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PaperclipPerfector  25d ago (text post)   1214 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 27, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Another week, another "Democratic" European country banning the leading opposition candidate from running.

https://apnews.com/article/le-pen-france-far-right-trial-verdict-explainer-83fb47af7aff36576c6a5f7caee141f2

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been sentenced to a five-year ban on running for public office for embezzling EU funds, a major political earthquake. The ruling, which takes effect immediately, is likely to bar her from running in France’s next presidential election

and people think these are our allies? We should be sanctioning them, not paying for their security and subsidizing most research, pharmaceuticals, etc.

EU Leadership is playing with fire and still does not want to see the writing on the wall - the genie on anti-liberal politics has been let out of the bottle and is no longer just tethered to charismatic individual politicians who can galvanise a few percent of electors at the margins of society. 3 decades ago, it needed extremely adept figures within far-right parties to elevate their results to national relevance, like Jörg Haider in Austria. Today, just being the designated "anti-system" party nets you an instant 10-20% of voters across Europe. Their support has at this point very little to do with personality cults (which was what carried figures like Haider or Jean-Marie Le Pen back in the good old days) and is almost entirely axed around concrete policy goals and fundamental mistrust towards the establishment.

While Marine Le Pen is certainly upset about the verdict essentially being a judicial coup depriving her of a very probable presidential victory, I doubt the atmosphere within the RN as a whole is beset with gloom and defeatism at the moment. They are by now the largest single political party in France both in polling and in parliamentary representation, the most popular with the working class by far, are making massive inroads into the rural vote to take advantage of a fractured and exhausted centre-right, and are competitive with the far-left for capturing the youth vote. Compared to their predicament just a decade ago (when they were already surging heavily), the Rassemblement National has become a well-oiled machine with legions of young recruits hailing from increasingly polite and respectable backgrounds - a massive long-term lifeline for parties that traditionally were forced to recruit their party apparatchiks from dubious backgrounds due to a lack of "normal" people wanting to be seen alongside neo-nazis and such. Successor figures like Jordan Bardella are the targets of unrelenting mockery and derision by the French Left, yet they underestimate that despite his relative inexperience and lack of political seasoning, he still polls considerably higher in popularity than both Macron and Mélenchon - and was able to convince 37% of voters to support his party in this past summer's parliamentary election.

https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1473435/cote-taux-popularite-jordan-bardella/

https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1473510/cote-taux-popularite-jean-luc-melenchon/

https://fr.statista.com/infographie/33119/cote-popularite-president-et-premier-ministre-macron-bayrou-barnier-attal-borne/

All in all, I doubt this verdict will have the intended result of meaningfully weakening the European far-right; rather, it will just be another stepping stone in the polarisation of our societies, yet another heightening of the liberal project's progressively undeniable internal contradictions, bringing us yet another inch closer to the precipice - when will we jump?

intended result of meaningfully weakening the European far-right

It may suffice to simply delay any far-right power moves until demographics neutralizes the far-right forever.

Yes, I think EU leadership is banking on kicking the can down the road by all means in the hope that some Covid-level event will resurge and they can resurrect the police state atmosphere of the lockdowns, rallying society behind them by means of alarmism and fear. This is probably also a central function of their warmongering towards Russia - creating a siege mentality in which large swaths of the political spectrum can be labeled treasonous and banished from open discourse, probably even moving towards arrests, party bans and other forms of persecution by use of emergency powers if it really gets to the point where EU soldiers are deployed to Ukraine.

I think I'm marginally less blackpilled than you concerning demographics, the true tipping point for most Western European countries is probably still 3-4 decades away from now, which is a lot of time for upsets and shifts to happen. The EU really is a paper tiger when it comes to actually enforcing it's own internal laws, if major countries decide to opt out from certain treaties and pacts like the Dublin Agreement, there is functionally nothing Brussels can do aside from rhetorical scolding - it's not like they can send policemen to arrest Denmark's cabinet or Victor Orban. Since the Great Recession and the ensuing Eurocrisis, the EU has mainly been surviving based off of Germany's economic dominance and its internal long-lasting political dominance by status quo oriented establishment parties like the SPD and CDU. Now that these certainties are fracturing, I don't find it difficult to envision a completely neutered EU that increasingly behaves like the League of Nations, proclaiming edicts that no one feels any pressure to follow anymore since there's no actual punishment for transgressing them.

