That’s a really interesting article. I didn’t know there were so many benefits to solar panels over crops.
However, I don’t see how growing crops under panels could become widespread.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimate that if just 1 million acres of farmland was covered in solar panels, the nation would meet its renewable energy goals.
For reference, Iowa alone has over 35 million acres of farmland. Solar panels are almost too efficient to cover a meaningful amount of farmland.
This entire concept has been studied extensively in China, and the conclusion has been that the yield is vastly overclaimed when solar panels are deployed on productive soil.
Your claim is that… China has incentive to reduce deployments of solar panels by criticizing the deployment of solar panels over agricultural land? We’re talking about the same China, right? World leader in solar panel production, being criticized by American and European leaders for overcapacity in solar panel production? I just want to make sure we’re on the same page here.
Jeez my bad the government responsive for legislating the sale of my broadcast rights has no oversight into the operations of my media company. Silly me.
But the IDF does not allow an independent investigation so we’re going to have to take israel’s word for it that this was a little oopsie and definitely not a targeted attack on aid workers in Gaza. Israel would never lie right?
Mr Yoon has been credited by the US for taking bold steps to overcome historical differences with neighbouring Japan to build up trilateral political and military ties and counter China’s growing regional influence and rising threats from North Korea.
In other words, they have been busy doing nothing helpful to anyone and catering to the status quo, just like Washington LOVES.
While actively funding and supporting a genocide too.
West Germany was never denazified.- More Nazis in German justice department after WWII than during Third Reich: study>Fully 77 percent of senior ministry officials in 1957 were former members of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, a higher proportion even than during the 1933-45 Third Reich, the study found. - businessinsider.com/former-nazi-officials-in-germ…> From 1949 to 1973, 90 of the 170 leading lawyers and judges in the then-West German Justice Ministry had been members of the Nazi Party.
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>Of those 90 officials, 34 had been members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Nazi Party paramilitaries who aided Hitler’s rise and took part in Kristallnacht, a night of violence that is believed to have left 91 Jewish people dead.
data that ends before the BIRTH of the majority of Germans
Look, I’m not saying that Germany doesn’t have a problem with an increase in far right politics and violence in recent years, but to claim that they never stopped being a Nazi country is some ahistorical tankie edgelord bullshit.
Until recently, Germany has been a near-pacifist country almost pathologically careful to “Nie wiederholen, nie vergessen” (never repeat, never forget) and pretending otherwise doesn’t accomplish anything except expose your very shallow and underdeveloped understanding of the world.
I dunno man, Germany just can’t help itself from committing or supporting genocide throughout their history. Are Nazi’s flying flags in Germany? No. Is Germany passing laws and carrying out foreign policy as if they were still run by Nazi’s? Most definitely yes.
Such fear porn. It’s amazing that now Sweden and Finland have become NATO members that they are subject to even more scare tactics! I think it’s ridiculous. Nobody is shelling Russians from Finland or Sweden for the last 7 years. Granted, joining AMericATO is a big mistake but mainly because you are submitting your national defence to US rent seeking instead of developing a European arms framework.
There is a European arms framework, that is developed to be compatible with NATO and thus US stuff. Nordic fighter jets which have been exported to many countries can carry US missiles. All the while, the US is phasing out the M16/M4 in the USMC for a German licence built rifle. They have been using German small arms for a bunch of stuff for a while.
Also, it’s not NATO who’s saying the Russians want to attack neighbouring states, it’s Russia who is saying that, who has been saying that, who has actually been attacking neighbouring states. Finland and the Baltics have been invaded in the past by the Russians as well, and Putin is open about wanting to reconquer them.
Check out the function of nato after the Cold War. Also check the new American economic tent seeking ambition if you want to see how Europe fits into the economic picture.
Yeah, the country I grew up in joined NATO after the Cold War, and it is viewed there as a universally good choice. It had us join the West, which has led to a big jump in living standards, civil rights, international relations, and not the least, I don’t have to worry that Russian tanks will shoot up my granny’s house.
What is it that you see as bad in former Warsaw Pact countries joining NATO? Are you implying that they were forced to or that they want to leave now, or that somehow it is bad for them?
Valid criticism is appreciated and I’ve changed my mind on the genocide going on. That said, when one submits only posts or comments pushing a single narrative to the exclusion of criticizing any other politician, it’s obvious they are a propagandist.
