Cold war 2.0

[Virtual ghost]

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

There are reasons why a country would not want to use nukes besides "not wanting to harm people." For instance, perhaps they want the real estate. Irradiated lands are not exactly choice property. If that was your goal, using nukes would be highly counterproductive.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Macron appoints Michel Barnier as new PM, hoping to end political impasse

This is political earthquake. Macron just appointed center right Republican to be the next PM of France. While on the other hand it seems that far right will also stand in line. Because with them there will be working majority in the parliament (that is very divided). What in the end indicates that Macron and Le Pen will form some kind of a "informal coalition", so that the country can be governed. In a sense this is probably why the new PM is politically between the two of them. While the left is going crazy over this. All in all just as I said some year and and a half ago: prepare of the right wing EU. Serious paradigm shifts are all over the place.

 

[Virtual ghost]

 

[Virtual ghost]

United Kingdom — polling average

Farage is becoming the dominant force on the right in UK, the conservatives are in serious problems.
(scroll down for the polling average)

More on that.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

@Virtual ghost

Reading your posts here, it really strikes me that this is a global struggle. I'm not convinced that trend lines necessarily follow globally, but I suppose we will see.

As unscientific as this sounds, the "vibes" left-leaning voters have in the U.S. is extremely different than it was in 2016. I do think that counts for something.

Forgive me if this is not news to you, but I feel compelled to say this:

I also think it is dangerous for people (for their own sake) to content themselves with not being the U.S. Something that helps me make sense of global affairs (among other things) is the remainder that people are people everywhere. In many ways, people are essentially the same wherever you go, and not all of those ways are good ways. The external conditions and the environment bring certain aspects to the forefront while suppressing others. I suppose we can allow for individual dispositions to play some role role, as well.

Also, it's always difficult for people to imagine how bad things could get until the day comes when they see how bad they have gotten.

 

[Virtual ghost]

@Virtual ghost

Reading your posts here, it really strikes me that this is a global struggle. I'm not convinced that trend lines necessarily follow globally, but I suppose we will see.

As unscientific as this sounds, the "vibes" left-leaning voters have in the U.S. is extremely different than it was in 2016. I do think that counts for something.

Forgive me if this is not news to you, but I feel compelled to say this:

I also think it is dangerous for people (for their own sake) to content themselves with not being the U.S. Something that helps me make sense of global affairs (among other things) is the remainder that people are people everywhere. In many ways, people are essentially the same wherever you go, and not all of those ways are good ways. The external conditions and the environment bring certain aspects to the forefront while suppressing others. I suppose we can allow for individual dispositions to play some role role, as well.

Also, it's always difficult for people to imagine how bad things could get until the day comes when they see how bad they have gotten.

In the case you haven't noticed the global free trade order has collapsed over the last 4 years. What means we are now going back to more traditional setting of rivalry between empires. Which is exactly why we now have about a dozen active wars around the globe and almost countless trade wars. What in the end means that just about everyone wants tougher leadership, since literal survival of people and their country is on the line (what is the case pretty much everywhere at this point). Therefore what we are watching is basically the disintegration of Roman empire on the global scale and at flank speed.

Also people aren't the same everywhere, that is simply false. People in developed countries are more or less similar but in the wider picture things aren't so simple. Especially since no one has identical living conditions and political reality at home. My far right supports single payer healthcare and gun ban. I am buying car gas at government owned gas station. I am buying electricity from government owned company. I have 0$ in student debt since the government payed the bill .... etc etc . Therefore in the head I simply can't be the person you are. We can talk but we are living in quite different practical realities, what means that we can't really be the same. Which is exactly why the global world order is crashing, since everyone wants to keep their way of live.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Macron appoints Michel Barnier as new PM, hoping to end political impasse

This is political earthquake. Macron just appointed center right Republican to be the next PM of France. While on the other hand it seems that far right will also stand in line. Because with them there will be working majority in the parliament (that is very divided). What in the end indicates that Macron and Le Pen will form some kind of a "informal coalition", so that the country can be governed. In a sense this is probably why the new PM is politically between the two of them. While the left is going crazy over this. All in all just as I said some year and and a half ago: prepare of the right wing EU. Serious paradigm shifts are all over the place.