This is, of course, a cautiously optimistic view that banks on certain key elements of the democratic process being maintained and allowing for far-right victories to happen.

there is functionally nothing Brussels can do aside from rhetorical scolding

blocking funding

The funding comes from member states. If Germany doesn't play along with Brussels, it's Brussels that's in danger, not the other way around.

It was/is trying to do it with Hungary.

EU coerced Poland by blocking funding (done in way to influence elections)

Yet, EU cannot wins against member states in general, but multiple member states can win against one of two of them using funding blocking as a cudgel.

It's a completely different ballgame when the EU attempts to intervene in member states that are net receivers of EU money, as Poland and Hungary are. Neither of those states pay for other members infrastructure development, West and North Europe pay for theirs. If you've driven around those countries before, as I have, you'll see that virtually every new highway, hospital or power plant was built with EU funding.

Germany receives nothing comparable from other member states - sure, they have downstream economic interests in developing the economy of their neighbours, but in the immediate sense, Germany cannot be blackmailed by Brussels the way Budapest can.

it's not like they can send policemen to arrest Denmark's cabinet or Victor Orban

AFAIK Hungary is net receiver of EU funds

And even in case of Germany they can for example make German companies ineligible for say rearmament funding send by other countries or do something similar. Also, while Germany is net payer they may suspend some payments - forcing German government to surrender or deeply escalate.

An earlier AP article provides more details.

The National Rally and 27 of its top officials are accused of having used money destined for EU parliamentary aides to pay staff who instead did political work for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. The National Rally was called National Front at the time.

The European Parliament’s suspicions were further heightened when a 2015 organizational chart showed that 16 European lawmakers and 20 parliamentary assistants held official positions within the party — roles unrelated to their supposed duties as EU parliamentary staff.

A subsequent investigation found that some assistants were contractually linked to different MEPs than the ones they were actually working for, suggesting a scheme to divert European funds to pay party employees in France.

Investigating judges concluded that Le Pen, as party leader, orchestrated the allocation of parliamentary assistance budgets and instructed MEPs to hire individuals holding party positions. These individuals were presented as EU parliamentary assistants, but in reality, were allegedly working for the National Rally in various capacities.

The European Parliament’s legal team is seeking 2.7 million euros in compensation for financial and reputational damages. This figure corresponds to the 3.7 million euros allegedly defrauded through the scheme, minus the 1 million euros already paid back.

Le Pen, whose party has softened its anti-EU stance in recent years, denies wrongdoing.

“Parliamentary assistants do not work for the Parliament. They are political assistants to elected officials, political by definition,” she previously said. “You ask me if I can define the tasks I assigned to my assistants; it depends on each person’s skills. Some wrote speeches for me, and some handled logistics and coordination.”

Despite her denial, her party has already paid back 1 million euros to the European Parliament, the Parliament’s lawyer Patrick Maisonneuve said. Of that amount, 330,000 euros were directly linked to Marine Le Pen’s alleged misuse of funds.

Pretty similar to Trump, byzantine campaign finance rules that no one really follows only get maximally enforced when it furthers the interest of the ruling elite.

Embezzling funds sounds like something that should be relatively easy to tell if someone did it, or is being railroaded, so I'll wait for the opinion of our local Frenchmen (I think we have at least one), before forming mine.

From what I understood, the matter is (at least that's what the officials say it is) that they used funds allocated to pay one kind of the employee (aides working on EU matters) to pay another kind of the employee (aides working on French local matters). While this may or may not be violation of whatever regulations exist in EU (I certainly claim deep ignorance on the subject, and not sure why you can't have an employee working on both matters), calling it "embezzlement" seems going too far - it's not like Le Pen bought cars, family dinners and Gucci bags with public money. Making it a criminal violation disqualifying a leading opposition candidate from participating in the elections stinks to high heaven, to be honest.

Also, I imagine if US had similar regulations - where you can't use federal funds allocated for Congressional aides to hire a member of your own party - that'd disqualify about every single Congressman in existence, as I don't see many Democrats hiring Republican aides or vice versa. And I am sure a lot of congressional aides deal with day-to-day matters that concern partisan affairs - talking to voters, organizing fundraisers, meeting important allies, that kind of stuff. Are there any regulations for that in the US?

