|
V. Illych L. posted:america has waged more war and killed more people than any other country in the world, without any close competitor. it escalates violence at home and abroad to levels entirely comparable with your "evil" regimes, and in fact is instrumental in propping up several such regimes *including qatar*. it's been a decade since libya and two since iraq - people like this must simply not have any kind of memory. it also asserts a narrative of the russian-georgian war which stands in clear contradiction to our own institutions' official reckoning with them. there is just *so much* that one has to ignore or outright falsify in order to arrive at this guy's position that it's legitimately hard to structure a counter-argument. 1. Continue relying on Russia, thus ensuring greater blowback on you when things eventually pop off because the American pushed the Russians one too many times. 2. Reduce dependence on Russia so that you're less vulnerable to the Americans sticking your dick in a hornets' nest.
|
# ? Dec 25, 2022 18:07 |
|
|
# ? Jun 8, 2024 06:24 |
|
VictualSquid posted:The pro-nuclear merkel government (and their counterparts in other countries) stopped all of that. Except some flashy renewable generation that is primarily intended as an export industry, and didn't include funding for storage and transmission to make it reliable. Honestly, that is short selling what they did. German wind and solar was a global market leader following the reforms of Schröder I and II, and the Merkel cabinets destroyed > 100 000 jobs in the industry on purpose while conservative state legislators enacted laws to prevent wind and transmission infrastructure. The latter is even more insane – I live in a state with a healthy electricity surplus at pretty much all times, but the conservatives have ensured transmission lines aren't built so a lot of that surplus just leads to generators shutting down.
|
# ? Dec 25, 2022 18:52 |
|
VictualSquid posted:Which German parties would you consider not "left wing" in either 2008 or 2014? And do you think they would have implemented the policies you propose if they had been elected, instead of the "left wing" CDU? I've no idea how you got from my post that I think the CDU are left-wing. The CDU, CSU, FDP and AfD are the major not left-wing parties by any standard definition. The Greens even in opposition managed to move the overton window on nuclear power enough that some elements of their disastrous anti-nuclear policies were going to get enacted as long as any mainstream centrist government was in power. And would be enacted even more directly if/when they were in power as a coalition partner, as they were from 1998-2005. V. Illych L. posted:like, this involves a ridiculous sleight of hand where the german greens are a left-wing party, specifically an anti-atlanticist one - both patently and obviously untrue, especially over the past decade or so. it also asserts that schröder's SPD - the SPD of the hartz reforms and yugoslavian interventions - is representative of the anti-atlanticist left. the turn towards russian gas as part of energiewende was entirely consensual between the SPD, the Greens and the CDU; it is absolutely not an accepted fact that schröder's SPD was "the most influential driving force" (e.g. https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/return-of-the-king), even if one accepts the ludicrous claim that that party is doing so out of sensitivity to left-wing anti-atlanticist impulses. So just to be clear, your positions are: - The Germany Green party isn't a left-wing party - The Social Democratic Party of Germany isn't a left-wing party. And Scroder, a chancellor of Germany who spent years literally on Putin's payroll, wasn't a main driving force in the reliance on Russian gas - America is more evil than Russia and Qatar and it would be preferable for Europe to be dependent on those two as partners for our energy security than the US You need to stop watching Russia Today and back away from the internet conspiracy sites, those are some fairly wacky extreme viewpoints.
|
# ? Dec 25, 2022 22:13 |
|
Blut posted:I've no idea how you got from my post that I think the CDU are left-wing. The CDU, CSU, FDP and AfD are the major not left-wing parties by any standard definition. The Greens even in opposition managed to move the overton window on nuclear power enough that some elements of their disastrous anti-nuclear policies were going to get enacted as long as any mainstream centrist government was in power. And would be enacted even more directly if/when they were in power as a coalition partner, as they were from 1998-2005. Maybe from your complaints about the "left wing" government decision when talking about 2008 and 2014. I can only conclude that you consider the government at the time to be "left wing". I agree that that is not the standard definition which is why I put it in quotes. And yes if the greens where closer to power, more of their anti-nuclear policies would have been enacted. For example we would have sufficient long term investment in infrastructure and storage to absorb the nuclear shutdown without relying on gas or coal too much. You seem to consider that a bad thing, I consider it a good thing.
