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On February 19 2017 00:46 RvB wrote:
Most NATO countries don't need their defense now. There are only a couple countries realistically in danger. Where the US is necessary is in foreign adventures. But then again we could just not help the US with some of their priorities if they don't help Europe (like Iranian sanctions which disproportionately affect Europe).
The entire point of NATO is to preclude considerations of use of force against those few countries who are realistically in danger to maintain balance on the continent. The world powers in NATO were never themselves at risk.
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I find it amusing that people are so much drawn in by people that one guy can up the party's rating by six percent.
As if the wind is blowing from the other side right now, as if the SPD has changed all of a sudden.
I heard about him being more creditable that his predecessors and think to myself why the duck is that important?
Why are personalities more important than contents? After all the feelings that candidates broadcast appear to be of high significance.
I'm really baffled by the ascension of the SPD in the polls and hope they can discern themselves as a worthy alternative to Merkel. Though I won't vote for either.
Schulz isn't new to the urgent topics at hand so the new captain ain't gonna wreck the ship. He's got that going for him at the least.
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Estonia4505 Posts
On February 19 2017 01:36 Artisreal wrote:
I find it amusing that people are so much drawn in by people that one guy can up the party's rating by six percent.
As if the wind is blowing from the other side right now, as if the SPD has changed all of a sudden.
I heard about him being more creditable that his predecessors and think to myself why the duck is that important?
Why are personalities more important than contents? After all the feelings that candidates broadcast appear to be of high significance.
I'm really baffled by the ascension of the SPD in the polls and hope they can discern themselves as a worthy alternative to Merkel. Though I won't vote for either.
Schulz isn't new to the urgent topics at hand so the new captain ain't gonna wreck the ship. He's got that going for him at the least.
Just curious, who is your preference and why?
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At the moment I actually am rather undecided.
I'm a green voter by heart and head but an assessment of their policies regarding policies that are important to me is due because realities have changed.
I almost fully expect me sticking with that because the other parties are just too unfaithful to my agenda.
But as pointed out initially, various situations regarding foreign policy, security, Europe have changed since I voted, heck, even concerning renewable energies and conservation of nature I am not sure anymore where the greens are positioned.
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for me it's pretty much between Greens and CDU atm... I wanted to voted Greens but if it's between CDU and SPD I'd rather have CDU myself?
CDU + FDP + Greens would probably be my fav outcome right now but there's no in way that'll
a) happen to be enough
b) happen because Greens + CDU lol
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I'd like to see a SPD+Greens+FDP government at some point but given the state of the FDP that's probably not going to happen very soon.
Not very keen on a red/red/green gov and I'd actually prefer black/green even though I'll vote for the SPD. I don't really want green/left dominated foreign politics.
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Estonia4505 Posts
First, thanks for the replies! Second, can someone give me a quick overview of the current state of the FDP?
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Not very keen on a red/red/green gov and I'd actually prefer black/green even though I'll vote for the SPD. I don't really want green/left dominated foreign politics.
I understand why you wouldn't want the left or hardcore greens to be in charge, but I gotta say Schröder/Fischer were some of the best foreign politicians Germany ever had in my opinion. They took the country out of the shadows and took a clear German/European stance. With Merkel in the lead at that time Germany would have participated in the Iraqi disaster and as much as I see Russia as an enemy of the EU and most of its members, a certain amount of apeacment wouldn't hurt in my opinion. There is little to be won in an overly aggressive standoff with a dictatorship.
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Dimitris Costopoulos stood, worry beads in hand, under brilliant blue skies in front of the Greek parliament. Wearing freshly pressed trousers, polished shoes and a smart winter jacket – “my Sunday best” – he had risen at 5am to get on the bus that would take him to Athens 200 miles away and to the great sandstone edifice on Syntagma Square. By his own admission, protests were not his thing.
At 71, the farmer rarely ventures from Proastio, his village on the fertile plains of Thessaly. “But everything is going wrong,” he lamented on Tuesday, his voice hoarse after hours of chanting anti-government slogans.
“Before there was an order to things, you could build a house, educate your children, spoil your grandchildren. Now the cost of everything has gone up and with taxes you can barely afford to survive. Once I’ve paid for fuel, fertilisers and grains, there is really nothing left.”
Costopoulos is Greece’s Everyman; the human voice in a debt crisis that refuses to go away. Eight years after it first erupted, the drama shows every sign of reigniting, only this time in a new dark age of Trumpian politics, post-Brexit Europe, terror attacks and rise of the populist far right.
“I grow wheat,” said Costopoulos, holding out his wizened hands. “I am not in the building behind me. I don’t make decisions. Honestly, I can’t understand why things are going from bad to worse, why this just can’t be solved.”
As Greece hurtles towards another full-blown confrontation with the creditors keeping it afloat, and as tensions over stalled bailout negotiations mount, it is a question many are asking.