Odd it took them 10 years then.

Why does the US (Trump) have any interest in Greenland? I don't get it. Is there some massive rare earths deposit there that I haven't heard of...

It looks large on maps with mercator-like projections.

China has been trying to take over international shipping lanes. Trump sees US control of them as critical in the long term.

Greenland only has 57,000 people. If the Northwest Passage becomes a more viable shipping route it's an obvious chokepoint for China to try to control.

The US is already paying to defend it by having a base there. Greenlanders would most likely be better off as a US territory. Denmark isn't doing much for them.

57,000 people is less than the monthly illegal immigrant entries under Biden, so it's pretty easy for the US to invest in new programs to benefit the residents in exchange for becoming a territory.

Plus there is likely oil that can be developed with modern technology.

The only downside for Greenland I can see is the Jones Act possibly causing some problems. I don't know any of the details about shipping there.

I think the most likely explanation is that this is Trump doing Putin's bidding by prising the US away from its allies and also normalizing land grabs. You can't prove that Trump is a Russian asset, but he keeps acting very much like a Russian asset would.

Europe desperately needs to confront reality.

The UK has less than 25 working main battle tanks and more admirals than working ships. Yet their politicians are talking about confronting Russia without the US.

It'll take at least a decade of intense reindustrialization and rearmament to field proper defensive armies.

They need to get started now. Putin is actually a moderate in Russia who just wants to bring territories that are majority ethnic Russian in Russia proper.

Putin is 72 and there's a very real chance that he'll be replaced with an actual hardliner when he dies.

The German delegation laughed at Trump in 2018 when he tried to warn them about dependence on Russian energy. Now he's decided that a harsh wakeup call from him is better than letting them be caught off guard in the future.

An actual Russian agent would just tell Europe not to worry and let them be at the mercy of the next Russian leader.

Putin is actually a moderate in Russia who just wants to bring territories that are majority ethnic Russian in Russia proper.

This part is dubious at best.

They openly demanded to get entire Ukraine as colony/satellite/feudal state/sphere of influence and succeeded with Belarus. See also Syria (this one almost entirely failed by now).

Putin is not limiting itself to "bring territories that are majority ethnic Russian in Russia proper". And if he would succeed with Ukrainian invasion scope will again become wider.

If you look at the location of actual passable (sometimes) routes through the Arctic, Greenland is nowhere near them -- doesn't make sense, particularly not for China.

There's probably oil though -- not sure how exploitable it would be however.

actual passable (sometimes) routes through the Arctic

That can change if things get warmer though. Also, Greenland is near the Western (US/Canada adjacent) route, though it's the less usable now, but again could change in the future.

Greenland is near the Western (US/Canada adjacent) route,

It really isn't -- look at a proper Northern projection, there's no reason to go anywhere near Greenland on the traditional passage. And that route (despite alarmism) is not reliably ice free even mid-summer -- if you are waiting for the actual polar icecap to go away, that seems like a much longer time horizon than I'd expect Trump to be considering. Not to mention that if you could sail right over the North Pole, Greenland would be quite irrelevant -- there's a lot of (potential) ocean up there, one could easily keep one's distance from any landmass at all.

I think it's most clear when you look at the top-down view of the arctic ocean, like this one: https://images.app.goo.gl/tTE2H6ZyXdkU5DZB8

Greenland is front-row center in the race for the arctic. And that's an entire ocean! (also, incidentally, the path for any missiles and/or satellites flying between the US and Russia/China... (as explained here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SDFqMjy172k)

Ideas that sound plausible to me:

  1. his legacy
  2. shipping lanes and naval activity in a melting arctic
  3. monroe doctrine
  4. oil, gas, minerals

There seems to be serious protests going on in Turkey just now, does anyone know much about the particular details of what's going on? What the protesters want, how likely they are to get it, the political situation that led to it etc?

Erdogan’s main opposition candidate was arrested and ruled ineligible to run for president under [obscure legal technicality].

under [obscure legal technicality]

Reuters:

Imamoglu has faced legal challenges throughout his career, being sentenced in 2022 to 2-1/2 years in prison for insulting public officials, though an appeals court has yet to rule in the case.

