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Collateral Damage posted:I expect development of the EuroBomb to be just as smooth and painless as the EuroFighter. The Eurofighter and the A400M were plagued by the political getting precedence over the industrial. One country says "I'm gonna order X% of them, so I want X% of the workshare, and I want to use it to develop this industry because my industrials in that domain suck and they need something to build some skills to hopefully stop sucking". Plus you have countries like Germany who are fond of ordering more than everyone else so as to get the largest workshare, then once they got that they immediately slash down their orders because lol suckers you fell for our tricks again  .Toplowtech posted:Let's be honest, we kinda need some euro-drone. Good thing the hideously named nEUROn program is a complete success. Well, near-complete, since the name is a colossal failure. Development of the Anglo-French followup FCAS (or SCAF in French) is funded and should benefit from the experience of both nEUROn and the British Taranis. As long as Germany isn't allowed to have any say on specifications or make any workshare demands, it should be a success.
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Mar 9, 2017 15:57
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blowfish posted:So kind of awkward and overpriced, but still much better value for money than the US alternative? 
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Mar 9, 2017 16:46
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We are getting countrywide municipality elections soon. They are pretty worthless otherwise but they are useful for gauging the political mood in the country. Seems about right.
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Mar 9, 2017 21:58
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black hitler is my nom de scene
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Mar 9, 2017 22:15
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does black hitler only kill black jews or how does this work?
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Mar 9, 2017 22:23
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Also good to see immigration bringing some much needed insanity to finnish politics. I was worried they were falling behind the rest of the world for a bit.
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Mar 9, 2017 22:33
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Finnish black Hitler is the new normal
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Mar 9, 2017 22:46
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I'm waiting for Maltese Caucasian Pol Pot myself.
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Mar 9, 2017 22:55
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blowfish posted:So kind of awkward and overpriced, but still much better value for money than the US alternative? Believe it or not the eurofighter is actually as much of a clusterfuck as the f35. It's just gets less attention because its smaller in scope. Whether its better value for money depends a lot on your country's defense goals really as they're quite different planes and there is something to be said for paying a premium to maintain domestic tech knowledge.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:17
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The Eurofighter's problems are of a completely different nature than the F-35's. The F-35 is a strike fighter (that is to say, a combat aircraft primarily designed for attacking ground targets, but still capable of engaging in air-to-air combat for self-defense). However, it's been asked to also be able to do air superiority missions because the F-22 order got cut to barely one fourth of what the military asked, and one half of their minimum requirements, so the bomb van had to be able to fill a niche it was not designed for because there's nothing else. It was also plagued with the dumb requirement of being able to land vertically so that it can be used to transform helicopter carriers into aircraft carriers, nevermind that this isn't as practical as it seems. These requirements complicated its design so much that a lot of problems had to be solved by new and unproven technology, so any sort of complication or delay in developing these new technologies slowed down the entire program. Worse, the design flaws accumulate and cannot be easily remedied because there are three variants and if you fix a problem for one it might cause a new problem for another. The Eurofighter had simpler requirements: be a good land-based interceptor, able to evolve later in a multirole aircraft. It suffered from two main issues: politically-motivated workshare agreement, meaning that countries got contracts according to how much they promised to pay instead of what they could actually deliver (and this led to weird compromises like one wing being built in Spain while its mirror image is built in Italy, WTF); and countries playing chicken with development. See, there's a lot of cool stuff the Eurofighter was supposed to get long ago, but didn't, because everyone figured that they didn't have an urgent need for it and perhaps another country would bite the bullet first and fund development themselves instead. This backfired because instead of funding said development, two of the partner countries decided to procure the other white elephant in the room (the F-35, by UK and Italy), one of the countries is just too poor to do anything at all (Spain), and the last country is basically Scrooge McDuck, still hoping that the UK will eventually pay for all the Typhoon upgrades so that Germany won't have to. The Rafale and the Gripen are much better because they weren't multinational programs and they didn't try to take off vertically.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:39
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GaussianCopula posted:If you want to reform the election law, the only good way to do it would weigh each vote by the taxes paid by the respective voter, so that people who contribute more to the state have more of a say, comparable to the election law used in Prussia from 1848-1918, but with today's technology it could be more gradual than just 3 classes. I thought you were a lot of incredibly bad things, but even I couldn't have imagined you to be a literal kaiserreich reactionary. Amazing.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:49
