German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the western region of North Rhine Westphalia.
I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?
I think this headline is misleading.
A better headline might read: “Coal found beneath wind farm. Turbines dismantled to make room for mining operation.”
I originally read it as “Germany says ‘Fuck wind as an alternative energy source’ and begins reverting back to coal”, so I figured I’d clarify in case anyone end thought the same thing.
Doesn’t seem like this article indicates that Germans is giving up on alternative energy.
Edit: corrected dumb spelling mistake.
No but it does clearly show prioritization when the 2 conflict, which is the point of contention (as well as using coal at all, if you give a shit about our planetary environment)
Well wind is abundant and you can get it most places. You can only get coal in places where there's coal.
Germany is basically what happens when an entire country embraces greenwashing as its ideology.
Dig it up locally. Burn into electricity in a neighboring country. A low emissions success story 😥
Germany has been rejecting practical solutions for moving off fossil fuels, such as nuclear. Current government is also pursuing a policy of pretending to reduce emissions through deindustrialization which only moves emissions to other countries since people in Germany still need the goods that were produced. This way Germany can claim to be lowering emissions simply by externalizing them. Finally, we see return to coal which is one of the dirtiest fuels around because wind and solar evidently can't keep up even with the energy demands.
They dismantled their nuclear plants because of nothing but a populace wide misunderstanding of how nuclear power works. They then, like very very smart people, came up with no alternative power sources, so the coal barons made their grand return!
Germany has been on a spiral downward.
but they have all those doctors that insist on you knowing and acknolwedging that they're a doctor.
I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?
Renewables are cheaper than coal.
What you've misunderstood about capitalism is it's not the thing that is cheapest that gets investment. The investment goes to the thing that gives you the highest ROI, return on investment.
If it produces a better ROI per square meter, it gets the investment.
The problem is capitalism.
And most often high costs mean higher ROI. The wind farm doesn't get continued funding precisely because it produces electricity when supply is high and hence prices are low. Electricity is not worth the same at all times; you can sell your coal fired watts when the wind speeds are low and the unit price jumps up. Instead of trying to solve the hard problem of storing electricity to fill the intermittency gap, capitalism takes the easy way out of burning fossil fuels unless you force it not to by regulating.
Yeah that's another issue. This video gives another generally good overview on the topic: https://youtu.be/3gSzzuY1Yw0
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/3gSzzuY1Yw0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Maybe they should support more
nazis, sanctions against other fuel resources and further terrorist attacks against peaceful infrastructure by their so called 
"allies".the only people trivializing fascism are those who see fascism symbology like the swastika, Black Sun, various nordic runes, etc on the soldiers they're egging on and go "doesn't look like anything to me!" while advocating for the double genocide theory
Have you any pictures of Azov with swastika, black sun, or such since 2014?
The Black Sun and Wolfsangel have been right on their fucking shit rag of a flag until last year, you fascist turd.
JFC the entire first page of your comments is nothing but nazi apologia, fick dich du kranke Faschosau.
Hey rember when they just got those new leopard tanks and some rascal painted a bunch of iron crosses on them, which libs insisted was from obscure world War 1 battalion and not where literally everybody knows the iron cross from, to the point the German government said they weren't gonna keep giving them weapons if that shit didn't stop
Leopards come with iron crosses by default, it's the fucking signet of the fucking Bundeswehr. This is a Bundeswehr tank. These are three Bundeswehr tanks.
Cossack crosses are very similar.
It's not just iron crosses, he's thinking of the balkenkreuzes that are being painted on tanks. The symbol Germany stopped using after WWII.
Yeah that's an IFF symbol. The Russians aren't doing calligraphy with their Zs either. It's something that soldiers paint with a brush in the field.
The Balkenkreuz goes back to the Teutonic Order. The Nazis used it a lot which is why the Bundeswehr didn't, but that doesn't mean that painting a cross in a rush makes you a Nazi.
Seriously, what do you think soldiers in the field trying to not get shot at by their own guys are thinking about. I'll give you a hint: Whether it's more important to be camouflaged to the enemy or identifiable for friendlies, that's it. Ukraine is using a simplified version of the Cossack Cross for that purpose, it's a native part of their symbolism and easily distinguishable from the stuff Russians use. If everything that looks like a cross is now a Balkenkreuz and therefore Nazi you might want to take it up with various Christian Churches.
Oh and just for the record you'll get arrested in Germany for showing the Z in a Russia/Ukraine context, including as a St. George Ribbon.
Lmao this response is up there with "the black sun isn't nazi it's an ancient symbol" and "azov's wolfsangel is actually an N and an I which stands for 'Idea of the Nation'".
You're a fascist mate and should stop fucking pretending otherwise. You're the worst crypto-fascist I've ever seen.
Lmao this response is up there with “the black sun isn’t nazi it’s an ancient symbol”.
Is not a thing I have ever, or would ever, say. Or opinion I ever had, or would ever have. You've got a very active imagination. The black sun was invented whole-cloth by Nazi mystics.