The country’s epic struggle to avert bankruptcy should have been settled when Athens received €110bn in aid – the biggest financial rescue programme in global history – from the EU and International Monetary Fund in May 2010. Instead, three bailouts later, it is still wrangling over the terms of the latest €86bn emergency loan package, with lenders also at loggerheads and diplomats no longer talking of a can, but rather a bomb, being kicked down the road. Default looms if a €7.4bn debt repayment – money owed mostly to the European Central Bank – is not honoured in July.
Amid the uncertainty, volatility has returned to the markets. So, too, has fear, with an estimated €2.2bn being withdrawn from banks by panic-stricken depositors since the beginning of the year. With talk of Greece’s exit from the euro being heard again, farmers, trade unions and other sectors enraged by the eviscerating effects of austerity have once more come out in protest.
From his seventh-floor office on Mitropoleos, Makis Balaouras, an MP with the governing Syriza party, has a good view of the goings-on in Syntagma. Demonstrations – what the former trade unionist calls “the movement” – are a fine thing. “I wish people were out there mobilising more,” he sighed. “Protests are in our ideological and political DNA. They are important, they send a message.”
This is the irony of Syriza, the leftwing party catapulted to power on a ticket to “tear up” the hated bailout accords widely blamed for extraordinary levels of Greek unemployment, poverty and emigration. Two years into office it has instead overseen the most punishing austerity measures to date, slashing public-sector salaries and pensions, cutting services, agreeing to the biggest privatisation programme in European history and raising taxes on everything from cars to beer – all of which has been the price of the loans that have kept default at bay and Greece in the euro.
Source
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On February 19 2017 08:29 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +Not very keen on a red/red/green gov and I'd actually prefer black/green even though I'll vote for the SPD. I don't really want green/left dominated foreign politics. I understand why you wouldn't want the left or hardcore greens to be in charge, but I gotta say Schröder/Fischer were some of the best foreign politicians Germany ever had in my opinion. They took the country out of the shadows and took a clear German/European stance. With Merkel in the lead at that time Germany would have participated in the Iraqi disaster and as much as I see Russia as an enemy of the EU and most of its members, a certain amount of apeacment wouldn't hurt in my opinion. There is little to be won in an overly aggressive standoff with a dictatorship.
That was under a fairly conservative red/green gov though without Die Linke, which I think would be quite different from a left-wing government today. The votes for red/green alone are just not there at the moment.
And while Schröder's decision to oppose the war was the correct call he did it for all the wrong reasons which became clear after he switched into the private sector after he left office.
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On February 19 2017 00:37 LegalLord wrote:
I think that countries who disproportionately make noise that underlies a desire to start a war should have an even higher threshold - say, 3%. The US makes a whole lot of noise and it spends that much, so the others should do the same.
In any case, pay up kids.
Could you give us a few examples of European NATO countries that want to "start a war" (I suppose by making it seem like they were attacked, in order to be able to invoke art. 5?) for which they'd request the help of NATO assets, according to you?
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On February 17 2017 21:43 nitram wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2017 21:25 TheDwf wrote:
A nice conversation was going on, then Team Islamobsessed happened... The spread of Islam in the west is an enormous issue. How dare you minimalism it. Hey, how does Paris look? Does it look like the capital of European culture or does it look like a trashcan?
I'm parisian, Paris looks fine thank you very much. And to have visited the Louvres recently, it still seems very much to me like the capital of european culture. Muslims are a stable 7% of french people (my uncle and cousins are among them).
I don't think islam is a problem. Poverty, ghettos, unemployments are, and of course fundamentalists, that are a tiny minority but make enormous damages.
France has 99 problems, and they are mostly social and economical. And immigrants, including muslims, are the hardest hit. But in 20 years in France I only saw very marginally real problem with islam as such, and have met countless wonderful muslims.
I would also like to remind you that for countless people in the 1930's, "how could one minimize the problems caused by the jews" would have been a really natural line of reasoning. Happens Europe had a problem with far right racism, not with jews. Just sayin'
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Paris is only the Capital of European culture to Parisians... (actually that title currently formally belongs to Aarhus)
EDIT: My not very clear point is: it's idiocy to think any single location can claim to be a capital of European culture - The culture varies wildly across the continent. But it is very befitting of all the prejudice that a Parisian would claim Paris to be it regardless.
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On February 19 2017 18:00 Ghostcom wrote:
Paris is only the Capital of European culture to Parisians... (actually that titled currently formally belongs to Aarhus)
Well that title could go to London and Berlin. But those are the three most vibrant cities culturally speaking.
I'm not talking of some bogus title decided in an office by some bureaucrats. I'm talking of what happens there.
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On February 19 2017 18:03 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2017 18:00 Ghostcom wrote:
Paris is only the Capital of European culture to Parisians... (actually that titled currently formally belongs to Aarhus) Well that title could go to London and Berlin. But those are the three most vibrant cities culturally speaking. I'm not talking of some bogus title decided in an office by some bureaucrats. I'm talking of what happens there.
Which is at best an inkling of what European culture is. It is folly to make such claims.