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Cat Mattress posted:The Eurofighter had simpler requirements: be a good land-based interceptor, able to evolve later in a multirole aircraft. It suffered from two main issues: politically-motivated workshare agreement, meaning that countries got contracts according to how much they promised to pay instead of what they could actually deliver (and this led to weird compromises like one wing being built in Spain while its mirror image is built in Italy, WTF); and countries playing chicken with development. See, there's a lot of cool stuff the Eurofighter was supposed to get long ago, but didn't, because everyone figured that they didn't have an urgent need for it and perhaps another country would bite the bullet first and fund development themselves instead. This backfired because instead of funding said development, two of the partner countries decided to procure the other white elephant in the room (the F-35, by UK and Italy), one of the countries is just too poor to do anything at all (Spain), and the last country is basically Scrooge McDuck, still hoping that the UK will eventually pay for all the Typhoon upgrades so that Germany won't have to. On issues like defense (or, arguably, humongous science projects like ITER), pork barrel spending should not be politically mandated but explicitly forbidden. Got a contribution to make because there is some sort of unique experience or capability located in your country? Sure, here's a bunch of contracts. Want to have your lovely defense contractors subsidised because they haven't built a good plane in 20 years (possibly because your air force is chronically underfunded and hasn't bought any planes in 20 years)? Go find a less important project to siphon money from. These things are strategic priorities that if they go wrong could threaten the entire Union, not development package #253 that keeps 300 Upper Silesian dairy farms in business. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 00:18
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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lollontee posted:I thought you were a lot of incredibly bad things, but even I couldn't have imagined you to be a literal kaiserreich reactionary. Amazing. I'm currently undecided on whether that's a level of hilarity above or below Reichsbürgers. Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:Finnish black Hitler is the new normal please please please be finnish gay black hitler
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Mar 10, 2017 00:19
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Do we have a French political/cultural thread? I feel like it will come in handy come election day and afterwards.
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Mar 10, 2017 01:57
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Grouchio posted:Do we have a French political/cultural thread? I feel like it will come in handy come election day and afterwards. But then again, it would be a better fit for GWS.
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Mar 10, 2017 02:21
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Grouchio posted:Do we have a French political/cultural thread? I feel like it will come in handy come election day and afterwards. France is dead and has no culture anymore
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Mar 10, 2017 07:55
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julian assflange posted:France is dead and has no culture anymore true but at least we had culture to begin with
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Mar 10, 2017 07:58
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GaussianCopula posted:I fully agree with this sentiment, it's a shame that some people in Germany prefer a former alcoholic high school dropout over a physicists with a PHD, but that's the reality we live in, where populism trumps qualification. I fully believe ideology is more important than qualifications, a person can be as educated on economy and whatever as he wants but at the end of the day if he only improves the lives of the rich I don't see how that's more preferable than a high school dropout who actually does care somewhat for the lower classes. So I'm curious: How is a physicist with a PHD better at leading a country than a former alcoholic high school dropout? Or rather, how does either of those things affect how the country will be lead by them?
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Mar 10, 2017 13:42
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YF-23 posted:Direct democracy is an ideal, but it isn't flawless. Very specifically, the issue of non-expertise is something representative democracy very much directly addresses: Your average citizen won't really know everything they need to know to make an informed decision. In fact, they don't want to know everything they need to know about everything they'd need to know it for. That takes time and energy, and people want to be free to spend those where they want to. So in representative democracy they, in theory, delegate their decision-making power to people they trust to either know what they need to know themselves, or to spend the time to learn what they need to know. That's the representative democracy's ideal. It's important to understand that the ideal will not correspond perfectly to what you'll get in practice. Reality is flawed, and as immaculate as that burger looks in the picture at the fast food restaurant, what you'll get in your hands won't look as good. more referenda but less active citizen participation in general is a literal nightmare and you should feel bad for even putting the words to paper. that's what got you trump and brexit
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Mar 10, 2017 13:45
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icantfindaname posted:more referenda but less active citizen participation in general is a literal nightmare and you should feel bad for even putting the words to paper. that's what got you trump and brexit I agree with you but I also think that the low participation, exemplified in the low turnout, stems from the feeling that the vote is useless. For instance, in the UK in 2010 three parties campaigned on not cutting down the NHS. Then a coalition of two of those cut the NHS down. What I am trying to say is, if votes meant anything else other than who wins the beauty contest maybe there would be more citizen participation. Also shorter working days etc.etc. that we have more than enough technology and productivity to pull off, but that's a derail.
