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Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

bbc.com

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Re: Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

#301

Post by mystraline »

ImJamal wrote: post #251
OKRainbowKid wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people are complaining, and we currently have a right-wing government. Your username is quite apt.

I think he is saying nobody on the left is complaining about how it is mandatory for men, but voluntary for women making it a sexist policy. People might be complaining about it is happening overall, but not about the sexist part.

Every leftist org ive interacted with places cis-males basically lower status than anyone else. Ive even had that used around me as a slur, almost like they dont really understand.

Attacking people just because they are cis- and AMAB (assigned male as birth) isn't bad. Its your actions that determine good or bad.

And, throwing men into a potential meat grinder of war is unethical. Frankly, it should all be actual volunteer, and not this doublespeak shit of voluntarily required.

Theres also this now public problem. Do trans-women count as men or women? And do trans-men count as men or women? The best answer is "volunteer". But governments are weird, especially the conservative/fascist adjacent ones.

Re: Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

#302

Post by jijijijij »

toast0 wrote: post #284
enceladus06 wrote: post #8

Just build nukes if you are afraid of Russia then nuke them if they try to invade. Ukraine is not as smart and gave up its nukes in the early 90s, and is now in the middle of a war for the last couple years.

Ukraine gave up nukes that they couldn't afford to maintain and got unenforcable security guarantees 'assurances' in return. Giving up the nukes allowed Ukraine to attract foreign aid and build an economy for 20 years before invasions began. Who knows what would have happened if they kept nukes and didn't get necessary aid and couldn't build their economy or maintain the weapons.

I think the point isn't if it's been a good decision at the time (I don't think it's been much of a decision at all), but rather that Russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine, if Ukraine was still armed with nuclear weapons. Hindsight is 20/20, but the world took notice.

Re: Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

#303

Post by nothercastle »

jeffrallen wrote: post #146
Balgair wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually you make a good point here. Women have better reaction times then men, so female drone operators, all else being equal, may be better at the job.

In my village's shooting club the women shoot just as well at the men, and quite a bit more consistently as well.

It’s mostly about ability to haul and dig as I understand it. I roles where you don’t need that as much strength is significantly less important

Re: Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

#304

Post by black_13 »

nicbou wrote: post #28

To offer a bit of context, the same government just voted to raise current pensions at the expense of steep taxation hikes for current workers, made massive cuts to social services, and is now discussing military service. This generation is rightfully feeling like they're getting a sore deal.

[dead]

Re: Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

#306

Post by samdoesnothing »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #53
venturecruelty wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of young people look at all of the wars waged post-WWII and are rightfully opposed to fighting for their governments. Would you want to die for nothing in Vietnam? Probably not, and a lot of other people didn't want to as well. Some of them did anyway, and it was all for nothing. So please have some grace if today's kids have looked back at our miserable history and have decided that they'd rather not d…

Putin will happily take over your home, even if you thought Viet Nam was a waste.

Haha you think the youth own homes? It'll be young people dying so old people get richer just like every other war.

Re: Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

#307

Post by samdoesnothing »

nsoqm wrote: post #237
hkpack wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see, millions are already killed in the biggest war in Europe since WW2 and it looks like this is just the prelude. Russia is threatening to fight Europe as of yesterday, continue to increase weapon production and militarisation. It is obvious that it just cannot stop as its economy and social order is switching more and more to the war-time. China backs russia up and officially declaring that it cannot allow Rus…

Are you of fighting age? In other words, are you putting your life on the line, or you just think that “someone else” should die to protect you?

Everybody who talks like this is unwilling to fight themselves.

Re: Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

#308

Post by jijijijij »

Amezarak wrote: post #295
jijijijij wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: I just checked and the average German nurse salary is (43k in USD vs 88k USD) less than half the average US RN salary, Where did you get this figure? 23.70€/h (~27.60 USD/h) apparently is the average wage for nurses. Working full-time, 38 hours per week, that's 46,831.2€ (54,492.34 USD) per year. Mind you, half of socialized costs, like health insurance is payed by the employer, so you need to adjust figures…

> Where did you get this figure? https://www.payscale.com/research/DE/Job=Registered_Nurse_(R... I am happy to accept your figure of "slightly more than half" for the sake of this discussion. > Mind you, half of socialized costs, like health insurance is payed by the employer, so you need to adjust figures accordingly. Nurses in the US also have half (or more) of costs like health insurance paid for by their employer…

Jesus, you people are certainly something...

> We can probably safely call this a wash.

Does it tho? Cause in Germany there are no deductibles or co-pay. How many hours do your nurses work for the money? How man vacation days are included.

Btw. the median income in Germany is 52,159 Euro.

> Germany has overall notoriously high living costs.

According to this site, US is 21% more expensive than Germany:

https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/germany/unite...

> I used to be baffled as to why Germans typically have no AC, only small appliances, often no clothesdryer, etc. Then after learning this I realized that for an average person, running American-style appliances would be totally unaffordable.

Are you comparing Idaho to Germany? Cause Californians have to pay more for electricity than Germans.

0.23€/kWh is the current price for electricity in Germany. We don't have ACs, because we got well insulated homes and live in a rather cold climate. Modern houses are equipped with heat pumps which can do both. Yes, we now widely heat houses with unaffordable electricity!

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/Strompreis-aktuell-So-vi...

Re: Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

#309

Post by toast0 »

jijijijij wrote: post #302
toast0 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine gave up nukes that they couldn't afford to maintain and got unenforcable security guarantees 'assurances' in return. Giving up the nukes allowed Ukraine to attract foreign aid and build an economy for 20 years before invasions began. Who knows what would have happened if they kept nukes and didn't get necessary aid and couldn't build their economy or maintain the weapons.

I think the point isn't if it's been a good decision at the time (I don't think it's been much of a decision at all), but rather that Russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine, if Ukraine was still armed with nuclear weapons. Hindsight is 20/20, but the world took notice.

Are 20 year unmaintained weapons an effective deterent? Would there have been capacity to resist occupation if it wasn't? Would Ukraine have been coerced into some form of union through economic means and would that be better or worse for the people of Ukraine than the invasions?

All sorts of questions to ask. Yes, if our timeline was otherwise unchanged, but the nukes were kept and maintained, it seems unlikely that invasion in 2014 would have happened... But it's a big change to the timeline to keep the weapons, and there's too many unknowns to predict the resulting changes. I do strongly suspect few countries will accept similar assurances in the future, unless under duress, but then Ukraine wasn't exactly free from duress at the time either.

Re: Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

#310

Post by jasonvorhe »

distances wrote: post #288
jasonvorhe wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand. I'm not against reporting about Russia. The oversimplification of reducing everything down to "Putin this, Putin that" is my issue. Imagine me saying everything the EU is doing is explicitly because of Ursel. It's stupid, ignorant and reminds me of Trump Derangement Syndrome which had a similar effect on reporting about US issues. I live in Germany so I'm fucked either way. I'm also aware of NATO e…

> I'm also aware of NATO expansion This is the Russian way of putting it. Guess what, NATO doesn't "expand". Each and every NATO member had to apply for membership themselves, after a national decision to do so. Any guesses why all Russian neighbours want to be NATO members?

Keep on ignoring Western intelligence influence on color revolutions and political instability at your own peril. I'm out.
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