Another case last year accused him of tender-rigging. His supporters view these charges as politically motivated attempts to sideline him, a claim Erdogan and the AKP deny.

The latest charges are the most serious. The Istanbul prosecutor's office has said 100 people, including journalists and businessmen, are suspected of involvement in corrupt municipal tenders.

Another investigation accuses Imamoglu and six others of aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey and its Western allies.

Adding to the pressure, Istanbul University annulled Imamoglu’s degree this week. If the decision is upheld by a court, it could block him from running in the 2028 presidential elections.

The United States is massing B-2 Spirit stealth bombers on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Reports suggest there are now between 7-9 B-2 bombers on the island. This is roughly 40 percent of all B-2 bombers in service. The B-2 is a stealth heavy bomber designed to penetrate heavily defended airspace. Although this type of bomber it could be used for strikes against Houthi forces, this force concentration is more likely designed to be used for a direct strike against Iran. There are some less certain indications that W-76 nuclear warheads are also being moved to Diego Garcia. It has long been theorized that Iranian nuclear facilities are too far underground to be destroyed by a conventional strike.

There are some less certain indications that W-76 nuclear warheads are also being moved to Diego Garcia. It has long been theorized that Iranian nuclear facilities are too far underground to be destroyed by a conventional strike.

what indications? is it on level of 4chan shitposting?

There are some less certain indications that W-76 nuclear warheads are also being moved to Diego Garcia

Really? Haven't heard anything about this. A nuclear disarming strike against a country of 80 million is a very, very bold move in an environment with multiple hostile great powers. I wouldn't think Trump has the balls for something so risky, no matter how many Zionists are jabbering in his ear.

Pick a fight with Canada

Demand Greenland

Impose tariffs on everyone

Attack Iran with a pre-emptive nuclear strike

Gigachad endorsed but probably not the wisest strategy, all things considered.

The problem is a lot of the nuclear facilities are so deep underground even the largest conventional bunker busters wouldn’t be able to touch them. It’s like NORAD, bored into the side of a mountain. If you’re going for a clean sweep, nuclear might be your only option.

They’re not only deep underground though, they’re also very widely distributed. Even the Israelis have low key accepted that Iran’s going to get the bomb if they don’t already have it.

It seems provocative and unnecessary though. Iran hasn't tested a nuke yet though who knows if they have some stashed away, nukes that could make there way back to the US one way or another, perhaps by truck. If Iran does develop nuclear capabilities that's bad news for Israel. But Iran has nuclear capabilities of some level, as does Pakistan. Yet nobody's nuked eachother. India and Pakistan fought many wars prior to acquiring nuclear weapons, now they don't fight much at all.

While a nuclear disarming strike can make sense for top-level world-domination affairs, why go to such an effort for Israel?

I am going to pre-register my position of "no major Happening occurs." It may well just be for the purposes of carrying out another flashy, expensive bombing run on the Houthis. Why strike Iran now and not before?

The Biden administration was planning a strike against Iran a few months before the election but cancelled it when a leaker blew the whistle on it. Despite the hysterical articles about Iran being six months away from a bomb every two weeks since 1986, they genuinely are getting close to one. Technically they are already past it. They have a bomb design, and enough fissile material for two or three, they just haven’t bothered to build one yet for strategic reasons. Israel is pretty skilled at gumming up the works, but that only works to a point. Iranian Uranium enrichment is about to take off, they have an entire line of centrifuges that are just about to start up.

It’s Iran’s only major strategic card left now that Hezbollah has been wrecked.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/27/british-steels-chinese-owners-reject-500m-go-green/

Jingye, the Chinese steel group that owns the plant, blamed Donald Trump as it announced plans to shut key operations, putting up to 2,700 jobs at risk.

British Steel has announced plans to close its two blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, making Britain the only G7 country unable to manufacture its own steel.

Jingye said it has invested more than £1.2bn to maintain operations since 2020 but said losses have ballooned to around £700,000 a day.

British Steel’s latest available accounts show pre-tax losses grew tenfold to more than £408m in 2022.