EDIT: deleted tongue in cheek comment as it seemed more trollish than was intended - my bad.
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On February 19 2017 18:05 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2017 18:03 Biff The Understudy wrote:On February 19 2017 18:00 Ghostcom wrote:
Paris is only the Capital of European culture to Parisians... (actually that titled currently formally belongs to Aarhus) Well that title could go to London and Berlin. But those are the three most vibrant cities culturally speaking. I'm not talking of some bogus title decided in an office by some bureaucrats. I'm talking of what happens there. Which is at best an inkling of what European culture is. It is folly to make such claims. EDIT: deleted tongue in cheek comment as it seemed more trollish than was intended - my bad.
Look my point is that someone mentionned the term "european capital of culture". To me that means, where the most of it happens. And that would be Paris, London or Berlin, because they have more theatres, cinemas, symphony orchestras, art galleries, museums, festivals, schools etc... than any other european city, by several orders of magnitude.
That's all there is to it.
And i was just answering biggoted comments about Paris being a trash can because of all those muslims. Which is infuriatingly ignorant and racist.
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This is so fucking dumb. I'm going to bed.
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On February 19 2017 00:46 RvB wrote:
Most NATO countries don't need their defense now. There are only a couple countries realistically in danger. Where the US is necessary is in foreign adventures. But then again we could just not help the US with some of their priorities if they don't help Europe (like Iranian sanctions which disproportionately affect Europe).
The US military is not necessary in Europe. Even today, with our minimalist spending on defence, Europe has a combined standing force that outnumbers and outspends that of the Russians (which is the supposed threat, right?). They have 1 million active personnel and spend 65.6 billion USD, we have nearly two million and spend $226.73 billion. And that's with the Russians spending a solid 3% more of their economy on defence. They should be spending some of that money and their engineering talents on something more useful that could benefit both Europe and Russia.
Forming an independent European defence group and effectively kicking the US military out of Europe/NATO could be a way towards finding an agreement with Russia to have them reduce their military and vastly improve relations, and bolster economic growth for both Russia and Europe through trade and infrastructure. Sanctions on Iran disproportionately affect Europe, and the same is true for sanctions on Russia. Meanwhile, both Iran and Russia can help supply Europe with energy while we make the slow transition into renewables, and I think the best (cheapest) way to get that energy is by effectively ignoring the US.
On February 19 2017 00:52 LegalLord wrote:
Everything the US does seems to disproportionately affect Europe. One of the perks of being two oceans away from the problem regions of the world I suppose.
Quite frankly, I doubt the Syrian crisis would have erupted in the way it did if the US hadn't invaded Iraq. Assad wouldn't have felt as pressured to solidify his hold on the regime without the militant Sunni uprising in the neighbouring country bleeding over into his own country. It was only made worse by the US and her allies (SA) supporting the Sunni opposition financially and with the supply of weapons.
People blame Russia for supporting the far-right groups, but they started on their own accord and only grew in numbers through the very real and widely reported on Syrian refugee crisis and the so-called rise of terrorism. Both of these are, in my opinion, the result of US policy in the Middle East. Fake or exaggerated reporting may have played some part in making the perception of it worse, but that's hardly the only problem.
As a whole, to me, it looks like the US is perfectly fine with breaking up Europe both as a result of their foreign policy in the Middle East, and the fact that Pence didn't mention support for the EU once in his speech, only talked about the military. The election of Trump has made it abundantly clear in my eyes that the US does not care about Europe other than using it as a puppet to further their own agenda.
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On February 19 2017 22:38 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2017 00:46 RvB wrote:
Most NATO countries don't need their defense now. There are only a couple countries realistically in danger. Where the US is necessary is in foreign adventures. But then again we could just not help the US with some of their priorities if they don't help Europe (like Iranian sanctions which disproportionately affect Europe). The US military is not necessary in Europe. Even today, with our minimalist spending on defence, Europe has a combined standing force that outnumbers and outspends that of the Russians (which is the supposed threat, right?). They have 1 million active personnel and spend 65.6 billion USD, we have nearly two million and spend $226.73 billion. And that's with the Russians spending a solid 3% more of their economy on defence. They should be spending some of that money and their engineering talents on something more useful that could benefit both Europe and Russia. Forming an independent European defence group and effectively kicking the US military out of Europe/NATO could be a way towards finding an agreement with Russia to have them reduce their military and vastly improve relations, and bolster economic growth for both Russia and Europe through trade and infrastructure. Sanctions on Iran disproportionately affect Europe, and the same is true for sanctions on Russia. Meanwhile, both Iran and Russia can help supply Europe with energy while we make the slow transition into renewables, and I think the best (cheapest) way to get that energy is by effectively ignoring the US.
Sounds lovely in theory. But as I said above, the point is to have overwhelming force. With the US involved there is a global West/East balance. With the US gone, it only takes France moving towards Russia to completely reverse the balance. Strategy is not just weighing one number against another - that's maths.
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