At what point will a naked war for resources with Saudi Arabia make sense? Like if a leader went to the EU/America/Japan/Korea and said, "we're gonna take the Saud's oil and sell it for $25/barrel to everyone that helps us for 25 years." And then we went to the public and said, "25 years to get off oil for good" when does that ship?
The issue with the Gulf Wars is that we wanted to control the oil resources via local proxy. Honestly, we (the US, I realize this is on the Europe@) could use our Navy to directly control about half of Saudi Arabia's oil and buy ourselves time to get off oil.
The Saudis don't have a Navy. About half their reserves and a massive chunk of Iran, Kuwait and the other Gulf State's reserves are in the Gulf. We don't have to set foot on the Peninsula.
Neither does Ukraine. Still decimated the russian navy.
Also to nip this whole "argument" in the bud, and I'm not even going into how terribly colonialistic your proposal is, how many billions of euro would you propose to put into essentially propping up a already dead technology. Fossil fuels have to be eliminated by 2050. Why wage war for something we won't even need in 25 years.
We WANT to increase fossil fuel prices. To hasten the change to renewables, the higher the potential savings the better.
Fossil fuels have to be eliminated by 2050. Why wage war for something we won't even need in 25 years.
I don't think that fossil fuel usage will be eliminated in 25 years given the opposition to mass nuclear deployment. I think this would ideally be a carrot that dictates green energy buildouts in exchange for subsidized oil.
The issue is that currently, the cost of extracting oil exceeds $25/barrel. Personally, I would be glad to see the Saud family ousted from Arabia, as there are countless reasons to consign those disgusting Salafists to the dustbin of history. However, reducing the price of oil at this moment is not feasible.
This analysis is from 2019 and it doesn't break down the cost difference for onshore vs. offshore oil. But it estimates the cost for the Saudi's at $8.98/barrel (approximately $11.01 in todays dollars).
Do you have the analysis where it says $25+/barrel. It is certainly possible that production costs have risen significantly in the last half decade.
Turns out people really don't like being ruled over by nakedly colonialist regimes, and when people really don't like things they tend to blow stuff up, and when people blow stuff up, it hurts the bottom line of oil companies, i.e. the only thing you care about for some reason.
Do you want to create a second Iran? Because that's what happened there.
Ah yes, the sea, a place famous for how difficult it is to get away with crimes. I see no flaws in your plan. The seas around the Arabian Peninsula specifically haven't had any notable activity from anti-Western rebel groups in 2024.
So we need the ECB to start QE in a big way to buy back government bonds. However the Saudis do not own too many.
We also have to go electric on transportation and that much much faster. Only a third of the EUs oil comes from the US and Norway. The rest comes from mainly dictatorships. Going green means supporting democracy. Staying on fossil fuels means supporting dictatorships.
Yep, even if you didn't care about the environmental aspect (which you should), not having to rely on dictatorships all over the place for your energy needs should be enough reason to transition away from fossil fuels.
Glad my money isn't wrapped up in EUR. QE = inflation.
I'm all for going green, it's worth mentioning that having trade with dictatorships is a two-way street, we can also use that trade as leverage to hold them slightly accountable.
In this case it gives the Saudis central bank money, which then leads to more money being removed over the coming years. Since the Saudis want to dump it, they have to sell it below market value. Due to that at intresst this means the ECB is moving money out of the monetary system. Hence this is deflationary. We actually saw that in the real world as well. QE meant low intresst rates. The intresst rates shot up as soon as QE was stopped.
There are a lot of battery factories being built in the EU right now. Even if they come from China, it is a one time purchase and not a total dependence.
This might change in the near future some time ago(not to sure how long exactly) I read an Article about a massive ore field of the resources needed for electrical components being discovered in Denmark Sweden.
Iirc: For certain materials like Lithium as well as Rare Earths, China basically has a monopoly on processing currently. E.g. with Lithium, Australia and Chile are major sources of the raw materials but virtually all of it is processed in China. Even if the raw materials come from the EU, there may be a major piece of the supply chain missing.
Okay, that's fair. I'm not entirely sure but I know that Intel is building a processing plant in Germany. I don't know if they use raw materials, or they also rely on other manufacturers to produce stuff for them.
Chip plants are another matter yet again. They usually work with silicon wafers into which they a chip surface.
I don't know where Intel get their materials from either. The silicon processing industry is largely Chinese again—I think Western and Japanese countries do have the appropriate factories and technology too though.
I just read, that TSMC also plans on creating a processing plant in Germany(near Dresden) so in the near future we might see chips made entirely in Europe.
Well first this doesn't really have anything to do with the article.
But to answer your question:
Be in a situation where your central bank (they can't get bankrupt as they literally print money) doesn't give interest (negative interest even better)
Be big, financially competent and trustworthy enough that no one doubts that you can pay back any loan.
Now people that have too much money and need a convenient place to store that money without too much costs buy your debt for more than what it's worth.
Sorry I somehow forgot the first part of your question.
If I understand correctly they threaten to sell off the debt they hold which will increase the supply of that debt, while at the same time decrease the amount of potential buyers.
To still be able to sell their debt the EU countries now have to (as any country needs a constant influx of money) make the new debt more attractive by offering better interest etc
But this fact is completely unrelated to OP and to your response aswell.