I wouldn’t say average lemmy user, but I have noticed a huge influx of astroturfers looking to gentrify lemmy and make it into another reddit (see r/politics for a prime example of that crap). It started with the shrieking demands to defederate from “tankie” instances.
All I see is “Thanks, trumptards”. Perhaps he edited his post or something, but I don’t get the impression he’s the one doing mental gymnastics on this.
I would venture to guess it’s because this time around might not have existed in the first place if Trump didn’t invest so much of his presidential attention to stroking Putin’s ego and having secret meetings with him in Helsinki.
But what do I know? I just wanted to tell you that you were doing more mental gymnastics than the other guy.
Wouldn’t have existed if Biden and the UK didn’t tell Zelensky to abort peace negotiations in 2022 because “they got Ukraine’s back” . Now we see they did not in fact “got Ukraine’s back”.
Biden is only on his knees for Netanyahu giving him as many Genocide bombs as possible.
You’re not wrong, but which came first, Biden & UK saying that stuff to Zelensky, or Trump getting cozy with Putin on Twitter, meeting with him privately in Helsinki, Russia’s election interference, and Trump’s insurrection attempt, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Maybe I’m just not clear on the timeline. Would you mind putting those in chronological order for me?
Putin invaded Ukraine because NATO tried to invite Ukraine which went against the deal with Russia.
Blaming that on the orange man who just slushed some cash away to mar-a-lago is saying a lot about how much the average Biden voter understands about Geopolitics
Ah my bad. It’s still early in my part of the world. So hadn’t Trump also been talking about NATO in a manner that kind of undermined its strength and encouraged an attack from Russia during his presidency as well?
I see. It was kind of Ukraine’s choice, but US and UK saying they’d have Ukraine’s back probably tipped the scales significantly. I understand why Putin wouldn’t want such a close neighbor being a NATO member, and preemptively laid claim to the territory and started a war that (surprise, surprise) US and UK don’t like financing. Still, I think Putin might not have been so bold if Trump wasn’t such a fanboy and there had been some actual repurcussions for Crimea under Obama.
Possibly but if Biden actually cared he could have sent them far more weapons by now. Instead Ukraine seems to be used to bleed Russia dry and when all the Ukrainians are dead cannon fodder America is just going to leave it.
Currently Biden is able to send weapons to Ukraine just like how he did for israel, yet Biden is not using those options.
No it’s quite clear this is their actual reason. They offered a truce for it.
In any case since you’re so smart go tell Biden to send weapons to Ukraine. Since Biden is so committed to infinite war at least give the Ukrainians something more than a few sticks to fight with.
Actually it’s a reason they invented after the fact. The initial reason were supposed to be “Ukranian terror attacks in Russia” which were going to be false flags by Russia themselves, but UK and USA called them out on it in advance and then they invented different reasons. If they had a legitimate reason from the start it would have been the one they lead with when invading, and yet the did not.
They have lied and lied and lied, and additionally they have ALSO broken numerous ceasefires.
Putin personally want to restore old Russia, that’s the only reason for the war. He’s the one who can end it right away.
I’m not American, I don’t have any influence over that.
Yep because they got leaked. Real sad that Biden is using the same dirty tactic Trump used to secretly sell weapons to Saudi. But of course Biden does it to support Genocide, not help Ukraine. And Biden recently passed the free israel money without Ukraine in the bill. Because Joe Biden does not seem to care about Ukraine at all aside from optics.
Strange when Trump did this to secretly sell weapons to Saudi it was a massive scandal and we all really cared about it. But if Biden does it it’s fine because only Trump would do violate his presidential powers this hard.
By the way do show me the receipts of these sales if they aren’t secret.
Hmmm I wonder who is responsible for the aid money not going to Ukraine. Couldn’t have been republicans refusing to vote for it. Nope… That can’t be it
Oh look there’s still someone left that believes in the fairy tale of voting and the President not being able to bypass congress after being directly demonstrated of the opposite.
“Anyone pointing out inconvenient facts is a Russian plant” is a stupid argument to make. I do see all the mindless upvotes you’re getting while seeing all the mindless downvotes others who are actually citing facts are getting and it makes me wonder if the regular astroturfers from reddit have added lemmy to their list of sites.
Is Russia really in any position to be trying to wage war on multiple new fronts? Poland just implied Russia is going to attack Europe. With what? Dry Russian wit and empty vodka bottles?
