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European army? Idk about that idea but not having 10 countries do the same R&D all by themselves to get individually to the (more or less) same result for 10 times the price seems like a good idea to me?
As a german in particular I'm not even opposed to the european army idea either. But not like I have looked into that a lot.
Let's take the conversation about Russia invading east europe from a couple months ago as an example. As a german it's basicly a lose-lose situation because sending (german) soldiers is probably not something people over there want for obvious historic reasons.
So if it were some bigger organization that might not be as much of an issue anymore?
But then again I'm sure there's going to be people arguing about how it's basicly one big german military organization doing our bidding and the next Nazi movement as well.
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On December 21 2016 03:20 LegalLord wrote:
Some people say "more Europe" is the solution for the problems with the Europe project. Others disagree. Both sides learn the lessons they want to learn from the current crisis and so the crisis continues.
The question is "to which" problems. The economic crisis that is killing Europe and dragging down huge parts of the rest of the world is one that we can only solve if we start taking centralized actions. I'm sorry for anyone who doesn't like that prospect, but we tied our economies together, especially within the Euro-area, now we have to seek united solutions. And a locally-elected politican just can't take action on such matters, because it means making unpopular economical decisions for the country you are elected in.
A lot of the "mission creep of EU" is going on because it is absolutly necessary. Take ECB breaking their rules and creating Euro-bonds through the backdoor through QE-measures, which is actually forbidden by European contracts. Well, that is what is necessary in a monetary union and there would be much more necessary stuff fiscally, yet the union does not have the power to do that. Well, maybe the Juncker-plan will work, but I remain sceptical.
And yeah, I'd rather have a democratically elected EP and government make huge decision on issues such as Greece rather than Merkel who just wanted to cover face when the first banking bailout wasn't enough for Deutsche Bank and therefore gave the most bancrupt country of the Euro the biggest credit ever given in history so that that country would go in German public debt to bail out Deutsche Bank a second time. I am sorry, but if you have heavily exporting countries and heavily importing countries within one currency, then the exporting countries have to transfer money back or stop exporting, it's the only way. Those are basic implications of a single market and I rather have these processes openly performed by democratically elected leaders, rather than by bureaucracy and monetary institutions.
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This notion of 'necessity' is the origin of every bubble in history. If you don't want complete collapse you need to cut your losses when it becomes clear that something is unsustainable.
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The euro has to be dissolved, it's as simple as that. Changing it to make it work would require things that Germany cannot or is not willing to do, not to mention peoples would most likely vote against further transfers of sovereignty anyway. The only question is whether this happens in an organized fashion, or in a chaotic way when the next big crisis hits.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
The Euro seems set to drop below the dollar soon enough. Italy seems to have been yet another hit against it.
From what I'm gathering the European Army seems to be one more of the many "more Europe is the solution" vs. "less Europe is the solution" divides. No surprise I guess.
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On December 21 2016 04:32 LegalLord wrote:
The Euro seems set to drop below the dollar soon enough. Italy seems to have been yet another hit against it.
From what I'm gathering the European Army seems to be one more of the many "more Europe is the solution" vs. "less Europe is the solution" divides. No surprise I guess.
Problem is this: even if more Europe is the solution, the people will never accept it, so it is meaningless to talk about. There is only one option.
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On December 21 2016 04:03 Toadesstern wrote:
European army? Idk about that idea but not having 10 countries do the same R&D all by themselves to get individually to the (more or less) same result for 10 times the price seems like a good idea to me?
As a german in particular I'm not even opposed to the european army idea either. But not like I have looked into that a lot.
Let's take the conversation about Russia invading east europe from a couple months ago as an example. As a german it's basicly a lose-lose situation because sending (german) soldiers is probably not something people over there want for obvious historic reasons.
So if it were some bigger organization that might not be as much of an issue anymore?
But then again I'm sure there's going to be people arguing about how it's basicly one big german military organization doing our bidding and the next Nazi movement as well.
You're already sending German soldiers (and tanks) to Baltic states because of recent NATO arrangement. I think most most people in the Baltic countries won't mind great grandsons of nazi soldiers on their soil anyway considering their ww2 history.
Here in Poland it would be different, at least as long as PiS is in charge. In 2014 our great leader Jarosław Kaczyński said he doesn't wish to see German soldiers on Polish soil and that at least seven generations have to pass before it would be acceptable (don't have a good source in English, sorry).
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No offense but Kaczyński seems like a legitimate fanatic. At first it seemed like he's just a version of Orban but Orban is basically just an opportunist, Kaczyński apparently actually believes everything he says
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Word on the grapevine is that ISIS claims responsibility for the truck incident.
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Surprisingly, Orban supports the idea of European army. That guy is full of surprises.
On December 21 2016 04:51 Nyxisto wrote:
No offense but Kaczyński seems like a legitimate fanatic. At first it seemed like he's just a version of Orban but Orban is basically just an opportunist, Kaczyński apparently actually believes everything he says
I'd take Kaczyński over Orban without hesitation. The latter is a corrupt populist while Kaczyński really hates corruption and short term thinking. Sadly his party is full of incompetent yes-men who can't do anything properly (which is probably his fault) but he's one of the few trustworthy politicians we have and that's very important to me. I did not vote for his party and don't intend to vote for it in the next elections though, I just think he's better than Orban.
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On December 21 2016 04:51 Nyxisto wrote:
No offense but Kaczyński seems like a legitimate fanatic. At first it seemed like he's just a version of Orban but Orban is basically just an opportunist, Kaczyński apparently actually believes everything he says
Kaczynski is a dickhead, but has surprising amount of support. It's really the archetypal "king of stupid people" kind of politician that have risen so much in the region (Orban, Zeman, Fico). The irony is that he is nowadays just a "normal" MP, apart from being the head of the party (which is kinda internal position, not a governmental one) - yet his opinions on everything are everywhere and is silently accepted to be in charge of Poland. So even though we can agree that what he says is bullshit, it's bullshit that's gonna steer the whole country for some time.