You know why I know such stuff? Because I fucking know Nazi symbology, unlike random US libs online larping as leftists on hexbear. The kind of anti-intellectuals seeing runes and hearing Faroese and then calling Tyr (the band) Nazis and shit. Not helpful, in fact, harmful.
The Balkenkreuz goes back to the Teutonic Order. The Nazis used it a lot which is why the Bundeswehr didn't, but that doesn't mean that painting a cross in a rush makes you a Nazi.
This is "swastikas are Buddhist symbols" level of mental gymnastics.
The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one. But, go on, spin random bullshit.
JFC the entire first page of your comments is nothing but nazi apologia
Yeah I happen to be arguing with another fascism-trivialising hexbear idiot in another thread.
Bruh that’s basically a swastika
Why carry water for a fascist group just do the lib thing and call them bad apples and move on ffs
It’s really sus
Have you gone to an optometrist lately. It's a Wolfsangel.
Here, another swastika. Notice the three hooks pointing counter-clockwise?
https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/wolfsangel
Wonder why a Slavic army unit is using SS division tags with German roots
Yawn
I don’t care man you can keep huffing paint if you want you’re still carrying water for fascists
Can't you hexbears read the thread before you're posting. Double-posting, even.
You didn’t answer it then either.
Why would someone move from the swastika to another German symbol used by the SS?
There are infinite symbols and they chose that one.
Are you just that gullible to believe that’s innocent or what? Actually don’t answer, we both know this is a game to you.
They didn't move from the Swastika the Wolfsangel was part of the Azov logo from the very start.
Pre-integration: The letters "Azov", Wolfsangel, black sun, some waves, and the Ukrainian trident.
Post-integration: The letters "Azov", Wolfsangel.
...the trident also vanished, presumably because it's already on the other patch they're wearing, anyway. Inb4 "waah that's a torch Nazis used torches the Ukrainian National Guard is Nazis".
Ah ok it's fixed now, they went from several nazi symbols to one nazi symbol.
Go on, go, read the actual thread I have no desire to link 1000 hexbears to the same post 100000 times.
PS: the Aryan Nations use this exact same symbol.
I wonder why… must be unrelated, right?
Haha, have you gone to an optometrist lately?
That's not a symbol of racism, that's the confederate battle flag, you blind fool, lol.
The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-National_Party_of_Ukraine
Panzergrenadierbattalion 13 of the Bundeswehr (1980-1992, dissolved because cold war over). You'll find it in more insignia not to mention coat of arms of towns but that one is closest to Azov in the sense that it's simply a singular Wolfsangel. At least among the ones I could find within 10 seconds of googling.
The Wolfsangel is not a Nazi symbol as such. If you want to outlaw everything the Nazis ever used then nothing would be left, including the Antifa flags because they totally did try to appropriate those. They're getting off on that shit and you seem to be willing to play right into their hands.
Weird how they only use symbols that are widely used by neo-Nazi groups.
https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/wolfsangel
Arguing "well actshually they used a bunch of different symbols" is more Nazi apologia since very few symbols were used as widely by the Nazis as the swastika or the wolfsangel. There's a reason you don't see neo-Nazis tattooing antifa flags on their bodies.
In the US, that might be true. Germany doesn't recognise it as such (page 82, "only illegal in connection with outlawed organisations, otherwise legal"), and neither does Ukraine. Context matters.
You can consider it more akin to the Iron Cross, just less common, which the ADL has a much better take on: "[...] an Iron Cross in isolation (i.e., without a superimposed swastika or without other accompanying hate symbols) cannot be determined to be a hate symbol. Care must therefore be used to correctly interpret this symbol in whatever context in which it may be found."
So they change their flag from one symbol widely used by Nazis to another symbol widely used by Nazis, but somehow that doesn't make them Nazis.
Care must therefore be used to correctly interpret this symbol in whatever context in which it may be found
The context is it's a widely-known Nazi symbol on a flag for a battalion whose members frequently express neo-Nazi views. What other fucking context do you need?
No the interior ministry kept the non-Nazi part of their emblem. They also kept the name, which also isn't Nazi but the name of the Azov Sea (east of Crimea, north of the Kerch straight). When Azov got integrated into state structure tons of Nazis left because they didn't want to be under state control and be told what they could and couldn't do politically etc, some stayed but the state imposed strict "don't do Nazi things" controls. In the beginning (2016 or such) it was about 20% Nazis left over so even back then a minority, there's been churn and growth since then so it should be quite a bit lower by now.
The old pre-national guard Azov was definitely a Nazi cesspool, yes, and alas one of the very few capable fighting forces at the start of the Russian invasion (for the record, that's 2014). Then regular people joined because they also wanted to fight and could look past the iffiness, that's why Azov already hadn't been purely Nazi at the time the Ukrainian state integrated and denazified them.
But all that nuance is lost in both Russian propaganda and also western media, where some libs found themselves a juicy topic to sell clicks with.
The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one. But, go on, spin random bullshit.
The Azov Brigade's official magazine is titled "Black Sun newspaper" which it produces and distributes to several tens of thousands within the Ukrainian military still uses the black sun, because it's literally the fucking name of the publication.