I think you came here for one reason only. And that not to add anything useful to the discussion. Instead, you prefer to open entirely new topics to push your agenda about something.
How about I put all of this in relation to climate change now? Maybe we can discuss this next.
No, you're just inventing a problem where there is none. The existence of a country is completely and utterly unrelated to anything you're talking about. I don't know how else to explain it.
That Israelis colonized Palestine and created a state on top of the British mandate via forced removal of the local population starting in early 20th century and culminating with formation of the state of Israel after what the Germans did during ww2.
You can start like that :)
And because of this Germans somehow feel morally absolved of the crimes while also obligated to support this abomination
Borders were set. Borders are there. Borders aren't changing. History is the past. You just need to accept that. The actions of Israel are a different topic.
You need a history lesson and you need to learn what "Nazi" means and meant. Hearing these words from you is a disgrace to millions of people that died from a genocide and ethnic clensing.
This is a good decision. Antisemitism is on the rise in Germany. 4782 antisemitic incidents in 2023, which is 83% more than the year before. 58% of these incidents occured after Oct 7.
These statistic say little as the German police does not properly distinguish between antisemitism and anti-zionism.
But regardless, if you are so extreme in your views that you can't accept the existence of the state of Israel in some shape or form, you are probably not a good fit for German society.
It is quite reductive to say anti-zionism is just denying the right of Israel to exist. Yes, the state of Israel is a deeply zionist project but you can accept the reality of this state existing and still be opposed to the idea of zionism in general.
I am opposed to the idea of colonialism in general but still accept the existence of states with a colonial history.
I'm not sure what you want to imply here. I do not see the benefit in asking the offender why they beat up the Jewish person.
I cited numbers from a study by RIAS (Wiki, German), this is not from a police statistic.
The study distinguishes Isreal-related antisemitism, meaning the incidents were directed against the Jewish state of Israel and denied its legitimacy. This kind of antisemitism was 52%.
Incidence does not mean "beating up" someone. Spray painting "stop the genocide in Gaza" is sometimes counted as an "antisemitic incidence" in Germany.
Just to give an orientation: denying Israel's right to exist, i.e. antizionism, including the Slogan: 'From the river to the sea – Palestina shall be free', counts as antisemitism, while criticising the Israeli government for killing civilians does not. Cheering Hamas killing Israeli civilians counts as appreciation of terror and antisemitism.
including the Slogan: 'From the river to the sea – Palestine shall be free'
As it should, this phrase and it's Israeli counterpart "between the sea and the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty" are often accompanied by calls for mass deportation at best and genocide at worst.
These sentences are not bad on their own, but the parties from which they originate (Hamas and Likud) have transparent desires for war crimes and genocide.
While I don't doubt that more Germans are becoming more antisemitic, promoting zionism does not combat antisemitism. Lord Balfor (of the Balfor Declaration), was extremely antisemitic. He was very explicit about how removing jews from Britain and getting a shiny new colony were both positives.
That article you linked does not contain anything controversial. No shit, "from the river to the sea" is forbidden in Germany and attending a forbidden demonstration where crimes are conducted has the risk of being detained.
She was released shortly afterwards but says: “I didn’t think I would get detained for that – I was naive it turns out.”
Don't act like people end up in prison here for criticizing the state of Israel. People get detained for a couple of hours in the context of demonstrations all the time. Stop derailing, the article from the Qatari news agency you linked does not add anything here.
Yeah no in the context of a german explaining why rounding up jews and throwing them in jail for protesting Israel is no big deal, you gotta be really, really obvious when you're making a joke since we're already well past poe's law.
But it's depressing every time I talk politics with one and it turns out they're a "leftist" who's actually a liberal, or an "anarchist" who's a zionist, or a "green" who supported ending all nuclear power (which restarted their coal industry), an "anti-imperialist" who only opposes Germany's enemies.
I expect this level of ignorance from American liberals who've literally never had a thought outside bourgeois democracy, half of Germany was communist until 30 years ago, they don't have an excuse.
From the river to the sea is not forbidden in Germany. There are several court rulings on this. Ironically, when Netanyahu wants a Jewish ethnostate from the river to the sea, that is perfectly fine for the same people who erroneously claim that saying „ From the river to the sea“ would be forbidden to say.
The intention is good I suppose, but it seems unfair to those who don't believe that nation-states in general have rights that should require our affirmation, even while they have many powers we must respect. Are they also made to affirm the right of Germany to exist? They've made a rule which denies would-be citizens the right to espouse anarchism, which seems like a step in the direction of removing human rights.
You get denied citizenship when you dont shake a womans hand so absolutely fair for us to gatekeep who gets in and is allowed to vote. We already had enough nazis in our history.
Me? I'm not so anarchist that I personally have a problem with pledging allegiance to a flag or whatevs, just anarchist enough that I find it somewhat odd when people assume that everyone is part of "you" and "us" groups of that kind.
I guess it's just that having to acknowledge the sovereign powers of some country other than the one you're applying for citizenship in is unusual enough to make this sort of weird power to define our views of the world that the modern state has achieved stand out a little more than usual.
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