Far right is kingmaker in France following Michel Barnier nomination

Michel Barnier: Everything you need to know about the new French PM’s conservative politics


It seems this will be the most conservative French government in decades.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

In the case you haven't noticed the global free trade order has collapsed over the last 4 years. What means we are now going back to more traditional setting of rivalry between empires. Which is exactly why we now have about a dozen active wars around the globe and almost countless trade wars. What in the end means that just about everyone wants tougher leadership, since literal survival of people and their country is on the line (what is the case pretty much everywhere at this point). Therefore what we are watching is basically the disintegration of Roman empire on the global scale and at flank speed.

Also people aren't the same everywhere, that is simply false. People in developed countries are more or less similar but in the wider picture things aren't so simple. Especially since no one has identical living conditions and political reality at home. My far right supports single payer healthcare and gun ban. I am buying car gas at government owned gas station. I am buying electricity from government owned company. I have 0$ in student debt since the government payed the bill .... etc etc . Therefore in the head I simply can't be the person you are. We can talk but we are living in quite different practical realities, what means that we can't really be the same. Which is exactly why the global world order is crashing, since everyone wants to keep their way of live.

Do you think people who vote for Trump in the U.S want to keep their way of life? Trump supports many of the same policies as the global right. These people are all friends with each other too.

The fact that they support universal healthcare in Europe isn't because they're more enlightened, it's because they've already had it for a long time. It's conservative to support it because it's the status quo. People are used to it.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Do you think people who vote for Trump in the U.S want to keep their way of life? Trump supports many of the same policies as the global right. These people are all friends with each other too.

The fact that they support universal healthcare in Europe isn't because they're more enlightened, it's because they've already had it for a long time. It's conservative to support it because it's the status quo. People are used to it.

Of course they want to keep it, the real question is to which degree that is even possible in the world that is changing this fast.

While when it comes positions on healthcare that depends from political party to political party. However that doesn't change the fact that due to this you and I have totally different social dynamic around us. What in the end means that you and me can't be super similar since we live under quite different rules (healthcare is just the beginning of the story). Plus right wingers are not all friends, just in EU you have 4 parties/blocks that are right wing. In my local case it is the right wing party that was key pusher of COVID measures and vaccines. They are the ones that had big fights with anti-vax people (while the left was silent on the issue). In other words the idea that all right wingers are quite similar comes from the fact that you live in a country that has only one right wing party (and one left wing party for that matter). What is one of the key reasons why the two of us can't be super similar.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Of course they want to keep it, the real question is to which degree that is even possible in the world that is changing this fast.

While when it comes positions on healthcare that depends from political party to political party. However that doesn't change the fact that due to this you and I have totally different social dynamic around us. What in the end means that you and me can't be super similar since we live under quite different rules (healthcare is just the beginning of the story). Plus right wingers are not all friends, just in EU you have 4 parties/blocks that are right wing. In my local case it is the right wing party that was key pusher of COVID measures and vaccines. They are the ones that had big fights with anti-vax people (while the left was silent on the issue). In other words the idea that all right wingers are quite similar comes from the fact that you live in a country that has only one right wing party (and one left wing party for that matter). What is one of the key reasons why the two of us can't be super similar.

What I'm talking about is that Trump is friends with Orban, and Farage, and Le Pen, and says lots of nice things about Putin (whom I consider right). It doesn't include every country but it includes the more famous politicians.

 

[Virtual ghost]

What I'm talking about is that Trump is friends with Orban, and Farage, and Le Pen, and says lots of nice things about Putin (whom I consider right). It doesn't include every country but it includes the more famous politicians.

I know, but that is just one block of right (and as I said there are 4 of them). In this example you really can't just talk as in US, everything to the right of center is "the right". You simply have to be more specific. Also just if some politicians are more globally famous that doesn't mean they are the most powerful in the mix. After all today media are evidently into selling of drama. What is kinda why we are where we are. Some people are simply getting too much air time for what they are worth. I am sorry but politics as you know it basically ends at US border. The global picture is much much more complicated. Orban and Le Pen are ultra-nationalists but they are also to the left of Democratic party when it comes to economic issues. At least in Europe divisions are much more about social issues and history than economy. Since everyone is to the left of US mainstream. In a sense this is why to me it funny when Harris gets slammed as the far left nutcase. While my entire local political spectrum is to the left of her in economic issues. If she is far left then where the heck am I living !?