Some but not all of them are available here: https://archive.org/details/black_sun/
Given that this archived collection goes up to 2017, you are full of shit.
Yeah no that's indefensible and the original editor in chief is nuts (google translate from the Ukrainian wikipedia page):
This is an old Ukrainian sign, which means a force aimed at destroying all the old and restoring the new. There is another version of its origin: the black sun is the period of the year when water acquires special life-giving qualities. This usually happened at night, when there was no sun, but since the nutritional properties were always associated only with it, our ancestors nicknamed this time the black sun. There is no hint of hostile ideology here, this is our Ukrainian symbol, which has a sacred meaning.
— Mark Melnyk ("Viry"), editor-in-chief of the publication
Couldn't find out when it was discontinued, the azov.press domain certainly is dysfunctional. Azov's official news feed seems to be here.
Could neither find out how official the whole thing was, either, and especially not in the crucial post-incorporation times. They might just have continued to operate independently.
Still, though: Is current-day Azov out there doing Nazi things? Ultimately that's the only question that matters. Of course from the Russian perspective yes it is according to Russian propaganda everyone opposed to Russia (and that includes being opposed to being invaded) is a Nazi.
Couldn't find out when it was discontinued
The magazine is produced by Azov's political wing, the National Corps as of 2016, which has currently suspended activity during the war. It will spin up its political wing again afterwards. Links and references in the other comment I sent here.
the azov.press domain certainly is dysfunctional
This started redirecting to Nackor.org in 2016 when the National Corps was started.
Oh and I can prove Azov are still distributing this free taster archive of the magazine via nackor.org, which is where the previous azov.press site migrated to later on. Here is a January 2022 archived page where you can see Azov are still giving away that selection of the magazine for free via their political spinoff the "National Corps", this is one of several of their party websites: https://web.archive.org/web/20220409062917/https://nackor.org/ru/z-dnem-sobornosti-ukraini
Reference for National Corps being directly linked to Azov: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/13/ukraine-far-right-national-militia-takes-law-into-own-hands-neo-nazi-links
It is the regiment's official political wing and has only suspended political activity during wartime.
nackor.org, which is where the previous azov.press site migrated to later on.
nackor.org is a gambling website now it seems. Certainly not a news outlet, certainly not from the outside.
Reference for National Corps being directly linked to Azov
Wikipedia. Yes they're certainly linked the National Corps is the home of Azov's Nazis.
...squinting at things and considering that National Corps ceased activity in 2022 (to go to the front) it doesn't seem too unlikely that they gave up on nackor.org and the successor to the Black Sun. I guess (really, guess) that it was run by National Corps for the longest time after Azov got integrated.
Anyhow are you seeing those election results. I can't blame Ukrainians for not being too worried about them getting into power.
nackor.org is a gambling website now it seems. Certainly not a news outlet, certainly not from the outside.
This is just a landing page that is displayed by the server host when a site can't be accessed. It's probably just down, wayback has archives as recently this month.
Anyhow are you seeing those election results. I can't blame Ukrainians for not being too worried about them getting into power.
This is an american's childlike view of politics, in particular it is one that has no understanding of political vanguardism and how absolutely tiny quantities of people can have incredibly outsized influences politically. The UK was pushed into leaving the EU by a political party with 0.2% of the seats that year on year received just 3% of the vote.
What you need to do is not view fascists as one political party, they're several spread out over multiple channels performing vanguardism through multiple methods because it has a far stronger effect. The goal is not to win elections. The goal is to create political forces in motion that move fascists through positions of power in all ways. Liberals think of institutions in the form of "win election and then you get to do your manifesto" but power doesn't just come from elections. Power comes from all elements of a state. The police. The administrative positions. The civil service. The judiciary. The businesses. Small local electoral positions. The media. The military. Etc etc etc. All of these elements can be hijacked without winning any major elections in any way whatsoever. They allow you to turn a country into whatever you want to turn it into because you are the voice of the country regardless of what you consider to be the intended "power" positions.
In essence, if you control the zeitgeist it doesn't matter who wins elections, all politicians are stuck following the zeitgeist, they are subservient to it. If they do not serve the zeitgeist then they simply get tossed out... or killed.
Instead of leaning on these metrics I suggest an alternate method for getting a picture of the influence that fascists currently have in Ukraine and that is looking at the opinions of the total population now vs historic on various topics. One in particular I think you'll find quite alarming is the shift in public opinion of Bandera, who I reckon you're quite familiar with. See this article from a major Ukrainian polling agency. It finds that in 2012 support for Stepan Bandera was only 22%, this is a very good measure for us for what kind of influence the fascists had in Ukraine pre-2014 when the Maidan revolution occurred. Today, after the changes and promotion of his fascist beliefs, the lionisation of him and the remaking of Ukraine that has been underway since Maidan, that support is now 74%. Quote:
In particular, the attitudes that gradually improved are the ones towards Ivan Mazepa (44% in 2012 and 76% in 2022), Simon Petliura (26% in 2012 and 49% in 2022) and Stepan Bandera (22% in 2012 and 74% in 2022).
