European Politics

Forostar said:
I read this https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eu...watch-live-meps-debate-eu-poland-legal-crisis:

"All eyes are now on the new budgetary mechanism, which could freeze payments for Poland, the largest recipient of EU funds. The scheme, applicable since January, is based on a complex procedure and exchange of notifications between Brussels and the government suspected of breaching EU law. It could take up to nine months for the European Council to approve the final suspension."

Where do we read that we need an unanymous vote?
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Right, I didn't even take that option into account because, as the article writes, there is no interest in the commission to employ it. And I mixed up the funding aspect with the implementation of article 7 of the EU treaties, which is the one that requires unanimous vote. Sorry about that, I didn't get much sleep lately.

Nevertheless, my point remains that nothing will happen: The commission won't freeze funding and the council won't implement article 7. I don't like it, but I'm not having any hopes.
 
No prob. It seems all complex.. it will take long and before that we can only hope any (be it new or not) sensible measures can be taken.
 
What's happening in Austria? I understand that the only way to implement 'stay at home' for a democratic goverment is to basically ban access to public space.
 
Police stop and question anyone out and about? It happened here in April 2020 and Jan 2021, but mostly on the roads and in city centres. People who were driving in and out of towns were stopped and asked for proof they were essential workers. Our neighbour got stopped with his van full of subcontracted staff trying to head down to Southampton.
 
Brigantium said:
Police stop and question anyone out and about? It happened here in April 2020 and Jan 2021, but mostly on the roads and in city centres. People who were driving in and out of towns were stopped and asked for proof they were essential workers. Our neighbour got stopped with his van full of subcontracted staff trying to head down to Southampton.
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Not as bad as what was happening in Spain during the first lockdown. I have relatives who were stopped by the police whilst walking their dog as there was a very limited area around your house you were allowed to walk to. Children were not even allowed to leave their homes!
 
It's fair to point out that the neighbour didn't have a legitimate reason for travel. He and his buddies were touting for business out of area and shouldn't have been travelling. They were probably trying to cash in on other workers sticking to the lockdown rules.
 
Brigantium said:
It's fair to point out that the neighbour didn't have a legitimate reason for travel. He and his buddies were touting for business out of area and shouldn't have been travelling. They were probably trying to cash in on other workers sticking to the lockdown rules.
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Then good on the police for stopping them.
 
And we seem to have another breakthrough in nuclear fusion

For the first time, a fusion reaction has achieved a record 1.3 megajoule energy output – and for the first time, exceeding energy absorbed by the fuel used to trigger it.


Although there's still some way to go, the result represents a significant improvement on previous yields: eight times greater than experiments conducted just a few months prior, and 25 times greater than experiments conducted in 2018. It's a huge achievement.

Physicists at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will be submitting a paper for peer review.
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LLNL had produced energy in the reaction which is an epic achievement. The powerplant as a system still uses more energy than it can produce, but the capsule itself is net positive.

I'll just put a few words here why I'm posting this in the Europolitics.

There has been a great anti-nuclear pushback mainly from German side. Their politicians (greens mainly) are not allowing EU investments into nuclear energy. The country in question has earned trillions in car sales throughout last 50+ years, while cars were (and still are) one of the greatest polluters of environment. Here you can insert the narrative of perpetual lies through decades, how your purchase of a car today makes the next generation better and less harmful, to be terminated with VW scandal, but it's not a core issue here.

The core issue is that these hypocrits (German example, found everywhere in EU TBH) do not realize they're harming the development of true clean energy on strategic scale.

Zero or minimal environmental impact, strategic magnitude energy system, does not exist today and can be only derived from nuclear theory.

Wind and sun farms are absolutely the rocket engine of power production. This may seem counterintuitive because rockets are dirty but it's not about the dirt, it's about energy density. With rockets if you want to increase thrust you need to increase fuel and then you increase weight. With that kind of scaling strategic spacelift is impossible. With wind and solar, the surface area of blades or cells needed to generate this kind of strategic power is impossible to implement.

So here we are, I didn't want to post this before the first fusion breakthrough comes - now is the time - we need to put money into nuclear lobby and not 'reusables' lobby or god forbid coal/gas/car lobby. Because it's the nuclear lobby that leads us to this :

- Water isotope used as fuel. Cheap to produce.
- Deuterium is also present in ocean in quantities enough to power the world for centuries - rare in density but the ocean is big :)
- There is no reactor; a place where self sustaining reaction occurs whose byproduct we harness as energy, no reaction no risk of blowing up
- No radioactivity
 
We seem destined to live in fear
And some that would say Armageddon is near
But where there's a life - well there's hope
That man won't self destruct

Why can't we treat our fellow man
With more respect and a shake of their hands
But anger and loathing is rife
The death on all sides is
Becoming a way of life

We live in an uncertain world
Fear, understanding and ignorance
Is leading to death
Only the corpses are left
For vultures that prey on their bones

But some are just not wanting peace
Their whole life is death and misery
The only thing that they know
Fight fire with fire life is cheap

But if they do stop to think
That man is teetering right on the brink
But do you think that they care
They benefit from death and pain and despair

​
The situation in eastern Ukraine and their border with Russia isn't looking too good. The continuous conflict that has been going on for over seven years already is bad enough as it is, but now there's major anxiety all over Europe regarding Russia's actions... They're building up a considerable force there. Well, making seemingly paranoid and threatening military preparations while blaming the "west" for escalating and feeding the conflict, along with threatening Russia, isn't exactly new. It's, sad as it is, a standard move in Putin's (and other dictators') playbook... but anyway, it's looking rather worrying.