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I know, but that is just one block of right (and as I said there are 4 of them). In this example you really can't just talk as in US, everything to the right of center is "the right". You simply have to be more specific. Also just if some politicians are more globally famous that doesn't mean they are the most powerful in the mix. After all today media are evidently into selling of drama. What is kinda why we are where we are. Some people are simply getting too much air time for what they are worth. I am sorry but politics as you know it basically ends at US border. The global picture is much much more complicated. Orban and Le Pen are ultra-nationalists but they are also to the left of Democratic party when it comes to economic issues.

That could well be true, but I still don't like Orban and Le Pen.

At least in Europe divisions are much more about social issues and history than economy. Since everyone is to the left of US mainstream. In a sense this is why to me it funny when Harris gets slammed as the far left nutcase. While my entire local political spectrum is to the left of her in economic issues.

She gets slammed as a far-left nutcase in part because people are delusional, in part because people are only willing to think the way they're supposed to think.

If she wins, just as there was with Joe, there will be plenty of people in denial, because there are delusional. Some of them are the same ones who have been thinking that the rapture is around the corner for at least the past 20 years.

 

[Virtual ghost]

That could well be true, but I still don't like Orban and Le Pen.

Neither do I.
My point was simply that outside of US there are different definitions of right and left all over the place (there are 190+ countries out there). Plus multiparty system makes all of this much more complicated than it is in US. Also this whole "self made man" is kinda North American thing and it doesn't really exists to such a degree elsewhere.

I mean with Le Pen the only real problem are pro Putin stuff and general autocracy. She is even generally pro abortion from what I understand.

She gets slammed as a far-left nutcase in part because people are delusional, in part because people are only willing to think the way they're supposed to think.

If she wins, just as there was with Joe, there will be plenty of people in denial, because there are delusional. Some of them are the same ones who have been thinking that the rapture is around the corner for at least the past 20 years.

My point was exactly that they are delusional or misguided at best. Calling neo-liberals far left is simply ignorance.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Top Macron ally bets he’ll be gone in months

I posted this a few days back. Therefore if he is truly flirting with Le Pen then that is probably about what this article was all about.

 

[Virtual ghost]

French PM Barnier promises ‘fiscal fairness’ will help keep debt under control

 

[Virtual ghost]

Argentina calls on ICC to order arrest of Venezuela's Maduro

 

[Virtual ghost]

The report on massive war in Africa that media don't really care about.

 

[Red Herring]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/a...ht-return-in-germany-heres-why-it-wont-happen

I am not quite happy with the framing of medieval settlings and population movements in that era as "colonialism" as it seems like a (sadly fashionable) misapplication of a modernday buzzword. Otherwise and overall an interesting take on some very old cultural divides:

Everyone is terrified of a far-right return in Germany. Here’s why it won’t happen​

The deep historical, political and cultural split between east and west acts as a brake on the rise of the AfD nationwide

The media are alive with crumbling firewalls (Brandmauer) in Germany. State elections in Thuringia have delivered the first win for the extreme right since 1945 in the region where the Nazis first entered regional power in 1929, and on the date Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.

“The East will do it!” The Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) campaign mixed the usual right-populist themes with the suggestion that the East is where the real Germany resists the liberal horrors of multiculturalism and windpower.

A panic-stricken commentator announces that “there’s only one way to keep Germany’s far-right AfD at bay. Address the concerns it exploits” with “constructive debate on sensitive issues”.
Other writers are horrified that Germany’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is suddenly concentrating its national firepower on, of all people, the Greens. Are Germany’s Tories copying all those former centrist conservatives of recent years (take a bow, Boris Johnson) and adopting the attack tactics of rightwing populists? That’s the firewall that really matters, and if that goes…