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Mar 10, 2017 13:57
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Dawncloack posted:What I am trying to say is, if votes meant anything else other than who wins the beauty contest Brexit and Trump vote meant a lot, people still hosed it up back to the drawing board with this theory
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Mar 10, 2017 14:01
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icantfindaname posted:more referenda but less active citizen participation in general is a literal nightmare and you should feel bad for even putting the words to paper. that's what got you trump and brexit I did not mean to suggest that combination. The latter of those two I mentioned with regards to complete and total direct democracy, which would require a citizenry that's active 100% of the time. The problem with that being, few people if any want to be active 100% of the time. More referenda I mentioned with regards to the present state of representative democracy in the west, where the political establishment has been, caught in the enthusiasm of end-of-historyism over the past 3 decades, pushing for 0% active participation, using elections as a means of passing the ball between two increasingly indistinguishable parties in most cases while promising a liberal capitalist dream that only recently has been completely exposed as the make-believe utopia that it is. What I said was that our representative democracy, as we have it, would be healthier and foster a more active electorate if it deferred to it more often, with more frequent referenda, if instead of treating the expression of the popular will as a last resort it consulted it as a matter of course.
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Mar 10, 2017 14:06
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:Brexit and Trump vote meant a lot, people still hosed it up A large part of why Brexit and the Trump vote were hosed up is because politics has been such a beauty contest for so long that a significant part of the electorate has lost the ability to tell what vote is important and what vote isn't.
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Mar 10, 2017 14:25
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:Brexit and Trump vote meant a lot, people still hosed it up The brits didnt gently caress up, the EU is a hard right wing organization and 50% +1 wanted out. Simple as that. They will be hosed yes, mostly because no one asked them who should govern after that, and they bound up with a horrible right winger. As for Trump, read the post below your response. Also, "they hosed up"? So what do you propose? Overturn legit elections because you dont like the result?
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Mar 10, 2017 15:12
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GaussianCopula posted:If you want to reform the election law, the only good way to do it would weigh each vote by the taxes paid by the respective voter, so that people who contribute more to the state have more of a say, comparable to the election law used in Prussia from 1848-1918, but with today's technology it could be more gradual than just 3 classes. Never forget he said this. Make it a monument to his monstrousness.
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Mar 10, 2017 15:23
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GaussianCopula posted:If you want to reform the election law, the only good way to do it would weigh each vote by the taxes paid by the respective voter, so that people who contribute more to the state have more of a say, comparable to the election law used in Prussia from 1848-1918, but with today's technology it could be more gradual than just 3 classes. Contender for the worst post in the forums. Also, it should be the background of this thread.
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Mar 10, 2017 15:29
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Dawncloack posted:The brits didnt gently caress up, the EU is a hard right wing organization and 50% +1 wanted out. Simple as that. They will be hosed yes, mostly because no one asked them who should govern after that, and they bound up with a horrible right winger. Are you kidding? The Brexit campaign was led from the beginning by the same right-wingers you're talking about. You've lost the plot if you think something championed by the British conservatives and loving UKIP could be in any way better than staying in the EU.
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Mar 10, 2017 16:22
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Brexit will lead to Britain becoming the new Cayman Islands but with worse weather and a lot of the actual things the EU did to Britain was making them less neoliberal.
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Mar 10, 2017 17:12
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Kassad posted:Are you kidding? The Brexit campaign was led from the beginning by the same right-wingers you're talking about. You've lost the plot if you think something championed by the British conservatives and loving UKIP could be in any way better than staying in the EU. I know all of that. I also know that, outside of the EU, one day, if the current assholes lose, some left wing politics could be effected. Inside of the EU the Growth and Stability and specially the euro pact makes it impossible. Is it an outside shot? Yes. But the EU is impossible to reform in any useful way because any reform (that isn't the kind of "reforms" the SIPG countries are getting) necessitates Germany loosening the purse strings. And considering how smug and moralistic they are about having hosed the entire continent for their benefit, I don't see that happening. Honj Steak posted:Brexit will lead to Britain becoming the new Cayman Islands but with worse weather and a lot of the actual things the EU did to Britain was making them less neoliberal. VVVV You know what? I'll go to bed less ignorant. Thanks for pointing that out. Dawncloack fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Mar 11, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 19:07