|
# ? Dec 25, 2022 22:20 |
|
Blut posted:I've no idea how you got from my post that I think the CDU are left-wing. The CDU, CSU, FDP and AfD are the major not left-wing parties by any standard definition. The Greens even in opposition managed to move the overton window on nuclear power enough that some elements of their disastrous anti-nuclear policies were going to get enacted as long as any mainstream centrist government was in power. And would be enacted even more directly if/when they were in power as a coalition partner, as they were from 1998-2005. -yes -"the" is the contention, not "a". this is important! -it does not make sense to classify the world in "evil" and "non-evil" countries and then put the USA in the "non-evil" box if that box contains countries such as qatar and saudi arabia hth, you need to stop reading bild zeitung as your main source of political commentary e; the spd point is somewhat more nuanced - the SPD under Schröder *also is not left-wing* and especially not anti-atlanticist, which was your contention. however, your reading is revealing in that it is either lazy or dishonest, and so i chose a response to illustrate that V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Dec 26, 2022 |
# ? Dec 25, 2022 23:47 |
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:Setting aside the question of morality, I think it's pretty fair to say that 2008 should have set Europe on a different course vis-a-vis Russia. That whole debacle made it clear that the Russian and American vision for the future were incompatible to the point of armed (proxy) conflict, and there was no reason to think either would stray from their vision. At which point it becomes a choice of which side to align with, which the Americans win handily with pretty much every politician. From there, your options, even as someone skeptical of America, becomes: i have no major objections to this post - my issue is pretty clearly with the "evil/not-evil" school of atlanticism, which i find entirely contemptible and intellectually bankrupt, and blut's abject nonsense. if you want to develop the argument that post-2008 it was clear that there was going to be an unmanageable contradiction between an US-oriented security policy and an energy policy based on russian gas supply, i don't necessarily mind that. my reading of german policy is that they were banking on being able to manage this contradiction. this failed - it's not obvious to me that it was structurally doomed to be unmanageable, but i obviously agree that it turned out that way in practise and i don't feel any need to argue the case here.
|
# ? Dec 25, 2022 23:54 |
|
V. Illych L. posted:i have no major objections to this post - my issue is pretty clearly with the "evil/not-evil" school of atlanticism, which i find entirely contemptible and intellectually bankrupt, and blut's abject nonsense. Basically, instead of austerity, choose (base level) autarky, and just slowly wind down entanglements with either state, not changing the relative balance between the two but making both less able to hurt the EU through their struggles. Find the biggest vulnerabilities in the EU economy and shore them up, and come up with plans for how to deal with those vulnerabilities should they become an issue before you've dealt with them.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2022 06:36 |
|
While for obvious reasons environmentalism is seen as a left thing, European Green parties are usually economic liberals. Ours is still called the Park Department of the main economically liberal party.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2022 11:12 |
|
VictualSquid posted:Maybe from your complaints about the "left wing" government decision when talking about 2008 and 2014. I can only conclude that you consider the government at the time to be "left wing". I agree that that is not the standard definition which is why I put it in quotes. My post that you quoted didn't mention "left wing government decision [making]". It explicitly stated that the aims of certain domestic voting blocks across Europe - and listed numerous examples of such - which were the main problems for EU energy policy. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3767159&pagenumber=923#post528584386 If European Green parties and their supporters had pushed a policy of only shutting down nuclear power when replacement reliable renewable power capacity had already come online to replace it that would have been more defensible, if probably not entirely practical. Instead we got nuclear shutdowns ASAP and a kibosh on any nuclear plant fleet expansion/replacement, with no viable alternative. Which played a large role in the terrible energy supply situation Europe found ourselves in in Q1 2022. The glaring issue is Europe would currently be both lower carbon, and much more energy independent, if Green parties across the continent hadn't pushed their anti nuclear agendas for decades. Its been an unmitigated disaster for the continent. V. Illych L. posted:-yes If you don't think the German Greens or SPD are left-wing parties, and you think relying on Russia and Qatar for European energy supply is preferable to relying on the US, then you're either trolling or insane.Those are some very extreme positions that nobody in the real world outside of the worst Putin influenced extremist political parties would agree with in 2022. Did an American brutally mug you for your computer's shift and caps lock keys and you've never mentally recovered or something?
