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[SirQuiamus]

[pigpost]
Damn, I wanted some hash browns and Yorkshire pudding with my bacon!
[/pigpost]

[Loud Whispers]

In britbortion news Al Shabaab militiants have disagreed with Britain's aim to build a stable Somalian government with mean words which is not very nice
Jokes on them, they have shit flip flops

Now this is interesting. The north has always been more stable than the south, but is a whole 70 people an actual contribution, or is it just a PR move?

It's legit; French have been beefing it up in West Africa and Brits beefing it up in East Africa; also don't forget that for as long as Somalia is in turmoil there will always be pirates disrupting British maritime commerce so there's a vital reason to not fuck up and help the Somalian government retake its lands. It's working, with shit flipflop lads losing ground. The 70 troops have been part of an effort to essentially build a Somalian military from scratch out of militias just as likely to be a part of the problem as well as fix it, Britain's been at it for a while and this is additional manpower to an already existing operations. Officer, Combat, Medical and Logistics training -  all of these will make the African peacekeepers the far superior fighting force when fighting shit flipflop lads, and more troops are on the way. Oh and of course there's a very practical contribution in that the Royal Engineers will be busy building up Somalian infrastructure, and I don't doubt Americans are at work behind the scenes with their strategic fund to try and get some investment going into Somalia so that Somalia will eventually one day turn from a failed state to a self-building state.

It was inevitable.

It is terrifying.
Though really, it is most amusing to see how differently French and Brits handle humanitarian crises than Germany. I don't think anyone's going to forget how pointlessly Germany exacerbated the crisis to span from one end of the Med to the other just to bypass opponents to mass immigration and then herself backpedaled when immigrants unsurprisingly arrived en masse; all in the effort to exploit migrants for cheap labour or in an attempt to save the already safe by enticing them to take a dangerous journey. Countries are not rational, they really are the sum of their parts; so it should come as no surprise that Germany thrust itself into such a situation in spite of so many warnings literal, spoken and seen - the political machine simply could not be stopped. With recent porkiness, you might even say it was:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[SimRobert2001]

In britbortion news Al Shabaab militiants have disagreed with Britain's aim to build a stable Somalian government with mean words which is not very nice
Jokes on them, they have shit flip flops

Now this is interesting. The north has always been more stable than the south, but is a whole 70 people an actual contribution, or is it just a PR move?

It's legit; French have been beefing it up in West Africa and Brits beefing it up in East Africa; also don't forget that for as long as Somalia is in turmoil there will always be pirates disrupting British maritime commerce so there's a vital reason to not fuck up and help the Somalian government retake its lands. It's working, with shit flipflop lads losing ground. The 70 troops have been part of an effort to essentially build a Somalian military from scratch out of militias just as likely to be a part of the problem as well as fix it, Britain's been at it for a while and this is additional manpower to an already existing operations. Officer, Combat, Medical and Logistics training -  all of these will make the African peacekeepers the far superior fighting force when fighting shit flipflop lads, and more troops are on the way. Oh and of course there's a very practical contribution in that the Royal Engineers will be busy building up Somalian infrastructure, and I don't doubt Americans are at work behind the scenes with their strategic fund to try and get some investment going into Somalia so that Somalia will eventually one day turn from a failed state to a self-building state.

It was inevitable.

It is terrifying.
Though really, it is most amusing to see how differently French and Brits handle humanitarian crises than Germany. I don't think anyone's going to forget how pointlessly Germany exacerbated the crisis to span from one end of the Med to the other just to bypass opponents to mass immigration and then herself backpedaled when immigrants unsurprisingly arrived en masse; all in the effort to exploit migrants for cheap labour or in an attempt to save the already safe by enticing them to take a dangerous journey. Countries are not rational, they really are the sum of their parts; so it should come as no surprise that Germany thrust itself into such a situation in spite of so many warnings literal, spoken and seen - the political machine simply could not be stopped. With recent porkiness, you might even say it was:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So, what is the difference, and how did Germany exacerbate the problem?

[redwallzyl]

a bit late but http://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-gmos-with-bill-nye-part-1/

[scriver]

I haven't watched that as I'm on my phone yet too impatient not to respond, but since it's the science guy I assume he's going to talk about the science parts, so: the science stuff is not the main thing people object to and in the few details it is it can be dealt with by thorough, conservative and foresightful jurisdiction and bureaucracy. The thing people mainly object to is the socio-economical issues. Ie GMO is not evil, Monsanto is evil.