Russia still has a lot of men and has already transitioned into a war-time economy. All Europe has done is have Baltics and Poland (and probably also Finland) go through potential invasion strategies, the rest of Europe doesn’t even believe in the possibility of war. The only way circumstances could be better is if Trump gets elected because that old fuck will make sure to hamper US support. Other than that if you’re going to invade you couldn’t want better conditions.
I’m not saying it will happen. I’m going to say the invasion would the stupid and hardly beneficial for Russia and the logical thing would be to not invade. But I will add that I said the exact same thing about the invasion of Ukraine and we know how that went. I wouldn’t put it beyond the realm of possibilities.
the invasion would the stupid and hardly beneficial for Russia and the logical thing would be to not invade. But I will add that I said the exact same thing about the invasion of Ukraine and we know how that went.
The main difference here though is the consideration of NATO. If you attack Ukraine you’re attacking one country, if you attack NATO you’re attacking many, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, who have some of the largest military’s forces on the planet and access to nuclear weapons. Russia had reason to believe it might have actually win against Ukraine, there’s no possible way they can think that they could win against NATO.
He’s counting on NATO continuing to take the “let’s just sanction him” approach. He’s essentially hoping they’re bluffing while he tries to get the gang back together. (USSR)
They won’t do that if he’s actually invading though. NATO’s point is they won’t ever escalate a situation. That whole point is to try and prevent something like world war II happening again. So declining war on Russia while he’s attacking a non-nato country would be an escalation. But they’re all about responding in kind to an attack against them.
Why multiple fronts? The current conflict may be frozen under “right” circumstances, Putin will have several years to resupply. It doesn’t matter if Ukrainian allies have more economical and technological power than Russia if people in places like Germany cry that Currywurst now costs 1 EUR more than 2 years ago, and just want this to be over.
If I remember right, most polls show people are against sending weapons. This might be why Scholz is cautious about sending Tauruses. The Baltic states have warned for years that Russia is a threat, even before Ukraine was invaded in 2022. But others didn’t listen to them then, and many still don’t take them seriously. The truth is, Russia is doing better than Ukraine’s allies because people think the conflict won’t reach them, and they prefer not to support politicians who would sacrifice short-term benefits for long-term security.
I’m not disputing your main point, I just think it’s interesting that you chose Germany as an example, which, as I wrote, is one of the top contributors, even adjusted for GDP.
In that case, I fail to follow your explanation. What’s more important: Words/sentiments, or actions? For example, Macron talks the talk, but fails to walk the walk, as evidenced by France’s sub-par contributions.
In my opinion, the outcome is what matters. But also: Sign off the Tauruses, Olaf!
I think most people are missing the strategy of modern Russian warfare. Is Russian going to roll tanks and soldiers into the Baltics this year? Probably not.
Russia is using more of an asymmetrical approach to warfare with a ramp up. On the low end is the disinformation campaign. (News and religion: there are a lot of Orthodox in Latvia) Economic “Little Green men” Conventional warfare Nukes or the threat of nukes
I’m the Baltics they are in the disinformation and economic section of the ramp up and are worried about escalation.
Also note Russia goes up and down that ramp escalating and descalating as they did in Ukraine.
Turns out we should have been helping Ukraine against Putin’s fascistic colonialism instead of supporting an entirely separate set of fascists commit genocide in Palestine.
The issue is partially that we have no real voice in American politics. Republicans are highly responsive to the whims of their voters, Democrats work hard to ignore when their voters have demands. Republicans have not choice to do what they’re voters want. Democrats have carte blanc because they know “Blue no Matter Who” and “Any Blue Will Do”. It’s incredibly important to recognize this divide in electoralism. The policies of the Republican party are the will of the Republican voter. Republicans are scared shitless of their voters because it is a non stop series of purity tests effectively contrived through the alt right media. If you step out of line as a Republican, consider your career vanished
Its super fucked, but its also people conditioned to believe that the Democrats are out there trying to do work for them, when they are just as invested in the US monoparty as the Republicans are. And those people are the majority of people on lemmy, pretty much representing a down vote brigade whenever you criticize Democrats, or point out that they are part and parcel to the dysfunction in our political system. They aren’t adjacent or subject to the problem; they are the cause and source and one of the primary beneficiaries of the dysfunctional state. The Democrats are not your friends. They aren’t on your side. They have shown that at a national level they do not give a fuck about the polices they campaign on. If it wasn’t for Democrats setting the table for it in 2008, there would be no MAGA movement right now. Failing to go after any kind of meaningful policies or actual criminal prosecution of the engineers of the financial crisis; effectively validating BAU and the Bush era policies and tax cuts: they had no interest in differentiating themselves from contemporaneous Republicans. This left the primary criticism on the table and perfectly valid: that the extant political system doesn’t reflect the will of its users. Enter MAGA. A specific and reactionary populist movement to address this criticism precisely. And it works because its transactional. MAGA voters are getting what they pay for when they vote MAGA. The policies are horrendous and deplorable, but you can count on MAGA politicians to work to get them into place. And herein lies the crux of the matter: Democrats are not interested in the politics they campaign on. They do not work to get the things they campaign on into place, because there are no consequences to them for not getting the job done. This is a direct extension of ‘Blue No Matter Who’ and “Any Blue Will Do”. Democrats always have an excuse for why it can’t be done. Republicans who fail to get it done are replaced.