For any bystanders interested in why this metric is valuable. Stepan Bandera was leader of the OUN (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists), this organisation collaborated with the nazis in ww2 and killed tens of thousands of jews during the holocaust, it was regarded by the Nazi SS as extreme and particularly brutal even by their standards and I should not need to explain to anyone how evil the SS were.
This is what vanguardism can achieve. You do not need elections to become the dominant ideology of a country. You take over various non-electoral parts of the structure and become the zeitgeist itself and this is all while ignoring the fact that fascists exist within the main parties as well, you see this with your own eyes in America where people at all levels of the structure are having a major influence in the fascist direction, in both electoral and non-electoral positions.
You need to reassess in your head what power actually means. There are many ways to wield it. Liberals often have a misguided perspective that politics = elections when the reality is quite different, elections are a steam valve for society to let off what would be revolutionary energy every few years through a process of giving people "choice". They're not what power is though when the choice is created through far greater forces of influence developed across society on multiple fronts. For a more marxist interpretation of them as a whole this is a strong video.
I additionally strongly recommend the (now suppressed and hard to find) documentary Ukraine on Fire (not to be confused with the propaganda film created to drown it out, Winter On Fire) which released before the war so it's largely free of the fog of war propaganda. It's not marxist but gives a fairly good overview of Maidan and influences within it.
There's another documentary I want to re-find too but am struggling with, might edit if I do find it. There's also another video I wanted to include in this of the far right occupying the rada, locking the doors and refusing to leave until the vote they want is performed. I can't find this but if I mention it here someone might remember what it's in, it's a good example of what power you can have without electoralism.
This is just a landing page that is displayed by the server host when a site can’t be accessed. It’s probably just down, wayback has archives as recently this month.
Domain registrant is Domains by proxy, nothing to get there. The logo though is favbet which is a Ukrainian gambling company. Seems like they took over the domain to direct traffic their way, it's exactly the kind of slimy but legal thing you'd expect gambling companies to do.
Last magazine landing page on wayback is June 2022, first gambling landing page June 2023. Domain must've lapsed somewhere in between, which tracks with National Corps getting out of politics.
This is an american’s childlike view of politics, in particular it is one that has no understanding of political vanguardism and how absolutely tiny quantities of people can have incredibly outsized influences politically. The UK was pushed into leaving the EU by a political party with 0.2% of the seats that year on year received just 3% of the vote.
Dude calling me a yank was uncalled for. I'm German, have a look at the AfD when you want to know what having issues with Nazis looks like. (Or, for that matter, the Republican party). And Ukraine, much unlike the UK (or USA) doesn't have a FPTP system, it's proportional so poll numbers actually mean something. Also that vanguard that pushed for Brexit was Etonians not wanting to declare their taxes, the EU had new rules on tax havens coming up.
Also as a body politic the Brits are muppets. They fucking had a referendum on introducing proportional representation and voted against it, can you believe that. Egged on by Russian assets when it comes to Brexit I wouldn't deny it but they're perfectly capable of being bellends all on their own.
In essence, if you control the zeitgeist it doesn’t matter who wins elections,
And, do they? Svoboda, Right Sector, all are deeply unpopular in Ukraine. The people's consensus is some liberal democratic EU-aligned thing, and safety from Russia, not a far-right resurgence. Poroshenko types, that is, electable kind of ring wing, is limited to "gays are icky church good" type of conservatism, but without wanting to murder them. And the SBU currently has its hands full sniffing out Russian collaborators so they're probably not very interested in what a splattering of Nazis with close to zero public backing do at the printing press.
Stepan Bandera
Bandera is a complicated topic, and not distinguishing between Bandera the Nazi (collaborator) and antisemite and Bandera the national hero is disingenuous. Ukraine also has the lowest rate of antisemitism among eastern European states and a Jew is President, witch actually higher approval ratings than Bandera. But yes I'd very much prefer Makhno... alas he wasn't terribly successful and whose fault was that, I give you a hint: That of a vanguard.
I kind of view Bandera in the same way as Churchill who, by all means, was a monster of a politician. And not in the positive way ask e.g. Bengals. Or take the founding fathers as worshipped by Americans, (nearly? not sure about the details) all of them slave owners in one way or the other yet we don't commonly call people with a Washington boner advocates of slavery. Stauffenberg was a monarchist yet he's getting honoured by the Bundeswehr, trying to assassinate Hitler washes over his iffy politics.
You need to reassess in your head what power actually means.
You're talking to an Anarchist. And recommend Marxist analysis. I think I'll pass on being educated by a Marxist on, of all things, power.
Last magazine landing page on wayback is June 2022, first gambling landing page June 2023. Domain must've lapsed somewhere in between, which tracks with National Corps getting out of politics.
None of this really matters. You're overly focused on "they stopped". The fascists haven't disappeared nor have they stopped promoting their views within society. Moving to different tactics isn't a win for anyone, it's like a person playing peekaboo by hiding behind their hands but somehow liberals actually think they've disappeared.