Some facts. At the last Thuringian election in 2019, the AfD won 23.4% of the vote. This year, it won 32.8%. Consider those five years: Covid, the Ukraine war and the energy crisis caused by Germany’s blind dependence on Vladimir Putin’s gas. A country led by a fractious coalition under a chancellor whose party got less than 26%, and who seems to do whatever he does (if anything) late and unwillingly. Five years of an ideal breeding ground for anti-“system” populism and conspiracy theories – at the end of which the AfD has managed to convince less than 10% more voters in its strongest state.
And in Germany, of course, being the biggest single party doesn’t mean you’ve “won”, because (imagine the rationality!) your seats are in proportion to your vote. Without an absolute majority, all you win is first dibs at a coalition. If everybody refuses to work with you (say, because you’re a pro-Putin fascist), tough. So the AfD won’t actually govern little Thuringia (home to only 2.5% of the German population, and falling), there’s no path for it into central government (the latest national polling last week puts it on 17.4%), and the moderate German centre is actually holding up, despite everything, better than anywhere in Europe, with the four mainstream pro-Nato, pro-EU parties enjoying almost 63% support.

Yet Germans are still told they must address AfD voters’ “concerns”. Or, how about we admit that, despite the Berlin Wall having been gone for longer than it stood, the German East remains profoundly different – not because the arrogant West was so heavy-handed after 1990, and not even because of 40 years of Soviet occupation. Because of history.

One word: colonialism. In 1147, Cologne, Bonn, Mainz and Frankfurt were 1,000-year-old centres of high medieval Europe; since the day Julius Caesar himself named them, no one had ever disputed that Germania was where the Germans lived; and Berlin was a Slavic river-fishing village.

That year, the northern arm of the Second Crusade sent German knights crashing across the River Elbe, intent on converting and conquering the pagan Slavs and Balts. The end result was almost-full German-speaking colonisation in westernmost Transelbia (almost: the Sorbs remain as witnesses, just north of Dresden); further east, in present-day Poland, the land remained forever disputed between mass settler-colonists and natives, while farther east still, in present-day Russia/Lithuania, the state of the Teutonic Knights established full elite-settler dominance over local peasants. In 1525 it was the first to adopt Luther, renaming itself (after a native tribe it had crushed) Prussia.

It’s a long story, but the result was the settler-colonial paradigm we find so often, be it in British Kenya, French Algeria, Loyalist Ulster, or the illegal settlements of Israel. It also applies, with obvious modifications, to the ex-slave states of the US.

By the late mid-18th century, Prussia was on the radar as the most militarised culture in Europe – as Voltaire put it: “Other states have armies. In Prussia, the army has a state.” The backbone of this Prussia (which still crowned its kings in Königsberg) were the Junkers of East and West Prussia.

In return for total loyalty to the House of Hohenzollern, they got exclusive access to the officer corps and top government. On their often vast but poor estates, they were (like the Protestant Ascendancy in Georgian Ireland) not just the landowners, but also the magistrates and militia commanders: Poles, Balts and Russians worked for them, under a more privileged level of German tenants. These, being most-favoured colonial underlings, stuck closely to, and (once they were enfranchised) voted for, the Junkers in their big houses. The resulting society was so utterly different to the largely Catholic west that in the 1890s Max Weber, the founder of sociology, decided it needed its very own name: Ostelbien (“East Elbia”).
This led to the unbalanced politics of late-imperial Germany, torn between the social and military goals of western industrialists (basically, to supplant the British empire before it linked up with the US) and those of the Junkers (basically, to smash Russia before it got too strong). It was this which, ultimately, led to a suicidal two-front war.

The Prussian general staff showed their colonial hand from 1915 to 1918, when the high command (East) ruled a great chunk of conquered land in the East with no civilian oversight: a military colony to produce food for the motherland (using forced labour, naturally) and be the jump-off point for the total conquest of Russia, which they insisted on attempting in early 1918, when they could have had any halfway reasonable settlement they wanted, despite knowing that the Americans were coming in the West. It’s only recently that anybody has really examined this Prussian overture to Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa.
After defeat, the Eastern Germans kept on voting as they had done before: the anti-democratic, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, assassin-linked DNVP (the German National People’s party, the second-largest in the Weimar Republic in 1924) was almost entirely dependent on Eastern votes. And when the deluge came, it came from the East: if everywhere in Germany had voted the same way as the Rhineland and Bavaria in 1930-32, Hitler could never have done it – and he still needed the help of the DNVP, which (as ever) got practically all its votes from the East.