Post-disclaimer: I apologise if I am in the wrong about context here, having not get seen the movie.

[redwallzyl]

I haven't watched that as I'm on my phone yet too impatient not to respond, but since it's the science guy I assume he's going to talk about the science parts, so: the science stuff is not the main thing people object to and in the few details it is it can be dealt with by thorough, conservative and foresightful jurisdiction and bureaucracy. The thing people mainly object to is the socio-economical issues. Ie GMO is not evil, Monsanto is evil.

Post-disclaimer: I apologise if I am in the wrong about context here, having not get seen the movie.

its a podcast and he does address those issues as well though not in as much depth obviously.

[Helgoland]

Schäublenomics. I read the German version, and I quite liked it - it illustrates fairly nicely the differences between the German/Schäubleian and Anglo-Saxon views of economics.

[mainiac]

Yeah all it shows is gross ignorance about policy outside Germany.  I mean economists outside Germany aren' skeptical about government policy?  What are you fucking braindead?  No where are the trade imbalances that are actually responsible for German "healthy economy that increased tax revenues".  No where are discussed the way that Germany is screwing over the US, Britain, etc. with it's policies.

And then we find this gem:

He points out that sociopolitical reasons were part of why Americans were provided with home mortgages at a reduced rate of interest

Which does not sound bad but within economic circles is a racist dog whistle, blaming the Great Recession on welfare for black Americans.

So, the man in the position of power is completely ignorant about the policy debates outside but knows the racist dog whistles.  I did not think I could disdain him more but I do.

As Mr. Schäuble sees it, the Americans simply don’t want to understand.

No the problem isn't that they dont understand.  The problem is that they understand.  They understand that you are wrong.

[Helgoland]

It may be news to you, but in Germany no-one - or no-one significant - really cares whether welfare goes to black or white people, and Schäuble certainly doesn't. When used on this side of the pond, that argument contains not one ounce of racism: Hell, I didn't even know that subprime lending was a race issue, I had always pictured the afflicted people as white southerners... I'll avoid going into how from here what you call 'screwing over' looks less like someone being ripped off in a poker game but rather like people coming out of a casino and bitching about how they lost money. Empirically it is safe to say that pointing this out will lead nowhere, and that therefore we should avoid such a debate.

[SirQuiamus]

This is indeed quite alarming. The article reveals that Schäuble's policy decisions are informed – apart from his own infinite wisdom – by the sage advice of someone called "Taliban."

That sounds like a kind of economic declaration of war and, in fact, Schäublenomics must be understood as an alternative concept to the Anglo-Saxon understanding of economics. Mr. Schäuble’s approach is coupled with a missionary dimension. Which is why he recruited Ludger Schuknecht, who is the only high-caliber economist in Mr. Schäuble’s immediate entourage that mostly consists of legal experts. Mr. Schuknecht is the director general for economic policy in the Ministry of Finance; in economic circles he is called the "Taliban." Mr. Schuknecht is actually a humorous and sociable character, but as soon as things get down to business, he knows no mercy. He studied under James Buchanan, an American Nobel Prize winner in economics, who had further developed the ideas of the Freiburg School and enjoys cult status among his followers.

Note that according to Wikipedia, James M. Buchanan "is considered to be a quasi-member of the Austrian school of economics," which amounts to saying that Herr Taliban's mentor is considered to be a quasi-snake oil salesman.

[mainiac]

It may be news to you, but in Germany no-one - or no-one significant - really cares whether welfare goes to black or white people, and Schäuble certainly doesn't.

I dont think it shows he is racist.  It shows that his world view is influenced by stupid sources.  It's like if the minister of health had no degree in medicine or statistics and started slinging around turns of phrase favored by Lysenkoists.

[penguinofhonor]

"Schäublenomics" is a word that really needs to catch on.

[scriver]

But you know, seeming as he's from the conservative party, there's a pretty big chance he's just racist.

[Helgoland]

You got a source for that? Otherwise that's just defamation.

[scriver]

Yes, poor little conservatives, getting defamated on the internets.