Also as a body politic the Brits are muppets. They fucking had a referendum on introducing proportional representation and voted against it, can you believe that.
Yes. I was there. The liberals caused it by calling for it immediately after Nick Clegg betrayed their voters on his one and only promise of not fucking over student fees, with students making up the majority of the base. The response to the proportional representation vote was largely coloured by the response to Clegg.
Egged on by Russian assets when it comes to Brexit I wouldn't deny it but they're perfectly capable of being bellends all on their own.
Nah not really. Libs love this shit but both we marxists and conservative eurosceptics had been promoting euroscepticism for 30+ years. The greatest foreign influence was american capitalists seeking to strip the country, which they're still doing.
And, do they? Svoboda, Right Sector, all are deeply unpopular in Ukraine.
No. Again you are making a mistake. Votes are not popularity. 35% of people here in the UK support socialism (not social democracy, socialism) but that doesn't translate to a socialist party getting those votes. Not because of a lack of popular but because there is considerable complexity in who gets those votes. If you're German you know this, you know the voters leaving SPD for AfD aren't doing so because AfD they agree with all of its politics but because they don't see any other viable options to use and they want to punish the major parties to send a message.
Bandera is a complicated topic, and not distinguishing between Bandera the Nazi (collaborator) and antisemite and Bandera the national hero is disingenuous.
No it's not. You are literally falling for the fascist propaganda now. This is one of many methods the fascists in ukraine have successfully laundered his image. You should be very concerned that if it is possible for the Ukrainian nationalists to do this with Bandera it is also possible for the German nationalists to do this with Hitler.
Ukraine also has the lowest rate of antisemitism among eastern European states and a Jew is President, witch actually higher approval ratings than Bandera.
Again irrelevant. Ukrainian fascism isn't nazism. Much like Italian fascism was not, nor was Spanish nor Chilean, nor Indian etc etc. Fascism conforms to the national conditions and presents itself differently each time. The use of the word "nazis" here is just to communicate the level of threat really. Their main concern at the current point in time is eliminating the Russian ethnicity alongside the Roma, whose camps they have consistently destroyed and murdered throughout this war. Moving onto other targets like the high proportion of greeks in Donbass would follow, there have been a number of Greeks in donbass who have spoken out about the Ukrainians attacking them, particularly in mariupol they did not like them (you don't need to watch all of this it's just the only place I know of for this particular clip from Greek tv I wanted to share, the first 5 mins or so is worth your time though).
Show
I kind of view Bandera in the same way as Churchill who, by all means, was a monster of a politician. And not in the positive way ask e.g. Bengals. Or take the founding fathers as worshipped by Americans, (nearly? not sure about the details) all of them slave owners in one way or the other yet we don't commonly call people with a Washington boner advocates of slavery. Stauffenberg was a monarchist yet he's getting honoured by the Bundeswehr, trying to assassinate Hitler washes over his iffy politics.
Churchill is a monster who should have been regarded as one, but was not because war. There's a considerable difference between laundering someone without a reason and this.
If anything if you want a hero of Ukrainian nationalism then the real hero of Ukrainian nationalism is Lenin who created the country entirely.
Stauffenberg was a monarchist yet he's getting honoured by the Bundeswehr, trying to assassinate Hitler washes over his iffy politics.
You're being naive again. This is an excuse to honour him, because the people pushing the honouring know what kind of laundering effect it has on the figure and the ideology that figure represents.
You're talking to an Anarchist. And recommend Marxist analysis. I think I'll pass on being educated by a Marxist on, of all things, power.
I grew up in squats and spent 30 years of my life as an anarchist. We probably don't differ politically as much as you think. I am an ML because we have a timelimit from the climate crisis that is going to see millions of refugees pour into europe very soon. The destabilisation this will cause will be on the scale of nothing we've ever seen before and only ML theory has the track record of revolution needed to save at least a some people in the coming chaos when the opportunities to seize states begin. You saw what just tens of thousands of Syrian refugees did to stability in Europe with your own eyes, in particular you must have seen this in Germany. You should know as well as I do exactly what tens of millions will cause. As an anarchist I could not sit by knowing my ideological toolkit was not equipped to try and deal with the death that is coming, and I could not sit around and think myself a moral person knowing exactly what the future holds yet not doing everything in my power to help people. The correct toolkit for the time limits we have is marxism leninism. Will I go back to the black afterwards? Possibly. I'll cross that bridge when it comes as we have no idea what things will look like in the aftermath of it all.
I know full well why you're an anarchist. But I really do ask you to wrestle with the question of what is equipped to save the most lives in all of this. States suck, we all dislike them, we're all in the left because we want them abolished, marxists and anarchists both. But lives are what matter here.
It's pretty obvious you're talking to a Nazi, not an anarchist.
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If you’re German you know this, you know the voters leaving SPD for AfD aren’t doing so because AfD they agree with all of its politics but because they don’t see any other viable options to use and they want to punish the major parties to send a message.