Of course, it could very well be just posturing - which it definitely looks like. Significant as their military might is, I doubt that Putin would risk open war. But he obviously has lot to gain in this increasing unrest and fear. Years and years of propaganda and media control has definitely helped to "justify" their actions to the masses. I mean, obviously not everyone in Russia buys that stuff, but the state controlled media has been feeding them... questionable stuff for many years. Putin has played that game rather well,.

Don't know where I'm actually aiming with this. Probably just expressing my worry and frustration at mankind's inability to get along with each other.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1470796299633053701
 
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There's a NY event in the warships game that we play that's ran by a Russian company. One of our clan mates just dumped 700e to get a shitton of premium content. We joke that he financed 30 pairs of boots and 40 pairs of socks in the following invasion of Ukraine.
 
My guess is that Putin is testing the waters with the changed geopolitical climate. Biden still has the first major international crisis to handle and Germany has a new government. Putin doesn't know how far he can push them yet, that's why he's playing the waiting game.
In the long run, I'm pretty sure he has the annexation of eastern Ukraine and Belarus on his agenda.
 
I don't think annexation is likely. I don't believe this is about 'russian minority' but all about black sea bases. It's all about Crimea they don't care about Ukraine or Belarus as long as they buffer them from EU/NATO.
It's also about not wanting these countries to go to EU/NATO.

Also Putin's got an upper hand he doesn't need to go forward. He's got his crony in Belarus and Ukraine has been shoved into frozen conflict territory - which Russia likes very much. For a country to join EU/NATO with insurgency on its soil that would be a first.
 
Perun said:
My guess is that Putin is testing the waters with the changed geopolitical climate.
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And that is indeed why Europe should draw the line and not bend too much. It's a beautiful thought that bending a little bit makes things easier for everyone, but it often just encourages Putin to demand more and test waters more boldly than the last time. Putin has already sort of won with the Crimea & Eastern Ukraine crisis; even if the situation ceases a little bit, Russia basically has the control over that area already and I doubt it's going to change at this point.

Putin definitely wants to hold on and regain the Soviet era sphere of influence, hence demanding that their neighbours make "international legal security guarantees for Russia, ruling out NATO’s further movement eastward and the deployment of weapons systems threatening Russia in Ukraine and other adjacent states." Or, to put it more appropriately, NATO and/or USA make those decisions for them. For Putin, it's been USA/NATO against Russia thing for ages and that tells something about his respect towards the independence of the adjacent states.

That being said, it's a bit tragic that Finland didn't take the NATO option when the political climate was a bit calmer. As important as it is to get along with Russia as we share about 1000km of border with it, people here like to think we're "special" and Russia/Putin truly respects us and our sovereignty. I mean, to certain extent, maybe, but if that really was the case, there shouldn't be any need for Team Putin to distort and colour the pages of history books, let alone make up straightforward lies or just generally cast a slur.
 
Randalf said:
That being said, it's a bit tragic that Finland didn't take the NATO option when the political climate was a bit calmer.
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Tragic? I don't think so. There are NATO members in Europe which would not be defended if article was invoked and there are non NATO members in Europe which would be defended instantly if attacked by an NATO adversary. I believe Finland is there.
 
Zare said:
Tragic? I don't think so. There are NATO members in Europe which would not be defended if article was invoked and there are non NATO members in Europe which would be defended instantly if attacked by an NATO adversary. I believe Finland is there.
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That is a fair point!

However, I think that NATO members are, or would be, relatively safe together and could provide a healthier (ok, quite bad choice of a word with this theme) counterforce to the Giants of the East. Now Europe is, sadly, slightly too scattered in that sense.

Then again, NATO is all over Europe already and just like EU, hasn't been as strong and unified negotiative force as people probably hoped.
 
NATO was considered a very united force until 2017 - it wasn't until a president of very low intelligence that we saw any questioning of the common defense core. And even if the USA isn't in NATO, the rest of NATO should still be strong enough to beat the Russians in a hot war. However, Putin has to push those boundaries, because he does see weakness. There's a lot of benefits for him pushing on the Ukraine, as well. Confirming the annexation of the Crimea is one of those benefits, but not all of them. There's also full control over the Sea of Azov, allowing the Volga-Don-Black Sea trading route to be entirely in Russian control. Forced economic integration of Ukraine into the Russian bloc would provide a lot of resources as well.

But mostly, I think Putin's thought is he wants Russia to be as powerful as the USSR was when he was young.
 

At 4:45 I believe this is called hypernormalization, a 'phenomenon' in society where things that should not be normal become normalcy. Prior examples were mostly socio-economic, like generational poverty. But this is eye opening - shells are flying over or around the village and have been for 8 years. People have learned to live with it and until one of those shells hits some house they can accept it as the 'new normal', because there is no other choice.

I also agree with conclusion of the first soldier interviewed, Russian buildup is more likely positioning before talks than an imminent invasion.
 
Huge controversy about Nazi looted art in the Kunsthaus Zürich. Neither the assholes from the "Bührle foundation" (Mr. Bührle was the Nazi that got these paintings during WW2) nor the Kunsthaus seem to be willing to seriously reveal or investigate, even after the international shitstorm. I'm no expert in the subject, but vomiting seems an adequate reaction.
 
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