|
# ? Dec 26, 2022 12:14 |
|
So you consider the nuclear shutdown under Merkel to be more representative of the European green position then the nuclear shutdown under Schröder. I believe the opposite. To me the left wing anti nuclear position acknowledges the danger of fossil fuels. And thus it takes 30 years during which alternatives can be found. This was passed while the greens were in power. The right wing anti-nuclear position assumes that the only danger of nuclear shutdown is to the operators shareholder profits. And thus they decide on large bailouts and quick shutdown. This was passed while the greens were not in power.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2022 12:33 |
|
Blut posted:If you don't think the German Greens or SPD are left-wing parties, and you think relying on Russia and Qatar for European energy supply is preferable to relying on the US, then you're either trolling or insane.Those are some very extreme positions that nobody in the real world outside of the worst Putin influenced extremist political parties would agree with in 2022. Did an American brutally mug you for your computer's shift and caps lock keys and you've never mentally recovered or something?
|
# ? Dec 26, 2022 12:48 |
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:You can't just roll all that poo poo together. SPD and the German Greens not being left-wing does not seem like an out there opinion, based on their apparent politics. Like, the SPD seem to mirror every other Social Democratic party in having "centrist" market reformers who actually run the show, and the Greens appear to be explicitly seeking "the center". The latter of course makes a lot of sense if you compare them to other Green-only parties in Europe, which try to embrace both left-wing and right-wing environmentalists. The SPD have definitely (and unfortunately) taken a neo-liberal turn in the last couple of decades (like a lot of other centre-left parties in Europe) but they and the German Greens are still very much left-wing parties by any standard political science definition. His arguing that the SPD or the Greens aren't left-wing isn't as insane as his thinking Russia is a better energy partner for Europe than the US, true, so may not have been worth rolling in. But its still an extreme position. VictualSquid posted:So you consider the nuclear shutdown under Merkel to be more representative of the European green position then the nuclear shutdown under Schröder. I believe the opposite. No. I believe that Green parties across Europe (both in coalition governments and in opposition) were the main group responsible for moving the overton window on nuclear power on the continent in an overwhelmingly negative way. That without their efforts over the past 50 years Europe would have had far more nuclear energy capacity in the year 2022, and as a result would have been less reliant on gas and Russia. And would also emit less carbon from other sources that we're now relying on like coal as a gas replacement. And that this has proven to be a disastrous policy for both Europe and the wider world.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2022 13:05 |
|
So as you believe that the nuclear policies changes that didn't come from the greens are good. Austerity politics in the Merkel years stopped all investments into energy infrastructure. You think that was good. So you believe that the government should not build new power plants of any kind, but keep all currently existing ones running.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2022 13:35 |
|
Blut posted:My post that you quoted didn't mention "left wing government decision [making]". It explicitly stated that the aims of certain domestic voting blocks across Europe - and listed numerous examples of such - which were the main problems for EU energy policy. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3767159&pagenumber=923#post528584386 you keep doing this thing where you read something i write and then interpret it in what i must assume is a deliberately stupid way. the initial post to which i reacted was this one: Blut posted:Becoming dependent on Russian gas was the easy thing to do for European politicians. No large domestic voting blocks were really against it in the 90s/00s, if anything you had the opposite with left-wing Germans especially wanting deeper links to Russia. And not only that but Russia was actively influencing politicians like Schröder and big business in favour of it. my precise objections were twofold: firstly, the idea that left-wing/"anti-imperialist" voters are a major political bloc able to shift mainstream policy, i.e. that leftie anti-atlanticism was an especially great motivation for the russian gas import policy as represented by the nord stream pipelines. this, to reiterate, is nonsense; the policy is *consistent* with an anti-atlanticist bent, but it was embraced by all the great parties of german politics through leaders from willy brandt to angela merkel, none of whom - bar possibly brandt - were significantly influenced by anti-atlanticist or "anti-imperialist" left-wing tendencies. you also do the tedious horseshoe theory thing by equating