What a pathetic story of British-style governance in action. Sell the steel industry to China. Wreck the economy with ridiculously expensive 'clean energy'. Lose basic industrial capabilities for warmaking or building anything. Lose jobs. Lose relevance. Lose everything, sooner or later (sooner).

Development economics needs a new category to go along with developing and developed, studying declining countries like the UK.

Australia does basically the same thing, albeit with the extra steps of 'bail out the industries wrecked by gross economic negligence' and 'invest in green hydrogen': https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/feb/20/whyalla-steelworks-government-bailout-administration-sa

Green hydrogen isn't even a thing, surely most physicists could tell you the concept is a fantasy. Who has ever dreamed of expensively converting electricity into hydrogen, struggling to store the ultra-leaky, diffuse, explosive gas and then turning the hydrogen back into electricity? Even in the fantasy-world of renewable energy economics it's an unusually silly dream. Nuclear power is still banned of course.

British Steel has announced plans to close its two blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, making Britain the only G7 country unable to manufacture its own steel.

This is technically false - it means that the UK would be the only G7 country unable to manufacture its own pig iron for conversion into steel. And this explains what is going on. Because of our early industrialisation and early deindustrialisation, the UK is the Saudi Arabia of scrap steel.

Mass of available steel decreases very slowly - a bit gets lost to rust, and a bit gets lost to landfill, but most of the steel in a manufactured object or a steel-framed building is available for recycling at the end of its life. The total stock of steel the UK needs is increasing very slowly - the total weight of steel in manufactured goods in the UK has been high for a very long time. (The value-to-weight ratio of manufactured goods continues to increase so a lack of mass growth isn't necessarily a sign of impoverishment) and although I support a big increase in steel-framed building construction, the median voter doesn't. And the rate at which the stock of steel in the UK increases is covered by imports of imbedded steel in manufactured products. So we can meet our domestic needs for steel entirely by recycling scrap in electric arc furnaces.

The physical logic of keeping a blast furnace in the UK is based on us being a net exporter of refined steel products - and in practice those exports had to go to the EU because every country protects its domestic steel industry. So post-Brexit the blast furnaces were on borrowed time - the money for the next needed major renovation was never going to be invested on commercial terms.

Recycled steel can't be used in certain areas. If you want a gun barrel or a nuclear reactor or anything important and high-performance, you want virgin steel. It's a key capability for a major economy. A strong steel industry has flow on effects in construction, advanced engineering, munitions, shipbuilding, energy...

Every country protects its steel industry for a reason!

If you want a gun barrel or a nuclear reactor or anything important and high-performance, you want virgin steel.

This is FUD from the legacy steelmakers in the US. In the UK, the speciality steel business (mostly based in Sheffield, as it has been since the Middle Ages, which is why Henry Bessemer moved there to found the modern steel industry) went electric arc first. The blast furnaces at Scunthorpe are fueling a long products mill - i.e. general construction grade steel.

We already have a company making gun barrels and nuclear reactor parts out of recycled steel.

Green hydrogen isn't even a thing, surely most physicists could tell you the concept is a fantasy.

I disagree. I'm a proponent of the Electrify Everything movement, and I'm convinced it's going to be cheaper for 90% of the economy than burning fossil fuels is, within two decades.

You want green hydrogen for two things: blast furnaces for virgin steel (steel from iron ore, not from scrap) and cement kilns for concrete. Both processes will be difficult to electrify without hydrogen. The rest of what you're saying is true, of course. You only ever store hydrogen if you have access to a subterran salt cavern - because then its economical to run the electrolyzers when electricity is cheap, and make steel/cement 24/7. In all other cases, you just make the hydrogen on demand, and you throttle down production if electricity gets temporarily expensive.

If you have a truly gigantic salt cavern (those exist) and most countries in the west continue to refuse reforming their nuclear regulations, you might be doing seasonal energy storage on the side. Because in a future grid without nuclear, the renewables will need to be at least 30% overbuilt, which means you have zero cost electricity for months. In that case, adding a few GW of gas turbines or fuel cells to your steel/concrete plant might be worth it, even if you only run them during the yearly dunkelflaute.

