Yeah the EU leadership has been really shortsighted on these past decades (especially since the 10s), especially in their strategic energy and industrial sectors.
Be it the Ukranian conflict, the ME crisis, the NA wars and instabilities, etc. The EU is the one that geopolitically speaking lost the most.
Unless they're full puppets for foreign interests, I simply do not understand how they could leave foreign actors to dictate policies that affect thier own territory and enterprises without any sort of critical thought.
But even then, they could not have possibly been all mere puppets. And yet.
It was cheaper, I don't think it's much more complex than that. And with fossil fuels, countries without significant local production are always dependent on someone else, with most potential suppliers being problematic in some way.
Of course we should have gone for renewable energy more forcefully, but that wouldn't have resolved the issue. That change will take time, and you can't arbitrarily accelerate it.
Nuclear is cheapest, then lignite, then hard coal, and then gas. Germany phased out the cheapest option first, now continues with the second, and is expanding the most expensive.
The obvious choice would have been to do what China and India are doing - phase out gas power first and focus on electrification. But Europe did the opposite.
Well the US benefit massively because of their investments in shale gas. Meanwhile the Europe suffers massively and they banned shale gas although they could exploit vast resources.
Sure, the environment, etc but Europe hasn't invested strategically in that, either. China has.
"By some estimates, they influence 75% of legislation"
> But even then, they could not have possibly been all mere puppets. And yet.
Even if the lobbying was not reason for all the bad decisions of the EU, the EU parliament has no way to actually propose any laws on its own. All the laws emanate from the commission which is also bought and paid for by you guessed it, the lobbies.
EU opposes the Houthis because they are a horrifying slave state that distributes children as sex slaves to their troops.
EU opposes Russia because it is a horrifying fascist dictatorship that has repeatedly invaded it's neighbors, and constantly talks about it's historical claims to EU territory.
In the NA conflicts it's harder to draw such a clear line, because the conflicts typically have about 15 sides each, but the basic algorithm you can use is generally that EU tries very hard to pick sides based on morality, not geopolitical interests.
The EU and Macron welcomed the new Syrian president who is a former ISIS fighter in Europe. So much about morals when hundreds of French citizens were killed by ISIS in France.
The EU is like the US, it does business with vile and despicable people if it is in its own interest.
Those can be said for other economic partners that are being used so no. That's not it, that's just rhetoric for the masses. _You'll here the same thing tomorrow, after I say the complete opposite today._
The issue was 1990s-2000s Germany argued it was in Europe's best interest to integrate Russia into the European fabric, but 1990s-2000s France+UK+Italy argued it was in Europe's best interest to integrate the Mediterranean into the European fabric.
When the UK left the EU and France+Italy were in the midst of their economic doldrums due to the Eurozone crisis, this left the hard power states within the EU comparatively weakened.
But the collapse of Minsk II and the ongoing war in the Middle East led to a cascading crisis for a unified Europe.
Minsk per the people that brokered it was just a temporary patch to prepare Ukraine for the invasion. So no. That's not it.
It's business and by now it should be clear to anyone that there's no morality involved in this space.
There's nothing wrong with Russia as energy partner, as long as you don't shoot yourself in the foot by blowing up the alternatives. South of EU had proper energy supplies from ME/NA. For example crisis in ME was mitigated by Russian energy or NA energy (Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, etc).
The new hegemons like Turkey, Israel, etc came only later, yet we can't say they're Saints can we? Also to appease the US administration line a lot of green energy projects were put on hold, and were only restarted this year after the Hormuz situation.
The only real explanation is shortsightness for personal interests (but even then you'd have to have all your capitals abroad), or being a tool for foreign interests.
Is that really a problem? Since there will be lots of evidence and criminals tend to fuck up quite a bit this should be well documented. Unless you think that those election fraudsters that buy tons of votes from civilians have better opsec than drug dealers and the like.
It's true. Rearming and mobilizing troops will cause a reciprocal reaction in your neighbors. Whether or not war is or was imminent is irrelevant; europe will manifest it regardless.
Even the latest World Bank report, the defacto neoliberal institution, recognized a couple of months ago that leaving the industries focus be dictaed by purely capital decisions was bad, as in _really_ bad.