the the left (at this point you presumably also don't consider the very atlanticist greens nor the SPD as the left to which you're referring, so there's some shifting references as well) with the far right, but that's just run-of-the-mill institutionalist smugness, which is par for the course. more broadly, it's making the question a weird morality play, as you make clear with your preposterous "evil/non-evil" categorisation of countries, wherein moral and instrumental reasoning are identical. basically, dealing with russia was bound to fail because russia is an "evil" country, and so they should've relied more on "non-evil" USA, which would've been better. that serves more to obscure the actual tensions involved than it does to illuminate them. basically what you're doing is that you're providing a scenario including a moral judgement for simply articulating the forces involved, and that is imo poor arguing. you then follow up with some entirely unconstructive paraphrases of what you appear to want my positions to be, which is also rather rude in addition to not being obviously consistent with your previous statements. this all makes it very difficult to actually engage in any kind of discussion - which you then follow up by effectively accusing me of treason, just to top it off, which cements you as operating at about the level of a right-wing tabloid. consecutive german governments made a gamble that they could balance US and eastern european influence in the security sphere with russian business connections for a lot of reasons, some of which you touch upon and some of which you don't. this gamble did not work out. that does not necessarily mean that it was an unreasonable gamble - it may have been destined to fail, but more work has to be made in examining that (such as a buttery pastry has been touching upon - i genuinely don't mind if someone wants to argue that, the point is that it really must be argued). if it was bound to fail, at what point did it become bound to fail? has german energy policy since Ostpolitik been completely stupid? there is much fruitful discussion to be had which you foreclose upon out of a perverse, manichean view of geopolitics.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2022 15:41 |
|
V. Illych L. posted:you keep doing this thing where you read something i write and then interpret it in what i must assume is a deliberately stupid way. The "gamble" to rely on Russian gas for a huge % of Europe's supply was a very questionable decision from the outset, as pretty much the entire history of resource supply to nation states would show. And it was very obviously a completely unreasonable gamble once Putin started invading neighbouring countries in 2008 and crushing all domestic dissent. Plenty of thought leaders have been pointing this out for literally decades at this point, but they were ignored by certain politicians in Germany in particular for any of the reasons listed in my original post and more. My categorization of states in this context is "which country is more morally defensible as an energy partner for Europe". Which almost any human in late 2022 would agree is the US, and not Russia or Qatar. You can rant about how terrible America is as much as you want, but it doesn't change that both Russia and Qatar are orders of magnitude worse. I don't know how you think I accused you of treason, I don't even know which nation you're from to accuse you of treason against. The primary thing I've accused you of is having completely bonkers political opinions that would get you laughed out of any political science course. Which I stand by. Your statements that the German Greens and SPD aren't left wing parties was bad by itself, but your rants about how terrible America is to try to justify European dependence on Russian gas was like something an edgy anarcho-communist first year undergraduate would write in their first semester. Though I guess I have also accused you being mad at a larcenous American for stealing your shift key, which is because I haven't seen anyone over the age of 15 write so many words without the ability to use proper punctuation. I also stand by that. I think you're literally the only poster I've seen in this entire thread too lazy (or inept) to type like a functioning adult, which really doesn't help taking any points you're trying to make seriously.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2022 18:47 |
|
Blut posted:Your statements that the German Greens and SPD aren't left wing parties I mean the problem is more that sure, they're to the left of you, but you're arguing with leftists in this thread who have specifically decried the right-wing shift of the SDP and have seen the greens as the usual fragile coalition they are between left-wing tree huggers and right-wingers who believe in preservation of their blood and soil. At the very least that's how it is here in the UK where the Green Part of England and Wales is perceived as a bunch of lefties but having dallied with membership of the party I found it was a chaotic coalition of old nazis and young socialists furiously trying to force each other out. The right wingers rarely get into leadership positions because even back in 2014 they could not stop ranting about transsexuals and pronouns long enough to make a policy platform, but they still ran the central committee via being in control of who's on the ballot.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2022 22:13 |
