly spread misinformation through the mainstream media with the aim to influence the public and/or political policys for the benefits of their own interests.
With the rise of the internet this monopoly on information,opinion and propaganda has slowly eroded away. It is still in the early stages of this process btw but it has sparked a fear,a fear of the loss of control over what the population thinks and so now there comes action.
To me this looks like a can of worms that will start to slowly undermine freedom of speech in the west and could end up with censorship in the long run if you would extrapolate the trend.
To make a good definition of fake news is very difficult,i would like to challenge anyone to come up with one and I will happily shoot holes in it by showing situations where it can lead to unwanted results.
Macron makes a good attempt to deliberately mention social media. Maybe he will exclude all the big media corporations and make their news posts and articles "non fake" news per definition which would be a first step to censorship and controlled news. Not state controlled but even worse,privately controlled.
Because if he would make a general definition that would apply to any news then there could be a slew of law suits waiting against vested interests who have spread fake news in the past up till today with the aim to influence public opinion and or political policys.
The whole fake news hype is heavily overplayed and looks like a false flag to gain more control about information with laws like the one announced in the article linked in this post.
Is it really worth starting to eat away at our freedom and freedom of speech over a bunch of rusian face book adds?
Are we going to block rusian tv from out cables and satelites as well,pretty much in a similar way as is north korea blocking all the media that is not from north korea/china.
Will all the news that we are supposed to see be controlled and verified by our government and deemed safe for consumption?
Its a trend that deeply worries me but one that will most likely continue in the coming decade(s)
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oh for god's sake put the tinfoil hat off
yes it is really worth combatting troll news from Russia or Breitbart or wherever because they're undermining our discourse. European countries aren't libertarian clowncars, we don't tolerate every act of speech just for the sake of it, never have and never will.
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they're undermining our discourse that alone is more worthy of a tinfoil hat than everything pmh said.
there is no "our" and the "discourse" is you schooling plebs, populists, old geezers, <everyonethat'snotwithus>.
let the fucking trolls run free so you could see the true magnitude of stupid that breed under your watchful eye/gaze/rule; assume responsibility for all of it and only then you'll be allowed to have an opinion on whom and how stupid need to be censured/stopped/educated.
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EPT