This colonial past isn’t history – it’s not even past. My father-in-law, who died in 2017, was an East Prussian landowner. His 1920s/30s childhood world (now part of Russia) was a German colony: a Russian stableboy taught him to ride and his parents spoke Lithuanian to their tenants. There are tens of thousands alive today, in Poland and Germany, who in youth could have been shot – either way – for calling their home town the wrong name (Posen or Poznan? Colonial or native?). And the colonial mindset always long outlasts any real danger. Ask anybody in Northern Ireland. That, in a nutshell, is why the German East always voted differently to the German West – and still does. We are not talking about rationally addressable “concerns”, but a political and cultural division deeper than the Mason-Dixon line in the US, and far older.

The CDU, it seems, has grasped that the political future of Germany is veering away from the comfortable postwar West German dream of democracy meaning that more or less everybody is more or less satisfied more or less all the time. It’s heading instead to something more like blue/red America.

As historian Adam Tooze puts it: “If Germany operated a first-past-the-post system, the CDU would sweep most of the West of Germany and the AfD would take the entire East of the country.” That’s why the CDU is reacting to AfD success in the East by attacking the Greens in the West. There’s nothing mad about it: they are simply campaigning for 2025 as though Eastern and Western Germany are two entirely different political battlefields.

And why not? Bavaria, the largest and one of the richest German states, is permanently governed by the Christian Social Union (CSU), which doesn’t even stand anywhere else. Yes, it’s hard to give up on the dream of consensual democracy and Germany, with its history, is understandably fearful of what might come instead. But the more closely you look at the vision of a culturally and politically homogeneous nation-state, the more it feels like a 19th-century fantasy, whose actual purpose was to construct an invented national culture ready to be imposed on an empire.

We British voted for the insanity of Brexit thanks to that fantasy; it’s led Germany to ship €2tn eastwards since 1990 (rather than strengthening social cohesion in the West) in the name of national unity – despite which the Easterners still vote as Easterners vote, shout they’re the real Germany, and demand more. Well, the “reunification” can’t be undone now, but at least it has a consolation built into it. Half the German East went forever in 1945 – good colonial riddance. As my late father-in-law put it: “Me, miss East Prussia? What’s to miss? Thirty degrees of frost and the Russians across the river?” It no longer has the muscle to wreck everything and its politics will no more spread to the Rhineland than New York will adopt West Virginia gun laws, because Germany still has the biggest firewall of all: the East-West divide.

tl;dr: the East of the country is and has been for a millenium different from the West. What works there will not automatically work elsewhere.

 

[Virtual ghost]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/a...ht-return-in-germany-heres-why-it-wont-happen

I am not quite happy with the framing of medieval settlings and population movements in that era as "colonialism" as it seems like a (sadly fashionable) misapplication of a modernday buzzword. Otherwise and overall an interesting take on some very old cultural divides:

tl;dr: the East of the country is and has been for a millenium different from the West. What works there will not automatically work elsewhere.

This is typical liberal take on the problem. Bla bla ... it can't happen.

However in my book it will happen and in a sense it already happening. What his dude fails to see is that the unpopular politics will be continued to be pushed by liberal part of the left. What means that many voters will shift towards illiberal left (BSW), autocratic right (AfD), or CDU that is increasingly realizing that they have nothing to do in the mix with liberal left parties. In other words these 3 options can completely crush liberal left all cross the country. If the liberal left puts some brakes then perhaps this wouldn't happen, but since they don't really have such intentions the pot will eventually boil over. This starts with eastern Germany, however than it will spread into rural western Germany, then into west German suburbs ... and at that point it is game over for liberal left.




France’s Le Pen says she will let new Prime Minister Barnier do his job

Plus since we are at this topic here is something from today.
In other words if you know geography you should know that west Germany is between France and east Germany.
Not to mention that far right should win in Austria in 4 weeks and center right should come second.
While Netherlands and Sweden already have far right in governing coalitions (and in Belgium such coalition is being negotiated).


I am sorry but you and that dude are living in a fantasy.