|
Blut posted:The "gamble" to rely on Russian gas for a huge % of Europe's supply was a very questionable decision from the outset, as pretty much the entire history of resource supply to nation states would show. And it was very obviously a completely unreasonable gamble once Putin started invading neighbouring countries in 2008 and crushing all domestic dissent. Plenty of thought leaders have been pointing this out for literally decades at this point, but they were ignored by certain politicians in Germany in particular for any of the reasons listed in my original post and more. of course russia as of today is not a workable energy supply partner for europe, nobody has ever argued that case itt as far as i can tell except in your head! what was being discussed was the origin of the partnership and the rationale and power coalition pushing for it in the first place! i quote and explain the context in the post to which you're directly responding! just shut up about orthography until you learn to parse a simple text, please. it's just ridiculous. V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Dec 26, 2022 |
# ? Dec 26, 2022 22:27 |
|
Neoliberalism is pretty much genuinely incapable of meaningfully responding to changing situations or forseeing future problems, it's the End of History poo poo where the only thing that exists is an eternal status quo. Ze price stabilitie and all that.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 08:54 |
|
V. Illych L. posted:of course russia as of today is not a workable energy supply partner for europe, nobody has ever argued that case itt as far as i can tell except in your head! what was being discussed was the origin of the partnership and the rationale and power coalition pushing for it in the first place! i quote and explain the context in the post to which you're directly responding!
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 11:43 |
|
Isn't the American LNG much more expensive than GCC option because of the distance? I don't think you can rely only on expensive energy and still have a competitive export industry (export outside of EU).
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 14:17 |
|
stephenthinkpad posted:Isn't the American LNG much more expensive than GCC option because of the distance? I don't think you can rely only on expensive energy and still have a competitive export industry (export outside of EU). It's an interesting question - when the threat of running out of gas hit the UK we ended up shipping a tanker full of it from bloody Australia of all places, so clearly ridiculous shipping lanes isn't entirely without precedent when Russia shuts off the taps. Probably a real killer for the environment to ship it that way rather than through a pipeline, mind you.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 14:26 |
|
stephenthinkpad posted:Isn't the American LNG much more expensive than GCC option because of the distance? I don't think you can rely only on expensive energy and still have a competitive export industry (export outside of EU). Doha, Qatar to Rotterdam: 7216 nm Houston to Rotterdam: 6190 nm Doha to Lisbon: 6213 nm Houston to Lisbon: 5658 nm So for most of Europe, "no"
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 14:35 |
|
You know for a moment I thought you meant nanometre instead of nautical mile and was wondering if I'd woken up in tiny train world.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 14:42 |
|
Rust Martialis posted:Doha, Qatar to Rotterdam: 7216 nm
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 14:44 |
|
I didn't realize the distance between Gulf and EU is that far via the sea route. I know about the cheap container shipping cost, but LNG needs alot more infrastructure on and off the ship so that change the calculation. So the Russia gas field that connects to nordstream 1 and 2, they are not connect to the Siberia gas filed to China. If Nordstreams are cut off permanently, can Russia convert the gas to LNG and sell it to some non EU countries in some where. Looking on the map I am not seeing any close country Russia ship to.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 14:59 |
|
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/price-of-natural-gas-goes-stratospheric-will-lng-shipping-rates-be-next So you charter a LNG transport for a year or more somewhere between $70,000 and $400,000 a day. A LNG carrier can be 175,000 m3. 1 Bcf (gas) = 45,000 cubic meters (LNG) If make a carrier 180,000 m3 LNG that's 4 Bcf gas, or 82,135 tons of gas or 440,000 MBTU. (Oof) 1 MBTU sells for $35 or so, so one shipload sells for $154 million USD. 30 days at 400,000 as day charter is 12 million. So shipping is under 10% of the cost My math may be hosed.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 15:04 |
|