Electrification is all well and good (clean air!) but why go to such a great effort in steel and cement? The capital base using coke/thermal coal is already there and paid for. There's 70-100 years of coke left, probably more if we look harder.

It just seems like an inefficient use of resources. Why would we even want to overbuild our electricity sector by 30% and have all this surplus/deficit in power? Just build more nuclear plants when we need more energy, keep them running 95% of the time and then switch over to fusion power. Keep using coke where needed, counter CO2 emissions with sulphate aerosols.

I guess it makes sense if the 'solar power is going to make energy insanely, ludicrously cheap' argument comes true. But they've been saying this for ages. It hasn't happened. We've been told that solar power is incredibly cheap, yet electricity prices have been rising even as we build more and more solar. I live in Australia. We're not short of solar potential! I think the whole narrative is an illusion. Actually cheap energy sources have high uptime and reliability - coal, gas, nuclear, hydro. I'm not aware of any major country whose electricity prices have fallen as a result of a transition to renewables.

Electrification is all well and good (clean air!) but why go to such a great effort in steel and cement?

Steel is 7% of global CO2 emissions, cement is 6%. And both are actually easier to electrify than agriculture, ocean shipping and jet flight - each also single digit percentage points of global emissions.

So if we stop short of steel and cement, we're so very much short of Everything, we might as well just give up and accept that global warming will be a continuous process that only stops after human civilization ends. I'm not yet willing to accept doomerism of that kind, I'd much rather build great things - which needs more steel and cement, meaning we need to electrify it in the field as soon as it begins to be cost competitive.

Just build more nuclear plants when we need more energy, keep them running 95% of the time and then switch over to fusion power.

I share your frustrations, but I've been waiting for a reform of nuclear regulations for decades now. It's not going to happen, middling public support and close to zero political will across the aisle. We just can't do it, and now it's too late. Even regulatory nuclear revolution followed by a Manhattan project 2.0 would not make nuclear in any way relevant in the west. The timelines are too long and renewables+batteries have full industrial momentum now.

France, South Korea and China had the political will 30 years ago, and thus have momentum now, but nobody else does.

But they've been saying this for ages. It hasn't happened.

It has happened for everybody who bought solar cells. Investments in rooftop solar amortize in 5-10 years, after that it's pure profit/free power.

The rest will follow with cheap batteries. Technologically, we could roll out vehicle to grid today, and connect several TWh of batteries to the grid. Grid scale batteries are economical today, you just need to wait in the grid interconnection queue for a year or two until you can get your GW connections approved. It's happening right now, and it will only get faster from here. The price is right now, and shortly the full force of capitalism will do the rest.

Consumer prices might not follow, of course. Lots of monopolies, stupid regulations, lots of new investments...

Good points. In my mind I guess I conceptualize civilization as an accelerationist project that is going to end up reshaping or disassembling the world one way or another, so why bother with greenhouse gas emissions? We'll end up paving the Antarctic and Arctic with datacentres, heating the world with sheer mass of industry, turning wilderness into parkland... Like it or not we've subjugated nearly all land mammal biomass and we're moving in on the oceans. Why try to arrest the transformation now? It is our destiny...

If you've ever read the Keys to the Kingdom series, a major part of it is Arthur trying to preserve his humanity from the sorcerous power of the keys. He takes all these risks and limitations on his power, trying to stay mortal. But in the end he becomes a 12 foot tall winged immortal Denizen anyway, he is the Chosen One after all. The impulse to retain humanity in the face of general superiority always seemed strange to me, though I accept my opinion must be in the minority there and in ecology/climate too.

Who has ever dreamed of expensively converting electricity into hydrogen, struggling to store the ultra-leaky, diffuse, explosive gas and then turning the hydrogen back into electricity?

I have. There was a short period of time where you could draw a straight line from the current (ineffective) storage methods to the promises of some developing technologies, then out a couple decades and get pretty impressive energy densities. Of course, it didn't actually happen and lithium batteries filled that niche instead.

Reading through your linked article, I thought it was obviously a hydrogen chemical plant, which would produce useful ingredients for industrial processes like steel production (there must be a reason to do it centralized instead of on-site, right?). But no, it's a power plant. Then I thought it must be a hydrocarbon refining plant that split off the easy-to-get hydrogen from hydrocarbons and used it in some sort of novel turbine that took advantage of its properties (Compared to natural gas, it has higher flame temperature, different exhaust gasses, and ?????). But no, it's a green hydrogen power plant. They're breaking water molecules in half then putting them back together again.

