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

bbc.com

331–340 of 465 posts

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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, it's important to keep in mind the population density in former DDR regions is very low. Young people often flee towards bigger liberal cities, as soon as possible. Pronounced in eastern Germany, the AfD is a national problem. In short: Propaganda. Germany is a major target of Russian influence. The AfD itself is heavily funded by Russia. There is no "old love" situation, Russia isn't representing social…

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> Source for this?

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_f%C3%BCr_Deutschla...

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Bystron

There is plenty of news coverage.

> Is Merkle part of AfD since she shat on Poland and Baltics 2 months ago?

You mean Merkel? No, she is not part of the AfD. She also isn't part of the government anymore and her political influence since 2021, in particular 2 months ago, is basically zero. Did you get the memo? We had two elections since Merkel. I don't care where she shits. That's a private matter.

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

#332
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now Soviet Union was "pushed" to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and to attack independent countries? I'm sure modern Russia was also "pushed" to attack Ukraine and Georgia? There's no need for antirussian propaganda. The Russian actions speak for themselves, have always done so, and will continue to do so.

> I'm sure modern Russia was also "pushed" to attack Ukraine and Georgia? Well yeah, that is indeed what the Russian argument is: America/NATO forced us to attack Ukraine. There was no choice!

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

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBG3Gdt5OGs

Use, for example, Google Translate on the (Russian) explanations of the lyrics at https://genius.com/Ic3peak-no-more-death-lyrics to understand the context of this song.

Just turning CC=on in the video does a great job as well. They translated well, I think?

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

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under scientific scrutiny it is not, tho. Contact interventions are considered the most effective tool to reduce prejudices across domains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_hypothesis https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014971892...

If you want to get an idea of what a war situation would do to a society like Germany just remember Covid. A battle between humanity and a virus deeply deeply divided our society. If I remember correctly Germany or Austria were ready to put non vaccinated people in jails. About every lines of division deepens.

What the AF are you talking about. Stop spreading lies.

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

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t matter what the wages are, if there aren’t enough people willing to work for them, they aren’t high enough. That’s the core of labor markets. Importing migrants just worsens the underlying problem. You destroy your own pipeline and eventually run out of migrants. Germany needs to pay more and provide a better work environment instead of just finding people desperate enough it seems like a good deal. Edit:…

> 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…

That's below the median income, so not a lot for trained personnel.

Everything else you say is correct, but it applies to all German workers. In that sense, it's a somewhat low-paid job. It feels to me like they're more deserving of their income than a keyboard jockey like me.

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

#336

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…

Exactly. Even after Vietnam, in this century. Iraq war 2 was all false pretenses. And the resulting power vacuum created ISIS. Afghanistan accomplished absolutely nothing, things are back to the way it was and all the deaths were for nothing. The only fairly recent war that the west was involved in that was slightly justified was the first gulf war. But even that wasn't really any of America's business. It wasn't tha…

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

#337
post #234
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There just isn't enough people who are local and want to do this job for this pay. This happens in Germany but also in my home country. In Germany there is a whole industry around recruiting foreign nurses. I work in immigration and a few of my colleagues specialise in that. There are websites and initiatives just for that. It will get worse. This population is aging.

And the solution to low salaries is... is increasing the supply of labour?

Correct. It's not great from a labour perspective, but I don't think the goal is wage dumping. I believe the goal is to meet the demand with the available means.

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

#338

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> It has defended against several thousand drones in the last year. The idea of shooting down thousands of cheap drones using the S400 sounds ... interesting, to put it mildly. > It also successfully used by India in the latest spat and India is placing more orders after its proven success in Operation Sindoor There's not exactly many options available to India if they want to have any kind of air defense. The S400 c…

> Indian Air Force has repeatedly falsely claimed that they downed five Pakistani fighter jets, and one AWACS aircraft. This claim is patently absurd and completely unsupported... This was also confirmed by several independent international aviation experts not only the IAF. The S-400 achieved a record-setting engagement by shooting down a Saab 2000 AWACS aircraft from a range of greater than 300 km. Check out the an…

>This was also confirmed by several independent international aviation experts not only the IAF. The S-400 achieved a record-setting engagement by shooting down a Saab 2000 AWACS aircraft from a range of greater than 300 km.

Not a single credible source has reported this.

>The only propaganda on this subject is sadly coming from yourself.

Look, there are a plenty of actual photos of the IAF losses in this conflict. The IAF claims of PAF losses took months to surface and are not accompanied by any evidence and are widely considered to be fabrications by the rest of the world, and I'm certainly not talking about pro-Pakistani medias.

>Check out the analysis of Austrian military analyst Tom Cooper - he has covered this extensively.

Tom Cooper is an idiot who also repeated false claims that India had PAF pilots in custody. He's also got an extensive history of making up false claims about non-existent AFU successes against Russia.

https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-4-5-july-2022-...

https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-29-june-202...

Articles like these that are more optimistic than the most optimistic Ukrainian propaganda.

If he is the genuinely best source you can find, maybe it's time to start reconsidering your beliefs.

>Umm..dude, the strikes were deep into Pakistani territory. Can't show the live site you know ? They did show satellite imagery.

Ah yes, of course it's impossible to source footage of a single one of the five jets supposedly destroyed inside Pakistan. That's totally credible!

>The IAF is not in the habit of lying and the government doesn't modify IAF briefings. The only propaganda here is sadly coming from yourself.

So you're telling me that the IAF never claimed to have lost zero planes in the conflict against Pakistan, only to change their story after photos came out? :)

Look, I get you guys have a certain nationalist interest in this topic and it's very emotional. But you could at least try to include some decent sources since this is HN. To start with, I'd love to see some substance for your original claim that Russia is using their super expensive long range S-400 to shoot down thousands of cheap Ukrainian drones when Russia has a plenty of vastly cheaper equipment suited for that particular task. That's a claim I've never seen before, as opposed to the India-Pakistani conflict that has been endlessly litigated at this point.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 36-40 hours is a typical workweek. Around here, it's 36 hours. Didn't expect that, tbh. Not bad. > Why is there such resistance to just paying people more? Because I said elsewhere, nurses are mostly happy with their wages, it's the hospital management and de facto working conditions which suck. Higher wages won't fix these working conditions.

We're talking in circles. The way you attract people into a field despite poor management and working conditions is higher wages . That's the basic foundational truth of labor economics. Simply importing people who are desperate for even a below-market (in Germany) wage means that there is no economic incentive for conditions to improve or for wages to rise, and that your own pipeline will continue to dry up, leaving…

> The way you attract people into a field despite poor management and working conditions is higher wages.

People don't want to work in these conditions tho. And the public has to pay these wages. Seriously, you are so damn ignorant thinking American free-market bla bla is the fix for everything. It's probably tough to swallow, but quality of life matters here. Why aren't you paying your field and gastronomy workers 100k instead of exploiting illegals?

People here got other options to improve their lives. It's a democracy, the root issue can be fixed politically. Nurses are also organized in unions. So there isn't even "free market" shit all anyway. These unions demand better working conditions not higher wages.

Maybe you should first check basic foundational truths about economics in your own country, before lecturing others?! Despite all the riches, the median income in the US is lower than Germany. You should pay people better over there.

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