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Dawncloack posted:I know all of that. I also know that, outside of the EU, one day, if the current assholes lose, some left wing politics could be effected. Inside of the EU the Growth and Stability and specially the euro pact makes it impossible. Things the UK had opt-outs from... kustomkarkommando fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 19:22
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Okay i did the candidate wannabe list the last time, now it's time for the "REALLY CAN YOU BELIEVE 500 MAYORS GAVE ME THEIR SIGNATURE IN THIS DAY AND AGE WHEN IT'S FINALLY PUBLIC?" candidate list to the post of supreme rear end in a top hat of the French republic. By order of more signatures to less signatures. Starting by the magnificent 7. To be in this list you need at least 100 signature. So i don't waste my time on totally worthless candidates, the normal 100+ ones on the list aren't that worth it, let's be honest. Rank Name Signatures # #1 François Fillon 2 111  Join the party, become MP, give fake jobs to your family member, buy a humble house, become prime minister, become presidential candidate, campaign as the most honest of all candidates, become the incarnation of petty corruption and modern Tartuflerie, basicly the French political dream. *Scarface theme start playing* We literally have a literary genre about that kind of man in France, why would we be surprised to see one IRL. 500 signatures reached the 1st of March Because François is French for Donald this year, so here comes the pro-poutine, anti-gay rights expansion, thatcherite but catholic-i-swear campaign priest who definitively didn’t give his wife and his children fake jobs for money (totally did it) and promised he would stop campaigning if he was indicted (he is and yet still going on, it’s magical). Supported by the most hardcore antigay “la manif pour tous” supporters, he is leading his party to a spike on a wall (personal hope but I won’t bet on it). #2 Benoît Hamon 1 317  Benoit Hamon (left) alongside defeated rival Emmanuel Vals (right). 500 signatures reached the 7th of March Heir to a hosed up kingdom in a George RR Martin’s book basically. And the meta-plot of the book doesn’t look to be about him. So Valls for warden of the ps I guess. #3 Emmanuel Macron 1 266  While the media already announces his unstoppable incoming victory, may I also announce his insanely high incoming presidential approval rate, those two things working, of course, hand in hand in the magic media land where queen Hillary the brave reigns in America and Brexit was defeated 80% to 20% in Glorious Albion. 500 signatures reached the 7th of March Politically somewhere between “French Tony Blair” and “Hillary without the balls”(and without the ranidaphobia, I hope) but produced in the country of the “Champagne” Left. I am actually surprised that model wasn’t released here sooner. So paranoid about Russia hacking the election(“in France too”) and his website, he recently suggested in his program electronic voting booths (probably because it sounds vaguely modern), despite multiple examples of those systems being a bad, costly idea in many foreign countries, like can you even loving try to make sense and be consistent. Feels like the newest candidate, is the smiling face of the kind of system who used to rule us under the Napoleons (both of them), but with modern marketing techniques!1!!!!! so it’s so hugely popular, kinda enough to make Lepen president. Like did you even see what happened in France before and everywhere else recently, dear french(????) billionnaires? And yet, somehow it’s Hamon who get most of the blame for this guy’s few years of work in the government. Medias are a magical place. #4 Nicolas Dupont-Aignan 623  500 signatures reached the 7th of March Hodor (for TV show watchers) of the rightwing but actually more like a “funnier” Patchface if you ever read the books. Believe he is carrying De Gaulle in his basket, north of the wall. Sadly, it’s just a dead tree log and the owls are not what they seem. #5 Nathalie Arthaud 593 500 signatures reached the 7th of March L’Internationale keep playing and for once the sound comes from my tv set. #6 Marine Le Pen 577  One has to admit the visual quality of propaganda clearly improved in the FN since Marine opened the door to the gay people. 500 signatures reached the 10th of March At this point, all the other major candidates are basically working hard for her election, it’s insane but with her party and family ruining her chance at every corner, she clearly needed some help. Thank god the French political class exists. If she was going anti-gay now, she could probably get so much right-wing hardcore catholic voters it would make me hate my own country and lose my sanity, it’s loving insane. #7 François Asselineau 524  500 signatures reached the 10th of March Remember when I said sooner in this thread I would make a list of crazy candidates who may present themselves? I sorted it in alphabetical order, encountered Asselineau, entered research mode and never exited, deciding to wait for the signatures part. I was expecting to add a "candidate we happily missed this year" section about him later but François recently managed his life ambition to become “noteworthy enough to justify a wikipedia page”, take that Pro-american french wikipedia admins/dogs! gently caress YOUR NEED FOR REFERENCES! HE IS THE CANDIDATE! THE OFFICIAL FREXIT CANDIDATE(also in favor of exiting the EU and NATO, but no talk of wall yet), HIS COMMUNICATION IS SOOOOOOO GREAT. IT’S GOING TO BE HUGE, LET ME TELL YOU. Because François is French for Donald this year, don’t you know. Accused by some of being a cynical republic’s auto-immune system attempt to steal conspirationist voters from the FN electorate but let’s be honest that’s Cheminade’s job as the european Larouche party candidate! If it works somehow (it won’t, but what do I know, really), I will laugh to death (probably). And now the extras who should be qualified soon enough: 8 Jean-Luc Mélenchon 432  Well, here is french Bernie Sanders/Jeremy Corbyns. We have supporters of his in this thread I think. 