… and there are no consequences for them proposing this stuff time and again.

“Murder hornets” vs. “Southern giant hornets” …

Which is true, except that the damage done [by] centrists is much more easily reverted if you can stop the slide to the right. Centrists will hurt the credibility of democracy but they won’t completely gut its institutions. I.e whoever succeeds Orbán or Trump will have a massively harder to task to rebuild agencies that are actually able to work properly than the person succeeding Macron/Barnier.

You’re right, it’s not the ideal article on the subject.

[Edith to clarify: The article is factual but it doesn’t give background on all the meddling that went on over the past few months since the snap election nonsense.]

As a non-Romanian, I’d never heard of it before.

For context: The “legionary movement” was a nazi group.

I almost want to bet this is not a coincidence but rather some security-through-obscurity scheme. This thing is completely ungoogleable, the only way to buy access to it was probably through your trusty black-market sales rep. Although maybe I am wrong, as the thing was marketed under different names, so maybe they were indeed oblivious,

Dutch police said the Matrix app was targeted along with similar encrypted services known by the names Mactrix, Totalsex, X-quantum and Q-Safe.

I also feel like there is a move to the right in order to meet the challrnge from the AfD.

That shift does exist, unfortunately across all major parties. The Left Party is sorta excluded from that dynamic but only because the left/right hybrid BSW split off.

However, it’s centered around stoking fear in/picking up fears from the majority society against immigrants/LGBTQ people (and other perceived societal outsiders). It is largely independent of behavior toward Israel [though] - [behavior toward Israel] follows a script that may be problematic too but [is not] defined [or majorly influenced] by Afd. Except for the aspects I named before: Right-wing isolationism (which may mean not delivering weapons to Israel and protesting for peace) as well as making refugees, many of whom are Muslims feel unwelcome (which may means using their [real or perceived] antisemitism against them).

which your comment is insightful

Thanks!

Overall, I find your comment exaggerated and its logic doesn’t hold up entirely:

1. A clearer line would be good, but it’s wrong to frame the entire political class as unfettered warmongers when in practice only defensive material is being delivered. If you read the article – the last time actual weapons were delivered was in February 2024. What was delivered since are helmets and other defensive material, and (possibly maybe!) spare parts for weapons. Future weapons deliveries were never categorically excluded though, as Germany does not want to cross Israel (there’s “a special relationship”). Within the coalition the party most opposed to [weapons deliveries] are the left-of-center Greens, whereas the barely-left-of-center SPD and the libertarian FDP would likely not have put in the brake.
2. Delivering weapons to Israel won’t actually help you gain votes in Germany. Claiming that weapon deliveries to Israel is a populist move (which is how I interpret “out-fashing the fashs”) is disingenuous when 70% of Germans are against weapon deliveries to Israel.
   • Centrists will feel bound to support Israel because this is the “reason of state” and we’ve always done it that way. They are the most likely to support weapon deliveries.
   • Right-wingers are isolationist. They hate Jews and they hate Muslims. Their belief system is fluid enough that their support can go either way: Fairly right-wing people solidarizing with Gazans or Afd in parliament decrying antisemitism because it helps them further their goal of sowing distrust against Muslims.
   • Left-wingers are usually pro-humanitarian and also traditionally largely pro-Palestinian, although I guess that support has gotten weaker.

I mean … I really wish it were different but almost the entire Greens group in Bundestag voted in favor of the “Security Package” only a month ago, despite it introducing more social insecurity for migrants. Of course, the goal was saving the coalition — but they did so voting by in favor of a law that (pending court decisions) contains most likely unconstitutional/EU-incompatible sections to do so. And the coalition then failed less than a month after that.

Of course, large parts of the party base don’t agree, and the last party conference showed that.

Huh. That’s an interesting one. I suppose you condemn online “piracy” then?

Large language models?

Please stop “randomly” bringing up “Russia/China bad” topics under unrelated posts.

I find it a bit weird how you (implicitly) pin blame primarily on Baerbock. Clearly, she is not the most forceful diplomat there is. However, imo that’s not generally for lack of good ideas (and yes, I find value-based/feminist foreign policy a great idea), rather she’s (a) probably lacking in machismo and (b) been undermined by cabinet colleagues, primarily Scholz who would always wait for US support before doing anything in Ukraine, by Lindner who’s been cutting budgets whenever/wherever possible, and even by her party colleague Habeck who negotiated the Qatar gas deal.

“Germany has left the diplomatic scene” – well no, it hasn’t but it hasn’t had a government able to speak in unison for at least a year now. “Germany bends to the will of whatever US government there is” – I am much less sure of that being true when a less respectful/respectable person assumes presidency; clearly, everyone will have to make do regardless.

… and Lower Saxony is a federal state (as in, “one of the 16 federal states”).

This guy appears to be the founder not the owner:

Asia Times Online was created early in 1999, at atimes.com, describing itself as a successor in “publication policy and editorial outlook” to the print newspaper Asia Times, owned by Sondhi Limthongkul, a Thai media mogul and leader of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, who later sold his business. – source, emphasis mine

Media Bias Fact Check lists them as “mostly factual”.

None of which makes the paragraph cited by thread op any more correct, obviously. (Fwiw: coal power is cheap in China because it is heavily subsidized & there’s no CO2 trading scheme, afaik. Overall, German companies opening factories in China because they’re cheap tracks, however.)

You can always find something in any article

Not every article claims to be dispelling disinformation.

but here these are red herrings

In what sense?

Even RT itself says they are a propaganda channel receiving orders from the Kremlin.

Yeah, we know. Literally nobody here is defending their work.

You may want to watch the name Daniel Kretinsky in this context, who’s not just a major investor of ThyssenKrupp but also controls the East German lignite business, as well as the media company Czech News Center (and a lot of other ventures).

His coal and coal-dependent businesses appear to be designed to extract the final bits of profit, harvest government subsidies, and ultimately leave the public to deal with the cost of his failed ventures (such as recultivating landscapes wounded by coal mining).

So you post a bumbling, flawed piece which makes a number of good points but also includes spin of its own—and expect its shortcomings not be discussed? Instead you post some false dichotomy?

True. But scrolling sideways conflicts with the downvote gesture (I could turn that off, but my main client is Voyager anyway).