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On December 21 2016 04:40 Sent. wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2016 04:03 Toadesstern wrote:
European army? Idk about that idea but not having 10 countries do the same R&D all by themselves to get individually to the (more or less) same result for 10 times the price seems like a good idea to me?
As a german in particular I'm not even opposed to the european army idea either. But not like I have looked into that a lot.
Let's take the conversation about Russia invading east europe from a couple months ago as an example. As a german it's basicly a lose-lose situation because sending (german) soldiers is probably not something people over there want for obvious historic reasons.
So if it were some bigger organization that might not be as much of an issue anymore?
But then again I'm sure there's going to be people arguing about how it's basicly one big german military organization doing our bidding and the next Nazi movement as well. You're already sending German soldiers (and tanks) to Baltic states because of recent NATO arrangement. I think most most people in the Baltic countries won't mind great grandsons of nazi soldiers on their soil anyway considering their ww2 history. Here in Poland it would be different, at least as long as PiS is in charge. In 2014 our great leader Jarosław Kaczyński said he doesn't wish to see German soldiers on Polish soil and that at least seven generations have to pass before it would be acceptable (don't have a good source in English, sorry).
yeah but even that article calls it a symbolic act more than anything else. You'd have to up the numbers quite a bit to have an actual defense in case of Russian aggression. And at some point people are going to be pissed because it's too many german soldiers stationed whereever.
Hence me calling it a lose-lose situation. You either have nothing happening which means it's too many soldiers there or you have to few and if things go south it's "omg, why didn't a large country like Germany have more troops here?"
(well, or you have too few soldiers there and nothing happening which is obviously nice but apparently that's also bad)
That being said, it's obviously up to every country themselves if they want that or not. It's not like it bothers me or anything, I'm just saying that if it were to go more towards international, european army that might not be as much of an issue anymore rather than the current thought of "you have X troops from Germany here, Y troops from France, etc."
//Edit, Either way to come back to the innitial question, it's not something particularly important to me, but I do think it's a money waste to have everyone do R&D themselves rather than one big organization doing it for everyone involved
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On December 21 2016 05:37 Sent. wrote:Surprisingly, Orban supports the idea of European army. That guy is full of surprises. Show nested quote +On December 21 2016 04:51 Nyxisto wrote:
No offense but Kaczyński seems like a legitimate fanatic. At first it seemed like he's just a version of Orban but Orban is basically just an opportunist, Kaczyński apparently actually believes everything he says I'd take Kaczyński over Orban without hesitation. The latter is a corrupt populist while Kaczyński really hates corruption and short term thinking. Sadly his party is full of incompetent yes-men who can't do anything properly (which is probably his fault) but he's one of the few trustworthy politicians we have and that's very important to me. I did not vote for his party and don't intend to vote for it in the next elections though, I just think he's better than Orban.
I have trouble believing that everybody else in Poland is somehow corrupt, and replacing corruption with ideological zeal is a really bad and dangerous trade in the long term. Orban at least is pragmatic enough to never push things too far, whereas we've seen numerous protests in Poland already just to stop attacks on really basic political rights, for example women's reproductive rights.
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It's not just r&d. A lot of smaller nations don't really have the capacity to develop all parts of the military to an acceptable level. It's why there's extensive cooperation between the Benelux countries already.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
The suspect that was detained for the Berlin matter was released for lack of evidence. No other suspects detained at the moment.
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The Chief Federal Prosecutor's Office said in a statement it had been unable to prove that the suspect had been in the cabin of the truck at the time of the attack and said he had denied any involvement.
Earlier, Die Welt newspaper quoted an unnamed police chief as saying: "We have the wrong man. And therefore a new situation. The true perpetrator is still armed, at large and can cause fresh damage."
while lack of evidence is true, if you believe the police chief it isn't just lack of evidence but actually the wrong guy they had
If ISIS claimed responsibility that would usually also result in someone being quite open about having done it. So either ISIS is wrong (and he did it without being ISIS involved) or the guy is actually innocent imo
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
This absolutely doesn't weigh positively upon German intelligence, I'll say that much...
I guess the French PM was right, Europe is just going to have to get used to more terrorism.
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@Nyxisto: I didn't say everyone's corrupt, I said that he really hates corruption because he doesn't tolerate corruption in his party which was a problem of our previous government (not a huge problem but still a problem). By "one of the few trustworthy politicians" I meant that Kaczyński tries to keep his promises while other politicians tend to speak in generalities or simply lie when making promises.
I already explained that the proposal to ban abortion did not come from his party and it never had a chance to get the parliamentary approval. Other things like problems with the media or the judiciary also happen in Hungary so you can't really say it's worse here.
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On December 21 2016 06:38 LegalLord wrote:
This absolutely doesn't weigh positively upon German intelligence, I'll say that much...
I guess the French PM was right, Europe is just going to have to get used to more terrorism.
we've had much more terrorism before in Western European history, we were just living in relatively peaceful times after the Cold war had ended.
Given digital communication and the mostly independent actors nowadays there is only so much any free country can do to stop terrorism.
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On December 21 2016 06:38 LegalLord wrote:
This absolutely doesn't weigh positively upon German intelligence, I'll say that much...
I guess the French PM was right, Europe is just going to have to get used to more terrorism.
Our intelligence agencies have a public imagine of incompetence agencies anyway.
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EPT
