European politics

[Dolan]

[Horsemen]

In Slovenia, we have a price cap for electricity, gas, petrol, diesel and they removed some taxes for these commodities. I think they went too far with some of these, there is no incentive to conserve energy even a tiny bit. On the other hand, we had a change of government and they are undoing the previous government's tax reform, which among other things intended to adjust tax brackets for personal income tax based on inflation and would've increased standard deduction each year for the next 3 years. So the middle and upper class are again going to feel the brunt of this as real wages will fall. For those on minimum wage, they intend to increase the minimum wage 2 times in the coming 3 months, possibly 3 times.

but at least europeans have free healthcare

[Dolan]

Insane that a missile could simply get into NATO airspace without getting shut down by an anti-missile shield.
And then some US officials right now are saying: we can't confirm, we need to investigate.
What happens if 15 such missiles hit Poland, are they gonna ask for a few weeks of investigations first?
This puts NATO in a bad light, imo, as it shows that a missile could strike one of its members that easily and there won't be any immediate response, as its members will be busy investigating, chatting up in Zoom meetings, etc.
By the time they make a decision 50 more missiles can keep striking. So they'd have a lot to investigate and chat about for weeks to come.

[Dolan]

Circulating rumours that the missile that hit Poland was fired by Ukraine.
If true and if it was intentional, it might have been part of Ukraine's nth attempt at drawing NATO into the conflict.
They might have thought that if they fire it while they're under attack, it would plausibly look like it was a stray Russian missile.
Next, they'll probably go into total damage control to make this look like it wasn't intentional, because otherwise a good part of their sympathy capital might go down the drain, together with the funds.

[duckzilla]

Insane that a missile could simply get into NATO airspace without getting shut down by an anti-missile shield.
And then some US officials right now are saying: we can't confirm, we need to investigate.
What happens if 15 such missiles hit Poland, are they gonna ask for a few weeks of investigations first?
This puts NATO in a bad light, imo, as it shows that a missile could strike one of its members that easily and there won't be any immediate response, as its members will be busy investigating, chatting up in Zoom meetings, etc.
By the time they make a decision 50 more missiles can keep striking. So they'd have a lot to investigate and chat about for weeks to come.

The missile went down only a few km inside Polish territory. Apart from the general lack of missile defense systems (EU != tiny Israel), there are not many way to defend against an unexpected attack. If this is enough to put NATO in bad light, then people really lost the abilityy for proper assessment. On the contrary, a NATO that swiftly retaliates without proper investigation (we are talking about 2 missiles and not a thermonuclear weapon) would be insanity.

[Dolan]

Insane that a missile could simply get into NATO airspace without getting shut down by an anti-missile shield.
And then some US officials right now are saying: we can't confirm, we need to investigate.
What happens if 15 such missiles hit Poland, are they gonna ask for a few weeks of investigations first?
This puts NATO in a bad light, imo, as it shows that a missile could strike one of its members that easily and there won't be any immediate response, as its members will be busy investigating, chatting up in Zoom meetings, etc.
By the time they make a decision 50 more missiles can keep striking. So they'd have a lot to investigate and chat about for weeks to come.

The missile went down only a few km inside Polish territory. Apart from the general lack of missile defense systems (EU != tiny Israel), there are not many way to defend against an unexpected attack. If this is enough to put NATO in bad light, then people really lost the abilityy for proper assessment. On the contrary, a NATO that swiftly retaliates without proper investigation (we are talking about 2 missiles and not a thermonuclear weapon) would be insanity.

There are lots of important cities close to a country's border (Lille in France, for example, but also others like Vilnius close to Belarus). It's obviously important to be able to react fast to an airborne threat coming into the national airspace.
That's what radar systems and quick-deployment air defence systems are for. Radars close to the borders not only can detect a sudden threat to a country's territory, they can see it from some distance inside the neighbouring country's territory and anticipate the threat. Then quick-reaction air defence systems can neutralise it.
Idk what Poland's defence uses, maybe they're not so well covered by NATO radars, but Romania is, we got lots of NATO radars installed on the eastern border and next to the Black Sea. And more are coming, the US and Spain will install extra radars here. We're also gonna add mobile deployment anti-missile systems.

[duckzilla]

These kinds of measures decrease in usefulness when there's a war raging across the border in which you do not actively participate. The problem is that while you can detect all the missiles early on, 99.99% of them are not going to enter your air space. Now you can choose to react to all potential airborne threats by activating your air defence systems - if you actually have them - or not wasting resources in anticipation that the "incoming" missiles are going down in western Ukraine anyway.