Do not know Germany's specific tax code, but in most EU countries should a control fire up it would result in tax evasion (not even tax avoidance), as in this case Germany can easily demonstrate the center of control is in fact in Germany.
Especially as you will have to file tax forms and disclosures for your salary.
You guys might want to take a consultation with a proper accountant/tax advisor for these setups.
> Firing from schools, hospitals and resendential buildings.
I really don't want to descend into countless counterexamples, but that's how virtually every military or militia wages war, including the IDF. I assume your confusion on this issue may be due to a lack of familiarity with the subject.
Usually never ever has anything to do with malevolence (eg. in an attempt to use the counter strike as a propaganda story). More often, it's just a matter of convenience, logistics, and the realities of operating in populated areas.
If there's one thing that CIA manuals on training militias stressed on, or any military history book in that regard, it's that soldiers need to be fed and supported. Or they'll find ways to meet those needs without you.
Units will use any reinforced or cover position to carry their objective.
Even roofs of civilians apartments, let alone reinforced structures such as hospitals, town halls, schools, etc if they can't use alternatives.
Even antique frontal wars used terrain to their advantage. That's why we wrote rules of engagement, but if the bigger powers themselves abuse them, how can you expect militias that have to carry guerrilla or urban tactics to stand by them?
Well, every choice has a consequence. For Israel the choice was accept rockets fired on Israeli towns on a regular basis(not settlements, btw, just towns within the 1948 UN recognized borders of Israel) or respond.
BTW, The response came after texting the residents, distributing leaflets and annoncening in every way possible that the place is going to be bombed.
BTW (2), For years Israel avoided bombing dense residential areas, despite knowing the origin of those rockets.
Caesarism/kleptocracy is definitely a more accurate description.
People usually attribute the term fascist to this admin, because of the racial/ethnic retaliatory actions or the neonazi/neofascist base they need to overpower/outweigh the more moderate right.
Actually, Caesar was very self-interested and got very rich from his campaign in Gaul. Plutarch estimated that Caesar brought back (and sold) a million slaves.
The strong minority base that has been artificially inflated to advance the personal interests of the leadership has linear roots dating back to the XX century rhetoric promoters and activists. In Europe there's the militant and militia groups of Gladio and the likes that thrived in illegal affairs and that have persisted and were integrated into power following 90s (case in point in Italy Berlusconi basically legalizing the MSI, AN, FdI and Lega by using his privately owned televisions and media, to acquire an election victory).
Italy is a good example why it's foolish to use "fascist" to describe everything one doesn't like. The European politically correct press was wary of the new "post-fascist" leader of Italy, promising us black shirts and leather boots again. In reality, Italians got a classic right-wing government, which increased work visas for non-european migrants (as they usually do, since doing the opposite of what you were elected for is a common habit in Europe).
In reality "fascist" is a qualifier to frighten white people voting for a right-wing government. Trump base by the way is not fascist, it's the evangelical bible belt. Which is crumbling at the moment, by the way.
Japan, Italy and UK have a program for a competing F35 design, GCAP. And Japan is focusing mainly on the engines.
Given there will at some point be the need to deliver competing cruise missiles for this platform, and after the crisis of the US not being able to keep demand with Israel's and Ukraine's orders they greenlighted SK and Japan to enter the European defense market, to answer your question yes, this is of course a defense related project.
There's been an industry request to develop native defense components on these matters within the EU following pressures and contrasts with the US (on a report to the EC for the ReArm campaign, EU's biggest playes of aerespace industry made a joint report estimating 60-80% of their components and tech are sourced from the US).
The Wiki has been a highly contested political/propaganda ground since its inception. My personal opinion is that it pretty much has endured just because the generation that formed the community back then was probably less susceptible to bias manipulation through social channels, because they didn't exist to this extent.
A famous case is the CAMERA's takeover of key administrator positions in Wikipedia back in 2008, but in local communities it went probably unnoticed.
Be it the Ukranian conflict, the ME crisis, the NA wars and instabilities, etc. The EU is the one that geopolitically speaking lost the most.
Unless they're full puppets for foreign interests, I simply do not understand how they could leave foreign actors to dictate policies that affect thier own territory and enterprises without any sort of critical thought.
But even then, they could not have possibly been all mere puppets. And yet.
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