Yeah and we don't consider protests votes to be Nazis. 2/3rd of the current AfD poll numbers are protest votes btw, 47% want the party outlawed (and among the 47% who don't are plenty saying "they should be dealt with otherwise"), and 10% of people polled to vote for the AfD want the AfD outlawed.
Back to Ukraine: Svoboda has exactly one seat. They can't really be hateful Nazis people don't like that, and they can't go undercover as patriots either because being a patriot really isn't a distinguishing factor while the whole democratic spectrum from left to right is fighting at the front.
No it’s not. You are literally falling for the fascist propaganda now. This is one of many methods the fascists in ukraine have successfully laundered his image. You should be very concerned that if it is possible for the Ukrainian nationalists to do this with Bandera it is also possible for the German nationalists to do this with Hitler.
I'll be concerned if those 70% percent actually come even close to expressing fascist ideas. Again, back to the founding fathers: How many percent in the US see them positively, how many advocate for slavery?
You're falling in a type of "big man" trap. Just because there was a (or more) big men in the past, and they did stuff, and now their memory is recalled, doesn't mean that all of their memory is recalled. This is not Bandera controlling people, it's people looking for some figure to represent national identity and, well, Bandera very much was a nationalist. Currently alive people project things into the past, not the other way around.
Back to Hitler and Germany: No. The conservatives have Bismarck and also Stauffenberg and such, leftists, if patriotic at all, are regionalists.
The use of the word “nazis” here is just to communicate the level of threat really.
No. The choice of words is due to Russian narratives saying "Anyone who opposes us is a Nazi". I've seen too much Russian talking points being uncritically parroted by hexbears to believe otherwise. You know the type, "Kiev is ruled by Nazis" stuff.
Again irrelevant. Ukrainian fascism isn’t nazism.
Svoboda in particular was deeply anti-semitic before they toned it down because nobody liked it. Non-Antisemitic fascists also don't tend to don Germanic symbolism, but that's circumstantial.
Moving onto other targets like the high proportion of greeks in Donbass would follow, there have been a number of Greeks in donbass who have spoken out about the Ukrainians attacking them
From all I know that could be a Golden Dawn guy hating Ukrainians. The plural of anecdote is not data and that's not even a plural. Generally speaking the idea of Ukraine as a multiethnic, and naturally multiethnic state, is very solidly anchored in Ukraine.
...even among the right. Which is why Svoboda and their more ethnophobic lines don't fly well at all, attracting if at all protest votes. The consensus enemy is the Kremlin, and with the Kremlin actually attacking the previous split between ethnic Russians ("we need to try harder to be friends with them") and the rest vanished. The Kremlin, unsurprisingly, interprets that as everyone being Nazi because if you're marching on Moscow (figuratively speaking) you're a Nazi because that's what Nazis do.
If Ukraine is oh so Russophobic why do they have a Russian president, and why are very large portions of the army speaking Russian? Including Azov, btw.
You’re being naive again. This is an excuse to honour him, because the people pushing the honouring know what kind of laundering effect it has on the figure and the ideology that figure represents.
Nah it's choosing an actual patriot over a madman, and giving cultural legitimisation, within the Bundeswehr, to, if need be, assassinate a mad man at the top of the chain of command as an extreme but justified way of fulfilling their oath, to valiantly defend justice and the freedom of the German people. There's no suitable democrat who, in a position like Stauffenberg's, tried a similar thing otherwise that guy would be honoured. Bundeswehr tradition is anything but random.
You saw what just tens of thousands of Syrian refugees did to stability in Europe with your own eyes, in particular you must have seen this in Germany.
Syria had little to nothing to do with it things have been brewing in the east for quite a while now. Remember Lichtenhagen? Among other reasons naive eastern Die Linke politicians saying "fascism can't reach the east because we're all good socialists". Prime Marxist analysis, right there, we've been telling them from the start that they're full of shit and got called Besserwessis for it. The issue with the east is that they don't have decades-long civil society experience combatting fascists because back in the days all politics was party matter, and the party said there were no fascists. The percentage of people with closed right-extreme world view is actually higher in the west than in the east, yet in the east they're making political inroads (and yes Bernd Höcke is a Wessi. Westphale).
Yeah and we don't consider protests votes to be Nazis. 2/3rd of the current AfD poll numbers are protest votes btw, 47% want the party outlawed (and among the 47% who don't are plenty saying "they should be dealt with otherwise"), and 10% of people polled to vote for the AfD want the AfD outlawed.
It doesn't matter what purpose a protest vote has if it's advancing nazi agendas and change in society. People don't need to be nazis to be influenced by nazis.
Back to Ukraine: Svoboda has exactly one seat. They can't really be hateful Nazis people don't like that, and they can't go undercover as patriots either because being a patriot really isn't a distinguishing factor while the whole democratic spectrum from left to right is fighting at the front.
Once again ignoring all the fascists in the major parties just because their party line isn't "we're fascists". It's like you fucking liberals can't understand that taking off a nazi uniform doesn't actually mean you stopped being a nazi.
From all I know that could be a Golden Dawn guy hating Ukrainians. The plural of anecdote is not data and that's not even a plural. Generally speaking the idea of Ukraine as a multiethnic, and naturally multiethnic state, is very solidly anchored in Ukraine.