I can’t argue with your logic here, and neither can I fault your conclusion. All that being the case, though, what can US voters do in this case?
Not vote? Vote 3rd party? Do you guys even have more than 2 parties over there? Seems like you have even more of a duopoly than we do over here in the UK.
The Democratic party is the only one actually implementing positive changes, and half the things they do gets neutered by Republican politicians and judges. Infrastructure bills, student loan forgiveness, etc, are you not paying attention?
I don’t think this is exactly right. For the longest time Republicans were the same way, dangling a carrot of doing something to get votes but never actually doing it. I think Donald Trump has emboldened a lot of people to run for office that don’t understand that you don’t actually give the base what they want cause it makes you deeply unpopular with everyone else.
You need to listen to what MAGA and rightwingers say when they are critical of the establishment. You don’t have to agree with them and you shouldn’t, but you should try to understand why they make the decisions they make and come to the conclusions that they do.
The MAGA movement was able to fuckold the Republican establishment into doing the will of their voters. It just happens that the will of their voters is vile and wrong, and basically orchestrated through the distribution of rightwing media. It went from outside radicals to business as usual in the Republican party in one election cycle.
Trump pushed for every single one of his campaign tent poles. He didn’t get them all, but he pushed damned hard for almost all of them, and got or made progress on many of them. You should hate him. You should hate those policy positioned he pursued. But he did his voters right in that they voted for a person who would go after those policy positions, and he went after those policy position. These anti-human policies are what right wing voters want.
Here are is a video interviewing rightwingers. Pay attention to how they frame things, how they are structuring their arguments:
And what you are describing, Republicans in the business of dangling carrots; that was the republican party for decades. Its also been the business of Democrats for decades. The difference is that the MAGA movement was able to force the Republicans into action on their polices. The progressive movement has been unable to do so with Democrats.
I generally agree with you, I think the one part I disagree on is the why Republicans go along with this. Sure some of it is because of the purity testing kind of stuff but a lot of it is just because the Republicans for the longest time have paid lip service to these issues but never done anything about them. Like with abortion for example. But then you have someone like Donald Trump come in who is just like, well why don’t we do all these crazy things. And that is what emboldened more people like him, with no experience in politics and no understanding that you can’t actually give the base the way out there stuff without alienating the general public, to run for election and start winning in very red areas. So it’s less of a pressure on the party from the outside to start following this new MAGA movement (although that does exist too) and more of an internal transformation of the party under Trump.
Democrats have always been “the big tent” party, which is part of their weakness, as their voters have a wide range of “demands” that are often, if not always, contradictory. You have to remember that this is a party that has to appeal to religiously conservative black people, while also appealing to upper middle secularists. They are trying to appeal to both conservative religious muslims, and at the same time the powerful voting Jewish bloc.
It’s not an easy tightrope to walk, but it’s not regularly “ignoring demands of the party” it’s “which of these two competing demands of our party can we ignore that will hurt us less?” They basically try to appeal to the voter, but that’s impossible because they are trying to please too many disparate groups at the same time.
Republicans have the advantage of having to appeal to a smaller group and set of beliefs, and then just get everyone else to fall in line behind it (although that is being tested now with MAGA delusionalists vs the traditional conservatives). Republicans have been pushing this fear of different people (immigrants, different religions)and liberal elites for decades now (as you note in another post, via things like right wing media). . . it’s just that they lost control of it when someone (Trump) rose up and fully embodied the id they had been fostering. . .and now they are just following the playbook where they have to get everyone to fall in in line behind that.
telegraph.co.uk
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