Nuclear power is still banned of course.

Yes, this is the most egregious failing of our world from Dath Ilan rational paradise perspective.

Imagine alternate world that is just like us, except it has problems with food. Not like us, problems of too much food, but problems of not enough food.

In this world, in richest countries, people spend about half of their income on food, the poor regularly go hungry and it is not uncommon for the poorest to starve to death. And in poor countries, massive famines killing millions are normal occurence.

The world does not like it, and tries hard to remedy it. Every day, there is new government initiative to solve the food problem, every day there is new startup business promising new and revolutionary ersatz food from sawdust and coal. But the problem persists.

You, as visitor shocked with their plight, offer an obvious (to you) solution.

"Do you know you could use pesticides to kill pests and this way to raise agricultural yield by order of magnitude?"

"Here are some very simple ones your chemical industry can easily manufacture."

"This way, no one will have to go hungry, food will be in such abundance that even homeless could be as fat as millionaires!"

The locals, shocked and horrified, answer:

"This is organophosphate chemistry! This is NERVE GAS! Do you want to kill us all? Are you Adenoid Hynkel, the most evil man that ever lived?"

We recently had our federal elections in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the winners, the CDU and their sister-party CSU, are currently organizing their coalition with the SPD.

The CSU got to pick the future minister of agriculture, and they chose Günther Felßner für the job.

Felßner has now cancelled this plan, because animal rights activists broke into his farm-home to protest against some form of animal abuse or another. Supposedly his wife feared for her life, and he considers his family's safety more important than high political office.

The protest has been condemned by the future government parties, but overall not much is made of it.

First the lefties get Tesla stock prices down through distributed property damage, now they pick off a future minister of agriculture in Germany with trespassing and intimidation. Terrorism works.

Tesla’s share price has declined because sales in Europe and China have fallen.

The sales decline in Europe is at least potentially explainable by the backlash to Musk, what explains China? Preference for domestically-made EVs?

Yeah, the rise of cheap BYD and other competitors with higher quality vehicles.

Now, hold on, this probably needs the caveat of "terrorism works in the short term." I doubt this automatically means that the Greens are going to get the pick instead.

I doubt this automatically means that the Greens are going to get the pick instead.

No, it means someone less offensive to the Greens is going to get picked, which means they get to act like they're a part of the ruling coalition without being in it.

The German Grunen are an electorally serious political party that frequently joins coalition governments (occasionally including ones led by the CDU/CSU) - the sort of animal rights extremist who breaks into a politician's home would consider them contemptible sell-outs.

The coalition isn't going to find an agriculture minister who is acceptable to the eco-loonies - because joining a CDU-led government is unacceptable per se. They are probably going to find an agriculture minister who lives in a more defensible location.

I also agree with the other two. Hardcore activists and mainstream Grüne/Linke are part of the same circles at university and get along well despite their differences. There is some grumbling here and there, but they have no problems working together, since they fundamentally share the same worldview.

For a public example, Nancy Faeser, part of the mainstream SPD and minister of the interior under the Ampel (which "protects us from enemies of our constitution", among other things) outright published an article in a magazine from one of the largest antifa orgs, one which has been noted as working together with violent leftwing extremists. Unsurprisingly, Faeser has been going after right-leaning journalists while completely ignoring the extreme left.

It is as @ArjinFerman says.

Die Grünen (and to a lesser extent die Linke) are married to the activists, which form the so-called APO (Außerparlamentarische Opposition / extra-parliamentary opposition). The two don't compete; they cooperate.

the sort of animal rights extremist who breaks into a politician's home would consider them contemptible sell-outs.

Sure, in the same way American leftists consider the Democrats sell-outs, and then dutifully campaign for them.

American left-idiotarians were rather noisily campaigning against Biden in the recent elections on the grounds that he was insufficiently pro-Palestinian.

Sure, some of them made grumbling noises over Palestine, all of them were 100% all-in for Biden in 2020, and most of them were still dutifully campaigning for the Democrats in 2024.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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