[Dolan]

Yeah, that's a common problem in regions with ongoing wars. But sometimes a misfired missile can end up pretty far from its origin, like that one fired from Syria that ended up dropping in Cyprus a few years ago. That was more than a 100km away from Israel, its intended target.
In Poland's case, though, western Ukraine has been less or rarely targeted by Russian missiles, so they should be watchful of stray missiles coming their way. Most likely, it's doable, so it's surprising they didn't intercept this one.

[Goodspeed]

So whenever you want to attack a city close to any border, you first start a war with the other country, wait for the country you actually want to attack to disable their defenses, then get a bunch of free hits in saying they were accidents
2022 military strategy

[duckzilla]

Not sure whether there is anything substantial to gain with this, but yeah.

[princeofcarthage]

It landed on a farm in a small village not in the middle of the city. Even Israeli defense systems prioritize high value targets. Pretty sure if the missile was headed towards a major city or potential high value target at least an attempt at intercept would have been made. Secondly you have to consider an element of surprise. No one currently expects a missile strike on Poland and war with NATO with Russian forces are struggling inside Ukraine. In such a scenario the first wave of attack or unexpected stray missiles are nearly guaranteed to hit at least in the low value areas given the extensive peace time procedures and likely red tape and limited spontaneous decision making power.

[princeofcarthage]

Also the latest statement by US says that it was fired by Ukrainians.

[fightinfrenchman]

Also the latest statement by US says that it was fired by Ukrainians.

Do you trust the US

[Dolan]

I stand by what I said some months ago that Ukrainians behave in a very perfidious way and when this war ends they should not be made EU members. Though I realise it's unrealistic to expect this, as lots of Euro leaders have rushed to promise them EU integration after the war ends, I'll still support this point of view that they should not be accepted in the EU. It would be a big mistake to do so. They are a very poisonous and treacherous kind. We should help them go through this war and with reconstruction, but things should stop there. A neighbourhood agreement and some kind of international treaty between them and Russia, involving a few other powers as referees, should be enough.

Spoiler

It's impressive how much Poland is willing to tolerate just because they're blinded by having a common enemy with Ukraine ^^

[princeofcarthage]

Also the latest statement by US says that it was fired by Ukrainians.

Do you trust the US

Trust is a continuous function, the value of which depends on the input(s). Based on the current input(s) I do trust US on this.

[iNcog]

https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate ... ia-2174929

wow why anti-romania

[Dolan]

Whatever. In 30 years westoids will migrate to Romania, when their turf will be paralyzed by civil strife. We shouldn't join Schengen, just build a wall around them, to make it a vibrant diversity containment area.

[iNcog]

Well sure but what is Austrians problem with Romania? There shouldn't be any so I don't understand where this is coming from.

[Dolan]

Well sure but what is Austrians problem with Romania? There shouldn't be any so I don't understand where this is coming from.

Idk, they claim Austria is under pressure because of uncontrolled migration and that this is caused by a trickle of illegal migrants working their way through Balkan routes.
Which is a weird claim because such migrants wouldn't need to go all the way up to Romania to be able to reach Austria.
But in the end, they can claim anything, come up with whatever made up reasons that sound plausible, just so that they serve their far right voters a reason to rejoice.
We'll also rejoice seeing Austrian corporation OMV trucks loaded with gas get caught up in traffic jams at the border because their politicians thought it'd be funny to play political games with this.
Who knows, maybe we'll even boycott OMV gas to make it easier on them so they won't have to bother shipping stuff here anymore.

I'd unironically support making Schengen border controls even more drastic, so that all imports from the Schengen area would spend days or weeks at the border, making the Germans red in the face that despite owning most of the retail sector here, they can't sell their Lidl and Kaufland branded products as fast as they'd want to ^^

[duckzilla]

It's not like the Romanian customers don't want their nice Lidl products.

I have no idea what the problem is for Austria. Schengen is a no-brainer.

[Dolan]

Tbh I don't get why people get so worked up about this, as most Romanians don't cross the border even once in their entire lifetime.
Probably the media kept inciting people, turning the issue into a question of national pride. But most people here don't have the money to travel, they'll always stay in the country.
Ig the media need topics to keep the masses fired up

[duckzilla]

I can understand people being discontent with it. The European Union promises equal rights to it's member's citizens. In this case, the EU doesn't hold this promise and gives Bulgarians and Romanians less rights than others. No matter if you actually use it or not, it easily makes people feel like second-class EU citizens.

[iNcog]

just so that they serve their far right voters a reason to rejoice.

I feel like this is the real reason.

[knusch]

just too many migrants showing up in austria (which is a obvsly a problem) and this is a way to make a stink about it.

[harcha]

Is there any evidence that Austria has high numbers of immigration due to Romania and Bulgaria? Or is this idea just made of thin air?