Japan has a massive successful export oriented industrial sector and satisfies its huge gas demand through LNG terminals. IIRC it's even the biggest LNG importer in the world.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 15:13 |
|
GABA ghoul posted:Japan has a massive successful export oriented industrial sector and satisfies its huge gas demand through LNG terminals. IIRC it's even the biggest LNG importer in the world. LNG is still more expensive than the plain old gas pipeline. Russia has built one and is building a 2nd Nordstream sized pipeline to China. Russia can easily build one to Japan geographic wise but they don't. Japan also impose pretty lite sanction against Russia compared to Germany sanctions. Reason probably because Japan is still buying LNG gas from Sakhalin, which is an island Japan and Russia/Soviet fought a few times over and lost. I think relying on more expensive LNG has the long term effect of encouraging you energy intensive industries move out of the country but retain the less intensive industries.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 15:38 |
|
Tesseraction posted:I mean the problem is more that sure, they're to the left of you, but you're arguing with leftists in this thread who have specifically decried the right-wing shift of the SDP and have seen the greens as the usual fragile coalition they are between left-wing tree huggers and right-wingers who believe in preservation of their blood and soil. They're both currently to the right of my personal political views actually. If it was possible in my constituency I'd vote for a more traditional center left party of the type that existed before the 1990s across most of Western Europe - one that actually prioritized caring about poor people, instead of "business friendly" free markets and distractionary identity politics. But even with their (questionable to more traditional leftists) party platforms in the year 2022 both the Greens and SDP are definitively left-wing parties in the German and European political system. What constitutes a modern left-wing party has changed, unfortunately. The remnants of the old/harder left are confined to electoral obscurity in Germany and across most of Europe, its an ideology dying as European voters move consistently towards the right.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 15:46 |
|
stephenthinkpad posted:I think relying on more expensive LNG has the long term effect of encouraging you energy intensive industries move out of the country but retain the less intensive industries. In entirely unrelated news the EU agreed to a world first import carbon tariffs just this month.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 16:23 |
|
mobby_6kl posted:The origin of the partnership is I think fairly reasonable in the end-of-history context, it's just that we've had 8 if not 14 years of evidence that it's not a good idea to continue expanding it. But NS2 went ahead and had Putin started the war a few months later, would've received certification. i doubt that NS2 was getting certified by february of this year - it had already started being postponed for reasons so nondescript that the germans might as well have said that it was political outright and the greens were known to be strongly opposed. regardless, the discussion about continuing the energy partnership must be seen in its context - if one sees a russian invasion of ukraine as inevitable after 2014 (or even 2008, though i really do disagree with both of those assertions) then you're of course right. my interpretation is that the germans - i.e., the political establishment from die Linke through the AfD with only the greens and possibly the FDP offering even nominal opposition - was that they could keep tensions from erupting disastrously and serve a lot of legitimate political purposes. obviously this failed, but it remains a legitimate question whether it was bound to fail and thus was made out of stupidity or corruption, and which interests were instrumental in driving this policy for what reasons. the initial contention i had was that i don't think that left-wing anti-atlanticism or "anti-imperialism" was a significant driving force behind this policy. the ill temper of the discussion probably stems from me not making this sufficiently clear early on. Tesseraction posted:I mean the problem is more that sure, they're to the left of you, but you're arguing with leftists in this thread who have specifically decried the right-wing shift of the SDP and have seen the greens as the usual fragile coalition they are between left-wing tree huggers and right-wingers who believe in preservation of their blood and soil. the german greens, fwiw, have no nominal commitment to what is commonly understood as being on the left, meaning socialism or a stated ambition to represent the labour movement. they're a pretty standard social-liberal party with a strong focus on environmental issues; if one wants to redefine what "the left" means to include this, then that is one's own business, but it should not be any surprise when people - especially socialists - don't agree. one might at that point start to question the utility of "left" or "right" as political markers in the modern context, but then one would probably end up as greens. there has been plenty of discussion on this matter in the german bourgeois press as well, e.g. https://www.blaetter.de/ausgabe/2018/februar/jenseits-von-rechts-und-links-die-gruenen-im-niemandsland or https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/gruene-mit-neuer-parteispitze-wie-links-sind-die-noch-15421019.html. blut's just being belligerent.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 16:43 |