It's a war. You're not getting data until 20 years after its finished. Multiethnic? You are out of your fucking mind. Pogroms and mass exterminations have been common since the start of the war. You're not an anarchist, you are a nazi and it is blatantly fucking obvious that you're here playing games and being a silly fuck. It is a considerable waste of time talking to you, eat my ass and kindly follow your leader.
It doesn’t matter what purpose a protest vote has if it’s advancing nazi agendas and change in society. People don’t need to be nazis to be influenced by nazis.
They're not Nazis. Or, differently put, dismissing them as Nazis plays right into the hand of Nazis: Protest voters have a reason they're protesting, there's things that other parties aren't addressing, haven't been addressing for ages, and those voters are pissed.
And you'd understand that if you actually, once in your life, went to a bar and talked to actual blue collar folks, instead of having your head up your own ideologically pure ass. You know, workers. The guys you're supposedly fighting for.
The current failure of the government isn't necessarily even policy -- it's primarily communication, and not signalling an actual turning point. The new heating law does not bankrupt poor homeowners, but they had the genius ideas of having drafts that didn't even include mentions of financial aid. Sure heat pumps are cheaper in the long term but first you have to be able to afford the investment, and many poor home owners don't.
That kind of stuff is what really worries people -- that they'll lose the little economical stability they do have, lose the little property they do own., as the saying goes, Erst das Fressen, dann die Moral. The FDP doesn't care in the first place, the Greens have to be reminded by the SPD (Greens aren't a left party as such) but would not block, either, and the SPD has its head far enough up its own image of itself as worker's party that it's not talking to actual workers before setting policy. Vanguard blindness in a sense.
Inflation? Well, it's not too bad. Some relief would be good, if you can't get that past the FDP just do what the French do and bully supermarkets. Not much to bully when it comes to the discounters but it's also the sentiment that counts.
Asylum? Actually, that's not the issue the issue is housing. An issue they're working on and as the previous government really fucked it up it's slow to start (actual lack of building capacity) but again, communication is shit. Berlin's SPD trying to sabotage the expropriation of landlords doesn't help, that is the exact shit that pisses off the east. At the same time they're co-responsible for the situation as is as they failed to put pressure on the CDU in the Merkel years.
In short: The issue isn't the people being Nazis. The issue is the people being to the left of the government but Die Linke not being an option, either, the east already tried that and I don't mean the GDR times. Three decades of unification and the federal republic is less social then before that's straight up their fault. People have the impression that the party cares more about random sexual minorities than workers, and yes it's true, of course you can, should, and must do both and people wouldn't mind, issue is they didn't do anything for workers.
Remember how fascism is a failed revolution? That right there.
Pogroms and mass exterminations have been common since the start of the war.
[citation needed]. Well you don't need to find those for Russian atrocities those have been well-documented. Show me a Bucha committed by Ukrainians, I'll wait. Show Russian soldiers who were castrated as POWs.
You’re not an anarchist, you are a nazi and it is blatantly fucking obvious that you’re here playing games and being a silly fuck.
How convenient of an opinion for you.
Germany's green energy push was secretly propped up by outsourcing fossil fuel needs to Russian natural gas. The war in Ukraine and America subsequently blowing up the Nordstream 2 pipeline means Germany will need to find new alternatives to feeding their energy needs. One could hope this results in a speed up of green tech development as it becomes more of a pressing necessity than just, you know, the right thing to do. And hey speaking of knowing the right thing to do and then not doing it because of the perverse economic incentives for ignoring it, it's funny to note that the global leader in green tech is China but due to this new cold war the US is brewing and due to Germany's newly-humbled-into role as Jr Junior partner to the US there's no way there will be the necessary cooperation there between national tech sectors
Seymour Hersh broke the story on this. He's famous for breaking the My Lai massacre. The article he wrote is behind a pay wall, but this is a very lengthy interview with from democracy now https://www.democracynow.org/2023/2/15/nord_stream_sy_hersh
I advise caution with Hersh's reporting. It was weak to begin with, relying on a single source. It's not improved at all since publication, with no one coming forward even anonymously to corroborate the claims. Seymour Hersh has published important stories, but he's gotten sloppy with this one.
Yes stranger on the internet, the most decorated investigative journalist alive has "gotten sloppy' you say. So who's more credible here, the guy who broke My Lai and Abu Ghraib, reported on Watergate and the secret bombing of Cambodia, won a Pulitzer and a record five Polk awards, or you, some anonymous commenter on the internet, laughably calling it "weak", "cautioning" against it? You don't think other bootlickers in the past have called his reports on My Lai, Cambodia or Abu Ghraib "weak"?
Didn't you know? Abu Ghraib is actually Saddamist shill misinformation. The Washington Post says so!His reporting on My Lai was based on internal government documents. Abu Ghraib was already being reported by other sources like Amnesty International, so he was backing up by other reporting there.
