The population ratio between Russia and Ukraine is 3.4 : 1. Ukraine is obviously weaker the smaller country, but Russia is the agressor and they send their men in human wave attacks. Right now the casulties are very much in Ukraines favour.
Probably destroyed by a British Japanese fishing frigate…
Correct on a per capita bases Portugal has been growing much much faster then Germany. The simple truth it that Germany is not benefiting from austerity either. What should happen is that the German government massively increases spending. This would turn Germany from a net exporter, to a net importer. That allows the PIIGS to export products to Germany paying down the debt, but it also stimulates the economy. Germany profits from the increased spending as well.
The simple truth is that German life expectancy is declining since a couple of years(being below Spain, Italy and Portugal btw). Median wealth of Italy, Spain and Portugal is higher then that of Germany, which is only slightly higher then that of Greece. Real wages in Germany have gone up by 3.8% over the last decade(not annually but the entire decade).
The only ones who really profit from this austerity are the super rich. Other then that it is as bad a policy for Germany as it is for Italy, Portugal, Spain or Greece.
Russia is fighting for bullshit reasons, so how heavy losses are they willing to accept as a people for basically nothing? At what point will it be enough?
Right now Russia is not forcing anybody in combat. They are mainly taking people dumb enough to volunteer and see them die. This will carry on for some time, but they are also starting to send foreigners to die. Also Russia is one of the most unequal countries in the world. So Putin spending a lot of money on soldiers and the worker shortages and increased war production mean plenty of well paying jobs for many Russians. Many Russians profit from the war. They can afford to buy cars, houses, dish washers, fridges and toilets, when they did not before.
So the Russian economy has to collapse and due to worker shortages, falling oil sales, higher import costs due to sanctions and a lot more it seems like it is starting to happen. However this will take time and that means thousands of deaths.
Spain has grown faster then Germany for most of the last decade(besides 2020). Out of PIIGS Portugal and Ireland also have done pretty well. Greece got hit hard and Italys economy has problems since the 90s(aka not a EU/Euro problem).
Also Norway is not an EU member.
Those parties are in the current Spanish government. Also the issue of independence is talked about less. Hence this is possible.
If only Germany would not be willing to recognice Palestine, then this might happen, but that is not the case. France and Italy the two next most powerfull countries do not recognice Palestine either.
Germany is usually fairly happy with the current state of the EU. The things Germany wants to change are usually also supported by Spain and that means blackmail is harder. The only exaption to that is finance. However Spain is not going to let billions go to waste to have Palestine recogniced. That is just more of a symbol, rather then massivly important.
Also Germany leaving the EU would cause some massive problems in other EU countries as well. They would hardly be cheering for it.
Foreign policy needs consensus. So the EU can not force Germany to do anything in terms of foreign policy.
Unlikely. Germany most likely is not going to recognice Palestine for a long time.
Social media in general loves controvery. So they push radical ideas, as they create conversation, clicks and other interactions, which means more time on the site. That then allows for more ad money.
The truth is most Americans are not that radical, due to just not caring too much about politics. They just want things to keep going as they are.
The other part of it is none Americans on social media. For Europeans for example Biden looks center right for the most part. Then again Europeans have options further left.
Add to that people of fighting age leaving Russia to not get drafted. The men dieing are the potential fathers of the next generation. We also saw what happens to birth rates and migration, when Russia is in an economic crisis. We pretty much know that Russia is heading towards another one right now.
First of all EVs do not need that much power. We are talking something like 25% more electricity production for a country like Japan. Then Japan has rather a lot of onshore and even more offshore wind potential. Mountains are a problem, but hardly something which can not be overcome. Solar can easily be installed on roofs and mountains are even less of a problem.
Also really important to say it. Combustion engines in cars are massivly inefficent. So an EV is still better for the climate, even if run with coal electricity. The other factor is that Japans population is falling. So they will need less power over the long term.
29 April 2022 You know up to date polling…
There are a few ways of going about it. One is third parties. If you vote for the Green Party for example, you get voting reform, anti genocide policies and a much better enviromental policy. At the same time Biden is still much better then Trump and being realistic about what you can get should also be part of voting strategy. Also it is incredibly important to say, that citizenship does not end at the ballot box. You got to and can do more to influence politics. So I would probably vote Biden in a swing state and Green Party in an state, which is not a swing state. This matters in two ways. Firstly the more people vote third party, the more likely they can get into some actual power, but also the Democrats see that they can gain potential votes, by improving policies.
Also no lesser evil has to be distinguised from compromise and deals. If you get an actual improvement out of doing something, it can be worth doing even at a price. So if two countries face a powerfull invader, it can be worth making a deal that country A gets 40% of the invaders land and country B also 60%, if country B is already stronger for example. In that case both get something out of it. However without the alliance both would probably fail. In this case the question is, if Biden would actually net improve the US compared to today.
You have to keep in mind that the decline in profits is mainly from selling fossil gas, that is the gas not liquid, to the EU. Blowing up oil infrastructure is a new thing.
The EU is doing that for some time. During the process of becoming a member, the country can already take out some money from EU funds for developing. Moldova and Ukraine are the poorest countries in Europe, so they will be able to get a lot of money. However it is linked to progress in becoming a member, which makes sense given how corrupt both Ukraine and Moldova are.
Also Russia should pay for the damages her actions caused in Ukraine. That is not on the EU.
There are a lot of procoporate enviromental policies. Building renewables, EVs, public transport and so forth is pumping money into the economy, which cooperations love. Obviously it is not enough and the US has to activly lower consumption to do enough to keep climate change manageable. For that you need activists. However corportists like Biden are activly working on making real things in America, which is a hell of a lot better then the finance presidents before that. To be fair Trump is also a corporatist, but he does nothing for the enviroment.
Welcome to reality.
The really bad part is that carbonbriefs analysis is that the Biden line is only the laws Biden has passed or is about to pass, before the election not being revoked by Trump. So if Biden actually gets elected he can and probably will do more, bringing the actual results much closer to the Target line. However being able to create a graph, seems to hard for a modern PR team.
The problem with that is that Bejing makes it very clear that declaring independence would lead to an invasion of Taiwan. So for a long time most Taiwanese rather did want to keep the current basically independent status quo. However support for unification was low since Taiwan became a democracy. Since the Hong Kong protests and the extraction bill polls for independence show a majority supporting it though.
Also Palestine has a seat on the table, just no vote, as a observer of the UN without being a member.
A war over Taiwan would at first be a naval conflict. Ukraine does not need many anti ship weapons and does not get many as well. Those factories are mainly free.
For many other systems the West is running at capacity and increasing it. Air defence missiles for example. Taiwan has Patriot and it would only be a matter of moving production to Ukraine to Taiwan instead to make it work. The West has jets, so there are other options of winning the air war. Ukraine currently gets F-16. So no longer as much needed and maybe the Europeans could intervene with a few jets, if need be. Similar story for a lot of other weapon systems. Increased production in Europe, which can be delivered to Taiwan.
Then you have use of weapons. It is much more likely that Taiwan will be allowed to strike China right away. No discussion as we saw in Ukraine.
Also yes China is not ready. They have to win the naval war and then be able to land. Invading Taiwan is much harder then invading Ukraine over what is flat open ground.