9 Jacques Cheminade 397  Nothing changed since the last summary about that pile of nonsense, still make no sense. Like who the gently caress run for the European Larouche party in France? 10 Jean Lassalle 289  Occitan mountain shepard turned politician and MoDem deputy in the National Assembly he sang the occitan hymn to sarkozy’s face once. Did a 39-day hunger strike in 2006, in protest at a threat to jobs in his constituency. Lassalle ended up admitted to hospital in Garches, in the western suburbs of Paris, prompting intervention by President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Sarkozy, since it made them look non-reptilian, a must in pre-electoral periods. Lassalle had lost 21 kilograms (46 lb) of weight, over the course of the strike. If you can stand his opinions and like rugby, a really decent human being. Bet you weren’t hoping to find one in this list. So do not hope him to get 500 votes. 11 AL  Does not compute François_Fillon.exe add more signatures! Not candidate, like really not, he swears! But send the signatures anyway. Over 500 if possible. You never know what could happen to his official candidate. April or may surprises are always funny. 12 Philippe Poutou 245  If you are a mayor in France, please send a signature so he can be candidate and stay dignified, make a good score and see his party split in two under him. That’s like all the good things, I wish for him. 13 Rama Yade 151  So it looks like Rama Yada won’t make it this cycle. Can’t say I am surprised. Hope she survives to do it next cycle, she got the support for that. Kinda wish she would manage it this time but it’s not a great series of years to be feminist and/or black and get signatures. Next one is Alexandre Jardin at 64 signature, so i may write about someone who don't make me puke again soon. If you have horrible dirt on him, share now. Toplowtech fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Mar 11, 2017 |
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Mar 11, 2017 13:12
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magnavox space odyssey posted:I fully believe ideology is more important than qualifications, a person can be as educated on economy and whatever as he wants but at the end of the day if he only improves the lives of the rich I don't see how that's more preferable than a high school dropout who actually does care somewhat for the lower classes. If you're incompetent your ideology doesn't matter, since you won't be able to reliably achieve results in line with your ideology. Voting for an undereducated candidate because he has CorrectTM opinions is a good idea when the you're voting against the other guy, not when you're voting for progress. Arguably, Merkel is not a cartoon villain. The question is whether high school dropout Schulz has managed to become competent enough to actually pick good advisors and see through bullshit people will try to sell him, and has the ability to see through multi year projects.
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Mar 11, 2017 13:20
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blowfish posted:If you're incompetent your ideology doesn't matter, since you won't be able to reliably achieve results in line with your ideology.
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Mar 11, 2017 13:35
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The Merkatron 2000 doesn't have ideology or ideas or plans. It will never stop until the status quo is upheld.
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Mar 11, 2017 14:05
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Turkey's trying to start poo poo with Netherlands. Will be funny if Erdork's referendum fails. Not that it changes anything but it will be funny.
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Mar 11, 2017 14:07
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Will Schulzbot just go into an SPD led SPD-CDU coalition? Can he demand the CSU fucks off out of the coalition or is that going to be a sticking point for the CDU proper?
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Mar 11, 2017 14:10
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jBrereton posted:Will Schulzbot just go into an SPD led SPD-CDU coalition? Can he demand the CSU fucks off out of the coalition or is that going to be a sticking point for the CDU proper? CDU/CSU act as one uniform faction in the parliament so that would at least be completely unprecedented.
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Mar 11, 2017 14:23
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throw to first drat IT posted:Turkey's trying to start poo poo with Netherlands. Will be funny if Erdork's referendum fails. Not that it changes anything but it will be funny. I have a sneaking suspicion that our PM is jumping for joy at the opportunity to look tough in the face of the Turkish government, just four days from our national elections.
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Mar 11, 2017 14:37
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Honj Steak posted:CDU/CSU act as one uniform faction in the parliament so that would at least be completely unprecedented.
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Mar 11, 2017 14:39
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If I could get the expert opinion of Europeans and Englishmen, what is Corbyn like? The one French candidate being compared to both him and Sanders made me curious. A lot of people I see online savage him as a complete and utter joke while a few here and there have insisted it's more that his party is just infested with faux-Leftists who have been sabotaging him at every turn. That at least sounds quite a bit like Bernie.
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Mar 11, 2017 14:51
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