Thing is, I'm not asking you to trust me. Not one bit. I'm asking you to apply an appropriate level of skepticism. Common practice for an accusation this serious is to get more people talking. But here, the whole accusation rests on one source. Why should we trust this source? Because Seymour Hersh said they know stuff? And since then, nothing. Now maybe Hersh is still digging and will publish something in the future. If so, I'm all ears. Until, I stay skeptical.
And it's not just me pointing to how Hersh uses anonymous sources as being problematic. His Wikipedia article has a lengthy section covering both criticism and defense.
The US is the most obvious party to have carried this out and is the only one who would benefit.
That seems like one anonymous source for a very wide range of allegations. I hope you do not accept that as absolute fact.
Considering the only party on Earth that benefits from the sabotaging of that pipeline is the US i think it would be very hard for anyone reasonable to ignore. Hersh is also one of the few investigative journalists who has reported on things like this consistently and been correct in the past
The only point I'd push back on is that this was only in US interests. Ukraine makes a decent sum allowing Nord 1 to transit over land in their territory, money they would lose with the activation of Nord 2.
Further, regardless of whom you believe committed the act, there is evidence to suggest the targeting of Nord 1 was accidental and the actual intent was to just hit Nord 2.
You could even speculate the destruction of Nord 2 was insurance that the west wouldn't abandon Ukraine since they could no longer flip a switch and take them out of the gas equation.
Do you know what the US does? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. However, the claim is the US blew up something that didn't belong to them. That is the most ordinary claim. It is so ordinary that if something explodes and you don't know why, it would take evidence to prove we didn't do it somehow
Here's a Washington post article including statements from the pentagon claiming that they've been aware for over a year that the Ukrainian military had plans to destroy Nord Stream 2 and then subsequently did: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-ukraine-russia/
Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure.
...
The highly specific details, which include numbers of operatives and methods of attack, show that for nearly a year, Western allies have had a basis to suspect Kyiv in the sabotage. That assessment has only strengthened in recent months as German law enforcement investigators uncovered evidence about the bombing that bears striking similarities to what the European service said Ukraine was planning.
...
Ukrainian officials, who have previously denied the country was involved in the Nord Stream attack, did not respond to requests for comment.
The White House declined to comment on a detailed set of questions about the European report and the alleged Ukrainian military plot, including whether U.S. officials tried to stop the mission from proceeding.
The CIA also declined to comment.
...
The European intelligence made clear that the would-be attackers were not rogue operatives. All those involved reported directly to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wouldn’t know about the operation, the intelligence report said.
imo this is just bullshit and the pentagon is just trying to throw the Ukrainian government under the bus to save face that the US committed an act of war against a fellow NATO member - the Hersh theory seems a lot more likely since it's not just uncritically repeating the current public line of the Pentagon. Still the article illustrates how it was very definitely either the US or a close US ally who did the bombing
It seems that US intelligence would like the world to believe it was Ukraine. Possible, but more likely to be the US
how? Would they have put a ukraine flag sticker on the torpedoes?
All the passports they found in the debris field were from Ukraine.
Just shows how green capitalism is just a waste of time. You'd think a country as geographically small and vulnerable as Germany would take this into account but guess not.
Naturally, they will inevitably pin the blame on China so :germany-cool: can build more coal guilt-free
That's an old wind farm that would be due being taken down. Wind turbines have a finite life span, they oscillate slightly and this loosens the ground around the base, so after around 30 years they're taken down. Typically they end up being sold to poorer countries where they're installed on a new base.
Didn't the green party in Germany have power in government right now? And weren't they the same guys who dismantled their nuclear plants?
I'm not very informed on German politics but if the answer to both was yes they should really rename their green party to the coal party.
The green party ruled my state for decades. Their commitment to “green” politics was always very surface-level and they catered to the erewhon customer type of voting base.
The Green parties are simply a way in which the capitalist superstructure ensures the security of the base by ensuring electoral support of the pearl-clutching petit-bourgeois.
They're implemented on the EU level but Germany isn't exactly unknown for pushing for them. The EP also likes to do it, the commission has more an eye on competition, sometimes those things overlap e.g. pushing train operators to finally implement a unified ticket shop (buying a trip from a single provider, even if the trains are run by different ones, has the consumer benefit that if a train is delayed and you miss a connection you can then take pretty much whatever train to reach your goal. And from the commission's perspective they want train operators to compete, but not by building walled gardens)
Yeah, little online test about it, too, but in the end even that took years and there isn't really any feasible way to get what you want other than suing the company
The bombing of the Nordstream pipeline upended
's energy plan and necessitated a quick replacement because Europe doesn't have much other sources of fuel in itself.It really isn't Germany is subsidizing coal by 1.7bn € every year. Like all currently coal producing countries give huge subsidies to their coal industry because they'd just immediately shut down.
is it just me or have these past few weeks just been one after another of announcements claiming people have given up on climate change? what gives?
Well that's not true. Of course many people, organizations, and countries have done many things over the years.
I'm not excusing the bad actions or inactions discussed here, though.
https://lemm.ee/comment/3033256
I had the same dire thought, but this comment really made me take a breath.
Haha, that would be too obvious, come on now.