|
You are essentially relitigating the Fundie vs. Realo split in the Green party that was thoroughly settled over a decade ago. Today's Greens are liberal transatlanticist quislings, and they've been that way for a long time. Meanwhile over at the SPD, the Seeheimer Kreis has won, especially after the birth of Die Linke. Both are "left" in the sense that the AfD/FDP/CDU/CSU are to the right of them, but that's small consolation for people who get to decide between Friedrich "Ukrainian refugees are welfare tourists" Merz and Olaf "Brechmittel / G20" Scholz.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 17:08 |
|
Owling Howl posted:In entirely unrelated news the EU agreed to a world first import carbon tariffs just this month. Yeah I think there should be more discussion of the carbon tax scheme. I heard EU is going to give US companies exemption in order to get the US on board. You know Macron was talking about digital tax a few years ago? They are going to trash that if EU ever going to sign US on board the carbon tax. IMO this scheme doesn't necessarily hurt the industrialized countries like China or SK but will hurt the industrializing countries ( i.e. India) the most.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2022 17:28 |
|
Blut posted:They're both currently to the right of my personal political views actually. If it was possible in my constituency I'd vote for a more traditional center left party of the type that existed before the 1990s across most of Western Europe - one that actually prioritized caring about poor people, instead of "business friendly" free markets and distractionary identity politics. I would argue that is what a leftist political party is. I can agree that the political landscape has changed in many of our countries to the point where these are still considered the nominally-left parties despite not holding left-wing values, but I'd argue this is the-end-of-history making every country a weird attempt for everyone to be the centre without ever understanding that a centre exists in opposition to the poles, and has led to often internally inconsistent ideologies (see: Green parties that end up backing policies that end up making climate change and environmental disasters worse). I think it's a mistake to change language to match the world as it happens to be in this way, it feels too close to the intention of newspeak, which I also then have to say "I'm not saying we're living in 1984" because we are not living in 1984. But Orwell's concept of newspeak was a salient discussion on the limitations of common language, and I suppose was a riff on his non-fiction essay "Politics and the English Language." V. Illych L. posted:the german greens, fwiw, have no nominal commitment to what is commonly understood as being on the left, meaning socialism or a stated ambition to represent the labour movement. they're a pretty standard social-liberal party with a strong focus on environmental issues; if one wants to redefine what "the left" means to include this, then that is one's own business, but it should not be any surprise when people - especially socialists - don't agree. one might at that point start to question the utility of "left" or "right" as political markers in the modern context, but then one would probably end up as greens. there has been plenty of discussion on this matter in the german bourgeois press as well, e.g. https://www.blaetter.de/ausgabe/2018/februar/jenseits-von-rechts-und-links-die-gruenen-im-niemandsland or https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/gruene-mit-neuer-parteispitze-wie-links-sind-die-noch-15421019.html. I had suspected this was the case, and the articles (at least from my poor skim) seem to suggest that they specifically reject the "lefty" label entirely because they see the left as a bunch of pinkos overly concerned with history over modernity. I'd then turn that criticism back to them on nuclear, but hell, we don't even need to have nuclear if we had loving invested in renewables decades ago when we saw how the winds were blowing hotter and full of carbon.
|
# ? Dec 29, 2022 22:33 |
|
Tonight at midnight Croatia joins the euro. The poor bastards.
|
# ? Dec 31, 2022 10:24 |
|
His Divine Shadow posted:Tonight at midnight Croatia joins the euro. The poor bastards. As long as we get rid of our nazi currency, I'll take Euro. gently caress the kuna HARD.
|
# ? Dec 31, 2022 11:30 |
|
Welcome to the suicide pact I guess
|
# ? Dec 31, 2022 14:44 |
|
What's wrong with the kuna?
|
# ? Dec 31, 2022 14:53 |
|
I thought it was just a currency, a kuna matata.
|
# ? Dec 31, 2022 15:12 |
|
|
# ? Jun 8, 2024 06:24 |
|
Everybody loves kuna, the adorable coin stoat. ... We regret to inform you the kuna is racist.
|
# ? Dec 31, 2022 15:15 |